Manubrium Monday

manubrium ~ any handle-like structure

I was talking to one of my sisters on the phone yesterday and I said our weather lately has been crazy all over the place, like Mother Nature has been using a roulette wheel to pick what the day is going to bring. One day it’s hot enough for a tank top, the next it’s cold enough for a jacket, with wind and rain and overcast skies in between. You just never know what the day’s going to bring.

Take today, for instance. It’s a little windy, a little overcast, a little chilly, but it’s supposed to warm up and be sunny later. And by the end of the week we’re supposed to be back up to 24 Celsius (75 Fahrenheit). Maybe I was a little premature in putting away my summer clothes.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned we had a family outing to the CNE, but I forgot to mention that one of the traditions is that I pick up something . . . frivolous. This is why you’ll see a variety of weird things around my house, like a voodoo stick, wooden chest, dragon holding a plasma ball, etc. This year it was a mask to add to the collection in my office, which is where my story starts.

It’s not that I didn’t have room for another mask, it’s just that we had to rearrange the masks on the wall to make room for it. And then the hubby suggested I might want some of my other keepsakes that sort of went with the masks in my office – things like the didgeridoo, voodoo stick, and rain stick.

Which seemed like a good idea except the only place I had room for them was behind my reading chair. But I also have a pole lamp behind my chair that kind of took up more than its fair share of space because it was too short for the height of the chair so I had it up on a wooden stand.

I managed to wedge the rain stick in behind it, decided it looked stupid and pulled it out again and in the process knocked the glass chimney that covered the light bulb and held up the lamp shade which shattered all over my head – the glass chimney, not the lamp shade.

But I digress.

Once I had the masks rearranged, I realized I had space for one more mask. So on the weekend the hubby and I went to Primitive Designs (a seasonal import store that’s just crammed with really cool stuff), and I bought yet another mask. It’s not the mask I had in mind, but the more I stared at the one I was going to get, the more it creeped me out. There was no way I wanted that thing staring over my shoulder when I was working in my office.

So . . . now my wall is filled and the glass chimney has been replaced and all is right with the world.

And is that the end of my mask collecting?

Probably not.

Meteorism Monday

meteorism ~ abdominal cramps and swelling due to flatulence

You ever have one of those brilliant ideas that turn out to be not so brilliant after all because it has a ripple effect that had you thought things through a little better might have been enough to make you think twice? Yeah, that was me yesterday.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about how I wasn’t happy with the orchid on my kitchen window sill and was considering moving it. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, this particular simple thing took me half a day.

The little table I was thinking about moving it to had a very large ceramic pagoda which had to be relocated. First I thought it could go up on the bookcases in my office. So I got up on the step stool and shuffled things around and the pagoda fit - just barely. But it looked terrible up there.

So then I figured it could go on the bookcase in the upstairs hallway, which was lower and wider. I took the pagoda apart, took it upstairs, and removed the large ceramic knight on his horse and the dragon he was fighting from the shelf. The insanely dusty shelf.

Naturally I dusted the shelf off before reassembling the pagoda, which looks great up there, especially since the opposite shelf has a Chinese doll in a case and mythological beastie. However, I couldn’t just have one clean shelf, so I ended up dusting off the rest of the rather large bookcase. And the books on it.

At this point moving the orchid was simple, but the one drawback of the table is that it sits between the cat tree and the bookcase in the dining room, and the cats like to use it as a gateway to the plants on top of the bookcase. Which is why the pagoda was there in the first place, to block their passage.

So to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to plant the sweet potato vine in a small planter box and drape it over a bamboo trellis I just happened to have. This necessitated finding my planting stuff in the depths of the basement - no mean feat in itself. I found a partial bag of dirt that had just enough for the vine planter, but not for the pineapple that is also growing hydroponically.

Now, the sweet potato vine has been growing for several weeks, and it kind of grew up around the other plants on the window ledge. It even had a shoot wrapped around the stick in the orchid pot. And another that was wound around part of the window. And several tendrils were growing up and intermingling with the hanging plant above it. In retrospect, it might have been easier to just leave it there.

But all’s well that ends well. The orchid is in its new home, the sweet potato is in its new pot, and the plant hanging in the kitchen window received a much needed divesting of dead matter.

I don’t know if you can tell by the picture, but the sweet potato vine looks a little wilted. In my defense, it was already wilting before I planted it in dirt. I’m not sure if it didn’t like the sun we were getting, or if it was just tired of being hydroponic. I’m hoping it’ll be happier in dirt, and the blinds should shade it a bit from the sun.

But I guarantee you, I will think twice before deciding to move a plant again. :-D