Category: Uncategorized

A few weeks ago Sym’s dad told me that in the evenings when he rides his bike around the Stanley Park Seawall it is just swarmed with otters. SWARMED. There are a few places where there are stairs up from the rocks to the top of the wall and the otters scamper up to bash clams open and also rummage through the trash cans for snacks. They are like water raccoons! Unfortunately for me I never get down the the Seawall in the evenings- after I finish work it’s like MAKE DINNER FEED BABY WASH BABY PUT BABY TO BED COLLAPSE ON COUCH PROBABLY FALL ASLEEP WATCHING TV. No way I’d have the energy to scour the Seawall for otters!

I hadn’t been on a proper Seawall walk since last summer, before I got sick. I was determined to get back in the habit, so today I broke out the double stroller and headed down to the water. I made Sym come with me in lieu of her other morning activities. Originally we were only going to do a short walk from English Bay to Second Beach and let the babies play at the playground before heading home. However when we got to Second Beach the babies were sound asleep, I was still feeling great and having such a nice conversation with Sym I didn’t want to stop yet.

We ended up going all the way to Lumbermen’s Arch, and it was between the Lion’s Gate Bridge and the Arch that we saw three otters in the water. I pointed and yelled OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS like a demented fool, I think Sym was a little embarrassed. We kept pace with them as we walked along the Seawall and eventually I decided to stop and try to get some pictures. At this point they very thoughtfully and obligingly clambered up on the rocks and came over to pose for pictures. So kind & thoughtful! Sym was trying to scheme a way to bring one home but I don’t think they would have gone for it.

The bridge from below.




OTTERS OTTERS OTTERS.

I made this! Used my sewing machine and everything!


This baby is literally me. buffalo plaid shirt, grey tank, black leggings, galaxy shoes



I need to know what the plant at the center with the little yellow flowers is. Look at the leaves, they are so cute! It’s like a cartoon plant.

Once a year my upstairs neighbor busts out his pressure washer and cleans his stairs, deck and roof, AND as a bonus he also does my stairs & patio. It’s great because the landlord never does my stairs and there is only so much I can do myself with a broom and a hose w/sprayer, especially when SOMEONE KEEPS STEALING MY DAMN HOSE. I just had Taylor order another one and I’m seriously trying to figure out how to bike-lock a hose to the side of the building. It’s especially dumb because the faucet is like… INSIDE my garden so I don’t even need a long, fancy hose, like if they made 10 foot hoses I’d be like ALRIGHT PERFECT! Tragically they do not, the shortest one I could find was 25 feet, but then the 50-foot one was on special and came with a sprayer sooooooo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ANYWAY. The pressure washing. My stairs are cement and they just grow mildew and algae like crazy because it’s super shady down here in the basement area. It was especially gross this year because last year they didn’t get cleaned. This was my own fault because I have to move all my stuff and sweep up all the dead leaves and spiderwebs aaaaand I didn’t, oops. I think not doing things was the theme of last year as I didn’t weed the garden at all either. So yeah, it was disgusting. But now it’s done and everything is clean and bright and I am swearing an oath that I won’t let it get so nasty again!

Fun story: while my neighbor was washing my stairs I suddenly really needed some lemonade. DESPERATELY. But I was trapped in the house so I did what any sane person would do: I climbed out the window. Totally normal, rational behavior.

Remember yesterday when I was talking about how I meant to come up with a reading list or math worksheets or SOMETHING to keep Sym occupied this summer, and how she was in NO WAY going to spend the next two and a half months watching Youtube videos in her room? Well in a shocking twist she was watching some Youtube videos when I asked her to clean up the toys & such in the living room and then vacuum. Cleaning up the toys is one of her chores; she has to do it almost every single day. I can’t do it all the time myself because it hurts my back too much (I’m old and frail), and anyway, I had to wash the dishes and do the laundry.

Predictably, she was a huge brat about it. This is literally what was happening:

Sooooo I was like “YEP NOPE THIS ENDS NOW.” I came up with some rules about screen time (which is now limited) and a list of what I call “activities” that she has to complete by certain times or risk losing her screen time. I implemented it right away and I feel like it’s actually working! It’s only been 24 hours but so far Sym hasn’t been arguing about anything, and she’s actually been spending time with me and Gwen instead of holed up in her dank cavern of a bedroom.

