Pushing Daisies

While I may have the necessary skills to re-create a cotton t-shirt with exposed seams (like the ones sold here), I'm afraid I've found a dress I may actually have to buy. Sigh. I've been watching alot of Pushing Daisies, a whimsical little dark-comedy show that ran for a few seasons. The styles on the show are all retro-cute



and has me salivating for upcoming summer so I can wear this:


I'll have to put it in my budget :)

Update: They have it in purple!! Sealed deal.

Spring Awakening

I know the flowers and gardens have been in bloom in Vancouver for a month, but out on this coast we usually get snow storms until the end of March. Fortunately, the frozen winter is slowly giving way...the last week has seen temperatures regularly jump up into the positive digits. Due to routine maintenance in my building on Wednesday we were without water, so I didn't go to work. Still rose really early (7 am), had breakfast with a friend (8-9 am), drove my husband to work and then took to the dog to Hometown to run errands, see another friend and have lunch with my mom. Mid-day, it was about 6 or 7 degrees Celsius, and on my way back to the village at about 3 pm, the gloriously warm sun was glistening off the puddles made by the melting snow. It was brilliant, and lifted my mood incredibly.

I stopped off at the fabric store to try my hand at creating clothing inspired by this etsy seller. I ended up with 3.5 metres of a mustard coloured knit (I found in the bargain bin) and matching thread for about $10, but the process of choosing the fabric was amazing. Everything in the store was extraordinarily beautiful, amplified by my good mood no doubt. I marveled at the whimsical patterns and the lovely textures. I oohhed and aahhed over the patches and the buttons and the zippers. I chatted with the man who was probably in a work-placement position reorganizing the bargain bin and then recognized the cashier as a childhood friends mother.

The sunlight has recharged my good mood battery. The last few days were rough at work, and I was so happy to have a mid-week day off. I'll post a picture of the shirt when I finish!

Metrics

Driving back in the snow-storm the other night, husband and I were discussing the qualities necessary for pop songs to have staying power. This was in response to a Red Hot Chilli Peppers piping over the radio waves. Although we both agreed it was thoroughly overplayed in its heyday, it completely hit the spot (musically) on Sunday evening. I think one of the reasons is the subtle, dark imagery of the lyrics, which sit just under a sugary coating of a pop rhythm chorus. Coal hearts have staying power.



On an unrelated note, I made green lentil-chicken-curry with a peanut sauce (without a recipe) last night and it was FANTASTIC! The problem is that, as my cooking skills improve and I explore locally sourced or organic food blah blah blah, hubby is not cooking. While this is fine now, I may become bitter if/when we have babies, because I don't want to be doing it all. And I don't want to be eating fried steak with chopped potatoes slathered in butter every night. So we decided last night to even out the cooking duties now in order to thwart any bitterness later. We all know coal hearts have staying power.

One Sunday

Yesterday afternoon I spent three hours outside playing in the snow. Something I haven't done in a decade probably. My husband, his two siblings, his brother's finacee, and his sister's son.

We made a fort. That turned into an igloo. That got a chimney. And a mini snowman sentinel.

I carved a mermaid in the snow, and gave her hair (ie sticks from the ditch). Got coloured water and made her tail green. Took pictures before she melted away.

We chased the dog around the igloo/garage/sculpture. My nephew (3 years old) would throw himself down, stomach first, into the fresh snow, and eat it. It would become bubblegum, or sometimes ice cream.

There was a slide, and a "crazy-carpet" thing (but better), which we would pile onto (two adults, or one adult and one child, or sometimes one adult and one poor puppy). We went down head-first, or standing up, or on our backs. Once my husband even climbed the garage and slid down the roof into a snow bank.

Then we piled inside, ate some nice warm seafood chowder, and played games until 11 pm. We drove back home in a mini snow storm that quieted down just as we pulled into the village. From our driveway, my husband could see the utility light he had left one in the barn. So we went together, in the hush of new snow and bright moonlight, to the barn. He had spent many hours cleaning up a section of it, and in that warm golden light it transformed into a magical place (one of many here at this house).

Last year, when we decided to move back "home", it was to relish these luxuries - a Sunday family visit & a home so enchanting it makes me jealous of myself. Love love love.

tossing and turning

This week is money week. I've started watching all EIGHT seasons of this reality program called "Til Debt do Us Part" which is basically about a hard-nosed (and curiously accented) host slapping consumer-driven Canadian couples from their debt-riddled lives. Since this is the first time in my life I have had a predictable incomes AND predictable expenses, I've taken the advice to heart. I've made budgets several times over, and actually stayed AWAKE a few nights ago, fretting about our financial future. Which is utterly unnecessary, since unlike the couples featured in the show who are routinely one full year of dual income-worth in debt, we have relatively little. The real eye-opener is that my scratchings on paper have told me we could pay off our mortgage ENTIRELY by the time our five-year term expires, by contributing $2000.00 a month to our mortgage. Ask someone in Toronto whether 2000.00/month for two people is impossible. It certainly is NOT impossible. It is certainly appealing to this young gal, who once had her heart set on mortgage-free living.

As I see it, interest rates can really only go one way from this point on. What if in five years our reasonable, locked-in rate of 5% jumps into the double digits? It has happened before, it will happen again. My mom was telling me about one of the mortgages she had before divorcing my dad and filing for bankruptcy. Fret fret fret.

