Faux Cats

I have come to the realization that I have quite a collection of cats. I'm not sure how this started, but it seems to be gaining since we moved. I love them all, so, I'm not giving them up no matter what. Some were given to me (I remember which from whom, so that says something). I want to share them with you. These first two (above) were gifts. One from an old boss and one from my friend Janice B. I tell you her initial because I have lots of friends named Janice (Janice B. once pointed this out to me). Janice B. also gave me the cat mug below. Janice, you should know I have had coffee or tea in that mug every day ever since I got it. It is the perfect size. Janice B. loves dogs. I believe I have given her the odd dog thing, but not as nice as these, she has a nack for appropriate gifts.

The sugar bowl was given to me by my invisible friend Richard. If you have read previous posts you will know all about him. Or some stuff. He got this for me on a trip to Africa he took a few years ago. I got two sugar bowls from that trip. He couldn't decide which one he liked best? I like them both, and use them both. He knows I collect honey pots (yet another blog topic!), but Africans don't use honey pots, therefore a person cannot buy a honey pot, even if they wanted to. Which Richard did. Sugar and honey are both sweet, so the bowls suit me just fine.

Aren't these little cats really cute? I have no idea where they came from, but the live in my china cabinet. They are very little and very heavy.

I bought these four recently at HomeSense. I am going to admit right here and now that I am addicted to HomeSense. If I were getting married now, I would just ask for gift certificates to HomeSense. Have I said HomeSense enough? I bought the little sleeping one first, she reminded me of our chocolate point siamese Echo who died about 3 years ago. The other three I found about a month later and of course, they match, so I had to have them.

I got this little cat at the store that I am addicted to. She has the words Kitten Keeper scripted on the basket that is holding all the kittens. Had to have it. Had to. You understand. The cross stitch beside the Kitten Keeper was my Christmas gift from my daughter, Jenn, last year. She made it for me. I love it more, but this blog is about cat things. I am trying to stay on topic here.

And here is my last precious cat thing. Or rather two things. I got these two from my girls for Mother's Day this year. Jenn came up to the lake with them and had dinner with us. Alia, when she phoned that night from Australia asked me what she had gotten me. In cahoots with her sister. Whatever, I got two lovely new cats out of the deal. To me they represent my two daughters. Awwwww.

So, it's true. You can never have too many cats. Who said that? Ohhhh, right, I made it up. It was me!

After 1 Feeding of Miracle Grow Ultra Bloom!

I have discovered that I LOVE container gardening! It makes me crazy happy to see these blooms every morning. Crazy happy is a great place to be.

Friday Walks

For those that know me, it will come to no surpise to remember that I have an invisible friend named Richard. For those who don't know me, let me tell you all about it.

Richard is a retired social studies teacher that I met years and years ago (Richard could tell me what year) at a walking club. The walking club was located at Kinsmen Recreation Centre in the valley. I started going with a co-worker, Anna, but found out pretty quickly that I wanted to walk with Richard, 'cause he was at the front of the class. I like being at the front of the class. Richard and I discovered we had lots in common and became friends. Years later we are still walking. We left the walking club behind after a year or so (Richard would know). Now we meet in the winter at Millenium Place in Sherwood Park and in the summer we meet at various parking lots adjacent to the river valley trails.

Friday walks are different. In the winter, we usually have time for an hour around the track and 20 or 30 minutes in the weight room, 3 days a week. In the summer, generally we meet on my days off, and do a loop of an hour or so. But not so on Fridays. Fridays we go for the BIG WALK. We plan walks that are 14 km or more. The first was a trip to the zoo, from the Kinsmen parking lot. We had done the zoo walk before, but now it's officially part of the Summer Friday Big Walk.

That is a french fry that I am holding. Our reward for walking to the zoo. Richard brings his camera on these Friday walks, takes pictures and then sends me the pictures by email. When I told him that I was going to do a blog of our walks and use the pictures, he was visibly uncomfortable. This is why my picture is here and Richard's is not. This is part of the reason why my kids call Richard my invisible friend.


The second Big Friday Walk that we took was just last Friday. We started at the Strathcona Science Park parking lot and walked to Wayne Gretzky Drive. We stopped at an outlook bench on Hardisy Drive. I think I'm o.k. publishing the following picture. I mean, this could be any one. But let me assure you, it's my invisible friend, Richard.

Our Summer Big Friday Walks usually include some animals or birds. On this walk, we encountered some geese and the baby geese (Richard would know the correct terminology). The zoo walk had other animals. Mostly zoo animals. No pictures of them.

If it looks like these geese are running towards us, that's because they are. They obviously were expecting a little more than a smile and wave. We didn't have anything in our backpacks that we could share, so Richard took a quick picture and we took off at a brisk walk.


The Summer Friday Big Walks are a lovely way to end the week. My knees usually do not like the walks, but generally I ignore their whining. I mean knees are only a couple little parts of a big whole. A couple of Advils and an evening of rest usually does the trick. I am hoping for a long warm summer. Many more Big Friday Walks ahead to look forward to.

It Rained All Night!

We could have cared less about the weather at the lake this weekend. We have mastered the new wood stove, so let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. Not really. We did have a lovely time. Got a bunch of little stuff done. I did ALOT of supervising. ALOT. Just look.

We just need to do a little grouting and the backsplash is done. Hans also got to work on the wainscotting in the hall. Three quarters of the pine was reclaimed from our demolition. We'll only have to buy a couple of packages to finish off.

