Happy Thanksgiving!

If you were to design perfect thanksgiving weekend weather, I'd say it's safe to say we have it right now. It's 20 degrees outside, the sun is strong and bright, there are no clouds in the sky, just a light breeze, and the air is crisp.

That meant perfect weather for the wedding we went to on Saturday, which included a fantastic Chinese buffet dinner. We were seated at what we ended up calling the "white kids table" but a couple of the groomsmen snuck us the real Chinese foodand it was SO good. My chopstick skills were embarassingly and uncharacteristically bad, but the food was incredible and everyone had a blast. I think I'll institute a week-long "no forks or knives" moratorium for myself soon just to brush up on my skills.

We went to church this morning with my parents, and enjoyed a fantastic turkey lunch at their house. When we got back I ran to costco to get some pictures ordered (we now have wedding pictures! in frames!) and and pick up some new plug-in toothbrushes.

I freaking love electric toothbrushes. The problem is we only had the battery powered ones which means we're constantly charging batteries and it's annoying when they don't work. So, I bought plug in ones, despite the fact our bathroom doesn't actually have a plug. (We tried to put one in but our electrician wasn't all that smart and that means we now have a big hole in the wall where a plug COULD be, but he wasn't able to fish the wire down). Ah the joys of owning an older house. I'm sure we'll figure something out.

The toothbrushes came in a BIG! ENORMOUS! box. It's one of the worst instances of overpackaging I've seen in yers. Behold the box.


Then look inside to see how much room two electric toothbrushes actually take up in the box!


I was never good at math, as my alcoholic grade 12 math teacher would slur his words to tell you (yeah, drinking peppermint schnapps in class doesn't really convince us it's just scope), but I'd say that package is 2/3 empty. Possibly 3/5. Pathetic! I get that they don't want people walking out with them up their shirts and whatnot, but this is completely wasteful and unnecessary.

While waiting for some wedding photos to get developed I found this beautiful rug. Wish I could find its twin in a bigger size. Love it, and, apparently, so did Scarlett.


We were unable to contain ourselves any longer and decided we HAD to get out and enjoy the weather, so we unleashed Hairy (our roomba) to clean the floors (I love a man who cleans) and went to the dog park. I remembered my camera this time.

Fall dog walking

We're regulars at Harmony Valley Conservation Area, the unofficial off-leash park in Oshawa. The dogs absolutely love it there, and so do we. It has fantastic trails, streams, and beautiful forests and fields to walk through and there are always lots of other dogs and their owners. Dogs their size need lots of room to run and it provides just that. The other night I went sans Dave and decided to snap a few pictures.

One of the side benefits of going is that it makes us more aware of the seasons changing. I really think that too often we spend too much time inside, or going from house to car to building so that we're insulated from the world around us.


We've of course noticed it getting much cooler in the evenings (but apparently not cool enough to get rid of the mosquitoes yet!), but it's much more than that. The summer brought lots of dragonflies, fireflies, flying grasshoppers, and other insects, along the trails. In the evenings of late those have all but disappeared, and instead we are greeted with the sounds of geese honking overhead, bats swooping insects out of the air and us having to save numerous toads from an unpleasant and goobery fate by keeping the dogs moving (leeeeave ittt!). The ambient noise there is now punctuated by the song of the crickets, and, because they're sighthounds, when they see the crickets jump they love trying to snap them out of the air. I can't say they've been too successful, luckily for the crickets, but it's fun to watch.

The word of the day is "exhausted"

(Ok this post contains tons-o-wedding crap so if you're not so into the wedding stuff I'd suggest you skip it.)

Our wedding was really a phenomenal day - better than I'd expected, than we'd planned, and better than we'd hoped for. Even the freaking weather cooperated!

For now we're completely exhausted. From last Friday until today we really haven't had much of a break. We went from the wedding, to the reception, to a hotel for a couple of hours, to the airport, to Florida, to the cruise ship, ran around the ports we stopped at, to a hotel, to the airport, to Toronto's airport, home, lunch, and back in the car to Cobourg to see my parents, to bachelor(ette) party and wedding in Ottawa this weekend where I was a bridesmaid, home this afternoon, and work tomorrow. So, here's the longer version if you're interested.

The days before the wedding were spent making programs, putting together ribbons and sheets of organza to wrap the blue spruce trees which were our wedding favours for all the guests.

We rented Victoria Hall in Cobourg (where I grew up) for our reception. The exterior is one thing, and is definitely beautiful, but the concert hall is something you have to see to believe it. It's totally gorgeous. The hall itself was built in 1860 and was opened by the Prince of Wales. The concert hall, where we had the reception has walnut floors, beautiful murals on the walls and a hand painted ceiling that is incredible. (plus it rents for a song compared to most places!)

