My first meme

I got tagged by Chicky Chicky Baby (well I'm not entirely sure since she didn't actually name me but I'll assume in this instance) for my first meme. Thanks! I wrote some of it last night before I crashed, but had to finish it this morning. Here goes:

20 years ago I...

Was seven years old and the house I grew up in was for sale. We were moving for the first time to a house across town. This was going to be cool because I would be moving closer to my friend Shannon but her family ended up moving before we actually bought a house near her. My parents still live in the house they bought that year, but they're doing so much renovating right now I'm not sure I'll recognize it when I go home next. I've asked them to put balloons on the mailbox just in case.

Was in Grade two with Mme. Luscowicz, Ryan, a kid in my class called her Mme. Lusko-bitch one day on the way in from recess. Yeah he got in lots of trouble. Like whoopee cushions, it's still funny to me 20 years later.

10 years ago I...

• Was 17 and was all excited about going to my high school formal (prom) with my high school boyfriend (of several years at that point). My family nicknamed him Lurch, so I'll call him that here. I remember it being the hugest event, the thing we talked out every day at lunch and how important it was to have everything just perfect. In the small town I grew up in it didn't really matter of much who you went with, or even what you were wearing. The big deal was how you and your date arrived.
  
  Crowds of people showed up to watch in front of the town hall to see all the creative ways people arrived. The town crier would announce you and your date to the crowd, and photographers from the local paper were there. Some people rented school buses, others came in on dogsleds pulled by teams of huskies and one couple even showed up in the cherry picker bucket of a hydro truck. Lurch and I had hoped to arrive being pulled in by miniature horses, but that fell through and we just had a regular horse and carriage one year and his uncle's 1929 Graham Paige the next year.
  
  I went a few years later to see my younger sister go to formal, and I was amazed at how rinkey-dink it was. When I was actually there it was like we were arriving to a red carpet premiere or the Oscars and I remembered it being this HUGE event everyone looked forward to, THE social event of the year (for the whole town!) and watching it made me wonder "wow... this is it???" Funny how time brings so much perspective.
  
  
• Was one credit short of finishing high school a year early. I was also convinced Lurch was the guy I was going to marry. Thank God he saw fit to dump me a couple of years later, 'cause marrying him would have been a big mistake.
  

• I was working part time at Bulk Barn and full time during the summer at the Land Registry Office.
  

5 years ago I...

• Lost my grandfather to a heart attack. I spent a couple of summers working in the city where he and my grandmother lived so I used to go over to their house for lunch every day. I miss those lunches and the chances they gave me to ask him about his life and hear stories.
  
  
• Wrote the LSAT and sucked at it. And look, I'm still a lawyer.
  
  
• Was living with an insane roommate in a fire trap of a basement apartment. Two days before we moved in they had to dig up the floor because sewage was leaking through the floor. I had to duck because the ceilings were low at some spots. I'm only 5"4. The furnace was literally located IN my room.
  
  The roommate was a diagnosed bipolar chick who decided she no longer required meds. She probably had a few other undiagnosed psychiatric conditions. I can recall times where she had no fewer than 14 different guys visit her bedroom in the span of 7 days. And these guys didn't stop by for the hot plate cooking. And the walls were thin. She would spend a thousand dollars in one day and not recall what she bought. She eventually got pretty nasty to me (and stole a dress and a very expensive pair of sunglasses from the girls upstairs). I pretty much stayed in my tiny room with the door locked when she was there or hung out with the girls living upstairs. The one good thing that came out of my friendship with her was that she was the one who adopted Scarlett from the humane society as a birthday gift during one of her manic episodes, and man is she a cute cat! (and I paid her back for the cost of adopting her).
  

3 years ago I...

• Dated a weenie guy named Mark from Wyandotte, Michigan. He was pretty, but dumb. He had two tortoises. One was named Sheldon and the other was Myrtle. His disabled mum looked after them for the most part. He went to Thailand that summer and came back crazy. I don't think he'd realized there was a whole other world outside suburban Detroit.

• Was living in an awesome apartment in Windsor. It was in an old building with 12 foot ceilings, crown moldings, huge windows and tons of storage space. Plus, living there meant I was close to the bridge, which also meant close to Mexcantown across the river in Detroit. Man they make wicked good food there, and the margaritas were awesome. We made many trips.
  

1 year ago I...

• Was scared I wasn't going to get hired back at my articling job.. I didn't get hired back, and everything turned out pretty well in the end. I was also applying for jobs like a woman possessed, which is probably why I landed a really crappy one to start.
  
  
• Could rollerblade to work, and right into an office meeting on the second floor without most people there blinking an eye. Dress in that office was also pretty casual which I enjoyed too. I also went for a blade every Sunday morning on the Ottawa River Parkway.
  
