Year: 2014

I went to the vet today, to pick up Claire’s ashes. When I had her euthanized I had a choice between communal and private cremation. Private costs more* (obviously), but in the end it’s what I chose- not because I was super desperate to have her ashes, but because I kept picturing a pile of dead pets just being shovelled into an incinerator like coal into a furnace** and it was a VERY UPSETTING MENTAL IMAGE. Of course on Friday night I kept picturing her lying all cold and alone waiting to be cremated and I cried my face off about that as well.

Over the weekend I started clearing out Claire’s things from around the house. It was hard and sad but I felt like getting it done sooner rather than later would be good. It was especially sad throwing out her litterbox, not because I was particularly attached to it, but because I could see she hadn’t used it in over 24 hours before she passed. Also when I took it out to the garbage room along with an unfinished bag of cat food a woman was in there with her spaniel and she said “I feed the same brand of food to my dog!” and then tried to start a pet convo with me, and what was I going to say? “O yeah I used to give my cat this food but then she died.” I just smiled and mumbled awkwardly before throwing everything in the dumpster. Anyway. I took her leftover insulin and the sharps box of used syringes back to the pharmacy to be disposed of properly. Her unused syringes I gave to the vet, as well as a blood glucose tester, test strips and lancets, for them to pass along to another owner of a diabetic pet.

I don’t regret my decision to have my cat put to sleep; I’ve been looking through my pictures of her from only a few weeks ago and it’s so clear that she was at the end. She just fell into such a fast decline, to be honest I think if I hadn’t taken her to the vet when I did she would have died the next day anyways. I miss her though, I wish she didn’t have to go. Sometimes I still think I hear her in the bathroom, meowing for us to come turn on the tap for her to drink out of, or just meowing because… cat.

* I was told it would $60-$80 more for private cremation, since Claire was such a very small cat (at the time of her death she weighed just 5 1/2 pounds). In the end the euthanasia + private cremation cost $200, although I declined a receipt so I don’t know the actual breakdown of charges.

** I’m sure they don’t just like… shovel them in BUT it’s what I kept thinking about.

Thank you to everyone for your comments on my last post. I miss my stupid cat so much, but writing that post really helped so I appreciate everyone who read it.

This is what I was planning on posting about last Friday…

Gwen has always hated playgrounds. Maybe I didn’t take her to enough of them when she was little(r), but once we started going it was pretty much a wash. The “good” playgrounds are all too far for her to walk, and if we took her in her stroller all she wanted to do was get back in the stroller and not play at all. She didn’t enjoy slides or baby swings, and the climbing equipment at the nearby playgrounds was all to big/advanced for her.

Last week that all changed, and when I took her to the playground at the school she actually played. SHOCKING. She really likes these rocking/bouncy animals, and even climbed up some stuff and went down a single slide. AMAZING. Her absolute favourite though, is the swings. Not stupid baby swings for babies, but REAL swings (although toddler swings with a seat back are okay too).


Too cool for school (playgrounds).

On the weekend we checked out some unfamiliar playgrounds along the Seawall in Yaletown to see if she’d play or just run back to the stroller.





Again, the swings were her favourite. I just wish there was a more toddler-friendly playground a bit closer to our house (COUGH COUGH MAYBE AS A REPLACEMENT FOR THE STUPID UN-FUN PLAYGROUND STRUCTURE IN NELSON PARK, VANCOUVER PARKS BOARD. GET IT TOGETHER).

A few other pics…




Weird mystery barge in False Creek, can anyone tell me what’s on the go here???


Pumpkin Spice Bébé. This was on Friday and I was SO SAD, then this lil goof started pumpkining around. How could I not smile?

Early this afternoon I said goodbye to Claire, my cat of sixteen years. There were so many times this summer when I thought she was at the end of her life, whole days she spent lying in my closet and crying piteously. Every time I’d think “This is it, this is the end” and every time she’d come strolling out of my room a few hours later all “Who, me? I’m fine! I’ll outlive all you suckers!!!” I was like, “How many times can this cat fake her own deathbed?”

