Snip Snip Snip

To quote Bob Barker: Spay and neuter your pets. Today Louise is becoming gender-neutral. This is occurring a month earlier than we originally planned. But for good reason ... recovery time from the surgery is approximately 3 weeks and we need her completely healed before we hit the road. It's been 2 years since our last road trip. This fall, we are again going to board Great White and hit the road for 5 weeks. We are taking an extended vacation from Labour Day to Thanksgiving (which for us is October 12th). Our plan is to head to Seattle and then travel the west coast all the way down to San Diego. And you know what happens when you travel that stretch? You just happen to pass through 4 major league cities! If schedules coincide we will try to take in a ball game in Seattle, San Fransisco, Los Angelos and San Diego. More importantly, though, we just hope to relax and put the craziness of the last 2 years behind us. I plan to see things, read lots of books and knit. Harry plans to do the same, except he will substitute golf for knitting! In 13 days I'm off to meet Mom, Rochelle and Renee in Toronto for a whirlwind visit centered on knitting and baseball. And in 27 days, we leave for our holiday. Am I counting the days? Oh yeah!

August 1 Archive Import

August 1, 2009 HAPPY 55th BIRTHDAY, RENEE! (August 2) HAPPY 25th BIRTHDAY, Grace! (August 2) HAPPY 27th BIRTHDAY, Genny! (August 6) It’s the first weekend in August and here in Canada, that means a long weekend (we have Monday off). It is called the August Long Weekend. Brilliant, eh? Technically, I think Monday is Heritage Day – a day we celebrate our multi-culturalism. There are only three months in the year when we don’t have a long weekend: March or April (whichever doesn’t have Easter), June and November. We have decided it’s "Purge Weekend". We rented a garbage bin and we are purging. We’ve been here for 6 years now and it’s amazing how things accumulate. Today (Saturday) Harry went out to Langdon to help build an enclosed back porch at John & Linda’s. I attacked the basement. I emptied all the storage shelves, cleaned re-organized and tossed. Then I moved on to the guest room closet and the little "kitchenette", cleaning and tossing along the way. Last I attacked my sewing/craft area. Bagged up all sorts of fabric bits, craft bits, and yarn bits for GEMS to use in their crafts. It’s a bit of a contradiction: I don’t accumulate things in general EXCEPT when it comes to sewing, yarn and craft items. I keep all sorts of little bits thinking it might be useful sometime!! It’s a good thing I chose to work in the basement since it was screamingly hot here today … 32C or 90F. Yeah … that’s hot for here! I know: suck it up princess! Tomorrow (yes, we are dropping out of church, society , etc for the WHOLE weekend … naughty us.) we are cleaning the yard. Some of the bushes in our raised beds have contracted bugs of some sort in a big way and they are dieing. Trip to the local garden centre confirmed we best tear them out completely rather than infect the rest of the garden. We’ll be digging out bushes and re-planting something new. Other areas are a bit overgrown and need some thinning out and pruning back. Monday will be the toughest day. We’re attacking the garage which has been the active depository for the past year and a half. In the process, we’re going to force J&L to take the few things they still have stored in our garage. To paraphrase mom: "Outta my garage!"