Kids These Days!

After an errand yesterday, Josie and I came home and saw a bunch of kids hanging around in the park just across the street from our house. Kids! Teenagers! Notorious lie abouts! What do juveniles do when they just hang around these days? What kind of hijinks were they up to? I had to check out these shenanigans. I mean, skylarking in the park on a sunny Sunday afternoon? What kind of monkey business is that?! I had to know what capers were going on.

AWESOME! They'd formed a skiffle band, with a washtub bass, banjo, penny whistle and spoons! Josie wanted to jam with them, so we brought her little red guitar and harmonica out, and she joined in. It was fantastic and unexpected and we were thrilled.

There's hope for kids these days people, there's hope.

...has Sprung.

“It's spring fever.... You don't quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!”

Mark Twain

The Reality of Reality*

(*Please note: Sometimes images just disappear from Blogger/Picasa, and there are numerous reasons given, some of which sound like bullsquat. I've tried to repair the missing images as best I could, but really, there's only so much I was able to do, and Blogger says the old images may even come back some day, so I'm not going all out. It's a lovely day and life goes on, right?!)

Hi there. My name is Marla Good, and I am a decorating show addict. I watch How Clean is Your House as must-see TV. I also read about it, and others, on TWOP. I get a thrill watching Clean Sweep. Organizing and decorating TV shows make me feel all giggly like a schoolgirl. I don't want professional people doing nice homes -- keep your Candice Olsen and classy decorating businesses away from me. I want real people in real homes, the more average the better! I have waved my dear husband's cuddles away because strangers on television are having their homes cleaned and reorganized by other strangers, because it's like he's reading my porn over my shoulder. I only watch reality TV so that I can see inside people's homes, whether it's The Girls Next Door or what have you. In fact, I go for walks at night so I can peek in people's windows, because in the daytime I just look at the gardens. It was less creepy of me to do so when we had a dog, therefore I am dog shopping again. What do you think of Molly? I'm going to go and have a look at her next week. Further, her current owners are describing her as high-energy. Sounds like she needs lots of walks!




If I am at your house, I am either admiring something you've done, or silently itching to move things around a bit. In fact, the other night at a friend's house, I couldn't contain myself and offered to find her a lamp for her living room, because I needed to or I'd burst. I want to plant the world's gardens, and I want to fluff your homes. I volunteer to help with redecoration projects at every opportunity, but am not offered the opportunity nearly enough. Hey, I fluff my own home for fun. I love to take everything off a shelf and put it all back differently, adding and subtracting objects as I'm called to.

What? Yes. I believe I'm called to do this. It's why nothing makes me happier than puttering around Winkel, perhaps making a new window display happen or putting a shelf of cool stuff together because it tells me that it wants to be that way.

Spring gets those cogs and wheels moving in a high gear. Now I must reveal that what I believe has been the mechanism for my enthusiastic engineering these days:

I never decorated a nursery for Josephine.

Since day one, she's been in our room with us, first in a cradle, a crib, and now a toddler bed. It's been mostly wonderful except when it's been awful; and it's how it had to happen as it turned out, given her needs for SO MUCH night time parenting. But now, everyone needs space - for stuff, and, for well, for every reason there is.

Our home, a semi-detached hundred year old money pit, has three bedrooms, all of them dysfunctional in some way.

None of them have closets.

Our bedroom is 9 x 18, with an odd chimney for a fireplace that doesn't exist running up one wall at exactly the most awkward part. Yes. Try to fit a bed in there. It can only go one of two ways if you don't want to always knee your partner's business climbing over to the inside to get some fresh air right by the window on the short wall.

The second bedroom, "the office", has no heating duct. It has a closet-type nook above the stairs, but it's not really a closet. The room is an odd L-shape too, and attached to the neighbour's bedroom, so you can hear stuff. Also, the raccoons are real assholes on the roof at night eating the mulberries from the tree out front, and the birds are noisy there in the morning for the same reason.

