right brain

The thing about Pinterest is, it makes my right brain so very, very happy. There's this sense of, 'Ah, finally a piece of the internet that I can appreciate.' The internet has been a very left brained place up till now (with the exception of the pxrnxgrxphy quadrant, I guess).

It also inspires me to do creative things sometimes.

You made my heart melt, yet I'm cold to the core,

But rumour has it I'm the one you're leaving her for.

--Adele, Rumour Has It

yoga journal

I drew this picture from Yoga Journal magazine a while ago.

I liked how she turned out, but all in all found the picture to be rather bland.

Then I picked up a blank book from Staples -- lined white paper with a brown cardboard cover. I'm sorry I forgot to photo it before I modified it; the blurb inside the front cover says it is made from 80% waste sugarcane, leftovers after the sugar has been harvested. It was a very basic looking book.

On an impulse I mod-podged her to the front of the book.

I kind of really like the result. I'm going to buy those books by the dozens and add stuff to their covers.

I just hope the book is dry by morning, as I have my current story that I'm working on in it.

Daylight again, memories fall like rain
Remind you to take it slow
One step at a time, baby
Till you find your way
Back to the big show
Places you've been
Things that you done
Somehow, you're still on the run

--Gregg Allman, Just Another Rider

what're the odds?

I went thrifting today. I didn't find much, but in one store I did find this dish:

So I bought it. You know, I wasn't going to just leave it there for $3. Besides, I knew I had a similar lid at home. I couldn't remember exactly what the lid was like, and I didn't think they would really match, but no, apparently they were made for each other:

So pleased with myself. Now I just have to find some place to display it.

You with your dietary restrictions

Said you loved me with a lot of conviction

I was waiting to be struck by lightning

Waiting for somebody exciting

Like you.

--Camera Obscura, French Navy

who needs a groundhog?

the house finches are back. I've heard their songs a couple of times in the past few days.

I've also seen ravens flying around with some big-ass twigs in their beaks. According to a post here, they breed sometime in January? We have a plethora of ravens in Saskatoon now; 20 years ago they were never seen. Ravens are pretty much the most fun of any birds to watch fly (same goes for any corvid, really).

Any of my blog-reading relatives who like birds should take a look at the pictures on that Saskatchewan birder blog I just linked to.

People are weird department: Last week I was at work, and this woman drove up in a truck to pay her parking ticket. She had a little bead pouch hanging from her mirror, which was very pretty, so I said something like, my that's pretty. Did you make it? For answer, she unhooked it from the mirror and handed it to me. I tried to demur, but she drove away.

So say you love me like a hoboWorn and grubby but you know thoughThere's no one above meAnd you love me inside out

--The Imelda May Band, Inside Out

bugger all this for a lark

Things I've learned in the last while that I already knew:

When renovating, every thing takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you estimated it would. At the least.

If you happen to be renovating in one house and living in another, any tools you need in one house will be in the other. Also, if you are working on something downstairs, any tools you need will be upstairs and vice versa.

If you go out especially to buy some wrenches because all your wrenches are elsewhere and anyway wrenches are useful things that you could own more of, even if by some fluke you manage to get one that will fit the particular bolt you want to loosen (or tighten) you will not have purchased one that will fit the next bolt you need to tighten (or loosen). And you will forget the level that you also needed to purchase.

I hadn't been over to t'other house much lately, because renovations dude is working on the bathroom over there (see previous post) and has ripped out all appliances from the bathroom, in other words, no toilet. And I don't hang around places where there is no toilet. But I went over there after I got off work last night because Reno Dude needed input as to what he was doing. So I haven't seen the place for a bit, and although Novel had told me what was had been done, it didn't really prepare me. Too bad I haven't had a time lapse camera trained on the renos.

It's like my living room has developed a sad and debilitating condition, sort of like gangrene. First there was a little hole in the ceiling under the bathroom, which quite rapidly got bigger, encompassing the arch under the stairs and upstairs landing. This spread to the dividing pillar between the living room-kitchen doorway and the living room-basement doorway and ate it away entirely. Then the condition metastasized and a hole appeared on the opposite wall, between the living room and the front porch and ate away a lot of the membrane there, leaving the underlying tissue exposed... On the up side, I guess, there was quite a bit of new tissue, muscle and bone in the holes, in the form of solid looking joists and beams, holding up the ceiling, stairs and landing. And there is a new floor in the bathroom. Reno Dude is confident in his work and even jumped up and down on the bathroom floor to demonstrate his level of confidence. (Doesn't matter; I'm sure I shall spend the rest of my life being paranoid about the damn thing falling down.)

