June 30th

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lil Canada Day tease on the clifftop.
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It took me literally hours to clean up this mess on my patio. HOURS.
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OH MY GOD, I am like totally dead. This morning Taylor and I took the baby around the Seawall (no otters this time, boo) and after we got home and everyone else went to bed I thought it’d be the PERFECT time to do some garden work*. I mean, I HAD to do some because I discovered that raccoons dug up my Corsican moss last night, those little shits. This is a problem I often have with my garden, fucking raccoons digging up my plants over and over until they (the plants) are dead (also the time they dug up my dead hamster, that was definitely a problem). Anyway I had to re-plant the Corsican moss so I figured I’d put in my little brick path as well. I had nine bricks and was planning on put them together in threes to form a little stepping stone-type path from my patio into the garden. Nine bricks, how hard could it be?

AHAHAHHA omg it was a literal nightmare. I only had a little trowel to dig with and there are two well-established bushes at that end of the garden with roots all over the place and the whole thing was just. UGH. Plus I was super tired and my legs/back hurt before I even started. I managed to get it done and moved a couple groundcover plants near the bricks and hopefully they’ll start to cover the ground (AS ADVERTISED) and that part of the garden will no longer be just dirt and dead leaves and crud. I’m also planning on foraging for some moss to put there, although we all know how it went last time I tried to put down moss**.

Since it’s summertime now we’ve been eating hotdogs a lot, more so than other years. Usually I serve them with tater tots, or corn on the cob, or a salad I make with corn, cherry tomatoes and cucumber. I think what I really need though, to take hot dog night to the next level is a good potato salad recipe. Gwen loves potatoes, and I like the idea of potato salad in theory but in practice it usually grosses me out. I’ve actually been having lots of weird food problems recently, like about texture or smell? The other week we had burgers, with just like frozen hamburger patties, and when I was cutting Gwen’s up the texture of the patty grossed me out so bad I couldn’t even eat mine. I think from now on I’m going to have to be more hands-on and make my own burgers from scratch.

ANYWAY if anyone has a line on a good potato salad recipe with no mayonnaise or mustard or dill (idk if those last two are even things people put in potato salad but JUST IN CASE) then hook me up!

It’s the last of the month, let’s see how I’m doing with my goals…

I’m still trying to quit pop. Trying and not succeeding. IT’S JUST SO DELICIOUS. Anyway I think I’ve convinced Taylor to join me in quitting, so hopefully once he stops filling the fridge with ice cold Cokes and Dr Peppers I won’t have so much trouble sticking to this!

Sunscreen is a bust, I have a terrible Birkenstocks tan on my feet. BOO. Obviously I’m going to keep using sunscreen because I’m not an idiot, but I have definitely failed in my goal to not get a stupid shoe tan. Better luck next year, I guess.

In brighter news, my hair is now TECHNICALLY past my chin. I haven’t gotten a trim in idk, months? I feel like I’m being very strong in my resolve to grow it, even though it is a very annoying and unflattering length on me right now.

*I hope y’all aren’t getting sick of my garden talk! I’d say I’m going to stop soon but for some reason I’m like SUPER COMMITTED to making the garden nice this year so probably I will never shut up about it.

**Poorly. It went poorly. The internet and also irl people told me the way to encourage moss growth was to get a lil bit of moss, blend it up with buttermilk and pour the resulting slurry where you want the moss to grow. So I did that. And all that happened was I broke the blender, my garden stank of old buttermilk, and it attracted even more raccoons that dug everything up even more than usual. NEVER AGAIN.

June 29th

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Walking the line.
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Boop.
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Weird little curbside garden plot with obelisks.
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What’s in my bag: wallet, phone, keys on Cutpath sun & moon keyring, scones. I’ve been using my Sad Ghost Club tote bag as my main purse because it is the best.
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30 minutes later it was blazingly hot & sunny.
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Beware of skunks.
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This weekend has been really weird, weather-wise. On both Saturday and Sunday it alternated between cool breezes, torrential downpours, steaming-hot sun, and freezing clouds. It kind of made it hard to do much, other than take the baby for little rambles around the neighborhood. I did manage to acquire (for free!) some bricks to make a stepping-stone path in my garden. I haven’t started laying them out yet though, as the only times I would have been able to do any garden work (when Gwen was napping/playing with Taylor) were also when it was the coldest and rainiest.

