Year: 2014

I started work this weekend on an exciting new project that I hope to share with everyone soon, but it’s made me busy as hell so no real blog post today.

Adding stripes, I feel like I may be overdoing it on this banner which, btw, is supposed to ship today & is not done 🙁 Although TECHNICALLY it doesn’t make a difference if I take it to the post office on Friday night or Saturday morning, I still feel bad.

Chocolate peanut butter sandwiches & orange slices, a very popular lunch around here.


As I post this, Taylor is getting all of his hair cut off. ALL. OF. IT. He’s been growing it (without so much as a trim) for three years, which is very inspiring to me as I’ve been growing my hair out for a year already which means in only two years I’ll literally be at Queen Serenity status.

Recently it’s been driving me crazy that my hallway has basically become a trash zone. There are just boxes of books and craft stuff that doesn’t fit in my closet EVERYWHERE. There are a few mis-matched shelves and cupboards: one crammed with disorganized books, one crammed with disorganized comic boxes & tabletop games, one holding some of Taylor’s shoes, and one with the laundry hampers inside. Other homeless crap currently littering the hallway:
• the disassembled remains of my tree bookcase
• the blue play kitchen
• a giant box of gift wrap
• a basket full of extension cords?
• a small trash can
• a pack ‘n’ play
• Claire’s hideous cat tower
• a piggybank shaped like and elephant wearing a basket of fruit as a hat

The hallways is one of my most hated areas of the apartment. First of all, it’s too wide. If it was juts a little narrower (it could stand to loose at least of foot of width, tbh) then all the bedrooms could be so much bigger! Why sacrifice living space for hallway space??? So I basically HAVE to have some sort of shelves or something in there, otherwise there’s just a massive amount of square footage going to waste.

HOWEVER it’s super difficult to do, because the hallway is just loaded with problems. First of all, it has SIX doorways opening off it. Two closets, three bedrooms and one bathroom. There isn’t a lot of real estate between all these door frames. There are also two light switches, the breaker box and the thermostat (which is LITERALLY in the middle of the widest expense of wall) to take into consideration. Third, part of what I would consider the hallway has linoleum flooring, while the rest is carpeted, leading to all sorts of height differential issues. And finally, all the various spaces between the doors where I could conceivably put furniture are weird widths which don’t accommodate regular furniture (ie cheap stuff from Ikea that I could afford) sizes well.

Compounding my hatred is the fact that when I painted it yellow years ago I used the wrong can of yellow paint; instead of the stuff I had leftover from when I almost painted the living room yellow I used the stuff leftover from when I painted my desk so it’s super glossy. NIGHTMARISH. But I haven’t bothered to repaint it because taping around all those goddamn door frames is a nightmare!

Anyway what I REALLY need is some custom built shelving units. I’d like something with cupboards on the bottom half, deep enough to hold all our shoes & boots, winter accessories, and other stuff I want out of sight, and open shelves on the top half that go all the way to the ceiling to hold books and possibly curios. They would be sized properly to fit between the assorted doors, and the height difference between the flooring types would be compensated for. At the end near the kitchen (where the stupid thermostat makes tall shelving impossible) would just be the laundry cupboard (which is convenient because that’s where the washer & dryer are). I’d paint the whole thing (and the walls!) white & replace the curtains over the two closets (I removed the doors forever ago) with something plain ie not weird yellow & orange flowers? What was I even thinking when I bought those?

Anyway. If anyone has amazing carpentry/cabinet making skills and wants to build this for me (and maybe also a shelving unit for the half-bath which is also stupidly big & lacking in storage, it’s just a big open space with a toilet & pedestal sink and nothing else) for a reasonably (ie low) price please do not hesitate to contact me. Because otherwise I’m going to have to learn how to do it all myself.

Eatin’ browies.



Someone planted some of these in my garden last year but in a spot that gets literally zero sunlight so they are small and tragic. Also, bumblebee photbomb!


All day, every day, climbing on the table & asking to be lifted down.



Watching butterflies. She just noticed that they exist the other day and she is fascinated by them. There were three on these flowers, she tried to touch one and it flew away, startling her.


She’s wearing the little shoes I made with the 2-piece pattern I modified from the 3-piece pattern I used for the black shoes. These stay on well when she’s walking, but fall off too easily if she tries to climb anything (which is constantly) or is picked up. I think the problem is a combination of too-loose elastic and a too-low back, but they should be fine if I add a little strap to them.


