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June 28, 2007
happy things
1. a d.i.y. plumbing job, all finished.
2. a much-needed torrential downpour to break up a hot, humid spell and wash some of the smoggy Detroit smell from the air.
3. a surprise visit from old friends (Dru, Em and Kelly/Laura), vegetarian platters at Marathon Ethiopian, a walk along the river through teeming fireworks crowds, holding out for the cheaper, fresher cotton candy at the other end of the midway.
4. two finished sweaters (three if you count the one that just needs buttons). There would have been pictures but I spent the whole self-timer photo shoot with my cardigan buttoned wrong, Tweek-style.
5. a morning bike ride, coffee with my beloved and then riding home to find the tree guys on our property, cutting down trees. Unlike the roofers, they didn't kill any of my flowers (the hollyhocks will survive the knocking-down, I suspect), and they didn't leave a huge mess. Just a couple of stumps and a lot more light coming in our dining room window.
6. a neighbour who happened to be standing in the sidewalk watching our trees being dragged to the chipper, who, on hearing that I wasn't expecting the tree guys just yet and was at least sixty bucks short in my bank account to pay them, handed me sixty bucks. Turns out they bill you later, so I'm about to head around the corner and give it back.
7. lovely, lovely spinning fibre in the mail. Even if I don't have a wheel to spin it on.
8. lost kitties who incredibly, impossibly find their way home. When I read about dear Digit's incredible journey, I had to go upstairs so Dylan wouldn't see me cry my eyes out.
Posted by jodi at 02:32 PM | Comments (7) | categories:
June 26, 2007
plumb worn out
About a week and a half ago our impending plumbing crisis became an immediate plumbing crisis when the water in the kitchen sinks stopped draining. Back when we had a plumber in to look at why the basement laundry sinks weren't draining (after about a year of emptying the sinks with buckets after every load of laundry) we found out that there's a big crack in the pipes underneath the basement floor, something we'd rather not spend the money to fix just yet. There's a clog in the line somewhere under the floor that's affecting the kitchen and dishwasher drainage but not the laundry sinks. After poking around the basement a bit, Peter had the crazy idea to reroute the kitchen pipes over to the bathroom on the opposite side of the basement so that the water will no longer drain out through the broken pipe, giving us a couple of years' reprieve on having to have the floor dug up to fix it and getting us off the hook completely for having to deal with the current clog. And we decided to do the work ourselves.
*an aside: I'm not sure yet if I can bear to show pictures of our disgusting basement even though I think we're total superheroes for doing our own plumbing and I want to show it off, but while I decide about that here's a picture of the old pipe Peter cut out from under the basement bathroom sink (the spot we're rerouting the other pipes into). See where it says "Daymond Centralia"? The former Daymond Centralia plant, like the former Centralia College of Agricultural Technology, was not actually in Centralia but in Huron Park, my hometown. Back when my dad and granddad used to work at Daymond, my dad was one of Canada's number one smartest dudes in the area of industrial knitting machines. Cool, eh? So now I have this piece of pipe that I want to keep, despite my brand new resolve to throw things out and stop being a packrat. Any suggestions on cool crafty things I can make with a piece of old pipe will help me justify keeping it and be greatly appreciated.
So. The pipes are disconnected and the kitchen sinks are currently draining into a bucket. Last Monday I rigged up a temporary drainage line from the dishwasher into the laundry sinks (using a piece of pool hose that we'd never gotten around to throwing out in the four years since we took out the pool) so that I could run the dishes, and felt rather clever and handy and pleased with myself when it worked without spraying dirty dishwater all over the basement. Tuesday and Wednesday evening were spent measuring, planning, buying supplies and finally cutting pipe and fitting it all together (I was extra excited to be able to get the brand new mitre saw out and set it up for this job: we bought the thing four years ago with some money my gramma gave us as a housewarming gift, vowing not to allow ourselves to take it out of the box and use it until we got the workbench set up, which finally happened last winter. Now I'm looking around the house for things to cut, because I love using the saw so much). Today I have to install the metal strapping that will hold all of the pipe in place (it's tied up with twine right now), drill some holes in a concrete wall, then take all of the pipe apart and bring it outside where I'll glue it together in sections with a respirator on. Then it's back inside to attach it all, glue up the last joins and woo! Turn on the water!
