Adventures in Interior Design cont.

WH and I continue to wrestle with what to put up on a number of our walls. 

This morning, we had the following conversation:

WH: Here's a crazy idea.  What if we made our own artwork? 
Me: [pause]
WH: No, wait, it would be great!  We could take a class on making a canvas and then we could just paint them!
Me: But what if we don't like them?
WH: Then we won't put them up!
Me: But what if I don't like yours and you really like it?
WH: Then we'll put it up.  Because I worked hard on it.

Me: Aw, honey... Thanks for writing my blog post for me this morning. 

I am addicted to...

... HGTV.

A couple of recent stays at home during the day have meant finding that HGTV is a really inspiring and lovely way to spend TV-watching time.  And as a result of countless episodes of home buying and home decor shows watched in the last couple of months, WH and I are a little bit more motivated to complete some of the home decorating projects that have been trickling along since we moved in.

We went to an antique superstore in Prairie City and found a really nice antique buffet.  It needs a little bit of refinishing work but otherwise, it's exactly what we've described wanting for a long time.  It's dark wood, with cabinet space big enough to hold our liquor cabinet, small drawers for wine stoppers, corkscrews, coasters, the guest book, etc., and a big drawer for linens.  It fits in really nicely with the space and we love it!

Today, we tired to do some more antique shopping for decor items but the local store wasn't open so instead we went to Home Sense, where we found three large wooden candle holders to put next to our fireplace downstairs.  Then off to Michael's to buy nice big candles for them!

We are now also on a pretty active search for artwork for the walls in our living room. We were looking at a design website this morning that had a neat shelving idea that we think we can do on one of the big and currently-bare walls in our upstairs family room, but we really want to do a couple of similar modern-ish paintings in the living room. We're also looking for either a long and narrow painting or for a series of repeating decor pieces to go over the fireplace.  We don't have a mantle but we're trying to think a little bit outside the box for the fireplace space.  A mantle is a possibility though too!

We have interest in three-dimensional decor pieces for smaller wall spaces, things like plates or masks.


It's fun! We're having a good time!

The Storm

It was very hot yesterday in The Hamlet (30C (about 90F for my friends to the south)). As is often the case on the Prairies, hot weather brings evening thunder storms. Last night's storm was a big one.

We first noticed the wind. Blowing in hard from the northwest, our neighbour's lombari poplar trees were bent almost double under its power. I was watching from the back window when the wind blew our BBQ and our outdoor chairs onto the back lawn. Lightning and hard rain followed the wind. Our power went out. I fell asleep, but was awakened by the sound of hail hitting the windows. It didn't take long before our entire back deck was covered with ice.

Mama Cat and Baby Cat were not amused.

This morning, on our way to church, we saw many victims of the storm - fallen tree branches, broken construction equipment and toppled road signs. Fortunately, there are no reports of human injuries, despite the collapse of part of a building in downtown Prairie City.

WH found this picture on twitter:

Things I'm learning...

... about myself as I grow older, and hopefully a little bit wiser each day.

• The fact that I didn't ask for the advice doesn't mean I shouldn't take it.
  
• The term "mind your own business" takes on a whole new depth of meaning in adulthood. I have found few things more exhausting than trying to compare myself to other people.
  
• In many inescapable ways, I am who my parents are. But in other ways, I am definitely not. And you know, both are ok.
  
• I think that humans are very instinctive creatures and that we know a lot about what's best for ourselves instinctively. But I also think that we can be remarkable close-minded to the concept that our instincts might be wrong. And that if we spend a lot of time getting defensive over what has been a largely instinctive decision, it might be worthwhile giving the decision a second look.
  
• It's not enough to make a decision based on careful weighing of pros and cons. I have to have given some thought to how to deal with the cons, which don't go away just because I made the decision.
• The people who love me will continue to love me even if I change my mind about something that I was formerly adamant about.
  
• There is really nothing wrong with not knowing what to do and asking somebody else who does.
  

I thought if I wrote these all down in my blog, it would help me remember them. :)

The Good, the Bad. the Ugly

of Chamber Choir Retreat Weekend!