She can also come up with other activities that aren’t on the list: this morning she played donut shop with her Sailor Senshi dolls for half an hour, and spent an hour drawing at the kitchen island with me while I worked on etsy orders. Honestly I don’t care WHAT she does as long as it’s not a) staring at the internet all day OR b) complaining she has nothing to do!

Some good stuff that’s been going on…

Gwen’s arm is getting better, the welts are fading and it’s not longer swollen & hot, so I guess it was just a hypersensitivity. PHEW.

I’ve gotten two of my penpal club packages in the mail so far (ty Vivian & Jill!), as well as a bunch of Sad Ghost Club stuff I ordered from etsy. I’m obsessed with Sad Ghost Club, idk why.

SPEAKING OF ETSY, my shop‘s been pretty slow recently but a couple weeks ago it suddenly picked up with tons of views, faves and SALES, yay sales! I figured out that pics of some of my banners were making the rounds on tumblr again, BUT this time the OP included a link to my shop, awesome!

I hope you all enjoy how I masterfully photoshopped out the woman who walked into this shot at the last second and ruined it, lol

Gwen had her 18-month vaccinations this week (a month late, oops). We don’t have a scale at home so doctor’s appointments are the only time I bother to find out her weight. She’s 13.2kg/29.1lb, which I think is about the 90th percentile? idk how percentiles even work but that seems good.

As far as I can recall, she was fine after all her other vaccinations, but this round was a doozy of a bad time for her. She woke up around 11pm with a fever that hung on the next day, and the injection site was a big red welt. The welt increased in size on Tuesday, and when I got her up on Wednesday it had grown exponentially larger, formed a weird welt-within-a-welt and also a series of satellite mini-welts that ran down the outside her arm as far as her elbow, as well as the inside of her arm. Her whole upper arm was hard, swollen and hot to the touch.

I spent the whole morning and half of the afternoon on the phone with the nurse hotline and in & out of various doctor’s offices. The first doctor I saw (at the walk-in clinic by my house) thought it could be an infection, and the second (our regular doctor) thought it was a hypersensitivity reaction to the dilutant in the vaccine. He told us to treat with Benadryl, and to keep an eye on it in case it continues to get worse or starts oozing. He also seemed concerned I would stop vaccinating her after this and tbh I was a little offended he thought that about me as I’m hugely pro-vaccination.

Last weekend Sym asked me to take her to buy a cactus for her dad for Father’s Day, which I took as a good excuse to also buy some new plants for the compost heap I call a garden. I chose a really pathetic looking maidenhair fern and a cool groundcover plant called Corsican mint, which smells fantastic when you smush the leaves (not that you should be deliberately smushing your plants). I planted them right outside my office window, between the hydrangea and bleeding heart, and I moved (transplanted?) a couple pathetic hostas in the hopes that they do better with some more light. My one non-pathetic hosta is literally blossoming this year for the first time ever, but all the others are sad and tiny.

I don’t even know if it’s the right time of year to be moving plants around (probably not, although they haven’t died since I moved them) but I DON’T EVEN CARE, like if plants can’t stand up to my type of gardening they they may as well give up now. ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE, etc. There’s also a nice-looking fern growing near the front of the house that I think I should steal I MEAN TRANSPLANT to my garden. It’s in this weird little concrete alcove where you can’t even really see it & it only has about 6″ of space to grow so I think I’d be doing it a favour (and also getting revenge on the universe for whoever stole my garden hose & sprayer, seriously I had to water my plants with a juice jug).

In addition to the planting and transplanting I’ve been continuing to weed back there and OH MY GOD. First of all, there is something I am definitely allergic to so I should never do any gardening if I can’t have a shower straightaway because the itchiness is unbearable. Also, in the last couple of years I swear someone chucked a few handfuls of grass seed into the garden and it’s terrible! You can’t get a lawnmower back there so the grass just get long and weedy-looking and it’s everywhere, displacing my hard-earned moss and hiding more insidious plants until they are too big to just pull up. On Monday I tore out a handful of grass from under a rhododendron and found a salmonberry bush AND a horsechestnut tree growing there!

