Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Owlet: Twenty-Seven Months Old!

This is about two weeks late; I’ll backdate in in a day or so. Lots of pictures, fewer words.

We spent Thanksgiving with my parents in southern Ontario. While we were there, there was much leaf-jumping:

And we managed to get to the warplane heritage museum where my dad works before it closed for the day, despite the rain and the accident that closed both sides of the highway:


And we went to a real fall fair on a thoroughly gorgeous fall day, complete with a midway, food trucks, and livestock competitions. The kids liked the 4H rabbit jumping competitions best. (Yes, this is a real thing. Bunnies doing obstacle courses with jumps and faults, just like horse show jumping. It was marvellous, actually.) The kids got to pet all kinds of livestock, like the rabbits, and sheep, goats, ducks, cows, and horses:


Owlet’s stubbornness is starting to make things like meals and potty training a bit more of a challenge. While she is essentially pee trained (huzzah! and I only say ‘essentially’ because if stated outright that she is pee trained she will have a massive accident) pooping is another matter. She has decided to refuse to poop on the weekends, which has made things kind of crazy. (It’s not even a daycare/home thing. She’ll poop at home on weekday evenings if she has to… just not weekends. It’s driving us batty.) We can put a plate of all her favourite things in front of her and despite loving every thing on it she will push it away sharply and call for yogurt or “peanut butter toast” (which is her term for peanut butter anything, really — sandwich, crackers, actual toast). She loves yogurt, clementine oranges, raspberries, hot chocolate, and anything she can dip into milk or the aforementioned hot chocolate. She can pack away three freshly-baked scones, and would try for a fourth if we let her.

She is quirky and bursting at the seams with character. She picks up inanimate objects and uses a funny deep voice to make them say, “Heywo, Mummy; how are ooo?” She insists on smelling tins of coffee and tea when we open them, big deep inhalations with closed eyes and a sighed “ooh, mmm” afterwards. She insists on eating a pot of yogurt on her own. “My self,” she informs us importantly. And she does indeed do it herself, very tidily, and only needs parental help to scrape the very last half spoonful off the sides. If she does something, she exclaims delightedly, “I did it!” Sometimes after she has successfully used the potty, she says, “I did it!” then throws her arms around my neck and says, “Me happy, Mummy.”

She has discovered how much fun it is to chase other people. She loved pretending to be a monster at Halloween and shrieked with laughter when Sparky would pretend to run from her in horror. “I going get you! I going get you,” she would say, chugging after him on her chunky little legs.

Her favourite shows are Peppa Pig, Sesame Street extracts, and the Angry Birds Toons that Sparky watches. She loves to sing, and brought home a somewhat garbled version of Frere Jacques from preschool that I nonetheless figured out one day (hurrah for motherly intuition). She sings the same circle time song that Sparky used to sing when he attended the other preschool that the director runs, and was delighted when I started singing it with her one day. Her current favourite books are King Pig and she keeps going back to the Little Pookie books and If You Take a Mouse to School. Her new favourite movie is Finding Nemo.

The big girl bed plans continue. Our daycare director passed along an antique wooden bed that has pinecone/acorn finals on the headboard and footboard and is finished in a lovely warm chestnut brown colour. Owlet’s not in danger of climbing out of her crib (the way Sparky was, yikes), but with potty training being close to done, she needs to be able to get out of bed at night. And she so loved reading and snuggling in bed with us at Nana and Grandad’s house, and cried when we had to transfer her into the playpen she sleeps in there: “No, Mummy, no Daddy, sleep big bed!” So the plan is to put up the big bed the first weekend of December, after classes are over at the school HRH works at, so if he gets up a couple of times a night to return a wandering toddler to her bed it won’t impact him as badly the next day. I found her a lovely vintage-looking floral quilted patchwork coverlet mainly in shades of pale green and blue, which looks lovely with the yellow walls. We’re looking forward to snuggling in bed with her to read and cuddle instead of doing it in the rocker (which will have to be moved out of the room, alas, as the twin bed takes up so much more room than the crib does). Moving to a big girl bed is such a sign of growing up!

Halloween 2013

In pictures!

