Day 15 - Your Dream House

Well, let's get the gushy stuff out of the way...any home that I live in with my family is my dream house!

Okay, now down to brass tacks...Actually, I'm pretty fortunate. I've got an awesome house. We watched go from a big pile of dirt, to creating our own big piles of dirt. (See picture series below, I'm still figuring out how adding pictures works. I'm not very proficient at it.

Dirt Pile (in the rain) Spring 2013

Foundation and framing ready to go.

Getting close to completion.

Almost done!

I did mention I have two boys (three if you include the Mr.), and there's nothing but dirt all around us, so yeah, it's a dreamy mud pie. :) We bought into the house when Mom was living with us (read back, Mom moved in to our tiny house just before baby boo, who's now 4, was born), it was a perfect set up, and was to have a finished 2 bedroom basement apartment for her. Now it's just the four of us, and the three cats roaming around in it. But I love it! No home is perfect, but we are way better off now in terms of not tripping over one another than our old house.


We have 4 bedrooms, which means both boys have a sizeable room (read can keep a majority of their toys out of main living spaces and aren't fighting with one another) and there is an extra room for all my craft stuff and things! Something I had to give up in the old house between the two additions (babyboo and Mom). The piece de resistance, and what makes it dreamy, is our Master Suite! It takes up the whole back half of the house. There is an ensuite with soaker, jetted tub, a frameless glass shower stall with two shower heads and a two sinks. It's funny, because the other bonus to the house is the main floor powder room which should alleviate my need to run up the stairs when I need to go, but I don't use it. I love my bathroom so much, I run upstairs and rarely use the powder room! LOL!! We also have a walk in closet and room to spare for a love seat. Future improvements will include moving the closet door and installing an electric fire place.

Floor Plan (linked to builders site)

Other dreamy qualities of our home (other than the toilets) include laundry on the second floor. Just outside the Master Suite, is our laundry. Which does mean that frequently there are baskets of unfolded  laundry awaiting the return of the master of the house, but at least I'm not slugging them up 2 or even 3 flights of stairs from the basement. It's divine!

We also opted to pay for a premium lot. We have a 42' wide property that is 200' deep, typically the lots are about 100' deep, half of that is house, so we have not just a double back yard but really, a triple back yard. Lots of room for the boys to burn off some steam. Of course, as mentioned previously, it is just dirt and weeds. They've got 3 more months to give us grass. I would have liked to have had more width, there's only 8 ft between us and the neighbour's house (only one neighbour so far) but what we found is so rare in a new community. The only thing that keeps this from being an absolute dream home, is the amount of property, I would have liked more, had it wider, and maybe even be more remote. But the neighbours so far have been stellar, we are building a nice little community here and I feel like I'm living a dream!

Boys will be boys (Always)

I don't know why, but at an early age I realized I was destined to be a mother of boys. Maybe it was just my secret hope to have boys, their lives seemed so much less complicated than mine as a girl. Maybe it was because I grew up with boys, having two older brothers and living in the country surrounded by other families with boys. I always seemed to gravitate towards guy friends and was a bit of a tomboy growing up. (Although my one brother would lead you to believe I thought myself a princess, I don't think I ever really felt that way. Of course, now he has 3 girls, so he might see my attitudes as different now.)

My wish or dreams, whatever you want to label it as, came true. I am the mom of two boys. Currently, they are 10 and 4. Yup, big age gap, that's a discussion for another post - I wonder why I never blogged when I was ttcing. They are a lot of fun. We still have dolls and talk about princesses. I believe in non gender specific role playing and developing their archetypal feminine attributes. They are also very rough and tumble. We recently moved into a new house, like new as in we watched it being built. We are still waiting on them to complete the grading (lay clean fill) and landscaping (top soil and sod). We've been waiting since Oct. 2013. This spring/summer has been an exercise in patience and I've had to pick my battles. I no longer wash the walls in the front hall/powder room. If I applied a damp cloth one more time, I would be washing the drywall away...sigh...builder grade paint sucks! I should invest in a first aid supply company as I never seem to have enough for all the cuts and scrapes. I'm pretty sure that I've said about a million times this month alone, "Stop beating up your brother." Usually to the youngest, the oldest is a pacifist. I've been sending them outside despite the fact the backyard is a disaster, they have energy that needs to be expended.

Thankfully the 10 yr old is old enough to help with laundry because the 4 yr old loves puddles!

They love it, and I love it! The boys make me happy, I'm definitely in my element. I doubt that I would be any less happy if I'd of had a girl, or two, but my life with boys is exactly what works for me and exactly what I have. I'm happily a mom of two boys. Well, three really. Conversation in the car on my way home with the kids...

