Moving In!

We got the keys to the new house today!!!!!! Yay!!!!!

We have already moved two car-loads of boxes over, and concluded that we really need to leave to boxes of books for the movers, because that is what we are paying them for - to break their backs so we don't have to!

It is also already a pain to drive over there and back. It only takes 10 minutes or so, but because of two rivers and construction, there is no direct route, so you have to weave through "traffic calmed" side streets all the way over, and then wait for five lights before your trun to turn left. plus it is the hottest it has been all month today, and people are all trying to go away for the holiday weekend, so drivers are all peevy. bah!

but the boards for the garage walls were delivered early, and we managed to get the delivery guy to take the challenge of backing up down our driveway and dumping the boards right into the garage, an interesting feat, and he was pretty chuffed with himself once he had successfully completed the task. now the workers are busy putting up the vapour barrier and boards so that we have a finished garage for the movers to put the extra furniture in on Wednesday.

Its all coming together so nicely! Mom is worried now, because the house looks so much smaller without furniture, but i reassured her that the previous owners had just as much furniture as we plan to put in, and it did not look crowded. I know she will not believe me until we get all of our stuff in.

So happy! My parents will be officially retired by Sunday afternoon!

Butterflies and cow socks

When I was about 7 or 8 I had a favourite pair of socks.

They came in a grab bag of clothes from one of the older girls in the neighbourhood. They were white socks with fuchsia pink cow spots all over them, with a pink band around the top that had a standing up cow and a laying down cow on both side of the sock. Awesome!

(actually through various grab bags I got other pairs of the same socks, some of them were blue though, and so was able to wear my favourite cow socks well into junior high!)

When I was little, my mom, aunt and grandma had a favourite ladies dress shop called Butterflies that they liked to go to. I loved to go too, because it was always a special occasion we were shopping for, and my cousins and I would run around the store and try on hats and laugh at the size of the shoulder pads.

This one time it was just mom and gran and me. I got bored with mom and gran deciding over one outfit, and so wandered off to explore on my own (anyone who has been shopping with me knows I still do this. sorry). They had rearranged the accessories section, and I spent a lot of time checking out the cool new socks they had on display. My new love of the cow socks had made me something of a sock officianado. Plus, they were the only thing that might fit me in the store.

While gran's purchase was rung through, I made one final hopeful pass through the sock aisle. Just as my mom was calling me to hurry up, the shop's owner came up behind me, and slipped something into my coat pocket, and said "That is for being such a good girl in the store."

As I ran to catch up with mom, I put my hand in my pocket, and pulled out a pair of pink and black striped socks.

Of course, the gift of socks was the main topic of conversation all the way home, with mom and gran questioning me as to exactly what the woman had said etc. etc. (they had seen her give me something, so at least they didn't think I had stolen them!) Then, when we got home, she was telling dad the story as we went upstairs to put the shopping away.

All of a sudden, mid-story, she burst out laughing, and said "C! take your shoes off and show me your heels!"

I did tell you they were my fav socks right? The heels were completely worn away.

Mom quickly took stock of the rest of my outfit, and kept on laughing. It was a Saturday. When you are little, you wear grubbies on Saturday so you can play. I was wearing a fourth-hand winter coat that probably needed to be cleaned (perfect for Saturday), pants that were a little too short for me, and penny loafers that showed off the holes and in my socks (and probably made them worse) with every step.

So the owner of the store had seen a well-behaved little waif in holey socks and second-hand clothes, longing only for a funky pair of socks (a wish which was quickly denied her by her mother), while her mother and grandmother (both snappy dressers) shopped for $300 suits. The lady probably felt sorry for me and thought I had a horrible mother.

My mom thought this was hilarious! Then she tried to make me throw out my cow socks.

Ha! That wasn't about to happen! Cow socks trump black and pink stripes any day!

Morning in a b&b

I am sooooo f*&%$^ glad that we only have 6 more days of operating a b&b.

Firstly, because my mother sold the daybed in "my" room last week, so I have been sleeping on the foldup cot. Then, it was Hillside this weekend, and we were more than full, so "my" room, with a foldup cot for a bed, was rented. Generally, when my room is rented i sleep on the cot in the basement. Do you see the problem here? I had to go sleep at the neighbour's.

Secondly, now that I am back in "my" room, the room beside me is rented, so I can't use the bathroom on this floor unless the guests who have that room are out of the house. That means I have to use the ensuite bathroom attached to my parents bedroom in the basement. The door to the basement is fully visible from the breakfast table. Which means that, in order to pee in the morning, i either have to get up at 6am, before all the guests, or wait until after the guests have left the breakfast table, unless I am desperate and I want my mom to laugh as I run by in my bathrobe and point me out to everyone at the table. thanks ma, ever so subtle.

This morning, the guests stayed at the table until almost 10am. I snuck into the bathroom on my floor when I heard them ask for another cup of coffee. It is now 11, and I am still in my pyjamas. I have had half my breakfast simply because there is a fridge right beside my room and I snuck a yogurt.

