Musings on a Small Life

...to cancel my long distance service with Rogers. Geezus. You get the run around from them until you start to get irate, at which point they do it for you, with thirty days' notice. So my service is effective until July 29th. That's so the mega-corporation can screw the customer for every service charge possible. In my case, $7. I have a $35 credit with them right now, anyway. Less those service fees, of course. Which will take weeks to be returned to me via cheque. I'm not paying plan fees and system access fees anymore when I call only two long distance numbers in Canada and when I can get 200 pre-paid minutes for $5 at Loblaws via their PC phone cards. Sheesh.

...I have just broken the Ikea table I spent so much time priming and painting. I've had that table for what, nine years? About that. Had it in every room in the house, just about. Carried it up and down the stairs without mishap. (It's very light, just looks like glued wood chips inside.) I almost had it back up in my old den, but I hit one of the legs against the wall going into the room. Totally demolished the leg; it's not repairable. Both the table (in pieces) and the mirror now are in the garage, awaiting appropriate disposal. Never again. Never again will I waste my money and my time trying to extend the life of my furniture. And I seriously am rethinking doing any painting in the bedroom while I'm off. No doubt I'd screw something up there too. :-/

Unless you're a pro or have innate talent, just don't bother to try and redo your existing cheap decor pieces. Like a large pine mirror, for instance. Because when you take the tape off, the tape you so carefully applied all the way around to prevent ruining the mirror glass, this is what you get. Around the entire frame. And you've wasted money, but more importantly time, for something you can no longer use. Be smart and save your money to buy new (or new-to-you) pieces that fit with your current decor.

I primed the mirror frame yesterday, in between putting coats of paint on the table (see yesterday's post and final pic), so decided I'd slap some paint on it today. Three coats on, mostly dry. I stepped outside to check it and saw two paw prints on the frame, one on the short end closest to the camera and one on the long side hanging over the step. Thanks, Nicki. Oh, yes, of course those prints belonged to Nicki, who, when coming inside at one point, felt it necessary to jump up on the mirror itself, rather than going around as Annie and Derry did.

Hair cut: check. Michaels for Spanish moss (for the flower box at work): check. Home Depot for paint--a darker colour for the counter top and a dark reddish brown for the old Ikea table: check. Tim Horton's for an iced coffee and whole grain raspberry muffin: check. Housework: check. Painting of said table: check. Pics along the way: check. BTW, that pasture and crop land (below) is owned by Corrections Canada, farmed by the inmates. The program is being cancelled in a couple of years, so all that lovely land, some of it a wetland restoration project, will end up bulldozed by a developer. In a few years, it will be a typical ugly housing development. Frankly, I think land developers are pretty much the scum of the earth. Far worse than lawyers and politicians, and that says a lot .

Today is Derry's 2nd birthday. Or as close to it as anyone knows, since he and his siblings were found when they were roughly 4 to 5 weeks old. It's the day we celebrate, at any rate. Catnip party this afternoon! I picked up catnip buds on the way home from work yesterday. Those things are potent . Dad emailed me last night; he's booked his flight for his fall visit. He'll fly to Ottawa on September 15th, which is a Tuesday, I believe. Probably get in late in the evening. I know he wants to spend a couple of days in Ottawa, so I won't expect him here until Friday sometime. But that could change. I'm looking forward to his visit--but by the same token, certainly don't want to rush the summer. Warm temps are hard to come by, thinking in terms of annual weather. Let's not rush into fall. As for work, I found a couple of interesting articles on the negative effects of cube farms: http://www.adminsecret.com/news/articles/1501-cubicles-lead-to-stress-flu-and-r...

We all make them, in a split second, unconsciously. Sometimes snap judgments are a good thing, as when we are facing danger of some sort. But more often than not, I think, snap judgments are ego-based criticisms of people. We size another person up within seconds and judge what s/he is like on appearance. And yes, our views can change, as we get to know someone. But first impressions--those snap judgments--often remain fixed. I took the bus part way home yesterday, a few blocks on a busy route, one of the main routes in the city. Across the aisle from me were two middle-aged women, probably in their early to mid-50s. One was wearing a cute sleeveless shift, white with embroidery along the hem. This woman also happened to be quite chunky, with flabby arm skin that was hanging down more than six inches. More like eight. My first thought, my snap judgment, was that this woman should not be wearing anything sleeveless, that all the flab was disgusting and she obviously was clueless and tac...

Two quick snapshots of the messy flower box. Still need the moss. Really, I ought to have done two boxes. Guess I still could....

