Staycation Day 2 aka School’s Out!

Today is Symphony’s last day of school. As you can see, she’s thrilled.

School's Out
Okay actually that’s just the face she makes when I try to take a picture of her. She’s a delight, truly. I just liked her outfit today! She really knows how to mix those colours and patterns.

As usual, I left the end of the year gift buying until the last minute. In fact, I TOTALLY outdid myself. Usually I leave it until the night before the last day of school, this year I left it until the ACTUAL day. OOPS. Lucky I’m not working this week or this shopping trip would have been a huge pain!

School's Out Gifts

I ended up buying her teacher a grow-your-own-organic-heirloom-tomatoes kit (which I forgot to take a picture of) and I got Symphony a bottle of Harajuku Lovers Lil Angel perfume. Along with Studio Ghibli films and vampires these perfumes are so hot with the elementary school set this year.

Sym's School's Out Gift

Before I went out shopping I managed to capture this special moment between Kichou and Georgie. He doesn’t bite her, just snarls and barks and then sulks in the closet. She is not scared of him at all though.

Progress in the Georgie-Kichou Relationship
view full size for maximum impact EDIT:
Kichou Has Feelings

Sleepy Angel

I got up to take out the puppy this morning (no pee incidents last night, yay) and found Sym sleeping on the couch where I had my nap yesterday.

Sleepy Angel

Good thing I didn’t look in her room first or I would have started the day with an omg-my-baby’s-been-kidnapped panic. She’s eight years old but I still check on her at night, to make sure she’s there, to make sure she’s safe, to make sure she’s still breathing. Sometimes she creepily sleeps with her eyes open and I wake her up to make her cut it out.

Staycation Day 1

Even though I’m on vacation my day started early. REALLY early. As in, 3 am when I was woken up by a very contrite puppy who had just wet the bed. MY bed. It was my fault- I usually take her out around 11:30 and she’s good until 6:30, but I fell asleep before ten and I guess she couldn’t hold it. Oh well. I cleaned the mattress and changed the sheets and I was able to get another couple hours in before it was time to get Sym up for her second-last day of school.

After I dropped her off I met up with Taylor and we walked our soggy doggies in the rain. They both got muddy and needed baths when we got home, which they weren’t happy about. Georgie in particular is not a fan of tubtime and whined her puppy face off. One the dogs were all dried off we went out for brunch, then relaxed on the couch and watched the season 4 opener of Burn Notice, which we are like, OBSESSED with right now. We watched the first three seasons in just a couple of weeks!

Once it was over it was well past Taylor’s bedtime, so he went to sleep. I was going to do all kinds of stuff like cleaning the floors and taking out the trash and doing dishes, but that didn’t happen. Instead I read on the couch and eventually fell asleep in a pile of blankets, pillows and dogs. Luckily I remembered to set an alarm to wake up in time to pick up Sym! Now she’s playing on her room and I’m doing all the dishes and cleaning I missed by sleeping all afternoon. So today was kind of a waste, but also kind of awesome.

I also spent some time looking at old photos and found this cute picture of me and Symphony at Vera’s Burger Shack from 2007.

SAY WHAT

Hahaha I love it. Of course, like every time I look at old pictures now I want to do my hair dark again. It looks so good!!

Best Friends

Best Friends
Best Friends
Best Friends

I cannot get over this cute friendship between Dougal and Georgie! Unfortunately Kichou doesn’t want to be part of my cool dog gang and sulks and hides under the couch all the time. Georgie is a big (tiny) bully though, always picking on him and pulling his hair.

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Poor Kichou! Hopefully they can work through their issues and become friends. I can’t be mad at her though; she’s too kissy and fuzzy.

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Popsicle Party

This week’s popsicle party was actually late. On Friday night we ordered pizza and watched Castle in the Sky and I was too tired to get into popsicle making. I figured if we made them Saturday morning they’d be frozen enough by the afternoon for us to try them.

I chose the flavour this time: Watermelon!

Watermelon Popsicle
We bought watermelon/strawberry juice to help liquid it up.

Sym w/Watermelon Popsicle
Symphony helped with the melon balling process.

Watermelon Popsicle
pre-blend

Watermelon Popsicle
post-blend

Watermelon Popsicle
The finished product.

Sym w/Watermelon Popsicle
I’m not gonna lie: these popsicles sucked. It might be because the watermelon was past its awesome date- it was a little desiccated in places. We didn’t use those parts but the whole flavour was kind of off. These might be better with a fresher, juicier melon so I might try making them again later this summer.

What I’ve Been Reading

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Half Broke Horses 46/104; The Brief History of the Dead
47/104; Catching Fire 48/104

I loved all of these books! I knew after reading The Glass Castle that I wanted to read Half Broke Horses as well and I definitely wasn’t disappointed. Kevin Brockmeier has been one of my favorite authors since I read his short story collection The View from the Seventh Layer a couple of years ago. Catching Fire is the sequel to The Hunger Games and I’ve been itching to read it for months. It suffers a little from second-book-of-a-trilogy syndrome but it’s still good, and now I’m more excited to read the final book, Mockingjay, than ever.

Puppy Burrito

puppy burrito

Georgie stepped in some poop and needed a small bath because she’s going to Sym’s school for Show & Tell today.

Fantastic Toys

While going through my old tumblr posts the other day, one of the awesome things I rediscovered was this picture of pony & unicorn plushes by Fantastic Toys.

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Unfortunately there aren’t any unicorns available now, but I was happy to learn that you can buy PDF papercraft playsets! For just $4 I got this adorableness:

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So cute! I’m going to go buy some cardstock and as soon as I get my file I have a fun new project to work on with Sym!

Cold Showers

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This was stuck in my door at 8:30 this morning:

Dear Residents,

Notice of Water Supply Interruption

The water boiler at your building has failed. Arrangements have been made for the immediate replacement of the boiler by [redacted]. The work is expected to take about 5 to 7 hours to complete and will begin this morning. We expect to have hot water service restores by the end of the day. If you need any additional information about the work to be done please contact [redacted].

Yours truly,
Assistant Property Manager

FIVE to SEVEN hours with no hot water, with no notice. THANKS BOILER!

Now, I could get all cranky and irritated about this, but instead I’m going to look at the bright side:
• because Georgie and Claire woke me up at the crack of dawn with their kitty puppy shenanigans, I had a bath and shaved my legs when there was still hot water (Taylor came home from work expecting to have a shower but NO DICE).
• with no hot water I can’t do the dishes or clean the floors, which means I don’t have to do the dishes and clean the floors
• there’s still cold water so we can still wash our hands and use the facilities, otherwise I would have had to close down and refund money to all my inconvenienced clients.