Yesterday, I decided to take the day off. In retrospect, it was a day wasted in a way, but I felt at the time that I needed some quiet time a moi même. Time to just quietly take it all in, with no worrying, no excitement, just acceptance that this is our new home. However, it didn't quite go that way for me, I found that the combination of the boring beige walls, the worn out floors, the dog hairs and stinky dirty carpets, (not to mention the totally ugly and grease-coated kitchen) were all glaring reminders that this was not 'our house'. (Even though, legally it is of course)... I don't mean to speak unkindly about it either, because the previous owners had done a pretty good job of cleaning the place, so I didn't really even have much of a purpose once I got there. I cleaned a few door frames, and the stairs, and a closet; I hung up some winter coats in the storage area under the stairs, and took pictures of the inside (www.ginlor.com/house.html). I wandered around the yard for a few minutes but the heat kept me mostly hiding inside where it was cool (thank gawd for basements!). The trees and bushes grow sporadically all around the yard, their ungroomed branches snag your clothes and hair and you can see by the worn trails on the ground that the previous owners were fine with weaving between the trees to access the various areas of the yard (which is huge). Anyway, it wasn't until last night, when Luc suggested we sit down together and write down some plans for what we wanted to do inside, that I got excited. Now I feel prepared to go back in there, armed with paint and new stylish door knobs, and of course, hedge trimmers!

The yard will be a work in progress and will probably take a few years before we have it where I want it to be. I'd like to one day put interlocking brick down in the front, reside the house, build gardens (even a small veggie/herb patch), pressure wash and stain the decks and put up some stained lattice alongside Tigger's run for my morning glories and moon flowers to climb, it'll be loverly eventually. :) The shed is another amazing thing - it's huge! We're not sure what we'll use it for yet, but Luc will have a kick-ass workshop for sure. :)

Anyway, we chose some beautiful colours for the walls inside that I think will really transform it to the way we want it. For our bedroom, we chose an ocean-inspired barely-there blue, which will go nicely with our cream coloured curtains and dark wood bed.
Then we chose a warm mellow yellow for the kitchen, with the plan to freshen it up by painting the cabinets a cream colour and adding mouldings as a temporary way to make it look a bit more classy. We got new handles as well and a new appliance set will snazz it up nicely. The lino is worn, curling and stained, so we will hopefully be putting down vinyl (it's a small area so I don't expect it to be overly expensive to do). Something like the kitchen pictured here:

In the living room, we chose an earthy green, as a nice contrasting backdrop to the beige couches we have. I'm contemplating renting a sander and attempting to fix the floors in there ourselves (at least as much as we can do for now). A light sand and a few coats of varnish would at least make them look nice and shiny again.

We didn't choose all our paint colours for the basement yet, but Luc did pick up a deep wine coloured paint, paired with a rich tan colour for the office downstairs and he's thinking a deeper blue for the rec room.

People had cautioned me to wait until we'd lived in the house before painting, but we just can't do it! I need to make it feel like home - it would be hard to go from our vibrant, comfortable, warm apartment with its bold reds and yellows and navy and terracotta, etc to an all beige house that screams 'someone else owned me!'.. I'm possessive, what can I say?

Anyway, I'm going to start trying to keep track of the decorating ideas we have - right now the kitchen is small and is separate from the dining room. I'm hoping we can knock the dividing wall down, put in an island, and eventually lay ceramic tile and new hardwood down. I'm planning to hold onto this house for a while so it's fun to dream big!!

Anyway, time for a meeting - back to the world of work.

xo

Litha (Summer Solstice): '...summer solstice, or midsummer, is a time to spread warmth and enjoy the sun's energy. The sun is at its highest point in the sky. Everywhere you look nature shows her bounty; praise the opulence and abundance available to you for the asking. This is a day to celebrate your gifts of healing, whether they are intuitive or use plants. Make peace with the impermanence of life and changing relationships, knowing that you are always guided and watched over. Bloom where you are planted. Respect male energy, honor your light, hug yourself. You are one with the infinite sun...' 'On this Sabbat light and life are at their most abundant. Many Ancient monuments are aligned with the Sun at this point in the Wheel of the Year, the most famous being Stonehenge in England, though there are many more all over the world.' - Another interesting, but not surprising, fact is that once again, the Christian Saint Jean Baptiste day (which is a day highly celebrated in Quebec as their 'national' holiday) was the Church's method of claiming the Pagan holy day of 'Old Litha', which occurred on June 25th.

