Zen and the Art of Home Maintenance

The nesting continues…  We hired painters to paint the front porch and the wood under our windows.  They also made a few repairs – where there was broken wood etc.  The finished product looks pretty good, especially since there’s no dust on it yet.  As a result, it gives the impression that we have the best maintained home in the row.  But once the road dust settles on it, it’ll blend right in. 

At the same time, we had WhiteShark come to clean the eavestroughs.  We had asked them to clean the windows too, but then cancelled the window cleaning part.  When we got home, they cleaned the windows for free.  Usually, when we’ve had them clean the eavestrough, we can’t really tell for sure if they did the work, or did it well.  But with the windows there’s no missing it.  It looks great.  I think I might actually have them come out and do it regularly.

Next step – the floors in the “study”.  They are the original pine subfloor, painted white.  But the paint had begun chipping off.  So I decided to scrape away the loose paint so we could repaint.  Well, I scraped and scraped and scraped… and about 1/2 of the floor could be scraped to the wood (and, accidentally, sometimes the wood could be scraped up too).  So the question is – what needs to be done to the ancient varnish on the wood to get the new paint to stick?

We went to Ontario Paint and were told not to use primer, because it is too soft for a floor.  We asked Joseph, the painter, and he said we needed to use primer.  He gave us a quote to paint the study , the hall and the stairs.  So now I have to decide – who is right?  What to do?

But I know it will make S very happy to have the floors done, to be able to put furniture back in the study so she can use it for work, relaxing, and yoga. 

 

Gigantic Tool

I received an email from Canadian Tire headlined “Last Week of Gigantic Tool Sale”.

I wasn’t quite sure what it meant.  Are the tools very very large?  Or is the sale targeted to people who are gigantic tools.  Or would you have to be a gigantic tool to miss the sale?

Dignity

Last night I was reading through some stuff for the LEADS course I’m on.  My sister noticed and asked me a couple of questions about the course.

Lil Sis:  Do you have to pass it?

Me: I don’t think so

Lil Sis:  Then why are you trying?

Me: Dignity

Lil Sis:   What dignity?

What dignity, indeed.

Damned AMC movie theatre!

It’s too conveniently located — so easy to pop in there after work on the walk home.  But we had become accustomed to going to the affordable Rainbow Market Square cinema, where full priced tickets are only $8.50, and movies are only $4 on Tuesdays.  It’s not swank, the theatres are small, and there’s no stadium seating or any of that.  But it’s cheap, the movies are first-run, and the popcorn’s good.  Plus, they have Movies for Mommies matinees on Thursdays, which sound like a good idea. 

We bought a bunch of passes for Cineplex movies a while ago – $8 each.  So when we see a movie, it’s pre-paid.  But getting to the local Cineplex, the Scotiabank Theatre, isn’t as convenient.  Plus, the place is crowded, generally messy with foul bathrooms, and the popcorn isn’t as good as Rainbow Market Square.

AMC is $13 pretty much all the time except for certain showings before noon.  The popcorn isn’t fresh, and although there are something like 24 screens, they don’t all show new releases. Some of the movies had been released quite a while ago and seem more like filler.   For instance, Sex and the City isn’t playing there right now, but they have the Bank Job, 21, 88 Minutes, War Inc…  But it’s oh so convenient to get to.  Plus, it’s always almost empty – presumably, because it’s new.   We’ve been there 4 times so far, watching movies more often than usual because of the location/tempation.

Take Monday night. We went there to see Sex and the City, which is when we learned that it wasn’t playing there.  So instead we saw Baby Mama on a whim.  It isn’t a movie I would normally have chosen, based on the ads for it.  But it ended up being a lot of fun.   Although it is a movie about alternative baby-making, at the end of the show it turns out that all the baby-making was totally traditional, heterosexual and normal. Which kind of seemed like a pointless cleansing.  But it was laugh-out-loud funny over and over again.  Maybe it was because I wasn’t expecting much, but it was almost worth the almost $40 for tickets, pop and popcorn.

$40.  Man, better not make a habit of this.

 

Happy Anniversary

Apparently, it’s the fifth anniversary of gay marriage becoming legal in Ontario.  Personally, I don’t like the term “gay” marriage or “same-sex” marriage.  If the point is equality, then it should just be called marriage.  So, let’s say it’s the fifth anniversary of the ability for same-sex couples to legally marry in Ontario.  But I digress.

It’s been 5 years and the world has not come skittering to a halt.  Heterosexual’s marriages have survived the “threat”.  And overall it seems like a long-dead issue.  But according to the comments readers posted in response to the article in the Globe and Mail, there’s a surprising number of people who still feel happy to tell me that gay marriage isn’t real marriage.  On the plus side, there were also a number of commenters who happily defended it.

I had questioned getting married, because it is so largely heterosexualized.  To this day it still has the trappings of women as chattel.  Overall, largely distasteful.  And was I selling out my queerness by getting married?  But in fact, I think marrying another woman is a very queer thing indeed.  So no worries there.

 

Sweaty

Just when I thought it was never going to get warm, the weather’s turned hot and steamy.  “31 but feels like 40″ type of thing.  Every year I’m faced with the choice – do I turn the a/c on or not?

The first summer in the house, we ran the a/c (a split ductless system called Mr Slim) from around 6 pm to midnight, and again in the morning while getting ready for work.  Our electricity bills more than doubled.

The next summer, we hired people to waterproof our foundation.  In the process, the exterior unit had to be removed while the work was done.  Not surprisingly, the work was done in a heatwave.  So we lived hot and sweaty, relying on fans to make it possible to sleep.  And after the a/c was restored, we were a bit reluctant to turn it back on.  We were proud of being able to do without, so used it sparingly at bedtime.

This following summer had us follwing the same “sparingly at bedtime” routine.  And I felt pride at doing my part to keep electricity consumption down.  Being sweaty and bedraggled was a badge of honour.

But this summer has me singing a bit of a different tune, so far. Last night around 6:30 I turned the unit onto the “dry” setting (which seems to result in running the a/c in shorter bursts to keep the humidity down).  And it made a huge difference.  It wasn’t particularly cool in the house, but it was a lot more comfortable.  I wonder if this “dry” setting could be the best solution.  or is it, in fact, hugely inefficient.   We have a “smart” meter now, so I’ll have to check to see if I can find a significant difference in electricity consumption between the various settings on old Mr. Slim.

 

 

Ooops…

S ovulated early this time, and we, in a nutshell, missed our opportunity to inseminate this month.

I am Canadian

A man and a little girl outside the ice-cream truck. The man is buying ice-cream cones  for the two of them:

little girl: (to the ice cream guy) I don’t want no vanilla, just chocolate!

man: Atta girl.  High five.  Are you Italian or Canadian?

little girl:  Italian!

man: (to the ice-cream guy, with pride in his voice) You know I never asked her that before!

I’m all for multiculturism.  I’m happy that people immigrate to Canada, and happier still that they bring their cooking with them.  I’m happy that they’re proud of their heritage.  But it saddens me that this person is raising his (presumably) children not to think of themselves as Canadians or the hyphenated Italian-Canadians, but as Italians.   It made me feel like some neo-Con, thinking: I’d bet you’d say you were Canadian if you needed a Canadian passport, or health care, or education, or opportunity – or whatever it was that made you choose to come to Canada in the first place.  So much for becoming softer and gentler in my old age.

But if asked “are you English or are you Canadian” it would be unfathomable for me to say anything other than ”Canadian”.