by Heather Plett | Aug 20, 2007 | Uncategorized
– I think the fruit flies are almost vanquished. Almost. One taunted me as I came up the basement stairs this morning, and a few more met their fate in the vacuum cleaner just before my bath.
– I have to go back to work tomorrow. Holiday’s over. Sigh.
– Yesterday, Julie and I collided on our bikes on the way to church. Neither of us was seriously injured, but she took the brunt of it. It wasn’t a very pleasant moment, looking down at my girl lying on the pavement clutching her head and crying “oh – my head! my head!” Especially since the collision could have been avoided if I’d been paying more attention. Later she told me she’d thought she was going to go to sleep at that moment because the pain in her head was so bad. She seems to be fully recovered today though, other than a little stiffness.
– Today is school supply shopping day. Gulp. Does that mean summer is almost over?
– I still enjoy school supply shopping even if the shiny new pencils and markers are not for me.
– This year, Maddie joins the fun. Kindergarten! Somewhere along the line, I must have blinked, because suddenly I have three children in school.
– Because it was the last night I could stay up late and sleep in the next morning, I went to a late show last night. “Becoming Jane”. LOVED IT!
– My sister’s new house is perfectly lovely. I covet her big open kitchen and patio doors to the deck. Perhaps someday, if our remodeling dreams come true, we’ll have our own.
– After our trip and the resulting build-up of dirt and crumbled snacks and unidentifiable substances in the back seat of the car, we thought we’d treat ourselves to a full-service car wash. It felt like such a luxury in these cash-strapped days. While we sat in the comfortable waiting room, I fantasized about a similar service for houses. How could I pull my house up to the building and have it emerge at the other end clean and sparkly? My fantasy was dashed however when I saw what a lousy job they’d done of the car. We had to get them to re-wipe the dashboard because it was still dusty, and re-scrub the bugs on the front end. And then on the way home, we realized they hadn’t even gotten a rag anywhere near the disgustingly grungy cup holders or door handles. And the trunk? Didn’t even bother to look at the crud on the carpet. How disappointing!
– Why is it that I only seem to be able to write rambling lists of random stuff these days? It must have something to do with summer distracting me.
by Heather Plett | Aug 19, 2007 | Uncategorized
I have declared war on the fruit flies. I am a one-woman army with a vendetta. Just picture a female Rambo, but with a vacuum hose and a bottle of balsamic vinegar as my weapons. I will NOT be beaten!
Alas, the flies, they are a-multiplyin’. They are taunting me with their beady little eyes. I swear I can hear them laughing at me in their evil glee. They have taken over every room in my house. There is absolutely NO FRUIT anywhere in my house (other than sealed in the fridge), and yet they have found some place to breed and lay their eggs. And multiply, multiply, MULTIPLY!
Last night, after catching at least a hundred in my traps in various rooms of the house (yes, I made 4 traps and Marcel made one – one of them is sitting on the desk near me, but the flies are simply circling around it and laughing at me. I can hear them!), it was time to pull out the full arsenal and DECLARE WAR.
I searched every website I could find, read every comment on every bulletin board that talked about getting rid of them, and did EVERY SINGLE BLASTED THING anyone suggested.
– Balsamic/cider vinegar traps in cups with paper funnels taped to the top to keep them trapped? Check. (And then, when you’ve got thirty or so trapped, add a little baking soda to watch them FRY! Hey – I didn’t say I was humane!)
– Pour bleach down every drain in the house in case they’ve been breeding in the gunk that collects in the drains? Check. (No, I didn’t pour a whole bottle like some sites suggested – I’m a little more environmentally friendly than THAT!)
– Take out all of the garbage in the house, seal up all food sources, wipe every kitchen surface clean? Check.
– Look behind dressers, in pantry shelves, in lunch bags abandoned since the last day of school for abandoned fruit or vegetables? Check.
– Put a piece of fruit in the oven, leave the oven door open overnight, and then sneak into the room quietly in the morning, close the oven door and roast those suckers? Check. Nyah-ha-ha!