Owlet as Mei from Tonari no Totoro:

And Sparky as Commander Rex from Star Wars: The Clone Wars:

Sparky’s costume was made entirely by HRH out of cardboard (save for the mask, which was purchased, but ended up not being worn other than for pictures). It’s a really amazing construction of cardboard and velcro strips, Gorilla Glue and paint. Owlet’s costume was thrifted in its entirety, from three different stores. She looks even more cute with pigtails like the character wears, but since she leaves them in for about 0.78 seconds, we didn’t bother. (The crocheted Totoro was made by Ceri for Sparky’s third birthday.) While Sparky’s friends at school were appropriately cooled out by his costume, poor Owlet’s educator had no idea who Totoro was. This didn’t bother Owlet, of course; she knew who she was, and was very excited about it.

There was no way Owlet could wear her costume to actually go trick or treating, and covering it up with a snowsuit was pointless, so a few days before Halloween I brainstormed an alternate nighttime costume. She would be a snow fairy, in the pretty lavender princess-style winter coat I’d bought for her last year and stashed away, we’d find wings (thoughtfully purchased by the Preston-LeBlancs when they found a perfect and inexpensive pair on their travels), and I’d make a crown and wand out of found and dollar store materials. And that’s exactly what we did:

You can’t see it very clearly thanks to my blurry photo, but there’s a snowflake with ribbons velcroed to the centre of her wings, the same snowflake that’s wired to her dollar-store crown and her dowel-painted-silver wand. (This is pretty much the only time I’ve been pleased to see Christmas ornaments in the dollar store before Halloween. Six plastic sparkly snowflakes for a dollar? Yes please!).

It poured on Halloween, but it let up to a cold drizzle around trick or treating time. We drove out to spend the evening with HRH’s parents as usual, as their neighbourhood “does Halloween,” whereas ours pretty much does not. At this age, Sparky was scared of the spookily decorated houses and the kids in scary masks on the street, but Owlet chuckled at passing costumed people, stomped happily along the streets, and would have kept chugging along had we not called the evening on account of cold and wet and a forty-five minute drive home.

As much fun as it was, now Owlet knows what candy is, and asks for it frequently. All the way home we heard, “MORE TREATS! MORE CANDY!” from the back seat, and this after only four M&Ms on the way there, and half a Kinder Egg after supper before heading out. Now she gets one M&M after supper, and she thinks this moment is heaven. Otherwise, she’s pretty much forgotten that she collected candy in her bag, which was very very interesting while she was in the process of acquiring it.

And so another Halloween is over. I kind of miss costuming for myself. We’ll be able to do that again in, what, ten-ish years?

Fourteen!

On this day fourteen years ago (really?), in the company of family and dear chosen family on a spectacular autumn day, I married my best friend.

Fourteen years later, we have not only owned our house for three years, complete with HRH-directed and -tailored renos, but we have two absolutely wonderful children who remind us daily that life is spectacular in so many ways.

Today also marks the fifteenth anniversary of HRH and I doing our first road trip together, one of the joys I have continued to experience with him throughout our marriage. Doing them with not one but two children has stretched the associated definition of “joy,” but it’s only getting better! A new car makes the upcoming trips feel even more exciting.

We don’t usually give ourselves anniversary presents, but this year I bought HRH a new coffeemaker, a fancy one that you can program the night before so that he can have coffee as soon as he gets up. These days it’s been hard for him to find the time to finish his first cup let alone pour a second, with two kids to get moving and breakfasts to make. And he is buying me a subscription to the new Ply magazine for spinners. Let’s tally up this year’s celebrations:

  • ordered sushi from our favourite restaurant last night, during which we
  • watched Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. premiere, followed immediately by
  • watching the first episode of the fourth season of Downton Abbey
  • a new coffeemaker for HRH
  • a new spinning magazine for me

That summarizes our relationship rather nicely, doesn’t it?

I love you, HRH. I’m looking forward to many more years together of joy, love, laughter, supporting one another, and sharing our lives.

Twenty-Four Months Old – Happy Second Birthday, Owlet!

Two years ago, after two or three weeks of extremely frustrating prodromal labour, I woke up at 4:00 in the morning with the usual contractions, got up to walk around as always, then realized that finally, this was the real thing. Four hours later, we had a beautiful little daughter.

And then she turned one…

And now she is TWO!

She is a chipper, physical little girl who loves to climb and run and roll around. She enjoys singing, reading, colouring, playing with the wooden train set, pouring tea and making sandwiches for her toys, eating tomatoes and berries and carrots right out of the garden, and following her big brother around. She has taken to kissing things she loves, so she kissed her birthday balloons yesterday, and her pony figures before we went out shopping today, and drops random kisses on the cats when she feels like it. (I do that, too, so I can’t blame her. They are so soft, after all.) She kissed my spinning wheel goodnight for the first time tonight. I suspect this was a delaying tactic on the way to bed, rather than done out of love.