The third bedroom has nothing electrical going on (or so we thought) other than an overhead light. Yes, that means no outlets. Hence, it's not the office. Also, it had closets and shelves and a blanket shelf built in it at some point, making it the closet for the whole house (that was a selling point at the time!). It did have a heating duct - half covered by a closet. Thus, no grate would fit over it, and it is now a favourite spot for the toddler to try to stick her entire leg down the hole. It was perfect as the "dressing room" for all these years, as it gets the best South light. Had? Was?

After much decision and years of perfectionistic procrastination, JOSEPHINE MUST HAVE A ROOM.

The "dressing room" had to be the one to go. She played in there the most, and its problems were easier, seemingly, to deal with.

Ye shall see, after bowing our heads for a moment to understand the magnitude of this loss to her parents...

What? Loss? Is it that dire?

Okay - forgetting about the clothes, of which there were lots, and the three shelves of books, here are some of the collections we'd massed in there:













It (sniff) stored all of our...our...stuff. Plus, cleaning products in the closets, and huge giant packs of rolls of toilet paper and shoes and boots and the dumbells I never used and the toilet snake and plungers we always do have to use and all of our tsotchkes and souvenirs and our books and...and...our...our...stuff. Over five years of living there has conditioned my body's memory, which means I grab my towels before a shower off that shelf, and I stand here to brush my hair and I get my clothes for the day out of here...and it's...it's gone. It's all gone now. I'm twisting in the wind, people! I actually did not brush my hair yesterday because I was so off-kilter.

Because the room, as of last night, looks like this:





And below? See that wire with the caps on it? It was hiding underneath the blanket chest (which um, it seems we didn't paint inside - wasn't the previous owner's colour awful?). Steve dropped the pry bar on it, not knowing it was LIVE and it threw a spark like you wouldn't believe, and left a huge burn mark on the pry bar. It also blew a few fuses, including the one for the TV, and shorted a wire somewhere and so I could not watch ANTM last night and that, fortunately, was the worst part of it.




Steve's dad used to be an electrical engineer before retirement, and we also have a handy electrician friend to tell us what to do about the freaky wire thing - it's being taken care of as I write. Thankfully our house didn't burn down at any point yesterday, or in years prior; and thankfully Steve wasn't touching the pry bar.

This is a reminder of why renovations on our house have moved so G-d slowly. "Crazy Joe", the boyfriend of the previous owner, did a lot of half- and quarter-assed things around the house, usually while stinking drunk. So, using ten nails where one was needed, and none where ten were needed is par for the house's course. It's just never fun to nearly, literally, die of shock at something that Crazy Joe left for us to discover. We've decided not to further explore the linoleum under the peel and stick parquet, which was under the 1/2" thick pine boards that had been installed AFTER the closets were built. So, next week, we have the fun of installing some kind of new floor. If I invent any swear words, I'll let you know. I promise.



But then, remember how I started this post? Remember?



I get to decorate a room for my sweet little girl Josephine, practically from scratch. It's like a dream come true - a dream that leaves my nightie in a knot! I am my own porn star!

As part of my de-hoarding, some of my posessions (okay, three) found their way to the store. Next weekend we may take part in the neighbourhood's annual street sale; or else, join in another one later in the year to benefit a cause.

Of course I've been thinking of this for years! YEARS! I've known for ages what I'd do - I just needed the doing of it! The inspiration?



From before pink and brown was "cool" - a very very old rag rug, made out of some lovely suiting material plus some pink cotton. It makes me terribly excited to see old suits mixed with old pink what? housedresses? I found it at an estate sale when she was in utero!

A pillow found when she was a wee baby, right nearby at Value Village - which, of course as any proper germaphobe would, I took apart, washed and put new stuffing in. I like that it was made from a printed pattern, but the person did not stitch it according to directions. That rocks, in my book.

And look LOOK look at that pink on the doll's furniture with the wee decals! (There's a bed too, but it I couldn't make a nicely composed image showing it). Josie plays with these things a lot, so I'm not just subjecting her to my tastes. It's as much influenced by her, as it is for her.