Yeah, I am totally ready for this b&b crap to be over!

Changing History

I have come to realize that my brain sometimes changes my memories. They are generally memories where I was feeling particularly foolish. And it is not like my brain changes the memory to make me look better. No, it just changes one little detail.

It changes the winter coat I am wearing to one that I had owned 5 to 10 years before the time of the incident.

In my memory of having a fight with my mother and being late and running for the city bus, something that happened in grade 8, I remember myself wearing the winter coat and snowpants I wore in grade 2 and 3.

In my memory of accidentally letting go an embarrassingly loud fart in the public library, which happened a few months ago (I can't believe I am telling you guys this, except that it still makes me giggle), I remember myself wearing the big black wool coat of my grandfather's that I wore in grade 10 and 11.

I guess my brain thinks this incident is just too crude to have happened while wearing my kicky new red coat.

At least with the coats, I know that they can't possibly have been worn at the time of the actual incident, I guess I need to be aware that I might have changed other stuff that might not be as noticeable.

Wherein I sell my childhood

I hate this moving thing! The packing, the unpacking when you discover you put something important away in a box, the repacking of the box which is never quite as good as before...... argh!

The thing that is really getting to me is the selling/giving away/throwing out of stuff. Stuff that has been around ever since i can remember. Stuff that I don't want to get rid of because it has a memory. but it is really just stuff, an there is no room for it at the new house, or in my current vagabond life of unemployed-ex-student-possibly-student-again-very-soon.

Like the salt and pepper set. They are bright 1970s orange. They matched the plain wooden set my grandma had. They sat on our dinner table every single night I was growing up. My brother and I used to hide them on my father once mom had determined he had had enough salt on his dinner. There are good family dinner memories associated with them.

But we haven't used them in years. And now they sit in the box for the garage sale.

So now i get to sort out the boxes that are being kept from the garage sale boxes, all of which, for some reason known only to my mother, have been put out in the garage. And disentangle the furniture that is being kept from the furniture underneath it that is being sold. and discover that we still have boxes of G.I. Joes that my brother has forbidden us to sell, labled "G.I Joe Vehicals, Do not OPEN, Do not MOVE, Do not throgh out! This MEANS YOU!!!!" in 9 year old boy handwriting.

To top it all off, there is a chipmunk who has chosen this same moment to make a nest in the back of the garage. Thank you Mrs. Chippy, for making our time in the garage ever so pleasant.

Argh!

Scenes from the beach

Scene 1:
Me: "Did a raindrop just fall on me, or was that bird poop?"
S: "Raindrop. ...Uh.... wait.....are you going grey?"
Me: "Yes."
S: "Ok, yeah, raindrop."

Scene 2:
Playing frisbee in the water. I have gone after the frisbee.
S's husband, A: "Lets have a jumping contest! 1, 2, 3, JUMP!"
S: "Ha! I went higher than you!"
A: "1, 2, 3, JUMP!"
Me: just comming back on the scene, "S, honey, fix your top, you're about to fall out."
A: "Oh! So close!"
S: "Hey!"

Scene 3:
A: "=Sniff= Is that someone's shoes?"
Me: "Yup, probably mine, they are entirely synthetic and they stink! I am so mad cause they are new!"
A: "=Sniff= yup, that's them, they smell worse than boy's shoes!"


Thanks guys for an awesome day at the beach!

Oops I did it again

Why oh why can i not get any guys my own age to even talk to me, and yet seem to have no problem attracting skeezy old men? Why?!! Ewww!!!!

So here is the scene: My cousin's dog loves one of the construction guys that work for the company at the end of the lane. This dog will refuse to walk one step further until the guy catches up with us if he happens to be on the property when we are out walking. They are doing construction on an island right now, so this guy asked if he could leave his boat down at my cousin's boathouse so he could take it over for work, so we have met him a few times on our evening walk. The guy is close to fifty, has a teenage daughter, and by the time we see him, he is walking and enjoying his evening beer and cigarette.

Last night, he was just walking across the beach when we finished our walk and the dog saw him, and dragged me part way down the hill to get to him. I got ahold of him though, and figured we might as well wait and say hi, cause the dog was not going to go inside until we did. So by the time the guy saw us, he saw me waiting with the dog at the top of the hill. I started to realize that this was not a good move on my part.

So we had a little chat while the dog almost turned himself inside out with love for this guy. Then he asked me when i was going home, and when i was coming back up again. And where home was.

And then he says, "Well, let me know if you want to go out fishing sometime, I go out all the time and I got lots of extra gear."

and there we go!

Now, I actually like fishing. As a solitary activity. Not stuck out on a boat in the middle of the lake alone with some old skeezy guy i do not know. His boat is really built for one person.

See, that would have been totally different if he was twenty years younger and didn't give me a creepy "no" feeling.

