Honey. I’m sick of drinking tea so I’ve just been mixing honey & hot water.
A water spray bottle AND a water bottle. Basically any kind of water I can put on or in my body.
Tylenol Cold Daytime & Nighttime.
My Kindle, since all I can do is lie around and read, and this way I won’t lose my place when I pass out from all the Tylenol Cold Nighttime I’m about to eat.
Not pictured: the very old sweatshirt I keep putting on and taking off, the hand towel I chilled it the freezer to drape across my poor, burning face, and my oh-so-wonderful husband, who woke up at 2:40 to pick Sym up for me since I was too sick to go across the street to the school.
Today I took some time to search the internet for pictures of the planets for Elina’s mural. Some of them are going to be ridiculously easy to paint.
Really, Uranus? Turquoise? That’s all you got?
Others, like Jupiter, are more complicated.
Here’s my sketch:
I kind of like it! The line down the middle is because I had to tape two pieces of paper together to get my actual-size diameter of 9″.
I think Earth is actually going to be the most difficult- like Jupiter it has a lot of detail, but it’s going to be much smaller and I’m not going to be able to swirl the colours together as much to get the right look. I really wanted to start working on the actual paintings today but I am sick like a dog so I’d probably end up messing them up. Instead I’m going to figure out the sizes for each planet and do more sketches. Another one I’m looking forward to is Neptune:
PERIWINKLE BLUE!
Anyway I’m already really enjoying this project because for some reason I’ve felt compelled to actually research each of the planets and all that big outer space stuff makes me feel existential and mindfreaked, haha.
For the past couple years I’ve been slowly painting and decorating my apartment, and as I finish it I’d like to share it with you, one room at a time.
The foyer was actually the first room I painted, and since it’s literally the first part of my home that anyone (especially potential clients!) sees, I want it to look really nice and fun, while still being practical. With my child care business I have half a dozen people going in an out of this room every morning and every afternoon, dropping off and picking up their kids, as well as the regular use by my family and pets.
The wall colour is Honolulu Blue by Benjamin Moore. I chose to use a semi-gloss paint over my usual eggshell preference, both for durability and ease of cleaning. This room gets REALLY muddy and I need to be able to scrub everywhere!
On the inside of the door I have two Three by Three Seattle magnet strips that I use to put up signs (like Symphony’s fire safety certificate) and notices (like the list of days that I’m closed this year that everyone seems to conveniently forget about). The “OPEN AT 7:45” sign dates back from when I had a couple of clients who had the intensely annoying habit of showing up 10-15 minutes early every day and banging on the door and yelling until I let them in.
To the left of the door on the south wall is a giant window. I keep my attendance binder on the windowsill and above that I have a clear plastic shelf (it’s by Umbra but I can’t seem to find it on the site) that holds things like stamps, Post-its, extra pens and some of my collection of Dunnies. It sticks right to the window and is shallow enough that I can still close the blinds.
The east wall also has a window, except it looks into the living room. This drove me crazy because unless I kept all the foyer blinds closed (which makes the house too dark), anyone who came in the backyard could see right in! To solve this annoying problem without blocking all the light, I wired together three canvases and hung them in the opening, and on the living room side I put up a bamboo roller blind to hide the ugly backs of the canvases. Light still gets in but we have some privacy!
Beside that there is a weird little alcove where we mounted a clothes rail for our coats. Below the coats are crates for our two dogs and bins for winter accessories (hats scarves gloves, etc). On the edge of the wall are blue & white bird patterned hooks for keys and apparently the food necklaces I made last year.
Next is the bird & cloud wall. I actually bought these little wall decals from Elephannie on Etsy a couple years ago but I never got around to putting them up until last night. In the frames are lists of emergency numbers and a floor plan like the one pictured above, but with all the rooms and escape routes labeled.
Below the clouds & birds is my “Tanie” bench. It was given to me by my friend James, his grandfather made it for him and it used to say “Jamie.” I filed away at the letters until it looked more like my name and repainted it- before it was orange and white. Unfortunately I didn’t do a very good job and it’s chipped and scratched badly. The seat opens up and inside is where we store all our athletic equipment, ie running shoes, my gym bag and some badminton racquets.
Beside the bench is a retractable babygate, which I use to keep the kids out of the dog food. It doesn’t keep dogs in though, as this video will demonstrate.
