Early Easter!

Look what we got from my Mum and Dad this morning!!!



Easter candy with a few awesome bonuses:

1) PLAY-DOH!! Which, as the packaging makes VERY clear, is NOT intended for consumption. No? Then why does it have all of those "CAUTION: Contains wheat" stickers?

2) New toothbrushes! Such a mum-like addition to a sugar-headache-inducing package!

3) Grocery gift certificates!!!!!!(not shown)!!! Even pushing 30, this is by far one of the BEST "care package" goodies to receive! Yay!

4) Kitty treats!! And treats that even Tomas will eat! Aku, well, will eat pretty much anything- he's more like a fuzzy black goat, really.

But in true kitty fashion....



...the box it all came in is FAR more interesting.

Mmmm.....Candy for breakfast...Thanks Mum and Dad! We love you!

Saturday afternoon snack!

I have Saturday off this week- and before you start dishing out the high-fives, this really isn't a treat for me. I've become accustomed to my days off being weekdays, and since I've never had a Monday to Friday type of job (neither does Shawn), I think I may always associate Saturdays with work. I like being able to do my weekly "stuff" without the weekend throng. It's much more relaxing.

Maybe that's why I feel so restless today- like I should be accomplishing something other than surfing Etsy, breaking in my new shoes, getting quotes for prints, and of course, baking!

One of my new favourite blogs, Everybody Likes Sandwiches (which is an AMAZING collection of yummy recipes, by the way), featured a recipe for cranberry and blood orange loaf earlier in the week, and I have been thinking about it ever since! Unfortunately, I could find neither blood oranges nor frozen cranberries (I really didn't want dried) at my corner grocer, and was in no way in the mood for a Saturday afternoon larger-chain-grocery-store venture. The horror, on the weekend! The horror! So I grabbed my last three navels (which had been languishing in the fridge for a good month), and subbed frozen cranberries with frozen strawberries. The results?



Exactly what the doctor ordered! A nice fresh-from-the-oven slice, with a hot cup of Natural Farmworks Chai, and I'm not at all concerned that I haven't got anything lined up for dinner. Strawberry orange loaf sounds fine to me...

Spring fun at the leaky house! Sarcasm as well!

It figures- we've just agreed to sign on for another year at our place (which is depressing in and of itself- Edmonton for another year...), and in spite of already knowing the kind of structural doom (cracked foundation) and other ailments associated with this place, we have had relatively few problems of late- only a broken (again) washing machine, and a blown fuse in the ancient dimmer switch in our dining room. Knock on wood.

When we were initially shown the house, there was notable water damage in the little boot room at the front- the ceiling paper was peeled away and stained, and there was definite damage to the large tiles on the floor, with at least 8 being loose, completely loose, or seemingly sunk into the (somewhat) rotting floor (there are also 2 and a half tiles right where the boot room meets our front room that were broken and missing to begin with). It was presented to us as having been a one time leaky problem.

Clearly, that is not the case.

I'm collecting my melt water in a bucket right now, hoping that come (real) spring one of us won't:

a) fall through what we know now to be a long-time rotting floor
b) have the sopping wet long-time rotting ceiling collapse on us
c) be electrocuted by the boot room light whose housing is a mere 6 inches from where there is water actively dripping.

Delightful.

Anyone with any roofing experience is welcome to offer suggestions or recommendations.

Where The Wilds Things Are...

...is probably the single most important book of my childhood. I can picture every page and (nearly) recite the entire story. I still giggle along with Max every time the jungle starts to grow in his room...! So, when I heard that there were plans in motion to make the story into a feature length movie, I was understandably skeptical- CGI wild things? A 40-ish page book drawn out to 60-plus minutes? My skepticism is officially dead.

Magical!!! Not just CGI wild things (as I'd feared)- muppetry!! Max is adorable! The dreaminess of the colours!! It made me cry- not just in a "shed a single tear" way (it was kind of embarassing!). I can't wait- and I'm sure will be blubbering on my way out of the theatre!

Okay-It's not the book, no, and I tend to be a bit of a purist on that count. Nothing can ever replace the magic of reading that story as a child for the very first time, but thank goodness Spike Jonze seems he may actually have given it a lovingly crafted tribute. Yay!

Children! Don't grow up!

Spring Cleaning!

Wanna see what $56 worth of bottles and cans looks like?




That's 560 (mostly) cans. Whoah.

Also removed from the premises: 2 enormous bags of clothing, 2 boxes of books, a broken behemoth of a television, and a handful of worn out bike tires.

Almost time to start sprouting bulbs and seeds on the windowsill!

Slow Recovery, Second Winter.

I went home for the first time in nearly two years over Reading Week to visit my family, and unfortunately, instead of enjoying non-snow, and non-minus-thirties, going for walks on the beach, and generally enjoying not wearing Sorels for a while, I caught the flu. So did my Mum. A really, really, bad flu. I was so sick, I wasn't even feeling well enough to mope about my bad luck until my last day in town, when I realized I was going home again.

Then I started to mope. Oh no!

It's been a bit of a crappy week back.

I've decided I'm not going back to University next year (I have a whole diatribe to unload on that subject, though that's for another day), but haven't determined whether I'm willing to go further into debt in pursuing something technical institute related (read: with gainful employment attached at the completion end), or whether I just want to work my ass off so we can get back to the right side of the Rockies as soon as humanly possible.

It's -31C with the windchill today, and my Farmer's Almanac predicts snow and frigid temperatures into April.

I'm generally pretty upbeat about being here- the third of the year that there isn't snow is actually pretty nice. I've kept a smile on my face through the winter, but I think I've reached the end of my tether. I can't imagine growing up, let alone growing old here. I haven't even entertained the idea of putting down roots, so I haven't, and in doing so have wound up in limbo.

Sorry for the bummer post. Woe is me! I feel like this is the second winter of the year, and spring is way overdue.

Men with backhoes making loud noises.

Last Thursday I came home to unannounced traffic signs being piled on our front yard. Upon asking the sign man what was going on, he informed me that starting tomorrow, the city was ripping out our sidewalk and large chunk of front yard in order to repair a sewer connection. Thanks for the notice guys.

Lo and behold, the next morning at 8 sharp, we had backhoes, jackhammers, and a crew of 6 to 10 guys on our front lawn, and as the day progressed, a 10 foot chasm opened where our minuscule front yard used to be.

About 2 pm yesterday, Shawn and I were coming home from lunch and upon skirting the crew to get to our front door, they announced that in getting to the sewer they had broken our water intake line.

Pardon me? Not only were we given no warning as to what was going on, everything WAS in fine working order up to this point- and now you're shutting our water off? Thanks guys. Again.

I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth- we DID had lead intake pipes (as I'm sure the vast majority of the aged and aging houses in our neighbourhood do, and they are now shiny new copper- but as 6 o'clock rolled around, the crew informed me that they were done for the weekend, but weren't going to insulate the new pipes so, you know, your pipes might freeze. Sorry. See ya.

Again, for the record, we had NO PROBLEM before you guys showed up. Now we may have frozen pipes and potentially no water- not to mention our water pressure is "unexplicably" less than it was before?

Now (upon the advice of the city crew and Epcor) we have to leave water running in our house ALL WEEKEND. Let me just state for the record that our house is tiny, none of the rooms have doors, and the only faucets we have are directly next to our bedroom. Let's not even get into what a HUGE waste of water this is. Needless to say, it was a restless, drippy night, and we have two more to go.

Not impressed.

All I have to say is that we had better be accumulating some SERIOUS house karma points for when we actually own our own house.