Meanwhile, upstairs...

This is going on above me. Floor being sanded three times and sealed three times to bring it back to its original natural colour. Will look amazing!

Writing Madly

I got word that my next manuscript has been accepted and is coming out in January 2026. This one is a non-fiction about making your life reflect your values. I've got some re-organizing and rewriting to do, so I've come up to the church we're renovating (we call it the cottage, which brings to mind a charming lakeside retreat with a woodstove, but don't let the term fool you. It's a full-on construction zone with boxelder bugs hatching out) to focus for a couple of weeks. Days spent at work, evenings spent musing and writing and muttering to myself and pacing and anxiety-eating and going for walks to visit the goats up the street and watching Hallmark movies and baking and more writing. It's my process.

You know you didn't get enough sleep when...

 You know you didn't get enough sleep when you turn on the dishwasher before going to bed, and the dishes are still hot when you go to have breakfast the next morning. Lukewarm Raisin Bran. Yum.

The Garden is In...and Drowning

This week I finished planting the last of the seeds and seedlings. I've taken a new approach, using dry cooking beans (plants) as a sort of mulch. I'm leaving some of the lesser weeds to cover bare spots of soil. I've diversified, planting several different varieties of things, and I've interspersed them instead of "mono-cropping" each raised bed. I've also added a lot more flowers than I usually do. We'll see what happens, and I'll add photos as the season advances.

Yesterday we got torrential rain, and I was worried everything would be flattened. It's still drizzling this morning, but I'll tiptoe out when the sun is up and survey the damage. Hopefully everything survived. Won't have to water for a while, at any rate!

An Observation on the Renaming of Holidays

All week prior to May 20, I kept getting greetings and wishes from people to "have a happy long weekend." Not one person said "Happy Victoria Day." Even online, all I found was references to the long weekend, not to the purpose of the occasion. And come to think of it, the same thing happens in August, when people tell me to have a great long weekend instead of saying "Happy Simcoe Day." Even the printed calendar says "Civic Holiday" instead of "Simcoe Day."

Is this a new trend? Like when my workplace wishes us a "great winter break" instead of acknowledging they are closing for a week for Christmas? I understand that not all staff at work celebrate Christmas, so that makes a bit of sense, trying to be sensitive, but still it can't be denied that the week we're all getting to stay home coincides with Christmas. I'd be equally as happy to get a week off work for Chanukkah. I'd also be happy to get time off work for National Bee Day, National Solitaire Day (there is such a thing. It was yesterday) or the garlic harvest. Just sayin'.

Now in the instance of Simcoe Day or Victoria Day, there could be an argument for not referring to the names because of shades of colonialism, and I get that. But it does seem a bit disingenuous to say we refuse to recognize the occasion but we still want the time off work. Don't talk to us about Queen Victoria, but give us her birthday off. It seems to me either you have to scrap the holiday all together, or you need to acknowledge what it is. Does anyone else have any particularly strong feelings about it?

Incidentally, it is said that one must not plant the garden until Victoria Day, and it's also a rule that one shouldn't plant until the peonies bloom. I am pleased to report that the peonies bloomed exactly on Victoria Day. A happy coinciding of events.

An Expensive Lesson Learned

Apparently my son has been ordering UberEats so often that the local wildlife has come to anticipate it. Last night a skunk lay in wait, and as soon as the delivery guy set the bag on the step and moved away, the skunk snagged it. He'd eaten part of my son's chicken sandwich before he even got the door open. My son flashed the car lights and honked the horn (remotely, using the key fob) to scare it away (thus waking me up so I got to witness some of this), but it was too late to rescue the sandwich. An expensive lesson learned. We might install one of those old-fashioned boxes like the milkman used to leave deliveries in, to keep animals out of future meals. 

I am somehow tickled that the skunk apparently has a taste for piri-piri.

Hilarious spam email -- or was it?

I just got an email from Air Canada that said "Ending soon! Save on destinations worldwide before it's too late!"

Why, is the world ending that soon?!