  
• Was driving 500 miles from Ottawa to Windsor Friday after work to see Dave, and driving back Sundays. That's 15 hours of driving in the span of under 3 days and we both did it fairly often.
  
  
• Was finally able to set a wedding date for us knowing where we were going to be living. Dave got a job almost exactly midway between the cities were living in, and I found a job a couple of weeks later in the same city. I started at looking at houses to rent, and, after we found none, houses to buy.
  

So far this year I...

• Have finalized most of our wedding plans and have not too many days left, bought my wedding dress on e-Bay
  
  
• Got out of a really crappy job that made me dread going to work and that I absolutely hated, and landed one I'm actually enjoying (most days).
  
  
• Stripped most (but not all) of the wallpaper in the front hallway, along the stairs, and upstairs hallway but can't get it all because we need to borrow a ladder.

Yesterday I...

• Had my first instance of being accused of racism. Nothing like an angry mob of people blaming you personally for things out of your control in the justice system. Once people have accused you of that there's very little to do to change their minds. I just argued for my clients (their friends) and listened to them sucking their teeth at me and others in court before the officers threw them out.
  
  
• Yelled at the porch monkeys down the street to not mow their lawn while drunk at 1 in the morning. Asshats.

Today I...

• Felt a bit better and think I ran a couple of good bail hearings and didn't get accused of racism. (yeah it still kinda stings because as far as I'm concerned nothing could be further from the truth)
  
  
• Registered for some china. Hoo-ee the excitement here never stops!
  
  
• Dropped my stupid birth control pill which skittered across the floor to an unknown location. I looked for it for 20 minutes and gave up.
  

Tomorrow I will...

• Have unwound from a long week at work
  
  
• Get the house cleaned cause it's a disaster area
  
  
• Think about getting flowers finalized for the wedding along with a guest list
  
  
• Figure out what to get my sister for her graduation and troll through the mall for a dress for my mum to wear to my wedding that will show off how cute she is!
  
  
• Call an electrician to do upgrades to our house
  

In the next year I will...

• Get married and attend 7 other weddings for friends. I'm in two of them. Last weekend I picked out my bridesmaid dress for Sara's wedding which I think is super cute.

• Have painted the house and maybe even have a new kitchen put in to replace the current ugly one.
  
  
• Have the cool neighbour down the street come and re-do our hardwood floors
  

It's been a head-smashingly fun week in the 'shwa

Has it ever been a loooonnnnnng week. I have no idea how I'll survive until Friday. Oh well. I'm supposed to be at a bachelorette party which should be lots of fun and games. That's of course if I'm still standing!

Anyway, moving on, I've done lots of learning this week. I've learned my parents have decided to do some work to their already gorgeous home. I've also learned that my mum probably should have become a highly paid accountant for some big nameless corporation because her tax-refund-getting skills are impeccable and I'm now expecting a fairly fat cheque from the man. These two forces have combined to make it virtually irresistible NOT to do some work on the house.

We moved in at the end of last summer and, beyond a few tiny things, we haven't done much work to the place. I have a long list of things I want to do to this place. It's an older house which definitely has lots of quirks, both good quirks and bad.

I'm hoping to slowly start to rid the house of the non cute quirks. The beige in the living room is making me a little cabin feverish. The original kitchen (or an early successor to it) in our 1940s house is getting more and more annoying especially when you view all the glorious cabinet options and choices there are out there. The original hard wood floors are still gorgeous but badly in need of re-finishing. Most of all the wallpaper in the front hall and upstairs hall is making me nutso.

In a bid to rid the place of its quirks, I think I've found a pretty good score. A neighbour down the street works re-finishing floors for a living (SCORE!) and has given us a wicked price to re-do them. So, that will happen once we get the walls un-beiged, and the ceilings touched up with plaster and painted, the floors are next.

But, in the meantime, the wallpaper in the halls is the bee doing the most stinging in my bonnet. Actually I have a bonnet full of bees right now, but I'm directing it all at the wallpaper.

I'm sure at some point this wallpaper was pretty to some person. I can't think of either a time when that would have been, or a person who would have found it pretty but I'm sure it was, just as I am sure that it is not pretty to me.

I'm curious as to what I'll find behind the wallpaper. The walls are lathe and plaster and we already know of one spot that will need work (we call it the rollercoaster wall because it dips up and down), but the rest is a mystery. My fingers are crossed that it isn't too bad and the wallpaper removal itself isn't as dreadful as I'm imagining it will be.

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Finally, should you randomly happen to be a caterer who happens to stumble onto my blog, I have some completely unsolicited advice for you. Aren't you lucky!

