Hey Universe?

So you know when there's something that wants to be written sitting at the top of the stack, keeping you from writing anything else?

Remember that time I wailed about wanting to be a rocker of boats? Yeah. About that. I'm good. Thanks. I'm good now.

I'm thinking what I'd like to wail about right now is a general lack of savings, and umm, ooo. The unfortunate dearth of chocolate peanut butter eggs in the Casa Valentine?

The plagues.

Well, hell.

Here's a little story about something I wish hadn't happened last week:

On Monday night, as the skies opened and Husband stepped out of the bathroom, there came a weird extended pouring water from a bucket noise. (or, in a particularly fitting nod to Mr. Maiden, piss from a boot. Him so classy!)

Strange enough for me to raise my head and look at Husband. Who looked right back and opened the basement door.

And descended the steps only to begin cursing.

Yes, my dears. Yes.

Through a process of scientific elimination, it was made clear that indeed, it did rain in the basement when we flushed the powder room toilet.

Well, I guess, thank the Lord for small mercies - I've got a little Bissel cleaner to suck all the water up (and scrub), and it had been a 'clean water flush', whatever that is.

I managed to convince Husband that it was time for the professionals and perhaps a new toilet (low-flow, natch), and so by Friday evening, and after a fairly hefty investment, I think we'll be able to flush again. With, hopefully, a lower water bill.

It should offset the cost in, I'm thinking, roughly 5-6 years, but everything after that is just gravy, right???

soooooooo

I may be back. I'll try not to write in French, but am feeling very pleased with myself for having written a long and rambling email en Francais to Mrs. Maiden. Take THAT traductrice!!

Heh.

So, for those of you who may not have guessed, I'm off to French training for 10 weeks. 10 weeks of one on one, private French training. I speak it for hours every day, with someone nodding and jotting notes of errors down as I babble on, listing tasks, and responsibilities and making up a Departmental mandate. You know, which seems to be to help Canadians. Ummm, throughout their lives. Especially training. And maybe when they're old, but also, when they're young too.

I'm gonna rock that exam.

In other news, the real estate market is so hot that several days ago, I came home to the following note, addressed to the Valentine Family, and written on yellow lined paper in red pen:

"Dear Valentine Family,

Hi,

My Name is Peter Fisher.

Doris and I would like to

$BUY$

Your House at

(my address here)

Please call us at

PH# (presumably, his phone number here)

Thanks,

Peter"

I know it seems strange, and kinda creepy, but I'm tempted to find out just how much Peter is willing to $PAY$ for the Casa Valentine....

Every day victories

Dudes.

In rereading the entries for the past month or so, it would seem I've been having a tough time. That's a misrepresentation. I feel in a good place; it's been a great summer, so I think I might be just finding written inspiration in my battles lately, instead of victories.

So here are some delicious victories to remind me of the summer I'm really having.

I'll be an honest to goodness auntie in late October. I'm already lucky enough to be an auntie to 6 really cool nieces and nephews, but this one will be the first baby from the Maidens (we got a ready-made nephew a few years ago in the really sweet two for one deal that was BigBrother's wedding). It's pretty exciting. I look forward to more Skype viewings soon.

In mid-July, Mrs. Maiden came to visit on her way to more healing touch training in Arizona. She stayed a day, which I was able to take off to be with her while the kids were in daycare. I had hoped to spend part of the day peeling the deadfish wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom, but as that took such a short time, we actually painted the whole room - and changed out the accessories to achieve fish eradication and new look in one day. Yipee!!

At the end of the month, she returned to care for the kids for a week while Husband and I planned to do foundation repairs. Unfortunately, as it rained each day, we were unable to dig, but what we did do was spend four days finishing all the carpentry work and prepping to allow us to finish painting the foyer, staircase and upper landing of the house - FINALLY - after 4 years of living here and two years of living with a partially scraped and prepped staircase which made me cringe just a little whenever someone new came to the house. A major, major accomplishment.

Oh, my goodness, it's delicious. The fish are gone. The decals also. As Janey said when we first bought the house - it's a matter of scrubbing out the crazy. (The sun, however, in all its subterranean glory, remains blissfully unaware of the fate which is slowly, but surely coming its way.)

Sundays I'm up when the kids are up (usually, husband takes the early shift on the weekends to let me sleep to 8. It's an amazing gift.) to do my distance training run. Doing it at the crack of dawn lets me have more of a family day with everyone, and allows time for essentials like rest, laundry and groceries. Usually, as I leave, MlleL and Husband chant "go, mama, go! go, mama, go!" (MasterP has simplified that to go, go, gooooooo!) It's tremendous motivation for me, and helps me get out the door. Yesterday morning, after my puttering around for a half hour or so - folding a load of laundry, having a snack, getting my road id on, and ensuring my iPod has juice - MasterP started his chant early, before I even had shoes on, and pushed me towards the door. "Go, go, gooo!" he crouched down and yelled through the window of the screen door as I walked out the carport, "Go, go, goooooo!" he yelled shutting the inside door.