In some ways, I do wish that it summer solstice didn't have to mark the point at which the days begin to get shorter again. Unlike in Saskatchewan, where the sun sets at 10:00 and rises again sometime before 5:00 (though the first streaks of colour appeared in the sky at 2:30 or so on the night we graduated high school...), here in Quebec/Ontario, it sets at about 9:30 and, because of all the trees and hills and buildings, it really hits twilight at about 8:30. So it doesn't take long to wind back down to our 5:00 darkness like in the winter. I'm sure I won't mind it when we actually get to Fall (because it's such a beautiful season, I can forgive it), but right now I'm not ready to think about winter coming back, not when we just got rid of it!

One thing that I did embrace today, by chance, was the idea of us moving. Up until now it has been something that rapidly went from daring (if not a little terrifying) to a tabu subject that I almost felt bad to speak about, incase I should accidentally say something negative that would burst the fragile bubble that was surrounding us. I have since chatted with a few good friends, who are doing similarly daring moves, for different reasons, and with different risks, (and in some cases, quite a different distance), but it seems to me that we've embarked on a potentially rewarding journey. Like the excerpt above says, you have to embrace the impermanence of life - to quote Jewel 'everything is temporary, if you give it enough time' and that is so true (especially in my life). So while I am still falling in love my current home (I adore my back yard), there are other reasons why moving on to a new place and making it special is a good, healthy thing for us to do. At the same time, (and along those same lines), where it suggests us to bloom where we are planted, this is another lesson that is difficult for me to take sometimes - I have always looked beyond where I'm standing, eager to see what waits around the corner, dreaming of the future instead of living in the present. Because of that (and possibly due to my up-bringing as an ever-moving army brat), I have found it very difficult to really say who I am at any one time, and feel happy in any one situation. I always feel like I'm 'posing' as someone else, in some made-up life that I've designed for myself. I need to work on blooming where I've planted myself, relaxing a bit and enjoying life as it comes... It must be rewarding, or it wouldn't be so damn hard to do. :)

On an unrelated note, another thing that Luc and I have decided to seriously try is to eat more fresh, chemical free foods. There is a farmer's market every weekend at the marina in Aylmer, where we'll be living. It's sort of an underground arrangement, where you meet the farmers there and they bring their harvests and, for, I believe $25/week, they supply you with a TONNE of fresh veggies, grown right here around us - no pesticides or crazy x-continent trips (like all our tasteless fruits and veggies at the store right now). We want to make chutneys and stews and chillis and jams, etc. I don't think we'll have time for that this summer, but you never know, and we will have a new deep freezer hopefully as well, to store it all in. I guess my family should be forewarned that this probably means they'll be getting a cute little package of preserves for xmas this year... ;) (Don't worry, I'm not that organized, you're all safe for now)...

