thanks love

I have a big stupid grin on my face.
With everything swirling around me this week I shouldn't. But just in one of those moments where I'm feeling so very alone (in the giant sense of the word/world), someone's thought of me. Created something thoughtful.

So now, instead of sitting and worrying about X, Y, and Z... and all the letters before those...I'm sitting with a warm dog on my cold toes, knitting at the ready, and the kettle nearing a boil for my tea.
With that big stupid grin.


"I saw that you were knitting and thought you could use some music".


Tweet last night: 12:30am  Need a guy with size 11 shoes to visit the house... no way to make that sound like it's not a booty call. #knitting #mens #socks

uh

quick! something funny needs to happen...

Past and and re-thinks

I was just reading back in a notebook... I found something that I think made it into the blog a few years ago... At the time it was about something else, but there's a line in it that made me pause this morning ... in a huge way. I've been leaning a little on the selfish side, instead I need to take a look at some things and see what I can be doing differently.

"you can't make shit like this up"

what if your morning started with the nicest fruitiest granola, made by a friend, who called and said coffee was made and waiting for you?
what if you sent people to the wrong place for a parade, but they still came and you all had a great time? and you played your kazoo, and rode your bike in a pretty skirt and gave it your everything?
what if people you loved so deeply were there, along with all your favourites?
what if you drank pints on the patio, ate poutine, laughed, took pictures and moved your office over one space closer to a chocolate shop?
what if you set up your tent, blew up your air mat, and nearly had a nap in the sun?
what if you had the most adorable old man living beside you? and you spent the afternoon and evening walking back and forth to the neighbours- chatting and laughing? and they looked out for you?
what if your favourite people came and you loved them through the rough spots?         what if you dragged them to the waterfront through all the tourists?                                what if you ate too much pulled pork, cranked some ice cream to smooth vanilla perfection, then dolloped it on to a cobbler from heaven?                                                what if then maybe you laid in the sand on a blanket by the lake with the real town- not the imported one?                                                                                                               watched women hula-hoop with fire, campfire visited, then experienced some crazy enormous fireworks- so good that you clapped, and maybe teared up?                           what if when you got back you danced a jig under the glow of twinkle lights while the fiddle played for you?                                                                                                     would you even believe it happened?

Toes

I'm on a sock knitting bender... I've given myself 2 weeks to knit 2 pairs of socks. Totally doable. Right?

A few nights ago GTI (I know, it goes by the name "Greenwood Coalition" now... I don't adapt well to name changes) Held it's second Johnny Cash Tribute night- a fund raiser, and all around good time.  It's an art show showcasing some of the work done by the GTI art group, and a whole bunch of amazingly talented musicians bringing Johnny's music to life.  I'm sorry if you missed it. Maybe next year I'll be in a place where I've got my head on right and think to share the info BEFORE the fact.

I've had some huge mixed emotions going into this one (the concert). Something in life ... in my circle... has shifted in the past 3-4 months, and I'm still learning to navigate the waters. It's nothing to worry about- not good, not bad.... just different.  I'm left feeling more observer than participant, and after the past couple of whirlwind years, maybe it's a really good thing.

HOW does any of that tie into a sock-knitting bender? Ah HA! One of the things you missed at the concert was a raffle... including one fantastic prize "2 pairs of custom knit socks"!

must stop typing must keep knitting must stop typing must keep knitting must stop typing must keep knitting must stop typing must keep knitting must stop typing must keep knitting must stop....

One pair down, one to go.

Things I Can See Without Turning My Head (or) items I need to remove from the kitchen table.

Note, the following items on the kitchen table are NOT items found while cleaning my basement... Those items are sitting in the middle of the living room floor with the hopes that Jelly doesn't fall into any of them.


Ukulele
ball of wool
Kazoo
Egg Shaker
skien of wool
Clown Nose
Pie Plate
Vase
bag of wool roving
3 binders (of Ukulele music)
teapot
a half knitted sock
2 mugs
a jar of homemade ketchup
couple of balls of sock wool
the wooden club thingy from my food mill
ball of yarn
my dinner (chili!)
and three purses.


just in case you were wondering.

Found items

So the basement acts like a time capsule... or a garbage heap... I'm not sure which is more true. The clean up process is still going.