She has become fascinated with shadows over the past month. She always stops on the stairs going down to the family room and points out Mummy’s shadow, and then her own shadow. She also stops while going up the stairs to pat the new banister HRH put in, saying, “Daddy build!” (It’s a good thing she wasn’t really aware that HRH painted the stairwell the other day, otherwise there would have been a lot of washing of paint-smeared hands as she approved of his ongoing work.)

She has also become obsessed with pockets, tucking balls and wooden puzzle pieces and small toys into pockets belonging to other people. If she can’t find an actual pocket, she will tuck it into the waistband of your pants or down the front of your shirt. Sometimes when we call her, she stands up and a little cascade of tiny things fall out from under her own shirt, because she’d put them all in her own “pocket,” which means she stuffed them into the neckline of her top.

She is past thirty pounds, wears 3T tops and bottoms, size 5 disposable diapers at night, size L training pants, and size 6 to 7 shoes depending on the fit. Her curls are turning into true ringlets. HRH showed me how long her hair is when it’s wet, and it reaches down her back almost to the bottom of her shoulder blades! But curls being curls, they end up sproinging much, much shorter:

Big milestones this past month include cutting her bangs (both she and we were getting fed up with the ends in her eyes, so we trimmed them, and the curl makes them sproing up past eye level now), and turning her car seat around to face forward. I was ready to keep her facing the back — the research and safety ratings is more than convincing enough — but a friend mentioned turning their car seat around because there was a rear-facing weight limit of thirty pounds on it. Hmm, I thought, Owlet is awfully close to that; I should check, too. Lo and behold, our rear-facing weight limit was also thirty pounds, and when we weighed Owlet she was past that. So around it went, and she was very pleased indeed:

(Does anyone remember Sparky’s Calvin face, the weird twisted facial expression he’d give when you asked him to smile? Owlet has one, too. Whenever you ask her to smile, this is what she does:

We have to start telling her to look happy instead, as we did with Sparky.)

Dipping and licking are her newest food-related discoveries. She will eat through an alarming number of carrots if there is a dish of dip with them, and a small puddle of gravy on her plate sends her into a state of bliss. This also means that if you’re not paying attention, she will dip her fingers into your drink and lick them, then again and again until you catch her. I discovered this a couple of days ago when I had made myself a tea latte with vanilla syrup and frothed milk in it. HRH taught her how to eat Freezie-style juice popsicle this month, and now as soon as she sees someone with anything that remotely resembles one she says, “Lick? Lick?” Except she latches onto the popsicle and sucks it until all the flavouring is gone from the end, which isn’t exactly licking. But semantics aren’t big in a two-year-old’s world when juice pops are involved. She had blueberry iced tea from Davids Tea one day, too — the server thought she was cute, demanding sips of my little tea-of-the-day sample glasses, and he gave her a whole cup of the blueberry for free — and now she will pester me for “Tea? Tea? Ice tea? ICE TEA?”

She is currently crazy for beebugs (ladybugs) and bees (actual bees), so those are what HRH and I made to put on her birthday cupcakes:

I committed the cardinal sin of trying a new cake recipe for a birthday, which can always backfire, but I’m enshrining this one. The cupcakes were light but moist, and the flavour was great. HRH bought her a birthday balloon with ladybugs on it, too, and she was terribly excited. While shopping today I found a cup with a ladybug on it, so I picked it up for her and she was so excited at supper. (Consider that part of your birthday present to her, MLG!) Her party was lovely. We had family and godfamilies over, and my mother handled most of the food, bless her, with contributions from my mother-in-law, and the weather cooperated. We got to see people we hadn’t seen in person for ages.