There was too much cloud cover to watch a sunrise today. I wonder how things were at Stonehenge and other henges around the UK. The best I could do is snap a bit of pink sky amid the heavy clouds. Of course, I'm trying not to think that it's all downhill from here, in terms of daylight hours. :-/

I'm sitting at the office right now, having brought my laptop in for a few updates via the network connection. So I took the opportunity to finally --and I do mean finally --put together the silk floral display in the "balcony" box I have glued to to the top of my cubicle, directly in front of me. (I had tried over-the-railing brackets, but they didn't work, the depth of the cubicle panel just wasn't enough and there was no way to jury-rig [jerry-rig?] the brackets.) I am not a floral designer. That much is obvious. I still need some "moss" to complete it, but other than that, I think I'll leave it as is. Its function is to give me a bit more privacy, and in that I suppose it does succeed. And it's certainly very colourful. It's just not even semi-professional looking. Not even close. I didn't bring my camera with me, otherwise I'd take a snapshot and post it. Maybe next week. I'd better get that "moss" first, though. Yo...

I can be productive in the evenings after work. Sometimes. Really. I swear! Yesterday afternoon/evening I managed to get a load of laundry done, vacuum downstairs, do the garbage and recycle a day early (to put out tonight), do the litter boxes, BBQ my supper and clean up, talk to both Mom and Dad, and even get a bit of reading in. Hmm, that doesn't sound like very much as I sit here and type, but I felt really busy and productive last night. LOL. Plus there was the whole cat fight thing going on, with Nicki attacking Derry (!) and then Annie attacking Nicki, with me screeching like a banshee at them all, loud enough for everyone within a three block radius--or more--to hear. But that's on my Fur Family blog. Maybe it was that little "adventure" that made me feel the evening was so busy.

So I get into the office around 6:45AM today, per usual. Boot up the computer, hit control-alt-delete to get to the log-in screen, type my name and password, click the "ok" button, and...nothing. Nada. Zip. Mouse moves, but won't select anything. Can't escape the screen, can't do a thing. Great. The only way I can turn off the computer is to unplug it. Which I do. Then boot up again and go through the same thing, again. Finally I give up and the log-in screen returns to the control-alt-delete procedure. I go through this about half a dozen times. Throw up my hands in defeat, log on to a co-worker's computer (she's on holiday). No problems there at all, though I need my computer, with my files. Still, I check work email via the webmail program and then check my personal Gmail account. Fine. Look up the office hours for computer support: 8:30 to 4:30. Huh. Some people work early , you know! So I'm fuming and basically twiddling my thumbs when another e...

I think three coats of paint will do it for the counter top. I put the third on the "island" a couple of hours ago. Looks fine. I like the shade of green better than the old, but it doesn't go with the yellow of the walls as well as the old. Fine. Whatever. It's only paint. My dream is to someday be able to replace the cupboards, counter, and sink anyway. In the meantime, I'll just have to live with various shades of paint every handful or so years. No biggie. As for other things, I had brunch downtown with a friend and a group of his friends. It was...interesting. LOL. I see why he stays so young, mentally. Of course, there is that whole Universal law of "like attracts like." Heh. I think I was old enough to be everyone's mother--well, almost everyone's. Kinda weird, in a way. I've just been through too much now ever to feel that young at heart again. Funny how our perspectives change as we age, go through various life experiences. Many of ...

I know, I know, I can hardly believe it, either, but I've actually got another couple of small painting projects on the go right now. One is the counter top and the other is an old Ikea "Lack" table. I thought I'd be smart and go early to Rona this morning, with a stop at Starbucks at 7:10AM first, for a hit of a caffeine and sugar (short, non-fat chai and a piece of reduced fat banana chocolate chip loaf). I didn't have my paint chip with me, for the counter top, but knew it was a CIL colour and knew I'd recognize the name. Huh. Rona didn't have it. They carry CIL and that's where I thought I got the paint chip. But Home Depot also carries CIL and I realized I picked up the paint chip there, earlier in the spring when I went for paint for the stairs. So I left Rona and walked over to Home Depot, not more than 35 minutes or so, with stops to take a few pics of wildflowers. Sure enough, I spotted the right colour immediately when I got to the store, so ...

Slight variation of, "Are we there yet?" No and no. Back to the dentist this morning. $1230 later.... ...I'm still not done! She bonded on the ortho wire, but doesn't like it, doesn't like how the lab made it and wants to replace it in a few weeks with one she's going to get from an orthodontist. Replace at no charge, in fact. Apparently the one she'll get from the orthodontist is "braided" and is flexible, will be easier to bond to each individual tooth. The "replace at no charge" is a good thing, because I don't know if any of the $320 cost for this wire is covered by my insurance company. A small amount is supposed to be, but today's print-out from the dental office simply indicated it has been sent for processing. Meanwhile, the crown cost $910, of which just over $600 is covered. So, at worst, I have to come up with an additional $600 to pay off the credit card. At best, that amount will be slightly less, with some coverage...