Creating the illusion of having a shirt tied around her waist by stuffing her whole body through the neckhole and just wearing it around her waist.

Random things…

I ordered some stuff from Zara online and had to return a few things I didn’t like. I love that you can return things bought online to the store, and get refunded to your paypal. Some stores that take paypal online refund you in the form of store credit, which is annoying, but at Zara it goes straight back into your patpal. I actually got an email that I’d been refunded before I even left the store. I did have to send one item back through the mail as they’d sent the wrong size (it didn’t match with the code on the receipt so they couldn’t take it back in the store), so I had to call their customer service line which was super fast and painless & hopefully the proper size pants are on their way to me now!

Gwen is super into those dried yogurt drops. I hardly ever buy them because they are SO EXPENSIVE, like even the store brand ones on sale are still $4 for what feels like a bag of air. I know people make their own by freezing little dollops of yogurt but wouldn’t those turn into a melty mess if not eaten quickly enough? Yuck. Most of the other recipes (or instructions, really, I mean the only ingredient is yogurt) I can find online call for a food dehydrator, but I did find one for making them in the oven that I might try.

On the weekend Taylor and I tried the wackest snack. He always buys new products, like put NEW!!! on the label and he’s all over it. Anyway he got us this Smartfood popcorn which was a mix of caramel… and cheddar cheese? WHAT EVEN. Like if you are going for a sweet-and-salty vibe just throw some sea salt on your caramel corn, don’t mix super-orange-Kraft-dinner-cheese-powder-looking cheese popcorn with it! Definitely not a good combination. I ate all the caramel corn out of the bowl but since half the bag was cheese it wasn’t enough and now I have endless caramel corn cravings, wahh.

Kelly started a youtube channel recently and I loved this video where she talks about her chronic invisible illness. While she has a much more terrible autoimmune disease than I do I still related to a lot of what she said.

(It’s long but worth it!)

I’ve been doing a little work in Gwen’s room over the past couple of weeks. We don’t really spend much time in there so it was kind of disorganized and messy, but also weirdly bare as I’d moved some things from it out to the living room. Also, when her lil friend is here he naps in her room, and I have a portable, foldable crib for him that was always set up because I had nowhere to store it, and it made her already-small room seem even more cramped.


In order to make the portable crib more storable, I cut the legs off so it sits right on the floor. This made it short enough that, when folded, it could be hidden behind Gwen’s crib. So that it wouldn’t be visible behind the crib I stapled lengths of ribbon to the large canvas I had between her crib and the wall and tied it onto the outside of the crib (previously it was resting on top the baseboard). Now I have somewhere to put the portable crib away where it’s still easily accessible and in the room where I use it.

I also “made” some “blackout curtains” for her room. Seeing as how we live in a basement and her room has one window that is underneath my upstairs neighbour’s porch, you wouldn’t think I’d need them. However, in the summer evenings the sun straight up blasts into her room, right at bedtime! Last summer I taped (yes, taped) a pair of dark brown pillowcases together and taped them to the window frame, but this year I wanted to have a better setup. I also wanted to do it cheaply, so I sewed the same pillowcases together and then folded the top over (to make it the right length for the window) and sewed a channel along the top. I screwed a pair of cup hooks into the frame and ran a dowel (which I’d cut to size) through the curtain channel and rested it in the hooks. It’s not super secure (opening the proper curtains causes the dowel to slide around) so I need to figure out a way to properly secure it, but even if I don’t it has the desired effect of darkening her room at bedtime.

Normally these projects would have taken me about a million years because I always try to do things manually. The reason for that is partly because I’m afraid of many of my electric tools and partly because I’m too lazy to dig through the various closets to extract said electric tools. This time though, I actually got my shit together. I used my jigsaw to cut the legs off the crib & my electric sander to smooth the cut areas, I used my sewing machine to sew the curtains, and I used my drill to make pilot holes for the hooks. Honestly I think I’d use all these things more often, and therefore be more proficient with them, if it wasn’t such a hassle getting them out. I wish I had a larger craft area with room for a sewing table and maybe a door so I could keep lil babies out of it, and a workshop for the tools! That’d be living the dream for sure.

I’m working on a pet portrait banner right now and istg it’s going to be the death of me. I kind of hate making them because they are a lot of work, but I also love making them because I love how they turn out. The hardest to make are definitely tabby cats. So many unique markings! Such diverse colouring! This one needs to be shipped in two days and I still have to make one more face & I haven’t even started the stripes yet.

