A Series of Unfortunate Events

The past week has been SO BAD. Exaggerating a little. I mean in a global sense I have nothing to complain about. I'm not starving, dying or worse. But would you please indulge me and hear the whining and complaining of my little world for just a few minutes?

 
     It all started with paying bills (doesn't it all?) So there I am trying to get all new bills for my house under my name because my roommate got married, moved out and no longer wants to pay them, imagine that. So after what seemed like hours of tedium on the phone with gas, electricity, waste, water and internet I was almost done. Until they came to the part where they told me that my power might be shut off during the switch of account holders. And wouldn't come back on until somebody called them. Which didn't bode well. No one was living at the house to know if the power went off, which meant no one would call, which then meant there would be 3 freezers full of thawed, rotten food when I went back to Edmonton. 

        

     After that it was a series of unfortunate events. Do taxes. Print off 100 useless pages of paper before I figure it out. Receive Student loan. Insufficient to cover rent alone. Not eating this year. Frustration. Siblings double book flight. Drive to Abbotsford airport without Mom. Saddness. Land in Edmonton. No one is waiting for me. Take 2 buses, a train and 2 hours to get home. Arrive at home. Lawn not been cut for weeks. Mower will not chop. Home alone, many spiders. Go to bed. Dark and lonely. Wake up, arrangements for my clothes, cookware and textbooks to be delivered from Vancouver fell through. School starts in 3 days. Hysteria. Mom won't answer phone. Alone. Shop for groceries, forget rice for stir-fry I'm making for company. Run to isle and back, angry line up. Come home, but forgot olives for greek salad. Roommates wedding tomorrow, not going. Alone. Spill salt, bad omen. Make cookies, phone rings, cookies burn. Check mail, letter returned because insufficient postage (even though I waited in a line for half an hour, right before my turn the whole system crashes but they tell me how much postage they need. Stamp fell off.) No roommates to tell my woes to. Alone.

  But I know this can't all be because of karma, because I haven't done anything bad! So it must mean that something very big and exciting, fantastic, terrific, grand and wonderful is going to happen to me very soon. I just don't know what it is. But it better be soon the way things are going.

Can She Bake A Cherry Pie?

  So my Mom is a domestic Goddess. She bakes like no other, and decorates her creations even better. She grinds her own wheat to bake bread (and has even made her own butter to put on it), Every year I get a home sewn costume for halloween and a new pair of pajamas at Christmas. She has the biggest garden on the block. I don't ever remember buying salsa or jam because obviously we have an entire room dedicated to the canned goods of our garden. Did I mention she also completed a degree by correspondence while raising 4 kids? So basically my mom and can anything. really, ANYTHING.

  Then there's me. I can hardly sew. Ashamed to say I can't even follow a pattern. I mostly make meals that don't require a recipe (a lot of stir fry, chili and pasta). And my roommates can attest to the fact that I am forever burning or botching some recipe. (Anyone heard of Amelia Bedelia? I'm something like that)

And then something changed...

NOW! (in a deep, smooth announcer's voice) from the smoky ashes of forgotten cookies...  
*Scenes of my unfortunate past flash on the screen*

...comes the summer that will change it all (dramatic inspiring music)

SHE CAN MAKE A CHERRY PIE BILLY BOY, BILLY BOY!

Ok so maybe one cherry pie isn't going to change it all and I doubt I'll be able to sew magical creations any time soon. 

But (announcer's voice returns) This is where it all begins...

To be Continued...

Do You Smell That?

 
 So my Mom recently taught me how to knit dishcloths. They are super simple and doing the same thing over and over in your hands is really therapeutic. I especially like doing it during a movie so I feel like I'm accomplishing something. Michaels has a great selection for yarn colors so I picked up a few to make an assortment of lovely wash ware. I'd just started on a new light purple cloth while my Mom and I sat down to watch a movie.
    A few days before I'd bought a perfume at the Richmond Night Market. And it was one of the first days I wore it. My brother walks in and says "Naomi! I can smell you." and continued to 'smell' me from increasing distances to determine the radius of my aroma. One of the ironic things about perfume is after you've worn it for a few minutes you yourself stop smelling it. But the weird thing was I could smell it too. Every once in a while a breeze would blow through the open window and my Mom and I could both smell it. The really strange thing was it smelt like lavender. When I tested the perfume it smelt nothing like lavender. After we finished the movie I couldn't detect any floral scents.
       We drove out to Vancouver that night and I packed my knitting with me (which made me feel elderly). I pulled out my pale purple yarn and began to click away. Suddenly a wave of lavender hit me. I grabbed the ball and made everyone around me smell the atrocious thing. This time I was certain that the radiating stench my brother had smelled wasn't me. I finally looked at the label 'scented'. Scented YARN! Who does that?! Well actually it's pretty cool. I'm just not a fan of lavender. Which is why I now have vanilla and aloe instead ;)

Celebration of Light

    Wednesday was a night of adventures. The family packed into our car and drove out to Vancouver. Each year at English Bay  there is a week of fireworks display on the water called 'The Celebration of Light'. Each night of the week a different country competes for the best fireworks show. Wednesday was Brazil.
We got there several hours early. They close off the streets and thousands of people storm towards the water. Even when we got there 3 hours early the beach was already packed with an eager audience.

We ordered Pizza and while Lynden and Katie went to pick it up Clayton and I had a little competition ourselves. We both played chubby bunny for the first time...with blueberries. Yes our mother would be proud of the spectacle we made in public. We finally called a truce at 40 berries. The madness had to stop. In the middle of our Phase 10 game the fireworks began.

But maybe we should have kept ourselves entertained in a better way.

They were awesome. Love fireworks. I don't think I would actually like to live in Vancouver. There's too  much traffic, too many people and way too much noise. I don't like being in a sea of people but there's something to be said for sitting in large crowd experiencing the same thing as thousands of others, hearing everyone 'ooh' and 'ahh' together .

 After the show was done we walked back to the dock where our parents left us to go on a work cruise. We began to drive home. After about 20 minutes my Dad pulled over and said he could no longer drive. He could barely stand out of the car. Shooting pains and numb hands. You don't have to be a medical student to know what that means. The 15 minute drive to the hospital was terrifying. They took him into ER immediately. After 10 minutes my brother comes back from Dad's bed. The doctor thought it was kidney stones. Painful, but not half as scary as the heart attack I thought he was having. PS. Hyperventilation causes numbness in you hands. Just so you don't freak out like I did when someone has kidney stones.

And to top off the night's adventures when we dropped Katie off at her abode a family of raccoons came running out from her garage. Man those things creep me out.