AUG 22: Roller derby

AUG 29: family BBQ + PFLAG day at CW
AUG 28-30: Winona Peach Festival

SEPT 15: Portstock

SEPT 19-20: Doors Open London
SEPT 20: Roller derby

OCT 17: Roller derby

OCT 23-25: London Crafts Show

NOV 14: Roller derby

I spent twice as much money this week at garage sales than last week. A whole twenty cents. But I was on foot this week, so no wasted gas. People, where is all the treasure you promise in your Kijiji ads? Where is this elusive “something for everyone” you claim to offer? Because I can’t find it among your filthy broken heart-shaped junk. (Also, I can’t believe people sell their old picture frames with photos of their kids still in them.)

Speaking of Kijiji, I’m on the cusp of my second sale. Next stop, trade empire!

This weekend I am beginning Apartment Therapy’s 8-week cure. My tasks between now and next Saturday are as follows:

Deep Treatment:

1. Make a complete list of repairs and solutions (physical problems with the bones of the apartment and what to do about them)
2. Vacuum and mop the floors
3. Remove one item (I’m skipping this one because I’ve already removed a ton of stuff lately)
4. Buy fresh flowers
5. Sit for ten minutes in a part of my home I never sit in (could be difficult given the size of my place)
6. Look into earth-friendly cleaning products

One-Room Remedy:

1. Choose one room to re-do
2. Gather pictures of rooms I love (for their activities, style/colour, flow)
3. Start a Style Tray for these pictures (I’m going to use a small corkboard)
4. Visit my favourite home store (Ikea, here I come)
5. Set my budget

I’ve already decided to re-do the dining area, since it is the one part of the apartment that I haven’t already mentally designed (the rest may not have physically caught up with the design, but the images are in my brain). I’ve changed my mind about the officey look because after all it’s really just a corner of the living room, which is (or will be, once the damn devil couch is gone or recovered) very modern and I feel like the old-fashioned-office-schoolroom thing I had started to envision for the dining area would probably clash.

Keeping it modern and keeping in mind that it’s the transition between the kitchen and living rooms are key. I don’t think you can have things that vary too much in style side by side in an apartment as small as mine. At least the bedroom is a completely separate room with an actual door; you can do it a little differently and it’s not as jarring.

So the colours I’m working with are black, dark brown (not actually present in the living room yet but coming soon, fingers crossed), dark orange (the TV stand), and beige (we’re pretending the walls are beige, remember?). The kitchen colours are white, black, chrome and slate blue.

Obviously there isn’t room for more than a table and four chairs, so most of my brain-storming and picture-gathering with be focused on the walls rather than the furniture. I’ll be moving the whiteboard off the north wall just as soon as I have something to replace it (prints or posters or whatnot). The corkboard that T found so distressing last week is STAYING — actually, technically it’s being swapped with an identically-sized one with black trim instead of blond that I just bought today at a yard sale for a DIME, can you believe it?) — because I’ll definitely still be using that space as my main computer-using, bill-paying and list-writing area (i.e. my mini home office). So suck it, T.

On a related note, there are plants in my abode for only the second time ever. Believe it.

I’m very proud of how productive I’ve been during the evenings this week. Well, except for Monday, which was a write-off because it was my brother’s birthday and I went over for cake and a visit after dinner, didn’t get home until 9:30. But the other three nights I’ve done dishes and laundry and chipped away at the to-be-eliminated pile — even made my first Kijiji sale!

All this during a week when I have to work late twice (today and tomorrow) because it’s our fiscal year end.

I don’t have big weekend plans yet, other than garage saleing on Saturday, possibly also shopping with my mom (for a table for the balcony, for my birthday). I should also work on hauling the last of my boxes from my parents’ basement, and do a little shopping down there while I’m at it – there may be something I want among all the forgotten mirrors and picture frames and wall shelves.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I also pretend the carpets don’t exist. Ideally I would like hardwood in the living and bedroom spaces and some kind of nice, neutral tile in the bathroom and kitchen. Also I forgot that my balcony needs work. I need a little table or two (I’m thinking of using TV trays of some kind, because they fold and store easily) and maybe a rug?

I’m out on the balcony right now. It smells like Happy Rolph’s out here and has all weekend. I suspect the Smokersons are letting their dog crap on their balcony and/or leaving animal waste out there for some reason. Luckily the stink hasn’t yet found its way into my apartment (once in a while I’m grateful for the lack of air circulation).

Got my hair cut this morning at the ungodly hour of 9 AM, then went to Value Village to drop off a backpack full of stuff I don’t want (a bathroom rug my mother bought me in an insane shade of green, goes with nothing I own or will ever own; two pairs of shoes I never plan to wear again, one due to excessively high heels and the other due to uncomfortableness) and somehow came home with a backpack full of more stuff. I cannot seem to purge successfully. I donated all those old clothes this spring and yet my closets are still filled to bursting.

All this week, when I’ve not been coughing my brains out, I’ve been making lists of home decor-type things I want to buy. It’s that time of year again: that brief period (early this year; usually coincides with the arrival of the new Ikea catalogue) when I actually give a damn what the apartment looks like. When I temporarily put aside my it’s-too-shabby-to-bother-with attitude and make a stab at decorating, or at least what passes for decorating when you’re incredibly aesthetically-challenged.

In order to make any effort at all, I have to pretend that the walls are the colours I want them to be, instead of off-peach or whatever the fuck they are. This means pale blue-grey in the kitchen, pale olive in the bathroom, and sandy everywhere else. That way, when I eventually live somewhere where I’m willing to invest time and money in painting, the rooms will transplant easily.

