Packing with cats

Some people’s cats may be proud, haughty creatures who are just as happy with you gone as around.

Mine? They’re more like 3-year-olds, at least in terms of clinginess and the need to be constantly entertained. Shakey’s always following us around, and hanging out in whatever room we’re in. Which would be great on its own – but there is also his love of boxes.

Which is why I now need to have two boxes around – one for whatever I’m packing, and one for Shakey.

Because if there’s only one box, he’ll be inside it in 10 seconds flat.

And of course, I need to stick random pieces of cardboard in his box once in a while, to keep him entertained with “hunting” – just so he doesn’t get bored and jump back into my much more exciting box.

And that’s how packing is done at our house!

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Shad Flies

AKA may flies.

Creepy little critters, aren’t they.

They are now taking over the parkade at work. It’s a little bit disconcerting, although the spiders must be having a feast. The other day, I came back to my car, and there was a carpet of dead shad flies all around it. Crunchy. Last time I park close to the light, too.

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Garden update

While I haven’t been writing much (at all) about the garden, rest assured that it hasn’t been forgotten. Due to the impending move, I’ve had to change my plans, and adjust my planting schedule to focus mostly on veggies with a short growing season. Even so, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to harvest much – the beets and peas that went in back in April don’t look like they’ll get very far in the next 2 weeks.

Here are the peas today – having at the recommended planting time sometime back in April. I hope at least a few of them fill out enough for me to snack on them. I think I’ve given up on sampling the second seeding, which I think I did 2 weeks after this first one.

The radishes are about the only thing that has produced so far, and they’ve been pretty delicious.

The raspberries are the cause of my deepest heartbreak. I should be able to get to enjoy some by early July. I want to.

Sadly, it really doesn’t look like that’ll happen. *sigh* Score another one for nature hating me. And there are going to be so many this year, too!

Of course, knowing my love of tomatoes, I couldn’t resist planting some. You should have seen how many I gave away, on top of the ones used to bribe people for donating to our Ride for CHEO. They’ve been looking good in their planters, and we’ll be taking them with us come moving day.

The flowers have been a small but very colourful comfort. They’re so pretty. I probably won’t really get started on the garden at the new house until next year or late this fall, when I’ve figured out the light and other conditions in the different areas of the garden, so I’ll enjoy these guys while I can.

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Milestones

I’ve hit a couple of transportation milestones over the last few weeks (or is it a month now?).

First, on an afternoon bike ride out to Pinhey’s Point my bike passed the 1,000 km mark. Not for the year, mind you (although I think Dan is pretty close to that already), but for the last 12 months since I’ve had the bike.

Embarrassingly enough, between the terrible weather we’ve had and the general busyness of this house-selling business, I’ve managed to bike to work exactly twice this year. Yes, I realize that it’s the end of June. I promise to do better. I started yesterday, and promptly got rained on on my way home. Thanks, nature.

My baby passed a much more significant milestone last week – 100,000 kms!

Yikes! While nowadays it features a dirty-ultimate-cleat smell much more often than new-car smell, I hope it’ll be around for many more hundreds of thousands of kilometers. Hooray for road trips!

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I’m back!

Hello!

After an almost-inexcusable absence from the blog, I’m back!

This is the reason I’ve been absent for so long. Selling a house is hard work – and it puts you through enough of an emotional rollercoaster that I didn’t feel like doing too much else worthy of writing about, and I didn’t feel like venting on here. But now we’re done, and I’m so excited I could do a little happy dance.

But – I’m back! Hopefully, with lots more upcoming posts about all sorts of projects we’ll undoubtedly be starting at the new house. But now I have to get back to my daily quota of half a dozen boxes packed before husband catches on that I’m slacking…

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