Conversations from the past 10 days

With Husband:
1. 1:37 AM
"Honey, I'm sorry, but you've got to get up. I need your help - there's a really bad flood in the basement."
"Ok. I'm coming."
"I really need your help - it's really bad."
"Yup, I'm putting my clothes on. Where's the flood?"
"In the basement. In the corners. In my workshop. Outside. You'll see."

2. 1:40 AM
"Ok. So the corners are a trickle. I put some towels down. I think we're good."
"It's out here - look - the water keeps filling the window well and leaking into my workshop."
"Ok, well, give me the bucket, and I'll bail it."
"I've been bailing for the last hour."
"Well, how about you let me bail for a while now."

3. 3:30 AM
"You get some sleep. I'll bail now, and then when the kids wake up, I'll go to Home Depot when it opens at 7."

Gaah. That was fun. And wet. And really, really, really cold. But at least the basement stayed dry.

With MlleL:
"I can take my dish to the calendar."
"Thanks, honey."
"I can take ALL the dishes to the calendar."
"Wow, sweetie, you cleared the table - what a good helper you are!"
"It's my pleasure."

Heeeee.

With Mrs. Maiden:
"So next weekend, I'm getting the level 2 healing touch training. You can do it long distance, you know - anything going on with you???"
"uh, well, I went for a run yesterday, so my hips are sore...."

With Wondermom:
"So, I've been thinking, you know how you wrote that post about your voice?"
"uh-huh...."
"Well, I've been thinking about mine when I'm writing. How do you do it? Did you decide on a voice, or...."
"Well, I do think about how I'm going to word something, but pretty much, I like to think that the way I write is the way I talk."
Wondermom: "......."

(hee. I take that as no.)

In a reunion of the dirtiest carpool:
"You know, for argument's sake, and if situations were different, I'd let that big boy in my life."
"Really??"
"Oh, yeah, I mean, private jet? Wherever I like? Seriously, it's kinda a fantasy, you know?"
"yeah. There's another one about a pool, where he says it's time to get out but you don't need to use the towel, just let it air dry - I mean, it's nasty, but I like it."

Yeah, baby. Are you sure you don't want to take a job back at Phase 4? I'm pretty sure I could figure a way to work the condo into my route.....

Why's it so cold in here???

My dears.

There are several stories in my repertoire I like to think the catch phrases of inspire my audiences to request them again, for example, there is of course:
1. The story that involved the sentence "well, First Fiancé was a robotics engineer. He worked with……….well, as you can imagine, robots."; and
2. The story that included "Husband came home early to find him up our tree with a running chainsaw and liquor on his breath".

There are some stories best seen in person (like my sun).

And there was something that happened just last night that I think will, for
me, gain it's own little place on the list of favourites.

It starts, innocently enough, with me tidying up the always strangely cold family room. It has electric heat in there, and we frequently turn it on just to take the chill off, despite it having just the same amount of heat as the rest of the house.

I have long suspected it of poor insulation, the same suspicion I hold of the rest of the house, but this addition was built sometime in the 80s, so I would have thought it would be a tad warmer. No. The outside wall has always been remarkably cold. We can also strangely hear our neighbours close their car doors with surprising clarity.

In tidying up, I moved MlleL's craft/tackle box away from the wall and was surprised with the almost frozen quality of her paints. Very cold, they were. Very cold. And also, a bit stiff.

Strange.

So I felt around, and realized that the little hole our electrician/waiter friend had helped us remove the live wire from (hah, no, seriously, yes. It was a wire, poking out of the wall. She had had the couch on top of it.) in the trim was actually blowing cold air into the room. Sorta the reverse of say, the furnace.

I was very proud of myself for having found what I assumed to be the source of the problem, particularly after the success of shrink wrapping the upstairs windows (they're now almost clear!), and went off to find Husband to happily report what I thought might be able to be fixed with a can of Great Stuff (at least for now, until we think of a prettier way to deal with that room.)

It's down here, I said, behind the futon… We pulled it out. He felt the outlet. No, I said, pointing again to the little hole, about a toonie in diameter, here!

Leaning over the back of the futon, he pulled the spare portion of the mattress away from the wall to get a better look, and had to tug harder because the frost had stuck it to the wall.

Now let's just pause and read that last phrase again. The. Frost. Had. Stuck. It. To. The. Wall.

Now. I'm no Mike Holmes, but I am a big fan (hi, Mike!) and do watch the show, so I know that that? That's not right. Not right at all.

Fudgesicles.

PSA for lovers of the sun

All is not as it appears.

Running on the treadmill right next to our floor-to-ceiling terracotta styled sun on our basement wall (for those who haven't met me or seen it - it's more than you can imagine, almost 7 or 8 feet in circumference, with texture, an eyes, nose and mouth in a sort of southwest style and IT WAS HERE WHEN WE BOUGHT THE HOUSE.) I wondered at the flaking mud coloured paint.

