Cosmic Shift

So somehow, without me poking at things, the LJ feed of my blog began to work again, although Karine and I both tested the Google Reader feed and it’s still dead. [ETA: No! IT WORKS NOW TOO! That means the feed in general is working again, somehow!] Feed aggregators originally choked on the weird error message that appears at the top of the template and I couldn’t eradicate no matter what I did, and I effectively fell of the face of the earth for people relying on those readers. So at least my adoring LJ public will again read the scintillating minutiae of my life, which I am sure they are terribly excited about.

Seriously, I did nothing. I bashed at this problem for so long back when the WP upgrade broke things, and gave up. Some sort of cosmic shift must have occurred overnight. Of course, that means it might vanish again at any time but I’m thankful for what I can get right now.

If you read Owls’ Court via RSS feed on LJ, please remember that it’s a feed and I don’t get notification of comments on it. I’ll try to remember to check, though.

ETA: HANG ON.

There is no error message at the top any more. The footer is in the right place. Everything is displaying like it’s supposed to.

I am absolutely flummoxed. What, was I hacked in order to be fixed or something? I worked to find the problem for months and gave up for two years, and now everything suddenly mysteriously works?

I’m taking what I can get. Thank you, universe.

Hey, can people who usually can’t comment because the comment box doesn’t show up try leaving a few words, please? If the weird there/not-there comment box problem is gone too, then I have some serious libations to pour for whichever god is in charge of my blog and software.

Random Observations

1. I am feeling much better after taking it… easier over the weekend. I wish I could say I took it easy without qualification, but there was zipping about and visiting the house and keeping the boy occupied while HRH worked over there involved, and while it was not the physical stress of packing, it was also not entirely restful.

2. The kitchen is the hardest room to pack in a house. Every time you fill six boxes, there is still a bunch of stuff left on shelves. I know a lot of the box space is taken up with packing paper around breakables and protective boxes for smaller objects, but still. Please, people, for the love of the gods: stop giving us coffee mugs as gifts. And it is somewhat disheartening to realise that the pantry is actually one of the least-stuffed cupboards, too. This is partially due to the fact that we have been consciously buying less pantry-destined stuff to cut down on what we’ll have to move, which in turn is making dinners creative, to say the least.

3. The paint colours have been chosen. They are:

    Kitchen: Cool Current (pale grey-green)
    Living room: Mermaid’s Eyes (sage green)
    Upstairs hallway: Mantra (pale taupe)
    My office: Tahini (deep butter)
    The boy’s bedroom: Crepe and Toffee Bar (dark parchment and warm mid-brown)
    Downstairs hallway and family room: Macadamia (warm parchment)
    Master bedroom: Pyramid (warm taupe) Japanese Garden (very pale green, to go with the warm varnished wood of one wall)

HRH has spent the day pouring primer on all the atrocious colours. Since there are miles of pine trim and moldings in the living room as well as a door and two windows there’s a tonne of masking to do before priming it tomorrow, so he’s stuck back there tonight to get it done or he’ll lose valuable painting time tomorrow and suffer a cascade effect through the rest of the week.

4. My father-in-law went over today and took down the claustrophobia-inducing laundry room wall in preparation for making the room two feet wider, bless him. Now I will actually be able to open the dryer door all the way. He also showed up at the house with a new BBQ.

5. Correspondence-wise, I just did the one final address change with a major utility that needed to be done pre-move. I only have two address changes left, both of which can be be done post-move. I also handled the communications to the moving team and the housewarming list.

Now I think I shall pour myself a glass of wine in one of the pewter goblets (I packed all the regular wineglasses in the first round of kitchen packing; WHAT WAS I THINKING) and settle down with Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, which is very excellent. When the boys get home I shall magically create something from what’s in the pantry and freezer.

In Which She Attempts To Chronicle Some Days; Or, How Far Can We Push Exhausted?

On Friday around two o’clock we signed the final papers and became official owners of a real live house. It was mildly surreal: after running around for four weeks having meetings, calling various institutions and services to send things to different people and so forth, actually sitting down in the conference room with the notary and having her read through the contract and point out various disbursements before we signed, then sitting with the sellers and signing a much shorter contract was so quiet and less stressful than we’d expected. In fact, we had fun with the sellers while waiting for the notary to call them in, and again after we’d rejoined them and signed everything. The notary almost had to kick us out. The only bad news was the amount of the welcome tax, which is going to be more than a year’s worth of property tax. I sincerely hope they let us break it into multiple payments.