– Vacuum up every single pesky bug you can find? Check. With twisted and rather pathetic delight. Again and again. (Note: If you’re doing this late at night and your bleary-eyed daughter walks into the bathroom to find you looking like a mad woman and waving a vacuum cleaner hose in the air, you may get some funny looks.)
– Clean out the gunk that sometimes collects in the bottom of the toothbrush cup in case they’re breeding in there? Check.
And yet… and YET – the battle continues. They are not vanquished. As I type this, two of them just flew past my computer screen (and I’m in the corner of the basement furthest from the kitchen and any source of food for them). The AUDACITY!
These flies WILL NOT BE THE DEATH OF ME! I WILL win! I WILL! (Whimper.)
(Incidentally, my friend Whippersnapper is fighting the same battle at her house. Together, we are Rambo and the Terminator! Don’t mess with two angry chicks with vacuums and vinegar!)
(No, I am NOT petty enough to bring one of my traps over to Whip’s house, drop a rotting apple behind her dresser, and open the trap. It wasn’t my fault! She had them before she came over to visit, and I haven’t been there for months.)
by Heather Plett | Aug 17, 2007 | random
– We have an infestation of fruit flies. Yuck. They were already here before our trip, but they multiplied while we were gone – even though we didn’t leave any fruit around for them to feast on. They’re in every room of the house. Just now I washed my hands in the bathroom, and there must have been thirty of them on the mirror – perhaps attracted to the windex Marcel just used to clean it. I figured out how to trap them, and I’m sure I’ve trapped about 100, but there are at least that many more still in the house. I may have to look for more aggressive measures.
– Do you want to see an ugly case of poison ivy? No? Well avert your eyes then, ’cause I’m showing you anyway (and this is just his legs – it has spread to his arms and back too)…
– As part of our housewarming gift for ccap and her boy and Abby, we bought them each a special plate. Guess who gets each one…
– And here’s a picture of the happy homeowners… (here’s hoping ccap doesn’t hate me for posting a pic before she gets around to it, but I thought perhaps her downloading cord was already packed.)
– My friend Whippersnapper just stopped by for a little visit. She’s one of those rare friends that, after nearly 10 years of not seeing each other, we can just pick up where we left off and still laugh just as hard and be just as relaxed with as we ever were.
– My holidays are almost over. Bummer. They sure have been good though. And thankfully, I have a job that I never hate to go back to.
– Yes, I know I’ve still got plenty of hormonal years to deal with, but I’m quite enjoying my preteen girls right now. During the camping trip, I kept marveling at how much easier it was to set up and take down our campsite, because they were both willing contributors in the work. And this morning was cleaning day, and my basement is VERY clean and I didn’t have to lift a finger (or even nag). They’ve moved past that stage where you usually have to do a spot check and clean up after them.
– Speaking of cooperative kids, I think some of it has to do with the lack of TV-watching this summer (we extended TV-free month to two months). Every time we give up TV for awhile, I find I like my kids more. They seem more settled and less irritable. Plus they do more creative things. Sometimes I think we should give it up permanently.
– Tonight’s an exception to TV-free month. My two preteens have waited all summer for High School Musical 2. I would be the worst ogre to walk the face of the earth if I denied them that.
by Heather Plett | Aug 15, 2007 | Minnesota, vacation
In between loads of laundry and cleaning the spilled dishwashing liquid out of the camping box, I managed to upload my vacation pictures. You can find them all here.
A sampling…
by Heather Plett | Aug 15, 2007 | vacation
We’re home again! Didn’t know we were away? Oops. I forgot to mention it. On our anniversary last week, after a lovely breakfast out, we set off on a week-long vacation. And now we’re back.
