The New Floor

The past couple of days have been spent tearing out and replacing all the floor in the dining room, living room and hallway to the upstairs.  We only managed to pull up one 2 layers, the floor and 1 layer of subfloor, there's still a couple of layers under there.

The old living room laminate.

The only time it ever looked this good.

I've always hated the living room floor.  Whoever installed the laminate, did it on a floor that had a huge slope to it.  If you don't level the floor, you get bouncy laminate.  Plus it was orangey, which makes for horrible yellowish interior photos.

The breaking point for me was the dining room floor.  It looked so good when we first installed it but it was short lived.  We tried two different finishes on it. They would wear off pretty much instantly and we'd be left with a rough floor that was constantly coated in grime.  I was mopping every day and it still looked like shit.  

Last week, I called Limey and told him to bring home some flooring or I was going to go completely crazy.  I hate mopping, it's soul sucking.   

It took forever to level the subfloor but it was worth it for a bounce-free floor.  The new floor is fabulous.  The colour is perfect. 

The next pic is an early evening shot with no flash.  I would never have been able to get such a cleanly coloured, bright shot with the old floor.

Now I'm going to go look for that leftover can of blue from the dining room and repaint the living room walls.

Treasure Trove

We're tearing up the all the floor in the dining room, living room and foyer.  You never expect it to a huge job but of course there's always hidden issues that you need to fix.  In this case it's the 4 layers of wood between the main floor and the studs.

It's a long job but we took a little break to check out the layer of 1930's newsprint we found under the top layer.

Kidlets

I was trying to get a photo of a hummingbird but the kids wouldn't get out of the way.  So I photos of them instead.

Handpicked Display

I used to be anti-flowers.  Why grow flowers when you can grow food?  Then I started a small landscaping project to pretty up the front yard at the old house and I became addicted.

I love having cut flowers in the house but it's hard for me to cut them out of my garden.  They look so nice in milk glass vases that I make myself do it anyway.

I'm dreaming about planting out a row style garden just for growing cut flowers for my house.  Maybe I'll that next year.

A Weird Story and a Funny Story

Story #1-When Limey drives home from his construction job in Halifax he calls me from his cell and we chat until he gets home.  Today he was on the highway about 15 minutes away when he paused and then said in a shocked voice "did you hear that?!"  I said no and then he was cut out by the weirdest thing I've ever heard in my life.  I've heard interference on radios, on my phone, I've even picked up another person's conversation but I have never heard the noise that came up on the phone tonight.  It was loud and clear and alien.  Laugh all you want, but it was all bleep, bloop and weird twisty space noises and just...ugh I can't even describe it.  It was just utterly bizarre.

I was kind of shocked and listened for a bit, Limey was no longer audible on the line, but after a while I just felt completely freaked out by it and hung up.  I immediately redialed him and when he came on the line he was just as shaken.  He had been listening intently to it before I cut the line off and claims that it sounded like (omg I'm laughing now) language and that there was heavy breathing in between the noises.  We can't come up with a reasonable explanation other than it was a prank but is that even possible, technically?

Weird right?

Story #2-Later this evening we were driving back from the grocery store when dd2 who is 4 years old and whom we still have trouble understanding sometimes says "I have m_______s in my noise."  We asked her to repeat herself several times but couldn't figure out what she was saying.  Some of the guesses by the other occupants in the car were; monkeys, mongooses, marbles, snot, nostrils, adenoids, hair etc.

She was getting increasingly frustrated with our inability to understand when Limey blurts out "molecules".  Dd2 affirms "yes! I have molecules in my noise" and we all start laughing hysterically.  Apparently she learned this from Magic School Bus.  Limey was laughing so hard that he had to pull over.

Another day in the life,  I tell ya.

Summer Pretties

Lots of summer blooms this week.

Where's the Rain?

Last year we had a bit of crappy garden season because of all the rain and this year we're having the opposite problem.  It's been hot and dry for months and everything is wilting under the heat.

The picture below is of two varieties of bee balm. One is obviously more drought tolerant than the other!

Look at those thin, leafless stalks on the right.  I've never seen bee balm look so  pathetic.  I was going to water yesterday but then Limey told me that wells are starting to dry up.  The flowers are just going to have to wait for rain.