My parents, my sister, her fiance John, and Dave's mum helped us decorate the tables Friday morning and get the hall ready. We just had plain white floral table cloths, jewel toned tea lights and we were lucky enough to have a friend of my mum's take the gladiolus that we ordered for the centrepieces, add some Queen Anne's lace, Solomon's seal, hosta leaves and asparagus ferns to make fabulous arrangements for the tables. I was totally amazed at how beautiful they looked even though we were far from a big budget wedding. This is the interior of the grand ballroom for another event but you get a sense of how pretty it is.

I left part way through decorating the hall to a spa afternoon Dave planned for me. By the end of it my hands actually looked like they belonged to a girl (I've never had a manicure before). When it came to picking a nail colour for my toes that was easy. My toes were my "something blue." (Yes I have hideous feet.) The other something blue was borrowed from Sara - a blue toe ring.

The rehearsal went well and it was so fantastic to have a wonderful dinner and be surrounded with friends and family. My family spent hours pulling it together and we really appreciated it.

Our wedding day started very early for me - when a neighbour of my parents' had their car alarm going off for about 20 minutes around 4:30am. I slept like a log to that point, but it took me a while to fall asleep again. The woman doing all of our hair has been doing my hair for the last 12 years, and I've been going to the same salon before she started there since I was 4. She does a phenomenal job, and doesn't charge nearly enough for an up do. She came to the house and had everyone done in time.

It was indeed my high school stalker's wife who did our makeup. In fact, it was him who dropped her off, along with an assistant (who assisted by sitting on the couch). He lingered in front of the house and when I saw that I made my sister run to get the door. Hah! Foiled ya, creepy dude! In the end she was reasonable, and did a pretty good job of making pretty girls even prettier. No make-up guns were set to "whore" as I feared.

I don't know who picked up the flowers, but they were done by Sav-A-Centre (A&P) and I was so impressed. They were cheaper than most places, and totally gorgeous.

We had some photos taken at my parents' house before taking the limo to the church. My family has been members of the church since I was a kid, and this summer we got a new minister who really helped us personalize the service and made it feel like OUR wedding.


I was shocked at how fast the whole service went. It seemed that suddenly we were at the back of the church and the bridesmaids were walking down the aisle, quickly followed by my dad and I (the aisle wasn't big enough to add my mum in). I was really happy with the service, especially the music. My high school music teacher sang a solo (and boy can he sing), and brought along a fellow soloist and I was completely blown away. Several eyes in the house weren't dry; they were that good. I felt like all of a sudden it was all over and we were walking up the aisle (with Dave telling me to SLOW DOWN cause I was too excited and wanted to walk too fast) and we were married. The picture in the post below is us at the top of the aisle at the church. My mum did the flower arrangements in the photo above the day of our wedding.

We then went to a lakeside park for more photos, where the limo driver (who we booked until 6:30) announced he was leaving at 5:30 because he had another job to get to. My sister tore a strip off him and our photographer took a picture of me giving him the finger as he drove off. I'm nothing if not classy (actually, I like to think I put the ass in class).

So, there we were with no way back to the reception hall, when we had the rescue of the year. Dave's friend Curt and his beautiful wife Katy have a brand new white mustang convertible, and he totally became the knight in shining armour with lots of horsepower. We rode in the back of the car while he chauffeured us to the reception, honking the whole way. We just sat in the back amazed at how awesome our friends are and what a fantastic rescuer we had. It totally made our day. My dad took some phenomenal pictures of us in the car, and our wedding photographer got this one too.


When we got to the reception my gorgeous friend Jodi jumped in with her event planning background and ushered everyone in and directing hors d'oeuvres our way while we waited for everyone to get seated. Dinner was great - we served a spinach and grilled asparagus salad with passion fruit dressing, entrees were either a mushroom risotto, chicken with sundried tomato cream, or rime rib beef, along with roasted tomatoes filled with ricotta and spinach, broccoli and dauphinoise potatoes. Speeches went through dinner so no one got too bored (hopefully), and the dancing started and went late into the night. Judging from the dance floor I like to think it was a good party.

In order to get us to dance we made the tables get up and do a dance (with the assistance of the DJ who provided music). There was some definite creativity in the room. By the end of the night we decided to turn the tables on everyone and Dave danced to "The stripper" while I sat and watched to get everone else to kiss.

