"Good evening, shoppers. There is a seniors' special in Aisle 7."

When I bought this a few weeks ago, Randal said out loud what I had been secretly fearing in my heart - that a day-of-the-week pill dispenser is what old people buy. Yup, this is now the only way I can keep track of what day it is - Tuesday: have I had my pills yet today? (Don't worry; I took this photo yesterday - yes, I know today is Wednesday.)

sigh - I'm sure Depends, dinner at 4 p.m., and people ceding their seat to me on the bus is not far behind.*


Something else to which I have resorted in my old age: liquid diets:


Yeah, OK, maybe not.

Jerome and Nadia came over the weekend before last with a bunch of things they had brought back for us from my parents' house in Toronto, and to thank them, we made cream soda ice cream floats. They were so pretty! And tasty, too. As if that needs to be pointed out.


Finally, I am now going to post what is hopefully the last photo with snow in it for this winter.**

Compare last week Tuesday with this week Tuesday:



There's hope yet, no?


* Seriously, though, I am currently on anti-coagulants for a blood clot I suffered on the flight home from Egypt (yeah, as if going to Egypt in January wasn't exciting enough on its own), and I have to take a different amount of pills most days, so in my defence, this really is the only way I can keep track. At least, that's what I will tell the social services people when they try to cart me away to a long-term care home.

** Dang. I just jinxed myself real good, didn't I?

"ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR---!"

Darth Vader discovers what the Emperor does all day long, sitting alone in the Death Star.

I'm sure if the Emperor had any real colour left in his skin, he'd be blushing right now.

It's beginning to look a lot like...

At least I didn't wait till Saint Paddy's Day to take the tree down this year.

No, sirree! It came down on March 13, a full 4 days earlier! (This picture, and others from the night before.)

For those of you who care to track these things, that's a full 8 days earlier than last year.

Yay me!

Oh, and you know what my reward for taking the tree down was? THIS:



Yeah, more snow. That was last Tuesday, AFTER a period of melting. This past weekend, more melting,* but then, what did today give us? You got it: MORE SNOW.

*sigh*

I hear they are looking for a law librarian in the Bahamas. ...À propos of completely nothing.

* or so I hear. I was in Toronto. It was lovely, shirt-sleeves weather there. Hey, Mom and Dad! You sure you want to move to this frozen outpost???

Be careful what you wish for...

OK, the extreme snow has sucked. But on the other hand, the extreme rain that we got overnight last night plus some heavy-duty melting today...has not led to green grass but rather, extreme wet socks and doggy paws.



Another week of Yuck, and we might be good. However, I hear it's supposed to snow again on Sunday.

After today's squooshing walk through the snow*, I'm not sure if that's actually a bad thing anymore. We could use some snow to fill in those horrid wet spots. *sigh*


* Or rather, the white substance bearing a passing resemblance to snow which actually is a front for a peculiarly Canadian springtime torture device called the Footwear Ultra-Soaker.

"UNCLE!"*

It's almost mid-March, and despite having its usual less-than-humane temperatures for most of the winter months, Ottawa is experiencing the bulk of its winter NOW. It's been largely (snow)packed into the last week and a half.



Our car, after a week and a half of non-use. It took us well over 40 minutes to shovel the darn thing out. And that, despite not even having a driveway to shovel as well! There was a thick layer of snow, then a thick layer of heavy slush from some mid-week freezing rain, then another thick layer of snow. First we shoveled around the front and along the two sides. Then we swept the bulk of the snow off the top of the car. This led to us then having to shovel around the front and sides again. In the meantime, it was starting to lightly snow. We did a second sweep of the car and then - yup, you got it - had to shovel around and in front a third time. We didn't even shovel out the back part of the space. I figure we don't really need to access the trunk before spring. (*sob*)

So, just in case you live in southern Ontario or somewhere else where they are actually starting to see green grass and crocuses, here is a reminder what the rest of us Canadians are still doing:



Icicles hanging off the front of our house. We get these every year...though usually in January!



Me, carefully picking my way across the icy sidewalk earlier this week.



Rion resting on a picnic bench after a swim through the deep snow in the park.



Our backyard. There's a garden waiting, somewhere way deep down.


See more at Flickr.


* a.k.a. "Please send backup."

Dog Wearing Hat: A (Thankfully) Short-Lived Series

I don't know if Rion can look any sadder than this.



Oh, wait - yes, he can.




Explanation: My mom was here over the Family Day weekend in mid-February. She'd brought a bunch of things for me. This felt hat, which she had made for one of my Cabbage Patch Kids when I was a kid as part of a medieval outfit, somehow got mixed into the bag of stuff. It was perfectly doggy-sized. Rion was ecstatic when he saw that my mom took the hat back with her to Toronto.*

* He better not get too comfy in his current hat-less state. She is moving here this fall, after all, so that hat just might make its way back onto his head.

pixxiefish in the sea: The HGTV Edition

Our basement is half-finished, and the main room has some exercise equipment (an elliptical machine which, yes, I do use sometimes, and a bunch of free weights which I don't touch but Randal has been known to), as well as an old desk of mine, our old TV, an area that I keep intending to use for sewing and other crafts, and all of our tools.

There's just one problem.



It's a mess and has been in various stages of mess for the last 3 years.

Tools here are on the left, and my sewing area on the right. It doesn't look sooooo bad, but that's mostly because I'd already pulled a few things out of the way before remembering to take a picture. Trust me - it was bad. The sewing area, not so much, but we couldn't find a single tool without a huge hunt. In fact, Randal had taken to keeping many tools in his computer room upstairs, so that we could actually find them when we needed them!

Saturday afternoon, I worked up the motivation necessary to finally, properly organize this space.




We bought some great resin shelving from Costco and I put 4 out of the 5 shelves in the tools area. Now we actually have space to store our tools properly!*




We moved the (old) TV from a side wall where it had languished for the past two years, to a wall facing the elliptical machine. Fancy that - I can now go on the elliptical machine and actually watch TV without having to crane my neck at a 45-degree angle!**




Look! I can see my desktop! I even got really ambitious and finally hung the shelf that had been sitting, waiting to be hung, on the table for 3 years. And look! There's even room on the shelf for more junk!

There's still a lot to be done, including the second half of this room (which is partially done but not ready for the Big Reveal yet, but I am so happy we finally got around to this. For more magnificence/detail, click on any of these photos to go to my Flickr site.



* The former "tool cabinet" was housed in an array of bins and bags that lived in an old TV stand that the former tenants had left behind. After 3 years of trying to make it functional, it has now finally met the garbage truck.

** Note to self: Go on elliptical machine. Now.