whirlwind

Last weekend was a busy one filled with work on Saturday and a number of social engagements down in Toronto for Bunny and I. It was a fun, and it was busy and it always throws into sharp contrast the difference between where we do live and where I love to live.

It's hard being so far away from our closest friends. That's never going to change, and it's a tradeoff because we're used to being close by. On the other hand we had an "easy" time being away from our families, but when push came to shove and shit happened we knew we wanted to invest more of our lives there. Being within an hour's drive to friends was part of the trade, and we both hate that part of the deal.

The other bit? The difference between urban and suburban? Bunny loves the suburban and I can barely tolerate it. (Although, to be fair, I loved the suburban city I went to university in. Distinct cultural difference there.) I feel stifled and bored and stagnant. It's just boring here, and white washed and insular and it's like wearing a too tight, itchy wool sweater.

There's nothing like the architecture of Toronto homes, the beautiful brick houses, all skinny and tall and full of characters. Every home on the street having its own unique character instead of the cookie cutter garbage. The press of people constantly buzzing around without demanding anything of me.

Apparently the urban environment was more suited to my introverted personality than I would have guessed. It let me have my quiet introverted time while still having all the options there for when I've got the social energy to expend.

block 19 and musings

Still no pictures, due to some technical difficulties in camera purchasing (we'll try that again, next weekend) but I'm getting excited about the Scrappy Trip quilt. I'm on my second-to-last block and just blowing through it quickly which means that pretty soon it's on to choosing a layout and piecing this baby together. This time I'm actually done - there will be no going out and buying more fabric to make the quilt just one row bigger.

There's still so much work to do, but it's on to the work that goes the quickest. Piecing the blocks into strips and then a whole quilt top is when things start to fully come together and I get a full feel for the quilt. I'm super excited to be able to curl up with Bunny under this thing when it's done.

At this point in the game I'm also mooning over the next project, which is for my niece. There are about a dozen different things I could do for her, but I think I've finally settled on a pattern that I like. She gave me a specific wish list: turquoise, white, black and perhaps some damask if I can find it and I'm thinking I want to make a fairly straightforward quilt for her. Repeating blocks, using the same fabric over again rather than do anything slightly scrappy. The block I've been drawing up (based on a gorgeous pattern I found online) is nice and geometric, and just a little bit modern. Now I'm just doing the math for a double sized bed and figuring out how much fabric I need and start looking for prints. Then, goodbye money hello project!

For now, though? I've got to get through these last couple of blocks.

bra talk

My bras and I have a love/hate relationship. There is nothing I enjoy as much as putting on an almost new, perfectly fitting bra. Feeling supported, knowing my chest isn't going to chafe (underboob chafing is about my least favourite thing, ever), a band that doesn't budge around my back.

My weight, though? It has not been super stable. I'd been on a year of careening downwards and slowly levelling off, and I've been on a slow upward tick that I'm trying to take control of right now. Unstable weight makes for tricky bras. Ten pounds can mean a whole new bra size, and I wear "specialty" sizes which makes life difficult.

Technically, if I'm throwing comfort and fit out the window, I can find a bra at a normal store. Except it doesn't fit properly, and there's underboob sweat, and because the band is too big things just don't stay in place. This is how wound up with me, running to catch a bus, suddenly busting out of my dress in university. I'd rather not relive that, really.

The smallest properly fitting bra I've ever owned was a 30F. The biggest was a 34G. I'm pretty sure that if I'd walked into my bra store at my highest weight I still would have only been buying a 36 or a 38 ... though maybe with an H cup??

Which is all a lot of love on my bras. I love a well fitting bra. I don't love when it's been a year since I've bought new bras, though, and I only buy 2 at a time because they're expensive, and I need to start thinking about a trip downtown to spend more money on fancy bras and get a new bra size. I don't love when I've just gained or lost 5 pounds and my bras feel just a little bit off, but not quite worth going out for new ones.

Of course this whole rant mostly just means it's time to go buy new bras. My good ones aren't holding up so well anymore - the elastic is shot and the band is starting to ride up my back and I'm starting to get some awkward boob spillage that isn't normal for me. Which also signals that I'll need to get re-sized as I'm at it, because none of that is normal. Shopping time soon, I suppose.

What items of clothing do you kind of dread shopping for?

oatmeal bars with raisins and nuts

Awhile back I made an attempt at pecan-maple syrup oatmeal bars, using a recipe from the Quaker website and was quite disappointed by the result. There was something very particular I'd had in mind and this bar didn't cut it. It was kind of crumbly and didn't hold much texture, there wasn't enough moisture. It needed more contrast than just pecan bits sprinkled atop the mess. The mess of maple syrup made the whole recipe far sweeter than I wanted. Of course that disappointment just made it clear that I needed to find my own recipe. An oat bar that straddles the space between cookie and acceptable breakfast food. An answer to my attempt to fix breakfast (or, you know, eat it), With some extra flavours in, and a more substantial mouth feel.

For textural contrast I knew I wanted raisins and nuts. Walnuts happen to be cheap here, so I used those, but pecans or hazelnuts would be delicious here. I considered tossing in some chocolate or butterscotch chips (I have good luck with butterscotch flavours), and even some coconut flakes - but that's a more muddled and dessert style bar than I'm going for with this. More is better with the mixings here, I found. The crunch of the nuts is one of the heaviest textures in this bar, and a heavy hand with the raisins helps balance that.