The Good

We learned a TON of music, made good progress on our memorization of three spirituals (Deep River, Witness, Wade in the Water) and started to learn the (very difficult) music for our Spring concert. The food was fantastic. And we spent lovely quality time with other choristers in a beautiful location. AND got our choir pictures taken in remarkably short and well-organized time. Hurrah for hiring your wedding photographer to take pictures of your choir!

The Bad

I suppose that there is a blurring of lines between The Bad and The Ugly, but I think I'll say that the only bad things were the standard bad things that come out of a weekend-long rehearsal process... I'm exhausted in pretty much every way, I ate too much German food, my back is sore from sleeping somewhere other than my own bed, and I missed the kittehs.

The Ugly

WH hit his head. Hard. Against the edge of a low-hanging ceiling in the room where we were sleeping. And we all know how speedily and liberally heads bleed. I'm so grateful to the retired nurse in the choir who took control of the situation and insisted on driving us to the hospital, which was a half hour away down the pitch-black Prairie Province highway. Three stitches later, and WH is fine. No concussion, which is a relief. Actually, the most uncomfortable part seems to be the spot on his left arm where they updated his tetanus shot.

I'm glad to be home.

Back to reality...

Reality being laundry, mostly, and work again on Monday...

But we had an amazing time, and accumulated many, many happy memories, including:

• many wonderful animals at the San Francisco Zoo, including baby tigers playing together;
• going to a Giants/Cubs game at San Fran's beautiful new ball park;
• Alcatraz, which was very powerful to see up close, and hear an award winning audio tour of the cell block, narrated by former prisoners and guards;
• Pier 39 with it's many beautiful and unique shops and restaurants, where we saw celebrations of July 4th;
  
• City Lights Bookstore, where I bought a copy of "Howl"
  
• The San Francisco Farmer's Market in the Ferry Terminal - a most amazing gathering of wonderful food and drink;
• The Golden Gate Bridge, which we wouldn't have seen except for one beautiful clear afternoon;
• Our rental convertible, which we drove to Sonoma for our trek, and then back to San Francisco via the coastal highway;
• Incredible trekking through Sonoma valley - this really is the best way to see the California countryside;
• tasting, talking and learning considerably more about wine than we did before, and meeting many humble and kind people who were eager to share their gift for wine-making;
• Twelve beautiful bottles of California wine brought back across the border to be the start of our wine cellar.

In which Chorus has a Treat

So, in a couple of weeks, I'll be starting to take voice lessons with a very talented singer here in town, and I am very very excited. I think we're going to have a lot of fun together!

Yesterday, WH and I descended on our local music store to buy some new collections of music. I have one book of Italian love songs already, but I was hoping to have a little bit more variety of pieces to study. Like going to bookstores, or office supply stores, or CD stores, I love these kinds of shopping trips... It's all about the POTENTIAL. We had some good recommendations from my teacher and knew what we were looking for, so it didn't take long to find three good collections and spend a healthy sixty bucks!

So now, to go with the Italian love songs, I have a collection of English songs from the Renaissance through the Baroque period, a book of German art songs, and a good collection of sacred music that I can use for church. I'd like to add some French art songs as well, eventually, but this seems like a healthy start!

Prairie Winter

It is -40. No matter what side of the border you're on, or what temperature scale you use, it is -40 here this evening. It is going to be a very cold week.

And the snow, she has a fallen today too. Lots of snow, compounded by strong wind, meaning that our front walk has disappeared. The weather is miserable.

It is -40.

Update: A couple of hours later, and it's -43.

Planning and Goal-Setting

First, the planning. Vacation planning, to be exact! I have five vacation days that need to be used before the end of March, so WH and I had been thinking about the possibilities presented by Las Vegas. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find a good price for a 3 or 4 day trip, and weren't interested in spending a significant portion of our holiday budget on such a short trip. So we've revised that plan, and will spend three nights in the Canadian Rockies, hiking and walking in town and having a relaxing time. This break will fall right after the Handel/Bach concert, so the rest will have been well-earned.

