Infinite Possibilities.

What? Have I done it again? I truly am sorry. I lose interest, then I come back. This usually coincides with creative cycles (whatever those are) in my life.

Anyway, enough rambling, here I am (tada!).

My readers, all eighty-three thousand one hundred and four of them, must have all gone astray. They have vanished. I am sitting in this big white room full of echo. Good. Finally some privacy.

Only Little Person Living Inside My Head is still here, and she is safely tucked away in her little condo, which I have built entirely out of bamboo, banana leaves and beach rocks. She is currently sleeping. So I'll whisper, now, if you don't mind. I'll whisper to myself.

So - I'm stuck. Maybe that's why I came here. I have choices to make, and no idea where to start. We're painting the new abode, which I am sharing with my husband (yeah, I know, right?) and we have settled on a very nice, calm but happy green for the dining room. But now, I am looking and looking and lifting rocks to look under them and shuffling aside pages and pages of the internet...to no avail. Nowhere to be found is the "zap" of sudden unadulterated inspiration which makes me rush to the store to get that colour. Where are my colours?

Benefits of Having Too Much Time on Your Hands When You live Alone with Two Cats and an Obnoxious Cyclops Pink Dog Doll.

Greetings, you bunch of Cutesy-Pies,

You must concur - that was the longest blog post title ever. Love it, right? Me too. It is way past my bed time, and I cannot sleep, so I figured “what the heck – I’ll show them what I am thinking of working on tomorrow because I need a project and I’ve been putting this off for way too long”. Intrigued? Good. So am I (glad we agree on so many things, things are looking good between you and I. Maybe we should take this to the next level). Let’s see where this takes us.

Months ago, on a bright, sunny, awesome day on the south shore with my Most Loverly V, I ordered (well – she ordered) some fabric off eBay. A quick look, shall we?

Yum, right?  I think so, anyway. So I was ready to commit to a long project, go figure, and I decided quilting would be it. I actually thought of hand-quilting, but then I remembered only my sister has this kind of patience and goddammit, I have a sewing machine, so for my first quilting project, it would have to suffice. So here I am, almost a year later, and these one hundred and twenty-six squares of fabric have been sitting all alone in one of my craft drawers, silently moping and hoping one day, I would fondle them and assemble them into one crazy, awesome united entity, My First Quilt. Since I live in quite the confined quarters, my craft drawers are in my room, and I swear I could hear them scream at me at night. They would bellow at me from the fourth drawer, and although muffled, their yelps sounded awful. The drawers they live in are see-through, too. So in visual terms, it looked like this (can’t you just see them scream?):

 Then this guy (who lives on my bed between two striped cushions during the daytime, but totally gets his ass hauled to a pile in the corner of the room during the night, because he would just bite my ears off, I swear) started sniggering and generally projecting an unpleasant vibe:

So that was it. Tonight, I got home after a yummy Mexican dinner out and decided it was time I kicked myself in the ass and did something about the nocturnal fabric screams (wow – that would sound so wrong in another context). So out of the plastic drawers the yummy fabric squares came.

Tomorrow, I will :

1. Wake up too early as per usual on Saturday mornings;
2. Remember it is Saturday;
3. Yawn, smile, yawn again for good measure;
4. Fall back asleep;
5. Wake up again about five minutes later;
6. Get up, make coffee and have breakfast but keep my jammies on instead of getting ready for work;
7. Maybe go for a shower, maybe not;
8. Set up some sweet tunes;
9. Open the windows and curtains even if it’s going to rain;
10. ...and whip out the ironing board, the straight pins and my sewing machine, and I am totally officially starting My First Quilt.

I am scared. But I promise I will post progress pictures. I am accountable now, as I have committed to you, my Rainy Day Ghouls. You Lucky Bastards. ;)

Live Things.

As promised, Legion of Unwavering Fans, here's my balcony (in July). Right now, it looks nothing like that. Enjoy:

 In the evening. Very cozy.

Delicious yellow tomatoes...

My herb garden, with (bottom to top): lemon thyme, chives, miniature purple basil, rosemary and more lemon thyme.

The little flowers that could: they saved my not-so-hot flower boxes this year. They're still alive and kicking right now....and they're the only ones left. I am definitely getting more next year.

The small, yellow flowers you see on the right were very nice at the greenhouse when we got them. They are edible: I tried them once in a salad but wasn't overly impressed. They were supposed to stand about one foot and a half tall: I was looking forward to having a bit of a wall of flowers to give us some intimacy on the balcony. However, the wind flattened and bent them and they kind of hung there all summer, half broken and sad.

The ensemble, not yet grown in. The other hanging plant on the right is basil. Notice this is your first partial view of The Man, enjoying his morning coffee in his jammies.

The Dream Kitchen Counter.