Before I expound on the vacation, I’d like to share a quote with you from the book I’ve been reading, “The Paradox of Choice – Why More is Less” that says alot about the quality of our vacation. It’s hard to find the perfect quote that puts it into context, but this is a good start…
“As our material and social circumstances improve, our standards of comparison go up. As we have contact with items of high quality, we begin to suffer from ‘the curse of discernment.’ The lower quality items that used to be perfectly acceptable are no longer good enough. The hedonic zero point keeps rising, and expectations and aspirations rise with it.”
In case you’re afraid I’m going to say how bad our vacation was because our expectations were too high, no, it would be quite the opposite. I’m just using that as an intro. to explain how a week-long vacation that involved 6 nights in a tent and only one in a hotel, most meals over a cookstove or barbecue in a campsite and only a few in restaurants, and many degrees of “on-the-cheap” could be one of the most incredible weeks I’ve had in a long time.
You see, five years ago, we gave up a lot of things so that Marcel could go to University. Vacations was one of them. When you haven’t had much chance to go away with your family, almost ANY kind of vacation feels downright luxurious. I can’t imagine we could have had much more fun if we’d been in an expensive resort somewhere.
We spent a week south of the border in Minnesota, the state that borders our province. If you’ve never camped there, I’d highly recommend it. It was perfectly lovely! In fact, we’d originally planned to cross over into Wisconsin and Michigan, but we were having so much fun where we were that we didn’t bother.
Here are some of the highlights of the trip: (Sorry – it might be a bit long, but it’s serving as my trip journal)
– The absolutely picture-perfect campsite we stumbled upon when we took the wrong road near Bemidji (and spent most of the evening dealing with a flat tire on the utility trailer we’d brought for bikes and camping gear, but that’s another story). This campsite felt like a little piece of heaven, with a lovely little private beach (dotted with tiny intricate white snail shells that we couldn’t resist collecting and bringing home) about 20 feet from where we pitched the tent. It was rustic (outhouses and a manual water pump) but it was so beautiful we stayed for 2 nights.
– The amazing bike trails near all three of the campgrounds we stayed at (even though we didn’t end up using the third one because we had so many other fun things to do). I was SO glad we’d bothered to take the bikes. I had no idea Minnesota had spent a fortune on miles and miles of beautiful PAVED bike trails through pristine forests, beside peaceful lakes, over hills, through prairies – you name it. A cyclist’s dream. We stuck to the easy trails, but there were lots of more challenging ones too.
– Campfires. Almost every night. And s’mores. Yum.
– The whole family shampooing their hair together in the lake in our little private beach. The giggles that accompanied the moment.
– Bike rides. Oh, the lovely bike rides. A long one with Julie (she was so thrilled to put on 21 kilometres in one day), another one with Nikki and Julie, one with the whole family, and one all by myself up a very gentle incline until I was high in the hills with the most spectacular view of Duluth and its picturesque bridges. Talk about a perfect moment! Stopping to eat chokecherries and watching a deer bound off into the bush made it so far beyond good I almost felt like stopping to write a poem.
– A ride on a miniature train with Maddie in Bemidji.
– Good people everywhere. It was the kind of trip that helps remind a person that people are predominately good at heart, generous, and helpful. There was Jeanette at Cass Lake who drove me 30 miles into Bemidji and back when we were stranded with a flat tire on the trailer (plus a flat spare), and then phoned ahead to the campsite to make sure they had a spot for us; there were Emma, Chloe, and Summer – the new friends the girls made in the campground near Duluth; and there was Curtis and his children Heidi and Timothy, who spent an evening with us in the Lebanon Hills near Minneapolis – first at the beach and then around the fire at his campsite after the kids were in bed. And then there were all the other people whose names we didn’t catch – the woman who lent us cooking oil for our pancakes, the woman who gave me change to finish my laundry and her husband who helped Marcel the second time we had a flat tire, the woman in the washroom who gave us recommendations for campgrounds, and the friendly proprietors at all three campsites – especially the one who found a spot for us even though the campsite was technically full.
– Wandering along the boardwalk on the shore of Lake Superior at dusk in downtown Duluth. Beautiful. That’s all I can think of to say.
– Chatting with the family on lazy mornings in the tent.
