Category Archives: Diary

Calm

I just had a wonderfully relaxing evening out at a concert presented by voice students, including the self-possessed and talented sandman7. It was so nice to sit in the company of friends and listen to someone else make music. And I really needed it after a day like the one I’ve had.

Now all nice and relaxed, I get to do a bit more packing for our trip to Oakville, then sleep well (please, universe? just for a change?), finish up tomorrow morning, and away we’ll go. I haven’t seen my grandmother in years, and Liam has never met her. It’s going to be a really special weekend.

Be good while I’m gone. (Yes, Nix, I’m talking to you. I know you turn the computer on to surf LOLcats and New Scientist while I’m out.)

Liam Is TWO!

Longer post later. For now:

June 11 2007

The new wagon, June 10 2007

The Nemo cake! June 10 2007

Awesome party, even though most of it happened while I wasn’t looking. Excellent behaviour on Liam’s part; much politeness and cheer. Despite the assurance that no gifts were necessary he had a pile of really terrific presents to open, and he very obviously enjoyed each one.

Thank you everyone for a wonderful day, and for helping us celebrate two years of having such a wonderful little soul in the world with us.

P-Day Minus One, And…

Oh my gods, I have never made buttercream icing that TASTES THIS GOOD.

I’m sure Liam’s guests will forgive me if I serve them plain, frosting-free cake.

(Who am I kidding? There’s five cups of the stuff.)

I get to be artistic later this evening with brushes and pots of tinted icing and sprinkles. However this cake ends up looking, I will have had fun. I will pour myself a glass of wine (Do we even have wine? Hmm. Wait, no, there is port!) and enjoy myself. I may even call HRH in to advise, but only if he is drinking too.

LATER: 10:30 and we are not only done icing the cake, but cupcakes for daycare, baking and icing the cookies, plus we’ve cleaned up and washed the dishes! I have a sugar burn in the middle of my tongue from sampling the icing and licking my fingers. I threw about three-quarters of a cup out in the end; I’m astonished because I usually run out of icing before the project is finished and have to make more.

The cake looks awesome; we had so much fun. Liam is going to flip.

Nine-Thirty? It Feels Like Three In The Afternoon

It occurred to me as I pulled into the driveway last night that I should assign myself lines to write. Something along the idea of, I will not listen to ‘Jack Sparrow’ with volume set at 22 while driving through construction zones at night on the way home from orchestra. A hundred times or so.

Slept horribly again, and Liam is fractious. So naturally, HRH was called in to replace someone at work today. We made pancakes together after he left; Liam stirred. There is currently a movie playing, because I am weak of will this morning and can’t keep up with him, and I have things to do.

There are a pile of things to do before Sunday. Like figure out what people are eating, find a good cake recipe, find a good frosting recipe (which is even more important, and no, I’ve never found one I’m completely happy with)… appropriate wrapping paper would be good, too. Ingredients for whatever I decide to make need to be purchased. I still haven’t found a cake board, and I don’t particularly feel like cutting up one of our good strong moving boxes to make one. I did find a new cake pan, but not as big as I was hoping for. I’ll double the cake batter and make cupcakes as well to be sure to have enough. I had intended to send some over to daycare on Monday on the actual birthday anyhow, along with streamers and balloons and such; might as well be a full batch instead of the half I was thinking of making.

Today I learned how to make my printer print much much faster (yes, it took me a year to find the fast draft mode). I thought I’d figured out how to do manual duplex printing too, but the printer out-thought me. It seems I have to select the option both in the Word print options and the ‘advanced’ printer options for it actually work. Now I have a two-hundred page document to edit that I was hoping would only use one hundred pages, and of course I forgot to paginate it. Yesterday I bought a photo ink cartridge, and discovered only after I’d gotten home that it replaces the black cartridge, not the dangerously-low-on-ink colour cartridge, so I only got another half-dozen photos printed before the regular colour ink gave out entirely.

On the other hand, I picked up an excellent selection of summer tops and two skirts yesterday as well, so I can throw out all the t-shirts that have somehow developed microscopic holes in them. I still don’t own a pair of shorts, which is fine with me.

I wrote eight hundred and something words yesterday. Granted, they were slightly expanded transcription from handwritten notes in a notebook, but it counts. My record sheet tells me that I haven’t put a single word into Swan Sister since early February, which sounds about right. That would be when I had to stop because there was a huge gap between everything I’d plotted and the outlined ending, a gap I didn’t think was as big as it was until I got there and couldn’t see the other side, as I’d expected to.

All right. Into the living room to keep the boy company. I will read with sticky notes and a pencil while he watches Buzz Lightyear, his favourite movie character these days.

Grr and Bus Rides

I have a bee in my bonnet about getting a particular gift for an upcoming child. I want this toy because Liam adored it, and every parent who saw it thought it was great.

I cannot find it in stores to save my life. I have been looking for a month.

