Photo of the Day March 17th

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

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It was nice to share part of St. Patrick's Day with Sandy and Madison... I was tempted to try my hand at making green eggs and ham for them for breakfast but settled on green milk, bagels and kiwi for breakfast instead. It's a sure sign of where you are in life when the green beer of St. Patrick's Day is replaced by green milk in a plastic tumbler, isn't it? Sandy got an additional dose of green from the green garbage bags she took down to my basement and filled with things that needed to be thrown out - Sandy's an uber-organizer, and loves getting her hands on cluttered and/or messy spaces. I have one heck of a disorganized and messy space in my basement, and Sandy's been asking to get at it for years... during this visit she actually had a crack at it. It's one of those things that would take days of concentrated effort to really organize, but she (apparently) had a good time making a little dent in it, and has agreed to come back later in the spring or early in the summer to help us get organized for a yard sale. I've wanted to have a yard sale for years, but am overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we have tucked away in the basement... I can't figure out where to start. Thank God for Sandy, who seems to have a knack at cutting past the overwhelming nature of projects like this - I'm so grateful for her help, and I think she'd do well if she started a business helping others organize their lives... I see shows on TLC about people decluttering other's homes, helping horders sort out their lives, etc. and I'm sure that Sandy would kick butt doing that for people. Where do I go to pitch a television show idea about her skills?

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Photo of the Day March 16th

Sophie, Madison and Rhys wrap up their investigation of what's living near the compost bin (shiver)

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Sophie's in heaven today: she not only has her cousin Madison here but Rhys came over too - she woke up this morning practically glowing with excitement. She and Rhys got a special treat as the result of Madison being here, because when the kids were playing out in the yard she asked me if she could help them find bugs and worms. We got out rubber gloves for everyone and off around the garden they went, pulling up rocks and looking underneath, overturning logs, digging around by the compost bin and pulling out all manner of squiggly and squirmy things to "ooh!" and "ahh!" over. If you know anything about me at all, you'll know that this is an activity I will never do with the kids. You want to make a caterpillar out of an egg carton, I'm your girl - you want to create a spider out of pompoms and pipe cleaners I can help you out... but the real thing? Forget about it. I did manage to act excited when they brought "the biggest worm ever!!!" over so I could look at it... I even suggested they give it a cool name before sending it back to it's family. Of course, then I shivered and ran inside to wash my hands and say "blech!" without them noticing... but I played my part.

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Photo of the Day March 15th

Yes, I really did use that many bandaids...

Are you reading this world? Cause if so, here's what I need: I need someone to take our cat Georgie out of my house and give her a new home before I loose my mind. As I'm sure I've mentioned before, this cat and I do not get along... we rescued her from a farm when she was just a stone's throw from dying and bottle fed her back to health - you would think she'd be grateful. But she simply has it out for me - she's forever jumping out at me from behind things and sinking her claws into my leg, sitting on my chest while I'm sleeping and biting my face, etc. She loves Chris mind you - snuggles up to him any chance she can get... perhaps she thinks if she drives me out of the house she can have him all to herself. I've got to figure out a way to make her understand that there's only one Alpha female around this house and it isn't her... and I'd like to do it with as little bloodshed as possible. Clearly that won't happen today, as she's drawn some serious blood already: when the fire inspector arrived this morning I went to pick her up so she wouldn't scoot out the door and she went ballistic - claws shredding in every which direction. I've got three deep scratches on the backs of my arms and a lovely puncture wound in the palm of my hand - it made quite the impression when I answered the door holding blood-spotted paper towels on both my wrists I'm sure. "No sir, I'm no suicidal - homicidal perhaps, if that's what you call it when you want to kill a cat."

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Free to a good home: one very annoying cat who hates my guts. 1 year old and in possession of claws she knows how to use. Has the potential to be used as a weapon of mass destruction, but if you get on her good side you're laughing. Must be willing to keep cat alive, as the guilt of sending her away to "the big farmhouse in the sky" is too much for our family to handle. Serious inquiries only please - if you get my hopes up and then don't take her I'll have a nervous breakdown.

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Photo of the Day March 14th

We enjoyed dinner and a concert this evening, albeit an online concert instead of an in-person one. A friend of mine is a member of a fantastic Blue Rodeo tribute band called Blue Radio, and they performed a live show on Imagefm.ca tonight... so we set the table for dinner, browsed on over and pulled up the video feed, then ate our pasta while watching Greg and the band sing and play their hearts out. Great concert - the only downside was that I couldn't tell them in person how much we enjoyed it... applauding at the computer screen just didn't seem to work!

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After dinner we excitedly welcomed my cousin Sandy and her daughter Madison for a March Break visit... they can only stay a few days but we've been so looking forward to it - I anticipate many late-night conversations and card games for Sandy and I and lots of adventures for the kids. Certainly there are bound to be many more story times like the one shown above over the next couple of days... ah, March Break!

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Photo of the Day March 13th

I wonder if I could get him to sweep the dining room if I tossed him the broom and yelled "hurry hard!"?

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Chris went to St. Mary's to go curling this evening with a bunch of his coworkers, and had a blast. Two members of the group are experienced curlers and the rest are somewhere between novice-level and "what's that big puck thing?"... Chris has curled once before and enjoyed it, so he and his buddies had a great time figuring out how to make the rock go where they wanted while not falling over. There were reports of several curling injuries, including Chris's quite bruised knee from his gripper leg hitting the ice too hard while delivering the rock, but it won't stop him - he's already started looking up curling club memberships for next year.

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On another note, I had my first wine tasting for Luma events today! I was scheduled to run tastings for [yellowtail], offering samples of both their Chardonnay and Shiraz, and once I overcame a couple of minor challenges at setup everything went quite well. Apparently the LCBO had the 750ml size of the [yellowtail] Chardonnay on sale and as a result the location I was running the tasting at had sold out. I decided to put the 750ml of the Shiraz and the large size (1.5L) of the Chardonnay on the bar - and after sampling the wine customers purchased about 6 of each, so I suppose it worked out. I would be curious to know how the numbers would have changed if I had the 750ml available in the Chardonnay though. I'll be very interested to see how my next tasting goes since it's scheduled for later in the day - 11:30am is a bit early for most people to want to sample wine I think... I didn't get many positive responses until well after noon. Clientèle at the LCBO I was at seemed to be a roughly 65/35 mix of the 55+ crowd and college students, one of whom asked me if you "shoot" wine or not... it made for several interesting conversations!

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Photo of the Day March 12th

I spent quite a bit of time at Tecumseh today as there were several events going on that we wanted to include in our next newsletter. The last day of school before March Break is a good excuse to have some fun, so a movie day was scheduled as a fundraiser for the Me to We club, all the students were invited to dress as "tacky tourists" for March's spirit day, and a presentation was held in the library all about fossils. I've met the gentleman who ran the fossil presentation before, as he's done events at the local library that I've brought Sophie and some of my friend's children to. He has an amazing collection of very striking fossils (including the fish shown above) and is very knowledgeable about all things fossil related. It was a fascinating presentation, so it turns out I had an educational last-day of school before March Break too!

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Photo of the Day March 11th

After a busy day we spent the evening at Chris's sister Mary's place celebrating Ross's birthday. He's turning the big 9-0, although he certainly doesn't act it (a complement, I promise I'm not calling him immature!) We had a blast watching the kids play hide & seek around the house before singing the big song and watching Ross blow out his candles with a bit of help from Sophie - I caught them above having a serious conversation about blowing strategy shortly before the big moment.

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