Blizzarding!
Growing up in the middle of the snow belt, I saw this kind of thing on a regular basis. Sometimes, it would last weeks and my siblings and I would start to feel claustrophobic in our big, yellow brick farm house.
This tree line at my parents place was, for a while this afternoon, the end of our visibility. We have neighbours across the road we could no longer see.
Now that I’ve gone and become citified I miss snow storms.
Nails!
My nails usually look something like this:
I am terrible about chewing my fingernails. My fingers just naturally end up in my mouth (probably a hold-over from my thumb-sucking days) and as a result, they end up jagged and chewed, if not bleeding and sore. If I’m careful and paint my nail every other day, I can manage to grow them and keep them nice for about two months, but then they soften, break and lose their pristine look after the first time they require clipping. I give up pretty fast.
For Christmas this year, my mom ended up with a pack of fake nails at the end of a gift exchange game we played with her side of our extended family. After she put her on there was a set left over which she, generously, offered to me and subsequently, helped me apply.
And you know what? So far, I really like them. I know they’re fake, but honestly, there’s no way I could get my own nails to look this good and be this strong. Take a look:
Maybe this is the way I should go? Instead of being so concerned about growing my own out and making them look nice, I can have instant good looking nails!
The end of a school term…
… always seems to be the hardest part of the term. I’m in exams, studying, pretending to study, outright not studying and everything just winds down into a loneliness that precedes Christmas. My cat is at my parents’ place for a while until I stop moving around so much and take extended weekends away from home. And now, my computer is Purolated to a Dell depot centre so my mouse button can be fixed (with 10 days left on the warranty no less!).
With my cat gone for even one day, I miss the closeness of another warm, living body.
With my computer gone, I miss the connection I had to the outside world.
(Granted, I’m on my old computer, the one that died a tragic death when the screen separated from the rest of the computer. I haven’t lost my connection all together. But crouching infront of the rocking chair that is supporting it’s broken body is not exactly the same as sitting downstairs in my comfy couch with the webcam on talking to M through Skype.)
And, honesty, I miss going to class. Who would think I would ever say that? But this term, I’ve had the best classes when it comes to friend count. My English classes contain friends I’ve known for years. My music classes proved to be really easy classes to make friends in. My film class was always pretty lonely, but it was a less than stellar class all ’round.
I can’t wait for Christmas to come and having people around me all the time again.
(Of course, by the end of it all, I may very well be wanting the exact opposite…)
The Driving Tourist: Ottawa!
A story:
The administration of my elementary school made some very very poor choices. There’s always a grade 7 trip. For years, it was to Quebec City. My sister, five years older than me, went there. For my brother, three years older, they downgraded somewhat to Ottawa. I was disappointed that they stopped doing Quebec City, but I was still excited about the idea of Ottawa. And finally, it was my turn.
They sent us here.
No, I’m not kidding. Someone along the line decided it would be a good idea to fore go teaching us about Canadian culture or history and instead stuck us in graffitied cabins with gross bathrooms and made us sing camp songs and do arts and crafts and climb ropes.
As a result, born and raised in Canada, and Ontario at that, at the age of 22, I had never seen the parliament buildings. Seriously, I got ripped off.
So, when M and I had one of his family Christmases near Ottawa, I requested a drive-by.
The teeny tiny Canadian flag on top looks kind of funny. But, there she is!
The angel watching over the soldiers on the cenataph.
We stopped once to look at Quebec.
Quebec!
And then, we drove around the wasted space that is the aviation museum.
Lots and lots of little planes.
Even though we kind of faked out as tourists, it was a lot of fun. JO, a friend of ours on a co-op term in Ottawa came along, and it was really good to see him and hang out again. M and I decided Ottawa is a nice city and, despite being really far away from everyone, probably preferable over the blob that is Toronto.
Psst: TD customers
TD is offering one of those programs that I can’t imagine people saying no to.
For every debit transaction you make, they’ll move a set amount (50 cents to 5 dollars, your choice) from your chequing account to your savings account. And, once you’ve moved $100 to your savings account that way, they’ll give you $10.
I asked her what the catch was. She said there was none. I signed up.
Of course, it just seems natural to me. I love to save. The majority of my money sits in my savings account, collecting the little bit of interest it can. And my RESP… I’m in my last year, but I have yet to clean it out. If I can get one more month of interest, I will!
Hmm… maybe I’ve taken after my Dutch forefathers a little too much if $10 every 50 transactions has me excited…
This is the havoc trying to write an essay in 10 hours causes
Can you find all of the following items in this picture?
1. An afghan, keeping all of me but my fingertips warm, because the thermostat drops the heat in the middle of the day and I’m too lazy to fix it.
2. Three cups of coffee, represented by one mug.
3. Three books on Ben Jonson.
4. Five journal articles on child loss poetry, bereavement, Katherine Philips and again, Ben Jonson.
5. One Dollar store short stemmed wine glass that has seen the suicide of three therapeutic candles.
6. One page of scrawled notes.
7. One phone in the hopes that someone might call, text, or distract in some other way.
8. General other messiness, indicative of 1 month of no de-cluttering.
9. One laptop that is my life and contains a 7.5 page essay that just won’t become 8 pages.
Vacation suggestions
M and his best man are thinking about going on a trip for reading week. It’s our last reading week and neither of us have ever taken the opportunity to go somewhere. I’m probably not invited along on this trip though, so my best friend and I are thinking about going somewhere ourselves, someplace new and exciting just for a few days.