Also! The new hose we ordered finally came (a long, stupid story about how UPS apparently doesn’t care to deliver our packages or even leave delivery attempt slips anymore) and it was a bust. As in, it was busted! The fittings were plastic and the ring that screws onto the tap was cracked, so when I turned the water on a tiny trickle it all sprayed out of the side of the ring! Ugh so annoying. Anyway the same person who gave me the bricks tipped me off to a way to get a new hose for free (ask the property manager, WOW WHAT A CONCEPT) so hopefully SOON I’ll be able to stop watering my plants with a frigging juice jug, haha.

In non-garden news… Since the weather was so mercurial the only thing I’ve done so far this weekend is start making Gwen a new pair of shoes. I’m working on a new pattern for some simple little ballet flat-style shoes, but I’m having trouble working out how to do the elastic. Tragically, I think this pattern might be a bust, which is disappointing as I had high hopes for it. It may still be salvageable; you never know.

Now I have two more days of weekend left that I’m hoping to make the most of!
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June 27th

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Spot the creep.
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Pitting cherries with the OXO Good Grips cherry pitter I got last year and never used.
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Freeze lemonade in ice cube trays & blend with more lemonade, it’s the lemonade-iest.
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Sym graduated from elementary school this week. I know some people think elementary school graduations are stupid but like, who gives a shit? When I finished elementary school there wasn’t a ceremony (that I can recall, it was about fifty billion years ago though) but my school only went to grade five, and there was a grade eight graduation dinner & dance when I finished middle school. At the dinner me & the other girls in choir sang “The Rose” and “I’ll Remember You” by Skid Row (IT WAS 1990 OKAY) backed by a rock band called BAD HABITS that consisted of cool guys from the high school.

I STILL KNOW ALL THE WORDS.

There was also an awards ceremony the next week, and the day of the ceremony my mom forced me to wear an outfit I hated (which she actually bought for me to wear the the dance but I secretly “borrowed” a very 1980s formal dress with ruching and a sequin applique at the waist from my older sister’s closet and changed in the gymnasium bathroom haha) because unbeknownst to me, I had won the academic award for having the best grades in the school. Clearly, I peaked too early.

So, back to Sym…the teachers are still on strike but the principal & vice principal held a graduation ceremony on Tuesday at a hotel, which was actually great for me as normally they have them at the school during school hours, so Taylor and I wouldn’t have been able to go. SOME OF US HAVE JOBS, OK. It was so funny seeing all of her little friends dressed up with their hair done looking like Pretty Little Liars: The Tween Years or something. The vice principal called all the kids to get their certificates and mispronounced Sym’s last name, which kind if annoyed me. There were only like, 70 kids in her grade, you’d think the vice principal could learn how to say their names??

Gwen’s big thing this week is climbing up on stuff and then asking* to be lifted down, and if you don’t lift her down in timely fashion OR EVEN IF YOU ARE ABOUT TO, she will probably fall off and yell. She twirls around on the end table until she’s dizzy, she backs away from you towards the edge when you try to lift her off, she runs on the top of the L-shaped benches and takes the corner too quickly, she clambers from the dining room chairs to the the dining table itself**… she’s out of control! So far she hasn’t seriously hurt herself, and she’ll learn to not fall off things eventually. I hope. Anyway, what can I do, just NOT have furniture in the house? Seems impractical.

Taylor’s favourite pie is cherry pie, so when I found really nice cherries on sale for shockingly cheap I decided to try my hand at making one. Since I’m a scatterbrained idiot it was kind of a disaster, OF COURSE. I didn’t want to make my own crust (lazy) so I was going to use a frozen one I had. Since cherry pie is supposed to be a double-crust pie and I only had one crust, I originally planned to make a mini pie using the mini pie pan I bought a few weeks ago, as a single full crust would be enough to make a mini double crust (still following this?). Then I realized that I had the exact amount of cherries that the recipe I’d chosen called for, so I decided to make a full-sized pie, forgetting that I only had one crust. I didn’t remember until I’d already pitted all the cherries and mixed them with the rest of the pie filling ingredients, so I was just like OH WHAT THE HECK and decided to go for it. I use my one crust and formed an impression of a lattice using the scraps I trimmed from the edge. Sym called it #pie. Looked weird, tasted great, next time I’ll be less lazy and make my own crust.

