Inadequate Materials

Like everyone else trying to avoid the current state of the world, I spend too much time on Pinterest. Whoever came up with this site is a genius. It’s the perfect way for serial procrastinators to believe they’re doing something productive. At this very moment I have 1879 projects pinned and waiting to be completed. In the handful of years since I started pinning, I have completed approximately 6 Pinterest projects. Perfect crime. On a related topic, if you are a procrastinator or general scatterbrain, I highly recommend this podcast . It will present you with countless handy habit-changing strategies that you can tuck away in your brain to either try or ignore. It’s basically Pinterest for your ears. Anyway, while pinning projects I know full well I'm never going to get around to, I've come across a few mugs that really speak to where I am in life. Case in point: If there's one thing that makes up for the wrinkles and chin hair that happen after 40, it's...

And poof! Just like that, spring break is over. Don’t feel too badly for me. For reference, this is what spring break looks like in my neck of the woods: Those snow banks are so high, it’s getting to a point where I can’t see the neighbours anymore. Which, to be honest, is exactly how I like it. But that’s not the point. My 13 year-old had three days at a fantastic autism day camp where he had the time of his life, and spent the rest of the break raiding the fridge. My 15 year-old spent the week alternatively holed up in his pit of a bedroom writing code, hanging out with his friends, and raiding the fridge.  It has just dawned on me why there’s never anything in the fridge. The other exciting event of spring break: That’s a full tub of homemade Instant Pot Yogurt splashed all the way from the kitchen to the plasma car (why do we still have a plasma car?!). I won’t rat on who caused that calamity, but I will give you a hint. He’s in the pictu...

Are blogs even a thing anymore? Let’s find out! A couple of times a week, I think about this abandoned blog. I didn’t simply forget about it one day and leave it behind. I just couldn’t quite get the posts right anymore. It took a while for me to realize that the blog and my life have outgrown each other, and if things are to ever move forward, one of us is going to have to change. The bad news is that I can’t go back to having toddlers. And there is not a sad enough emoji in existence to express how I feel about that one. Once I could talk about two year-olds smearing poop on the walls, playing soccer naked, and generally being hilarious. Now I have teenagers. And anyone who was ever a teenager knows that it’s not cool to violate their privacy all over the internet, whether anyone’s reading or not. And besides, teenagers aren’t hilarious. They’re horrifying. So, just like in real life, I’m going to have to switch gears here and focus on me. I’m burning this thing to ...

Well, I've already started to backslide on my blog. But what can I say? Those last couple of weeks of school are CRAZY! I have an iron or two in the fire that I'm hoping to share in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Canada celebrates its 150th birthday today! We contemplated celebrating our first Canada Day in the area by going downtown and checking out the festivities, but as it's such a big one, and as we'd be dragging along an autistic tween with crowd and noise issues, and a surly teenager with embarrassing parent issues, it seemed like more of a punishment for us than a celebration. So we decided to stick to the activities available to us in the immediate vicinity, which are actually plentiful and impressive. You know what else is plentiful and impressive? The RAIN we're getting this grey, miserable Canada Day! Here's a look at an hour-by-hour forecast of what we're in for today: Universe, strike me down now! It's Canada's 150th birt...

After we had to let Finnegan go (and I swear I'll stop talking about this soon. Every time I start a new blog post, it seems to come out again. This is cheaper than therapy.), I must have been suffering from some residual guilt or something, because I got into this mode where I was obsessed with making life more luxurious for my remaining two pets. So, off to the sewing machine I went and made new beds for them. Then I went a step further and decided that the cat needed me to convert an old IKEA table into an activity station for him, with his new bed underneath. Here is what that looked like: Note that there is no sign of the cat anywhere in this picture. That is the normal state of his activity station/bed. Instead, this is where the cat can generally be found at any given time of the day or night: On someone else's bed. Under a completely different table, surrounded by clutter. On the floor, in Finnegan's old spot. In the la...

With a big cross-country move comes some big changes. I spent my last three years in Manitoba substitute teaching at the kids' school. Returning to work on a part-time basis was literally the best thing I could have done for my mental health, and I miss it a great deal. Unfortunately, there are factors that make getting onto a sub list here difficult. We'd need a second car, I'd need some kind of backup child care plan for my youngest, and not being bilingual here really limits me, to name just a few. So it looks like that goal will have to wait a while. But fear not! You know me. I roll with the punches! To keep myself busy, I have been working VERY slowly on getting our boring newly-build house looking like humans actually live in it (the kids and pets have been doing their part by systematically demolishing the finish on the hardwood floors). And what I've lost in hireability here, I've gained tenfold in thrifting opportunities. This area of the country is an a...

This blog is like the abandoned amusement park at the edge of town. Most of the time it sits around collecting dust and looking sad, leaving passers-by to wonder if anyone has died there. And then, just when you think someone's going to come along, bulldoze the whole thing and build a new cookie-cutter neighbourhood, the old ferris wheel slowly lurches back to life in the middle of the night. Maybe if I had a van load of teenagers and a talking dog to sort things out, I'd have a working operation on my hands. So, I left you more than a year ago in buggy Manitoba. We are now back in good old Upper Canada, where life is rather different. I like to start with the bad news and then finish up on a high note, so here's the update: The title of my blog is no longer entirely accurate. Back in March, we had to have our 16 year-old dog Finnegan put down. Despite having the blood work of a puppy right to the bitter end, he'd been suffering with increasingly severe arthritis si...