We had intended to go scoop the boy up from school early and let him take down the sold sign that was still in front of the house, but the selling agent said that it was actually her responsibility (and property) and she just hadn’t had the time. She was already there unscrewing it when we arrived, sans boy. This was our first look at it completely empty.

It is kind of like a dollhouse. It’s quite small, but well proportioned. There’s a lot of work ahead in the patching of large holes left by the screws they used to hang pictures, evening out the paint lines on the walls in order to have a smooth surface to paint, and the painting itself, especially because there needs to be one of those huge buckets of primer purchased in order to cover the dark brown, purple, gray, raspberry, and neon green with cobalt blue rooms. (Yeah. So not us.) HRH is over there today doing the spackling and plastering, then mowing and trimming the jungle the previous owners left for us. Then this week is solid painting. I am having minor existential crisis about the colours for the kitchen and living room, as the space is pretty much flows from one to the other. It’s either a green-tinged tan for the kitchen and a mid-green for the living room, or the mid-green for the kitchen and a darker sage green for the living room. The latter was my first choice and still the forerunner in my mind, because I am concerned that with a tan in the kitchen it will all be sort of a big neutral block, since the cupboards are all beige as well and they make up the majority of the kitchen. Also, the darker green is called Mermaid’s Eyes, and really, how can I pass that up?

We had time to kill between dropping the boy off at school on Friday morning and our notary appointment, so we did some recon regarding our laundry set and the loveseat for the living room. We think we’ve settled on the laundry system, and now we’re just waiting on a reply from the commercial salesguy at The Brick, with whom our real estate agent’s company has a deal regarding preferred pricing. Time’s getting tight, though, so I’ll send him another e-mail today, and if I haven’t heard from him by Tuesday I’ll switch to the guy located at the branch near our new house instead. I’m getting frustrated regarding a loveseat, too. The living room is tiny, and all the loveseats we’re seeing are surprisingly large. We wanted something light-looking, too, and apparently that sort of style is Not In at the moment; everything is overstuffed. Also, what is with all the leather and microsuede in the furniture options? Why can’t I have simple upholstery? We thought perhaps a futon might work, as the frames for those tend to be light-looking, but even they are too long for the space. We went to four different furniture stores that morning alone, and I’m at my wits’ end. In the final one I saw a chaise lounge I liked, and we realised that one of those would be less visually weighty, as well as comfortable and would allow for two people to sit if necessary. So suddenly that’s an option. (It has just occurred to me that the one I saw and liked is the colour of wheat, and would go beautifully with the Mermaid’s Eyes paint. And I’d already noted that it has the additional bonus of being the precisely right height if I wanted to sit on the end to play the cello or spin.)

We checked out the Dix-30 shopping complex before the notary appointment as well, because I needed to pick up a gift for the sellers at the SAQ and a book at Indigo. The Indigo is pretty, relaxing, and polished, although smaller than I am used to. Their children’s sections are very nice, though.

I am out of commission this weekend. I’d been having increasing difficulty with my left hip and lower back, and near the middle of the week I thought it was getting better. Then on Thursday I moved the wrong way and the right hip did something weird, so I couldn’t move at all without a lot of pain and problems. I dug out the muscle relaxants for an initial strike, used Tylenol after that, and the heating pad a lot. I’ve been really, really careful over the past two days, but that specific pain on top of the general fibro achiness and exhaustion aren’t doing my temper or stamina any favours. I’m glad we’re about 75% packed.

This week I pack the last of the household while HRH works over at the new house. We have to figure out an alternate route to the new place for moving day, because the bridge is going to be down to one lane from its usual three and traffic is going to be a nightmare as a result. Our usual alternate route across the Mercier bridge and around the seaway isn’t an option because the mileage will kill us when added to the truck rental, so it looks like it may have to the the Jacques-Cartier bridge, as the Victoria bridge has a height and weight restriction and is cars-only.

HRH fit twenty-one book boxes in the car this morning. He’s very pleased. If he can take twenty boxes of that size over each trip, that puts a significant dent in the amount that have to be moved on the actual moving day. (Significant being one hundred boxes. You can’t knock that.)

In non-house news, we managed a brief visit with Ceri, Ada, and Scott in the hospital and were completely enchanted by tiny Ada Emily. They stopped by on their way home from a hospital appointment yesterday to pick up the baby equipment we had put aside for them, and the boy got to meet Ada, who slept through the whole visit. He sat a bit behind me on the chesterfield while I held her and just looked at her with a little smile on his face. He wouldn’t touch her, though; I think we may have gotten him to barely touch a finger, but I can’t remember if he actually made contact with it or not. He did whisper to me at one point, “She just said hi.” “Did she say anything else?” I asked, aware that the baby had been fully silent in her boneless state of babysleep. “No, just hi,” he said.