In gardening news, the two pathetic hostas that I transplanted the other week are THRIVING! I was out watering the plants with a juice jug the other night (my new garden hose hasn’t come yet, ugh) and the one pathetic hosta that had never grown more than two tiny leaves now has a THIRD leaf, and the other pathetic hosta has sprouted a tiny, stunted flower stem! Exciting times. I planted some more groundcover plants, but I might end up moving them as I’m planning on acquiring some bricks or flagstones from somewhere and making a little path from my patio into the garden. I’d want to put the groundcovers between the stones.

I finally stole I MEAN TRANSPLANTED that lil fern from the front of the house. I had to wedge myself between a chained-up bike and the wall and stand in a horrible spider pit to get it, and there was some contractor was working on something nearby and he was like “WTF IS WITH THIS CHICK.” Then the property manager was hanging around in the backyard for some reason and I had to pretend it was totally normal for me to be carrying around a loose fern with a dirty root ball and a trowel like I wasn’t stealing plants. Anyway. I put it in this little planter outside my front door where there USED to be a fern that was strangled by ivy. Hopefully it lives.

*By “asking” I mean holding her arms out to you and squealing, she doesn’t really talk yet. Sometimes I worry about that, but idk, she understands what we are saying to her and she manages to communicate her wishes by shaking her head no and saying “mah” (mine) to ask for things. Every thing. All the things. She’s kind of like the seagulls in Finding Nemo. Mine? Mine? MINE????

**safety disclaimer: I came back in the room after like ONE SECOND and found her sitting up there, and my phone was right on the kitchen island in front of me. I didn’t leave her unsupervised for an extended amount of time, or leave her on the table while I went to grab my phone, and I only paused to take a picture because she was sitting down on the table, if she’d been standing I wouldn’t have.

June 23rd

A few weeks ago Sym’s dad told me that in the evenings when he rides his bike around the Stanley Park Seawall it is just swarmed with otters. SWARMED. There are a few places where there are stairs up from the rocks to the top of the wall and the otters scamper up to bash clams open and also rummage through the trash cans for snacks. They are like water raccoons! Unfortunately for me I never get down the the Seawall in the evenings- after I finish work it’s like MAKE DINNER FEED BABY WASH BABY PUT BABY TO BED COLLAPSE ON COUCH PROBABLY FALL ASLEEP WATCHING TV. No way I’d have the energy to scour the Seawall for otters!

I hadn’t been on a proper Seawall walk since last summer, before I got sick. I was determined to get back in the habit, so today I broke out the double stroller and headed down to the water. I made Sym come with me in lieu of her other morning activities. Originally we were only going to do a short walk from English Bay to Second Beach and let the babies play at the playground before heading home. However when we got to Second Beach the babies were sound asleep, I was still feeling great and having such a nice conversation with Sym I didn’t want to stop yet.

We ended up going all the way to Lumbermen’s Arch, and it was between the Lion’s Gate Bridge and the Arch that we saw three otters in the water. I pointed and yelled OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS like a demented fool, I think Sym was a little embarrassed. We kept pace with them as we walked along the Seawall and eventually I decided to stop and try to get some pictures. At this point they very thoughtfully and obligingly clambered up on the rocks and came over to pose for pictures. So kind & thoughtful! Sym was trying to scheme a way to bring one home but I don’t think they would have gone for it.

