Author: Tanie

During my trimester of illness I really got out of the habit of blogging. Partly because I felt too sick and partly because since I hadn’t done my big ~reveal~ yet I couldn’t blog about being pregnant, and in being pregnant (and feeling sick because of said pregnancy) was basically my entire life… so what was there to blog about?

Another reason I wasn’t blogging much is because my poor old mid-2011 computer was really feeling her age. There was one week there in February or March (it all blurs together) where it was just SO SLOW and couldn’t handle doing anything. I couldn’t use my photo app to download pictures from my camera while Chrome was running, and FORGET photoshop. It took twenty minutes to open, five minutes to run a simple action, five minutes to save and another twenty minutes to close! And while it was very slowly doing these things I would have to walk away and do something else because I couldn’t even scroll down a webpage without pinwheeling. I have about zero dollars in my new computer or even new hard drive fund, so I worried the old girl was on her last legs. Luckily after about a week it mostly recovered and stopped acting so decrepit. EXCEPT for with photoshop, that still took FOREVER to do anything. Anyway my friend Sara posted on her facebook about having similar photoshop problems with her macbook, and one of her other friends suggested she upgrade her RAM. I was like OF COURSE, I need to do that too! So earlier this week I added 8 more GB to the paltry FOUR this computer has been running for the last five years and WOW. It’s like a whole new computer practically! It started up way faster and of course the first thing I did was open photoshop to time how long it would take, and it was less than a minute which LET ME TELL YOU was better than the TWENTY minutes it used to take. Now I feel like I should photoshop things all the time, haha.

It’s been a pretty great couple of weeks for Symphony; on Monday she got the palate expander from her braces taken out so she can talk and eat like a regular person again, she got her second term report card and she had made enough of an improvement in math that she’s being recommended for pre-calculus next year, which she needs to take if she is going to get into the grade eleven math class she needs to get into university, and she can finally hear again! Last year she mentioned to her dad that she was having trouble hearing out of her left ear, so he took her to the doctor who said she seemed to have a blockage in her ear canal. I took her to have her hearing tested and they agreed there was a problem, and when they asked how long she had been having trouble she said it had been since she went to Mexico, which was FIVE YEARS AGO. And she never said anything to us! Because it when she was a little kid she had to see a pediatric otolaryngologist so it took a few months to get an appointment, but when she finally saw one they fixed her ear that day! Her dad took her and she was given the option of two months of a foul nasal spray which might not help, or they could poke a lil hole in her eardrum and they could suck out all the blockage. She chose the latter and apparently the amount of crud that came out was UNBELIEVABLE and also super gross. The result though was that her hearing was IMMEDIATELY restored, to the degree that for two days she was accusing everyone around her of yelling. She has a follow-up appointment next month to check if her ear tube has remained clear but so far it seems fine. Here’s to hearing!

The other day I measured & weighed Gwen and then looked up the average height/weight for kids her age and LET ME TELL YOU she is beyond it. At 3 1/3 years she’s actually slightly above average for a 4 year old. Most of her clothes are a size four now but I’ve started getting her some things in a size five and they are not that big on her. I also discovered she has outgrown her carseat (what kinda idiot carseat maxes out at just 40 pounds for forward facing?) which is a huge pain because now I have to get a new carseat WHICH I RESENT because we don’t actually have a car. So now I gotta spend a bunch of money on a new carseat we’ll barely use and also idk if you are familiar with how much it sucks installing a carseat, well imagine doing that EVERY SINGLE TIME. Nightmares, honestly.

A few months ago I broke one of my acrylics really badly and jaggedly and painfully, but was luckily able to get to the nail salon to have it repaired right away. HOWEVER the nail tech was SO MEAN about fixing it (even though it was only the second nail I’d broken in like… two years of having acrylics) I almost cried and am now too traumatized to go back. I’ve just been growing them out ever since. When they get too long I just file the acrylic down and I think they are a little more than halfway back to being regular nails again. I’m interested to find out if my natural nails have recovered from the weak-and-brittleness they had from my Graves’ disease, which was the reason I started getting acrylics in the first place. Of course they look super weird right now but who cares? Toddlers? Toddlers don’t care and they are the only people I see on the reg outside my family.