The grapes look okay but I'm sure everything will be stunted this year without adequate rainfall.

The lilies don't seem to mind.

Are things still growing and blooming (besides weeds) in your garden with all the crazy weather we've been having continent-wide?

Tentative Fall Plans

As I said previously, we're homeschooling through the summer.  It's been great. We get up, have breakfast, feed the animals and have a quick tidy.  School is then finished before lunch and the rest of the day is a free pass.

I took a break from school last week and by the end of the kids were begging to "do school" again.  During the break, I started finalizing plans for the next semester which we'll start in September.

For dd1 (age 6)

-RemainingWinning with Writing 2b
-Math Mammoth 3a

-BFSU Volume 2 Section A (Chemistry)

-Weekly microscope study with Adventures with a Microscope

-101 K'nex Challenges

-Lego challenges 

-Creative builds from recycling bins

-Virtue flash cards with Value Stories

-Dismantling of various electronics, cameras etc

-CreativityExpress

-Lifeof Fred
-Continued world cultures study

Dd2 (age 4)

-Teach Your Child to Read in 100Easy Lessons

-Reading Rainbow

-101 K'nex Challenges

-Lego challenges 

-ArtRage

-Life of Fred

-Nature Study with BurgessBird Book and BurgessAnimal Book
-Five in a Row

Like a Cheetah, Except Not

Saturday evening, dd1 thought it would be a good idea to stand on top of the baby gate "like a cheetah about to pounce" and promptly fell off, landing on her hands.  She immediately started screaming and ran up to me to show me her arm.  

You know that scene in one of the Harry Potter films where his arm bones get liquified?  It was kind of like that.  Her hand was limp and her wrist was sloped inwards like a tire had run over it and left a groove.

Limey was at work so I called a friend to pick us up.  When we got to the hospital, Limey was already waiting for us.  We were in and out pretty quickly. They gave her a splint and told us to come back in the morning for an x-ray and cast.

Zebra stripes.  I guess she's over cheetahs now.

She was in a bit of pain overnight but I think she slept better than Limey and I did.  I swear I have that image of her arm burned into my head for life.

The x-ray showed that she had two breaks, a clean one all the way through and another about half the way in.  The doctor had to set it a bit but not enough to require sedation.

We're going to have to take a drive into Kentville later this week to get a new cast put on and she'll be in it for about 4 weeks.   Summer in a cast.

Canada Day

For some reason (laziness) I almost never bring my camera to events.  So instead of enthralling you with photos of fireworks, all I've got is a couple of photos of us.

Maybe next year.

The Other Blog

Limey said this of the other blog;

"It's interesting but not always funny."

Well that's good enough for me.  Here's the link to the blog.  If I see anyone pointing and laughing at me while I'm out shopping, I'm shutting her down!

Adventures With a Microscope

So it turns out that there aren't a lot of books out there that tell you what to do with a microscope once you have one.  You can find a bit on the net, but the info is either very brief like "look at cheek cells"  or extremely detailed and dry.    The lists of things to look at tend to be the same dozen or so items.

There are books out there but most are out of print and hard to find.  Luckily enough, Amazon.ca did have Richard Headstrom's Adventures With a Microscope available.

The book was written in 1941 and despite one or two cringeworthy terms, it's a really great find.  It's exactly what I wanted.  The book is divided into 59 adventures.  Here's an excerpt from one of them;

We Hunt for a One-Eyed Monster
Our third adventure takes us on the quest for a one-eyed monster.  If you remember your Greek mythology, there existed at one time a race of one-eyed giants called Cyclops...
...You can spend  many pleasant moments studying Cyclops and watching it move about, which it does by means of specially designed swimming feet.  But first of all can you find it's solitary eye, which gives it it's name?


Each adventure reads like that, with details about where and how to find the subject, how to mount in on the slide, how it's live and moves, etc.  It's a really nice, relaxed writing style that I wish more educational books would use.  There are also 142 illustrations to go along with the narrative.  It was under $15 online and definitely worth the price.

We're going to do a STEM heavy focus in the fall and we'll probably do one of these a week in addition to BFSU.   Do you have any microscope books to recommend?  They seem to be a very rare breed.

A Secret

I started another blog.  It's currently on private but I've been debating letting you all in on it.