If, as a caterer, you're being asked to price catering an event such as a wedding, and one of the MAIN parties identifies herself as a vegetarian right from the beginning, it would probably not be a great idea to note how big a "pain in the ass" some vegetarians are at catered events at length. You would probably also be best not to tell said vegetarian about how she should realize that most of the people attending the event will eat meat so she really should focus on ordering food that will please them (meaning all meat, all the time) instead of the "few vegetarians." This type of comment will make said vegetarians consider hiring one of your competitors instead.

Just moments before the steam started to come out from my ears and my head started spinning rapidly in counter-clockwise fashion, I told her that as a vegetarian I had more often ran into caterers who were a pain in the ass that treat vegetarian guests who were paying a great deal for their services as the pains in the ass. I'm also not a fan of cocktail receptions where all the hors d'oeuvres are meat. Moreover I didn't want my veggie friends to end up with a dish of the standard cold penne primavera, or, as I served one time, a vegetarian dinner that consisted of two potatoes (one still covered in sauce from the chicken that had until moments before occupied the plate) and veggies. I don't want my own freaking wedding to be like that!

Beyond that, when we said pork was out as an entree option because we have friends who are devout muslims who can't eat pork she implied that was completely unreasonable and said that "some people are so unreasonable as to not want to be in the same room." Uh yeah! And they're our friends, so we're happy to accommodate that. You should be too! Frig!

So now, after the fun this week has been so far, my sweetie has prepared a hot water bottle for my aching back (no, I'm not 90 years old and yes I use water bottles regularly) and I'm off to bed. You may have guessed I didn't get much sleep last night, which has made the tone of this post somewhat cranky. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow fresh and ready to tackle the wallpaper sans cranky pants tomorrow night after work.

Good idea, bad idea

GOOD IDEA: Buy beautiful grey cashmere sweater (hereinafter known as "good idea sweater") which shows just the right amount of cleavage without looking like you should be standing on a street corner wearing ripped red fishnets and a short white tube-top style skirt. Even better idea, buy one that's on sale which is perfect for going to bars on winter nights without also freezing. Have fond memories of the many phone numbers you amassed because of this shirt.

GOOD IDEA: Fall crazy in love and get engaged to a guy who is wicked good at getting laundry done. Throws it all in the washer, then all in dryer with amazing ability. Even better idea when you really suck at laundry.

BAD IDEA: The "throw it all in washer then in dryer" style as it pertains to above good idea sweater. Sadly good idea cashmere sweaters do not appreciate the washer-then-dryer on high heat method.

EVIDENCE: Excuse the Marie Antoinette look, but here is Dave modeling the sweater, and one pic of my sunglasses on top of it. I'd guess it'd fit most five year old girls, and probably Victoria Beckham. When he came up to show me, he couldn't stop laughing and apologizing profusely. He even tried to stretch it so it'd fit again but we quickly learned he couldn't get his elbow past the shoulder part. We both agree it's a lost cause.

Easter Weekend Part II

For anyone who hasn't been there, I know Windsor gets a bad wrap. I openly joke (having lived there for 3 years) that it's the armpit of Ontario. It does have its rough edges but I do have a certain fondness for it. I love how diverse it is. It's apparently 4th most ethnically diverse city in Canada. There are amazing ethnic grocers, great restaurants, and there's a cool variety of faces and languages, all things that are sorely lacking in the 'shwa.

Friday night we went out with friends to play pool, Saturday night we danced like fools at the Loop - a bar that always seems to have a great and fun crowd. It's the kind of place where goth people dance with preppie dressed people, and it's no big deal to see boys hitting on other boys. No one seems to blink, and the music is usually great too.

Friday night we had wicked perogies (pierogy, peroggy, pyrogy, however you want to spell it) for dinner from the Ukrainian Church. I could have eaten them by the pound, and after eating some I walked like I had eaten several pounds. It's a good thing we live four hours away, otherwise I'd actually start looking like a perogy pretty soon, oil pouring out my sweat glands, all round and doughy. Heck, I'm already pretty pasty coloured and fairly round.

Saturday we enjoyed a great lunch with great company. I love reconnecting with friends and catching up on stories. Both Saturday and Sunday nights we were treated to delicious family Easter dinners.

We spent some of Saturday afternoon at the mall shopping for summer clothes, after realizing how much warmer things are there. We were boiling in jeans and long sleeved shirts.

Sunday was an anniversary of sorts for us - we had our first date in Windsor two years ago that day, so while we were walking the dogs along the river we stopped by and took a picture. I know, it's very fromage.