We had the local grandparents booked for babysitting last night, as the original plan had been to go out with Ceri and Scott to celebrate the beginning of Ceri’s maternity leave and our signing for the house, and they urged us to go out anyway. So we went to see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, which had been part of that original plan, and we loved it. The only thing missing was having Ceri and Scott along with us to make it the best possible experience, but I am plotting to see if we can make that happen somehow.

So here we are in the home stretch. I’m really hoping my body holds together long enough to accomplish the last of what I need to do this week. Tylenol is my friend, as is the heating pad and the occasional Robaxacet. We can do it.

Weekend Roundup: Yet More Packing And A New Baby Edition

We have managed to exhaust ourselves, and it’s not even the move yet.

On Friday we went to the bank and got the bank draft for the notary, covering the down payment, the taxes, and the notary fee, another huge step that made it all a bit more real. We stopped by the license bureau to renew my driver’s license, had lunch together, bought a new toaster (you didn’t seriously think we could live without one for two weeks, did you?), researched washer/dryer sets, scoped Home Depot for new closet doors for the master bedroom (or at least something which which to cover the twelve feet of mirror that both of us find creepy), packed the knick-knacks, statues, and photographs, and stopped by the yarn store for some weaving supplies. (And good thing too, but that’s later in the story.) I drove hard to finish a freelance assignment I’d begun the day before, but I ran out of time. t! dropped off a slew of boxes for us, bless him, and stayed for supper.

Saturday I packed the wall of books in my office, my altar, and my knick-knacks. Once I’ve cleared the last few lingering things like cables and gloves off the bookcases we should be able to dismantle them, giving us a new place to stack packed boxes. Then pretty much all that’s left in here that I can do is my writing desk and the reference stuff and plastic bins of fibre-related stuff underneath it. Saturday afternoon Ceri called, saying that she was in her local hospital under observation for her blood pressure, and we talked for a good long time about stuff in general and possible premature delivery. We had steak and corn on the cob for supper, our first corn of the year, and it was tasteless and cardboardy. We’ll try again.

Sunday morning we had the upstairs neighbours down for brunch, the last one we’ll have like this. We’d packed our waffle iron (oops) but Blade brought his down to learn how to make HRH’s awesome waffles. There was equipment failure, though: the iron plates had too-small grooves and so the waffles self-destructed every time, so we gave up and I used the batter to make pancakes instead. But the company was good! While brunch was happening I got another call from Ceri, telling me that they were transferring her for possible induction to the same hospital I’d been transferred to, the one with the neonatal intensive care unit. We both got a bit weepy, me because I knew exactly what she was going through, and Ceri because she knew that I knew: I’m not ready yet, I was supposed to have more time.

We packed two-thirds of the kitchen that afternoon, until I had to stop because my back and hips were aching too much and my energy was wiped. Scott called and told us that the hospital was going ahead and inducing. At about four o’clock I brought out the loom and started measuring out a warp with the yarn I’d bought on Friday. I’d been planning a very different kind of blanket experiment to test a new technique I was considering using for my gift to them for the baby, and suddenly the experiment had a focus and a reason. I had the warp measured, threaded, sleyed, and wound, with half a blanket woven by the time we went to bed.

Monday morning we were pretty wiped. HRH took the boy to preschool, and I returned to the freelance project that I hadn’t managed to finish on Friday like I’d wanted to. Scott called around ten to let us know how things were progressing and to ask us to bring the stack of books and the camera I’d set aside on Saturday, expecting to go keep Ceri company before they decided to transfer her. I finished my project, handed it in, invoiced, handled my address change with the company, and officially booked off for the duration of the move. Then HRH and I drove up to the hospital we knew very, very well to drop off Ceri’s things and speak with Scott while Ceri rested.