In the meantime, we've been spending the last few weekends in London, working on a major deep-cleaning and de-cluttering of Pete's mom's house while she's in hospital recovering from surgery. We spent three days there last weekend, making the kids help, then the two of us went back alone this weekend and busted our asses for four days getting more work done than I thought two people could do in four days. I left there last night with a sense of accomplishment for what we'd done, and a new resolve for getting ahead on all of the things that need fixing, cleaning and organizing in our own house. But jesus murphy I'm tired, and after the little bit of gardening I did this morning there's a part of me that just wants to slip into my usual routine of sitting on my arse on the porch, drinking tea and staring at the laptop screen. But, lucky for me, the yelling neighbours across the street just came out on their steps a little while ago and started in on their favourite hobby (yelling at each other), so now seems a very good time to go inside and drill some concrete.
Posted by jodi at 12:07 PM | Comments (7) | categories: projects
June 15, 2007
grody jeen
I tried to think of a cute name for a sweater called Orangina knitted in green, but the only thing that comes to mind is the nickname the kids in public school used to call me.
*photo is swiped from Peter.
Posted by jodi at 10:15 AM | Comments (16) | categories: sticks and string
June 14, 2007
the windsor ontario bureau of the canadian broadcasting corporation is where they stick all of the on-air personalities that nobody else wants.
Granted, the current morning show host, Tony Doucette, isn't nearly as irritating as the guy he replaced. Still, it seems not a morning goes by that we don't lie in bed after the clock radio has come on rolling our eyes or laughing out loud at some absurd statement or garbled attempt at describing the weather. This morning's gem (paraphrased somewhat):
Well, you know, a lot of people have blogs. And they write about their day and their life and what they like and what they don't like and about how sometimes life is really hard. Well, three hundred some-odd years ago today, Louis Hebert, Canada's first farmer, arrived here and can you IMAGINE how hard life was for him and his family? (dramatic pause) Somebody should write a novel about that. Or maybe somebody has. I haven't checked.
This was followed immediately by Bill Baker the news guy, Tweedledee to Doucette's Tweedledum, giving the weather thus: "smog advisory today, but that's okay".
These guys are complete idiots, but that's okay. It's only Windsor people who have to listen to them.
Posted by jodi at 06:00 PM | Comments (3) | categories: assholes
show and tell time. And then maybe a little rant about my neighbour.
This morning I finally got the last section of the front yard filled with plants. I've been picking away at it slowly all week, not wanting to work too hard in the heat of the day and finding myself easily fatigued thanks to a cold/virus/allergy/something that's been making my nose run and sapping my energy without just getting on with it and turning into any sort of full-blown illness. I've mostly just been puttering in the dirt for an hour or less each morning and quitting when it gets hot, but after managing to turn in the manure and peat moss last evening while Peter weeded the other bed, this morning I pushed through and finished. It feels good to have all of the tarps off the ground after two years. No, those aren't tarps in the middle! Those are roofing tiles and pieces of tarpaper (so much classier than tarps), and they're marking where our new sidewalk and the cement pad for our new porch steps will go. We might even get that sidewalk laid this year, yet.
Here is more information than you want or need, placed here for my own future use (because I can't remember what we've planted from year to year and also am becoming a bit obsessive about knowing who gave us each plant):
1. sedum, originally moved from Pete's mom Mikell's place. There's about ten times more of this in the back yard. It has pink flowers. She hated the stuff and asked us to take it all out of her flower bed and I happily brought as much as I could here, because I love any plant that is aggressive and no work to grow.
2. pinks, left here by the previous owner, first moved by us to the back yard and now back to the front.
3. daisies, different from the ones in the other part of the yard. These are more the roadside weedy kind, with delicate ferny foliage. They may have come from Owen and Pat's garden.
4. a different kind of sedum, the wormy one. Yellow flowers. I think also from Owen and Pat, although I had a lot of this in my old place in London.
5. hens and chicks, moved from the back yard. I'm not sure where they came from, perhaps left by the previous owner.
6. ajuga that I brought from Mikell's. It was originally bought by me when I lived in London, and moved to Mikell's for safe keeping when we came to Windsor. I'm not sure this is going to live, it pretty much hated the week I made it spend in a pot before planting it here, and is pouting like crazy.
7. a wee bit of a mystery spurge that tagged along with the pinks from the back yard. We're already in danger of having the entire other side of the front garden taken over by this stuff, so a little more won't hurt, right?
