shoebox_dw: (ratatouille remy herbs)
The Grand Day Out, But Not watch with Shoemom & -sisses continues: we've gone from a day of pampering beginning with a champagne breakfast and ending with a fancy dinner to...getting their hair done, followed by a semi-fancy dinner. In less than 48 hours. I'm looking forward to their showing up this aft with a bag of ketchup chips and a home pedicure kit.

Meanwhile. Having already spent a weekend wallowing recklessly in the baroque hedonism that is downtown Montreal - going to art museums and everything - I am strictly persona non grata today. Which is not a bad deal, as it means I now have a long, uninterrupted Saturday afternoon to Get Things Done. Such as:

--Finally knuckle under to mass media conformity, ie. sign up for Facebook. Yes, I discovered there's a Bob & Ray group. Shut up.

--Decide whether I also want to sign up for Twitter. It's kind of pointless really, since my evenings do not - shall we say - remotely resemble those spent in Casablanca circa 1942 ("8:42 pm: Cleaning up the cat's hairball." "8:43: Oh shoot, the cat wasn't finished.")  But it might be fun to live vicariously through the really exciting people. Still pondering.

--Organise my new bedroom. Because the cold is finally better - have I mentioned the cold? No? OK, consider yourself lucky and let's move on - anyway, I no longer have an excuse to still be living in a random pile of stuff. Except that, damn, do I have a lot of books. And all from different genres, which just complicates things no end.

I mean, thus far the mood is Quiet, Traditional Elegance (or as close a facsimile of same that can be acquired from IKEA) and displaying the Star Trek collection would not help any. Nor would Dave Barry, His Collected Works. On the other hand, the kids' classics and mysteries are be a trifle too cozy. What I really need is a carefully-chosen library of quirky-yet-sophisticated works of historical and/or sociological significance...I think I may have grown up just a tad too late, here.

--Organise the approximately fifty billion photos currently clogging my hard drive - isn't it funny, how the desire to take photos on vacation is in direct proportion to how pointless they seem afterwards? I mean, apropos of the art museum, I couldn't get the stills to work without flash so here I am with about twenty short films detailing things like 'That Cool Display of Moderne Chairs'. It's odd.
Albeit I am glad I got the Gainsborough in. Also the 19th-century Japanese pottery. Exquisite does not do this stuff justice. (The day camp in the background, though, could've done without that reminder. "Look, kids, what's this motif?" "It's a fishy!" "Yes! And how do we know it's a fish?" "'Cause it's a fishy!")

--Likewise, there is no longer any room at the inn for the thirty-odd Mythbusters eps recorded off the TV card, so onto DVDs they go. Also, I have to seriously review my need to keep
Big & Small in my life. It may be the funniest, cutest, smartest and charmingest TV series I've come across in awhile (even without the UK-only accents), but it does star fuzzy cloth puppets. You watch the eps on the iTouch in public, people look at you funny.

Or...I could just sit around and contemplate all the fun stuff I have on tap for the next while. Life really is pretty good, chez Shoe.

shoebox_dw: (kitty sock puppet)
I am moved.

Not so much in the emotional sense, although the sight of the Ikea dresser still to be put together on my new bedroom floor certainly isn't helping. And the huge blowout fight with Shoesis on the actual day...erm, yeah, we've got past that and everything. She's too busy planning out our new 'French country' living room, anyway.

Then there are the cats. Who remain deeply unsure about this strange new joint which contains all the old familiar smells, but...not. I can sympathise with their distress, but that doesn't mean I enjoy being waked up by a fishy little tongue to the nose at 2am to be 'told' about it.

Speaking of being told about it, our new next-door neighbor is an, um, sprightly little elderly lady whose first line of conversation was our respective star signs. Told politely but firmly that we don't believe in that sort of thing, she replied, "Oh, you sure will if you spend much time with me!" Oy.

It's an odd building altogether. Small - only three floors - tucked lengthwise between a massive highrise and elegant row houses. Located on one of the more exclusive streets in the area (one down and around the corner from our ex-address) but seemingly only slowly becoming aware of it, renovating unit-by-unit as the people who've lived here for decades move out - often in coffins - and new faces move in. That is, people who aren't ninety-seven or so, and thus have no walkers to shove under a wobbly bathroom sink (true story from our friend's reno).

There are a decent handful of us modern young things, by now, enough that I can get an open wi-fi signal on the iTouch, but we are by no means in the majority. Especially since the geriatric contingent has all the dogs. Heavens t'Betsey, do they have dogs. Dogs and fussy balconies, those are the hallmarks. The astrology lady has a black poodle with a red scarf round its neck. She exercises it in the parking lot below us.