Me: "I love you two boys more than any other boys in the whole world!"
Jonah: "But what about Dad?"
Me: "Dad's not a boy, he's a man."
Jonah: "Well, he sure acts like a boy a whole lot."
Me: "Okay then, I love you three boys more than any other boys in the world!"
They keep me entertained. As they say, out of the mouths of babes, and they certainly have mouths on them...where is that volume control button, come on evolution, at least give us that for the first 20 yrs or so!

Maybe I'll tell you more about the SO's unsupervised exploits in a future post!

If you've found me, I once was lost, but now am found? Anyway if you are reading a long, and have snooped through past posts, you will see that I once upon a 2011 started a 30 day blog challenge. I've decided to resurrect this to inspire me to keep writing. I left off on Day 14 out of the 30 Day Challenge. Through my posts you will learn why I left blogging behind. I'm not the kind of person who airs their dirty laundry and just didn't feel like blogging was the appropriate place to put my struggles ...it's been a wild ride these past couple of years. Life is good, always has been and always will be, but there are ups and downs, and when I am down I don't write. Anyway, I'm in a place now where blogging can and will be a part of my world and so to help me stay inspired to write here are the posts you can look forward to reading about:


Day 15 - your dream house
Day 16 - a song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 - an art piece (drawing, sculpture, painting, etc)
Day 18 - my wedding/future wedding/past wedding
Day 19 - a talent of yours
Day 20 - a hobby of yours
Day 21 - a recipe
Day 22 - a website
Day 23 - a youtube video
Day 24 - where you live
Day 25 - your day, in great detail
Day 26 - your week, in great detail
Day 27 - your worst habit
Day 28 - what's in your handbag/purse
Day 29 - hopes, dreams, and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 - a dream for the future

Getting back on the proverbial horse

I fell off. I fell hard. I probably should have been blogging, it might have helped me process everything but I chose silence instead.

One of my favourite visionaries or activists if you will is Mahatma Ghandi, and one of my favourite quotes from him is, "Be the change you want to see in the world." I subscribe to that in many aspects of my life. I am a socially/environmentally conscious person, but I keep failing in one big way - myself. I want to see change in my life, and yet I keep failing at being that change.

So, now is the time to start. Take it all on, be the person I want to be, that I know I am and should be. I'm going to start by writing more. At the very least, monthly, then maybe weekly. I won't get crazy and say daily, although really, that is what I should be doing.

Life will always get in the way. I have learned my lesson. Every time I set out to do something I give myself the excuse that life got in the way. But I'm not going to let the things that life hands be the ability to take over. Otherwise I'll never get back on that fucking horse, and it will run free in the pasture, all the while laughing at my sad ass sitting there in a pile of it's own dung. Been there, done that, not going to let that shit stink up the rest of my life!

So here I am, ready to tell my tales again. I will find my stride and I won't worry if I have a following or not.

Keeping my fingers busy....

I've been knitting a fair bit again lately. I've been on an extended hiatus, partly due to interest and partly due to time and partly due to finances. Thanks to my cyber friends at Ravelry, I've found free patterns and nearly free yarn (recycling and re-purposing).


My latest acheivements have been a scarf I knit using a cardigan sweater that recently became 3 sizes too big and a shawl I knit using yarn I had originally intended to create baby.legs style leg warmers for baby boo. I found the leg warmers way too time consuming and boring!

So here is my scarf:




It keeps me warm when the a/c is trying to freeze me out of my office. Since it is multi coloured, it goes with just about everything. The scarf is a modification of a pattern I found on Ravelry - modified only because I kept going and forgot to stop the border section and therefore the border became the whole scarf. It works though!

Here is my Shawl:


This is the Holden Shawlette found on Ravlery and was a lovely easy knit. I am quite satisfied with how it turned out. With a little effort (and about 220 pins, and 2 driveway reflectors) it toook on a very lovely shape and was well worth the 1/2 hour of effort and the "trauma" the cats endured being locked out of the bedroom!


Here's a couple of pictures of the blocking process:

Day 14 - a non-fictional book

I recently, and by that I mean - in the last 13 months since baby boo was born, read The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. It was a case of truth is stranger than fiction! A good read though, captivated me and kept me reading despite the sleep deprivation and the amount of housework piling up while caring for my dear LO.