I've been making the most of this - doodling, with coloured pencils and all:








She has her Ikea toddler bed, and other furniture I've collected second-hand. I've had a vintage book case from Winkel for a while, though it's been hanging out in the office just waiting to be stuffed with Josie's books instead of disc-y magazine-y office-y stuff. And the wardrobe? Scratch the one I drew - the better choice recently presented itself. (*original image may be missing because Blogger sucks sometimes)



I'd missed this at the antique store near Winkel when I went looking for options a few weeks ago, and had decided to settle for the Ikea one...when my boss, who does set decorating for movies told me that the film she's on now was renting the above pictured, and that the store owner said if I wanted it, I could have it for less after the rental price was discounted - less than that even for cash. And the movie set's drivers would deliver it to my house from the set after they were done with it. So, instead of paying so much for Ikea, instead, for $200 cash, I get a charming, child-sized Art Deco wardrobe. What? What movie? Oh, it's Saw IV. Don't worry. The wardrobe didn't come with splatter on it, and Kari doesn't believe any bodies were hidden in it.

What's better than cheap?

Free:


Sadly, and happily at the same time, Skeeter Jones has fallen in love and is moving to a charming cabin on the lake in Winnipeg. She's closing Fabric Hound, and after years of my being one of her worst customers but favourite gossipy neighbours, she's just as thrilled about decorating Josie's room as I am and so she's donating lots of stuff to the cause.

And so I'm dreaming about projects - like taking the inspiration from this doggy wallpaper and painting some dogs (or reindeer?) in this style on stretched canvases:




And colours! Josephine, for all her love of purple, wants a pink room. Okay! Sure! Plaster pink, with one darker pink wall and a small table in that crazy hot pink - coming up!



It's all just so fun - like being the decorator AND the resident of a reality makeover show! It should be close to done in under two weeks! I hope! I think! Of COURSE you're going to see it. It's MY blog! It's like this is why I ever started blogging! (cackles and does a crazy spinning dance, waving the cream flannel sheets that were custom made for Josie's bed as a present from Kari for her birthday, and then stops suddenly, then embraces the two pink embroidered chocolate brown fleece pillows that were also part of the gift and inhales them deeply murmuring "fressh polyfillllllllll!" - then curls into a fetal position under the Laura Ashley pink plush blanket found at Winners for $16 last week whispering something about curtain finials)

It helps to think about the cute and the pink and the wow and the porn factor, you know, because the reality of reality is this pile of crap in the back yard, easily visible from the window of said room:

(*image may not be available because Blogger sucks sometimes, and I can't replace it as I did the others, but picture a huge pile of junk in our back yard.)


And having it hauled away is going to cost more than anything else we're doing in there.

Even Here We Are.

Josephine is growing up.

When I started working at Winkel again a few weeks ago, Josephine started in at a nearby daycare for two of the days. She also started napping again. That means she started not going to bed at a decent hour. Which means we've started going a bit crazy.

We are loving the conversations we're having with her lately. One night last week, too tired to make dinner, I suggested that we get dinner on the Danforth. As our bill was presented near the end of the meal, Josephine asked about the mints included on the tray. We explained that she couldn't have any, as for her, they were choking hazards. She picked up one, handed it to Steve, and said "That's okay Daddy, you can have my choking hazard after you finish your dinner."

That example of her sweetness toward her daddy also illustrates how mad she is at me lately. She feels that it's my fault she has to go to "school", and she wishes she never had to go there again. It's not a bad place - she just wants things as they have always been. We've been told by Josephine that she doesn't feel like we're still a family when she's there. The Good family solution is to draw tattoos on her that are like Mommy's and Daddy's, so that she can always look at them when she needs reassurance; after all,that's why we have them. It works during the time we're drawing them, but later in the day she'll tell our friends who also have children there that she is lonely and that she misses us. There is nothing we can do, even giving her permission not to miss us, that helps any of us feel better about this.