xo

Something interesting to write about... Why not...?
So, I have been beating myself up a little bit lately because I have been operating on a bit of a crazy, fast-paced agenda, where acquiring a home (and in our case, two apartments), the dog, the picket fence (oh yeah, but mine's gonna be black), and the stable, loving partner, a couple of kids, as well as trying to build a career and dreaming about fitting some travel in there all take priority on some high level in my life. I started to wonder if I was rushing things, while I look around me at women my age (though honestly I don't know many my exact age, but a range from low 20's up to early 30's) and I realize that most of them have been taking a very different approach to their lives than I have... I have friends who have forgone the career/home/partner/family route altogether for a while, and have been focussing on seeing a bit of the world, whether that be overseas somewhere, or even just taking a job that requires lots of traveling around. I have friends who have invested time and money into extensive educations (and even now are returning to add on to their degrees), these friends who are content with living in a one-bedroom apartment, partying at bars on the weekend, and seemingly, their greatest worry is what they'll wear out on Saturday evening. They seem (but maybe I'm just not as observant as I think), to not really have any worries about children in the near future, and figure once they meet 'the man', everything will fall into place (and maybe it will). I also have friends who have opted for the family route, earlier than later, in order to enjoy having children while they're young enough to play along with them. These women have opted for a smaller, simpler life perhaps, but they make ends meet, and a few I know are married and living happily with their spouses (and adding on children), and a few are living the single-mom life and seem quite successful at it (though I'm sure it's not easy at all).
So where the hell do I fit in? Why can't I make up my mind on what I want? I have no idea. I always wanted to get married. And, in some small way, I always wanted children. By age 18, when I went off to University, it started to eat away at me that all I wanted in the whole wide world was a baby. I know now that I really was looking for a 'companion' in life, and since have (thankfully) adopted two cats, a turtle (who didn't remain with me) and a dog (that I'm freaking about), who provide me with more than enough ways to exercise my 'mothering' instincts. Over the next 7 years, I have gone to college, opting for the quicker, more direct route to a job, over the more expensive and less goal-oriented (for me) option of University. I don't have any regrets that I dropped out when I did, but now I sometimes wonder if perhaps I have potential to be or do more and am limiting myself by not having that piece of $50,000 paper that says 'she's a smart cookie' from the University of Ottawa or wherever. Then I started on a career path, that proved to be a bit more difficult (trying to get into the gov't) and ultimately landed me in a consulting role, where I've been working to defy the hugely stacked odds against me (I'm young, inexperienced, female, and without a degree - some view that as a pretty bad list of things to be up against). Within that career, I've struggled with trying to find out what I really, truly, would be happy doing. I find I'm bored now in what I'm currently working on, and I do need a change, but I'm unsure about the direction I should go in. I have found I don't have a lot of patience for working with other people, I like to get things done efficiently and effectively, and don't handle a lot of wishy-washy social crap in between (in other words I've found I really don't enjoy working with most women...) I've entertained ideas of writing, but don't think I'd do the whole news and gossip thing well, and where I used to think I'd enjoy social sciences or psychology, I've since found that they don't cater to my results-driven side that I find the computer science field really feeds.
Then, I've always had this nagging feeling that I've wanted to travel, though interestingly enough, when we took a trip down South one year, after about four days, I was ready to go home. And I struggle with trying to figure out if life in the city, with its cappuccinos, flashy lights, nice houses and 'things to do' is better suited to my tastes than the allure of a quiet, simpler life in the country, with a sprawling old house with a big veranda overlooking beautiful gardens and rolling hills. And where, in all that, do I fit the kids? Do I even want kids? Yes, sometimes I think 'oh, wouldn't that be cute to dress the baby up and take him/her to the zoo'. Then I see some poor, distant mother, dragging her screaming kid(s) through the store or on the bus, while people (myself included) shoot dagger stares at her and wish she'd do something to make the kid be quiet. Even the financial aspect of raising a child scares me. To give up my career (and in the computer world, as a woman, if you have kids, you better be employed by the government, or bye bye career) and stay home with the kids would probably drive me insane. I don't really like children (especially once they get older and spoiled), I need time to myself, I am not a good house-keeper... There is the option that hubby could stay home, which might make more sense financially, but I'm not sure that this idea is based in reality for the majority of us out there.
Anyway, all this to say, it was just a thought I was mulling over on my walk at lunch. Then I came back and found this article http://www.srmjournal.org/article/PIIS1546250104000052/fulltext that talks about how most of the women you see at the top of the corporate ladder (including my boss) don't have children, as it is extremely difficult for women to battle the demands of getting an education, landing in debt, finding a career, finding a husband, having a baby, taking time off work, regaining the career, and raising children while climbing the corporate ladder (and traveling the world? :) ) all at the same time. It has an interesting checklist at the bottom that, to me, is worth keeping as one of those things you look back on in 50 years and giggle about how ludacrous it seems (reminds me of those Suzie Homemaker articles from the 40's in terms of how it provides such a definite 'checklist' of things you MUST do in order to be happy). So I don't know if I'm on the right track or not, or even which track I'm on, but at least I know I'm not alone in trying to get everything sorted out early so I can have my family (if family is what I'm destined to have), or my 'winter home' in some tropical place, or whatever. ;)
In the mean time I'm attempting to NOT step on my other-half's toes, while attempting to figure out what is best for both of us, and this is a difficult thing when so many aspects are up in the air.. Food for thought anyway...