Water issues

Living on a lake this summer, we obviously have water issues.

The water here comes straight out of the lake, goes through a filter and then through a uv filter. It is supposed to be drinkable at this point, and you wont die or get sick if you happen to get some in your mouth in the shower, or brush your teeth in it by accident, but it's not really drinkable. To feel safe about drinking it, we boil it on the stove for 10 minutes, and then we use this water to make tea (yup, we boil it again for tea) and to give a final rinse to veggies. We drink bottled water most of the time.

But, since i have been up here, the water in the white toilet bowls has looked kinda yellowish. My cousin went down to the basement the other day, and all of this clanging and banging and swearing ensued. It sounded like she was battling a demon or something. When i went to see what was happening, she had the filter container off the system and was washing it. We had had the water guy out a week ago to try and make sure the water line was down on the bottom of the lake, and he must have kicked up a lot of dirt.

The filter container was full of mud. icky, sticky, lake bottom mud.

Now the water in the toilet bowls is nice and clear. There is still a lot of mud in the tank, but it will have "settled" by now apparently. ewwww.

I am a little worried about the few showers I have had here now. We have had a flock of Canada Geese and Mallard Ducks living on the beach for awhile now, and the water line is not that far out from the beach. And judging by the amount of droppings they have left on the beach, i am sure just as much is going in the lake. Also, we found evidence of beaver in the swamp. Yeah, i am sticking to bottled water as much as possible.

At least it is not like the cottage we used to rent across the bay, where we had to collect our water from a spring in the bush on Martin Short's property and boil it.

Needless to say, personal hygiene has taken a strange turn. I brush my teeth with a glass of bottled water. I only have two showers a week, where i wash my hair. I basically just have a sponge bath in the morning and then try to get in swimming as much as possible (yes, in the icky lake water). I have bought biodegradable soap and shampoo in case it ever gets warm enough i can have my bath in the lake. Likely right on top of the water intake. The weather has not been co-operating though, and we have only gotten in swimming every few days. I don't think I stink or anything, it is just not what I am used to.

It is amazing to realize that I can get away with way less washing, and water, than I use at home, and not feel gross and dirty. Oh, we really are spoiled with our access to an overabundance of clean water in the city!

The Wilds!

Up here in the wilds of million dollar cottage country, we get a lot of wildlife, but somehow, we are still surprised when we see it. Like the moose tracks we have been seeing on the laneway. We live next to a swamp here. I have seen moose in the swamps on the side of the road about a kilometer away. But somehow, we are surprised that it was walking down our laneway. I guess we are just across the river from the village, so we assume that we are in the middle of civilization.

We still get some pretty cool stuff though! We just saw a pair of foxes running along the beach and down the rocks after dinner. We have deer running all over the place (i actually pet one when i was younger) Last year I saw a river otter down at the rocks, the year before there were a family of mink (baby minks are so cute when they are learning to swim!), and one year my mom and I saw a squirrel swimming across the bay.

That is right. What, you didn't know squirrels swam? we didn't either.

We were out in the paddle boat at dusk, and saw a little head plodding around the front of the point from the river, straight towards us. mom made us stop because she thought it was a beaver and she had never seen one. But as it got closer, we saw it had a fluffy tail that it was keeping out of the water. We followed it until it climbed up the bank on the far side of the bay and sat down on an old stump. It kept right on a straight course, despite the fact that we came within a few feet of it. I still wonder what was after it that made it swim so far. It would have taken us at least 15 minutes to paddle the distance that that little squirrel covered with his determined little doggy paddle.

See, told ya we have some weird wildlife! And I haven't even started on the people!

I'll die with the blackflies picking my bones......

The bugs are bad.

It has rained for almost a week straight.

It was sunny for the first time this afternoon so we went down to the beach to soak it up.

The ground down my the beach is a bit mushy at the best of times.

Now it is a bug factory.

We quickly ran back up to the house to get our bug jackets and bug spray for all exposed skin.

I have had a bug jacket on for so long now that my eyes have gotten used to it. I am having trouble seeing without it on.

The blackflies are still around. They are supposed to be gone by the beginning of June.

Please, can we have some better weather soon?

Somebody stop me please!

I am contemplating the unthinkable.

I logged onto the computer this morning, and after visiting my usual sites, I found myself googling something horrible.

The Masters of Library and Information Science program at the University of Western Ontario.

It is apparently one of the best programs in the country.

I can specialise in a variety of areas, including archives.

They have a co-op option.

It is entirely coursework.

I can enter in any semester.

I can be done in 12 months.

I have a much better chance of finding a job once I am done than I do right now.

But, more school? I just finished school! It kind of feels like I am admitting that my History MA is worthless.

I am conflicted.

Maybe this is just a reaction against everybody saying, "What can you do with that degree? Teach?"

plus, QWP put the idea into my head. Her and her crazy cousins