The drive home Sunday night was fairly uneventful; we passed a grass fire along the side of the highway, undoubtedly caused by someone who smokes and thinks the world is their ashtray so it's okay to just throw a butt out the window. It takes something like 14 years for a butt to break down where it falls, and they aren't exactly good for the environment (amazing I know, given how good they are for your lungs). When I run the world that kind of crap will be strictly enforced by making the offenders pick every single butt up off the ground in a 1km square area. With their teeth.

The drive home was also made more interesting because we had less room after picking up our new-to-us Christmas tree from Dave's aunt. Space normally reserved for dogs lounging in the back of the car was limited, the result of which led to Prometheus trying to figure out a way fit his 100 lb dog body onto a few inches of seat space while Daedalus lounged across most of the back seat. This is what followed:













It wasn't all dog antics; we were treated to a beautiful sunset as well.

Weekend Recap

• Frankencouch's days are officially numbered. Next Saturday the new couch is being delivered, probably some time between when the sun comes up and it goes down. I'm guessing the likelihood that they'll narrow the delivery time down any more than that is slim, but I'm still excited.
  

• With the new couch coming I'd really like to un-beige our living room walls but I'm at a loss for what colour to paint them, and I'm a bit of a "have a complete vision" kid before I get started (at least when it comes to decorating; nothing else, oddly enough). So, we did what broke people do when they wanna re-decorate and spent Friday wandering through Chapters looking for ideas in books. Still haven't made any decisions though. I'm not sure if I'm bold enough to paint the walls a warm bluey greeney colour when the couch is chocolate brown... or go with a more neutral tan colour on the walls with red accents... any suggestions? All I decided is that I want to have Debbie Travis come and re-do our whole freaking house cause it's hard to decorate tiny spaces on a tiny budget. The living room's small and we spend most waking hours in it so it's gotta be calming and not too crazy. I'd like to do some feng shui but I have no idea where to start. If there are any budding designers out there send ideas our way!
  

• Is there anything better for a cold than tom yum soup from a Thai restaurant? There's something about the sweet-salty-hot-sour combination that's perfect for sick people.
  

• After Friday's excitement I almost entirely slept through April Fool's Day, but when I saw the score for the Leafs game on the CBC Saturday night I thought it was a late April Fool's joke. The Leafs, who have stunk (pretty much) the whole season and blew a playoff berth last weekend won 7-0, now that a playoff berth is way out of reach.
  

• Saturday I tortured Dave by bringing him curtain shopping. To TWO places. I think he only went along with it because he was afraid I'd either get too whacky and the curtains would look like something out of an acid trip or I'd pass out in a coughing fit in a fabric aisle, never to be heard from again. What we found were curtains that were either hideous thick floral prints or not anything we (read I) liked so we're (I'm) still looking. It wasn't a total loss, though, I did manage to find a nice camel coloured chenille throw for the new couch that's so soft it makes silk feel like sandpaper. I'm looking forward to curling up on the new chair with a book and the new throw on a rainy day.
  

• We have a wedding photographer! Another thing to check off our wedding list is done (and less than 5 months before the day!)
  

• We went for a walk with the dogs and my parents at a park in Cobourg and the dogs loved the chance to run in a big open space and seemed to have a blast. They panted the whole ride home and we've hardly heard a peep from them the rest of the night.
  

• Finally all my whining that the neighbours have bulbs peeking through the soil and we don't has paid off! I planted a ton of bulbs late last fall and finally I'm starting to see leaves peeking from the soil that I swear weren't there when I (neurotically) checked Thursday. I can't wait to see blooms! The pussy willows in the park are bursting, the birds are back, the days are getting longer and the sun is definitely stronger, I just love spring!
  

Adapting to our environs

My parents have a spa in their house that they use most days to relax and unwind after a long day. The jets massage my already flabby back to butter, the noise of the jets drowns out whatever your brain is still screaming about from work, in short it's the perfect way to relax after a hard day's work.

We often crave a dip into my parents' spa after a long day's work, but the 35 minute drive there makes it a not-so-practical solution. Add in the fact that after about 15 minutes in the spa you're ready to sleep like the dead, which makes matters worse.

This makes us perfect candidates for getting a spa of our own.

Unfortunately, we're not the sort that can afford a spa, unless our grand plan of winning the lottery unexpectedly pans out there will be no spa in this house.

Reality gets in the way again when you consider that there'd be nowhere to put it in our tiny house, it wouldn't fit through either doorway, and the old wiring in our house probably wouldn't power one anyway.

The 'shwa is known for being a pretty ghetto, blue collar town and I think it's starting to rub off on us. To remedy our spa-less situation we've come up with what I'm sure would be viewed as a wonderfully ghetto solution.

We fill up our tiny bathtub (which takes up half our tiny bathroom) with water and bubbles (it at least gives the illusion of wonderful pounding jets) and just soak. We take turns on who gets the "bad side" which means sitting with a faucet in the back. It's a great system. Sometimes, we even break out the dollar store inflatable bath pillow. When it's been an especially bad day, we bring up our plastic ikea glasses and open a bottle of the finest Barq's diet root beer.