Sigh.. I've written and re-written various posts in previous days, but due to the overwhelming amount of pessimistic (and defeatist) attitudes surrounding me currently, I keep falling into the trap of making this into a diary entry, when I promised myself I would not do that. To focus on a couple positive things, I am happy to say that summer has finally arrived - with temperatures hanging around 28 degrees (give or take a few), and lots of sunshine and I have the trucker's tan to prove it... (For those not in the 'know', that's when one shoulder is blazing red (actually my whole arm) and one is still snow white - very sexy, kind of a yin and yang sorta thing goin on there... ;) Anyway, in order to distract myself from all the stress of details and having to run in fifty directions all at once, while at the same time jumping up and down waving pom poms and shouting 'Isn't this FABULOUS!?!' at the top of my lungs all the time (yes I'm being figurative here), there are still a few things I can smile about in life. One being myself and my frequent 'adornment' of various kinds of foods and sauces that I seem to be intent on wearing. I figure if you can't laugh at yourself, you're in trouble... So last night, it was ketchup and mustard, smeared up my forearm, while I was meeting a coworker and her husband to check out a washer/dryer set that we may purchase for our tenants (for an ouchy $600, but I digress)... Today it was peanut butter, pasted neatly all over my face, while I chatted with a techie guy about my broken computer (since fixed at least) and with my boss about this and that. Gotta love that you never discover these things until about five minutes after they've left the room, and I have to wonder how they all hold a straight face while they talk to me, but anyway.
That reminds me of another sweet moment I had on the weekend. My sister and I brought our dogs to a little town outside of Ottawa called 'Almonte'.


It's pretty, with big old houses (with their own style that has been dubbed the 'Almonte style' by architects), and various old mills resting on the banks of the river that runs through the center of the town. Anyway, we decided to go 'all out' and ordered ourselves some poutine, which was a challenge to eat when one arm was 'tied' to a gigantic puppy, but we managed. Then we went for a walk down the main street, and finally found an icecream place that served soft cones from outside (through a window). So I ordered a cone for my sis, one for me, and of course, one for the dogs to share. :) It was absolutely the cutest thing, and a moment that really reminded me why I got my doggie friend in the first place. He'd never had ice cream before, so he licked at it, 'gingerly', with his ears all screwed on sideways, and his eyes squinted against the cold. Then my sister's dog got a turn. She's a tiny little German Shepherd, but her huge personality makes up for it. She reminds most people of a 'Raptor'. Anyway, she did a typical 'dyno-bite' and bit half the ice cream off in one go, which of course made her panic, chewing faster and faster to get it down as it was ice cold. Anyway, this went on until the whole cone had been eaten, and ended with her having ice cream on the tips of her ears, and my dog with it streaked across his cheeks. It was a nice to have a genuine giggle over something for once, and really made me appreciate what an adorable pair of animals we have. :)
We move into the house in the next few weeks - actually we get possession of it in less than two weeks. I'm feeing apathetic, as it's the safest emotion to have at the moment, especially when everything rides on the ability of everyone involved to muster up some courage and soldier on with a little enthusiasm, which is currently lacking on all fronts.
Anyway, I will blindly charge forward, as there is no going back, and I know my money is being invested wisely, and I have made one promise to myself which is to take me and a like-minded female friend (or group of) and go relax for a week in Southern France, perhaps next year or the following one - definitely before I'm 30. With all the other things we've accomplished so far, it'd be a crime not to get a few 'dreams' out of the way before life really does bog us down. I'm hoping my other half can do the same for himself too one of these days.
Well, it's lunch time. Gonna go get some rays (with sunscreen on this time).
xo