There are times when I think to myself it would be very, very nice to have a different kitchen counter. Like tonight, for instance. If I had a different kitchen counter, I would be there right now, leaning on my elbows on its ceramic top, deciding what to make for dinner, listening to some cool jazz, and looking out into the dining room. Right now, I can't do that, because there are cupboards in the way. White melamine cupboards. If I lean on my elbows, my forehead leans on the overhead cupboards. Not so sexy.

They are fine, really. They are newish. They are clean. They have nice stainless steel handles. They provide storage space. But - and this is what bugs me - they close off the kitchen. Plus, when I stand at my current kitchen counter, using the sink, all anybody sitting at the dining room table will see is, well, my breast area. I try to work around this slight embarrassment by leaning over and pretending I am ordering a chocolate sundae. People sitting in the dining room do not usually get the joke, so I have to explain. I know. Embarrassing. I actually have to look under the cupboards to look towards the table. Enough complaining. At least I have a) a kitchen and b) a dining room table, let alone a dining room. And breasts. I have breasts, too. I'm a lucky gal.

My dream kitchen counter involves a few things (aside from the fact The Man does not know about my dream kitchen counter):

1. A ceramic top. Did I mention that already? The ceramic is, preferably, terracotta. Or something equally cool (I know, it's very 2005, but I like the look);
2. Drop-down halogen lighting with nice coloured glass lampshades, preferably elongated hand-blown glass. Red. Or - yellow. Oh no - blue. For a warm look. Not the white, cold neon lighting I have right now.
   
3. A built-in sink. And one of those nifty pull-out hose things. To spray people with.
   
4. On one end, open shelves that go all the way to the ceiling, to put plants on. And eventually, any other knick-knack The Man decides to leave there. He does that.
   
5. On the dining-room side, along three-quarters of the length, a recess so I can have two stools there. For making conversation while making dinner. You know, entertaining. Like this:

   "Oh yeah, listen. Super simple. I marinated these scallops overnight in lime juice and I'm just going to sautee them slightly with these shallots and a bit of Pernod. Oh - pass the anchovy paste-filled olives, please? Thanks. Sorry, I drooled. Haha. Yum. Want some wine? So anyway, I'm thinking of painting this big ass landscape with a very defined Italian slash Mediterranean feel to it, and just having these huge cedar-like trees in it. Can you hold this for a second? Thanks. What? The painting's already been done? By whom? Oh. Modigliani. Right. Haha. I'll stick to Squibbits, then. Can you give me that thing you were holding? No - not that one. The other one. Thanks. Oh! DOWN! GET OFF THE COUNTER! NO! BOO! OFF THE COUNTER - you little %!*&# - sorry. That cat loves olives, go figure. Wait - Honey? Can you bring up some chairs? What? You're killing zombies? It's okay, babe, hit the start button, they'll wait for you! Haha. That man loves his zombies. So...tell me all about being a plant. Do you like being a plant? Is it a quiet, peaceful life? Do you panic when your soil is dried up? I'm sorry, I know I only water you - what - once a week? Yeah. Is that OK?

All I need now is to keep saving up that non-smoking money to make it happen.

Holiday.

What, my Loverly Loverlings, is sweeter than being on vacation (even if it's only for one week)?

I'll give you a moment to think it through.
Take your time.

For me, anyway, it's very simple. There's no schedule. Sure, there a few projects, some of which have been put on the proverbial Back Burner for some time. But things happen at a natural pace, a laid-back, what-time-is-it pace, and I enjoy that very much.

This morning, for example, I spent a few minutes checking a few things on Facebook, sipping my cup of coffee while The Man shoots some people in the game he's currently playing. He's got his headphones on, so I don't know what's going on. All I know is when he gets shot, he goes "awww man I didn't see that guy coming - he scared me!" and I nod or do the " awww man that's too bad" face. We have a good balance, there.

We're slowly revving up to go buy what we need to paint the bedroom and fix a few things around the house. We spent a really nice weekend with The Man's dad. On Friday we had dinner at Café du Clocher Penché, and I had some of the most scrumptious Ris de veau I've ever had. We then attended the Cirque du Soleil's street show, Les Chemins invisibles.

Saturday, we thought we couldn't beat the restaurant from the night before, and we were wrong. I had reserved a table on the very charming terrasse at Poisson d'avril, in Quebec's Vieux-Port. I had snow crab and surprised The Man and his father unit by completely showing this crustacean who was the boss. I even managed to make it look easy (for a girl who hadn't tackled crab legs in over 15 years). After dinner, The Man declared, and I quote: "Ok, that's it. From now on, I'm always going to order what you're ordering, because your plate is always better than mine." Wisdom, my friends. Wisdom, right there.

We went to Moulin à images that night, and to Grosse-Île on Sunday. A great weekend. Now, it's time to don the painting gear and get cracking. Slowly. With a what-time-is-it stance.