It's a dream journal.  I have really bizarre dreams.  Occasionally one will be prophetic but for the most part they are just crazy stories.  I'm also a lucid dreamer.  I used to lucid dream all the time when I was a teenager but I lost the ability around the time I got married.  The ability seems to be coming back so that makes for some interesting dreams as well.  

Over the years I've thought of recording them but just never got around to it.  The writing on the dream blog is a little less restricted then on this one.  There's swearing and some dreams might not be PG rated.  As you may have noticed, I tend to balk at being too personal in my writing and a dream is pretty personal, although for the most part they aren't intentional.  

Limey hasn't really read it yet and I won't decide until he does and tells me it's entertaining.   If the writing isn't amusing, there's no point in making it public and I'll just keep it as my own personal journal.

So what do you think? What other kinds of blogs do you read?  Do you keep a dream journal?  Share your thoughts in the comments.

Pretty Little Flowers

I'm a little sad that my foxglove are almost done flowering.  Nothing lasts forever in the garden.  The peony poppies are filling up the void nicely though.   I'm going to save seeds from them and sprinkle them everywhere.  I am determined to have a chaotic cottage garden!

Now That the Emotion Chip Has Been Removed...

Bunnies!

It's not rainbows and kittens but still.  Bunnies!

New Zealands and New Zealand/Flemish crosses.  Should be weaned and ready to sell in 2 weeks.  Don't you want in on this cuteness?


P.S  Thanks for all the comments on the previous blog post.  I actually felt a million times better after posting it.  It's always nice to know you aren't alone in your feelings.

Only the Lonely

Let me preface this by saying I really don't like confessional type blog posts.  They are lauded  as being "so totally honest man" but I feel like they are exactly the opposite.  In hypocritical style, this is going to be one of those posts.  I'll save it as a draft and likely delete it later.  Or maybe I'll post it and spend the rest of my life regretting it like I do the few other woe is me statements I've made on my blog.  Marvin the Paranoid Android, indeed.

I warn you, that this will be rambling and likely non-sensical and I don't expect a response or help, just an ear I guess, or an eye in the case of the internet.  

Deep breath. I've been feeling a little down lately.  This makes me somewhat paranoid because depression runs in the family and I'd rather not go down that road.   It started in the fall.  I'll ignore it for weeks at a time and then I'll have a sad introspective day and then I'm back to being "fine" again.   I think I'm lonely.  If you know me at all, which I think most people really don't, being lonely is a weird thing for me.  I have always been an introvert (I'm drained by people rather than recharged by them) who doesn't give a shit about what anyone else thinks of me and can go a long time being friend's with no one other than my husband.  Limey has always been the social one, the people pleaser.  We seem to have reversed roles somewhat.  


Right now you're thinking "you're husband works all the time and you don't drive, of course you're lonely."  But that's actually nothing new.  Limey has always been a workaholic.  When we lived in Ottawa he was gone for weeks at a time.  Honestly, I feel like if I was back in Thunder Bay, or Ottawa, socializing more would solve this feeling, but here in the Valley I don't think it will.

When I'm hanging out with people here, I feel like I'm just hovering about on the periphery of other people's friendships.  Like people are humouring me.   Friends, but not FRIENDS.   I'm under the impression that there's a subtle clique thing going on under the friendly, tolerant surface.  I'd heard about it when we first moved here but now I'm actually feeling it.  In the emotional part of my brain, however, I'm still going to make it about me.  Self esteem is obviously a player in this.  I spent the awkward puberty phase suffering from several health issues and being called various derogatory terms by my mother's boyfriend.  Social phobia and all the drama of highschool didn't help.  By the time I met Limey, I had pretty much withdrawn completely into my shell and was convinced that if anyone ever asked me out, it would be as a joke.  He had to ask me out twice before I realized he was serious.

I've managed to keep most of that social anxiety dead and buried since then but here I am feeling it again and I honestly don't know what to do about it.   Is it all in my head? I'm I the only one that feels like this?  Or am I just too loud, opinionated and repellant?  Limey thinks getting my driver's license would solve it all, but will it really?

I don't freakin know.  Rereading this post just makes me tired and frankly, completely over myself.  I think I'll stop thinking so hard and go back to ice mode, it's easier and less depressing.

Tomorrow I'll be back to posting pictures of kittens and rainbows.   I promise.