While I was gardening Sym was hanging out on the stairs discussing her favourite Pretty Little Liars theories with me. In case you don’t know there is a province-wide teacher’s strike going on here, so I guess school’s out for the summer? Some people are pissed/pissy about it but IMO teachers absolutely deserve to be paid and treated well. I just don’t get all these people who are like “teachers are sacrificing our children’s education so they can line their own pockets!” But like… if you aren’t paying a decent wage, you aren’t going to attract quality teachers, and then what kind of an education are your children going to get? NOT GREAT, BOB.

This early start to summer vacation is kind of a drag, I had been planning to force a reading list & math workbooks on her (because I am cruel) but it kind of snuck up on me and I am woefully unprepared. I’ve been trying to kill two birds with one stone by throwing her outside with a book to read in the fresh air, and I’m hoping to start going on Seawall walks again, which she will also be participating in. She’ll no doubt treat them as forced marches but WHATEVER, TWEEN. You can’t spend the whole summer locked in your room wearing dirty pajamas and watching Youtube videos.

lil braids!


this entire plate of food went onto the floor & she had cookies for lunch instead






making tortilla chips all afternoon forever








tiniest baby fuchsia

Taylor went to a one-day conference this week. He brought home two chocolate cupcakes from a boutique cupcakerie: one filled with caramel and the other filled with cream and topped with a Oreo cookie. I ate them both while Gwen was napping and Sym was at school so I wouldn’t have to share. This was poor planning on my part, as I felt very ill after.

On Saturday morning we were walking down our street behind the farmer’s market stalls (I wanted to go pet these two big fluffy white Samoyeds that belong to a women who works for one of the vendors) and a woman with two little boys walked by us and said about Gwen: “Walking now? She’s so big, but I guess I haven’t seen you in a long time,” and I had NO IDEA who it was. It wasn’t until later in the afternoon when I realized who she was:

She moved into my neighborhood a few years ago, pregnant with her first child. They live on the corner opposite a preschool I used to drop off/pick up kids at so I’d see her, her partner and eventually, their baby, all the time. After a while I saw that she was pregnant again, with her second baby. This was back when I was still trying to convince Taylor to even try to have a baby with me, and I literally started bawling my eyes out to him about how come SHE got to have TWO babies and I didn’t even get to have ONE, it’s not fair, wah wah wah. I guess my wah-wah-wahing worked though, because it can’t have been much longer after that I finally got Taylor to agree to have a baby.

On Sunday to celebrate his caving in to my hysteria I made blueberry/raspberry/white chocolate pancakes for a Father’s Day brunch. Gwen’s gift to him (she assisted with the online ordering) was a beard care set from the Dr K Soap Company, and my gift was not getting on his case about playing computer games & reading comic books all afternoon (also some hot dog-print boxer shorts, lol).

One of my favourite books in the whole world is Hens Dancing by Raffaella Barker. My mom lent? gave? me a copy forever ago, but someone borrowed it from me and never returned it, so I hadn’t read it in a long time. A couple years ago I put it on my Christmas list and that was when I discovered there was a sequel, called Summertime. I asked for that one as well and Taylor ordered them both for me.

Unfortunately Hens Dancing didn’t arrive until well after Christmas- I think I got it as a birthday gift instead- and Summertime never arrived. I think maybe it was out of print? Taylor just got a series of emails from Amazon saying “we’re having trouble locating this book, would you like a refund instead?” This went on for OVER A YEAR and finally they just cancelled the order and refunded him.

Since I received it I think I’ve re and re-read Hens Dancing half a dozen times. It’s just so familiar and soothing! I read it again the other week and after I finished it it was driving me crazy that I couldn’t read the sequel, so last Friday I decided to check again online to see if Summertime was available at all. Well GUESS WHAT it was, and not only that it was available for kindle for $3.50. I purchased it immediately and as soon as Gwen went for her nap I adjourned to the bath to read it.