Other than these “bad days,” she was mostly her normal self, playing slappy-paws with Georgie, sitting next to me on the couch and purring louder than a motorcycle, climbing up and down her tower and hopping up on the bathroom counter to drink out of the sink. This week it all changed. First she stopped eating. I thought it was just another one of her bad days, but one day turned into two, which turned into three. Without her eating I couldn’t give her insulin for her diabetes. She started losing weight rapidly, and yesterday she stopped drinking water. We all tried feeding and hydrating her by hand but she wouldn’t or couldn’t do it.

This time there was no mistaking it; it was the end. I spent the day yesterday wracked with guilt and indecision over what to do. Would it be selfish of me to just let nature take it’s course so that I wouldn’t have to face the hard reality of deciding to have her euthanized? Or would choosing euthanasia be selfish since that way I wouldn’t have to deal with her health problems anymore? Also, why do pets have to die anyway, because that is some SERIOUS BULLSHIT.

Last night I talked it over with some people in a discussion group I’m in on facebook, and they helped me come to the decision that the most humane, gentlest thing to do for Claire was to have her put to sleep. She was clearly suffering, and I didn’t want to leave her in pain just so I could feel better. This morning when I woke up I found that she couldn’t walk anymore and I knew it was definitely the right thing to do. I called the vet as soon as they opened and immediately burst into tears. I cried the whole time I was booking an appointment for 12:30 today, and after that all I could do was wait. Wait and cry.

I spent the morning trying to keep her comfortable, petting her and making sure Gwen and the dogs didn’t clobber her. At noon I moved her from beside my desk into a sunbeam that shone through the living room window. She always loved lying in sunbeams and I wanted to give her one more warm, happy moment. We all sat around her and told her we loved her and she was a good cat and it was ok.

Taylor stayed at home with the little ones and Sym came with me to the vet. Claire hated to go into pet carriers against her will so I carried her there in my arms. The vet and all the assistants were wonderful, so gentle and kind. We stayed in the room with her until the end. Sym sang “Amazing Grace” but replaced all the words with “meow.” We told each other stories about all the silly things Claire used to do, we made each other laugh and cry. We told Claire goodbye, and then she was gone.

baby kitten in my lap, 1998

surrounded by love on her last morning, 2014

She was the best little kitty ever, and I will miss her so much. Goodbye, Claire.

It’s my first day back at work after two weeks off, and I’m not even mad. Gwen and her little friend have spent the entire morning so far chasing each other around, playing and laughing and emptying out the recycling bin. They have so much fun together, plus he’s started talking a lot so maybe he’ll teach her a thing or two.

Today should be Sym’s first day back at school, but the teacher strike that started before the summer continues. I’m lucky I work from home so it doesn’t affect me the way it does other parents, but I’m kind of at a loss as to what to do with her while this endless summer vacation drags on. Like, she SHOULD be in school, not just lazing around her room reading manga and drawing pictures. I think I need to get her some workbooks or something before her brain atrophies entirely.

Taylor got back from San Francisco last Thursday evening, and we spent a nice long weekend together. The weather was kind of terrible but it was the nice kind of terrible, cool and crisp in the early morning, then rain storms at midday, followed by sunny afternoons. We mostly just hung around the house, but on Saturday we took a walk in Stanley Park. My plan was to swing around Beaver Lake and go up to Prospect Point, and as usual I got totally lost and turned around. I mean, not LOST lost, we didn’t go off trail* or anything, but I took us into the park on the wrong side of Georgia Street from Prospect Point so we had to find the overpass, and we went the wrong way at Beaver Lake and ended up on the Seawall so we had to backtrack majorly to find the right trail.

On the way back we came down off the hill onto the Seawall at Third Beach and continued along it to English Bay before heading up the other hill to our house. This is also the exact time when it started pouring with rain. Gwen was cozy under her stroller’s raincover but Taylor and I were not appropriately dressed for the weather. I had a flannel to put on over my t-shirt, but we were both wearing shorts and neither of us had a jacket. OOPS. By the time we made it home we were soaking wet.

Fun fact: the last time we went up to Prospect Point was this very same weekend last year.