Stretchy pizza cheese!






I thought these lil flats were gonna be a total bust BUT they are actually perfect. Like, the perfect size, the perfect shape, the perfect fit. Amazing! I already made a second pair with a modified pattern (the original is 3-piece, the mod is 2-piece) but they didn’t turn out as well so I’m planning to remod the mod.


Gwen really likes being helpful these days. When I print things she likes to take them out of the printer and hand them to me; she gets upset if I grab the papers out of the printer myself. I’ve been making lots of little shoes & pouches out of leather, and I use these little scraps of suede to help push the needle through and she likes to pick up the pieces of suede and hand them to me, even though I already have them. Ditto with the box of baby wipes when I’m changing her little friend’s diapers; she’ll pick it up and try to pass it to me and if I don’t take it she’ll throw it at my head!

She’s super into clothes, putting them on AND taking them off. One of her faves is when I fold laundry and she has full access to a wide variety of clothes in many sizes and she can try them all on (before putting them back in their piles, she IS helping after all). She likes to take off her clothes and put them in new, exciting configurations: shirt-as-cummerbund, shorts-as-skirt, leggings-as-armwarmer. Her fave things to take off are tank tops and her sweet little jean shortalls, which is terrible because they are some of my fave things to dress her in. I am pretty impressed by her ability to squirm out of the shortalls though.

Consider that a neat segue into a topic I am supremely baffled by. Y’all might have seen a recent spate of hashtag activism (hashtagtivism?) in support of various mommy bloggers who have had their Instagram accounts suspended. A bunch of #bringbacksoandso’s and #stopcensoringmotherhoods. These suspensions seem to have all played out similarly: someone instagrams a pic of their child in a state of undress, pic is reported & subsequently deleted by instagram, they repost the pic and it is reported/deleted again (sometimes multiple times), their account is suspended, they FREAK OUT, other people FREAK OUT in support, account is restored after three days (this seems to be the standard timeframe for unsuspending accounts and NOT the result of hashtag hysteria). In some cases it’s clear that the person is deliberately goading Instagram into suspending them! This keeps happening and I am just like… what?

First, the reason why these pics are being deleted is because they are in violation of Instagram’s TOS, the TOS you have to agree to when you sign up. It’s pretty clear they have these rules in place to cover their asses (haha) so they don’t get charged with distributing child pornography (I will probably regret posting that phrase on here). If you’re SUPER desperate to share these pics, how about you just post them on your blog (which most of these women do anyway).

Second, pictures of half-naked children being deleted from your Instagram IS NOT a violation of your First Amendment rights. Look it up, in the US the First Amendment protects you from being censored by the government & any laws it might try to pass. Facebook (which owns Instagram) isn’t a branch of the government (yet…).

Third, some of these bloggers are crying out that it is breastfeeding pics that are being deleted/causing these suspensions, and using that to garner more sympathy & support from the breastfeeding community. However, I know of at least one case where once the suspended account was restored it was obvious all the breastfeeding pics had never been deleted, only the undressed kid pics. In this instance the blogger tried to backpedal and say it wasn’t about breastfeeding, but that’s not what she wrote on her change.org petition (seriously).

Fourth, why are you crying about the terrible loss of all your precious memories when your account is suspended? If those memories are so precious, why aren’t you backing them up, Carrie Bradshaw??? Instagram actually makes it super easy to back up your pics: when you post you have the option of sharing to different services, several of which (flickr, facebook, tumblr) will act as a backup. Also, if you go into the settings you can turn on “save original pictures” which will save your pictures to your phone, and from there you can back them up to your computer or the cloud or whatever. With the former you have to select where you want to share each picture every time, but with the latter it’s automatic, and if you have your phone set to back up each night then you LITERALLY do not even have to think about it.

Finally, and this is the thing I REALLY don’t get, is what EXACTLY is it that these people are fighting for? The right to publicly post semi-nude (or full nude, one popular blogger posted over the weekend about how she really wanted to post pics of her totally naked kids to instagram but all the ASSHOLES would report her, wth) pictures of their children on the internet? Really? REALLY??? Look, I don’t have a problem with kids running around with some or all of their clothes off. Sometimes it’s impossible to even keep clothes on a toddler (please see above re: Gwen). I also don’t have a problem with people taking innocent pictures of their kids like this. I have plenty of pics of my girls as babies with no shirt on or their lil buns showing. It’s cute! But I don’t POST THEM ONLINE*! IT IS LITERALLY COMMON SENSE.

