Summer Fun

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds.
— Regina Brett

Everything good, everything magical, happens between the months of June and August.
— Jenny Han

Summers had a logic all their own and they always brought something out in me. Summer was supposed to be about freedom and youth and no school and possibilities and adventure and exploration. Summer was a book of hope. That's why I loved and hated summers. Because they made me want to believe.
— Benjamin Alire Sáenz

The daughter and granddaughter visited a sunflower farm last weekend, and surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of sunflowers. I love flowers – it made my heart do a happy dance.

Last week was a shorter week of babysitting – I had Monday off because it was a holiday. And unfortunately, the weather wasn’t much improved, so most of our activities were indoors, except for Wednesday.

Wednesday, my sister (who lives in Hamilton) came down for the day, bringing with her her daughter (my niece) and granddaughter (my great-niece). There’s about a 3 year age difference between the granddaughter and the great-niece, but they got along pretty well. Mostly.

One of the things they got along with was playing in the pool:

The granddaughter, as I’ve mentioned before, swims like a fish. The great-niece . . . not so much. She wasn’t very comfortable in the pool – she’s only had a couple of swimming lessons – and she’s never been as comfortable in the water as the granddaughter. But then again, who is? LOL

We have several flotation devices – the giant unicorn pictured above, pool noodles, pool noodle chairs, and a couple of inner-tube like donuts – but the only one the great-niece felt comfortable trying out was the inflated target for the water darts game:

My sister wanted to check out my gardens while she was here. There wasn’t much to see really, but I did point out the reason I didn’t have any green beans yet. I’ve been invaded:

That is a Japanese beetle, which has been the scourge of home gardeners everywhere this year. They’re part of the scarab family of beetle, and kind of pretty, but they’re also relentless. You see the way they turn leaves into skeletons.

Their favorite plants seem to be roses and string beans, although they don’t seem to care for tomatoes, peppers, or lettuce. And their grubs will attack the roots of many plants too.

As for the rest of my vegetable garden. Well, you can sort of see the carrots, struggling for space, and half a row of lettuce, but I defy you to pick out the tomato plants from among the beans:

I planted what I thought were bush beans at the back of the garden, and planted my tomatoes in front of them. By the time I discovered that they were pole beans, it was too late, they’d already tethered themselves to the tomato cages and were taking over. *sigh*

The single cherry tomato plant I have was planted at the edge of the garden, so it seems to be doing well, but the rest of my tomatoes? Who knows. I’ve been able to poke through the bean plants enough to see that I’ve got a few green tomatoes, but whether they’ll ripen or not while hidden away is anyone’s guess.

Other highlights from my gardens included the pond garden:

And the coleus that have taken over Kelsey Park:

Up on the deck we have a yellow rose that was originally a miniature rose that I bought a couple of years ago, kept in the house until it was all but dead, and then stuck outside to see what would happen to it.

And last but not least is the deck pot that the hubby fills with flowers for me every mother’s day. This year’s batch apparently really likes the wet weather we’ve been having:

Glad someone does!

Crafts ‘N Such

Work done by you with unconditional love and pure devotion goes straight in the category of divine and immortal craft.
— Seema Brain Openers

Crafting is like meditation, it allows you to focus your mind and release your stress.
— Unknown

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
— Maya Angelou

My son-in-law’s shift changed last week, so I had the pleasure of my granddaughter’s company. The weather turned cool and rainy, so we didn’t use the pool once. But who needs a pool to have a good time?

We started by making some jewelry. I have a large supply of jewelry supplies, and the granddaughter was more than happy to help me use some up. ;-) First up, we have her jewelry:

Two necklaces and a . . . um . . . decoration to hang on stuff. LOL The pink and blue necklace was the most difficult of all the pieces we made. Not because it was hard to do, on the contrary, the beads were strung on wire so it was pretty easy to do. Except I had the idea of using seed beads as spacers between the larger beads, but they were too small. Then I thought to use bugle beads, but the holes in the larger beads were so big that the smaller beads slipped right into them. Third time was the charm though and I found a larger glass bead that worked fine.

You might notice the granddaughter really liked the mermaid scale charms. She made a necklace with just the charm on it, and put one on either end of her decoration. And then she decided her mom needed mermaid scale earrings to go with the necklace we made her.

I thought that was a pretty good idea, so I made myself a mermaid scale necklace to go with my earrings.