Now, because we've chosen to do a relatively cheap little holiday in February, we are beginning some more significant plans for our summer holidays (all pending my permanent job status which is frustratingly still in the works). The preliminary plan is to fly to San Francisco and spend a couple of days there, and then drive to Sonoma for three or four days of wine-tasting and vineyard tours. We found a neat website that offers walking tours, including wine-tastings, so we might look at that. I think that walking through the Sonoma Valley with a glass of red wine in hand sounds like a pretty amazing way to spend the summer holidays. And the desired timing of the trip is early July, in line with our first anniversary. Tra la la...

Now, the goal-setting part. Colourful University sponsors a race on June 1st to benefit children's programming in Prairie City. Participants have the option of running or walking 5km or 10km. Now, I have done very little running since high school, and even less since my left lung collapsed about 5 years ago. But I think that with sufficient will power, I can train to run the 5km between now and then. WH is thinking about whether this is something he wants to tackle as well, and I think that it would be a pretty amazing accomplishment for both of us.

We shall see!

The last piece...

... of a renovated kitchen arrives today! We're in to the delivery window now for the new fridge, and that is the last thing we need to replace to have an entirely new kitchen. And we're home tonight to enjoy it! This kitchen renovation process has been so positive, and our real estate agent informs us that we've probably added about $30,000 to the value of our house as a result. Myabe I'll celebrate tonight by continuing my cookie project (see 'C' here!)

I was cleaning out the fridge last night, tossing ancient leftovers, and consolidating duplicate bottles of "stuff," when I opened the back door to empty the large garbage can we keep on the back porch. When I pulled the old bag out of the can, it revealed a wee tiny dead mouse at the bottom of the can. I am afraid of mice, and I had to go inside and shut the door before I could get my head straight to figure out what to do. Eventually, I did the logical thing, which was to dump the can in the snow. RIP Mousie. But despite the fear, and relief that I had not encountered him alive, I was sort of sad that he froze to death all by himself at the bottom of our garbage can. This is the part of the story where WH interjects and says, "Um, we're talking about rodents here, right?" Yes, yes we are.

Anyway, today is for waiting for the call that the fridge has arrived, and thinking about the little creature at the bottom of the garbage can.

And trying to reconcile myself to THIS!

You Belong in 1955

You're fun loving, romantic, and more than a little innocent. See you at the drive in!

What Year Do You Belong In?

UPDATE! Fridge has arrived, and they were able to get it in the door, and it fits the space between the cabinets, and all is good!

Not the start we'd been hoping for...

...I seem to have the flu.

When I woke up yesterday morning, I didn't feel great, but that was not particularly surprising, given the New Years Eve excitement. About midday, I started to have flu-like symptoms (I'll spare you the details). I checked my temp, and it was up, and kept rising as the day went on, peaking at about 100.2 late in the day.

So I'm at home today, wrapped in blankets on the couch, with Mama Cat and Baby Cat providing excellent TLC. I slept almost a full 12 hours last night, and am pretty sure that I could do that again without much encouragement. At last check, the temperature is back close to normal, and a bowl of cereal has stayed down so far today. I am beginning to consider the possibilities of soup for lunch.

WH has been lovely, providing appropriate amounts of gentle soda, and crackers, and gentle words. He shall have stars in his crown.

Back to work tomorrow, I hope!

Mama Cat and Baby Cat

I've wanted to blog this story for a while now, and I thought today would be as good a day as any.

Wonderful Husband is allergic to cats. Very allergic. Up until about a year and a half ago, I had resigned myself to the fact that I would not ever be a cat owner again (we always had them growing up). WH and I had a number of conversations about the possibility of getting a dog someday, and we had a freakishly tenancious Beta fish, so I wasn't particularly wanting for cats.

Until WH and I moved into our little old house, he lived in an apartment in the basement of the church where he is the music director. It was a great living arrangement, and the apartment had a nifty back yard, which WH and a friend had outfitted with a deck. In May 2006, a very large black tomcat appeared on this back deck, and took up occasional residence under WH's stack of deck chairs. About a day after he first arrived, so too did a much smaller black female. Both cats were clearly homeless. What we didn't realize at the time, but connected on later, was that somebody had abandoned both cats in a box on the doorstep of the church with a can of tuna. Remind me to rant another day about responsible pet ownership.

