Filling Up

I am sitting back and enjoying the view from a different spot on our couch today. 

I am having a "cat day".

I am nourishing my mind with Abby Wambach:

Snapshot of some words worth pondering in the book Wolfpack - by Abby Wamback

I am nourishing my body with a toasted ham/cheese/tomato sandwich.

I have tended to a few loads of laundry, dusted some cat hair off the floor and am anticipating an afternoon spent following whatever may unfold.

I have felt empty and exhausted lately. I can feel my energy reserves replenishing as I fill myself up this most anticipated Sunday with myself.

The Irony of It All

Enter the girl who has been full of complaints about the high cost of maintaining her laminate flooring since its date of installation.

This girl has complained of wafting cat hair, endless need to vacuum, accumulation of said cat hair on the walls/doors/baseboards due to the fact that carpeting is no longer in the house to capture and hold onto said cat hair and allowing the above mentioned person to take care of cleaning on her own terms.

Add the complaint that spillage on laminate flooring reverberates and splashes long and far and wide. When you spill a liquid on laminate, look UP. And across. And behind the area of spillage.

Listen to all of the above and you may assume this person is not appreciating her laminate to the fullest.

Guess what this laminate-complaining-person found this morning?

A carpet beetle.

One lone beetle in a house that has little to no carpeting. Oh, the irony of it all...

Back to School!

Our students are presently enjoying either their last official day at school or their first day of summer holidays today and what did I find in yesterday's mail? A magazine advertising a large chain store with "Back to School" articles featured on the cover.

Honestly?

Is it not bad enough that you can start buying Easter candy right after Valentine's Day; Hallowe'en costumes in the middle of the summer; and Christmas descends upon the stores in September? Can't we give our kids the opportunity to seize the day and enjoy their first days of holidays without bombarding them with back to school advertising?

I remember how the time dragged when I was a kid. It felt like I would never get to the next grade and the wait from one school holiday to the next felt like an eternity. I felt like I was young for forever. Nowadays? Time seems to be going by quickly even for children.

Occupying every moment of the day, fast forwarding from one holiday to the next and simply being caught up in our present day world where we aren't truly present is detracting from simply enjoying the moment you are in.

Granted, there are times when I am grateful the moment doesn't last forever. But for those of you who are enjoying a first day of holidays, celebrating the completion of an onerous task or simply waking up to a day like any other ... may the world stop spinning for a moment so you can savor the good stuff.

A Cat's Life

This is kind of where I wish I was right now ...

... living a "cat's life".

A day to sit back and watch the birds, chase little sparkly balls, rest whenever and wherever I wished and watch the dust and cat hair float waft about in the air around me.

Ahhh. A day in the life of a cat. I'm craving a cat day.

Housecleaning 101

One of the best parts about our main floor renovation was that after the dust settled long enough to vacuum it all up, for one hot second the entire main floor felt clean.

New flooring, fresh paint, new light fixtures, baseboards, window coverings ... you name it. It was new and fresh out of the package.

It was such a good feeling to know everything was clean.

Enter ... the cats. And dust. And life in general.

It has been almost four months since the completion of our renovations. I have vacuumed, swiped down and washed these new surfaces more times than I can remember. Then last night I looked up at the kitchen blinds and noticed they needed to be washed.

I bought this handy dandy little item when I was all excited about amassing cleaning tools to keep our renewed home all clean and shiny. It sat unused until last night:

It works like a charm. It isn't perfect. It needs a little assistance from a wet cloth and I used the dust buster to clean my cleaner.

I only "cleaned" a few slats last night before putting aside this little gadget for another time. The time was this morning.

I decided to clean a blind while I made myself a cup of coffee. I stepped upon a little step stool we have in the kitchen to reach the top blind and raced with the kettle to see who could complete their task first.

