It doesn't take much to amuse me
One of the neat features of the house (and one which is more much useful than the sauna) is the laundry shoot. The washer and dryer are on the main floor. Between the bedroom and the main bathroom is a cute little hole in the wall, with a little wooden door, around thigh height. Now, because I'm lazy and a bad housekeeper, with John gone I leave the door permanently open. Got a mental image?
Some times when I throw my dress/work shirts in there, they end up catching on the opening and get stuck, hanging in to the shoot, with both arms dangling in to the hallway. It looks like an imaginary person is trying to climb their way out and it make me smile every single time I notice it. Until something else gets thrown in, or gravity wins, I have clothing trying to escape.
Wow, that's pretty lame.
Labels: house, snippet
A gift
Our six year anniversary and my birthday are 3 days apart. (Wednesday and Saturday, this year.) On Monday morning, at work, I got an email saying there was a gift for me - I thought it was going to be a gift basket from a local bar I organize corporate functions at. How delightfully wrong I was!
At the time of this photo, the flowers had spent a week on my desk already, and still look lovely.
(The Tupperware bins - after the whole mouse in the house debacle, I moved everything that might be of interest to mice (and hadn't been yet) in to the containers. I really should put them away already.)
Labels: holidailies, house, solo year, the boy
Twitch
Every once and a while I get jumpy, alone in this house.
Today was one of those days. As I check the mail box, I found a cigarette stub, on the corner of the deck and the two stairs. Long extinguished, but, you know, there. Unexplained. (Probably the mailman, but still.) So that made me a little jumpy anyway.
Then, 15 minutes later, I've unpacked my bag, dealt with some stuff. It's late - I didn't get home until after 8, and really dark out. I've made a pot of jasmine tea, wrapped the presents for my mom's birthday tomorrow, and am about to settle down to watch
About a Boy and work on my obscene cross stitch.
Suddenly, a slam comes from the room behind me - for all the world like a door slamming shut. I freeze, feeling my blood turn to ice. I creep back in to the kitchen, already prepared to lose my mind.
My backpack had slipped off the counter, and, still having contained a journal, 2 books and some tupperware, slammed in to the floor with the crash.
My face was tingly numbed and I was shaking so hard I couldn't cross stitch for a good fifteen minutes more.
Oh yeah, I'm coping with this
just fine.Labels: holidailies, house, solo year, twisty
SO SAD!
It was 21 degrees out today. 21! Warm! Then a cold front blew in and now there is more than a centimetre of snow on the ground, and it's accumulating.
Shit - I'm going to have to shovel snow soon. And I haven't even raked the leaves yet.
This responsible homeowner shit is harder than I thought.
Also hard? The first solo wedding. This past Sunday - John was to have been the best man. First of 3 this next year, I think.
Last week I was fine. Everything was fine. I was fine. I was doing fine. Just fine. Fine, you know? Fine.
This week I am not doing fine. The wedding, some self esteem problems related to any of this, some stupid fucking drama with his family (my stupidity two years ago coming to light, followed by Vince's true feelings about me coming out, with much drama all around), some work stress and did I mention? That the boy's been gone a now a week and counting? And I am not doing fine.
But I am busy. Busy makes it easier. For now? For the whole year? If I am never have a evening free, that will make it easier, right? The fact that I constant calculate the time difference (9 hours difference, so subtract 3 from my time and flip am/pm) constantly will slide, right? I will be able to function with a skin more than 1mm thick?
Labels: garden, house, solo year, the boy, twisty
I had my first panic attack about this last night
I'm trying to wrap my brain around my soon to be quasi single status. I feel, sadly,
underprepared.
We've been dating for 5 years, 8 months and 16 days by this point. We've been living together since August 2004, and moved into the house in June 2005. That's more than 20% of my life we've been together. We both moved straight from our parents houses in together after we graduated university. That's like, my entire adult life.
(And yes, of course there have always been a few reservation with the whole fall-in-love-and-mate-for-life-plan we've got going here. All theoretical, however. I would be hard pressed to imagine a better match for me. My only changes would be to render his family far distant, and make him read more. The second is something I can easily live with and the first is probably a life time work in progress. It could be worse. Always.)In essence, I've never lived by myself. It's not that I think I am irresponsible - I may the bills, keep the house moderately clean, manage to get to work on time every day and have a full life. It's more that... It's a big house, and they require upkeep. John, I swear to god, instinctively knows things about the house. Like: what a
soffit is and how to replace them. Or: what to do about a leaky basement. Or: how to replace a kitchen tap without even thinking about it. Or: how to kill bugs without screaming like a girl first. Or: how to rip a second story deck down to the joists and built a newer, far better one, without help. You know, those kind of things.
Not to say he's perfect either - we'd been noticing a bit of a smell in the house, and after scrubbing down the whole kitchen and emptying all the
garbages and checking all the mouse traps and plants and such, we were stumped. My mother walked in and said, "when the hell did you last replace your furnace filters??" We looked at each other in puzzlement, then dawning comprehension - the answers was something like, "uh, it didn't occur to us...". There were even some left behind by the previous owners - problem solved, and now we'll never make that mistake again. But, you know, there are all sorts of things.
And then there is the silence. The loneliness. The girl rattling around an empty house. The learning to cook for 1. The responsibility. All while he is 11,250 km and 9 time zones away.
Labels: house, identity, life, solo year, the boy
Rhubarb
Welcome To Calgary. In May.
I know, right? That mess of tarps and ripped up deck carpeting (never carpet your deck - what were they thinking...) is covering the garden, and did a good job of keeping *fingers crossed* everything alive.
This is what one of the rhubarb patches looked like when we woke up on Thursday:
And this is what 14 POUNDS of rhubarb looks like:
Those are the two biggest bowls we own, along side the biggest knife. And there is still enough rhubarb in the garden for like, half a dozen crisp recipes.
When I read about how to
take care of rhubarb, I just laugh. You can't kill this stuff up here if you try.
John is making rhubarb wine. Lots and lots of rhubarb wine... What else can you do with that much rhubarb, when you know you're going to be getting at least another 14 pounds by fall, if not double that?
Labels: boredom, food, garden, house, the boy