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The bridge from below.
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OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS.
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June 22nd

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I made this! Used my sewing machine and everything!
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This baby is literally me. buffalo plaid shirt, grey tank, black leggings, galaxy shoes
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I need to know what the plant at the center with the little yellow flowers is. Look at the leaves, they are so cute! It’s like a cartoon plant.
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Once a year my upstairs neighbor busts out his pressure washer and cleans his stairs, deck and roof, AND as a bonus he also does my stairs & patio. It’s great because the landlord never does my stairs and there is only so much I can do myself with a broom and a hose w/sprayer, especially when SOMEONE KEEPS STEALING MY DAMN HOSE. I just had Taylor order another one and I’m seriously trying to figure out how to bike-lock a hose to the side of the building. It’s especially dumb because the faucet is like… INSIDE my garden so I don’t even need a long, fancy hose, like if they made 10 foot hoses I’d be like ALRIGHT PERFECT! Tragically they do not, the shortest one I could find was 25 feet, but then the 50-foot one was on special and came with a sprayer sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ANYWAY. The pressure washing. My stairs are cement and they just grow mildew and algae like crazy because it’s super shady down here in the basement area. It was especially gross this year because last year they didn’t get cleaned. This was my own fault because I have to move all my stuff and sweep up all the dead leaves and spiderwebs aaaaand I didn’t, oops. I think not doing things was the theme of last year as I didn’t weed the garden at all either. So yeah, it was disgusting. But now it’s done and everything is clean and bright and I am swearing an oath that I won’t let it get so nasty again!

Fun story: while my neighbor was washing my stairs I suddenly really needed some lemonade. DESPERATELY. But I was trapped in the house so I did what any sane person would do: I climbed out the window. Totally normal, rational behavior.

June 20th

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Remember yesterday when I was talking about how I meant to come up with a reading list or math worksheets or SOMETHING to keep Sym occupied this summer, and how she was in NO WAY going to spend the next two and a half months watching Youtube videos in her room? Well in a shocking twist she was watching some Youtube videos when I asked her to clean up the toys & such in the living room and then vacuum. Cleaning up the toys is one of her chores; she has to do it almost every single day. I can’t do it all the time myself because it hurts my back too much (I’m old and frail), and anyway, I had to wash the dishes and do the laundry.

Predictably, she was a huge brat about it. This is literally what was happening:

Sooooo I was like “YEP NOPE THIS ENDS NOW.” I came up with some rules about screen time (which is now limited) and a list of what I call “activities” that she has to complete by certain times or risk losing her screen time. I implemented it right away and I feel like it’s actually working! It’s only been 24 hours but so far Sym hasn’t been arguing about anything, and she’s actually been spending time with me and Gwen instead of holed up in her dank cavern of a bedroom.
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She can also come up with other activities that aren’t on the list: this morning she played donut shop with her Sailor Senshi dolls for half an hour, and spent an hour drawing at the kitchen island with me while I worked on etsy orders. Honestly I don’t care WHAT she does as long as it’s not a) staring at the internet all day OR b) complaining she has nothing to do!

Some good stuff that’s been going on…

Gwen’s arm is getting better, the welts are fading and it’s not longer swollen & hot, so I guess it was just a hypersensitivity. PHEW.

I’ve gotten two of my penpal club packages in the mail so far (ty Vivian & Jill!), as well as a bunch of Sad Ghost Club stuff I ordered from etsy. I’m obsessed with Sad Ghost Club, idk why.

SPEAKING OF ETSY, my shop‘s been pretty slow recently but a couple weeks ago it suddenly picked up with tons of views, faves and SALES, yay sales! I figured out that pics of some of my banners were making the rounds on tumblr again, BUT this time the OP included a link to my shop, awesome!

June 19th

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I hope you all enjoy how I masterfully photoshopped out the woman who walked into this shot at the last second and ruined it, lol
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Gwen had her 18-month vaccinations this week (a month late, oops). We don’t have a scale at home so doctor’s appointments are the only time I bother to find out her weight. She’s 13.2kg/29.1lb, which I think is about the 90th percentile? idk how percentiles even work but that seems good.

As far as I can recall, she was fine after all her other vaccinations, but this round was a doozy of a bad time for her. She woke up around 11pm with a fever that hung on the next day, and the injection site was a big red welt. The welt increased in size on Tuesday, and when I got her up on Wednesday it had grown exponentially larger, formed a weird welt-within-a-welt and also a series of satellite mini-welts that ran down the outside her arm as far as her elbow, as well as the inside of her arm. Her whole upper arm was hard, swollen and hot to the touch.