Steve, especially, likened it to something he once read in an interview with Paul Westerberg regarding his son going to school for the first time - something about how it was hard to share his kid with the world that way. We feel that way too. We liked things the way they were, but she is growing and changing, and even if she doesn't recognize that she has needs that I can't meet any more by staying at home with her, I have to be brave and face that. Though she can still come to the store with me, and has - I can see that it's not good for her, and for us. Even I have a hard time spending six hours in one room with myself. This is necessary.

I try to be nice to her in a million little ways, as I'm feeling a little sad about this stage too. Today, with Steve pulling Josie in her little red wagon on the way to school, I impulsively picked a flower for Josie, something blue that had strayed into a trash-filled parking lot we pass by. Josie clutched it tightly, and I walked along side her, and held her white-knuckled little mitt. Looking back at us, Steve found this song:

Even Here We Are

Beautiful flowers in your garden
But the most beautiful by far
The one growing wild in the garbage dump

Even here even here we are

Song of the bird lives in the sky
But the most beautiful by far
Scream of the man who never learned to fly

Even here even here we are

Sun shines bright, it's a beautiful sight
But the most beautiful by far
Is the blind girl alone with the angel of the night

Even here even here we are

Here are Josie and Steve, having one last bit of togetherness before we're apart.


Steve is growing up.

As part of starting our general, all-around, freshening-up Spring Cleaning of our lives and home, Steve went to get a routine check-up - something he hadn't done in a while. It started out fine, all was well...then, his family's history of funky heart problems stuck a stick in the bicycle spokes. Starting with another echocardiogram, then another, then a day wired up to a monitor, leading to a stress test later this week - well, there is nothing like heart issues to remind you that you are officially an adult. And the point was driven home rather graphically, by having his manly, hairy chest shaved by a petite Asian nurse for the electrode application, still leaving a few chunks of hair there for ripping off. The ripping off being done in the bathroom of the place he's been freelancing at for a week and a half on his way to a job interview.

However, fingers are crossed: the full-time contract job with benefits up the wazoo and bonuses and vacation time and stuff looks like it's happening - after five years of Steve's freelancing supporting us, it'll be nice to see what living with a grown-up job is like. Even if he is going to be diagnosed with heart problems just before the insurance coverage starts.



I'm just growing.

Ok, well, I've grown, but now I'm trying to shrink.

Over the winter I added a couple of pounds. You know, a couple ten. I'd know exactly how much if I'd just stepped onto a scale, so let's just call it I added "I had to lay down on the floor to zip my fat pants up"; or maybe "I cried in Thrift Town because my upper arms didn't fit into a really cute denim jacket."

But, I've been Somercizing diligently - a way of eating that really does make me feel better, and about five years ago in this way I lost the 35 pounds that I had to thank Depo-Provera for, so you can stop laughing at the Chrissy Diet right this minute. I'm fitting back into the normal clothing without looking like ten pounds of shit in a five pound sack. It's working.

But, despite this transformation and after all of that deprivation (not of good food - of things like pretzels dipped in Nutella), last week a regular client walked into the store and told me:

"You know, I've got to say this - a lot of women would be embarrassed to look like you. My niece died at 25 years old from anorexia. She was a Sunshine Girl, and her heart gave out trying to keep herself at that weight. I like a woman with a little meat on her bones. I think you look great just the way you are - don't lose a pound!"

Oh yes he did.


That's about all I've got right now. There's a lot of coping going on in the Good family.

And so, even here we are.

What's Your Excuse?

Girl Meets Cupcake

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so. Galileo Galilei




At a birthday party on Saturday. Chocolate cupcake with pink frosting. "It is 'zactly my mouth sized!"

Good Fences...

“No one can have peace longer than his neighbour pleases”

Dutch Proverb




One of Josephine's favourite things in the world is to be passed over the fence to our neighbour's house, where yesterday she was fed two popsicles, four chocolate chip cookies, one glass of whole milk, and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Our neighbour also has fun things like beads around for Josie to play with, and loves to paint Josie's fingernails.

