Category: mumbling

Sometimes when I download photos I find images like this, images I did not take, and for which I have no reference. Weird.

My laptop is in the shop. The repair shop, not the workshop. Long story short: I know I shouldn't use a laptop in the bathroom, but Shep shouldn't be spilling full buckets of water outside the tub either.

Anyway, it shorted out the keyboard which needed to be replaced. So off it went. I'm posting this a few days later, as it's now back in my sweet little hands, but I took the pictures and mulled over the thoughts that day.

I usually only have one gap in my working day. If the stars align, the children will all be in their rooms for one hour. Neko rarely naps, so she boings out of her room periodically, asking if quiet time is up. And when it finally is, she's full-stop until dinner. I typically use this time to eat lunch, check my email, and peer in on the rest of the world via the internet.

Clearly today that was not going to happen. We were strangely caught up on the laundry and the house was kind of clean, and I had this brief moment where I didn't really know what to do with myself. I spent an hour on the patio reading, basking in the sunshine. Then I wandered back in to release Neko, only to discover that she'd fallen asleep. I typically wake her up, but today I let her sleep. In fact, I crawled in with her and I think I dozed off myself.

When we woke up, I thought we'd make homemade crackers. I found a recipe a few weeks back, and I'd been dying to try them. I know I can find a perfectly good box just a hop, skip, and a jump away, but I was curious. And so I made crackers. In the afternoon. With sunshine streaming in the skylight.

I'm not saying I'm tucking the computer away forever, but it might just spend a few more afternoons in sleep mode.

Don't worry, I haven't become of those obsessive hoarding people. There's a good reason you can no longer see our counters due to the horrifying amount of stuff piled in heaps.

The heating and cooling people have come to live at our house, and I'm going to start calling one of them "Eldon" if they don't leave soon. It seems that the heating and cooling that was installed when we built the house wasn't quite adequate for our weird high ceilings and crazy floorplan.

Anyway, the system needed a bit of an "upgrade". I won't bore you with the details, but it involves installing two 12-inch diameter intake ducts that run from the basement to the very highest point in the house. This would have been fine in a normal house, but I maximized every square inch of this house. Whenever I saw the builders come at an empty space with a piece of drywall, I went running and demanded they turn into some sort of shelf or nook. That tactic? Super for storing our stuff, not so good when you need to hide ductwork.

After much soul searching we decided to lose part of the pantry. Not too much, but enough that we had to completely dismantle the entire shelving system and the contents of the pantry are now spread out all over the kitchen.

Somehow we've been cooking and functioning around the piles, but if this goes on much longer I might consider packing up and going back to Toronto.

…and the Amazon boxes cometh.

How did anyone do gift shopping before the internet? I mean, how was that possible? With children?

We moved into our house three years ago. Between the new kids and the new company, unpacking and decorating had to take a back seat.

So it's probably a good thing that every now and then we have a function at our house that catapults us into a full-on frenzy to bring our house one step closer to the place we know it can be. Besides getting things clean, we try to address one or two new issues.

In preparation for a progressive fund-raising dinner that is making the appetizer stop at our place, I managed to finally address my desk in the bedroom. Sometimes I forget how much a plant and pictures of the ones you love can make it feel that much more like home.

I now have the ingredients in my hands to make this tasty treat in my very own kitchen. 150 calories, virtually no nutritional value, and oh-so-delicious.

Now if I could get my hands on that J. Alexander's veggie burger recipe, I would never have to leave my house again.

I couldn't avoid it any longer. I had to take my car in to get serviced. It was due for its regular service plus the tire indicator wouldn't go off even though I thought I'd put enough air in my tires.

I usually spend my service appointments at the closely-located Target. I load the kids up in the stroller, and we wander the aisles for an hour or so. But today? Thanks to a hefty service and a new tire, the appointment clocked in at 3 hours. I was delighted to discover that the waiting room had been renovated to include a whole kid's area, including a seating area and their very own television.

We happily spent the rest of our time watching Cars instead of Montel.

(Yes, it's a crappy iPhone photo, but I had to document somehow.)

I’m sure these are probably the same flowers that are kicking my allergies into high gear, but from the moment the expanse of them popped up behind the shop I can’t stop smiling.

While Neko was at school, Tom took Shep and Ellery for FOUR SOLID HOURS. In my pre-child life this would simply have been enough time to get a cup of coffee and think about making a list of the things I wanted to do. But these days? In four hours I completely cleaned and purged the upstairs desk and dresser, the dumping ground of Stuff for Which We Cannot Otherwise Find a Home.

This has been on my list for a year. Hooray for checkmarks in checkboxes.