I also knew I needed more liquid. The last bars were hard in that awful, brittle kind of way that I just didn't want to see again. A second egg seemed called for, and liquid sweetening was definitely called for. I didn't want anything too sweet - the last bars had a pretty high sugar ratio and it was definitely overdone. These? By no means are they sweet, but they have that just enough touch that makes them perfect. I suppose you could cut the white sugar if you're super sugar sensitive, but these worked for me perfectly.

This is the first recipe I have ever made completely on my own. Oh, I pulled from old recipes to figure out when they were done and to get ideas for ratios of baking powder and such, but this was what my head came up with when I thought "oatmeal raisin bars".

Oatmeal Bars with Raisins and Nuts

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 2 cups oats (old fashioned or quick, your preference)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup butter or margarine, melted
• 1/4 cup honey, plus more for drizzling (optional)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup raisins (optional)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts or other nuts (optional)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375* F. Grease 9x13 baking dish.
2. In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients (flour, oats, baking powder, salt, white and brown sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon) until fairly evenly distributed. You'll have some clumpy bits because you've got oats in there, but stir until you don't have any clumps of  flour or brown sugar there.
3. In a smaller bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Add melted butter and honey, stir.
4. Pour the egg mixture over the dry ingredients, mix until incorporated. A folding technique works well here if you're doing it by hand, or else your mixer can easily handle this. The dough that comes together is just barely wet and will want to pull together into a large ball.
5. Add the raisins and nuts to the dough and mix.
6. Transfer to the baking dish and smooth down the batter to an even layer.
7. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
8. Allow to cool for 10 minutes, slice and serve.

terror of the cats

The saga of the cats continues, as life does. I've been enjoying having both cats here, even though it means I have more around the house work. I'm the cat feeder, water-er and litter scooper primarily (and yet ... neither of these cats are, strictly speaking, mine). Cats, being all smart and cat like, are quite aware of the fact that I take care of keeping them fed and so are extra sweet to me.

Plus, they've started genuinely playing and it's adorable and I'm a sucker for cat entertainment.

Bunny, though? Well the cats have been pissing Bunny off. Quite literally pissing him off. One of them keeps peeing on his clothes. He's had about as much as he can take of that and if he catches one in the act I'm pretty sure it won't be a pretty scene. I've increased the frequency of litter scooping to try and curtail the behaviour, but to no avail.

Any advice? How do I get the cat to stop doing this.

error message

There were supposed to be photos by now. I had every intention of making there be pictures here for you, but of course I really assumed an ease that would not happen.

It's all the fault of how cheap I am, really. In buying a camera, I chose not only a model that was on sale, but one that was pretty much sold out. So I just said, hey, give me an extra discount and I'll take the floor model. No big. Right?

Except when I got home and realized that the battery and/or charger are busted and will not work. So the next day I went back into Sears figuring I'd ask them to swap it out for the battery/charger on the other floor model of this camera (just a different colour) and I'd be golden. Right?

Which of course led to a trip into Sears only to discover that the person working in electronics was just filling in and had no idea where anything is. Would happily change things for us, which is perfect, but doesn't know where to find what we're looking for.

So we're headed back in tonight to see what an actual employee from the electronics section can find for us. Hopefully a swap on the battery pack fixes this. If not? Well the search for a camera will go on awhile longer.

starting fresh

It's May. How did that happen? April practically flashed right on by me and I'm not really sure where the month went at all.

Lately I love the start of a new month. At work with the way our sales cycles run, I always find the last few days of the month rather stressful. It's either worrying about keeping my numbers up and being terrified of having a bad day that will throw my numbers under the bus or its about busting ass to try to pull my number back to a something that resembles respectable. It feels like a lot of money is on the line; considering the percent of my monthly income that I can make in bonuses in a month it is a lot of money on the line for me.

Luckily I started April off strong so I had a lot of the work already done coming into the last week or so. I managed to pull through strong and even though I'll spend the next few days waiting for the official numbers and for management to release the month's bonus tally I know from my own math approximately how much I can be expecting, and I feel good about even the low end of the spectrum. It's nice to feel good about my performance, and I really like the hard feedback from numbers and the financial reward. Still, the last few days I'm stressed about having a bad day and throwing my month down the drain.

The first of the month feels all fresh and shiny and new at work. There's a chance to start over again. Working on setting myself up for success is more exciting than just trying to hold on to numbers that I've been working on, and even when my numbers are rock solid near the end of the month I stress out, hardcore, about the whole thing.

It's also a good time for me to reassess my financial situation on a more personal level. I haven't run all the numbers yet, but I'm cautiously optimistic. My paycheque deposit last night pulled my bank account number up above a big deal savings goal of mine that I've been working hard on developing, although once my loan payments come out it might slip just back under target.

It puts us at a good place with saving for a down payment (technically, we have a down payment at this point, we could just never afford the mortgage we'd be carrying with only this much down). We also need to figure out what we're really doing with my bonuses. We always figure them out a fair bit before they're paid out (we budget them) but it's all over the place. Probably when we're closer to buying a house we'll save them for things like laundry machines and those bits of furniture you forget you need and all the other things that go with moving but that's still ages away. We could definitely be more intentional about this.