Cleanliness is Next to Impossible

I've been trying to move for about 20 years.  I still live in the house I was born in.  The odd house that has never moved but has had three different addresses as the city moved out to engulf us.  Now where there were fields and trees behind my house, there are houses upon houses.  I have a very clear recollection when it started.  I was 17 and our next door neighbours of forever years had sold up and now the bit of land between the two houses was being made ready for its own house.  I remember going down to the garage, which had the only window facing in the right direction, and being horrified while I watched bulldowzers destroy the lovely pussywillows.  This became the quintesential image that stuck in my mind as all future devestation in the name of progress, and, yes, needed money, happened.  My childhood was gone and life would funtamentally never be the same again.  And it hasn't been.
Fast forward to me going to graduate school only because my wonderful parents let me live at home.  FF to my Dad's terminal heart disease that lasted 17 years when they had given him two years to live.  My mother would take care of my father and then I would take care of her, putting her to bed because she was so exhausted.  FF past my father's death 10 or 11 months to my mother's terminal cancer, pancreatic and liver, diagnosis and the 24 hour a day care so she would not have to die in the cold hospital.  I regret none of this care.  In fact it warms my heart that I was able to give back.  But after they were both gone, I clung to the house as the only source of security I had.  Now 20 years later and I have rheumatoid arthritis and find I cannot take care of such a large house with so many stairs.

But the problem is I now have 3 generations worth of stuff to get rid of.  (My grandmother's things were shipped here when she moved and then died,)  We are of Scottish ancestery and I find it very difficult to throw anything away that might be useful in the future.  Consequently I seem to move things from place to place.  The city only allows one bag of garbage per week.  How can you clean things out in only one bag?

That is probably more of an excuse than anything.  But moving m



Fast forward to me going to graduate school and only being able to afford it because my wonderful parents let me live at home.  FF

Water Water Everywhere...

When the City is going to turn your water off for 8 hours, why don't they warn you in advance?

Further Adventures in Internet Shopping

So I placed my order with scrapbook.com, ordering some things I need and more things I don't.  I waited days for my order to be more than 'pending'.  Then it went to 'accepted'.  Finally it gets to 'shipped' and I get a tracking number.   Now I don't have much patience when it comes to ordering on the internet.  When I buy something I tend to want it right away, so I can touch and admire the stuff that I don't really need and that adds to the clutter of an already  way-too-cluttered house.  (That Scottish blood just won't let me throw anything away.  I mean, my grandmother kept a large ball of left over aluminum foil.  And one of elastics.)  Next step: I eagerly go to USPS to see where my package is.  According to them, it was delivered Nov 4, 2010.  Panic.  It really is going to take 25 days to get here because it is already lost.  I immediately sent off an e-mail to find out what is going on.

Now I must give scrapbook.com credit.  They answered my e-mail right away, reasuring me that the number may have been used before and I should check back later.  More waiting.  It is a 13 digit tracking number, with letters and numbers.  And it's out of date in less than two years.  This makes me realize that even when you make a new password for a website or account or whatever, and the bot says it is a good password, it really isn't.  The United States post office ran out of numbers.  It must be easy for a bot to figure out any password.  I feel much less safe online and I didn't feel safe before.

Inchies have arrived

Wow, I've never known two postal services to work so well.  Maybe they read my previous post.  The inchies only took one week to arrive.  Since then I've been happily stamping one inch stamps on pretty cardstock.  I mean I had to see what each and every one looked like (I didn't realize just how many I had ordered).  Now to get up the nerve to actually use the official inchies, which turn out to be inch-and-a-quarter-ies, because I didn't read the product description properly.  But there is that serendipity again,  because I actually really like the size I got and think one inch would be too small for my old and bent body to work on all the time.  Of course, I've got the one inch punch if I want to go true inchie.  And it makes great little squares.  I highly recommend ellenhutson.com.   They were helpful all along the way.

Now on to my rather larger order from scrapbook.com.  Fingers crossed that it doesn't take the outside estimate of 25 days to arrive.  I hope that that is just cya.  When that order arrives I will be a great deal farther along towards being prepared for Mixed Minded in May.  A lot of the recommended supplies were not in stock in local stores.  Of course, the Magic of Oz papers and stuff weren't called for, but I am a rabid Oz fan and couldn't resist.  I had better get to usin' some of these things I am ordering and post some pictures.  I am a bit of a hoarder and can't quite yet make myself use any of the new things.  So far I'm happy just admiring them.