– Riding the trolley car through downtown Duluth.
– Coming up with fun pictures to take of Joe Banana in various locations (more on that later).
– Watching the massive ships go in and out of the harbour at Duluth, while the sounds of the waterfront blues festival (ccap – another festival for us to visit some day!) wafted across the water.
– Visiting the aquarium in Duluth.
– Seeing the looks of excitement on the girls’ faces when I let them pick the absolutely least nutritious breakfast cereal. Did you know they made chocolate chip cookie cereal? Funny thing was that after the initial excitement wore off, they didn’t actually like it and when we left the last campsite, half of it got tossed in the dumpster.
– Getting lucky with three really great campsites. The first one (Cass Lake) held tonnes of rustic charm. The second one (Indian Point, near Duluth) was a little more crowded with not as much charm, but it was close to Duluth, our site was near the play structure and the laundry room, and it was close to the Munger Trail that led me up into the hills on my bike. The third one (Lebanon Hills in Apple Valley near Minneapolis), had beautiful secluded sites (we seemed to luck out and get the best one), we were right close to the most beautiful washroom and shower I have ever seen in a campground, and it was close to a beach, Valleyfair, and Mall of America.
– A day spent at Valleyfair. Again, because our kids have not grown up with expensive vacations every year, they are absolutely THRILLED with a one day visit to an amusement park. And I had no idea Valleyfair was so impressive. I happen to love rollercoasters, and there were so many of them we didn’t even manage to ride them all. And did you know that you go SIXTY-EIGHT miles per hour on the steel venom?! I’m glad my two oldest daughters love rollercoasters as much as I do!
– Seeing the African acrobats at Valleyfair. Just like the ones I saw in Kenya.
– Good moods. The girls were all such good sports on this trip, even when there were less than ideal moments. I thought for sure they’d panic or get cranky when they had to stay with daddy on a secluded dirt road with the flat tire as the sun was setting (and after Jeanette had mentioned the possibility of bears), but they handled it remarkably well. And the one and only time rain briefly hampered our activities (just as we were getting ready to eat supper) we all hunkered down in the tent for an hour or so and actually had alot of fun laughing and talking.
– The final night in a hotel, especially when we lucked out and got a poolside room for an unexpected discount (that the clerk gave us just because she felt like it) right across the street from Mall of Americ
a. We even got into the room several hours before check-in.
– Watching the lightning and rainstorm through the windows while floating in the hotel pool, and knowing that we didn’t have to sleep in a tent that night.
– Wandering around Mall of America with the girls, buying Lego with Maddie, candy with Julie, and clothes with Nikki (and that pretty much sums up each of their shopping priorities). Plus shopping at Ikea with Nikki.
– The absolutely incredible weather we had all week. Only two short rainfalls, and neither of them drastically impacted our plans, nor did we ever have to pack up wet camping gear. We had perfectly sunny days on all the days we wanted to do outdoor things, and comfortable nights for sleeping in a tent. Sometimes – like when the temperature dropped from the mid nineties when we first arrived near Minneapolis to a pleasant 83 degrees when we spent the day at Valleyfair and then back to the mid nineties when we were at MOA and the hotel the next day – it felt like the weather was custom made for us.
– A remarkably bug free week. The only exception was the afternoon on our private beach at Cass Lake when there were some pesky biting flies. But we fended them off by staying submerged in the water or biking faster than they flew.
There were only two downers on the trip – the trouble with the trailer tire, and the severe case of poison ivy (or something else that causes a really bad rash) Marcel picked up along the way. He’s at emergency right now trying to get some relief from the itching. He was a good sport about it though, and didn’t let his discomfort dampen the fun we were having.
Unfortunately, with the end of a vacation comes unpacking and laundry and clean-up. That’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow – at least up until the time that I get to go see my SISTER’S NEW HOUSE! Yay!
Hopefully soon I’ll get a chance to catch up on your blogs. And maybe tomorrow I’ll get some pictures posted.