I spent the whole morning and half of the afternoon on the phone with the nurse hotline and in & out of various doctor’s offices. The first doctor I saw (at the walk-in clinic by my house) thought it could be an infection, and the second (our regular doctor) thought it was a hypersensitivity reaction to the dilutant in the vaccine. He told us to treat with Benadryl, and to keep an eye on it in case it continues to get worse or starts oozing. He also seemed concerned I would stop vaccinating her after this and tbh I was a little offended he thought that about me as I’m hugely pro-vaccination.

Last weekend Sym asked me to take her to buy a cactus for her dad for Father’s Day, which I took as a good excuse to also buy some new plants for the compost heap I call a garden. I chose a really pathetic looking maidenhair fern and a cool groundcover plant called Corsican mint, which smells fantastic when you smush the leaves (not that you should be deliberately smushing your plants). I planted them right outside my office window, between the hydrangea and bleeding heart, and I moved (transplanted?) a couple pathetic hostas in the hopes that they do better with some more light. My one non-pathetic hosta is literally blossoming this year for the first time ever, but all the others are sad and tiny.

I don’t even know if it’s the right time of year to be moving plants around (probably not, although they haven’t died since I moved them) but I DON’T EVEN CARE, like if plants can’t stand up to my type of gardening they they may as well give up now. ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE, etc. There’s also a nice-looking fern growing near the front of the house that I think I should steal I MEAN TRANSPLANT to my garden. It’s in this weird little concrete alcove where you can’t even really see it & it only has about 6″ of space to grow so I think I’d be doing it a favour (and also getting revenge on the universe for whoever stole my garden hose & sprayer, seriously I had to water my plants with a juice jug).

In addition to the planting and transplanting I’ve been continuing to weed back there and OH MY GOD. First of all, there is something I am definitely allergic to so I should never do any gardening if I can’t have a shower straightaway because the itchiness is unbearable. Also, in the last couple of years I swear someone chucked a few handfuls of grass seed into the garden and it’s terrible! You can’t get a lawnmower back there so the grass just get long and weedy-looking and it’s everywhere, displacing my hard-earned moss and hiding more insidious plants until they are too big to just pull up. On Monday I tore out a handful of grass from under a rhododendron and found a salmonberry bush AND a horsechestnut tree growing there!

While I was gardening Sym was hanging out on the stairs discussing her favourite Pretty Little Liars theories with me. In case you don’t know there is a province-wide teacher’s strike going on here, so I guess school’s out for the summer? Some people are pissed/pissy about it but IMO teachers absolutely deserve to be paid and treated well. I just don’t get all these people who are like “teachers are sacrificing our children’s education so they can line their own pockets!” But like… if you aren’t paying a decent wage, you aren’t going to attract quality teachers, and then what kind of an education are your children going to get? NOT GREAT, BOB.

This early start to summer vacation is kind of a drag, I had been planning to force a reading list & math workbooks on her (because I am cruel) but it kind of snuck up on me and I am woefully unprepared. I’ve been trying to kill two birds with one stone by throwing her outside with a book to read in the fresh air, and I’m hoping to start going on Seawall walks again, which she will also be participating in. She’ll no doubt treat them as forced marches but WHATEVER, TWEEN. You can’t spend the whole summer locked in your room wearing dirty pajamas and watching Youtube videos.

June 16th

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lil braids!
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this entire plate of food went onto the floor & she had cookies for lunch instead
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making tortilla chips all afternoon forever
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tiniest baby fuchsia
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Taylor went to a one-day conference this week. He brought home two chocolate cupcakes from a boutique cupcakerie: one filled with caramel and the other filled with cream and topped with a Oreo cookie. I ate them both while Gwen was napping and Sym was at school so I wouldn’t have to share. This was poor planning on my part, as I felt very ill after.

