Nom de Plume

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Our claim to fame is that she lived two houses down from us. Oh to be this close to glory! And we still live with her legacy: she reshaped the alley by dumping garbage into it for over thirty years.

Some of them make me want to weep with longing. Like Kiyoshi Saito’s Winter in Paris.

At The Ren Brown Collection.

I love the idea of tin ceilings. I just don’t know where in the house we would put them. Bathroom? Actually … hmmm … Can you can waterproof the tiles and use as a shower backsplash thing?

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Mine is humongous at this point, as I update it every few days. If there’s anyone out there who would like to use mine, let me know. I’ll e-mail it to you.

Slowly, slowly, the house is starting to come together.

Steve lugged home a massive drill from work and carved out “bubbles” in the concrete in the backyard to plant in. He probably spent about four hours jackhammering (with the “Brute”) and another four shoveling (with the “Truper”). It was a lot of work for two little holes. Meanwhile, Mirabella showed up unannounced on Saturday to clean–and we are still marvelling that the house has never been this scrubbed…

I spent most of the time tending to my plants. Planted cauliflower and cabbage starts, cosseted my seedlings. Tonight will transplant into larger pots. I also finally sanded down the floor in the back room and put the first layer of paint down. It is going to look FAB and I feel perfectly vindicated with my choice of colors. We’re going to move the bedroom in there for the summer, and redo the master bedroom and it’s going to be so nice and cool and airy.

The science behind cooking techniques explained. Not terribly interesting, though some of the recipes looked good.

Picked this up at the library for Steve because he is obsessed–obsessed being defined as having four distinct stands of the stuff in a single yard. (Our neighbors are going to hate us.) To be frank, I thought it would be interesting too. And I am sure it is, if you can get past the frightening prose: “The quite recent idea of universal education, now shared worldwide, is occuring at a time of unprecedented global population growth. Raw materials to make schools and to teach children to make and build and read and write in them are increasingly expensive …”

But the pictures were pretty.

This, from Roxanna. You know what they say about big ears …

I didn’t have to go to work today.

I didn’t have so much work.

The trim in the back room would magically spackle itself so I could get on with it. (I am a terrible spackler.)

The dog didn’t make me feel so guilty.

The floors in the house were refinished.

I were motivated to finish the trashy novel.

Well, really, my life’s not so bad.