Category: Uncategorized

Puppy time has been great so far. She’s had a few accidents in the house but I mean, she’s a puppy; it’s inevitable. I’ve come up with this ultra-efficient dressing system for sleeping so that I can get her to the yard to pee really quickly if she wakes me up: I got to bed in underwear and a dark, non-see-through shirt (I don’t have time to “bra up” before going outside and I live in the middle of the most densely populated part of North America. No need to put everything out on display!), and leave shorts beside the bed that I can pull on one-handed (she’s less likely to start peeping on the carpet if I pick her up right away*). On Saturday night I wore a long sleeve top and last night a tank top, and I found the former worked better because I didn’t need to put on a sweater.

*The exception to this came on Sunday evening: She pooped in the hallway and then ate it before I got there. I was cleaning up the leftover poop-crumbs and she came scampering over to investigate so I quickly picked her up and she peed down my leg. OOPS.

For this weekend’s popsicle party Sym chose Lime & Limeade for the flavour. I figured I would take her literally, so I bought a bottle of organic limeade (Santa Cruz Organics, the same brand as the lemonade I used last weekend) and some limes. I bought six but I ended up only using three because I just have an old-timey reamer and juicing limes is hard work! I was worried they’d be too sour so I also added a little sugar syrup (I just melted like, eight sugar cubes & a tablespoon of water).

You know what goes with popsicles? PUPPIES!!

Somehow I misjudged the amount of liquid I’d need and I only got six popsicles out of this batch. I also forgot to take pictures while we were making them but these are pretty simple and all my measurements are ~guestimations~ anyway.

Also if anyone is interested, there are THREE THOUSAND MILLION more pictures of Georgie on my flickr, including this never-before seen picture with her red glitter collar.

It has a rhinestone G. She’s so fetch.

puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy puppy

Eight million more pictures pending.

After having one nice day yesterday, it’s gross and rainy out again. These pictures from Saturday evening help to remind me that it WILL be sunny again.

I mentioned last week that I found a dresser in the alley. Well, I’ve confirmed that the building it came from DOES have bedbugs, although I don’t know for sure if the dresser does yet. Either way I’m continuing with my decontaminate-and-refinish plan because last night I found a desk as well:

These are cool pieces of furniture! They just need a little diatomaceous earth and some tlc and I think they’ll be good as new. Of course it’ll be easier to clean and fix them up IF IT EVER STOPS RAINING OMG.

Graceling39/104; The Carrie Diaries40/104; Fire41/104

After the last three books I read, especially the horrifyingly sad Every Last One, I wanted to read something a) frivolous and b) stupid. My friend Gabrielle suggested I read The Carrie Diaries, but I was like “Not that stupid!” So instead I chose Graceling, because I the premise (people with two different coloured eyes who have extraordinary powers) sounded pretty silly. At first I was like WOW THIS IS SILLY, especially since the character and place names are mostly ludicrous (Prince Greening Grandemalion, what) or uninspired (the kingdom on the west is called Wester, the kingdom in the middle is called Middlun), but the writing and the story itself are actually quite good. I was impressed enough to get the companion, Fire, which I assumed would be a sequel of sorts but is actually kind of a prequel, taking place in a different kingdom and several years (decades) earlier than Graceling. In between them, though, I did read The Carrie Diaries, and it was every bit as frivolous and stupid as I thought it would be, with a healthy dose of super annoying and I-want-to-punch-all-these-people thrown in for good measure.

Currently I’m at 41 books read, although I should be at 45. I’m slowly catching up though, and I few more weeks or reading 3 books instead of 2 should get me all the way there.

A couple weeks ago Symphony was feeling upset about something, so to cheer here up I came up with the Popsicle Party Plan: Every Friday night, all summer, we’d make a new kind of popsicle for us to try on Saturday. We were going to start last week but with her slumber party and the Puppy Plan* we just didn’t have time, so this weekend was the first Popsicle party.

Symphony chose Strawberry Lemonade as our first popsicle, but the store I went to didn’t have straight strawberry juice, so I bought strawberries and organic lemonade.

My popsicle tray holds about a cup and a half of liquid so I hulled and sliced half a cup of berries and blended them with a cup of lemonade.

I poured the strawberry lemonade mix into the try, Symphony added the sticks and our creation was ready for freezing!

Today we tried out our first Popsicle Party popsicles and Symphony declared them a success. I was worried they wouldn’t be sweet enough but they were just right.

