Category: Uncategorized

Some things Georgie loves:

my Cardi Uggs

Taylor’s Sumo beanbag chair

her bff Dougal

this little Owlet toy from Urban Outfitters

Something I love:

Georgie ♥

This was stuck in my door at 8:30 this morning:

Dear Residents,

Notice of Water Supply Interruption

The water boiler at your building has failed. Arrangements have been made for the immediate replacement of the boiler by [redacted]. The work is expected to take about 5 to 7 hours to complete and will begin this morning. We expect to have hot water service restores by the end of the day. If you need any additional information about the work to be done please contact [redacted].

Yours truly,
Assistant Property Manager

FIVE to SEVEN hours with no hot water, with no notice. THANKS BOILER!

Now, I could get all cranky and irritated about this, but instead I’m going to look at the bright side:
• because Georgie and Claire woke me up at the crack of dawn with their kitty puppy shenanigans, I had a bath and shaved my legs when there was still hot water (Taylor came home from work expecting to have a shower but NO DICE).
• with no hot water I can’t do the dishes or clean the floors, which means I don’t have to do the dishes and clean the floors
• there’s still cold water so we can still wash our hands and use the facilities, otherwise I would have had to close down and refund money to all my inconvenienced clients.

This is what I wish I was doing right now. I’m SO TIRED!

Sunday I had a nice day with Taylor, we walked puppies, did a little shopping and lazed on the couch eating humous and watching Burn Notice (which we are recently obsessed with). I also did the nicest thing ever- I got up early and while Taylor was still sleeping I order him a Kindle as a late anniversary/early birthday present. Of course this turned out to be a bad idea when the price dropped $70 yesterday morning but after talking to three different customer service reps (amazon.ca, amazon.com, and Kindle-specific) and spending a total of 30 minutes on hold listening to the worst hold music ever, I secured a refund for the price difference. Seriously though, if you are thinking of buying a KindleDO IT because they are cheap as heck now.

This morning I learned that in all likelihood, building maintenance WILL be tearing out my wall to fix that weeping pipe problem. I’m hoping to arrange to have it done next week, because next week I AM ON VACATION. Yay, summer vacation! We aren’t going anywhere, I’m just taking a week off of work so I can do stuff like Sleep Later Than 6:30, Start Going to the Gym Again, Refinish Some Furniture and Maybe Get a Sweet Tan. Basically just not work. I really need this, I’m completely exhausted and frazzled and sick of wiping noses and breaking up fights over plastic cars. Maybe after my vacation all the kids will be over the endless summer colds and snotterfalls that have been making the rounds for the past month. I just need to make it through three and a half more days and then I’m freeeeeee!

Sometimes we like to pretend we are a cheesy commercial family and have a ~family fun night~ where we play a board game or watch a Studio Ghibli film. Last night was actually more of a Taylor & Symmie fun night.

It is so cute when they bond. Afterwards Sym was all pink-cheeked and worn out, she wanted me to dab her face with a damp cloth, haha.

While their fun was going on I was doing other stuff- before they started playing I made a lime & ginger grilled chicken salad for dinner (I made the chicken ahead of time) since it was too hot to cook actual food.

I also did all the work for popsicle party. This week was Pink Lemonade & Raspberry.

6 oz of raspberries, fill to 1 1/2 cups with pink lemonade & blend.

Because I didn’t add any sugar these were not very sweet at all. Very very raspberry though.

Sym approved. She ended up getting it all over her face but she’s going to her grandma’s house today and needed to have a shower anyway.

Requisite puppy.

There isn’t anything I can do about Gross Closet until maintenance sends a plumber or whatever, so I figure I won’t dwell on it. I’m going to take all the linens out of it and forget it exists.

Symphony always asks if she can hold Georgie and after two seconds she’s like “OKAY YOU CAN HAVE THIS BACK NOW.” Oh and please pretend you can’t see my packed-full-of-dog-hair vacuum back there. I was right in the middle of cleaning the foyer when I took this.

Kichou still isn’t friends with Georgie, whenever she tries to play with him he sits in the bedroom closet and sulks. Last night she curled up next to him to sleep and he stormed out of the bedroom in a huff and didn’t come back for the rest of the night! This is basically the only interaction they have:

I love the way the force of her chirpy little barks causes her legs to fly out. Of course this incessant barking isn’t behavior I want to encourage, so today I’m going to make a penny can (get a can, put pennies in it, seal shut) to shake at her when she gets too barky. I wish someone had done that with Kichou when he was little because he is NOISY.

In case you thought life in my house was all puffy puppies and funshine, it is so not. I decided to take advantage of naptime to get some stuff done around the house, including cleaning out the bottom of my linen closet. When I took everything out, lookit what I found:

UGH WTF. The baseboard is totally deformed and discoloured and as you can see has totally pulled away from the wall in one place. It feels clammy and smells mildewy to boot. This is my hallway closet, and on the other side of that wall is I believe the pipes and what-have-you for the geothermal heating system, part of which is obviously leaking. Or maybe moisture is seeping up from the ground- I am in a basement suite. Either way, GREAT JUST GREAT. I called the management office and they’re going to send over the maintenance guy “just as soon as he’s available.” DOUBLE GREAT. Meanwhile I’m dying from black mold over here.

EDIT: I printed out the picture and took it to the management office and they sent the maintenance guy over right away. There’s an access panel in the wall right above the grossness, and when he opened it out he found a cold water pipe next to a hot water pipe and mad condensation going on. AWESOME. So they’re probably going to come back with a plumber and maybe even tear the whole wall out!

Say it with me:

GREAT.

JUST GREAT.

I’m really getting a kick out of the interaction between Dougal and Georgie. She’s not afraid of him anymore, so she’ll try to play with him. He is really gentle with her and seems mostly bemused by her silly puppy behavior.

Georgie is committed to literacy

Uglies42/104; Pretties43/104; Specials44/104; and Extras 45/104

These are some of my favorite books! I’ve read them a bunch of times. Unfortunately when I stashed the boxes of books under Sym’s bed I made them pretty inaccessible. I really felt like reading them again so I did the only logical thing: bought them all for my kindle! It’s worth it though, because these are young adult novels are about teens living in a post-apocalyptic dystopian future AKA MY FAVORITE THING EVER.

The first three books take place like three hundred years in the future, in a society where upon reaching the age of 16, everyone has massive, Heidi Montag-style plastic surgery makeovers to become pretty. The fourth book (which used to be my least favorite but I’ve recently developed a new appreciation for it) takes place three years later in a city that runs on a “reputation economy”: everyone over the age of say, twelve, has a personal “feed” where they can post pictures, videos, stories, whatever they want, and how popular a feed is determines that person’s place in society. DOES THIS SOUND IN ANY WAY FAMILIAR? I was lolling my face off about it.

ANYWAY you should read these books.

I forgot to take a picture of this before we started eating so it looks a little depleted

I adapted this meal from a recipe in Real Simple. I only made 2 chicken breasts, grilled them instead of using a skillet and I didn’t bother with measuring the spices- I just sprinkled them ~freehand~. For the couscous salad I left out the basil and I didn’t have any lemons so I used one of the limes left over from the last Popsicle Party. The chicken was okay, but the couscous was awesome! Why did no one ever tell me that couscous was so great? And it is LITERALLY the easiest thing in the world to cook, too. I foresee a lot more couscous in my future.

… now with puppy.