Once home again, I realised that shoehorning a full workday into the morning had left me too burnt out to move on to packing the books in the living room, and HRH wasn’t much better, so I wove the rest of the baby blanket while we watched the middle part of The Return of the King (we’ve been re-watching the Lord of the Rings extended films at night because we’re too tired after a day of packing to do anything else). With every weft pass I was thinking health and safety, health and safety. I was going to finish it no matter what, because I was determined that this child was going to have something handmade especially for her ready even if she was a month ahead of schedule. When HRH went to pick the boy up I hemstitched the ends and took it off the loom. Since this was a new technique that I’d never tried before, I was worried that it might fall apart. But it didn’t, and it was exquisite; I foresee much potential with this technique indeed. I laid it out on the bed and took some photos (which will be shared in a project-devoted photo post once it has been gifted, I promise!), then prepared for the final step, which included felting it slightly in the washing machine. I used the gentle cycle just to be sure, and good thing. The so-called gentle cycle tore open all my protective layers and ties, leaving the blanket to agitate loose in the hot water, which is exactly what was not supposed to happen. I checked on it in time and rescued it, though, and while it’s felted a wee bit past what I wanted, it is certainly a success and I am thrilled with it.

After I put Liam to bed I drew myself a hot bath, because I have somehow screwed up my lower back and hips as badly as I did around the time I was pregnant (which, I have just realised, is the last time I moved, duh). I have to keep reminding myself to take it easy, but the repetitive motion of packing boxes and reaching up and down for things is doing a number on me. I downed some Tylenol and at the last moment paused, then took the phone into the bathroom with me, just in case.

Well, twenty minutes into the bath the phone did indeed ring, and I was out like a shot, grabbing a towel and the handset. Sure enough it was Scott, with the wonderful news that Ada Emily had been born just before six o’clock, right around the time I was pressing the water out of her completed baby blanket and hanging it on the clothesline to dry. I had finished it just in time for it to be ready for her. He told me to go ahead and tell people, and off he went to post quick notes on Facebook and Twitter from home.

When we got off the phone I sat down and had a very therapeutic cry. When someone else is going through something traumatic that you’ve been through, you worry about them. You know everything will be fine, but you still worry, and you feel for them, and I walked around most of the weekend becoming increasingly stressed and agitated, knowing what they were going through and being unable to help them any more than we were already doing, being a sounding board and support. Also moving a hell of a lot of energy around, through the blanket and otherwise, which is probably another reason why we were exhausted; the last time we did energy work that intense was when our own premature son was in that hospital and we were working for his health. There’s something about babies and births that makes you fight with everything you’ve got.

We all slept in an hour and a half later than usual this morning (apparently we’re all tired, what a surprise), which led to everyone scrambling out of bed in a panic and the boys leaving around the time they usually get to preschool. Today is the living room: we pack the books, an easy task (though long and tiring, because I did two English degrees and I’m a professional writer, and I’m not apologising for it) but one that disturbs me, because once the books are packed the house has officially been torn apart, and I still have another week and a half to live here. And that’s the halfway point packing-wise. There’s more kitchen, the rest of my office, and we’ll do some more of the boy’s room in the next day or so.

I have a double batch of bread rising to bake for Ceri and Scott so they’ll have two loaves in the freezer when they get home, I’m doing laundry, and the dishwasher is about to go on. I’m caught up on news and correspondence. HRH brought me a breakfast sandwich so I’m fed. Let’s do these books.

Timing

We threw out the toaster this morning.

It was a huge four-slot jobbie, with two separate dials to adjust each pair of slots. We inherited it from my parents years ago when they downsized to a toaster oven. (That should give you an idea of the size of it, as well as the age.)

The toaster’s been acting up for years. Sometimes the dials gave you the same degree of toastiness if you set them both to the same setting, but most often they did not. For three years the left dial only yielded warm bread or charcoal, no matter where you set the dial. It changed its mind last year for some reason, and we thought it had moved past the adolescent unreliability and rebellion, settling into responsible adulthood. Still, sometimes the springs stuck, sometimes you had to toast things twice; it was always an adventure with this toaster, the kind of adventure you usually aren’t physically prepared for at a certain hour of the morning, waiting for coffee to finish brewing and your breakfast to be ready. We observed it and learned its little foibles, adjusting our technique and approach to match its output and needs as they evolved. Despite its capriciousness and unreliability we treated it well, wiping it down and shaking out the crumbs regularly.

HRH and I idly discussed replacing it every year or so. But a toaster isn’t really high on the list of priorities when there’s food to be bought, shoen to shoe your ever-growing progeny’s feet to be purchased, utility bills to be paid. After all, it worked… some of the time. To a certain degree. Even if that degree was undetermined on any given day. Then a couple of weeks ago we made a sweeping decision: we would not move this toaster. No, we would toss it in the bin when we left this house, a symbol of leaving make-do behind, and we would Buy Ourselves a New Toaster with which to celebrate the purchase of our first house.

