Author: Tanie

I made this dog sweater myself. Originally it was for Kichou but he looks even sillier in it than Georgie does, if you can believe it. I do like the way her red Buddy Belts harness sits right on the red stripe though.

Just when I was starting to feel better about the fact that I will never ever ever be able to afford to buy my own home, the rickety little 2 bedroom house next door goes on the market just to rub it in.

I saw the For Sale sign yesterday and through some clever sleuthing was able to find the listing online, and the asking price of $1,800,000. Yep. ONE POINT EIGHT MILLION. DOLLARS.

*this might have actually happened in third grade, I don’t exactly remember

One year, they closed the woods at the elementary school.

I grew up in the country, and went to a small school of only a hundred students, K-5. After I grew up and moved away it was closed due to being constructed basically entirely from asbestos, but later reopened as a Christian school. I guess faith in the Lord protects your children from assorted cancers or something? WHO KNOWS.

Anyway, behind the school was the sports field, and to the north of the field was The Woods. Most of the woods wasn’t on school property, but we were allowed to play in the fringes of it, provided we didn’t go any further than the white and/or yellow lines painted on the trees. Past the lines was Out Of Bounds, and if you went Out Of Bounds, you’d be in Big Trouble. Of course, that didn’t stop the boys from exploring the untamed wilderness past the lines, and one rainy lunch hour, it didn’t stop me either.

I’m not sure exactly what game the girls were playing that I was so disinterested in that I snuck off by myself. Probably something about pretending to be horses. Whatever the reason (and it could have just been that I was a weird, socially awkward kid), I toggled up my navy blue duffel coat and when no one was looking, slipped into the Out Of Bounds.

There were kind-of trails through this part of the woods, but the huckleberry bushes and ferns grew close on either side. I kept my hood up against the rain and also to protect my identity in case I met anyone else out there. I was walking along with my thoughts when I suddenly came face to face with a group of boys from my class. I looked at them, they looked at me, and we all turned on our tails and ran off in opposite directions. I rushed out of the woods and joined in the horse game with the other girls, and watched furtively as the boys burst out of the trees and ran straight to a teacher, waving their arms and yelling. Oh. Crap.

That afternoon we were all called down to the gymnasium for a special assembly. I couldn’t believe it- they boys had ratted me out and I was about to get in trouble in front of the entire school! I had never been in trouble before, never had a detention or even had my name written on the board. This was going to be humiliating!

We all sat cross-legged on the floor and our principal, a short woman who resembled a chicken, stood up in front of us all and announced that ALL of the woods would be off limits for playing in until further notice, because some boys had seen something in the trees. Something scary. Something dangerous.

The boys had seen… a bear.

A bear! Everyone started whispering to their friends and discussing the horror of a bear in OUR woods, while I tried to hold in my laughter. Out of all these people I was the only one who knew the truth- there was no bear. There was only a skinny blonde eight**-year-old girl with a hand-me-down navy blue duffel coat. Of course, there was no way I was going to admit that I was the bear. I would have gotten in trouble for being Out Of Bounds, and besides, being mistaken for a bear wasn’t exactly flattering. I kept my secret to myself, and everyone in the school suffered through several weeks of woods-free lunch hours until the threat of the bear was perceived to have passed.

**I know 4th graders are usually nine but I skipped a grade.

Dougal has fleas. He’s ashamed.

I found out yesterday but the vet was closed, so this morning I took the daycare kids out on a super fun trip to buy Advantage for all the pets. I don’t think Claire or the other dogs have any but better safe than sorry, right?

It’s nowhere near finished, obviously, but I’m basically like, IN LOVE with this painting. I think that makes me conceited, haha.

The bird will be green and blue, the fish will be red and purple, and the pomegranate will obviously be red, but I’m having difficulty deciding what colour to do the hair. Dark, like the original picture? Lighter, like it is now? Or grey, like it’s on its way to becoming? I just don’t know! I think I’ll leave it for the very last, and maybe by then I will have figured it out.

Last night as I was drifting off to sleep Claire decided it was the perfect time to get up close and personal with my face. She stuck her nose to my nose and stared at me with her huge eyes and it was like being alien abducted. Then she bit me so I pushed her off the bed.

I’m actually a little concerned about her- she used to be a very fat cat, but she’s lost tons of weight and I would say she’s bordering on downright skinny now. There have been some changes to her life recently so I’m not sure which caused her to lose weight.
a. I got a puppy and she’s not very excited about it.
b. She has a new tower home that she spends all day climbing up and down.
c. I switched her from really cheap food to better quality food.
d. All or some of the above.

I keep her food up in her tower so I know she’s eating it and not one of the dogs, so that’s good, and her behavior and personality haven’t changed AT ALL in spite of her advancing years- she’s 12 now and still acts exactly the same as when she was a young cat. She’s just so thin now! idk, maybe she’s normal and I’m just used to cats being fat.

I’m not having a wonderful morning. Instead of dwelling on it I’m going to look at these pics from the other night when Dougal was using Georgie as a little pillow.

This is my favorite tree in the whole city. It’s across the street from my house and I think it’s just perfect. There are a couple on my side of the street as well but they’re crowded with hawthorn and laurel trees so you can’t see them as well. This morning when I was walking the dogs I discovered this:

BABBY TREES! I think I’m going to swipe one and put it in a pot so I can have it for my own. If I don’t kill it, that is.