Opposite the bench is the cubby wall. This was originally just another useless shallow alcove, but the previous tenant installed these shelves, which just happen to be exactly the right width for 4 baskets from the dollar store. Each daycare child (and everyone who lives here!) get a cubby.
Even the dogs have a cubby under the reminder board!
Below the cubby shelves are hooks for coats, but since it’s the weekend these are empty.
The foyer floor is linoleum, so to keep it from turning into a sick wet muddy mess I have these boring utility mats everywhere. To make them a little less utilitarian I cut them in curves to echo the clouds painted on the wall and canvases. By the way, the floor isn’t dirty there, when the previous tenant put up the shelves she dripped some adhesive on the floor and I can’t seem to get rid of it no matter what I try.
Between the door and the cubbies is a small wall with a window (the paper taped in it is a reminder that I’m closed Friday and Monday this weekend). Below the window is another set of hooks for Symphony’s coats and bags, with another utility mat for our shoes and boots. Above the light switch I have my first aid certificate and child care license in frames that match my emergency lists.
And if you look up…
I changed the light fixture from an ugly “titty” light to an Ikea Smila Sol sun light. It’s super cute, but it’s always filling with dead bugs, and to change the bulbs you have to pull the sun’s centre out and all the dead bugs fall on you. As for the “Happy Birthday” sign, well, I put it up in November for Symphony’s birthday, but every time I think about taking it down I realize it’s almost someone else’s birthday (mine, one of the daycare kids, etc). I think it’s just part of the decor now.
Also partially pictured throughout is my stroller, which I love. It’s a B.O.B. Duallie Iron Man sport utility stroller that I bought last year with a grant. It’s bright yellow with a bright yellow rain cover, and really allays my paranoid fears of some inattentive driver plowing into us when we’re crossing the street, since you would have to be literally blind to miss it!
Symphony and I went out this afternoon and bought this Crazy Forts fort-building kit.
I actually wanted this for myself for Christmas, but when Taylor went to buy it for me it was sold out. I saw a bunch at Chapters a few weeks ago and I knew I had to go pick one up. If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good fort!
We made an “igloo” frame and then I draped it with a bunch of saris Symphony’s grandma gave us years ago. From the outside it looks a little silly…
but from the inside…
Symphony took in a little pink flower lamp, a pillow, her stuffed Chococat and her latest Daisy Meadows Rainbow Magic fairy book and made herself right at home.
I LITERALLY could not be more thrilled with this purchase.
I really can’t think of a better way to transition back into work after a vacation than by having two short weeks in a row. I have today and Monday off, and really, is there anything better than a four-day weekend? I’ve been looking forward to it all week, except for one thing- because he took so many days off for our trip, Taylor had decided to work today (well, last night/this morning, his shift is 12am-8am in order to “make up” one of the days off, so he didn’t have a long weekend with me and would be sleeping all day today.
We decided to go out last night anyway, just for burgers & beer with our friends Rich & Jenn. Afterwards we came back here and hung out with the dog while Taylor go ready to go to the work. He left at 11:15, but then at 11:40, just as Rich & Jenn were leaving he came back in a panic- he’d lost the swipe card to get into the office! Luckily he’d stopped to get coffee and realized the card wasn’t in his wallet and was able to come home to search for it. I immediately started helping to look and also offered to give him cash to take a cab to work so he wouldn’t be late. Suddenly he turned to me and yelled “April Fool’s!” I was confused (and a little drunk) so I was like “… you didn’t lose your card?” I thought, what a stupid prank, now you’ll be late to work- oh wait! “You’re not going to work!!” What dedication to pranking! He kept the lie up all week, only had 2 drinks at dinner and went all the way to Starbucks after 11 just to trick me. Obviously he’s been learning from me- the other day I was in the bath and he busted it and threw ice cubes on me, which was HILARIOUS. I guess the student has finally become the master.
Since he didn’t have to leave we stayed up and watched the new episode of Fringe, which we’d forgotten was back on. I have to say I don’t know why more people don’t watch that show, it is SO GOOD. I don’t want to spoil anything, so i’ll just say that I bawled like a baby through the whole show!