Upward and onward.  Bring on the Cricut machine.

Kritter, My Kritter -- A Valentine Lament

I suppose it is appropriate to be writing this on Valentine's Day because it is a love song for my dear departed feline friend Kritter.  Or to be more acurate J. Kritter -- J for jungle.  (Somewhere in that name is a reference to T. S. Eliot's poem "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock",  the name "parted on the  left hand side."  I wish I could remember who said that.)  I have a penchant for long thought out, meaningful (to me) and different names for my cats.

He was a plain brown tabby who I tried to give away after he was given to me by a student.  I had asked for, and been told I was getting, a grey female.  Brown tabbies were my least favourite type of cat.  They brought back memories of a neighbour's cat from my childhood,  unimaginatively named Brownie.  Although thinking back that cat was female because I remember her having kittens.  And there was nothing wrong with her.  She was a little wild, but not mean.  Just a boring colour.

But as I tried to give this tiny kitten away 12 years ago, I gradually fell under his spell, because he was the most affectionate cat I had ever known.  At the time I had either 2 or 3 other cats.  ( I was trying to work my way towards crazy cat lady status.)   I adored my cats, but they were rather stereotypically cat cats.  Would allow some touching.  Liked to be with me but didn't really want to be cuddled.  Not  Kritter.  He demanded to be picked up and fondled.  At all times.  As the years wore on and I became disabled from rheumatoid arthritis,  he spent most of his nights sleeping on the pillow next to mine.  The one for which I had dreamed a male companion of a different kind.  When not on that pillow, he was curled up beside me with my arm around him.  Sometimes he wanted that position so much he would sit on any other cat by my side and eventually end up in the coveted spot.

So on January 22, 2012, my beloved Kritter went off to kitty heaven, having had a heart attack, or so the vet thinks.  He hadn't been deperately sick.  He'd only been unlike himself  for a couple days.  I had just begun to think of taking him to a vet.  I'm not a bad mommy.  He really had not seemed sick.  My first thought was he had eaten something he shouldn't have.  But early Sunday morning I could not find him.  It took nearly all day, in my movement restricted state, to find him.  He was tucked away under a bookcase over a heat vent in a tiny space where no cat ever goes.  I guess he had slipped away to find some place to die.

I miss my Kritter desperately.  (Remember Elly May's kritters from The Beverly Hillbillys?  That's where his name really came from.)   I mourn his loss and am having trouble dealing with everyday things.  I know this trauma will lessen.  I have been through this before.  But right now it is a big gaping hole of pain.  This writing has been therapy, and if anyone is actually reading this, which I doubt, well, it was just something I needed to do.

Rest in peace my beloved Kritter.  Kia and Kaliko are looking for you.  And I miss my "cuddle-bunny".

Contest

And now for one of the reasons for this blog -- so I can enter contests.

This one is at Going Buggy and is for a set of letraset markers, which I really want.  I've been  eyeing markers such as Copic, but they are so expensive.  So maybe the contest fairy will smile on me.
 
I'm supposed to link back to their site, which I think I have just figured out how to do (woohoo!)   The date of the post is Feb 13.

contest for letraset markers

Mixed Minded


I just signed up for the Mixed Minded conference in Cambridge, Ontario, being put on by The Art House Studio of Kitchener.   It's amazing how serendipity comes into play.   I was looking at Donna Downey's website, which I absolutely adore, dreaming about  going to North Carolina to take a class from her.  I had even decided when -- May 25-7 or so, so I could potentially go to a NASCAR race in  Charlotte.  But I guess everyone who lives there flees the area when the influx of a hundred thousand rabid  fans descend on the area.

Slight disappointment, but also some relief as huge crowds and my scooter do not mesh well., So I flip through her classes anyway only to discover she's going to be less than an hours drive away from me teaching that weekend.  Out came the credit card.  I'm so excited, maybe even more than about the inchies.

Now, of course, I  have to go out and fill up the list of reqiured items needed for the classes.  And something to carry them in.  Such a hardship ;)   I do have to figure out if all the items are available here.  What, specifically, is a craft mat?  I usually use a plastic table cloth and a smooth piece of wood.  Can't truck a 2 foot square piece of wood around wirh me.  Perhaps The Art Store will know.

It's got to be at least 5 years since I had any kind of vacation.  Woohoo!