I think we'd impress Mr. Darwin with our quick adaptation to our new environment.

Truce is better than Friction

Of late, it seems that Scarlett has made peace with the dogs. While she's still fully in control (and swats at will when they irritate her), it's like she's decided that since we have yet to get rid of the dogs, they're probably staying so she decided to get used to it. Just after this picture was taken Scarlett went up to Daedalus and licked his forehead.

I still think she was saying "what a filthy thing you are, [sigh] here let me clean you up" but it certainly seemed to be out of affection. I doth anthropomorphize too much.

Cool 'que

It was a gorgeous day here - bright and sunny but it hovered around freezing all day (it's -3C right now, -9C with the windchill). Unfazed by this, we decided that today was going to be the start of BBQ season.

Just after Christmas this year my grandmother gave us her barbecue. It was a gift to her and my grandfather from my parents a few years ago, and she had always been afraid to use it. Actually, to be more accurate, she expected to be blown to smithereens by it. This expectation meant that unless my parents or uncle were there, it sat idle.

We were all too happy to give it a new home. Dave fired it up tonight and man was it good!

I'm a lucky chick

This week Dave's off work for the March break. Since I've just started a new job I really couldn't get time off and vacations aren't an option on account of our "not exactly rolling in the dough" status.

I really thought he should spend this week relaxing and recharging. He's a teacher and his class is, to be generous, a challenging group. You know it's a bad sign when countless teachers came up to me at the staff Christmas doing impressions of students in his class. He totally deserved a break to relax. I joked that I was going to make him a honey-do list for his week off, but I know after quitting a job I hated and the week I had off before starting my cool new job that he probably needed a chance to recharge more than anything just as I did.

Instead of just bumming around and relaxing this week, he's taken the disaster area that was our basement and cleaned it up so that it's an organized and tidy place.

The day we shacked up I moved my things in with the help of my family, and then Dave arrived with his crew (for those up on their geography I lived in Ottawa and he lived in Windsor, about 500 miles apart). It had POURED rain when Dave and crew were loading up the truck, and shortly after they got here it began to pour rain again. In an effort to just get everything in the house most of it just got piled into the basement.

We both had entire households of stuff before we shacked up, but Dave's had been largely boxed up for a few years so we didn't know what was in some of the boxes. From the weekend we moved in (we got here Saturday and both of us were at work Monday) until after Christmas I think we had 2 weekends where we weren't out of town, off visiting friends or having people over, so needless to say lots of the stuff just sat there in boxes in the basement.

It was complete chaos down there. Dave knew it was driving me nuts to have such a crazy cluttered basement (it might have been me saying "we have GOT to tackle the basement this weekend" every 5 minutes that gave it away). Instead of relaxing this week he's worked for hours to clean up the basement. He did a ton of laundry. He even assembled shelves to put things on. He cleared boxes off the floor. While it's not totally done it looks a thousand times better than it did.

I'm a lucky chick I tellya.

A different kind of March madness

This weekend we walked around outside in long sleeved shirts and a litte vest on and basking in the sun and 15 degree weather. We had a thunderstorm yesterday and it felt like spring outside. I even did some spring cleaning Sunday night!

This morning it was snowing, below zero again, the winds have picked up and now there's a warning that we may get snow squalls and white-outs tonight. The paper says that this is just par for the course but I don't want to believe it. Guess my rollerblades will have to wait and I'll have to dress warmly on my run tonight.

Weekend tidbits

We went out for Thai food on Friday night, and MMMM was it good. So good, in fact that I just enjoyed leftover green curry veggies & tofu with jasmine rice for dinner. Is there anything more delightful than mango sticky rice? I drank jasmine tea by the gallon.

What a GORGEOUS weekend! It was so nice to have a taste of spring.

Saturday the weather was just amazing. It was about 15 degrees but the sky was perfect blue with high whispy clouds and a light springey breeze. We rallied the dogs and drove to Cobourg (where I grew up) to visit my parents. We all went for a walk along the harbour, out the pier, across the beach, and through the downtown. I had hoped to get some adorable treat jars for dog and cat treats but sadly, no luck.

It was so sunny, that on the ride home I decided I simply had to get a new pair of sunglasses. So, for $20 I now have sporty sunglasses which do a much better job than the other $20 pair I have which aren't that dark and have a nasty habit of pulling out my hair.

Looking back I really wish I'd gone for a rollerblade late Saturday when we got home. I really got hooked on blading to work last year in Ottawa and can't wait to get at it again. I still really stink at it but am getting better.