She wants to go to New York. I’m ok with that. New York could be fun. But I’m not into high end designers and Broadway is too expensive for me. New York intimidates me with its skyscrapers and scary taxi drivers. Why would we go if we’re not willing to spend a lot of money on this trip?
So, I’m asking for suggestions! If you could take off for an extra long weekend, buy a last minute flight somewhere you’ve never been before, where would you go? Or, if you were going to New York with no money, what would you do?
What’s next?
Every time I start researching and writing a paper, I wish I were on a career track that led to academia. That led to reading and thinking and writing.
But I’m not.
Next semester, I will be writing my last research essay of the foreseeable future.
A Pekoe Story: Part II
I realized I never updated from this post. Everyone who really cares knows the end result anyway, but I figure it’s time for me to talk more about my cat anyway.
I took my boy to the vet. Got a good lecture about the flea collar I had on him (the vet was concerned about the well being of the children I might one day want to have. You know, poison in me, passes to poison in them. Something like that.) And a lecture about putting Pekoe on a tether in the back yard. (He must have felt like a sitting duck out there! Absolutely miserable!) And a conclusion that the throwing up was likely caused by a hair ball (here, have tuna flavoured laxative!) and the peeing was probably behavioural and I should trust Pekoe enough to let him out and officially be an inside outside cat.
So, he is. Officially. My roommates are happy, because they no longer have to fight to keep him inside when they leave the house. There have been no repeat performances of the inappropriate peeing and the only times he’s thrown up, there’s been grass in his vomit. And Pekoe is pretty much perfectly happy. He goes out, sometimes at 10 o’clock at night, spends the whole night chasing shadows in the backyard and the neighbour’s backyard, has probably made a few friends, and comes back when I step out onto the porch to call him the next morning.
His paws look like this now:
See all that dirt and the cracks? He’s no soft-paw anymore! But he’s way more cuddly and actually sleeps through the night when he choses to spend it indoors!
In other kitty news, the other cat I called mine left my parents’ house one day and never came back like she usually does. But, I’m ok with it. It’s a fitting way for this particular girl to go. But that’s a story for another day.
Lady Grey, ~2004-2009
Mmm… chili in a crock pot
My favourite kitchen gadget is my crock pot. I went without one for the first two years I lived on my own off campus and I know how I did it, but I wish I hadn’t.
One day, almost two years ago, shortly after I moved into the place I live in now, I noticed the grocery store had some stock of kitchen gadgets in. They don’t always, so when they do, I like to peek at what I could have: the coffee makers, blenders, rice cookers, toasters, crock pots, deep fryers. I wanted a crock pot. Pretty badly actually. But they’re way to big for me. What am I supposed to do with 5 or 6 quartz of soup? I am one person with freezer space shared between four completely unconnected people. I can neither eat that much food nor store it.
And then, I saw it. Two quartz of delightful cuteness for less than $15. A small crock pot, perfectly sized for me! I couldn’t resist. I brought it home, imagining the soup, the chili, the stews I would make in it. I borrowed a crock pot cook book from my mom, planning to expand my repertoire beyond the standards.
Of course, things didn’t work out that way, exactly… As much as the crock pot industry might want you to believe it saves time, it really doesn’t that much. You still have to put the work into preparing food to cook. A crock pot is just an oven you can leave on when you leave the house. While in school, I tend to gravitate towards quick and easy: stir frys, chicken fingers and fries, prepackaged meat pies, plenty of granola bars, clementines and pears. And coffee. My eating habits aren’t the healthiest. And while working, I don’t have time to throw together a chili in the morning to cook for 8 hours while I’m at work.
So, my crock pot sat in its cupboard, pulled out occasionally, mostly on Sundays so that soup can cook while I’m at church, smelling delicious and perfectly warm and ready to eat when I get back. And then, I got Tuesdays and Thursdays off this semester.
Perhaps it’s a way of procrastinating. Or maybe it’s just a way for me to enjoy my morning. But I’ve been finding myself more often waking up, eating breakfast and cooking. Last week, I cut up and fried some pork, mixed it with left over mashed potatoes, a can of creamed corn, broth, and a (bad) combination of spices to make corn chowder. (Unfortunately, the addition of onion soup mix made this a complete flop. I’m going to try to save the leftovers somehow… for now, they’re freezing.) The week before that, I made a (slightly imperfect) chili. (I learned the importance of tomato paste.)
The best part about all of this: the crock pot makes enough for about four servings for myself. Even if M is around, I’m still left with half a crock pot of good food after we’ve both had our fill. I throw it in old yogurt containers and freeze it in my fridge. When I feel like using my crock pot again, I pull something out, add whatever is appropriate and in my pantry and conveniently have four more servings, two of which go right back into the freezer!
M has a big crock pot, 6 or 7 quartz I think. I’ve done a small ham in my small crock pot, but I’m kind of looking forward to having a bigger one to try things like a roast, slow cooked in beer, or a whole chicken.
Do you have any favourite crock pot recipes?