Maybe I’d built it up too much, or the familiarity of Hens Dancing coloured my opinion, but I was kind of disappointed? The main character seemed kind of stupid and mean, a subplot about her customizing clothing in idiotic ways and selling them to fancy boutiques was silly, some secondary characters were left out and others appeared to have had a personality transplant. Worst of all, everyone was constantly telling the protagonist (a divorced mother of three) that she should get married, she needed to get married, there was no way she could possibly successfully raise her kids if she didn’t get married. This was a theme that was not at all present in the first book and I found it very off-putting. idk, I’m going to re-read it a few dozen million times and maybe it will grow on me, haha.

other people post pics of gorgeous, healthy food; I post pics of food court garbage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯




she sells sea shells






city beach = sand pigeons


we found this rake & another toy discarded in the sand so we kept them #freeganbaby

Another busy weekend….

Gwen’s favourite activity right now is walking the dogs. You might think I was trying to make cute happen and gave her the leash, but it was quite her own idea. Whenever we go into the foyer now, instead of grabbing all the shoes she heads straight for the dog leashes! Taylor has some more dog walking pics on his instagram, including one of her walking Georgie AND Kichou which will probably cause you to die from cuteness.

Her LEAST favourite activity is going to the farmer’s market. So many people, and it seems they all want to tell Gwen she’s cute. This week an old lady held out her arms as if to pick her up and Gwen basically turned around and ran away. She just doesn’t like strangers bothering her! I always tell people she is shy, but it doesn’t stop them from trying to make friends. Maybe I should start telling people she bites? I told Taylor I was going to get her a lil Hannibal Lecter mask.

Sym asked me to dip-dye the ends of her hair pink this weekend, and I think it turned out really well. I don’t like when there’s a really stark delineation between the colours so I deliberately painted the bleach on in an uneven and more natural looking way. She really loves it.

After her hair was finished I had to take her out shopping for her seventh grade graduation dress, which now that I think about it might be irrelevant because the teachers are probably going on strike for the rest of the year. But at least I got to spend several hours of her rejecting every single dress in every single store for no reason she could state until I was ready to tear my eyes out! Eventually she settled on a little off-white lace minidress from the tween section at H&M (the last store we went to) which was almost identical to a dress she turned down in Forever 21 (the first store we went to). TWEENS.

On Sunday I THOUGHT I had to go buy some supplies for one single etsy order, but at the last minute I bothered to check and as it turns out, I had everything I needed. Instead we decided to go to the beach for the morning. It was the perfect day for it: warm but a little overcast so we didn’t broil in the sun. I’m so happy we live so close to the beach; we can head down there at the drop of a hat and never feel like we have to stay all day to justify to bother/prep/travel time because it’s only a few blocks from our house.

The last time we went Gwen hated everything about it, but she had much more fun this time. Maybe next time she’ll put her feet in the water? Only time will tell.

Taylor and I also binge-watched the new season of Orange is the New Black, which was great. I liked the feeling of knowing that everyone else was watching the same thing; is that what it was like in the olden days when there were special television events and miniseries that everyone would watch? You’d think I’d remember, being from the olden days myself. On a related note, I read this morning that it’s been estimated that Netflix makes up 1/3 of all internet traffic at any given time. i’m pretty sure that 1/3 of that 1/3 is just me, haha.

idk what she is doing here, sneezing?


there is this one community garden plot in the park that has HUGE bleeding heart flower plants, and every year I’m like UGH WHY WON’T MINE GROW SO BIG??? I have to say though, since weeding this one looks a lot bigger. MAYBE if I weed around it regularly it will grow bigger because all the nutrients in the soil aren’t being sucked up by cruddy weeds, and next year it’ll be EVEN BIGGER. GARDENING!


a rare sighting!

You know how scent-memory works? How a certain fragrance will bring back a flood of memories? Well I have a weird version of this that I like to call activity/tv memories, where doing a certain activity will bring back the memory of what was on tv when I was last doing it. I decided this week that I wanted to make Gwen a new pair of shoes for summer, and yesterday while I was looking through my leather bin for this particular piece of beautiful, soft duck’s egg blue leather I was flooded with memories of what I was watching the last time I made her footwear: Highlander, in particular The Kurgan, who cracked me up through the whole movie.

Assembling file folders makes me think of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Making woodland banners reminds me of series one of Misfits. And for some reason that makes LITERALLY zero sense, doing the dishes makes me think of The X-Files, which is really weird because I can’t see the tv from the kitchen sink, and why would I start watching an episode of The X-Files and then leave the room to wash dishes? The mind boggles.