I like the fact that all the mermaid scale charms are different, although we were able to find a matching pair for the earrings. I still have a few of them left – we’ll have to figure out something different to do with them.

Next we tried a craft that I promised her in the spring we’d do in the summer. The dreaded tie dye. Well, it wasn’t nearly as messy as I thought it would be, and we didn’t have to take everything outside to do it.

The kit I got used powdered dye and ice. You basically tie up whatever you’re dyeing, sprinkle the powder over it, and then cover it with ice. Weird, or what? I was kind of skeptical that it would work. But it did. sort of.

Of the two items we dyed, I think the back pack turned out best. We actually had four colours in the kit, but because I figured we should use all of the powder, the dark dye kind of took right over. Oh, well. Better luck next time.

I have to admit, it pays to have a vivid imagination. When we weren’t doing crafts or watching TV, the granddaughter was happy to invent her own games. Like “store,” where she set up a table and was selling cats and cat toys.

Only one of the cats pictured is a real cat. The beauty of her set-up was that it was our stuff we were buying, and we had to give it back when the store closed. And she got to keep the money. LOL

She also set up a restaurant in the living room, but that was strictly for the squishmallows to enjoy. And, apparently, Khaos, who helped herself.

There was also a brief real estate game, where she took pillows from the living room upstairs and re-decorated the bedrooms to become condos. There was one for each of us, and they included a free cat. Fortunately, we never got around to discussing prices.

We also enjoyed a girls road trip to the Michaels Craft store in Peterborough, and while we were there, we naturally had to stop at Spirit Halloween, which just opened in the mall.

The granddaughter was a little disappointed that they didn’t have much in the way of Stranger Things merchandise (her current obsession – she wants to be a demigorgon for Halloween), but they did have a lot of Beetlejuice stuff (a close second).

All in all, we had a fun-filled week. We’ll have to see if we can do as well this week.

Moineau Monday

moineau ~ small flat bastion that protects fortification when being built

You know, these Monday posts were much easier when I didn’t have a separate writing blog. Despite the fact I proudly proclaim myself an author on my banner, I’ve been trying not to talk too much about writing stuff because I have a whole other blog for that and I don’t want to repeat myself (although I do that with the poetry post, which I forgot to do Friday). You can, in fact, find it HERE.

I think to keep everyone from getting confused, I might indulge in a little housekeeping on my blogs during my vacation, which I think is mid-August. That’s right, I’m not sure when my vacation is. Technically, it’s the daughter’s vacation, but it means I’m freed up from babysitting for the week and I’ve already started making a list of things I want to get accomplished.

But in the mean time, I still live in a small town and other than babysitting I don’t get out much. Last week the hubby was on vacation which made my mornings a little easier because I didn’t have to take him to work, but it was a little disconcerting to have him hanging around when I came home from babysitting.

Okay, he wasn’t literally hanging around. He was keeping busy painting inside the house and staining the deck and a bunch of other stuff, but he had a definite presence that kind of threw me off my game. It was just plain weird. LOL

Friday I talked him into coming to the beach with the grandbaby and I, and a good time was had by all:

She was intrigued by a circle someone made of seagull feathers and insisted on playing inside it. Though you can tell one of her favorite things is to dig in the sand, she was very careful not to get any sand on the feathers, and if she accidentally knocked one over she made sure she set back up again.

Most of our time was spent playing on the beach, but she also got pushed on the swing, made Grappy go up in the pirate ship play structure with her, and we had a picnic lunch. Now that’s something I should have taken a picture of - the picnic lunch. It’s been a long time since I packed for a picnic and of course I packed way too much food. But at least no one went away from the table hungry. :-D

I’ve been watching the buds on one of my mini orchids with great anticipation for the last week or two and my patience was finally rewarded:

It’s one of the two orchids I have on my kitchen window sill, and I think it’s the only one that’s not pink and white. I have two orchids in the dining room that are just finishing a bloom run, and as per my neighbor’s advice, I am not cutting the bloom stalks. I did that on the other orchid in the kitchen and it hasn’t bloomed since, but one of the orchids in the dining room not only re-bloomed off the same stalk, it grew another one as well.

And outside my sweet peas are just starting to bloom. Just a couple of blossoms so far, so no pictures yet, but they should be in full colour when it’s time for my August garden update.

I can’t wait!

Misbeseem Monday

misbeseem ~ to be unsuited or unsuitable to

Last week was a week, I tell you what.