We even salvaged enough chair rail so we don't have to buy any. I was supervising really well on this one. Well, I did get up to take the picture. I also managed to finish one whole book and start another. Hans (on his breaks) is reading his cousin Rainer's book about touring Europe on his motorbike. It's must be good, 'cause Hans has broken into a grin several times and once or twice laughed out loud. I'll never get to read it though, it's written in German, and even though I know how to ask for a little cake and coffee, I never did master the reading part. I'll have to settle for the odd translation. He didn't finish his book though. Not enough breaks?

The cats enjoyed the weekend as well. Ninja comes willingly, she doesn't even go hide when her carrier comes out of the closet. Phoebe can read a calendar as every other day of the week, so comes down from her closet perch at around 3pm, but on Friday, she doesn't budge. After I wrangle Ninja into her carrier, I have to get out the ladder and climb up to the top shelf in the laundry room and physically take her down. This time she grabbed her blankie and would not let it go. It's a large blanket, she sleeps on it up there. You can imagine me trying to undo each claw out of the blankie so I could push her into her carrier. It's a battle that I always win, but she tries every time. Once she is in the carrier, she promptly falls asleep while Ninja stays awake for the whole journey, huge eyes starring at us from the back seat.

Once there, they really enjoy themselves. Well, they do what cats do best. Sleep.

These are Hans and my chairs, by the way.

Ninja was awake for part of the day though. She kept us amused as she always does. This is her finding a hiding place on the couch. It's so cute that they forget about their tails.

After she was "discovered" under the cushions, she had that mad look that cats get. You know, they lay down their ears, back on their heads. Either they are mad, or are thinking they are great hunters when they get this look. She was mad at me after for pulling the cushion away. She put her ears back and refused to look at me. She did catch a couple of bugs though. So that makes her a great hunter too.

July 12, 1984

This is likely my favourite picture on my hutch top. This would have been taken maybe the day after Alia and I came home from the hospital. I had to spend a week recoperating due to some stupidity of my own, so we weren't allowed to leave the hospital as usual. This picture was taken on July 12, 1984. Making me 24 years and almost 2 months old. Jenn would have been 26 months and 4 days old. Alia - 8 days old. She was a very healthy girl, as you can see. I have no idea why I dressed her in that heavy winter sleeper! She must have been sweating a river in there.

The reason why I wanted to share this picture with everyone is that I remember this day. I actually remember Hans taking this picture. At that moment, I remember feeling true joy in my whole being. That feeling of completeness. Being whole. Being in the right place, and the place being the best place for me, for my family. I also remember feeling that anything was possible. Ice Possible. Just knowing that, stretching ahead was a whole life time of experience waiting. Life is good. Still. Luckly for me, I have had many moments of clarity like that in my life. Of certainty in my space. Of course, I have had times of instability as well, doubting my own thoughts, many times I doubted my decisions. Something I have vowed to work on, learning to accept the joy that comes with making a decision that is good, even if it makes others lives a little more uncertain. But I would have to say that the moments of pure joy have far out weighed the rocky feelings.

Life is good. There is great joy in accepting this. Believe me.

The Renovation Journey Continues

It was a beautiful weekend at the lake. Even the cats would agree that it's worth being wrangled into their carriers like cattle; once they get out there.

Of course, we didn't get there until 7:30 or so on Friday night. After picking up Hans at 4pm, then we make our way to the west end to eat dinner at Red Lobster. We usually have to stop at Home Depot for supplies and then always a pit stop at Superstore for the groceries. Cats have bladders of steel though, they never complain or go rushing to the bathroom

All worth it though. Look at the little things we crossed off our list. Remember the little space between the cabinet and the wall?


Hans finished it up. I think it looks great. So far, all I have used it for is the bread and rolls in the top basket. Nice to have extra space though.

He also got the bookcase finished. The one in Alia's room, that used to be closet doors. I need to move some books over from the other overcrowed bookcase in the living room.

We have a few things left to finish up. The blue tile backsplash is next. The kick plate in the kitchen has to be covered or painted. There is always next weekend!

The View From The Balcony

This is our first whole summer in the condo, or Connie as we like to call her. There was definately some lifestyle adjustment, but now I do not believe we would change anything. We love the building, we love Connie and we love our view from the balcony. Our condo faces a ravine. We are two wings of the building away from the road. There is a walking path just beyond the stone retaining wall. Then trees. And animals that we can hear at night. We have an OWL! In our backyard. Crazy.

At night, when I am lying in bed, I can only hear the owl and the coyotes. We used to live in a house with a back alley. Our bedroom was in the back. At night I could hear the cars go by on the major road that ran almost beside our house and the people in the backalley passing through or hanging out back there.

The people on this buiding are very quiet. One of our concerns about moving into a condominium was what if the people were loud and had parties, stomped around. What if we could hear our upstairs neighbour moving about. We thought for almost a year that the upstairs neighbour must be an old, old person who was bed bound, as we only hear something from upstairs when the cleaning person came on Thursdays. Turns out it's a 50'sh single man up there. Very active. That was our biggest concern. No issue at all. Sometimes you spend too much time worrying about something that might be. I think it would be wise to not worry about anything until it comes to be.

Over all this was a really good move. I can honestly say, I don't miss anything about living in a house. We are still giddy over the condo fairies and the gardners. Still giggle when I clean and it takes me an hour or so. And I have been doing the flowers up over the last couple of days. Four terra cotta pots and a pedestal plant. Begonias and impatience. No weeding!

Of course, if you know us, you know that we could not just move in and live with what is. Althought the previous owners had done a lovely job of decorating, we had to put our own stamp on the place and changed everything. You know us. You'll see what I mean soon.