This morning I slept in, which was awesome, and then Taylor and I went to the gym. We just got back and Symphony was just dropped off, so I think we’re going to hang around here for a while and then go out to buy new dog crates for the foyer- right now I have these ugly, awkward plastic ones, so I’m going to replace them with metal ones, which I think are less intrusive into the design of the room, plus they are a bit bigger, which is nice for the dogs themselves!
For Kichou, 24″ x 18″ x 19″, this is about the same length as his current crate but its way wider AND taller:
For Dougal, 36″ x 23″ x 25″, this one is a little bigger than his current crate:
As for the rest of the weekend, I don’t know yet what I’m going to do. I know I want to get my foyer ready to photograph, and maybe spraypaint some picture frames in there red, although that depends on whether or not it ever stops raining. I have tons of work to do on Elina’s mural- it’s just a bunch of blue canvases right now.
Not so exciting yet, but they will be soon!
The kids are all down for nap and I am ready to start painting! I think I might have mentioned this before but I’m really excited to start a new project. Yesterday I had a great idea to make the sun painting way more awesome- I got a round magnet board from Three by Three Seattle, and I’m going to paint it yellow and bolt-slash-glue it to the canvas, kind of like I did with a bird-shaped one my reminders board.
You can consider this a ~sneak peek~ of my foyer, which I haven’t cleaned well enough to photograph and post yet. Also, four day weekend!!
Recently I’ve really been appreciating my cat, who is cuter and fluffier and more filled with personality and charm than all other cats. Combined. Now you can appreciate her too!
March 23rd
In addition to the lizards and creepy geckos (or whatever they were) that lived under our air conditioner, there was a bush next to the parking lots that was like a LIZARD CONDOMINIUM.
We spent the morning of our last full day at the beach, and it was the funnest beach day yet. Not too windy, no crazy-huge waves. We’d finally fine-tuned what we were bringing with us and didn’t even have to drive because it was just like, my beach bag & our towels, Sym’s chair and a little boogie board we found near the condo’s bike rack (Taylor’s big one was broken by this time).
I’ve mentioned before how scared Symphony was of the big waves, and how after she got churned up she wouldn’t go past the breakers at all. Well, that day I’d devised a plan to get her to broaden her ocean horizons: BRIBERY. I told her that if she came out into deeper water and used the boogie board as a floaty, I would buy her a new humpback whale stuffy at the Maui Ocean Center, where we were going that afternoon. Lovely parenting, I know. I used the same method six years ago to get her to poo in the potty.
I managed to get her to let Taylor pick her up and carry her past the breakers, where we then transfered her to the boogie board. She held onto one side and I stayed on the other to keep her calm. She was really anxious at first and started freaking when she saw a big wave coming, but once she realized that the waves would lift us instead of knocking us over she was fine. It was a lot more fun for me too, since I didn’t have to keep going back and forth from Taylor in the deeper water and Symphony right on the shore. Instead, we all got to hang out together!
After lunch we headed up to Wailuku to visit the Maui Ocean Center. For Symphony it was definitely the highlight of the trip- if you ask her now if she had fun in Maui, she says “I went to the aquarium!” The girl is mental for aquariums, for real.
I’ve never gotten so many non grumpy, non-squinky, non-monster-faced pictures of her in one day.
I can’t see seahorses without thinking of Away We Go: “Why the seahorses, Rod?” “In the seahorse community, the males give birth. The female inserts her ovipositor into the male’s brood pouch. That’s where she deposits her eggs.” “If I could, I would lay my eggs in your brood pouch.” “I know you would.”
I’m pretty happy with this picture I got of a teenage sea turtle.
They have this big tank full of sharks and stingrays, it’s super cool.
There’s also a tunnel that goes through the tank. This picture would have been perfect if Sym hadn’t turned her head to look at the giant stingray!
Two seconds later a hammerhead shark swam past and Taylor and Sym BOTH turned their heads. GREAT YOU GUYS.
Unfortunately, when we got to the gift shop they had NO HUMPBACK WHALE PLUSHES. Crazy! All they had were babyish dolphins and depressed looking sharks, so after about 45 minutes of deliberation she choose six little toys instead. I did find a pretty awesome humpback whale Christmas tree ornament, but it was forty-six dollars. Yes, FORTY-SIX DOLLARS. I don’t even know, you guys.