And peeled it. Just a piece.

And discovered that under the mud coloured paint there lurks what appears to be blood fire orange tempera. Which explains the strange mottled appearance around the most textured bits - the flames, the nose, the mouth.

Which also means that the current colour scheme must have been a super-tricky plan to stage the basement to make it EVEN MORE ATTRACTIVE to potential offers.

Clever, clever girl.

My Summer Vacation

I'm back. As you know, I've spent the last week in the land of dial up. Also, Mrs. Maiden does not know about the blog. Both of which make for awkward posting.

First, the basics: We got there Saturday night, and left on Sunday morning a week later. The kids had a great time; MasterP, while not a great napper, didn't do too badly at night. Thankfully, we remembered the night lights and sound machine, as we discovered on our last trip that the remote village Mrs. Maiden lives in is both TOO DARK and TOO QUIET to sleep.

Berries were picked, beach time had (both at rocky beach and sandy beach), and campfires complete with s'mores were enjoyed. Auntie and Uncles adored. My Auntie could not come, as her doctor refused her request to drive the 18 hour trip on her own at 73.

Husband, Bigbrother and brother in law worked like dogs each day cutting down dead trees and pushing the bush back from where it had spent the past 3 years encroaching on the yard.

Addresses were not made. It was a little as if Marie Antoinette planned the memorial - except that there was pie and cookies instead of cake. But about 20 people came, and raised a glass, a fork, and some flags to Himself. And as MlleL said at the event, "He's the only grampa I miss, Mama." And also, while jumping on the bed and discussing things with our next door neighbor "I wish Grampa could come back from God." Reasonable sentiments, both.

But it was the discussion on the eve of the memorial that brought the most reflection for me on the way home. During planning what would happen the next day (which didn't), we discussed the house, and what would happen to it, in the vaguest of fashions. Would we come up? was asked of the three of us and our spouses.

Uh, we guess, was the answer. Shrugs and nods occurred. Mrs. Maiden expressed her fantasy where this would be the place we came to, piling in and taking the boats out for a paddle. Despite the probable reality that the week we return each year would be spent much the same way as it was this time - with the guys working like dogs to keep up the property and the wimmins entertaining kids and cooking, she wanted us so badly to say that this was where we considered our home to be.

But where is your home town? I had a professor say that it was where you graduated from High School. In which case then, South Haven is my home town. It's where I graduated (the first time). It's a nice place to visit. It's beautiful, but there's nothing. I really don't even know many folk I went to high school with - with the exception of High School Best Friend of the same name as me Katie B. (Now Katie H., but she'll always be Katie B. to me.)

Is it through length of connection to a place, or is it your future there? (But, Mrs. Maiden said, we've been coming here for 25 years!) Is it where you've finally decided to make your home as an adult? Where you've bought your house and had your kids?

Is it where you have the most emotional contacts made? Husband and I killed ourselves to get to the annual Beef Barbecue - a homecoming for the village and it's disparate children. We drove 13 hours (had to keep stopping to let the kids out of the car.) We got there after the dinner, and before the dance really got going. We walked up to the town hall, conveniently located at the end of the driveway, and into the dance hall, ready to say hello and let the kids run a bit before bedtime.

What we got was open mouthed stares. Not welcoming smiles, not waves, not even a hello.

Now. It's possible that they were in awe of our intelligence and good looks, but I'm not convinced. It's not like they wouldn't know who we are, for goodness' sake, there's not even 20 people who live in the village full-time. We've been coming there for 25 years, after all. Shouldn't be a mystery.

What had just happened was the only brown person at the event had just walked in. The Island is populated by Scotch descendants and Ojibwa. While they blend a bit more down island, up at the west end, they don't so much.

Is this my home town? I wouldn't say as much. I'm happy that Mrs. Maiden has a place that she feels so emotionally tied to, but me?

I had a nice time, and a good visit. Wasn't long enough with Bigbrother or Littlesister and her delicious husband. (Four days in three years isn't enough, Auntie M. - we are discussing a trip farther East in the next couple of years... stay posted.)

While all of those things are true, I'm glad to be home.

What we talked about doing...

yesterday was the Teddy Bear Picnic at the Governor General's. What we ended up doing was putting the kids down for their nap (out of the gutter - we're done with that!) donning our work clothes, safety glasses, and rubber gloves and stripping the deck. (or the duck, as MlleL calls it.)

It needed done, but the rapidly approaching MasterP's christening is apparently creating great impetus for home repair. That, and the sun - it seems like forever since we've had full sunny weekend days.

Today's list holds: morning mass as a practice run for the aforementioned christening (note to self: Dammit is not the appropriate thing to say when hearing there's a visiting priest and realizing that the practice run is in vain; that we are no closer to being able to recognize Father or know how he does baptisms than we were at 9:30 this morning), further prep of the duck, and painting the front door.

Finally, the purple will be gone!!! (Be warned, those of you who use this as a marker to tell which house is ours!)