The home aka money sink.

After a good three years and a half of my life without a dining room table, we finally got one last week. Damn, you don't realize how much you miss it until you lose it and then get it back. It's now my new favorite piece of furniture at home. If I like it more I'd have to promote it to the "electronics" class and give it a name. But that's silly, no one names their furnitures, do they? (I'm thinking Ronaldo because it's round).

Getting a new place and a new piece of furniture has its danger though. Now I want to make it all pretty and Canadian-Living-ish.... Sigh, dreams of table runner, centerpieces and picture perfect tableware, maybe even starting to see the point of those expensive paper napkins with pictures they sell at chapters.

Nothing screams settledom more than a costco membership and a weekend spent at hardware store. And then, a couple of hundreds dollars later, I realize that I should have seen this coming, that I should not have been given a home and a credit card. My Sims experience could have told me that.... Except I don't have decorative flamencos in my washroom now.

Maybe it's all those daytime television I've been watching, too. I reeeaaaally need to find something serious to do soon. Who would have thunk, housewifing has a diminishing marginal utility.

the curse of the black thumb may have been lifted

My parents both have green thumbs. My dad grew up in a farming family and growing plants and food comes naturally to him - when do you need to water plants, how deep do you sow the seeds and what kind of food they need. Do you plant these in the shades or in the sun, when and how to fertilize. My mom could have grown up on a farm. Any half-dying plant that she adopts eventually start astronomical growth and producing flowers and fruits and seeds, some of which develop gigantism.

Apparently the green thumb is not genetic, as me and my sister have the legendary ability to reverse my mom's process on very resilient plants. Personally, I think my sister still had some tint of leftover greenness in her thumb. On my end? I'm pretty sure the exceptional ability to kill a cactus and those bamboo things that grow in any type of environment would have made me a witch in another era.

But here's a chance for my reputation to be saved!! A year ago, I had attempted to plant herbs from those herbal mini-kits so that I don't have to buy an entire bunch of parsley and basil that supermarket sell to giant Italian villages. It was sadly, a fail - a few weak-ass sprouts well, sprouted, and they almost died as soon as they sprouted. Not even an epic fail, it was more a whimper and sputtering out fail. My dad's diagnose was that I didn't water and I didn't fertilize. So basically, it wasn't my fault. Effing high maintenance bitchy herbs.

So this year I water. I fertilize. Have them get sun. Over the entire summer. I even play piano for the goddamn plants and don't swear around them and flip them over every 2 hours so they don't get bed sores. AND I MADE IT HAPPEN. Ladies and gentlemen brace yourselves. This is a jungle compared to what it was last year. I had even gotten enough to yes, yes dare I say - cook with.

We got Thai basil on the left side and some Italian parsley on the right hand side. In the back of this vast and extremely dense forest of abundance we have some mint and cilantro. "Oh my dear modern day Demeter, what are those things on the upper left corner, amongst the bountiful bush of basil," you ask.

These purple things, my little grasshopper, are the reasons why there were Adam and Eve and the big bang. Flowers, my dear. Flowers.

I think this constitutes overwhelming evidence contrary to the claim that my thumb is unable to grow organic things. And so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I rest my case.

my last post was really lazy

Mr. Burn's diseases

I'm sorry fellow readers to subject you to a mundane piece of update that's not even worthy of a Facebook Status. The point is, I had a good weekend, it was stuffy as hell downtown, and grumpy doremish just felt like a thousand words wanted to come up but they all got stuck at the door like Mr. Burns' viruses. Maybe the topics hadn't mulled in my head for long enough (the danger of letting ideas mull in my head is that sometimes I forget them, ahem "first cruise ever" post that never got published).


Anyhow... The danger of a good weekend is that it makes the Monday next feel like shitting a pinecone. This morning as I was stuck behind a mob of people at an intersection on my way to work, I appreciated the analogy V made the other day about how it looks like a herd of cattle. I was part of that herd, mooing and obedient, on my way to the slaughterhouse. For those that know me in real life know that I have about as much patience as a potato chip has nutritional value. Being stuck behind suits made me want to go all Keanu Reeves on those Mr. Smiths. Start of a great week, if you must know, but I didn't start the post to whine about my Monday again (I totally just did. Hah).

So new development this weekend, V has met with a mortgage specialist which I suspect may kick start his moving out in a more concrete way (well, more concretely than it ever was). That, coupled with my recent visit to an ex-coworker's humble (read: not humble at all) abode in a rich Missisaugan neighbourhood made me wonder about homes: do you prefer a spanking new house or something with a bit of age and character? Heck it got me thinking, and I don't even know. An old house if well renovated, could look like something out of a magazine - the romantic side of me thinks that I can decorate it with junks I bring back from around the world (hello drum from aggressive vendor in Jamaica!)... it would have terracotta ceramic in the kitchen, a well stocked garden for me to kill, and trees tall enough for a treehouse and hammocks. On the other hand there's the thrill of designing and having a spanking new big house - a proper dining room, family room, and all that stuff. It's all about suburbia and landscaping... yes it's comfortable, but somehow, feels a little - generic?

I don't know if I will want to deal with the old gas pipes and all the hidden problems of an older home, but if there's one that just has character but proper innards... well, it'd be like finding the perfect guy that's also not gay. One can dream...

I got new barstools!

I had forgotten how it feels like to sit somewhere that's facing nothing in particular and not a wall.

I've also finally taken the time to put something up on my wall and gotten a small patio set - my place is feeling not just like home, but like a refuge. I love how it makes me leave my work and all the wariness at the door. Love the way i can wedge into my couch comfortably, put my feet up and watch tv while playing fruit ninja during commercial breaks. Of all the condos i've visited, mine would be, in my own very biased opinion, the most personal and comfortable... I've somehow made it into a ultra large bedroom with a kitchen (which would explain why it feels almost weird to have people over sometimes...)

But I'm also thinking about moving on, as weird as it sounds. There are two buildings coming up that may eventually block me in where i can now see the highway and more importantly, the sun. I can see myself wanting a bit more space in a year or two - i was right, afterall, when i first were condo hunting, to say that my timeline would be 3-4 years. Hm.

So what is next. Well i just changed job and it's got its up and downs, and although there are opportunities out there right now i think it might be a little too impatient for me to change. But as always, i don't know if i'm saying that because i'm afraid to change and am getting complacent, or that i actually am starting to see the good sides of things. I know that there are things that are definitely putting me off right now, and i'm also the type of person that give things a little too many second chances.

Well, at least now i have a barstool to sit on and think about these big life decisions while sipping tea. Now, let's get this pros and cons list started!

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