The daughter had a conference in Texas of all places, and since she was going to be in the neighborhood, more or less, decided to spend a few days visiting a friend in San Diego afterwards. This meant that the grandbaby and I got to spend some extra time together last week. Make that a lot of time. ;-)

I knew about this well in advance and made lots of plans ahead of time. But you know me and planning for things ... this was no different. *sigh* The original plan was, the son-in-law would drop the grandbaby off at our house on his way to work (early morning). I had crafts and other activities planned for us to do until we had to take the hubby to work (mid-morning). On Wednesday I was going to have hubby take the day off and we’d take grandbaby to Riverside Park, which is a park and free zoo in a city north of us.

However, that was not what happened.

First of all, I hadn’t planned on the brother-in-law taking last week off (hubby and BIL own their own business jointly). Not only did that put the kybosh on the zoo trip, it kind of screwed up the rest of the week too.

Instead of being at work for 10:30, hubby had to be there for 9:00. So instead of son-in-law dropping baby off, I went and picked her up and we came back here to pick up grappy and take him to work. From there it was pretty much a case of ‘now what?’

Monday the weather was kind of iffy, so we went back to the daughter’s house with a big bag of craft stuff. I had paper, and washable, non-toxic markers, and stickers, and all sorts of wonderful things in my bag of tricks. Grandbaby seemed to enjoy painting Hello Kitty pictures with water the best.

Tuesday we went to the drop-in play group we go to on a regular basis. I thought it would be even more fun to get there early for a change. It wasn’t. It was boring as all get out. Most of the kids we’re familiar with and the regular day care workers were all involved with the Day Camp. After an hour the grandbaby was bored enough that she was asking to leave. So we went shopping instead. :-)

Wednesday we slapped on the sun screen and went down to the beach. The nice thing about going to the beach that early was that we got one of the free parking places. Don’t get me started on residents having to pay for parking at our public park and beach.

Grandbaby got to try out her brand new bathing suit although she didn’t exactly get it wet. She slid down the pirate ship, got pushed on the swing until my arms were ready to fall off, and had a great time playing on the splash pad ... until someone turned on the water. LOL

We went down onto the sand where a couple of lovely ladies told us to help ourselves to the beach toys they’d brought for their grand kids - who were more interested in playing with their body boards in the water. We’ve got about three quarters of our beach back and the water for the first few hundred yards is extremely shallow. I tried to get the grandbaby to at least go wading with me, but she was having none of it.

Thursday the weather was kind of iffy, so we gave the play group another chance. This time we went a little later in the morning and we had a much better time. Friday the son-in-law had the day off, so that meant I did too. But of course Thursday afternoon I noticed my throat was a bit sore and my nose was a bit sniffly. Isn’t that always the way? I took some cold medicine when I got home, but it was too late.

My favourite moment of the week was when I went to leave Wednesday after the son-in-law came home and grandbaby threw her little arms around my legs and said: “No go Grammy! I keep you!”

Is it any wonder she has me wrapped around her little finger?

Maschalephidrosis Monday

maschalephidrosis ~ massive sweating of the armpits

Continuing on the theme from last week of mother’s curses . . . The daughter had another convention she had to attend last week, so I put in some extra babysitting time. But unlike the previous week, this time I had the use of the daughter’s car, and more importantly, the car seat.

Wednesday was story time at the library and I figured it was the perfect opportunity to get out and be sociable. Unfortunately the woman in charge of the program was not very friendly and the kids were kind of standoffish. So afterwards we indulged in a little shopping therapy to make us feel better. :-)

Thursday we decided to give the drop-in playgroup at the YMCA a try and had a much better time.

The people running it were friendly and welcoming. There were just enough kids to make it interesting and an endless supply of toys. The grandbaby’s favourite was the playhouse in the picture. And the small, indoor slide. It may take some finagling with the car seat, but we’ll definitely be going back again.

In fact, there’s a Halloween party there today that we’re planning to attend. And yes, I’m dressing up too. If I can find my witch’s hat. Grandbaby, of course, will be wearing the Ewok costume her doting Grammy made her.

It’s not the best picture of the costume, but the smile says it all.

On the weekend I finally started catching up on my book reviews so I could log the books I’ve read into my Goodreads account. Fourteen down and six to go. I’ve been meaning to do this since July, and to keep better track. Like, update once a month or so.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here or not, but I’ve decided to do NaNo this year. NaNo, for those of you who are new, is short for NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel during the 30 days of November.