On Saturday morning we were walking down our street behind the farmer’s market stalls (I wanted to go pet these two big fluffy white Samoyeds that belong to a women who works for one of the vendors) and a woman with two little boys walked by us and said about Gwen: “Walking now? She’s so big, but I guess I haven’t seen you in a long time,” and I had NO IDEA who it was. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon when I realized who she was:

She moved into my neighborhood a few years ago, pregnant with her first child. They live on the corner opposite a preschool I used to drop off/pick up kids at so I’d see her, her partner and eventually, their baby, all the time. After a while I saw that she was pregnant again, with her second baby. This was back when I was still trying to convince Taylor to even try to have a baby with me, and I literally started bawling my eyes out to him about how come SHE got to have TWO babies and I didn’t even get to have ONE, it’s not fair, wah wah wah. I guess my wah-wah-wahing worked though, because it can’t have been much longer after that I finally got Taylor to agree to have a baby.

On Sunday to celebrate his caving in to my hysteria I made blueberry/raspberry/white chocolate pancakes for a Father’s Day brunch. Gwen’s gift to him (she assisted with the online ordering) was a beard care set from the Dr K Soap Company, and my gift was not getting on his case about playing computer games & reading comic books all afternoon (also some hot dog-print boxer shorts, lol).

One of my favourite books in the whole world is Hens Dancing by Raffaella Barker. My mom lent? gave? me a copy forever ago, but someone borrowed it from me and never returned it, so I hadn’t read it in a long time. A couple years ago I put it on my Christmas list and that was when I discovered there was a sequel, called Summertime. I asked for that one as well and Taylor ordered them both for me.

Unfortunately Hens Dancing didn’t arrive until well after Christmas- I think I got it as a birthday gift instead- and Summertime never arrived. I think maybe it was out of print? Taylor just got a series of emails from Amazon saying “we’re having trouble locating this book, would you like a refund instead?” This went on for OVER A YEAR and finally they just cancelled the order and refunded him.

Since I received it I think I’ve re and re-read Hens Dancing half a dozen times. It’s just so familiar and soothing! I read it again the other week and after I finished it it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t read the sequel, so last Friday I decided to check again online to see if Summertime was available at all. Well GUESS WHAT it was, and not only that it was available for kindle for $3.50. I purchased it immediately and as soon as Gwen went for her nap I adjourned to the bath to read it.

Maybe I’d built it up too much, or the familiarity of Hens Dancing coloured my opinion, but I was kind of disappointed? The main character seemed kind of stupid and mean, a subplot about her customizing clothing in idiotic ways and selling them to fancy boutiques was silly, some secondary characters were left out and others appeared to have had a personality transplant. Worst of all, everyone was constantly telling the protagonist (a divorced mother of three) that she should get married, she needed to get married, there was no way she could possibly successfully raise her kids if she didn’t get married. This was a theme that was not at all present in the first book and I found it very off-putting. idk, I’m going to re-read it a few dozen million times and maybe it will grow on me, haha.

June 10th

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other people post pics of gorgeous, healthy food; I post pics of food court garbage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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she sells sea shells
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city beach = sand pigeons
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we found this rake & another toy discarded in the sand so we kept them #freeganbaby
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Another busy weekend….

Gwen’s favourite activity right now is walking the dogs. You might think I was trying to make cute happen and gave her the leash, but it was quite her own idea. Whenever we go into the foyer now, instead of grabbing all the shoes she heads straight for the dog leashes! Taylor has some more dog walking pics on his instagram, including one of her walking Georgie AND Kichou which will probably cause you to die from cuteness.

Her LEAST favourite activity is going to the farmer’s market. So many people, and it seems they all want to tell Gwen she’s cute. This week an old lady held out her arms as if to pick her up and Gwen basically turned around and ran away. She just doesn’t like strangers bothering her! I always tell people she is shy, but it doesn’t stop them from trying to make friends. Maybe I should start telling people she bites? I told Taylor I was going to get her a lil Hannibal Lecter mask.

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Sym asked me to dip-dye the ends of her hair pink this weekend, and I think it turned out really well. I don’t like when there’s a really stark delineation between the colours so I deliberately painted the bleach on in an uneven and more natural looking way. She really loves it.