Today, the toaster died.

HRH set it to make toast as usual and went about the rest of breakfast-making. Except the toaster didn’t jauntily toss its toast in the air with the sudden snap-release of the internal mechanism. No, it wasn’t until HRH poured his coffee and turned to manually whack the lever up. Because sometimes, you know, you have to do that with this toaster. It only works to a degree, remember. It’s part of what we do when we use it: we don’t think about it, we just do it if it needs doing.

A slab of charcoal rose to the top of the slot. So, too, did a leaping blue flame from the elements and wires inside. And that was that.

We’re in the market for a new toaster a bit sooner rather than later, it would seem.

Surfacing

We’re in packing and prepping mode, but it all feels like we’re running in place. We can’t pack the basic rooms of the house yet because we live in them and we’re not moving for another two and a half weeks. We’ve packed the closets and most of the garage. And we’ve sort of run out of room in which to put boxes while still having living space. This is problematic.

We were going to pack the knickknacks and artwork last night, except we had no packing material, and we’ve packed all the towels and sheets and such. HRH is bringing home paper tonight.

I’m going to take this afternoon and start packing my office, to the extent that I can do that and not mess up my workflow or workspace. If HRH can dismantle my bookcases tonight we’ll have an extra wall against which to start stacking boxes that won’t be in anyone’s way. My closet is problematic in that I kind of have a desk in front of it, so I don’t have room to easily hand stuff down. I may have to move my desks and computer cables in order to pack the closet, which feels like two huge jobs instead of one big job, but if it has to be done then it has to be done.

Really, most of this work is going to have to be done the week between taking possession and the actual move, because we’ll be able to shift boxes over to the house and free up space for other boxes. But in the meantime it’s a frustrating situation to be in. It will all be worth it, I know, but treading water doesn’t feel productive. In the meantime I can sort through the kitchen cupboards for things we don’t use often, like roasting pans and baking tins and the good china, but where we’re going to put it so it’s all safe I do not know.

Spinning is, frankly, maintaining my equilibrium. Look at my pretty yarn.


Both are from the same wool top, four ounces of Projekt B (which is my eternally awesome LYS Ariadne Knits‘ house line) hand-dyed BFL. The top photo is of a two-ply heavy fingering weight yarn (around 17 WPI), of which I’ve got 233 yards, and the bottom photo is of about ten yards of chain-plied leftover. This top was a dream to spin. BFL is silky and drapey to begin with, but it was a genuine pleasure to spin this after working with wool/mohair for a while. I did it worsted with a short forward draw on a 10:1 ratio (which often translates into a short backward draw for me). The yarn is so even and soft. I’m pretty impressed with the colour-matching in the plies, too. I split the top in half and spun each separately after lots of predrafting, and the repeats are surprisingly even, with only a bit of colour mismatch as the repeats shift in one or another of the plies.

The colourway is called “Little Miss Tiggywinkle” and while I am not usually a fan of pink, this is lots of fun and reminds me of a bowl of mints or peony flowers. There are lots of baby arrivals on the horizon, and stocking up on baby-appropriate colourways is not a bad idea.

What I Read In July 2010

Perilous Gard Elizabeth Pope (reread)
The White Cat by Holly Black
A Comet in Moominland Tove Jansson (reread)
The Path of a Christian Witch by Adelina St.Clair
Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik
The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly McNees
The Lost Years of Jane Austen by Barbara Wilson
Gingerbread by Rachel Cohn

I give up on:

Freedom & Necessity by Steven Brust & Emma Bull (this has a great premise but I just can’t settle into it)
Kingdom Beyond the Waves by Stephen Hunt (the style of this keeps me at arm’s length)
Extraordinary Engines ed. Nick Gevers (short fiction, and again, most of them are holding me at arm’s length)

Other:
Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy by Robert Jourdain (I have had one chapter of this to go for a year, and I’m finally declaring it read in order to get it the heck off my bedside table.)
Stories ed. Neil Gaiman & Al Sarrantonio (I can’t rightly say I read this, since I read less than half the stories, but I did read some of it before I had to take it back to the library. I quite enjoyed Gaiman’s story and Joanne Harris’, as well. Nothing else stuck in my head.)

The moral of the story is apparently that it’s summer and I can’t focus on much. And I want to enjoy short fiction, I truly do, but by the time I settle into the style or story it’s over, and the next thing is different and I have to go through the whole adjustment process again.