Our first dance was Etta James singing "At Last," and my dad and I danced to Rod Stewart singing "I wish you well." Dave and his mum danced to Carole King "Child of mine."

The boquet for tossing went directly (and completely unintentionally) to my friend Sara, who was in our wedding party and getting married 8 days after us (I was in her wedding party too). She luckily survived a few stray elbows that narowly missed her head. Apparently it went right to her like some sort of ouija board boquet. I just whipped the thing over my head.

The garter was some cruel joke too, as it went directly to my sister's fiance. Poor John was our wedding day gopher, and had, only minutes before run to the house because I realized I had forgotten to wear a stupid garter. Now the poor guy had my sweaty stinky garter in his hand, having just retrieved it. Dave and I are looking forward to being the gophers at their wedding next summer.

For our last dance the DJ asked everyone to stand around us in a circle holding hands as we danced to Louie Armstrong singing "Wonderful world." That was totally one of the best moments of the day because at every step we could see friends and family around us (and hear my dad and Dave's best man singing). It was an awesome feeling (and to anyone who is getting married DEFINITELY DO THIS for your last dance).

We walked to the hotel room my parents rented for us, crashed for an hour or so, Dave shook me until I gave in and got up, and Dave drove us to the airport in a huge storm around 2:30am so we'd get to the airport in time for our 7am flight.

Next? What kind of morons snorkel during a hurricane! Uh that'd be us!

Married!

There will be lots more to come but for now blogger just isn't cooperating. This one was taken by our photographer (who also has a blog) of the two of us kissing at the top of the aisle just after the ceremony. Her blog has other pictures of our big day.


Reflecting afterward we were both really calm the whole day, and anything that didn't go smoothly right away (and most things did) ended up working out better than what we originally planned.

We wanted to make sure everyone had a good time, and from everyone we've talked to it sounds like everyone had a blast. We both still had somewhat sore feet two days later from hitting the dance floor all night. Don't think it could've been more perfect.


(Way more stories to follow; gotta run to Sara's wedding this weekend. Had a fantastic honeymoon!)

If you ever want proof that I'm an incurable sucker

...all you need to do is look at Rhett.

While living in Windsor I went with Sara one day to help her rescue a kitten who was sick and going to be put down. I was absolutely NOT going to go home with another animal. I was merely tagging along for the ride.

I came home an hour later having adopted Rhett.

He had been in a tiny 2x2x2 crate at the humane society for a few weeks already and was an older cat. When I walked past his crate he reached out with his paw (and claws). I was hooked literally and figuratively. I opened the door and he purred and meowed with all his might. He wriggled around in my arms like he was trying to make sure as many square inches of his body as was possible were touching me and being petted. He nearly fell out of my arms a few times. I don't think I've ever seen a creature who was more happy just to be held.

With fresh tooth marks on my hands and arms from his zealous love bites I gladly whipped out my debit card and decided I couldn't leave without him.*

I named him Rhett, but the name doesn't suit him at all. He's a Gilligan. He loves everyone and everything but isn't among the brainiacs of the animal world. He often sees a nail in the wall and thinks it's a spider and will pounce on it. Repeatedly. He bites things (and people) when he's hungry. If someone came into our house right now and paid attention to him he'd leave in a second to go live with them, and forget he ever lived here. Not maliciously or anything, he'd just be so excited he'd forget about us.

The twist, of course on this new plan was that Miss Scarlett (aka Miss. Hissy, Miss. Pissy, or Miss. Crankypants) already ruled the roost** at home. Thankfully I knew bringing Rhett home wouldn't be smooth so no great expectations.

His first few days Rhett lived in the TINY bathroom of my Windsor apartment. He was un-tutored which meant he was fond of spraying, as adult males do. It also meant the pink monster (or red rocket) would occasionally pop up when I was petting him. This led to me running from the bathroom a couple of times.

Scarlett spent the first two weeks on a stakeout outside the bathroom door, hissing and growling to welcome him. When he was finally released from the confines of the bathroom after a trip to the vet's, she spent the next months chasing him to beat him up for intruding on HER space.

Nearly two years later I catch him coming to see her when she's sleeping, hoping for a quick few licks on the head or someone to snuggle up to. She's still fond of biting his ear, but it's more of an affectionate bite now than an "I'm going to tear you to shreds, dummy" bite.

He was a skinny little cat with wiry, coarse hair when I got him. He's now a plump sausage shaped cat who still loves nothing more than to curl up on you, purring loudly, flailing wildly. He's a master at both breaking into bags of expensive diet cat food, and none-too-stealthily-but-very-persistently eating from the dogs' bowls. He goes after cat toys with such focus it's as though he's possessed. He loves sleeping like Big Bird, with his paws stretched over his head.