I grew up in the country without much in the way of worldly possessions. Sure I had a bucket of Barbies to call my own but I didn't have the trendy toys like a Cabbage Patch Kid, and for all intents and purposes we were "latch key kids" coming home after school while my parents still worked. I learned to cook dinner and do the laundry at a young age and on Saturday mornings while my parents worked (they owned their own business that was open 9-12 on Saturdays) we had a list of chores to do - clean house, feed the chickens, collect eggs, cut the grass, etc. But we certainly didn't grow up in poverty or neglect. Jeanette's story is not just of poverty and poor parenting style, but of survival...of flight or fight...she was a fighter. She took what was handed her - Nothing! - and turned it into something. She not only survived but made something of her self.

I believe the driving force of her success is her ability to forgive and ever be the optimist. These are two characteristics that I highly value and do my best to posses and utilize in my life. Without these two driving forces she would have found herself sucked into the crazy, emotional, substance dependent world her parents enveloped her in. She was able to forgive her parents for their neglect, and selfishness and believe in the possibility that dreams can and will come true, that there is a silver lining.

Beleiving that things can and will get better is something that I hold onto dearly, no matter what challenge comes my way, I understand that I can grow from it if I embrace it rather than run away from it or let it get me down. Believing that the cup is half full keeps me from focusing on what is missing. Some people call it faith, others optimism...I just call it life and choosing to live it.

Jeanette's story is powerful, moving and entertaining. As I said in the beginning, there are times when life is stranger than fiction and hers certainly fits that bill! Between her mother's apathetic attitude towards, well, being a mother and her father's genius but un-executed schemes there is no shortage of WTF moments. A worthy read for sure!

On my own...

Maybe it’s the weather (it’s a bit gloomy out after having been sunny and warm yesterday) or maybe it’s the week’s worth of eating lunch on my own but I find myself being introspective today. I am hearkening back to my University days (that could also be because the College radio was playing “retro-tunes” which were cutting edge when I was in University – boy does that make me feel old!) when I sat alone in the University Centre eating lunch for the 2^nd week in a row…thinking to myself, “I need to make some friends.”

While I do have several “work friends” I don’t seem to be in any of their circles and am not called upon to luncheon. Which leads me to question, why am I not in their circle? I am outgoing and friendly, I make myself known others and introduce myself easily. Many have commented that I know a lot of people here at the College, and I do. But I don’t really. I know them as acquaintances, familiar faces around campus that I have interacted with for one reason or another, but I’m not really their lunch buddies and I don’t see them outside of work related activities. SO I am left to my own devices and sit lonely and worried during lunch hours as they pass.

Do I need to be more, I don’t know, something here? More friendly perhaps? More open, giving of myself? When people ask me how things are going I usually give the standard fine because I don’t want to bore them with the troubles in my life, the details that are boring and mundane or overwhelm them with the ABC’s that are the ups and downs of living with a sick mother, a husband in full time school and two little kids.

Maybe I need to be less? Maybe I overwhelm people and leave them thinking – “Whoa, stay away from her, she’s too much!” Maybe they didn’t want to hear about Mom being in the hospital, or that baby boo’s allergies haven’t let up yet? Do they really want to know that my life is a whirl wind of activity and I’m stressing to fit it all in?

What do I need to do to alleviate this lonesomeness? Maybe next week I will have some lunch dates and feel less isolated, and maybe I will get to know my department mates the longer I am here (it’s only been 7 working days) and have lunches with them. Maybe I won’t feel it as much another day as it will be bright and sunny (I can dream right?!) and I’ll make a point of not listening to the retro tunes playing! Finally, maybe I will accept that alone time is good; I rarely get it at home anyway! Maybe AF is on her way and that's all this is...damn her for ruling (and ruining) my life!

Green (certianly not the grass)

This is not a grass roots post or even a soap box rant about how green one should or should not be...just a little rambling of how I enjoy being green (Kermit didn't know what he was missing out on when he complained about being green!)

Firstly, our community rolled out a green bin program this winter. We have been marveling at the reduced waste going out on a weekly basis, it is amazing. The beauty of this program is, just about everything can go in it! Tissues, bones/meats, as well as the usual veg matter. We fill the bin pretty well in a week - they even take kitty litter so our kitties are helping us keep the bin full! We are avid recyclers and have wanted to compost ourselves but always have such a hard time getting it set up so the city took care of it for us.

Secondly after joining ravelery I learned that if you look at your store bought sweaters carefully you can discover whether or not they are a candidate for unraveling and re using/re purposing the yarn! Sweet! So I dug through my closet, things I've held on to despite dropping 3 dress sizes and have found 2 likely candidates. I didn't take a picture of the complete before of this little cardigan, but here are some pictures of my progress!

Here are the front panels:
A close up of the yarn colour pattern:

Here are the balls of salvaged yarn.





Now to decide what to make!