This will be my tenth year, but my eighth win (if I complete the challenge). I did not win the very first year I did it - my story ran out at 30,000 words and try as I did, I just couldn’t make it any longer. And I didn’t do it last year, and really missed it. It just didn’t seem like November without those massive word counts.

To be perfectly honest, the writing hasn’t been going well lately. I haven’t been writing much of anything, other than blog posts. And yet I’m starting to feel pretty excited about NaNo. I’ve even ordered a NaNo tee-shirt online - this will be my third one, but I’ve already got the thermos, travel mug, hoodie, and USB bracelet.

There’s just something magical about NaNo, although you really can’t understand it unless you’ve tried it. But it’s so magical that I was even able to persuade three out of four friends (who’ve done it before) to join me.

Tomorrow night I’ll be attending a write-in being thrown by our official Municipal Liaisons and hopefully I’ll be meeting other like-minded writers. I may end up being a crazy person for the month, but it’ll be fun.

Trust me. :-D

Megathermic Monday

megathermic ~ surviving only in tropical climates

Are you familiar with “the mother’s curse?” It kind of goes like this: I hope when you grow up you have kids just as bad as you.

Well, I have learned to be careful what you wish for. Especially when you end up babysitting the child of your child. *sigh* She looks so sweet, doesn’t she? Sitting on the coffee table with her stuffed monkeys:

That picture was taken just before she stood up on the coffee table and booted the monkeys off, one by one. Monkeys flying everywhere!

Thursday and Friday last week the son-in-law had to fill in for someone at work, so my babysitting time doubled. What’s cute when you babysit for 2 ½ hours (which includes the beginning of nap time) is exhausting when you babysit for 5. And to make matters worse, it was too wet and cold to play outside.

On a whim I Googled “mother’s curse” thinking to discover the source of it. Imagine my surprise when the feed filled up with all this scientific jargon regarding a real mother’s curse. It’s some kind of genetic anomaly that’s passed down from mothers to their sons - only the sons, not the daughters. I didn’t understand a fraction of what it’s all about, but if you’re interested in the science of it all, you can learn more at Phys Org.

This week the daughter is off to another convention, so it’ll be full time babysitting for most of the week. But the upside is I’ll get to use her car, so even if the weather’s bad we can still go to story time at the library and play group at the YMCA.

And you’d think I would have had enough of the kid with the extra babysitting, but no, I went with her to our local comic con on the weekend. She wore her batman outfit and she and her trusty monkey were ready to protect us from the Daleks that were wandering around causing trouble.

Other highlights of last week include going to Oshawa to meet my favourite author, Charles de Lint. It was an amazing experience and I’ll be writing a separate blog post all about it soon.

And finally, yesterday I spent the day working on the grandbaby’s Halloween costume. She’s going to be the cutest little Ewok out there. I was able to get the main part finished in one go - basically, a brown sleeper made out of arctic fleece with a hood (with ears on it) and feet. The pattern turned out to be a little trickier than I expected, but it turned out okay. Now I just have to figure out how to do the head scarf.

Sadly, I didn’t get much writing in over the last week, but at least I kept busy. :-D

Monandry Monday

monandry ~ marriage to only one man at a time

Last week the daughter had a course she needed to take for work which required her to be in Ottawa, so once again Grammy pulled extra babysitting time. The first day we played outside - blowing bubbles, me dragging her around in her Flintstones-like car, picking flowers ... Day two we went shopping, always a fun time, and though I was sorely tempted to buy us junk food I honoured her mother’s request that I not.

Here’s the little darling trying to show the cat how he’s supposed to use his toy.

Then came day three, the day I had figured on taking her to a drop in play group. But first thing in the morning the grandbaby really wanted to go outside. So we chased the dog around the back yard and found him a stick and ... being blind, he didn’t realize the grandbaby was directly in front of him and steam-rolled her, biffing her in the head with the stick.

She ended up flat on her back and I think that, more than the blow to her head, is what upset her. It was nothing hugs from Grammy couldn’t fix. Well, all except for the goose-egg on her forehead. Which is why we didn’t go to the play group with its finger pointing mamas. We went to the dollar store and made cupcakes instead. ;-)

Like last month I had a couple of extra days off as my reward for full time babysitting. And while this time I didn’t end up with a mega-death cold, I don’t know that I was a lot more productive with my extra time. What can I say? It’s summer time and Mother Nature has finally acknowledged it with some super hot weather.