8. rue, brought from Peter's herb garden back at Mikell's place. We already have a large one of these on the other side as well, but this little one was lonely and wanted to come here.
9. balloon flower that we bought a few weeks ago, moved to a new spot.
10. cardinal flower, store-bought last year, moved to a new spot today.
11. a chartreuse hosta, moved from the back yard, originally came from my old place in London, via Mikell's (our holding place for all our plants between moving to Windsor and buying the house). These may have originally come from Raven and Laura's garden. I think it has white flowers.
12. more hostas, these ones taken from Mikell's, where they encircle the front yard trees. These originally came from Peter's grandparent's house in Leamington. They'll flower purple.
13. coral bells, bought a few weeks ago, moved to a new spot.
14. false blue indigo, bought and planted a few weeks ago.
15. purple fennel. This won't be its permanent home (it'll get way too tall to stay here), but a spot needs to be prepared for it in the back. It'll eventually be moved to along the backyard fence, next to the valerian, faux-boo and the crazy wonderful roses I can't kill.
16. columbine, the orangey native-to-our-area one. Bought and planted a few weeks ago.
17. blue bells, more from our last shopping trip.
18: mazus, also from that shopping trip. This stuff isn't doing so well, it just wants to act faint and listlessly wave for the smelling salts pretty much all the time. I hope it shapes up, as I can't really abide wimpy plants that need babying.
19. siberian irises, brought from my old place via Mikell's. Originally a gift from Mariella de Peregrino's garden. There are also some smaller irises in front of those that came from Pete's grandparents in Leamington, via Mikell's. Along in front of the irises there is going to be a flagstone path, which we may or may not get around to putting in this year.
Okay. Time for a story, boys and girls. Since coming home, I've been spending as much time as I can out on the front porch, knitting, working and watching the neighbour kids play. A few days ago I noticed a bad smell, like the smell of a dead animal rotting, occasionally drifting across on the breeze. A few cats have gone missing on our street this past week and I began worrying that one of them had got under our porch and died (Peter said he thought it smelled more like regular garbage than like something dead, but I'm not sure if he really meant it or if he was just trying to curb my overactive and paranoid imagination). So yesterday morning I went down the basement and stuck my upper body through the window that is the only access to under the porch, looking around with a flashlight for any gruesome piles of former kitty. None were there, so I tried to forget about it and get on with my day. Still, the smell remained.
Sometime later in the morning, as I sat in my porch chair indulging in the first book I've read for pleasure in who-knows-how-long (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of my Melancholy Whores), my neighbour (this is the neighbour whose house you can just see to the left in the top photo, and not the neighbour with the two adorable children who keep me company) came out on her porch with another woman, talking about getting ready for her yard sale and pointing to various items among the junk filling her porch. I saw a white flash and heard something go thwap!, then the two of them went back inside. Before long, flies had descended on the three feet of space between my porch and hers, and the smell was worse than ever. I looked over my railing and there on the sidewalk was a bag. And the bag was wearing the crown of flies.
Well. I may be a bitch with a big mouth but I'm not all that good at confrontation, so I decided to wait until the neighbour came out on her porch again and then say something about the offending bag rather than just knock on the door and get it over with. Hours went by, during which I went inside for a while to escape the smell, then came back out to watch the school buses drop off the kids (because, yes, I am going to be that old lady watching everyone from the window some day. In fact, Peter says I'm already that old lady). At long last, bag lady came out onto her porch, and the neighbour girls immediately ran screeching to her; she said, oh hello girls, yes girls, and quick like a bunny hopped into her waiting friend's van and away before I could get a word in edgewise.
I could see by this time that I was just going to have to get passive aggressive if I wanted to be free of the smell, so I went over and picked up the bag (no, I didn't look inside) and placed it back on my neighbour's porch (and immediately ran inside to scrub a layer of skin off my hands). And that was that. It's still there, it still stinks, and she hasn't said a word to me about it.