That's an old expression those of us of a certain generation got from our parents. Not a particularly wise expression, either, since children learn more by example than by words. One of the comments to my "About Relationships" post started me thinking about this (thanks, Evy!). She wrote: "If you don't have a good relationship with your spouse, the children won't be happy. Happy parents make for happy, well behaved children." The other thing that factored into my musing on this was Mom's hope that she and Dad provided oh, I guess a good, healthy foundation for life. I'm not sure if I'm expressing that well enough -- she seemed concerned, the other day, that there was some good in my childhood. I really had to think about this, because my initial reaction is that no, I can't recall anything positive in my upbringing. (Not related to humans, that is. Lots of positive things related to animals and Nature.) Mom and Dad had an awful relations...

7:30AM, back in the dentist's chair for two needles. Because I just don't freeze on one. Lucky me. Forty-five minutes later I was done, the new crown on, hopefully permanently. Because I really don't want to go through that again. Tomorrow it's the ortho wire at 7:20AM. Let's hope that this time the lab did it correctly. Otherwise I'll have to go back yet again, and frankly, as nice as my dentist is, I've seen enough of her lately.

Never mind why this topic came up today, it just did. Here's what I think. The most important relationship you have in your life is with your Higher Self. Some people perceive that as "god," and that's fine. Second to that, I believe the most important relationship you have is with your mate/partner. I can hear parents everywhere saying that's not true, that the most important person in their lives is their child or children. That's fair--when the children are dependent and still at home. Though, frankly, if the parent (either mother or father) has neglected their relationship with their spouse/partner for the duration, in favour of the children, they're going to find themselves with a stranger by the time the kids are leaving home. If not sooner. And divorced or certainly living emotionally separate lives. Children do what they are supposed to do: grow up and move on, both physically and emotionally. They do not have an obligation to be the parents' b...

You clearly can see, in yesterday's snapshot and blog spot, that I taped all around the treads before starting with the brown paint. I did that because I'm a sloppy painter, always make a mess. Well, shit. I might as well not have bothered, since I got brown paint all over the place anyway, all over the white, and will have to pick up a tiny brush (like a craft or artist brush) to do the touch-ups. The treads look fine; it's the sides that look like crap now. Huh. Tell me why I bothered to do this.

Can you believe it? One more coat of brown on the treads, presumably sometime this weekend if I can keep the cats outside, then I just have to remove the painter's tape and I'm done. After how many months? Only ten. I took the carpet up last August, have had bare, rough, unfinished stairs since. I didn't bother to sand them; this is supposed to be a temporary measure. ("Temporary" in my situation means indefinite, of course.) I'm not sure what I want to do with them eventually: carpet or laminate. Carpet would be better under foot, of course, but carpet would be shredded by the cats, who used the old stuff as a scratching post in spite of the kitty condos in almost every room of the house. If carpet, it would have to an extremely durable, low-pile type. But for now, I'm just going to slap another coat on the treads and be done with it. Possibly redo the counter top next, as it's been five years since I painted that, to cover the ugly grey that was ther...

Okay, I actually left the office at 10:30AM, caught the bus to the Centre. But I got in at 6:40AM, so that was more than half a day, technically. I had walked in, seen "Grady" again, by chance or design, so got to feed him and take a few snapshots. Blurb and pics on my Fuzzy Tales blog . And today I really needed a mental health break. Some days simply are like that, you get a feeling that you're going to crawl out of your skin if you sit in the chair any longer. It's terrific to have a boss who understands the need for these breaks, and great to have the vacation days to do it. I can't say I was hugely productive; I think that's contrary to the concept of "mental health break." LOL. But I did stock up on cat food plus some groceries before heading home. Got lots of reading done this afternoon, even a nap. I still feel a bit run-down, but not as much as earlier today. Probably just allergies contributing to the general feeling of "blah." Or...

...for oh, five minutes, tops. The lab didn't do the ortho wire correctly (she even showed me the hand-written, legible note she had included with the work order form), so she couldn't bond it on. It'll have to wait till next week, sometime after the permanent crown on Monday. I think I've seen my dentist more in the past few weeks than in the past decade! So, since that was a bust, I got to the office around 8AM, earlier than expected. Well, at least it's "happy hump day." No carrot cake for breakfast today. Mm, but I do have some dark chocolate tucked away in one of the desk drawers. Sugar + caffeine...It doesn't get much better than that. ;-) [Note: Today's pic was Monday's glorious sunrise.]