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shoebox_dw: (butterfly resting)

So I'm sitting here, and I wanna do a Bob & Ray post to cheer myself up, but I don't really have anything. (Other than some mild curiosity about what a 'magic lantern' might involve, in 1940's usage. In the new ep I listened to today, the organist asks Ray if it's true that Mary McGoon is selling them, and suddenly they're both giggling, and Ray-as-Mary goes off on a 'giddy' falsetto ramble that has nothing to do with anything and is clearly totally baffling Bob. It's all about as vaguely disturbing as these two ever got.)

I'm sitting here a week until moving day, in a bare-ish small room made ever smaller with a scatter of cardboard boxes. For the past month we have been living in this manner, oddly reminiscent of the
Collyer brothers only with less agoraphobia. Some of the boxes are full - mostly of my favourite things - but more are empty, and all are skewed oddly in and around traffic areas. I have tripped over more cardboard in the past six weeks than...well, than most people do in six weeks, anyway. Probably in their entire lives.

Which is about as long as I'd rather go without staring at cardboard. Hideously depressing stuff, all sort of blank and...beige. Except the ones from the liquor store. Even though this is only the third move I've made in the last dozen years, boxes with wine labels on the side still raise the hackles of the thirty-odd Shoe family shuffles prior to that. Endless cast-off boxes hauling the flimsier family possessions to...houses that were still under renovation by other people when we stayed in them...OK, actually just one of those. Still, random guy tromping across our kitchen for a couple months drinking beer and muttering, that was memorable.

*shakes self* Right, enough of that. Think of new furniture, in a new room - my new room. With a door. Also, a walk-in closet, have I mentioned that? There are new shelves in there now. And new bathroom fixtures, and new appliances. I mean, the appliances aren't in the closet, of course. They're in the kitchen. Which makes it even nicer. Think too of the friends next door, with whom I am (finally) going to see Star Trek next Tuesday. And the hot potato salad Shoemom is making for the painting party Saturday.

So I'm really having angst for no particular reason at all - she tells herself, firmly. I am simply tired and cranky and blocked on that last game level on the iPod and just got back from Wal-Mart. Before that, there was an entire workday getting nothing at all done, because of a missing sample that the vendor claims is the only thing standing between fit approval and production, and why the hell are they entrusting us with their only sample in all of everywhere to begin with, don't ask, because I don't know. I am at a low ebb.

So I have been spending most of my time out in the newly summery twilights lately. Hovering somewhere in the gap between wishing fervently that something - anything - might happen, and realising that even then it might not bridge the whole. I am thinking that this may be one of the things purgatory means.

shoebox_dw: (pbs yaaaaaaay)
Oh, I'm so happy. We'd just about convinced ourselves that it wasn't going to happen - no, no particular reason, just that we are the kind of people who routinely need proof that stuff like this is gonna happen to us. Said proof arrived yesterday, in the form of a call from the property manager, and boy are we not complaining.

Two-bedroom apartment! With...OK, this is going to be hard to explain as squee-worthy, given that it's what the people on any given ep of House Hunters are looking for in a spare bedroom alone, but...doors! That close! Walk-in closet! Storage space up the wazoo, in fact! Space to entertain! Living room, to put the TV in, that is not either of our sleeping spaces! Means losing the unspeakably thrilling biweekly oh-am-I-getting-popcorn-in-your-bed-I'm-sorry-I-don't-have-to-watch-this-no-wait debate, of course, but we'll muddle through somehow.

And the whole newly renovated - they're apparently upgrading the individual units as they rent them, which hey, new bathroom faucets! Did I mention the new bathroom faucets? Oh, lord, people are going to think we live in a cardboard box right now. Which we don't, really, but... Ooh, something else I just remembered - our friends live there, two couples' worth actually, and a couple more in the building right next door (including the mother-daughter team we went to Florida with). So. Cool. For starters, what with all the big strapping husbands hovering about, we are totally set come moving day (June 1st). The beer bill might be a tad high.

Ooh! Also, we have a landlady who likes to tell stories about the time she got drunk and her boyfriend had to take her home, and when she passed out on the floor decided to stay all night to look after her - but not touch her, no sir. She knows this, because she went to the doctor the next afternoon to confirm it, and he told her that she was totally un-taken-advantage-of, and didn't that tell her something? So she married him - no, not the doctor, her boyfriend. Honestly, I am torn between hoping this woman never comes near us again and inviting her in for coffee on a regular basis.

*sighs happily* So much to think about, so much to do...new bedroom furniture to buy...what do you guys think of taupe and cream with rosy accents as a colour scheme?

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