Peter said that it was probably an oversight and that they likely meant to move the bag to the garbage can later and forgot, what with all the cleaning up and yard sale preparation. And I know that I could be more charitable and more tolerant of people in general. But here's the thing. This morning when I finished planting I went inside to wash my hands, and as I went in I saw her coming out her door. And when I came back out to collect the library book I'd left on the table (The Hokusai Sketchbooks: Selections from the Manga) so that it wouldn't get wet while I watered the garden, I saw my neighbour at the side of her porch, hands outstretched holding two grocery bags full of garbage, about to drop them over the side onto the sidewalk. "Good morning!" I sang, and she started, stuttered a greeting and quickly drew her hands back (she doesn't see very well, and likely didn't know I was that close until I spoke). And now she's sitting on her porch, I'm sitting on mine, and bags of garbage are piled next to her in a plastic chair. I don't know how she can stand the unholy stench of death over there, and I don't really care just as long as she keeps it away from my property. But her garbage can is just not that far away, for fucksake.
Posted by jodi at 01:26 PM | Comments (11) | categories: assholes : green thumb?
June 12, 2007
hang on, i need something to write that down on
Small shop update today with some sets of wee notebooks that fold up like matches:
Posted by jodi at 03:11 PM | Comments (2) | categories: capitalist pig
June 11, 2007
friday x thirteen
On Friday we meandered our way to Port Stanley behind a spectacular storm, managing to stay dry the whole way, toodling through all sorts of little towns we'd never heard of (and some we had), writing down their names. We took our picnic supper and our Tim Hortons beverages (nasty, yes, but we go there because it's a cultural institution, not because the coffee's good) to a little park in downtown Chatham, where Peter took lots of unflattering photos of me eating that I'm sure he'll share with all the internets pretty soon. Leaving town we stumbled across this evidence that two billion people's lord and saviour is really just another lonely schmuck looking to add you to his friends list:
I was all set to tell you about the wonderful visit we had with my old studiomate Ellen in the beachside pub in Port Stanley whose kitchen she manages, and how effective (if ill-advised) one migraine pill + three frozen margaritas is at taking away a three-day mystery malaise, but I just had a little browser crash and that part of my story wasn't saved, and now the pressure's on me to shut down and do the errands that need doing before our dinner date this evening. So I'll leave you with a promise of a finished Orangina (the pictures just need to be fetched off Peter's camera) and another finished cardigan as well (just binding off the final button band right now), and with a few images of some new drawings left over from Saturday's show, now up for sale in my etsy shop:
Posted by jodi at 04:59 PM | Comments (4) | categories: jet set
June 08, 2007
quickly now
I don't know why the weblog gets such short shrift of late, it's not like I'm not sitting on my arse all day every day staring at the laptop screen with things to say. It seems always to get pushed aside until the last minute, and today is no exception. We're leaving in half an hour or so, to London for the weekend. For those of you in and around beautiful London Ontario this weekend, I'll be showing/selling my art down at Art in the Village (you can find me on somebody's front lawn on the northwest corner of Wortley and Bruce, 10 until 4; be there or be. . . not there, I guess. But if you're there you can hang out and knit with me for a while, won't that be fun? And bring down your amazing finished knits to show off so that I can take your picture. Here's someone I just found on Ravelry (the site that's got everyone abuzz, whose awesomeness I'll talk about later, soon) who will also be showing art there. We'll be the crazies sitting out in the sun knitting when it's too hot to even touch fabric.
Peter and I have a lovely aimless afternoon ahead of us, taking our sweet time meandering to London, perhaps by way of Port Stanley (I've never been there despite living pretty darned close to it all my life), and having a picnic of sandwiches and pies from our favourite Lebanese bakery. While our relationship really has no beginning and no end, today is an anniversary of sorts for us, a day to acknowledge quietly, a day I like for us to do something special together if we can. We haven't had a lot of time alone together since I came home because of kids and family stuff, but today there are no obligations, and we have no plans other than to be together.
Orangina is all over but the weaving-in, which I've been putting off for two days now because there are about a jillion ends. My goal is to wear it to my mom's on Sunday. The red cardigan is a button-band away, the blue cardigan just needs a hem and some sleeves. The cardiganized Wicked is blocked, and while searching the attic for my big bag of hanging hardware that I use to hang my art on the gridwall for outdoor shows (didn't find it) I found a little bag of buttons that I think will be perfect for it. I love how that happens, except for the not having any s-hooks to hang my art part. Pray for no wind, friends, because I'm relying on packing tape and zip ties tomorrow.
Posted by jodi at 02:45 PM | Comments (6) | categories: art stuff : self-absorbtion : sticks and string