Today is also the first West End Farmer’s Market of the year. It takes place literally in front of my house so we go to almost every one. There wasn’t a lot of produce today, so we got delicious Bean Boy homous, three different kinds of honey and an apple pie.

I might go back later to get some tomatoes, the line for that stall was just way to long when we went!

*We’re going to pick Georgie up next Saturday!!!

It’s done!

lol this thing is so hilariously awesome now! Taylor put these pictures up on flickr and he’s been getting tons of compliments on all my hard work. It’s inspired him, so now he says he’s going to have at the Master Chief helmet with some spray paint and unicorn stencils. WE’LL SEE.

Anyway I’m just happy to be finished with all the spray painting, I’ve had a headache for like a week straight. Sorry, brain.

The other day one of my clients was picking up her kid and she noticed the huge salmonberry bush just outside the back gate that was covered in big, juicy, ripe berries. She said “Ooh, salmonberries!” and plucked the plumpest, reddest one, but right before she popped it into her mouth she got all sour-faced and said “They never really get ripe though.” I just don’t get it! Confronted with FREE DELICIOUS BERRIES and all she can say is something crabby? How depressing! And just never mind the fact the the berry she was holding was totally ripe! Negative people bum me out, BUT their energy-sucking grumpiness does have an upside: it reminds me of the importance of staying positive!

Yesterday I mentioned wanting to put up that stick-on mirror in my hallway, albeit with clips and not stickiness. It urned out to be too thin and flimsy to clip to the wall, so instead I had a New Project! I cut a piece of particle board (I have a bunch from the back of old Ikea bookcases) into a slightly larger rectangle, and since I was (and still am) currently painting that God of War box pink, I figured WHY NOT use the same paint for this project? A couple coats of paint, a couple coats of lacquer, peel-n-stick the mirror and BOOM.

I LOVE IT. The bright pink makes the mirror part look like weird negative space. There are only two problems with it:
1. I did the peeling and sticking on the living room floor, which is a den of dog hair, so I had to tweeze a bunch out when I was done, which was easy but annoying.
2. The particle board is curved! I stupidly put to mirror on the convex side, so it bulges out and makes you look fat. I wet the back and I have it squished under a bunch of heavy tool cases so hopefully it flattens out enough. If not I’ll have to construct some sort of frame to hold it flat.

Also last night, after dropping Sym at her dad’s, I found this cool chest of drawers in the alley where people leave stuff they don’t want.

I wish all the tiny drawers were real but it’s actually just 3 small drawers in the top and three big ones in the bottom. I want to paint it up all cool and store my craft supplies in it, BUT I don’t want to bring it in the house until I’ve confirmed that it isn’t riddled with any sort of bugs. It was starting to rain so Taylor and I carried it down into the covered area outside the door until I can figure out what to do with it.

In other news, today was basically the GROSSEST day ever, work-wise. I normally wouldn’t post pictures of any of the daycare kids, but I’ve cropped this one to protect her identity so I could show you the SNOT ROPES this baby was producing.

the arrows point to the top and bottom of the snotterfall

Sick. This happened all morning to the point where I had to change her shirt because this one was soaked through with mucus and separate her from the other kids. Anyway she developed a nasty cough and started to get glassy-eyed so I called her parents to come pick her up, and it turns out she has an ear infection. Her mom is gonna keep her home until she’s better, so no more booger baby this week!

Sometimes when Taylor buys videogames, he splurges and gets the ~special edition~

Special editions generally come with some fairly useless collector’s item, like a duffel bag to put all your ill-gotten gains in (one of the Grand Theft Auto games I think) or a giant and hideous Master Chief helmet that takes up too much space on the bookshelf and gets put into storage. His most recent hideous acquisition is this sinister box, courtesy of God of War 3

Lovely.

Really lovely. It’s made of the highest quality faux-metal (aka plastic) and the inside is flocked in black velvet, with a false bottom to hide all your most evil and arcane possessions. Because. If you had evil and arcane possessions you needed to hide you’d use a CREEPY BOX WITH DEMON FACES ON IT. Really.

Anyway this thing is ugly as hell and there’s only one thing to do about it.

I’m absurdly amused that the clear coat’s number is T1000.

Anyway…

SO MUCH BETTER ALREADY! It needs a few more coats of pink before I lacquer it up, but I can’t do it inside when the kids are here so I’m waiting for a) the weekend or b) it to stop raining, whichever comes first.