After her hair was finished I had to take her out shopping for her seventh grade graduation dress, which now that I think about it might be irrelevant because the teachers are probably going on strike for the rest of the year. But at least I got to spend several hours of her rejecting every single dress in every single store for no reason she could state until I was ready to tear my eyes out! Eventually she settled on a little off-white lace minidress from the tween section at H&M (the last store we went to) which was almost identical to a dress she turned down in Forever 21 (the first store we went to). TWEENS.

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On Sunday I THOUGHT I had to go buy some supplies for one single etsy order, but at the last minute I bothered to check and as it turns out, I had everything I needed. Instead we decided to go to the beach for the morning. It was the perfect day for it: warm but a little overcast so we didn’t broil in the sun. I’m so happy we live so close to the beach; we can head down there at the drop of a hat and never feel like we have to stay all day to justify to bother/prep/travel time because it’s only a few blocks from our house.

The last time we went Gwen hated everything about it, but she had much more fun this time. Maybe next time she’ll put her feet in the water? Only time will tell.

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Taylor and I also binge-watched the new season of Orange is the New Black, which was great. I liked the feeling of knowing that everyone else was watching the same thing; is that what it was like in the olden days when there were special television events and miniseries that everyone would watch? You’d think I’d remember, being from the olden days myself. On a related note, I read this morning that it’s been estimated that Netflix makes up 1/3 of all internet traffic at any given time. i’m pretty sure that 1/3 of that 1/3 is just me, haha.

June 6th

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idk what she is doing here, sneezing?
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there is this one community garden plot in the park that has HUGE bleeding heart flower plants, and every year I’m like UGH WHY WON’T MINE GROW SO BIG??? I have to say though, since weeding this one looks a lot bigger. MAYBE if I weed around it regularly it will grow bigger because all the nutrients in the soil aren’t being sucked up by cruddy weeds, and next year it’ll be EVEN BIGGER. GARDENING!
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a rare sighting!
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You know how scent-memory works? How a certain fragrance will bring back a flood of memories? Well I have a weird version of this that I like to call activity/tv memories, where doing a certain activity will bring back the memory of what was on tv when I was last doing it. I decided this week that I wanted to make Gwen a new pair of shoes for summer, and yesterday while I was looking through my leather bin for this particular piece of beautiful, soft duck’s egg blue leather I was flooded with memories of what I was watching the last time I made her footwear: Highlander, in particular The Kurgan, who cracked me up through the whole movie.

Assembling file folders makes me think of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Making woodland banners reminds me of series one of Misfits. And for some reason that makes LITERALLY zero sense, doing the dishes makes me think of The X-Files, which is really weird because I can’t see the tv from the kitchen sink, and why would I start watching an episode of The X-Files and then leave the room to wash dishes? The mind boggles.
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Conceivably there is a scent element to some of these these; leather certainly has a smell, as does dish soap. But file folders? They don’t really smell like anything. And I make banners every week (sometimes every DAY), but only the woodland banner makes me think of Misfits. And actually I’ve sorted through my leather a couple times recently (while moving all my craft supplies into my new craft closet) and it wasn’t until I decided to make the shoes that the leather reminded me of Highlander. Maybe this is a sign that I watch too much tv? WHO CAN SAY.

As it turns out, I chose the perfect time to make some new shoes for Gwen. She recently outgrew the coral suede ones I made for my tutorial, and I just discovered the gold leather ones I made her for Christmas have a hole in the toe- she’s worn right through them! I have to say, I feel pretty smug that the leather wore out before my sewing. Anyway, I found the piece of duck’s egg blue leather I was looking for, as well as some very similar-in-colour suede for the soles. I just had one piece of the leather, and I didn’t think it was big enough to use my regular pattern so I spent all my spare time working out a new pattern that required less leather. I made a test shoe out of green felt, then adjusted the size and shape. Finally satisfied with the pattern, last night I traced and cut out all the pieces… only to realize there would have been plenty of leather to use my old pattern! D’oh. But hey, it’s good to expand my cobbling repertoire, right?