Goal update…. The struggle to quit drinking soda continues. I did okay for most of this month but then one night while Taylor was away I had a DINNER EMERGENCY** and had to order pizza. I must have had some kind of a blackout because I also ordered a bunch of Dr Peppers, oops. Also a couple times during the month Taylor bought me cokes for the caffeine because I have been SO TIRED. I have been falling asleep almost every afternoon recently, but never while Gwen is napping so it’s not very convenient.

Anyway, while I continue to work on this I have a new goal! While Taylor was in San Francisco he worked out in the hotel’s gym a couple times, and now he wants to start going to the gym here again. We used to go like six times a week, but stopped going regularly years ago. I hadn’t been in forever, but yesterday marked our triumphant return to Fitness World. I’m weak and get exhausted easily (I HAVE A DISEASE OK) so I just walked semi-briskly on the treadmill while Taylor ran. It’s a start, and we’ve decided we want to go to the gym three days a week (after Gwen goes to bed on the nights Sym isn’t at her dad’s). I only have one sports bra though, so WE’LL SEE.

* Taylor actually refuses to go off trail with me. The one time we did (this was years ago, probably 2007 or 8) we stumbled into a creepy shanty town and I fell off a slippery log and landed on my back in a mud puddle. When I didn’t get up right away Taylor thought I’d cracked my head open or something (really I just knew that without help getting up I’d just get more and more covered in mud).

** I’d planned on making some cheese tortellini for the girls and I but after boiling the water I actually looked at the tortellini package and discovered it had expired in JUNE, yikes.

I feel like even though I’ve been posting recently I haven’t really been talking about what I’ve been doing. More like what I NEED to do and also my feelings on things, plus pictures because who doesn’t love pictures? Anyway. Here’s what I’ve been up to while I’ve been off work (since the 18th)…

Actually I’m going to start with the weekend before the 18th, and what I was up to that weekend was being sick. I woke up on that Friday morning with painful blisters in my nose. I was like WHAT EVEN IS THIS so on Saturday morning I went to the walk-in clinic to see the doctor, who told me it was probably a cold sore. I’d never had one before and I didn’t even know you could get them inside your nose. I got a prescription for anti-virals which absolutely knocked me on my ass for the whole weekend, especially when combined with the otc muscle relaxants I was taking for my unbearable period cramps. Not the best weekend of my life, tbh, but the anti-virals worked and by Sunday night the blisters and face pain were but a distant memory and I felt well enough to go out for gelato.

Monday was also super fun, with a dentist appointment in the morning (for me) and a doctor’s appointment in the afternoon (for Gwen). As I previously mentioned I wanted to speak to her doctor about her speech delay, and he reassured me it wasn’t a big deal and that she’d probably catch up, but he also referred me to a pediatrician just to be safe.

Tuesday we went for a walk in Stanley Park.

pics from Stanley Park here

Wednesday is comic book store day for Taylor, so Gwen and I tagged along to run a couple errands and also stop by Cartems Donuterie for donuts. Taylor had whiskey bacon, I tried chocolate chip mint and Gwen demolished a vanilla bean. They were so good, and also really filling? Like I can easily eat three donuts from Tim Hortons in rapid succession but one from Cartems was enough for me (which is good because they are expensive).

Thursday was supposed to be our PNE day, but the pediatrician our family doctor referred us to had an appointment available in the middle of that afternoon. She had no other appointments for three weeks so we decided to postpone our trip to the fair. I have to say, I LOVE the pediatrician and I wish she could be Gwen’s regular doctor. She was great and even my super-shy toddler (sort of) warmed up to her by the end of the appointment. Unfortunately her office is way the heck out on Oak Street near Children’s Hospital and 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back of walking-train-walking isn’t practical for us car-free types. Anyway she said that while Gwen definitely has a speech delay, she also said it wasn’t a big deal and that she’d probably catch up, and to just keep reading, singing and talking to her. After the appointment Gwen immediately passed out in her stroller (missed nap + emotional trauma of strangers examining her = tired toddler) so Taylor and I walked down to Broadway so I could go to the craft store. We love walking through residential neighborhoods and picking out our favourite houses, and the area east of Oak between King Edward and Broadway has some lovely ones, plus lots of little parks. Man I wish we could afford a house. The little 2-bedroom house next door to us is actually for sale again, this time listed at 2.1 million dollars. Ugh, Vancouver, why you gotta be so expensive?

