pending blizzard...

crazy car-smashing storm

mmm. hail.

yesterday i was having a bad day. i am dogsitting for my sis while she is away for the weekend, which normally i enjoy as my pup poppy really loves having some buddies. last night, just as i was about getting ready to go to bed, i looked out the kitchen window to see poppy chewing on something, and nikki's dogs rolling around in the grass rubbing themselves on something. this could not be good.

i went out to investigate. sure enough, the buggers had found something dead. which is not unusual, they are dragging dead things into my yard all the time. however, this dead thing i could not immediately identify, mainly due to the wicked stench of decay preventing me from getting close enough. suddenly it clicked: they had dug up the body of pauline, one of my big barn cats, who i'd found dead in my driveway about a month ago (an only slightly less traumatizing story that i will not tell you today) (and no, i did not run her over, just in case that was your theory).

so, yeah. month-old dead cat on my lawn and dogs rolling all over her. i realized that at that time of the night there was nobody that i could call that would actually drive all the way to my house to bury a rotten cat for me, so i was on my own. with tea towel tied around my face, i used my hoe and my rake like giant tweezers with which to drag poor pauline back to her grave.

fun times. i could still taste puke in my throat when i went to bed and was relieved that my day was over and couldn't get any worse...

well. it did. i woke up about 4:30 this morning to what sounded like my house being beaten by angry ogres with big sticks. luckily, it was just a wicked crazy hailstorm smashing the shit out of my most expensive belongings. and my poor dog.

after the insanity let up, i grabbed a few hailstones off my deck. they were just the biggest ones in my immediate vicinity - it was still lightning like mad so i didn't want to push my luck - i already thought once that my day couldn't get any worse. put them in my freezer, and, satisfied that the worst was (hopefully) over, went back to bed.

ventured out about 7 this morning to check out the damage. i found hailstones on my lawn that were still the size of tennis balls, over 2 hours later and with the heat already nearing 20 degrees. thank god those ones didn't hit my car, because the ones that did sure did enough damage. dents in my roof, hood, and down the passenger side, and a giant circular crack in my windshield.

luckily my house fared better, with all windows remaining miracuously intact and only some dents in my siding to show for all the insanity. for the most part, even the gardens are ok. one of my planters got totalled, and i lost one of my 12 tomato plants, but that seems to be about it.

haha! just as i was typing this, i was on the radio! i had called CBC to report my overnight excitement, as they were getting reports of 'golf-ball sized hail overnight' and of course i had to one-up everyone. and they just played my voicemail on the news!

ahhh... summer

so. it's summer. which means it is too bloody hot to be scraping walls, with plaster dust sticking to my sweaty back/armpits/thighs/etc. still working on the stairway and halls. i have ceiling tiles and crown molding and a vintage chandelier all ready to put up, so though progress has slowed considerably, i have renewed motivation.

been spending most of my time in the gardens. with 4 flowerbeds, one veggie garden, and a pretty damn giant yard (and no riding mower), i spend most of my life mowing down dandelions and pulling weeds. i always had these romantic notions about organic gardening, but now i'm thinking it's for hippies who have nothing better to do than mow down dandelions and pull weeds. i'm about ready to drop a big round-up bomb on it all. kidding. sorta.

bad dog

how could such a sweet little thing produce so much evil?

zen and the art of wallpaper stripping

ugh. and here i thought i'd left the arctic.

nevermind. that was yesterday morning. and pretty much every morning the past 2 weeks or so. today things have turned around, and it is a balmy -10. this however brings different challenges, namely getting out of my yard in the morning to go to work. the wind that blew in the warm weather last night also blew half of the total snowcover of the RM of dundurn onto my driveway. this has happened before, and i was prepared. with shovel in car i headed off, and began my semi-regular routine of shovel, drive 10 feet, shovel, drive 10 feet, and so on. right before the last time i was to repeat this sequence and hit the clear road to freedom (well, to work, so not exactly), i got cocky. needless to say, it is 1:00 p.m. and i still have not made it to work. i shovelled for an hour but the snow just kept blowing right back, so i figured it was wise to wait until the wind calms down. yes, it took me that long to discern what might be wise. shaddup.

anyhow, with my unscheduled (and unpaid, ugh) day off i figured it was time to catch up on all those important things, like my blog (haha). i have now been in my palace for just over a month, and i absolutely love it (apart from the driveway issue, but i get my quad next week)(for real). the renos have been going slow (my real job takes up a lot of time, go figure) but i am starting to see some progress and damn, am i proud of myself.

armed with but a putty knife and spray bottle, the wallpaper bandit decimates 90 years of slapdash interior design...

i have stripped most of the wallpaper from the stairwell and upstairs hall. i never thought i'd say this, but i LIKE stripping wallpaper. i wouldn't want to be condemned to doing it for eternity, and i am sure i will NOT like it before too long, but right now it gives me that same sense of satisfaction that you get when you pick a scab and it doesn't hurt. only it is a lot less gross, though it takes a lot longer. the walls have no less than 6 different layers of wallpaper, some with borders on top and some with plaster in between. apparently wallpaper is an excuse to do a piss-poor plaster repair job. i also found 3 tea towels in the wall, apparently holding the plaster together. the original layer of wallpaper was gorgeous, though yellowed with age (and when you wet it down to peel it off the ink runs and stains your hands for days...). underneath the paper the pencil lines drawn to guide it when it was hung in 1918 are still visible.

i am now alternating between getting the rest of the wallpaper off, and plastering. i like plastering too, though again i am skeptical that this love will endure. next will be to get that damn paint off my woodwork. the fun never ends! :)

i am also very proud of my brand new walk-in closet. the closet in my bedroom is too narrow to hang hangers, i.e. you have to turn them diagonally in order to close the door. apparently hangers were smaller in 1918, or people had narrower shoulders, or something. lucky for me i have a long, slightly wider closet-ish room in the hall that just needed a rod to become a bona fide closet. my first attempt was unsuccessful due to a slight flaw in my engineering, but i reviewed the design and have had a closet rod attached firmly to the wall for a whole month now. with clothes on it, even! i promised myself i would not bore people with my closet story but it looks like i just did. just to push it a little further, there are pictures in my webalbum.

don't worry, i still go out and have fun sometimes too. my new life isn't ALL closet rods and wallpaper.
just most of the time.

finally here

well, almost. i rolled into saskatoon on the 9th, after 6 days on the road from inuvik. holy crap, what a long drive. 4015 km or so, if you are curious. poppy diabla the wonderpup was a wonderful travelling companion, but we were both pretty eager to just friggin' get here already.

upon arrival in the city, my sis took me out to check out my new digs. i had about half an hour to wander around my house before she had to be back in the city. how bizarre to finally be in there - though i had seen tons of photos, i had it mapped out differently in my mind, so although everything looked like i expected it would, it was all in the wrong place. still, i heart it more than i even expected to.

the next day i had planned to get out there and start getting settled. instead, we woke up to the worst blizzard saskatoon has seen in decades.



so, needless to say, it was days before i got out there again, and i needed a 4x4 truck to get into the yard. #1 item on my shopping list is now a 4x4 quad with a blade. sheesh.