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July 01, 2008

my promises are clearly not worth the ether they're written on

I know, I made some kind of promise and disappeared. Y'all are going to have to deal with it. Let me tell you, briefly, about my last two weeks: I wasn't feeling well for a few days and had to miss a local blogger meetup and also a stitch 'n' bitch in order to lie pathetically on the couch; it's fruit canning season and in the last week I've made strawberry jam, mango salsa, pickled garlic (not a fruit, I know, but still in season and cheap right now), mango chutney and then today a second batch of mango salsa; Pete's ex-wife moved on the weekend and we helped out with that and fetched our giant California job case cabinet that we'd been storing in her garage and also moved Pete's daughter's stuff to our place because she's moving in with us (!); and then on Saturday night after the move, while I was showering and Peter was returning our rented trailer, the basement flooded. So the rest of the weekend (after the plumber left) and up until today has been spent doing the work we've been wanting to do but never getting around to in the basement, namely getting rid of all the crap we don't need and building a storage island in the middle of the room to both hold all of our stuff and also sit beneath the ducts we're always hitting our heads on so that we can't walk into them anymore. A conveniently timed statutory holiday has meant that as of this evening we have a vast expanse of empty basement floor, a clever and sturdy storage island with shelving, space to stack totes and a raised channel in which to slide all the long poles and tent bits. We have extra tool drawers within easy reach of the workbench and they're all organized and labelled. We have a secondary pantry space within easy reach of the kitchen. And we figured out that the "dead" fluorescent fixture above the workbench actually works, we just needed to jiggle the bulbs a little. So now we have light right where we need it to do things like not cut off our fingers with the mitre saw! I'll take some pictures but they won't have the same impact without any before shots (although we did take some of the flood that will be suitably gross).

I saw the Canada House Guy out building something new on his property last week (as he does every June in preparation for Canada Day) but have been too busy dealing with water and wet stuff to go down and take pictures, so instead I offer you a lovely Canadaversary cake:

From last week's picnic celebration of the 40th anniversary of my dad's family's arrival in Canada. Happy Canadaversary to us! And happy Canada Day to y'all.

Posted by jodi at July 1, 2008 05:24 PM | categories:  true patriot love

Comments

Posted by: Sandy at July 1, 2008 05:58 PM

Posted by: TheAmpuT at July 1, 2008 10:58 PM

Posted by: Kathode Ray Tube at July 2, 2008 09:22 AM

Posted by: njstacie at July 2, 2008 10:02 AM

Posted by: Christiane at July 4, 2008 09:06 AM