Among the things I did get done was finally catching up on my Goodreads reviews and a lot of relaxing on the deck. And I planted more petunias in the front garden. And despite the fact my roses have only been uncovered for a few weeks, one of them even decided to bloom.

Ahh, summer. Nice to see you!

Mirific Monday

mirific ~ wonder-working; marvellous

It’s the twenty-fourth of May
The Queen’s Birthday
And if we don’t get a holiday
We’ll all run away!

Okay, so it’s only the 23rd of May. But close enough for it to be Victoria Day. This means that if you live in Canada you probably have the day off. And if you live in the States ... well, we’ll raise a glass to you as we sit on our decks enjoying our barbeques. ;-)

Victoria Day, as you might have guessed, is celebrated in honour of Queen Victoria’s birthday. When we originally started celebrating it, back in 1845, it was held on May 24th, the queen’s actual birthday. But after she died in 1901 it was decided that in order to give everyone a long weekend, it would be held on the Monday before May 25th. Nice of them, wasn’t it?

Last week was pretty mixed up for me. The daughter had to go to a conference in Vancouver, so her hubby switched to a day shift so that I could babysit during the day and he’d be home in the evenings with the baby.

This was going to be fun! Or so I thought. Since I’d have the use of the daughter’s car, I envisioned road trips to the parks and maybe a visit or two to the drop in play group at the local YMCA. Girls going wild, Grammy style!

However, Sunday night my little Ellie came down with the sniffles, and was no better on Monday. This meant play group was out. And though the sun was shining brightly, the wind was really cold last week, which meant the park was out. *sigh*

My son-in-law took Thursday and Friday off, so my services were no longer needed, but as a lovely parting gift, Ellie gave me her cold. Wednesday I woke up with a really sore throat and was getting sniffling myself, and then Thursday it blossomed into the Epic Mega Death Cold From Hell.

Who says good deeds never go unpunished? On the other hand, look at that smiling face. It was totally worth it. ;-)

Microphytology Monday

microphytology ~ study of very small plant life

Happy Simcoe Day. Or Civic Holiday. Or, as some of the locals have been lobbying for it to be, Happy James Cockburn Day. It's not a statutory holiday, but people generally have the day off ... unless you're unfortunate enough to work in retail because while the Post Office and other government agencies are closed, stores are open.

To celebrate the long weekend, our town closes off the main street for a huge, three day sidewalk sale. It's pretty much like a two-block, over priced yard sale. The stores put out all the stuff they couldn't sell over the last few years, but don't lower their prices enough to encourage people to buy.

There's also music and a sand sculpture competition down on the beach. The competition is pretty cool and attracts people from all over. I'm sure there's other stuff going on as well, but I wouldn't know. I tend to keep to my cave during these public displays of madness. ;-)

The competition ended on Sunday afternoon, and Sunday night we had some torrential rain storms sweep through, so I don't imagine there's much of the sand sculptures left. If the rain didn't get them, I'm sure the extremely high winds did.

Last week was a bit of a scorcher. Okay, it was a lot of a scorcher. I have to chuckle at the weather network. They can never make up their mind as to whether or not it's going to rain, and they seriously underestimate the temperature. They did declare an excessive heat warning for our area, but their temperatures were in the high 20s C (high 70s, low 80s F). Someone local on Facebook put a thermometer outside in the sun on one of those days, and the temperature registered 45 C (115 F). I think the truth lies somewhere in between.

I don't handle excessive heat any better than I do too much overcast/grey weather, so last week was not particularly productive. Again. But I decided on the weekend that I'm just going to have to suck it up. August is just starting and I'm sure the heat is going to extend into September, and I can't afford to keep wasting time like I've been doing. Life is too short.

The week ahead is going to be ... challenging. After much searching, the daughter finally found a job. That's the good news. The bad news is, her hours and her husband's hours over lap so they need someone to baby sit during the day. Namely, me.

On the one hand, I get to spend time with the granddaughter every day. On the other hand, I've already fallen behind in the transcribing and a three hour chunk out of my day isn't going to help matters. So again, no more wasting time, and I'll have to re-arrange my schedule to fit all the other stuff I do around the baby sitting. Easy peasy.

Bye, bye, mindless games. ;-)