Friday we went to the PNE. Gwen freaked out during the SuperDogs and Sym was disappointed because her favourite food vendor wasn’t there, but other than that we had a lot of fun.

pics from Cartems & the fair here

Saturday Taylor left for San Francisco. I had been a little stressed about how I’d manage the house with the dogs and Gwen by myself on the nights when Sym went to her dad’s (since I wouldn’t be able to leave the house when Gwen was sleeping), but Sym kindly agreed to stay home with me all week, which has been great. Mostly we’ve just been hanging around the house and the neighborhood; after all the places we walked last week I’m bone tired and have no desire to go on any long outings. The furthest afield we’ve gone was Tuesday, when we went for brunch with Jenn two blocks away from the apartment. Taylor is getting back tomorrow night and I can’t wait, I miss him a lot.

And here are this week’s pics…







We have new upstairs neighbors who foster dogs, this week they have an 8-week-old pitbull mix named Theo and everyone is In Love.

First of all, happy birthday to my handsome husband who is unfortunately out of town for a conference, all alone and sad and probably about to shop his feelings.

This is the first year I haven’t been able to tag along with him for a long weekend in SF before the start of this particular conference, and it’s also the longest we’ll be apart since the first Christmas after we started dating. Is that gross? It’s gross. But it’s true! He’s going to be gone for 5 1/2 days and the last time we were separated for longer than that was Christmas 2006. Hahaha aw we’re so in luv.

Secondly, this morning is your LAST CHANCE to place an order in the shop before I put it on hiatus to work on kickstarter rewards. Any current open orders or orders placed before I close will be made & shipped on time, I just won’t be taking any new orders after today. I’m not sure how long the shop will be closed for so if you want/need a banner you should order one asap.

Finally, I have some thoughts on kickstarter I’ve kind of been sitting on until my campaign was over. Running a kickstarter campaign is weird you guys, especially once you start getting backed. You start getting tons of emails from marketers wanting you to pay them to promote your project, which in the case of a low-dollar-amount campaign like mine is ridiculous. I’m actually STILL getting these messages and my funding period is over! The other weird thing is the messages from other people running campaigns. They all want you to back their campaign $2 and promote it on your social media and they’ll back your campaign $2 and promote it on their social media. idk, this just seems kind of tacky to me? I only like to back campaigns I really believe in! I had one person send that message and then send a second message saying “I’m just going to back your campaign $2 even if you don’t back mine, good luck!” and then when their campaign was fully funded they cancelled their contribution to mine! WOW.

I also had some people message me asking how I got my campaign chosen as a staff pick, and honestly I don’t know. They probably just have quotas for staff picks in different categories to meet, and I was lucky in that my category (children’s wear, a subcategory of fashion) isn’t as crowded as some of the others. I also don’t know if being made a staff pick helped my campaign that much; most of my backers came from facebook, this blog and a couple forums I shared it in. Only $282 was pledged via kickstarter vs external sources, and $100 of that came from Taylor so it doesn’t really count. I do know that being picked/seeing my campaign on the front page certainly helped my ego, haha. No but really I’d been feeling very insecure about the chances of making my goal and it definitely gave me the boost I needed.

ANYWAY. Now that the campaign is over I have to wait two weeks to get the money (less kickstart’s percentage/processing fees, about $100) and then I can start planning my trip to the leather supply store! I’m not sure how many different hides I’m going to get, it really depends on the cost of whichever ones are the proper thickness. I’m thinking I might start with six or seven: three neutrals, two or three colours, and one metallic. WHO KNOWS, though. I also set myself a lil stretch goal where if I reached $1,200 in contributions I’d buy a custom leather stamp, and I did reach that amount so I get to order that as well.