As for our present to her, we were a little stumped for a while. She didn’t need anything; grandparents and godfamilies were covering little things she’d enjoy playing with, and we’re not fans of buying things for the sake of having something to give. And then I thought back to a wonderful, wonderful trip we took to Ottawa in late July, to meet two of my online friends who both had little girls who were born around when Owlet was. (They’re part of my brilliant online mums group, who all had babies due in July ’11.) Both the little girls wore amber necklaces, which are said to help soothe teething pain as well as providing other benefits (heck, I wore a large amber drop for over a year when my back was really bad just after I left retail and I was dealing with a lot of murky social interaction; it’s not like I don’t know the associated energies of the stone). There were play necklaces there, too, and Owlet had fun with those, as she doesn’t have play jewellery. So I thought that perhaps we could buy her an amber necklace. I asked her if she’d like that, and she considered it. “Like Sylvie and Audrey were wearing,” I added, and then she nodded very firmly. “Yes, please. Neckliss?” she said. So today after her nap we headed out to a local shop and looked at them. She chose a multicoloured one right away, over the lemon or cherry amber. “This! This neckliss, Mummy. For me. My neckliss.” She picked another one up and held it out to me, and said, “Mummy neckliss? Too?” I am not one to refuse amber (ever), so we found a Mummy-length one in the same multicoloured amber as hers, and we bought the two. And when we got home we both put them on and looked in the mirror together, and she was very happy indeed. She took it off for a bit, but then she asked to put it back on. She was unhappy when we said she had to take it off at bedtime (it was just a bit too long for our comfort level, and we didn’t want her chewing it), but I found a special little dish for her to put it in and we promised she could put it on again first thing in the morning. After HRH read to her I went in for my little cuddle, and she fussed at my necklace, wanting hers on again, but I took mine off and put it with her necklace, promising her that she could put it on for me when she put hers on the next day.

I had an ulterior motive for acquiescing to the matching necklaces. Tomorrow morning Owlet has her very first half-day at daycare, or “cool,” as she calls it. I wanted her to have something from me that she could see in a mirror or touch, and remember that I had one, too, and that when I touched mine or saw it I would be thinking of her as well.

She is terribly excited about “cool.” She has asked at least once a day to go for the past two weeks, sometimes going so far as to put on her hat and get her bunny and stand at the front door before asking. Her little head and shoulders would droop with disappointment when I’d tell her no, not today, there were still however many days to go until the big day. “Oh,” she would say, her little voice echoing with the pathos of crushed hopes and dreams. But tomorrow is the big day at last, and I was excited as I packed her bag tonight. I’m a little worried about the nap issue, but we won’t address that till Wednesday since they’re only doing the half-day tomorrow. She’s attending part-time, and normally she’d go on Tuesday, but she has a doctor’s appointment that day and so she’s going tomorrow as an exception.

Recently she’s had some hard nights. Her two-year-old molars are doing their thing, and sometimes it’s just difficult to fall asleep. The other night I was in her room cuddling her, and then I stood up to put her back in bed. She clasped her arms around my neck and swayed back and forth, mumbling something as she did. It took me a moment to understand her. She was saying, “I love you and love you; and love you and love you; and love you and love you.” It’s from the end of Night-Night, Little Pookie by Sandra Boynton, and it just about made my heart explode. I teared up as I kissed her curls, and I whispered, “I love you and love you, too.”

Because who can’t love this character?

(Dramatic? Nah.)

Concert Reflections, And On Emily’s Quest To Be With Henri

We held our annual Canada Day concert as part of the Pointe-Claire Canada Day celebrations last week. It was really, really good. Having brass and percussion certainly kicks things up a few notches, and also relieves some stress. After dress rehearsal, some of the cello section laughed about how we no longer felt the need to practice like crazy to try to polish the last little things, because no one would be hearing them anyway. In all seriousness, though, I’m happy with how I did considering the lack of time I had to practice this material.

We’ve played the Capriol Suite by Peter Warlock before (twice, I do believe) but in the arrangement for string orchestra. This time we had the percussion and a BRASS SECTION (it deserves capital letters because it was VERY THERE) and it totally changed the feel of it. Also, it was a more aggressive interpretation on the part of our conductor, so all in all, a very different piece. I enjoyed the Tchaikovsky waltz from Swan Lake (also much more energetic than I’d expected), and as it was Canada Day and a dance-themed concert, we naturally played Strauss. I grumble about Strauss, but playing through waltzes gives me a much more refined appreciation of them. This year’s was Tales from the Vienna Woods, and we also did the Thunder and Lightning Polka, which was deliciously rollicking, crashy and loud thanks to the percussion, and a lot of fun. We played some Dvorak Slavonic Dances to end the concert, and while at times I think Dvorak orchestrated these with particular attention to trying to kill cellists, they do sound fabulous.

I realized that it’s been four years since I’ve officially owned this 7/8 cello. I love it. It’s a tidy, trim little thing, a workhorse that matches me in whatever I ask of it, and it’s developing some very pretty sound in the upper register as it ages and is worked in. (Or maybe that’s me. Or both of us together.) It doesn’t have any oddities that I’ve found yet, just nice even sound from bottom to top. I consider myself extremely lucky to own it. (I need to replace the strings this fall, and it really should have a check up, since it hasn’t been back since I bought it in the summer of 2009.)