Last week I started reading House of Leaves and LET ME TELL YOU it is not going well. It’s not just that the story is dense and complicated and hard to get into, it’s that I had to buy the ACTUAL BOOK and it weighs a hundred thousand pounds! I’ve been taking it to read at Sym’s piano lessons and carrying it to her dad’s and then up the hill home is a nightmare. I can understand why it’s not available for kindle- all the weird formatting and footnotes and different typefaces and coloured text, but I really wish it was! Also, every time I try to read it I fall asleep. Maybe my brain it trying to tell me something?

Also a quick note: If you subscribe to my blog through the old wordpress address (http://unicornparade.wordpress.com/) then posts are probably showing up on your reader or w/e HOURS later than if you subscribe to http://unicornpara.de . So if you want to experience the wonder and the mystery of my life when it’s still fresh then please update your subscriptions 🙂

Today has not been an awesome day so far. Sym slept in and I was rushing around trying to tidy the house and before I knew it, it was 20 after eight, she hadn’t had breakfast yet and I still needed to make her lunch. That’s when I discovered that I forgot to take the bread out of the freezer so then I had to make toast for her sandwich and I was having emotional problems with my cookie cutters and it was just STRESSFUL trying to get everything ready so Taylor could get her out the door and to school on time. I mean, it’s only the second week and I don’t quite have our new morning routine down yet but OBVIOUSLY whatever was going on today was not cutting it.

This was compounded by the fact that the daycare kids were being a nightmare today. Three out of four had a weeping hysterical temper tantrum when they were dropped off and after they all got over that they started playing a “game” in which they ran around waving their hands at Georgie, trying to entice her to chase them, at which point they would fall over on purpose, nearly crushing her every time. NOT ACCEPTABLE. I had them all go sit at the table for a minute to calm down, at which point the new girl spontaneously threw up all over herself. She’s not sick or anything, she just barfed on her pants. AWESOME. This is clearly exactly what I needed to deal with.

Did I mention that this was all before 9 am?

So now my nerves are shot and I’m all frazzled and just like, OVER working for the rest of the day, let alone the rest of the week. unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of just quitting, so here are some things that help calm me down when i get to the end of my parenting/housework/child care rope.

1. MINDLESS AND REPETITIVE YET SATISFYING AND/OR CREATIVE TASKS
This weekend Sym and I bought supplies to make a miniature pink-and-white version of this Ruffled Lotus Lantern. Because we bought a small paper lantern, in order to fill in all the gaps I had to cut down and glue back together a whole bunch of cupcake liners to fill in all the gaps. I did most of it on Saturday afternoon, but I wasn’t quite done yet. While the daycare kids were playing with toy food and dishes I took the opportunity to cut/twist/glue 52 mini-blossoms and after they’d dried, glue them onto the lantern.

Some other things that have the same effect include sewing simple felt toys while watching a favorite film (watching movies while crafting is a habit I picked up from my mother); the assembly line-like process of making mini doughnuts, six at a time, with my mini doughnut maker; and folding the dozens upon dozens of tiny hand towels for the daycare washroom.

2. CURLING UP ON THE COUCH TO WATCH A PERSONAL CLASSIC
Obviously this isn’t something I can do while working, but once the daycare kids are down for their nap if I want I can blow off whatever housework seemed so pressing and watch one of the aforementioned favorite films. I’m fond of Wes Anderson movies: The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited (which I’m probably going to watch today) in particular.

On weekends and holidays I’ll have a movie afternoon with Sym and let her pick what she wants to watch. Sometimes she wants to watch an animated film (recently it’s been My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service or Sailor Moon, but occasionally a Pixar movie or something Disney Princess-related gets chosen) or a “real people” movie: Legally Blonde, Charlie’s Angels and Down With Love are some that we’ve watched together tons of times. I might sew her a small toy during these, or we might just pile into the blankets and pillows and eat junk food together.

3. CLEANING OUT THE CUPBOARDS AND DRAWERS
A tidier and more organized house is a less stress-inducing house, but mopping floors and scrubbing toilets aren’t exactly my favorite activities. Some stuff I’ve done recently include sorting through all the tupperware and tossing any containers without lids and lids without containers; rearranging all the pots and pans and things in the kitchen island and throwing out stuff like the old saucepan with the permanently loose handle and the non-stick frying pan that isn’t so non-stick anymore, and freeing up tons of space in the process; and ruthlessly sorting through all my tank tops and getting rid of anything too small, too stained, too old and holey. These projects only involved 2 cupboards and 1/3 of a drawer and probably only took five minutes each but they still made my head feel clearer!

4. LETTING GO OF THIS YOU HAVE NO CONTROL OVER
I was so excited when those boots I ordered were delivered last week, and SO MAD when I discovered I couldn’t even get my feet into them! I had this big freakout over whether I should exchange them for a bigger size, or just return them and buy them somewhere else in a different bigger size. I decided I wanted to try them on but no stores have my supposed size in-store, and anyway they are much more expensive her than the pair I ordered were, and I don’t know if I like them THAT MUCH that I want to spend an extra hundred dollars on them. So instead of making myself crazy over these silly boots I said FORGET IT. I decided to exchange them for a bunch of different stuff- those sweatpants trousers I like so much, a cord for Symphony’s paper lantern, and some velvet curtains to hide the ugly closet doors in the not-really-a-library.

Choosing all that stuff (not all of it for me) was way more fun than getting stressed over one selfish pair of boots, and I was even able to get Sym and Taylor to help me pick the curtains.

I could probably think of some more things, but right now it’s time for another soothing activity: PUPPY.