I also have to pretend that the treadmill simply doesn’t exist. (That’s easy; I’ve been doing it for weeks, every evening after work when I should be using it.)

So I’ve been spending all my online time on Etsy and Apartment Therapy and all my offline free time reorganizing my closets. I’m finally forcing myself to part with SOME of my empty boxes; not the really nice ones, just the crap ones that have been through so many moves there isn’t a spot left that isn’t covered with packing tape or magic marker. That freed up some space for some of the miscellaneous clutter that adds to the unkempt bachelor/teenagery look of my place, something I wouldn’t mind edging away from.

Now I just need to:

• slipcover the couch (preferably chocolate brown; I have a bid on one on eBay right now that looks promising)
• get art to hang on the walls (especially over the TV, in the bedroom and on the long wall that goes from the entryway to the living room)
• buy a ledge/shelf for the blank part of the living/dining wall (I like this idea of putting old clipboards on it, especially since my dining area is really more officey than eaty)
• maybe buy a new dining room table?
• figure out where to put the towels (there’s no room in the bathroom and there’s no spot big enough in the bedroom right now)
• collect some (preferably vintage) cake pans (in fun shapes, not just rectangles) to hang on the kitchen wall
• stop leaving the kitchen such a freaking mess all the time!

I babysat the Ns last night. The oldest had multiple nosebleeds, the niece had a teeny, tiny, nearly-invisible scrape on her toe that was preventing her from sleeping, and the youngest was an utter terror until I realized he was just missing his Buddy (a stuffed animal that he won’t sleep without). Exhausting. I got blood on my pants, but I was about to donate them anyway because they don’t fit.

I got my hair cut on the weekend and I don’t know what the chick did to my bangs but they are effed. Luckily they have some time to grow before SF because I plan to be talking to the camera a lot that week. My nephew warned me not to drop my camera in the water on the ferry to Alcatraz (where I’m also instructed to keep an eye out for sharks and take pictures if I see any), and not to let K push me in either.

I was out of commission much of the past week with a head cold (the sore throat from the previous week wasn’t as over as I thought) and of course I’ve been jetting back and forth to my parents’ to try to check the basement for squatters and such. Yesterday I finished off my clothes shopping for my trip (I think) so all that remains is the elusive bag (or an acceptable alternative, more likely) and possibly a laptop sleeve (especially if the appropriate bag doesn’t materialize and I end up using my parents’ carry-on).

So Work-K and I have decided to do the Weekend to End Breast Cancer in September. It’s going to be a big challenge, both in terms of fundraising (you have to commit to collecting $2000 each) and the walk itself, which is 60 km over two days. I figure that’s about six hours of walking each day (based on doing the Rankin Run’s five km in one hour). Right now the forecast is suh-weet — 24, no chance of run, some clouds.

I’m also looking forward to hiking Shorts Hills with T next weekend. That’s going to be awesome. I can break in some of my new hiking clothes.

Today I walked down to the beach (from my mom’s, not from home) and strolled along the (incredibly windy and cold) waterfront, got drenched on the pier (the waves were crashing against the west side and spraying up all kinds of… well, spray, I guess), and walked home along the Waterfront Trail (which in that area is mostly sidewalk through a neighbourhood).

It was a nice walk except for passing packs of annoying, underdressed teenagers (there was a big regatta going on) on the way down and at the beach. I hope they got frostbite in their tanks and short-shorts — I was cold in a T-shirt, hoodie and jeans. But my route back avoided all the people (the main reason I don’t go outside that much) so that was good.

My new shoes seemed to perform fairly well on their first off-road walk. Not that it compares to actual hiking.

Now I’m doing laundry at my mom’s (all my “hand-washables” — in the machine!) and rooting through the crap collection in the basement. I still have books and stuff here that I need to take home. Not that I have room for them.

Raining again, but I wised up today and kept the window shut so I drove home from my parents’ in a leisurely fashion about an hour ago. The shopping was only semi-successful today. I got the camera case and the watch, but the messenger bag eludes me. All I have found is a leather one at Roots — too fancy, not to mention too pricey. I have done all the malls (that I can drive to in under an hour) so now I need some advice. I’m such an amateur at this crap. Where should I look?

I feel like such a fool tonight. I went to my parents’ after work (and after driving across the city twice on stupid but inescapable errands) and made spaghetti for supper. Oh, and I should mention that I stopped at home first, where I opened the bedroom window wide because it was SO SUNNY AND NICE outside. So I’m eating dinner on the couch at Mom’s when suddenly (and unsurprisingly) I spill spaghetti sauce all down the front of my (brand new, of course) jeans.

Luckily I had brought a set of workout clothes so I changed into the shorts and threw the jeans in the washer. The sauce seems to have come out just fine. But not long afterward, as I relaxed and semi-enjoyed an episode of Departures, I suddenly heard the sound of rain beating against the windows. It was pouring. Picturing my bed getting drenched, I dashed out to the car (unshaven legs and all!) and drove home, anxious to get that window closed as soon as possible.

The bed was bone dry when I got there. Although I did drip some rain onto it from my jacket as I jumped up to slam the window shut.

I have another big shopping weekend ahead, I think; I still need a lot of new clothes, plus some other stuff for my trip. I want to get a canvas (or similar) messenger bag to use as my carry-on and as my purse-type receptacle while walking around SF. I also need a watch and a case for the new camcorder. How fortunate that Visa has recently upped my limit.