So, you can guess who Josie thinks rocks, and who she thinks sucks these days.

Fear of Lye-ing

On Saturday, Jen and I took an organic soapmaking class taught by Amanda (here in her GORGEOUS shirt) (which makes me want to go to Grassroots and buy one right NOW), whose simply soaps are one of my favourite gifts to give. I rarely treat myself to them though - that's going to change.


The class was one offered at one of the lovely local stores that makes my neighbourhood a charming place to live, Nathalie-Roze. Entry to the back room was enough of a treat, because viewing the secret stashes of craftpersons is one of my guilty pleasures.


I've often looked longingly at the classes offered, and they're all appealing - but I'd spent some time chatting with Amanda at one of Nathalie-Roze's Crafternoon Teas, and her warm and sparkly personality was definitely incentive to sign up for this one. As well, the soap I bought then included a donation to benefit the South Riverdale Child-Parent Centre, a place dear to my heart.

The other enticement was the promise of a tea break...




And it did not disappoint. WARM cranberry scones, clotted cream, and some kind of delicious tea I need to remember to ask Nathalie-Roze about.

But, what was surprising, was how much knowledge came away with me about soap and soap making. The handouts were really well written, and I took notes! Everyone did!


Most of my notes were about how scary lye is, such as "The steam is caustic too!" and "lye corrodes!" and I also got to use soapmaking words, like "trace", as in "...because it's still a volatile chemical reaction - have your ingredients ready to go for when you reach trace".

But what has stuck in my head is not so much the importance of the soap's organic qualities - it was the fascinating business about remembering the importance of fair-trade practices as part of making these better choices. An example is that the purchase of organic beauty products is great - but if the shea nuts used in it, likely harvested by some impoverished woman with her child strapped on her back aren't from a decent source, you could be doing better. So, learning about how science and art combines to make something like soap, and it has a worldwide impact that reaches right to where six of us sat on Saturday - like whoah. Rarely is it explained so well - Amanda's got a way of imparting the "whys" so that they settle on you like one complete and satisfying slowly dawning realization rather than a series of bitch slaps that wake you up.


Amanda, to my great relief, also took care of the scary lye part in her studio at home, though there was still plenty to "Ooh!" over - like when we fondled coconut butter:


She also did the important steps leading to that mystery point that had been revealed to us: trace



And we got to do the fun part, like huffing essential oils and adding stuff to give our soap superstar qualities. Jen chose to do an "tea tree oil-ylang ylang combination with a light green tint and a bit of colloidal oatmeal". It seemed just like what she would choose - cool, elegant, tasteful and attractive.



Me? Mine? As usual, mine stuck out like a turd in a punchbowl. I chose to do one with ground coffee and cinnamon, colloidal oatmeal, apricot oil, orange essential oil, and with just a soupçon of fennel. It was the brownest and grittiest of everyone's, by far. It's not going to be a pretty soap. But based on its ingredients, it should exfoliate, moisturize and envelop me in its warm, homey but stimulating scents.


I think I'll love it - though it'll take a few weeks to cure, it's a pleasurable sort of anticipation. In the meantime I'll enjoy one of the many hundreds of bars Amanda made originally to help her little boy's sensitive skin and eczema - it was nice to have a gift like that to take home too.

I really, really enjoyed the class. I'm writing about it not just because I think it was a wonderful three hours, totally worth my $45, and not just because I learned a lot and wanted to share my excitement in a "Hey! This was a Very Good thing to do for myself, my neighbourhood, the world, and shea nut harvesters everywhere will forevermore know my purchases shall be ethical and I am Happy that I did it!" - but I'm saying this about it:

Somehow it came out that I made soap like the me I want to be: weird, gritty and aspiring toward greatness.


*Here it is! It smells like some kind of wonderful cake, and looks like some kind of fudge mistake (please note that the author of this post aspires to the former, not the latter)