Conceivably there is a scent element to some of these these; leather certainly has a smell, as does dish soap. But file folders? They don’t really smell like anything. And I make banners every week (sometimes every DAY), but only the woodland banner makes me think of Misfits. And actually I’ve sorted through my leather a couple times recently (while moving all my craft supplies into my new craft closet) and it wasn’t until I decided to make the shoes that the leather reminded me of Highlander. Maybe this is a sign that I watch too much tv? WHO CAN SAY.

As it turns out, I chose the perfect time to make some new shoes for Gwen. She recently outgrew the coral suede ones I made for my tutorial, and I just discovered the gold leather ones I made her for Christmas have a hole in the toe- she’s worn right through them! I have to say, I feel pretty smug that the leather wore out before my sewing. Anyway, I found the piece of duck’s egg blue leather I was looking for, as well as some very similar-in-colour suede for the soles. I just had one piece of the leather, and I didn’t think it was big enough to use my regular pattern so I spent all my spare time working out a new pattern that required less leather. I made a test shoe out of green felt, then adjusted the size and shape. Finally satisfied with the pattern, last night I traced and cut out all the pieces… only to realize there would have been plenty of leather to use my old pattern! D’oh. But hey, it’s good to expand my cobbling repertoire, right?

started, but did not finish cleaning my patio




dinner dates




favourite book




If you live pretty much anywhere in North America this should sound familiar to you. I knew the song but I didn’t know what kind of bird it was, but I can hear one outside right now so finally did some googling to figure it out. Song Sparrow, duh! Their song reminds me of being in my teens/twenties when I would stay up all night. When the song sparrows started singing in the morning was when I’d realize “oh crap, now I’ll never get to sleep.” While I definitely don’t miss those nights there is a certain nostalgia to them. Song sparrows also make me think of being in the country. Waking up early, a field of wildflowers, tall trees, coffee on the deck in the morning sunshine. I can picture it so clearly but I feel like this isn’t even a real memory. Just sort of an amalgam of growing up on Vancouver Island and various cabin-based vacations I’ve gone on as an adult.

To do list for this week:

1. fix all the holes left in the walls after moving furniture*
2. take apart the old entertainment stand and re-use the drawers in the dining room bench**
3. paint the mirror & bulletin board frames for Sym’s room***
4. paint the old dresser top that I saved to make into a headboard, and figure out how to put it up ****

* Also holes left from shelves falling off the walls THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN
** Formerly the dining room faux-denza, pls see above re: shelves falling off the walls THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN
*** When Sym decided she wanted a vanity area in this room she chose this Ikea Ung Drill mirror for it. It’s still in the packaging but last Friday morning I was taking out some garbage and I found an identical mirror propped up against the power pole outside the back gate. The mirror is cracked but the frame is in perfect condition.
**** SUGGESTIONS WELCOME

that grump face!



she was really into sharing my smoothie, so I wanted to get some toddler cups with a straw so I could make her smoothies at home. when Sym was little I had these these ones but for some reason NO STORE around here carries them anymore???? All I could find were ~fancy~ ones with flippy lids and weighted straws that aren’t good for smoothies AND cost more than I wanted to spend. I ended up having to order them online, so annoying.



Taylor picked out this top for her!

I did so much this past weekend, it felt more like a long weekend than any of my actual recent long weekends have.

On Friday night Jenn came over for tacos & to watch Lifetime’s Petals on the Wind. We’d watched Flowers in the Attic together, and while that one was pretty bad, Petals was LITERAL GARBAGE. It was so bad, like it wasn’t even funny-bad, like Twilight. I guess it’s a pretty difficult book to adapt; it starts when the narrator is still a teen and by the end I think she’s in her early 30s? A lot happens! So some stuff was cut, or condensed, or simplified, which was fine, but still. Overall it was TERRIBLE.