Now, when I first started looking for Liam’s I had a similar problem, but I eventually found it. This time? Nada. Actually, it’s worse — I finally found one at a TRU last week but the box had been badly destroyed, and it’s for a gift, so no way. Went back today thinking that I could ditch the box and do the gift bag thing — and it’s gone. Fisher Price has a whole new line out, and I think the toy I want has been discontinued, replaced by something similar but annoying with batteries in the new line. I can’t even find it listed on the FP website. (The Link-a-Doos line seems to have been replaced by Miracles & Milestones — have I mentioned my resistance to battery-powered toys?) Even eBay is failing me.

I hate it when things like this happen. You think and think and think and you come up with the perfect idea, and then boom — your solution vanishes due to circumstances beyond your control.

Back to the drawing board.

On the other hand, I already have one of the gifts for a baby who is not scheduled to appear for another six months. So I suppose these balance one another out.

In other news, Liam and I took the bus out to shop this morning, and he loved it so much that he asked throughout the shopping trip, “Bus? More bus?”. On the ride over he called it a “school bus”, and when I corrected him he told people importantly as they got on, “City bus. Hello people.” He pointed out the light above the back door every time it went on, and told me that it was green; he told me people were sitting, riding the bus; he pointed himself out in the mirror and made faces at me and laughed. And again I am astonished at how helpful some people can be when strollers are involved on public transport, and how understanding they are when the bus is full and your stroller is pretty much blocking the door because there’s nowhere else for you to go. Thank you, anonymous patrons of public transport, for your patience and understanding and willingness to inch your way around the stroller, and for leaping to help dislodge jammed wheels. Mothers and their stroller-bound children everywhere are deeply grateful.

Okay; the boy’s been napping for two and a half hours. Either the trip out this morning tired him more than I thought, or he’s plotting something.

Argh

So naturally, since I chose today to begin printing photos for Liam’s photo album, the colour ink is low and there’s no point in going any further because I’ll just waste photo paper and what’s left of the ink.

To be fair, I think this is the first time I’ll be replacing it. I can’t really complain about the longevity, only the timing.

On the bright side of things, I got not one but two boxes of books in the post.

Monday Miscellania

The aqueduc truck just went by sounding the water-off alarm. There’s roadwork happening the next street over. I wonder how often this will happen; it’s the second time in two weeks.

The interview I did last week is up. Gwinevere says of me that “She is totally wise to the Wiccan ways, and I loved reading her books!”, which is very sweet of her and made me feel all warm inside.

I’m back to sequential nights of poor sleep. Last night HRH woke me up by saying “What was that?” after a loud sound on the back steps around twelve-thirty, and that was it; I was up for the next four hours. I reread most of the first Harry Dresden book while awake in the wee smas of Saturday night, and last night I got a third of Busman’s Honeymoon read. (How on earth was this book ever done as a play?). I read Shannon Hale’s latest paperback Princess Academy last Friday and was mildly disappointed that it wasn’t as rich as her Bayern books; it felt less deep, and I wasn’t as drawn into the characters or the style of the storytelling. I’m less intrigued now about her newest books Book of a Thousand Days and Austenland.

We had a lovely visit with the ADZO household Saturday afternoon where Liam had his first experience with a wagon and adored it enthusiastically, as I suspected he would: he pushed it, pulled it, and talked about riding in it the whole time we pulled him along. Thumbs up, Self, for the suggestion of a wagon as birthday gift to the grandparent contingent. (Pats self on the back.) Sunday afternoon was coven, and we roughly outlined stuff we’d like to do over the next few months and how we’d like to approach it, as well as roughing out the Midsummer ritual at the end of the month. Unfortunately HRH scheduled the meeting to begin right at the end of Liam’s nap time, so he spent most of his time chasing after the boy. This is what frustrates me about daytime coven meets: we constantly lose one person to childcare. Fortunately as it is now summer we are shifting to Monday evening meetings, because so much happens over the weekends that it gets nigh-impossible to schedule everyone on a weekend afternoon, so the boy will be in bed. Much easier to have everyone participate when one of us isn’t fielding/entertaining a toddler.

I made brownies Saturday morning from a new UK recipe (Nigella, natch), which meant I got to use my little scale as well as my funky measuring glass with the different weight measurements for various ingredients on the side. I used dark Tolberone for the chocolate. Divine. Very buttery, though. Liam called them “magic”, which was hugely amusing.

Three-word sentences are becoming the norm where Sparky is concerned. It’s mildly astonishing every time he produces one.

The Jam Sessions release date seems to have been pushed back to September. I am irked. I played through the first chapter of Phoenix Wright last evening and enjoyed it immensely.

And now, I go to clean my office window. On grey days such as this, one needs to maximise the amount of light coming in at all costs. Also, where is the rain? We were promised a downpour. Perhaps HRH jinxed it by saying, “See you in a couple of hours!” as he pulled out of the driveway this morning. I was kind of looking forward to going to the party store later with him to look at candles and such for a certain birthday cake, and maybe a new large sheet cake tin and a cake board. (Things I will never do: make a 3D owl cake. Yikes. How do you serve something like that?)