The eventual goal is to clear out the old coal-bin area and build hanging shelves to place christmas decorations and crafting crap and whatever other items survive the purge (all those Ramona Quimby books I've been saving for my potential future children). Hanging shelves? The coal-bin space isn't paved... the entire basement is paved... except that strange square that's still filled with hunks of coal. I'm being honest with myself when I say - it'll never get cleaned out and paved. (At least as long as I'm the one living here). So, rather then waste the space, the wooden shelving units are going to be attached to the floor joists above and hang down. The rental place I was in before buying here had them... the basement floor was all wonky/uneven... BRILLIANT!

I'm rambling....

LOOK WHAT I FOUND IN THE BASEMENT!!!!!!

He was nestled in some insulation, all cute and dead like... LOOK at his adorable shoulder blade!!! If you squint- it looks like a baby mouse ear!  And HIS TOES!!!! eeeeeeeeeeek! Adorable. Dead.

super

I was SO excited when this happened.. mostly because I couldn't wait to write it down, to craft it into something awesome. Seriously... I even said out loud "I can't wait to blog about this". But, well...

So, I'd collected the eggs from the chickens and brought them into the house (actually a lot more than just that happened but for the sake of this being a short story...). I'd placed them in a bowl near the sink... somehow, Cheepers (one of the chickens) had managed to get in the house, hopped up beside the bowl, squatted and plunked another egg down and it landed in the sink.

ok.. so.. uh... here's the thing...

The bowl was on the floor. The egg bounced into the sink from the floor.
That's when I realized I was dreaming (in my dream) and said (out loud to the people in my dream) "oh never mind, I'm dreaming again." To which everyone in the dream frowned at me, because by announcing that they were actually dream-people, I'd essentially killed them. They all turned and left the room.

Once my brain realized what I'd just done, it whisked me off to another dream.

sit knit

So, it's knitting and podcast season again.

Build it.

In the past couple of months, two of my neighbours have built new garages.
Not the "attached to the house" kind, like in subdivisions, but the grand "coach house" style that they park their cars in front of and store random crap in.

Because, they still need us to be able to see what their cars look like.


I love my neighbourhood.
It's this quirky combination of giant century mansions tucked into corner lots, with tiny century homes (those built for the servants and children of the "big houses") scattered between tiny war time houses and a hodge-podge of 70's mid-sized homes.  THIS. This weird jumble is why I love downtown small towns.

Some of those giant homes have been turned into multiple family dwelling units (read: ghetto apartments), while some are B&Bs, every other is a single family home...

I realized today that both of those new garages are significantly larger than my home.

And I'm SO ok with that.

(photo credit: the lovely Jerry, taken moving day 2009)

stumbling

Inspired by my friend BethSheff, I'm taking on the basement... I went down there this morning armed with a recycling bag, a box for garbage and a few boxes for the local second hand store.

I didn't come back up for hours.

And when I did... things were worse than when I started.
The house is... um.... *sigh*

Let's just say that if my mother wasn't already dead, she'd have had a heart attack and died from the piles of random things. I've mentioned before how I'm an "Outie" organizer raised by "Innie" parents, right?  Their version of storage was "everything has a place, and everything in it's place".... my version is "I know which pile it's in".

I'm slowly learning that neither method is right... it's ok to be either way... there are good sides to each of the systems... it's the Catholic guilt that I deal with for having things in sight that really does me in....

Anyway... I've emptied more than half the boxes (those which were never unpacked after the move) into garbage/recycle/reuse piles... the things I've found!!! Seriously. AMAZING.

I've found a smoke detector... the one that started beeping 4 months ago.
My Social Security card... I didn't know it was missing!
Countless bottles of shampoo... all half used... weird.
So MANY binders.
(one of them was even my music binder from 1997) (hello "Lifeline" music team!)

Some of the things I've been bringing up and leaving where I'll see them- so I'll deal with them right away... um. except that the dog keeps tripping on them.

I'm not kidding... she fell into a mixing bowl tonight. It comes up to her knees... it's not small. It's in the middle of the floor... um. beside the spinning wheel. um... beside the autoharp.

On monday she ran into a wall. She didn't cut her eye this time... but she did bruise it... I think she's lost most of her vision now in the left eye.

Hence falling INTO the mixing bowl.

I borrowed these snazzy Doggles to help protect her eyes... except her head is too big for them... Bubble wrap is the next option.