Saturday was the first West End Farmer’s Market of the year. Taylor was excited because his favourite food truck was there, but other than that it was pretty slim pickings- I mostly like to buy produce there and right now it seems like the farm vendors just have radishes, kohlrabi and potted herbs. We did get some strawberries, flowers, delicious-looking buckwheat honey and pastries. Last year when we’d go to the market Gwen would be in her stroller, but this time she walked with us. It was kind of hard; she really doesn’t like crowds or strangers or people she doesn’t know talking to her. She’s just not a friendly baby! I ended up taking her home early while Taylor got his food, so it’s very fortunate the market is in front of our house. Hopefully as the summer goes on she’ll get more used to going out to the market with us.

In the afternoon I went to a clothing swap hosted by my friend Ally. I found a couple things for the girls and myself, but more importantly I got rid of an entire suitcase full of stuff I didn’t wear anymore (or in some cases, ever). It was strangely gratifying to see other people scooping up the clothes I’d brought. After the swap I headed to the nail salon to get my acrylics filled. It had been over a month and they were looking seriously gross. The technician actually scolded me, haha.

Sunday I was exhausted and just wanted to sit around forever and do nothing, but instead we went out to run some errands. We got things we needed (summer clothes, shipping supplies) and things we didn’t (a bunch of mini-size kitchenwares that I was physically unable to resist). By the time we got home it was well past lunchtime so Gwen had a quick meal and went straight to bed for her nap. Taylor also had to go to sleep since he works on Sunday nights, so I spent the afternoon weeding my terrible garden and then trying to recover from all the walking around I’d been doing. I get exhausted very easily nowadays and have muscle weakness in my legs (also arms, although I don’t walk on those) from my Graves, so usually I only like to do a lot of walking when I know I can do nothing the whole next day.

Speaking of Graves and also walking (because the dr’s office is across town, ugh more walking), I had my quarterly endocrinology appointment today. I was the first appointment of the day but somehow the doctor was still almost an hour late to see me? His assistant said he was in a meeting but why would you schedule a meeting for the same time as appointments??? Seems mental to me. Anyway blah blah blah my hormone levels are all normal. He’s actually pretty optimistic that at the end of this year I’ll be able to go off the meds and have my levels stay normal so everyone keep your fingers crossed because that would be a dream.

Quick goals update…

Quitting pop is still proving really hard. I definitely slipped a few times in May, because I was tired (coke), because I was carsick (ginger ale), because I was away and what you do on vacations doesn’t count, right? Anyway I’ve been doing better recently, and I’m going to keep trying.

Wearing sunscreen has been a TOTAL BUST omg I hate it. Every time I end up getting it in my eyes AND Gwen’s eyes and then we are both weepy and mad all day. A lot of the time when I’m going out with the kids it’s for really short periods of time and it seems dumb to slop on the ‘screen when I’m only going to be in the sun for 15 minutes. Anyway as a result of this slackery I almost burned my shoulders on Saturday, oops. Must do better at this! And also teach Gwen to NOT rub her arms & hands on her eyes after I’ve sunscreened her.

What I’ve done recently…

• Built & rearranged so much furniture around the house! In addition to finally finishing the WALL OF MALMS in my bedroom, I moved the bookcases from my office to Sym’s bedroom, moved a little side table from my bedroom to my office (where it now holds the printer, much to Gwen’s delight), taken one of the dog crates in the foyer down and made room for a sorely-needed shoe rack, and put doors on the dvd cabinets to keep little baby hands out. I also jettisoned a ton of old/broken/unwanted stuff, like Sym’s old desk and the remains of one of my old dressers-although I kept parts of the dresser to construct a headboard from, which I hope to get started this weekend.

• Created some new products for my shop: iron-on patches! I used the designs from my jewel & gem stickers, and after testing the security of the iron-on adhesive and the colourfastness of the patches themselves by ironing a whole whack onto my old summer bag I’m happy to say that they are now available in the shop for only $2 a pair (plus shipping). You can check them out here.

• Started a penpal club! I was thinking the other day about how much I like getting stuff in the mail and participating in swaps and I thought… what if the swap went on forever? Originally I just wanted a couple penpals for myself but I had such an overwhelming response that I decided to match people with penpals of their very own. I’ve been collecting everyone’s info and entering it into a spreadsheet, and hope to match everyone with their partners this weekend. I’ve also been gathering up some cute little trinkets to send to my own penpals (of which there are six, oops).