In the meantime I’m going to be contacting everyone who selected backer rewards other than shoes (which I can’t start making until I get the money & the leather) to get their addresses & requests (for custom items). I also need to make a size chart for when I do start making thew shoes. And patterns for all the different sizes! Ugh I have so much to do, wahhh*

*not really

white chocolate & salted caramel gelato










spot the turtle


the lagoon smelled like doody, it was intensely gross




chipotle lime chicken tacos

My kickstarter ends tomorrow! There are still plenty of good rewards left if you’d like to back it. I’m so excited about getting started on this new project, I think it’s going to be pretty cool. I’ll be putting my shop on vacation mode after this weekend so I can work on my backer rewards so if you would like to order a banner please do it asap as I don’t know how long I’ll be closed for.

Taylor backs the weirdest things on Kickstarter (this is a Game Frame btw).

It seems weird that August is half over already, and seeing as how I’m on vacation for the next two weeks it’ll be September before I know it. I’m not one of those bloggers who waxes poetical about fall, it seemed to be particular egregious this year with people talking about how they couldn’t wait for fall in early July, and in one instance, on the first day of summer. Like… really? Why are you wishing your life away, just enjoy the now, geez. The worst is when grown women get all nostalgic about back-to-school and buying notebooks and new pencils and… Just stop. You’re an adult, if you want new pencils you can buy them any time you want. Hell, buy stock in Dixon Ticonderoga! Or don’t, I mean idk how they’re doing, please don’t take investment advice from this blog. Now that I think about it though, I do need new pencils. All of mine are little nubs.

I don’t even know if have to think about back to school for Sym any time soon, since the strike that started in June is still happening. I’m really lucky that I don’t have to worry about what to do with her if school doesn’t start in September like it’s supposed to! Although I guess I wouldn’t have that problem even if I did work outside of the home since she’s a high school* student now and can effectively fend for herself.

Even though the new school year is still up in the air, Sym’s grandma is taking her clothes shopping next week, so I’m making her go through her old clothes, getting rid of the too-small stuff and figuring out what new things she needs. She can be pretty reluctant to let go of her favourites; a couple months ago I found shirts in her laundry from when she was eight years old! She managed to be more ruthless this time and I didn’t have to fight her over anything, which was good. I also put a bunch of her too-small stuff aside to save for Gwen, which seems ridiculous since it won’t fit her until 2025 (yikes).

I’ve been slowly buying myself some fall stuff as well: two sweatshirts, a henley and MOST IMPORTANTLY, some high-waisted black skinny jeans. What else do I even need, really? I discovered my own personal jeans Holy Grail years ago, the Always Skinny from the Gap. I buy myself a new pair in a medium-blue wash every few years and when I saw they had a new high-waisted black version (that seems to be sold out now, here in Canada at least) I was ALL ABOUT IT (once I got myself a 40% off coupon). I get a lot of wear out of jeans, they have a very extended lifecycle with me: new jeans, jeans with holes, jeans with patched holes, jeans with too many holes to patch, and finally, cutoffs.

Yesterday I finally did something I’ve kind of been putting off, which was to make an appointment with the doctor to talk about Gwen’s apparent speech delay. I haven’t really discussed it much, but Gwen doesn’t talk. She says “mum-mum” for mommy and “MAH!!!” for mine (when she wants something) but those are her only words**. I tend to vacillate between being super worried about it and totally relaxed and chill about it. After I made the appointment I was so upset I almost cried, and then after I did more internet research I was totally fine (usually not how it goes with internet research, haha).

I mean, I know she can hear us, I know she understands us, and I know she’s learning new things every day. I also know it’s common for toddlers to have a speech delay and that most are completely caught up by the time they are two and a half. However, when I see her little friends in the same age group expanding their vocabularies and speaking lots of words and even sentences I can’t help but get a little anxious.

I am still struggling with her incessant climbing. She’s figured out that even if I have the dining room chairs secured, she can push the highchairs over to the bench and climb into them that way. She even straps herself in so it’d be very safe if it wasn’t for the climbing part! I’ve taken to shutting both highchairs in the half-bath when they aren’t in use, which is a little annoying but necessary. At mealtime I pull her chair out and put it next to the bench so she can climb up & strap herself in under supervision before I push her over to the table. It works well and keeps everyone safe and happy but JEEZ this kid makes things challenging at times! Would that she’d put a little of her climbing energy into talking…

*her high school is grades 8-12, still seems weird to be starting high school when you are only 12
**she also shakes her head “no” at us constantly, especially when I try and get her to speak

Georgie thinks all cats are her friends. Smoky disagrees.