This whole thing is just SO WEIRD to me, like with all the awful things going on in the world, THIS is the struggle these people have decided to hitch their wagons to? It’s like the epitome of non-problem problems. idk, what are your thoughts on this whole brouhaha?

* Ok, full disclosure, when Gwen was tiny (like, younger than six months) I DID instagram some pics of her in the bath or wearing just a diaper, but I NEVER showing her genitals or her bare bottom- they mostly just showed her face and MAYBE her upper chest/shoulders.

Before I get to the cute bb pics I just wanted to post a little Claire update. If you follow my twitter or instagram or are in the same general discussion forum as me, you may have noticed my TOTAL FUCKING MELTDOWN yesterday about my cat. I seriously thought she was dying, you guys. Like, if you’d seen that cat yesterday you would have been like “dang, that kitty is at death’s door FOR REAL.” Here’s why I thought my cat was dying:

• old as hell
• diabetes
• basically stopped eating over the weekend and lost SO MUCH WEIGHT
• weird yowling?
• seizure-like activity
• wedging her face under furniture in a super strange way
• when I wrapped her in a towel & put her in a basket she stayed there for EIGHT HOURS
• you couldn’t even tell she was breathing, like at all
• cold
• no purring
• peed on the towel I had her wrapped in

Like these are NOT my cat’s normal behaviours and I was SO SAD. I cried a lot and kept checking on her and petting her and saying “it’s ok, it’s ok, you’re such a good kitty.” At one point I thought to myself “How will I tell Georgie that her friend is dead?” and I burst into tears thinking about how sad my dog would be lol good grief. ANYWAY at like 5 o’clock she came out of my room and was like “o hey guess what I’m fine now.” She ate and started purring and was just super chill and today you wouldn’t even know she was basically a cadaver all day yesterday. WHAT THE HELL, CAT. So to everyone who said sweet things to me, THANK YOU and also I’M SORRY MY FUCKING CAT JUST PRANKED US ALL.

IT’S CALLED FASHION, LOOK IT UP.




swimsuit & hat








I made another cardboard cabin on the long weekend, gearing up to have a whole cardboard village soon.

We had a totally chill Canada Day. Sym was out of town for the whole weekend so it was just me, Taylor and Gwen, and Taylor had to work that night so for the afternoon it was just me & Gwen. In the morning I set up a lil wading pool for her in the backyard and she wore her first bathing suit ever. She didn’t have one last year because I assumed she would fit into Sym’s first summer swimsuit but NOPE, this baby is too gigantic. The suit I bought her this year is for a 2-year old and tbh I don’t think it’ll fit her for the whole summer (she is only 20 months old btw).

In other Gwen news, she is just like out of control with her sneakiness. I’ve had to take two drawers out of my desk and put them in other rooms where she can’t get them because she will not stay out of them, and this is after I already took the knobs off the drawers! Taylor inexplicably taught her how to climb up on our desk chairs and now you can’t keep her off them, which makes it so much easier for her to get at all the stuff on our desks. Every time I try to get any work done, like etsy orders or housework or anything, she’s up on the dining room table. When we are outside her favourite activity is to act like she’s going to fling herself down the concrete stairs.

She had a couple pretty spectacular tumbles over the last week. On Friday she fell off the back of the slide onto her face. On Saturday she was walking Georgie, who decided to suddenly take off at a run, pulling Gwen down on the gravel path in the park. On Sunday she literally just walked off the bench in the dining room into the air? What? Why would you even do that??? I just don’t even know what is going on in her baby brain.

lil Canada Day tease on the clifftop.





It took me literally hours to clean up this mess on my patio. HOURS.

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.

Walking the line.






Boop.





Weird little curbside garden plot with obelisks.


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.


30 minutes later it was blazingly hot & sunny.



Beware of skunks.

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!

Spot the creep.


Pitting cherries with the OXO Good Grips cherry pitter I got last year and never used.




Freeze lemonade in ice cube trays & blend with more lemonade, it’s the lemonade-iest.

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.

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.

The bridge from below.




OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS.

I made this! Used my sewing machine and everything!


This baby is literally me. buffalo plaid shirt, grey tank, black leggings, galaxy shoes



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.

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.