I was doing well. I needed to grab the bottom of the blinds to keep them from moving while I was cleaning. Cleaning tool in one hand. Blinds in the other hand. Then "WHOOSH!" ... my step stool slid out from underneath me on my newly cleaned laminate flooring.

Luckily, I caught myself with my elbows on the counter top and simply resumed cleaning. 

Then I thought of the other option in the "choose your own adventure" fork in the road in this morning's life events.

What if I hadn't caught myself and I had conked myself on the head while tumbling to the floor with a blind and cleaning tool in my hands. The irony of sustaining a life altering or ending injury while CLEANING is not lost on me.

See?! House cleaning can be dangerous! Especially when you are out of practise. 

The Miracle of Life

As my sister-by-marriage and I were sitting waiting for Oprah to step on stage, our conversation was all over the map. We went from the inane to the serious and everything in between. Her brother had died just one day previous and he was never too far from our thoughts.

I retold a story she had heard before. The one about the time he borrowed $50.00 to buy me a birthday present and I ended up with a $5.00 pair of earrings. His explanation was that he had hoped to gamble with this money and pay back a larger previous loan, as well as get me a gift. I was lucky to end up with the earrings.

She nodded when I added "I think I have told you this before..." but I had one addition to the story I had not revealed previously. "I think that was the night our son was conceived...." I kept track of these things and according to my calculations, my birthday was the only "unsafe" day we took a chance on love. I thought this new information would add an upbeat spin to an old story as we rewound the years and talked of that which was light and easy during her brother's and my courtship and marriage.

Our conversation took off on a new direction and my story was soon forgotten.

Enter "Oprah!". Oprah is an incredible story teller and there is a reason behind every word she speaks. She talked about her existence and being born at the precise moment she was born, in the exact place she was born, to the parents who conceived her. The timing, the place, her mother and the way she was raised were all instrumental to Oprah becoming "Oprah!" - the celebrity who was up on the stage, talking about some of what she has learned by interviewing 37,000 people over the course of her television show.

Oprah then told us the odds of each and every one of us being born at the exact time, place and to the parents we have. There are so many factors to consider. The fact that our parents met at all. The fact that once meeting, all the stars were aligned at the precise moment in history they were, in order to make conceiving a child a remote possibility. Then you add in all the stuff one learns in science about the number of eggs and sperm and everything else involved in the technicalities of conception. Once conceived, so much can happen that could interfere with the chance of this baby ever being born.

There are millions of factors to consider and it is nothing short of a miracle that each and every one of us in existence due to all of these stars aligning. She gave us an exact statistic in the above equation. I didn't write it down but according to my Google sources, the odds of us being born at the exact time, place and circumstance we were born is about 1 in 400,000,000,000. We are ALL a miracle!!

I turned to my sister-in-law and simply said, "That was a pretty incredible birthday gift, wasn't it?"

So much in life is all in the way you look at it. I never once thought of the true gift I received that one fateful birthday ...

Back on the Home Front

My thoughts have been consumed with things bigger than myself lately. As I told my boss as I breezed into work later than I had hoped to arrive last week, "House renovations, going to see Oprah and a dying ex-husband are taking up a lot of my head space lately. I'm here and will do my best but I must forewarn you ... I'm just a tad distracted at the moment."

Our house maintenance project was running right on schedule. Until the rain began one day prior to the scheduled date to install our eavestroughs. Three days of rain later, our eavestroughs are installed and ready for whatever weather comes our way.

And a peek at the soffit - it looks as good looking up, as it does looking on..

Yes, the eavestroughing crew worked quickly and efficiently to get the job done. On a Sunday! 

More soffit, halting bird nest construction in its tracks.

What a great feeling to have this all behind us.

Only exterior painting remains. When I last spoke to the company who will be taking on this exterior painting project, they were right on schedule. I'm not certain how the rain will impact our date to paint but it is the last item on this summer's renovation list. 

It's all coming together. Add a little rain to our brittle, dried up grass and things are looking pretty good around here. I couldn't pick a better place to live.