I wore those floral Doc Martens to a concert with a miniskirt & oversized tee and felt a lot of 90s feels about it.


Quo by Orly in Femme Fatale.

I liberated this soaker hose from across the alley to use in my garden, it was split open pretty badly but so far my electrical tape patch job seems to be holding well.

I mentioned my love for First Aid Kit the other week but I have to bring them up again. I am so in love with this band and so sad I didn’t discover them earlier! I could have been listening to them for years, but it’s my own fault for living under a rock, musically.

Since I’ve been leaving the kitchen gate open, Gwen is in and out of her room all day long. It’s so funny to hear her little toddler feet slapping across the linoleum before she reaches the hallway carpet and then the bang of her door slamming shut. Sometimes when she realizes she’s trapped herself she cries and needs rescuing, but more often she uses the solitude as an opportunity for mischief. Yesterday she emptied out a whole bin of toys and at bedtime Taylor put them ALL in her crib. Like fifty* stuffies! It was crazy, but once she sees them in there you can’t take them out or she’ll freak out, so I’ll have to sneak them out while she’s not looking. Today I forgot to shut the closet doors after getting her dressed and she emptied out two of her dresser drawers before I realized what was up. I had a total flashback to when Sym was two and would empty her whole dresser AND wardrobe AND toybox every single day, and I thanked my lucky stars that Gwen’s room is so small I was forced to put her dresser in the closet and this will be a (hopefully) isolated incident.

When Gwen’s little friend was being dropped off this morning his mom reminded me that she wouldn’t see me until after Labour Day, as she’s out of town for work for the rest of this week and I’m off the last two weeks of August. I don’t have any vacation plans this year so I keep forgetting! All I have planned is a dentist appointment for Gwen and myself and a visit to the PNE next week. I should probably come up with some other activities so we don’t just spend all our time at home, doing nothing.

One thing that is happening during my time off is my kickstarter will be ending. I’m planning on putting my shop on vacation mode for a while (I’m not sure how long) so I can focus on making backer rewards, so if you have been debating getting a banner you should do it now!

*only a slight exaggeration

I mentioned recently how much I hate my apartment’s hallway, and how it’s just a garbage heap of random junk. I decided I’d had enough so over the past couple of weeks I’ve slowly been clearing it out. Taylor and I sorted through all the books and boxed them up (we’re getting rid of six boxes worth) and dismantled one of the busted, mismatched shelves. I have some craft supplies to sort through still and then one tall shelf that I have to decide if I’m going to get rid of it or move to Sym’s room, but it’s so much cleaner already! I also finally put all the childlocks back on the kitchen cabinets. Gwen’s bedroom is the first room off the hallway so my next goal is to put a set of gate hooks in the hallway just past her door so we can block her from the other bedrooms and the bathroom. This way she’ll be able to get to her room and her toys whenever she wants, but I don’t have to worry about her making a mess of everyone else’s things.

My favourite dinner to make recently is vegetarian tacos. I haven’t been cooking a lot of meat these days because the texture while I’m prepping/cooking it tends to gross me out, and I’m not supposed to eat too much soy (thyroid probs) so most fake meat/meat substitutes are out as well. I like to make a bunch of different fillings and everyone can choose whatever combination that they want. It’s perfect because I don’t have to deal with any whining and complaining about “I don’t like this” because there’s so many different options. Sym chooses mostly plain veggies (tomatoes, lettuce) & cheese, and Gwen will only eat the filling, no tortilla. She’ll eat a lot of them though! Her favourite is roasted red peppers; the first time I made them I did four, thinking I’d have plenty of leftovers for her lunch the next day but she just kept shovelling them in her mouth and finished them all. I made them over the weekend and I had roasted red peppers, fried corn with jalapeños and garlic, black beans (I cook them with a little tomato sauce, garlic and pepper), and fried peaches with lemon juice, plus baby argula, salsa and cheese. I also had some amazing heirloom tomatoes I’d bought at the farmer’s market but I forgot to cut them up!