March 24th
Leaving day 🙁 Let me tell you we were NOT happy to be going home! We got up and instead of going to the beach we had to finish packing, do the dishes and vacuum. So lame! We left the condo at 9:30, stopped at Starbucks for coffee and headed into Kahului, where we killed time at Old Navy trying on shorts and dresses until it was time to take our truck back to the rental place.
Last year we took this redeye flight back on Sunday night, and let me tell you, it was the WORST flying experience of my life! The plane was totally packed and apparently, lots of people with little kids take those redeyes because they figure their kids will sleep on the plane. Well, they don’t. They scream for six hours! This year I was like, NO WAY am I doing that again, so instead we took the afternoon flight, which leaves at 2.
Symphony did pretty well on this flight as well, although she did start to feel sick towards the end. The flight attendants were super nice kept bringing us different things they thought would help: an icepack, water, damp paper towels and a bigger bag to throw up in, just in case. I think they would have brought her the kitchen sink if they thought it would do any good! In the end she made it to Vancouver without puking, thank goodness! I had the same ear problem I did on the way to Hawaii, my right ear kept popping and popping until well after midnight (our flight arrived at 10:30).
So yeah. That’s it, that’s our trip. Now all we have left is our memories, 1,000 photographs (if you think I post a lot of pictures YOU HAVE NO IDEA how much restraint I showed), our macadamia nuts, the cheap summer clothes we got at Old Navy (we have Old Navy here but all the stores are out in the suburbs where I never go, so I end up buying stuff there when I’m in Hawaii or Seattle or wherever it’s convenient) and this quilted pillow slip that I haven’t bought a pillow for yet:
I actually want the bedspread but it’s $800. EIGHT HUNDRED.
As a reward to myself for only taking two days to completely clear off the sick mess on the kitchen island I’m going to buy a shredder so I don’t have to tear up all those old credit card statements by hand.
I’m having major hair confusion. It was a huge disaster for the entirety of my vacation and I’m kind of regretting cutting it short (although kind of not, it was good to get rid of all those fried ends). It looks really cute when I take the time to blow it out, but if I let it dry naturally it’s a sick mess and when I flat iron it it looks weird for some reason. I’m pretty sure I want to grow it back out, but the real question is WHAT COLOUR? Right now it looks like this:
This is the aforementioned natural dried sick mess. It’s pretty close to my natural shade, but the thing is, unless I want to fully embrace the grey, I have to keep dyeing it every month no matter what colour it is.
Some ~inspirations~
lol clearly I’m leaning towards going dark again. Thoughts? Advice? Tips?
Oheo Gulch at Kipahulu is part of Haleakala National Park, and since we’d gone up to the crater only a couple days before our receipt would have still been valid, but I’d STUPIDLY cleaned out my wallet earlier that morning so we had to pay again. it’s only ten bucks but STILL. Unfortunately the pools were closed to swimming, which meant we had to stay up on the cliffs and trails, but it was still beautiful.
This guy thought he owned the place.
For some reason Symphony keeps making finger scissors in pictures.
Now, this is where almost everyone turns back and from what I remembered from my 1999 visit you aren’t allowed to drive rental cars past that point because the roads aren’t very good. However, I heard the park ranger in the visitor center tell some people they could definitely continue on in their rented Town Car. I think it was a trick though, because if you look at the map in the back of the magazine the car rental agency gives you, that part of the road is marked in red with a big note that “DRIVING PAST THIS POINT INVALIDATES YOUR RENTAL AGREEMENT.” That’s because at this point the road turns into an single lane unpaved muddy track clinging guardrail-less to the side of a cliff. NOT THAT I WOULD KNOW, becuase we would never do something that would invalidate our rental agreement like drive around the far side of the island. If we had, though, photos of the backcountry taken from a moving car might look something like this.
After all the lush greenery on the east side of the island, the southern side is bleak. Bleak and eerie and creepy. At first the rusted out cars and rickety old rape shacks are unsettling, but as the fences and powerlines fall away you find yourself longing for some sign of civilization.
Now, the thing about this weird, forbidden road is that it doesn’t actually go around the island. It cuts across the flank of the volcano and if you take it, you have to drive nearly all the way to Kahului in order to get to Kihei. At one point though, you would be right above where you were staying, and if there was just one road that went down the hill you’d be home in 10 minutes.
Nuts!
Next Up: Beach Day #3, the Ocean Center & Coming Home