So I need to go out tomorrow and buy some lino for the floor. I debated putting in tile, but that would be more expensive, more of a pain to install, and I don't particularly like walking on tile in the bathroom. While I am out, perhaps I shall remember to buy a level, and a bigger wrench.

I spent the morning trying to set up the new washing machine, which we had delivered over here because god knows when it will be convenient to install them at the other house and the washing machine and dryer here were almost totally kaput and we need to get the washing done. I have it pretty much done except I have reached the point of adjusting the feet to make the machine level and I can't budge them even though the instruction sheet shows that they can be adjusted by hand. And I don't have any wrenches big enough to fit them.

Conundrum that has exercised my mind this morning: If we had sold that house instead of deciding to live in it, and had therefore only performed minor cosmetic repairs on it, thereby not finding out how precarious the bathroom floor was, and if, after we had sold it, it had collapsed, just how guilty would I feel about any resultant loss of life and/or limb?

The answer of course is 'quite guilty'.

(Not a picture of my renovations.)

When you're lucid you're the sweetest thing

I would trade my mother just to hear you sing

When you're lucid you're the sweetest thing

I would trade my mother.

--Camera Obscura, Sweetest Thing

the bathroom reno post

So we found this guy who does home renos, and contracted him to fix our bathroom, install the new bathtub, move the toilet & sink. Finding someone who does this kind of work, knows what he's doing, and then does it -- well they're very rare, as I'm sure you all know. This guy is competent, knows what's what -- that's the good part of this post.

Then we bought that bathtub, which costs a ton, and weighs a ton, too. That was the first bit of pain. To get it in the house, and up the stairs took four guys. I was at work that day, thank heavens.

But we figured that the floor in the bathroom should be reinforced before the new tub was installed -- makes sense, right? And Charlie (the reno guy) agreed. So he began ripping up floor boards.

Meh. The rest of the week went something like: Charlie rips out more of the walls, finds more stuff that wasn't done properly in the first place and needs fixing. In the pictures, you can see the new joists he's added, plus a support that he has holding things up right now. He has to put a new beam across the doorways which lead from the living room to the kitchen & basement. This beam will be right under the head of the stairs; a place where you would particularly think that good solid support was crucial.

"How it's stayed up there all this time I don't know," he said.

Not that I'm complaining about the work getting done, you understand. Just depressed about the necessity for it.

Do what they say, say what you mean
One thing leads to another
You told me something wrong, I know I listen too long
But then one thing leads to another.

--The Fixx, One Thing Leads to Another

organize

I need a bigger house -- much bigger -- then I wouldn't have so much trouble fitting all my stuff in it, and it would be easier to get organized.

Time to buy lottery tickets.

I remember one of my periodic attempts to get a handle on the junk in my life. We were living in that apartment on Spadina, and I was trying to find places for everything in the kitchen, and develop the habit of putting things in their predestined places. The Empress would have been 6 or 7ish, I think.

"We're really trying to keep everything in the right place, right, Mum?" she asked in that way kids do when they've spotted a pattern in life, and are trying to understand why it's there.

"Right," I agreed, and I may or may not have muttered under my breath, "We'll see how long I can keep it up this time."

This past Sunday, I was visiting over at the Empress' s and remarked that I had too much to do (probably said in a whiny voice.) The Empress, something of an organizational ninja these days said I should try the Household Scrum method. (I have a feeling there should be a TM after that.) I said something about being more the sort of person who makes a To Do list, then rewards myself with a nap. What I meant was that for me, there is such a thing as too much organizing -- all too often, the organizing becomes a means for putting off the doing.

There are two areas where I fall down in the getting things done category: 1) stick-to-itiveness and 2) just taking that first step. If you have those two steps mistressed, then a method like Household Scrum will make you more productive. If one cannot reliably perform those two steps, then anything more complex is a waste of time.

***

In the next few days I hope to have a post about the continuing Reno Saga -- Bathroom Edition. (As an aside, we finally got all the drywall up in the master bedroom -- still has to be mudded and sanded and painted, but still. Good on us.) I've always had a bit of a phobia about bathtubs falling through floors when I'm in them. Turns out that when I was living in that house, that fear wasn't so far fetched. And by that I mean, we need a new floor in our bathroom.

Novel gave me a Kobo Vox for Christmas. Yesterday I discovered that Indigo has most of Georgette Heyer's novels as ebooks. Last night at work I ignored the biography of Catherine the Great that I had bought, and instead read The Quiet Gentleman.

Tuesday afternoon is never ending
Wednesday morning papers didn't come
Thursday night your stocking needed mending
See how they run

Lady Madonna, children at your feet
Wonder how you manage to make ends meet.

--The Beatles, Lady Madonna