I even got 2 runs in with the dogs, about 5.2 km on Saturday, and 4.8km on Sunday. I felt good after both and am seriously hoping I can stay on track and get going on the weights in an effort to cure my comfy bum. I'm starting the Running Room 10k clinic on Tuesday night and am really looking forward to it.

I'm starting to get pretty excited about spring. The dose of spring weather we had the last 2 days (which I gather will be short lived, they're forcasting rain/snow and temperatures hovering around 0).

I'm looking forward to seeing the fruits of me planting a whack of tulips, hyacinths and daffodils bulbs in OUR garden this fall. I'm getting nerdy about gardening this summer, having our own yard and I'd really like to have a nice garden out front, with mint growing in it for mojitos.

I'm also looking forward to more hours of light in the evening and firing up the BBQ we inherited from my grandmother. She insists she's too afraid to use it (lest it explode) so she gave it to us. It just needs a good cleaning after sitting idle for a few years. I might even give it a fresh coat of BBQ paint to make it look all new and shiney.

The only downside of the glimpse we had of spring is that the zoo has started shedding MORE than they were before. As if that were even possible! It's a good thing my spring cleaning instinct has kicked in.

Farewell to the frankencouch

I've mentioned before we don't have swanky digs. My clothes are stored in plastic dressers. Our loveseat has been named the "frankencouch" because it started coming apart at a seam some years back and I had to make some serious repairs so there weren't foam bits every time you sat down. Unfortunately, the only way to repair the ripped cushions was to take some yarn and a big darning needle to stitch it back together. This obviously did not bring some pretty results.



I wish I could say "at least it's comfortable," but sadly I cannot. I even had to make the same repairs to the full sized frankencouch that's still with my parents.

Come to think of it, the only furniture in this house isn't a hand-me-down is Dave's (none too swanky) ikea chair, and I think we can all agree that ikea barely counts as grown-up furniture.

We made a couple of trips "browsing" for furniture wherein we found ourselves getting up and plunking down on more pieces of furniture than I'd care to admit. With each plunk came the analysis of whether it was what we were looking for.

The couch had to be comfy to both of us, nice to look at, suited to a more formal room but casual at the same time, and easily cleaned up given our "zoo." That's why we really wanted leather. You wouldn't believe the amount of hair we have to vacuum off the frankencouch every week from the cats lounging on it, and the dogs, who we're both pretty sure sneak up there the moment we leave the house. Since leather doesn't trap and attract hair like fabric does, we think it'd be perfect, really.

Agreeing on "the" couch was difficult. Dave has comfort as almost his sole criteria. Despite his art background, looks were less important. He would be happy to get one of those big fluffy lazyboy chairs that look more like a stack of oversized muffintops. Those chairs and couches look like to me they're just waiting for you to take them home and open up the cheesies and the box of donuts and grab the remote. In short order you would swell to the ranks of the morbidly obese to fit the chair's ginormous proportions, and later die, still in the chair, despite numerous well-intentioned Maury Povich interventions.

I'll admit I am a bit of a clean lines kid so the plain, stylish couches attracted me, but I was usually disappointed because they were as comfortable as sitting on a stack of cardboard.

So, when we went shopping a few weeks ago we both agreed we liked one couch and it fit our criteria but I was still not 100% sure, even when there was a 50% off sale THAT DAY ONLY! Yeah, I figure if they can have that sale once, they'll have it again soon.

Tonight we returned to find yet another a 50% off sale, and the sales people (who were painfully obviously on commission and circled like hyenas) told us it was an additional 20% off the already 50% off tag, so we ordered this couch and chair, and ended up spending less than we had originally planned. In 4-6 weeks this is what we'll be sitting on:

And yet, despite my excitement for new, pretty furniture, I feel bad for frankencouch. It seems mean of me to just give it away to another home just because I don't like the way it looks and it's falling apart.

It did nothing to deserve being covered in blue stripey fabric which quickly fell apart, and now, after years of being available to plunk my butt down on it, the only thanks it gets is a trip to yet another home (I am its third owner, and it's lived in 3 places while with me, shipped across the whole province). Of course I'll donate it to a good cause or find it new digs (or let it become the animals' couch in the basement, not sure which) but I feel badly its glory days are numbered. I guess I'm just odd that way.

Meet captain passed-out

I'm not sure about this one, but I think taking Daedalus for his first 5k run with me may have been a bit too much. To be fair it was dark out, in the rain with wet sidewalks, and a hilly course. I think around kilometer 2.3 he gave me a look that said "are you seriously going to keep making me do this!?"

He's been passed out on the floor since we got back... and he didn't even come over when his brother was getting attention which is completely unheard of.

A label for my crazy...