Again, we I thought we lived frugally. But I think we could be doing better. The complication is that last week, before the budget bingeing started, I called the mortgage lady to ask for money for home renovation. The demolition is chugging along, and hopefully before the snow melts entirely we will be ready to have electricians and plumbers help with our best laid plans. Since we have excellent credit and moderately good incomes, I think we will be approved. The question of course is whether we should go for it if we are. Last week I was sincerely and completely in the "no shit, abslutely" camp. The downstairs is a wreck, gutted without a proper kitchen and NO INSULATION means we are paying out the nose for heating this winter. I don't want to spend the next 24 months fixing it. I want to spend six months fixing in it and then 18 months paying for it. But at the expense of paying years more on the mortgage? We are teetering on "maybe not such a good idea, don't-spend-it-until-you've-got-it"now. Or at least I am. Hubby probably thinks I'm two parts crazy & one part hormonal.



Ask me next week, I'll likely expound on the virtues of different flooring options. I am a tad spastic with my obsessions. *breathe*

Monday Humming

I woke up this morning in a super-grumpy mood. Not aiding this fact: I had a Paula Abdul song stuck in my head. "Straight Up", which was introduced into my unconscious by a friend Saturday night, explaining his visit with family. "It's like I never left. They watch Amercian Idol, Survivor or movies all day. But now the TV has gotten bigger-it's like a 102" or something". He mentioned a surprising performance on Idol, a acoustic rendition of Straight Up by LA artist Andrew Garcia, that made him question why the guy was on the program in the first place. I didn't seek out the video until this morning, in an attempt to dislodge the song. He was right, it is pretty impressive.




Somehow, this acoustic version of Straight Up morphed into another earworm; "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley. I recently heard a cover of this song by Alice Russell, played during a kitchen dance party at a friends' place. I was checking out her stuff on youtube a few weeks when I came across this uplifting little ditty:



Sure helps with the mood.

In this new age

The amount of amazing art and music and creative-ness that I run across on the internet has me more attuned to how the biggest, bestest library in the world can help artists reach a larger audience. And what my role as a consumer of this art is. It reminds me of a post I read almost two years ago on a blog by writer/actor Wil Wheaton. He expands on a notion first written about by Kevin Kelly.
"A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living...Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day's wages per year in support of what you do. That "one-day-wage" is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that. Let's peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks."
Maybe it is because I'm a scientist at heart, but I often try to quantify the meaning of beautiful art or music in my life directly, and $100/year seems like a bargain. Something to think about in my quest to simplify life & material goods, and spend more time/effort/money of things that matter to me. Food. Art. Music. Family. Wine :)

where I explain what happens when hubby doesn't work

My husband, being a carpenter often employed in replacing windows or completing additions to homes, requires a minimum outdoor temperature to make the occupants comfortable while this happens. He is usually laid off during the coldest months of the year, regardless of who he is working for (or in what city). So for the past tree weeks, he hasn't been going to work. As a result, our schedule has gotten incredibly wonky. Average time arriving to work is probably 11 am. One luxury of my job is that I can make my own hours. Being a recent grad, I am paid with a government grant for placement among industry, and I was told the grant covered five 7-hour days. (NB: recently informed I'm under the grant value, so I can log more hours if I feel like a pay boost). When I work these 35 hours is entirely up to me. I could work 12 hours on Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday and have Thurs-Fri-Sat-Sun off if I wanted to. Lots of molecular biology techniques don't work that way though, so mostly I stay consistent and go in dutifully everyday. With the alarm clock decommissioned, I lazily wake around 9 am, hang out with the dog, shower and then get out to work around 10:30-11 am. The past week I've been staying from 11 am-7pm at work with one hour lunch (around 3:30 it seems). Late dinners are not cumbersome these days thanks to the all-day-cookfest I undertake on Sunday. We eat alot of soup. Last night was a three-bean salad (that tastes better the longer it marinates-yum!) and some (formerly frozen) pork souvlaki I cooked that morning while showering.

Evenings are varied-Tuesday a Nobel Peace Prize winner gave a talk at the university. Wednesday nights are vegetarian/gluten-free/lactose-free potlucks with a half dozen girlfriends, where we consume wine and talk about books, fashion, sex, food and boys (and radio shows, taping birch trees and unemployment insurance). Friends visit the farm and we make good use of the snowshoes gifted to us for Christmas-we went walking in the snow on Saturday, Sunday and again yesterday. My legs are sore from walking so bow-legged.





With no job, hubby is able to tackle the demo downstairs. It is a fine balance between using his free labour while it is available and removing the air barrier (ie plaster) from our walls, effectively exposing ourselves to the cold harsh winter outside. We are averaging $500 month in oil, and that's with the thermostat set to a balmy 12 Celsius. This is what the downstairs looks like these days:




We have narrowed down a floorplan for downstairs, including an open concept kitchen-dining-living room. The front parlour will become a library, and we will add a half-bath and mudroom in the current kitchen location (as well as lots of currently lacking closet space and pantry space). I've contacted the bank to explore financing options related to inceasing the mortgage, as we would prefer to do the bulk of the work in the next 18 months with loaned money instead of a slow renovation over many years. But that may not fly, and we may have to fund it ourselves with tax returns and line of credit. There are pros and cons to each method, so I am okay with whatever works out in the end.

Oh, and I turned 26 years old. My friends threw a surprise sushi party. Awesome!

I got a doggie:

and she's cute.