The moment I come home Rhett comes racing for the door, belly jiggling and meowing the whole way as though he's telling me about his day. When he gets within a few feet he usually flops on the floor and rolls around on his belly meowing. It's like he's doing an impression of bacon frying. He couldn't be happier. It's as though his brain has some wires mixed up which make him permanently happy, for no reason. There isn't a mean bone in his body or a mean thought in his head (Dave would correct me and say there are no thoughts in his head).

I'm so glad I ignored all common sense and didn't leave him at the shelter that day, almost two years ago now.

____________________________________________________________________

*well, actually the shelter had a policy where you had to wait 24 hours before picking up an animal, and it was a Saturday so I actually did leave that day but came back on Monday to get him.

**if she could talk she'd point out it was her house.

***This fact also meant that the pink monster (aka red rocket) would show up if you pet him too much and made for some awkward moments with me running from the bathroom yelling EW!

Shave and a haircut

Not for me, for the dogs (though I'm in need of both)

Before:After:

I kinda think they look like overgrown jack russell terriers with their summer haircuts. Hopefully they won't hate me as much after a run now.

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.

Dog park at dusk

The frogs in the marsh Sunday were almost deafening. This was recorded after the dogs ran through the water, which not only scared the living daylights out of the frogs but silenced half of them. I think anything as small as these frogs that can sing this loud should get a mate.

Trotting uphill

I love the way the faint vapour trails crisscross the sky like fireworks.

There were definitely signs of spring popping through the sandy soil.

Stopping for a kiss.

Dog (mis)adventures

Last night, just before bed we noticed Prometheus (one of our dogs (that's right, Russian dog, Greek name)) had gotten into something he shouldn't have. Looking at the strewn bits across his new doggie bed it became clear that he'd managed to eat a bar of soap.


All that remained were a couple of bits,the biggest was smaller than my thumb. He ate almost an entire bar of soap.

Dave thinks he wanted to be clean from the inside out and he's now been dubbed our little neat freak.

I have my own theory about it - I think it stems from his eating a package of my birth control pills a while ago. You can't devour an entire package of those and not do some, well, you know, mental damage. (yeah, he was in a lot of trouble that day)


Luckily, his "vacuum dog" traits came in handy today. I was having a couple of friends over for lunch and was nuking some broccoli and decided to throw in some butter to melt at the same time for my wicked garlic bread. I don't normally put two things in the microwave at once, but I was in a hurry to get things ready and just threw it in.

When the nuker beeped I grabbed the broccoli, knocking the yummy garlic butter mix everywhere. It was on the floor, the microwave, fridge, and all up the front of the water cooler.

After swearing for a while I went off to vacuum our furniture (a 24-7 hobby in this house), leaving the mess where it fell and figured I would clean it up in a minute.

But, in record time, our famed soap eater came to the rescue and had quickly licked garlic butter off EVERY surface by the time I had de-haired the furniture. Perfect!

(and yes, I cleaned the surfaces afterwards, dog slobber doesn't pass for "clean" in this house)

How much does Rhett love cat grass?

THIS much! My mum dropped some off last weekend and the cats are really enjoying it, Rhett especially. He does, however, get frustrated with cat grass (and plants in general) when he tries to rub his scent on them. It doesn't work that well since they're not hard surfaces so he just ends up biting them. Keep your fingers crossed for my amaryllis, which fell victim to his teeth Friday night. I hope it will still bloom even with a few bite marks!

Dog Park-o-Rama!

Saturday and Sunday we decided to take the dogs to the dog park. Equipped with long johns and lots of layers, we herded the dogs into the car and off to the park.

To be fair, our dogs aren't used to being around other dogs. They're okay with just one more dog, but when they're in a crowd they're not very sure how to behave. In fact, they're kinda like the kids who cling to their parents and end up eating their lunches in the bathroom because they have no one to sit with.


While the other dogs were running around doing dog things, our guys were mostly off on their own playing with each other, or running away from the other dogs scared and watching them play. They got more comfortable as time went on, but a number of times they came up and stood with us instead of playing with other dogs. Funny they were much bigger than any of the dogs there, but were intimidated by dogs half their size.


All the running around led to them taking a number of snow baths, and eating a fair bit of snow. Luckily, they just stuck to sniffing the yellow snow.



They got more comfortable as the afternoon went on and I'm sure they'll at least progress to being like wallflowers. Next time I'll be wiser and bring some (spiked) hot chocolate to stay warm too.