I can’t even imagine not owning a cello. Playing on a borrowed instrument and not being able to allow yourself to make as deep a connection as you want to must be incredibly difficult. And yet, that’s the position my friend Emily has been in. She’s a professional cellist and teacher, and a year ago she was forced to sell her cello in order to make ends meet. We’re talking a totally different bracket of cello, here. Selling mine would maybe net me a grand. Emily’s… well, let’s just say it was a heck of a lot more than that.

But in selling it, she also sold a friend, a companion, an instrument that had been with her for the entirety of her professional life, and most of her student life, too. And while a colleague lent her a cello so she could continue to work, she was missing… well, she was missing a soul mate.

And she’s found it.

Henri is a 1938 French cello with dreamy, rich sound. He and Emily fit together beautifully. And she’s asking for help from friends and strangers in raising the last of the money she needs to buy him. In typical Emily fashion, her way of thanking sponsors is to give back to the community by working with charities, veterans, public schools, and various assistance programs. There are fun personal thank-yous, too — Emily’s quirky stick figure drawings, copies of her quite excellent cello technical manual, and so forth — but Emily’s all about giving back at large, and outreach. It’s no surprise, because she has an enormous heart and sense of justice, and she values everyone and everything.

So when HRH asked me what I wanted for my birthday this year, I really thought hard about it. Did I want a gift certificate to the local spinning supply studio, and a free afternoon in which to visit it? Did I want a pair of hand carders? Did I want books? And then I knew.

HRH is donating money to Emily’s fundraising campaign as my birthday present. Because I know that Emily and Henri are meant to be together, and because I know what it’s like to own your instrument and be able to allow yourself to fall in love, to make that deepest connection. And if I know that on my own superficial, amateur level, then I can only imagine what it’s like on Emily’s professional level. To be a professional musician without an instrument… it’s unthinkable. And I’m happy to be able to direct my husband’s birthday present to me towards a friend’s need, and know that many, many people will benefit by it in the long run.

Emily’s website is EmilyWright.net.
Her fundraiser can be found at http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/stark-raving-cello-fundraiser.
Here’s an interview by Zero 2 Maestro with Emily about her situation.

Summer Vacation Begins

Portfolios have been brought home, report cards received (all very good, thank you), the backpack has been emptied, and we are on summer hols here in the dollhouse. We’re bumping against one another a bit while we find our summer rhythm.

In a nutshell:

It is hot. And humid. And stormy.

HRH demolished the old, rotting fence on the north-west side of the property and built a new one — in three days. This is it, only halfway done:

Owlet has a cold, a nose-streaming, whiny, sneezy cold. She must have caught it at the daycare get-to-know-you picnic party. Ah, the joys of challenging the immune system.

I have a concert in four days. That would be July 1, if you missed it. We’re playing Dvorak Slavic Dances, and Strauss, and Warlock’s Capriol suite, among others. Nice stompy and swingy stuff.

I finished spinning the undyed BFL/silk single and plied it with the waiting single I spun from the lavender/green/chestnut braid of My Own Fibre Club BFL/silk I dyed in April. And I completely misjudged the weight. (Not the mass, the diameter of the yarn.) So now I have 1100 yards of light silk laceweight, which does not work for what I was spinning it for at all. (Which was a lace shawlette calling for 475 yards of sock weight yarn. Yeah, I really blew it. I should have chain-plied the dyed single and skipped the other ply entirely.)

For my June edition of My Own Fibre Club, I dyed some silk hankies to spin in the upcoming Tour de Fleece. I did a two-part process, dyeing them with yellow, purple, blue, and green in the first step, then overdyeing them with blue in the second, and ended up with some truly lovely Peacock hankies.

Last weekend Sparky had his birthday party #3, the Friends From School edition, and it went very well indeed. HRH scratch-built a Minecraft cake landscape from cubes of fondant that he painted. It was a big hit.

Books… I read Elizabeth Bear’s The Shattered Pillars and it was very good, managing to not fall victim to middle-book-of-a-trilogy syndrome. I read Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was so very, very perfect and bright and sharp. I am rereading Possession, because I have to do that every five years or so.

No work coming in, which is both worrisome and welcome. My fibro meds aren’t settling the way I was hoping they would; maybe it will take another couple of weeks to adjust.

