like pebbles on the beach

Yay! On holidays again.

The younger teen is at summer camp this week, and the eldest is back in Canada, and has been home quite a bit.

I've been rereading Rennie Airth's mystery novels, which are fantastic.

Monday I caught up on the weeding in the garden. My cherry tomatoes are ripe and sweet. I'm still losing my kale and parsley to the local groundhog, though. Miss Dog is not earning her kibble.

Yesterday I remembered I had painting projects to do. We had ripped the awful grey carpeting off the stairs earlier this summer, leaving me with a banged up wooden staircase. Yesterday I got the risers painted white. The treads are stil problematic, but I'm going to touch them up with black paint, and call it a day. My mantra for that project is "Not letting my perfectionism get in the way".

I also repainted the bathroom! Previously, on Lass's Old House, the bathroom walls were beige/grey tiled about 2/3's, with pepto bismol pink on top. And a kind of sunset bronze/gold shower curtain. Shut up. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. 

Anyway, Yesterday I painted the pink part of the walls white. I'd already replaced the shower curtain with a white terry 'hotel style' one. And having moved out the antique pine hutch to paint, I'm keeping it out - the bathroom is so tiny, I'm deciding to purge and reduce what we're keeping in there and use a much smaller shelf thing instead. 

Eldest helped me sort through all the stuff we had in the bathroom, and we tossed a lot. 

After I swapped out the quirky folk art for a framed black and white fish photo from the living room - it looks amazing. When the boy gets home from camp, we'll probably tackle replacing the cracked floor tiles with stick down vinyl flooring. 

Now. What shall I tackle today???

Mmm... supper tonight was homemade chicken soup.

1. Simmer chicken backs, celery, carrots and garlic in enough salted water to cover, for about 2 hours
2. Lift the solids out, skim the fat off the top
3. Pick through the chicken for meat, put that and the carrots and garlic back in, discard the rest
4. Serve with a squeeze of lemon and hot sauce in each bowl for a hot/sour flavour.

Gunless is a thing of joy and beauty. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy I am that it is in rotation in my movie channels.

I bought a new tv for Christmas! It will be big and shiny! (And not here until January, but I'm still excited)

My therapist keeps encouraging me to write/talk/otherwise explore my feelings. Pfft. You guys. If I wanted to talk about my feelings, I would.... IDEK, do whatever it is that people who want to talk about their feelings do. But anyway, I'm trying.

( cut for something approaching talking about feelings )

Dear Fellow Slings and Arrows Fans,

I must tell you that whilst at the New Burbage Festival this afternoon, IRL, I almost fell out of my seat as I sat through not one but two extended scenes containing the comedic stylings of disembodied sheep bleating and a stuffed sheep on stage.  

As the bleating went on and on (and on) I thought "Haven't they seen Slings and Arrows? Are they really going there?" And they did. At length.

your Faithful Theatre Correspondent,
beachlass

Four of my scheduled appointments done for the week. Only two left, and they're both on Friday.
Four days in a row I'm working out of town next week. Yikes!!
Four weeks in a row I'll have worked on my day off.
Four days left until this keynote speaking thing for which I still have only the vaguest plan.

Hmm... maybe that's enough grumbling.

Four patches of daffodils blooming in my garden.
Three yellow school buses in a line.
Two hugs from my teenage daughter when I drove to her school for missing paperwork.
One worship service in the nursing home, with smiles and a warm welcome.

I've replaced the broken doorknobs on the front door (which was a lot easier than I thought it would be). Had someone in to fix the dryer (not entirely sure if it is fixed, however). I've been to the accountant's to pick up my tax stuff, and the hardware store and the health food store and the bank.  And I caught up on paying bills and sent in money and contracts to the national church and receipts to other people and posted a couple of letters.

(And Nezu, when I looked around the messy, messy house and cringed at the thought of the repair guy coming, I thought of you and reminded myself that I was paying him to fix the washer, not pass judgement on my housekeeping skills.)