Sometimes when you finally have a term or label for something or some experience in your life it all suddenly makes sense.

My old buddy from high school Eric, being the smart, attractive guy that he is, has managed to finally give me a term for a bizarre behavioural problem I had through university.

The term, you ask? Procrasti-cleaning. And I think it's an affliction I've had for some time now. While still formally undiagnosed (I have no word about whether it will be included in DSM-V), but I think any doctor could confirm my layman's diagnosis.

During the seven years I spent at university, right before major exams or when major essays were due and it truly was crunch time and there weren't enough hours in the day to accomplish what I needed to accomplish, I would start to clean obsessively.

(As a side note, I realize lots of people would certify me crazy for going to university for seven years, but since most doctors spend eight I kinda figure that "crazy" diagnosis won't be forthcoming.)

Looking at my house now, you can see I have no major exams or essays due. At the time though, I would clean my residence room/ house with roommates/ apartment furiously. Not that I was especially messy to begin with, but when confronted with the prospect of "do these things you absolutely must do in order to pass your class" I would instead choose "clean obsessively like the queen is coming to visit and will be inspecting the premises AND you will be beheaded if she does not approve."

I would wash down every surface in the house (with some roommates I lived with this was probably a wise idea anyway), vacuum every nook, cranny and spot on the carpet, tidy, go through drawers, re- fold things in my dresser drawers into neater piles (I still have, and sadly use the plastic ones I bought while I was a broke student). I would re-organize the closet, vacuum every surface imaginable (a second time), clean out the fridge, wash the sheets, clean the mirror, dust the lights, EVERYTHING you can imagine to make the room spotless, all the while knowing I should have been putting that effort into the looming deadlines I had for school work.

My good friend had a similar affliction in first year university. In our first year of university, we were terrified when faced with our first set of exams and still adjusting to being the little fish in the big pond.

We had the great fortune of having our first three university (also spelled "S-C-A-R-Y") exams on the first two days the university scheduled exams. That's three exams in barely 48 hours, and we had essays due minutes before exams started.

It was crunch time like we'd never experienced before, and what did we do? We cleaned our residence rooms (right across the hall from each other) obsessively. Oh, and we labeled a "stress relief ball" that was in the shape of a brain with the various parts we needed to know for our upcoming psych exam. We thought we may end up having to take a different "psychological" exam than the Psych 1A03 one we were scheduled to take.

Luckily, though, we made it through, and when exams were finally finished we had clean rooms to party in, but sadly both of us consumed a great deal of alcohol in a short period of time and missed going to the bar. I should apologize to Jodi's roommate Ada, on whose bed I spilled Mike's Hard Lemonade because I was under the mistaken impression (this impression may have been created by the two bottles of said beverage only minutes before) that I could drink lying down. I have since learned that lands you with a great deal of booze on your face and on your friend's roommate's bed, but very little in your mouth as you had intended. (I have also since learned that Mike's Hard Lemonade is gross and have moved on to much better alcoholic beverages.)

So, I feel relieved to finally have a diagnosis for my affliction, and, while I have no present plans to return to university (or money with which I could do so), I have to say I imagine if I ever do go back, that procrasti-cleaning will undoubtedly be part of such an experience. At least I now have a label for it. Maybe we could start a group like "procasti-cleaners anonymous" to discuss the affliction. I think we'd have to meet right before final exams.

in case you needed a laugh

This is one of those urban legends/things that just spiral out of control on the internet. I've read that it was on an intake sheet for social assistance in Dallas Texas, and also that they were British mums, so who knows whether it's real or where it was from, I find it hilarious.

In my line of work I'm running across a few baby-daddy (and to be honest, a few baby-momma) stories, and, while I'm not doing family law anymore, this was just too funny not to share.

They're all replies that [insert name of city] women have written on [insert name of agency here] forms in the section for listing "father's details," and all, in true internet legend form are apparently "real answers." Apparently number 11 won the prize as funniest.

1. Regarding the identity of the father of my twins, child A was fathered by Jim Munson. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of child B, but I believe that he was conceived on the same night.

2. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly from behind. I can provide you with a list of names of men that I think were at the party if this helps.

3. I do not know the name of the father of my little girl. She was conceived at a party at 3600 Grand Avenue where I had unprotected sex with a man I met that night. I do remember that the sex was so good that I fainted. If you do manage to track down the father, can you send me his phone number? Thanks.

4. I don't know the identity of the father of my daughter. He drives a BMW that now has a hole made by my stiletto in one of the door panels. Perhaps you can contact BMW service stations in this area and see if he's had it replaced.

5. I have never had sex with a man. I am awaiting a letter from the Pope confirming that my son's conception was immaculate and that he is Christ risen again.