Both cats were very friendly, especially after we put out a can of chicken flakes for them. If either one of us sat down in the back yard, the little cat would jump up on our lap and purr away. I should clarify that despite WH's allergy, he quite likes cats, and I think we were both delighted by how social these two were. We went out and bought a bag of proper cat food. We probably should have realized at this point that we were big suckers, but in a faint-hearted demonstration of our iron will, we stated that we would continue to feed the cats, but they had to be outdoors. After all, WH is allergic.

WH phoned me at work the next day to let me know that both cats were sleeping peacefully on the couches in his living room. WH's heart was lost to the cats, especially to the wee female, and I have to confess that I was pretty fond of them as well. It was, however, entirely WH's call. After all, he's allergic. We went out and bought a litter box.

A few days after the intial introduction to indoor living, the tomcat disappeared for good. We had expected this, given that young male cats tend to be transient anyway. But the little female showed no signs of wanting to go anywhere but into a lap or onto a couch. We were adopted. WH sneezed a lot.

About three weeks after she made WH's apartment her home, our little cat's tummy began to expand outwards. She didn't get bigger anywhere else; it was just her tummy that grew. So we googled "How can you tell if your cat is pregnant." The first website we found said, "If your cat is female, unfixed and has been outdoors, she's pregnant." So we took her to the vet, and the vet laughed at us and said that yes, she was CLEARLY pregnant, due a mere three weeks later. We spent the next three weeks feverishly learning everything we could about kittens and mother cats and their care.

On the morning of July 1st, 2006, Mama Cat gave birth to five beautiful, perfectly healthy kittens. We cried when the first one was born. Three of the kittens were black like their mama, and two were white. Adorable doesn't even begin to describe them. It was amazing to see how instinctive Mama Cat was. She just knew what to do, all the time.


So, if you're doing the math, we had gone from zero cats to six cats in the space of about a month. We decided pretty early on that we were going to keep one kitten to be company for Mama Cat. Eventually, we chose the little while female. As she has grown up, her face, paws and tail have turned dark, so her colouring is like that of a siamese cat. We successfully found homes for all four other kittens.

WH's allergies have pretty much gone away, or at least, he's no longer allergic to our cats. We are a pretty happy little family of four.

An Adventurous Evening

Yesterday evening promised to be one of THOSE evenings... Two different rehearsals for two different choirs for two different concerts this week at the same time plus a choir photo for one group, all of which necessitated getting out of the house in good time last night, fed, with four separate music folders (two for WH and two for me) and two choir outfits (one for WH and one for me) through the un-ploughed streets to the concert hall where, mercifully, both rehearsals were taking place.

We managed not too badly. But by the time we were finished rehearsing with the Symphonic Choir, changing into our Chamber Choir outfits, getting our picture taken with the Chamber Choir, changing back into comfy clothes and doing another 2 hours of rehearsal with Chamber Choir... I was exhausted.

So you can understand that it was a bit of a bummer when we got in the car, at the end of it all, and WH turned the key in the ignition, and the car made a sputtering noise... and would not start. It was 10:00pm, we'd been in rehearsal for four hours, and it was -25C outside.

These are testing moments. I think we handled it remarkably well.

We phoned the local Vehicle Emergency Response crew, for which I have a membership and therefore receive free service, gave the dispatcher all the information, and she quoted us FOUR HOURS as the response time (see above re: time of night and temperature). She was, however, kind enough to put a "Risk of personal injury" note on the call, as we really didn't have a warm place in which to wait. The Battery Truck arrived five minutes later. Sadly, even he couldn't get old Healy to start (WH's car; named after Canadian composer Healy Willan... we're geeks). So he called the tow truck to take the car to WH's mechanic, and we took everything of value out of the vehicle, called a cab, and went home.

Mercifully this morning, the car had arrived safely at the Garage. They'll look at it this morning and let us know what the problem is. We hope it's not expensive, or we might be giving each other a new fuel injector for Christmas. Happy Holidays, baby!