Later, when there's a kid home to spot me on the ladder, I need to climb up and engage in another round of territorial warfare with the starling trying to nest in my dryer vent. I've got a couple more pieces of screening, and a new roll of duct tape. Fear me, starlings.

So. I might be having bad dreams about paperwork that's not done at work, but I'm sooooo glad I took the day off to get stuff done at home.  

I've done a ridiculous amount of driving around southwestern Ontario in the past week or two. I've been in and out of cities, over to the lake and around the countryside. I've driven in snow and rain and sun and hail. The hail was yesterday - when it started up I had the window down, and had to roll up quick after it came stinging into the car.

Even with the hail, it was a great afternoon to be driving home... There was a long interview with  Gordon Lightfoot on the CBC, and the miles of field rolled past to old Lightfoot songs. Listening the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald under rolling grey skies can still give me chills.

On the weekend we braked as a beaver crossed the road. The tractors are out on some of the drier fields, in others blackbirds are perched in the corn stubble. The birches are bleeding from white trunks to a burnished dark red in twigs, the willows glowing gold in the late afternoon sun. The lilies are growing bright green in the ditches. My neighbour's magnolia tree is starting to bud, white promises of spring I can see from the upstairs hall. I saw colts and calves and wee baby lambs in pastures.

It was windy driving home, the tractor trailer ahead of me on the highway going north was squirrelly on the road, twisting onto the gravel shoulder. The pines swaying, the willows streaming out, the sky clearing to the west, over the lake. 

Happy Things
Day 8 

Christmas shopping at the used bookstore. And the happiness of having a family where that's part of Christmas presents; especially when we can find really weird books. Like a 1960's guide to camping.

I just came home from driving my daughter to work.

I shed my woolen scarf and suit jacket, because just now it's warm enough in the last bit of golden afternoon sun to be out in the yard in bare arms. I stopped at the volunteer squash patch, which has taken over part of the side yard, and rummaged through the prickly leaves until I found another three squash. They're longed necked, golden and green, sometimes spiky things, little decorative ones.

Threaded my way through the piles of discarded lumber still littering the yard from taking down the back deck. Around a togaggon and boogie board, past an old snow shovel. Just before I made it to the garden patch, to gather up a handful of herbs and some late tomatoes for supper, a flight of geese lifted off from the resevoir behind the trees. The honking pulled my gaze up to the sky and there they were, brash and beautous against the sky, forming three vees.

The sun was warm on my face and arms, the geese were lifting up above the orange and red maples and my hands were full of squash I hadn't even planted.

Small Town Adventures: Christmas Shopping Edition

So I went downtown this afternoon to do some christmas shopping. And I hit the usual places: the the shop with transformers, lego and matchbox cars; the asian grocery (every stocking needs pocky); the girly store and the used book store. Where I am a well known customer, who gets a frequent buyer discount. So I'm picking up some books (wine growing, Isabel Allende, and some Douglas Adams, because my copies always seem to have some sort of metaphysical property that either causes them to disappear, or transmute into extra copies of Jeanette Winterson novels).

Anyway.

I commented on how empty the front of the store seemed: he's shipped I don't know how many boxes up to northern communities this week, and the towering uneven piles of boxes were missing. I was a little worried about having a bout of agoraphobia, since I'm used to the whole cramped, books from floor to ceiling used bookstore aesthetic.

The bookstore guy (who is so nice) says he had a woman throw a hissy fit just before I arrived. She browsed around, picked up a couple of books and brought them to the counter. Then she asked why the price was written in pencil in the front of the book. He took a couple of tries explaining to her that the price in the front is the price he sells the books for.... she didn't understand why he wasn't selling them for the price published on the back cover.

Until she realized that they were used books.

...

And that's when she freaked out. You can't give used books as presents! These are used books! She had no idea! Used books! Ewww!

And he tried really hard not to just laugh meanly at her.

Apparently the other customers thought is was pretty funny. I'm kind of sorry I missed it.