6. I cannot tell you the name of child A's dad as he informs me that to do so would blow his cover and that would have cataclysmic implications for the economy. I am torn between doing right by you and right by the country. Please advise.

7. I do not know who the father of my child was as all blacks look the same to me. [this one really bugs me but I included it anyway]

8. Peter Smith is the father of child A. If you do catch up with him, can you ask him what he did with my AC/DC CDs?

9. From the dates it seems that my daughter was conceived at Disney World; maybe it really is the Magic Kingdom.

10. So much about that night is a blur. The only thing that I remember for sure is Delia Smith did a program about eggs earlier in the evening. If I'd have stayed in and watched more TV rather than going to the party at 146 Miller Drive, mine might have remained unfertilized.

11. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby, after all when you eat a can of beans you can't be sure which one made you fart.

Wherein we get our asses kicked

So with less than six months before the wedding and both of us having recently sprouted comfy-bums (wherein you're happy in your relationship and your butt develops an attitude that it can grow to whatever size it wants because it no longer needs to impress anyone), we've started to hit the Y again with renewed vigour. I'm not a fan of my increasingly comfy bum.

And so, we've decided to go to a spinning class tonight. For the uninitiated this is where you're on bikes as a class and an instructor proceeds to torture your comfy bum for an hour, leaving your face flush and drippey with sweat, heart pumping and brain hoping your lungs will recover from the burns.

And I genuinely mean torture. It was great and made us work hard, especially since we're both STILL getting over colds and aren't yet 100%. We celebrated by taking a nice long bath to soothe what will definitely be jello legs tomorrow.

Hopefully with lots more classes our bums will be less comfy looking!

A lazy weekend

I had hoped this weekend would be full of errand running and some cute dates but since we're both (STILL!) sick we did a lot of sleeping, coughing, and nose blowing, as we've been doing for about a week. Oh, and buying kleenex, I did more of that too.

Friday night we just relaxed and bought groceries. Saturday we awoke in the early afternoon (not like me!) to a nice blanket of snow... it wasn't the 10-15 cm they were calling for, but it was a nice change from the drab brown we were starting to get used to.

We spent some time lounging, then cleaned the house and started prepping dinner. Friends of Dave's came over for dinner and they brought a lovely bottle of wine, and a wicked home made Napoleon for dessert. I'm so impressed with their cooking abilities- mille feuille pastry with home made pastry creme and strawberries - it was as delicious last night for dessert as it was this morning for breakfast. Oh and treats from a doggie bakery for the dogs!

Sunday we slept in (again! this is not like me!) and did the usual dog park and "get the groceries we forgot to get Friday night because we were too tired" thing. The cold really has both of us wiped out, and I can't help but be ticked we spent most of the weekend sleeping. Oh well, once we're feeling better we'll be back to normal I guess. I'm looking forward to having some energy again to go to the gym and run... so far my asthma gets aggravated walking up the stairs so not sure how the gym will go.

The dog park was fun this afternoon. The dogs like it so much more when there's snow to roll around in. This year's on-again-off-again winter was on-again today and they love the cold. They ran scared, as per usual from the mini Aussie shepherd who chased one of our dogs all the way to the parking lot (she's maybe 1/4 their size) Dave and I followed with Dog #2, coughing all the way there. They're both now contentedly sleeping on the floor.

New meaning to "the zoo"

Our house currently looks like a kleenex factory... after the explosion. we picked a whole bunch out from the sheets this morning, and there seem to be little collections we've made littering the house that have fallen out of pockets. We're going through kleenex faster than I think I've ever seen two people go through boxes of kleenex before. We both have colds and it doesn't look like there's much of an end in sight, but we're seriously hoping it comes soon! You know it's bad when Dave likens my nose blowing noises to a elephant's trunk at a zoo and rather than being ticked off at him and give him the cold shoulder all night I laugh, make the same (admittedly remarkably elephant-like) noise and then fall into an asthmatic coughing fit while he scrambles for inhalers to rescue me. At night and in the morning I sound like a wheezy 70 year old man who has had a pack-a-day habit for at least 60 years.

New job!

Today was the first day at my new job. I was really looking forward to it, but i spent yesterday unable to move from the couch because I as so zonked out by a cold that when I woke up this morning I wasn't feeling much better. I went in, figuring it wasn't such a great idea to call in sick my first day of work(duh). Anyway, after a morning of me coughing and being all snot-filled, my new boss said "go home" and not to worry about it which was super cool. I spent the afternoon in bed and will probably hit the sack for good tonight shortly. But, so far, so good, I'm liking the new job and definitely think it's more "me". At the very least the environment is definitely healthier at the new place (despite me coughing in it all day).

And now a poem:

Mom if you went to jail
I'd pay your bail!