The kitten is settling in very, very well. She loves playing with the children, purrs loudly when she snuggles into your lap, and has quite the personality. Gryff approves.

That’s what’s happening. Back into the fray.

Recent Excitement

1. We have a new kitten. She’s three months old, and it only took our big orange cat Gryffindor two days of suspicion before he started romping with her. His hisses were half-hearted, though. I think they were mostly for show.

Gryff has been clingy and needy since Cricket left us. He’s always been one of a multiple-cat household, and very social; he was miserable without another cat around. The original plan was to get another cat at the end of the summer, when Owlet turned two. Well, that plan was moved up for Gryff’s sake. Last Sunday afternoon we visited the city shelter, and came home with a wee brown and grey tabby. Meet Minerva (McGonagall, of course):

She’s zippy and so energetic that she may tire out both the kids and Gryff, now that he acknowledges that she exists in his own reality. The first evening, she raced laps in our bedroom, under the bed, up one side, running across under my knees, throwing herself off the other side, then repeating the whole thing. She’s three months old, is slim and tiny, and has wee kitten claws and wee kitten teeth. We put her carrier in a quiet part of the living room when we got her home, and I found Owlet pushing the straw of her water bottle and goldfish crackers in through the wire door to share with the kitten on two different occasions while we made supper.

We all had a really good feeling about this. We wouldn’t have brought her home otherwise, as disappointed as everyone would have been to come home kitten-less. We’re good at judging personalities and energy and estimating how they’ll fit into the energy of the family and house. Minerva was grounded, forthright and self-assured without being aggressive, and wasn’t afraid of the children. She fit in right away.

2. Sparky turned eight last Tuesday, and we celebrated his birthday this weekend en famille. My parents came in from out of town and HRH’s parents came over, too. The birthday boy requested cheeseburgers and ice cream cake for his birthday feast, which also doubled as our Father’s Day celebration, so that’s what we had for lunch on Sunday. He specified ice cream cake with an Oreo crust, a bottom layer of chocolate ice cream, and a top layer of peanut butter ice cream, so I made that Sunday morning. We had it with whipped cream and homemade hot fudge sauce, and it was really good. My mother, who does not eat desserts, had a slice and enjoyed it immensely, which was all I needed to know it was really good. (I knew everyone else would like it, and I’m glad they did. It’s just that Mum doesn’t eat desserts, so wow.)

3. Sunday afternoon Sparky and I had our end-of-year cello recital. Sparky played “Song of the Wind” extremely well, clearly, in tune, and in tempo. I had the pleasure of accompanying him again. I did a “Chanson Triste” that people thought was excellent, but I knew had been better in rehearsal. And then we played lots of good movie music as an ensemble, and we totally killed our teacher’s original four-cello-part arrangement of “Skyfall,” which we segued into after playing the James Bond theme. (I don’t know about the audience, but most of the students up on stage had goosebumps!) My teacher now has twenty students, so it made for a long afternoon, but it was good. It was great to have Marc M and Marc L in the audience, and both HRH’s parents and my parents this time; my parents haven’t heard me play for years.

My teacher is raising her lesson fees for the first time in ages next year, so it looks like I’ll have to stick to my biweekly schedule instead of returning to a weekly lesson. (Assuming I ever work again. It’s been six weeks since the publisher sent me a project. Feast or famine, that’s what this is, and I know it. Still, work would be nice, what with Owlet’s private daycare costs about to begin in August. Especially since the whole point in putting her into daycare was so that I could get work done without making myself sicker.)

4. The Tour de Fleece is coming up! This is a for-fun spinning event that runs concurrent with the Tour de France. I was so excited that I cleared my wheels two weeks ago, which was kind of a dumb move. So I’m doing my vanilla spinning now to get it out of the way and fill my time before the TdF begins at the end of June. I’ve got an undyed BFL and BFL/silk blend going on my Symphony to ply with a bobbin of dyed BFL/silk I’ve already spun, and I’m doing some longdraw singles from heathered plum roving on my Baynes Colonial to get used to woollen spinning on it.

5. It’s the last week of school for Sparky. (We got next year’s supply and fee lists today, and I’m having trouble parsing the fact that he’ll be in grade three in September.) He has a final birthday party coming up next Sunday for five friends. Then after that it’s the Canada Day concert, two weeks off for everyone, and then day camp begins for Sparky. I’ve made it through the past two weeks; I just need to make it through the next couple.