I found myself with a wealth of lemons recently (dozens. Don’t ask) so this afternoon Gwen and I made some lemonade together. When I was in San Francisco with Taylor we went to this one restaurant, Super Duper Burger, that makes their lemonade with brown sugar so I thought we’d give that a try. While it looks weird (kind of like iced tea) it tastes amazing! Even Sym likes it and she is notorious for refusing to try new things. I think if I had light- or golden brown sugar it would look a little less strange, but there’s always next time! Or maybe half white sugar half brown sugar? There’s always next time I guess. I still have a bunch of lemons left so if you have any sure-fire recipes for lemony baked goods send them my way because I’m in a baking mood.

Brown Sugar Lemonade

• juice of 10 lemons
• 5 cups water
• 1 cup brown sugar simple syrup (see below)

In a large jug or pitcher, mix together all ingredients.

To make the brown sugar simple syrup: in a small saucepan mix together 1 cup brown sugar OR 1/2 brown sugar & 1/2 white sugar with 1 cup water. Heat on medium-high heat, stirring constantly until all sugar has dissolved. Do not bring to a boil and take care not to allow it to burn. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

I took these pictures a couple of weeks ago; when I told Gwen we were going to the beach she immediately ran and put on her bathing suit from last summer and I had a doozy of a time convincing her that February was too cold for swimming.

making Not a lot. I have been very hard at work trying to get my shit together with regards to my REAL job and it has left me precious little time for much else (like blogging for example). I am still working on my suede & leather skull patches but suuuuuuper slowly; I’ve only finished two so far which is a little disappointing. I did make what I think is a GREAT mini banner this week: a lavender-to-black gradient that reads “NOT ONLY WILL THIS KILL YOU; IT WILL HURT THE WHOLE TIME YOU’RE DYING” except instead of a semi colon it’s a little lightning bolt. I’m trying to decide if I want to bother listing it in the shop- it’s so long that it’s difficult to photograph, especially in the current late winter gloominess of my basement apartment, and the number of characters makes the price $55 and idk if anyone in the world would buy it.

reading In the past few weeks I’ve bought and read cheap Kindle omnibuses of ALL the Anne of Green Gables books and ALL the Little House on the Prairie books. I started but didn’t finish both of these as a kid and I figured what the heck. You can get these for just a few dollars for the entire series and they are great bathtub reads (although the other night I was reading The Long Winter while waiting for Taylor to pick up food and it was Too Real).

watching I’m really not feeling anything that I’m watching lately. When I work I have been slowly dragging through Gilmore Girls but like… it’s a really bad show you guys. I’m only on season two because I hate it so much I keep giving up in disgust. Right now I’m just dying at what a terrible jealous red-flag waving control freak Dean is and like HOW can Lorelei encourage this relationship???? It’s terrible! Also I don’t understand why everyone thinks Rory is so smart and so great, bitch thinks AYN RAND is a good writer. Look, I read The Fountainhead and objectionable content aside, there is literally ONE sentence in the whole book that isn’t total trash, and it’s like a description of grass or leaves or something. NEXT.

loving I have the month off work and have been spending lots of quality time with Gwen, and it has been great. She is just a really good kid with a sweet little heart. Most mornings I get up with her and we watch Peppa Pig (her current fave) while she has milk and a snack, then “pway wos” (play Legos) until breakfast-and after breakfast-and all the time! She cannot get enough of her “wos.” In the past few weeks a lot of her sneaky, naughty behaviour has stopped, and I can leave doors open and cupboards unlocked without having to worry that she’s going to wreak havoc (sometimes) and she loves to help with things around the house- doing laundry, wiping counters, making coffee, microwaving. The only trouble is if you don’t let her help with this stuff (or you just forget and put a load of wash on without consulting her) she breaks down and cries like you’ve broken her heart, which you probably have. Shame on you.

planning How to get myself back on track, financially. I’m back to work in April and have enough new clients starting over the course of the spring that by June I will have more than QUADRUPLED my monthly income from what I made in January. This is a pretty big deal as I have been super broke for a super long time and I am really looking forward to not being in the bottom of my overdraft anymore.

wishing Spring would get here already!