Wow! A whole seven days have come to an end. A whole extra family and one Andy descended upon this here little cottage house a week ago…. and now they are all gone. And I don’t know what to do with myself.

It’s been a week of imbibing and excess in almost every way you can think… and there’s always been someone around to make sure a meal is being made. Every two to three hours.

I’ve NEVER eaten this much. And, believe me that’s saying something. I have also NEVER been met toe to toe in the eating arts by another woman. Particularly one smaller than me. My stomach has grown to the size of my old Honda hatchback.

Some of the highlights in this past week’s gluttony:

• ribs ‘n my special Caesar Salad
• Pizza a la Filipes
• blue cheese burgers
• cheddar smokies
• steak ‘n my special Caesar Salad
• steak fajitas ‘n homemade grilled veggie salsa
• a night out for brie and bison
• Crispy French Toast
• Bacon ‘n Eggs
• Homemade maple scones and devonshire cream and jam (available every morning)
• Tim Horton’s (for our American friends….)

Distributed evenly throughout, endless chips and dips, bread and dips and very much cheeses…. so very much of cheeses… and bread… oh, and more meat, of various assortments….

There was also an endless supply of beverage choices… endless….. ugh.

It was a great week. They were all, including the Andy, the easiest of company. We will happily host their ski vacation any time… and I love their kids. They have wonderful kids.
Triathlon… 10 weeks and counting…

Training starts Monday.

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We wake up to snow today.  However, with visitors from Virginia, this is not such a bad thing.

They’re here to ski and get that Rocky Mountain feeling.  Here it is.  Clear, cold and a substantial skiff of snow.  Bodes well for the mountains, as we partake in a thorough Ski Tour of the Canadian Rockies Week.  Perhaps there’s a business idea in there somewhere.

I’m so happy to have them here.  They are some of my favourite people from our days living there.  In eight years since we left they have yet to make it up our way and it is rather unreal to have them sitting, drinking, with us, in our little living room…

I’m looking forward to a dandy week….

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Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh……. the beauty and comfort, not to mention complete liveability, of a finished basement. After only eight-count ‘em: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… ugh…, years, we have finally completed the perpetual, seeming never-ending, job of finishing the basement.

The finishing touch: cheap, nothing less than completely fake, laminate flooring. But, for those of you, like myself, who consider yourselves hardwood purists out there, let me assure you, it looks absolutely, remarkably, freaking fantastic- not to mention, complete!! The walls had been painted, the trims, mouldings, baseboards had all been installed, but the concrete floors remained all this time. With merely a coat of dark blue paint. And you know what… despite the lovely painted walls. Despite the lovely finishing carpentry. Despite being divvied up into tidy little rooms. It still felt very much the cold, concrete basement it was.

Until… the recent installation of our cheap, clearly fake, laminate flooring. It’s a revelation. It’s a total and amazing bloody reincarnation. Of what was previously just my basement. We have reclaimed a full 1000 square feet with this remarkable, albeit totally fake and pressboard, product.
Now it’s a place we will live. Amazing. Oh, and more amazing yet. I. That would be me. Myself. I did most of it- read: almost all of it- alone. Read: without husband.

It’s a surprisingly easy, practical…. downright magical, fix for what would otherwise be a cold, dreary, uninviting space.

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Having one child at home overnight…. easy, peasy. Fucking lemon squeezy!
My eldest child chose karate and staying home with mum over camping in sub-zero weather, no propane for propane heater (”Jesus Christ, woman, we’re just gone for one night.”), carcinogenic weinies, and a porta-pottie. Oh, and again, no propane for the heater. In temps that dropped below freezing.

The kid’s nine. He knows from stooo-pid!!

So I had some good company with my frozen pizza and AI. One nine year old boy, given he has a little time in front of one screen or another, is fun to be around. Downright helpful, in fact. Without any drama.

We picked out groceries together. We cooked together (yes, I said frozen pizza- it still needs to be cooked!). We made some lovely strawberries and whipped cream for dessert together. We CLEANED UP together. We got all cozy and settled in and read a chapter of The Golden Compass together. We muddled and stumbled over big, long, ridiculously unfamiliar words together. And, finally, we got all cozy and settled in for an evening of TOOB together.

It wasn’t my night alone. I’d have liked that.

This was better.

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Today is one big day, alright. Firstly, the basement will be officially done… at least until we come up with the time and materials to really finish it. But it will seem pretty done. To us. And to our visitors. Who after eight years of hearing us talk about our small, cramped and painfully, soon to be eating our young as well as each other, inadequate cozy, little cottage house expected to be camping out on a plank floor in front of the pot-bellied stove, in our one room Rocky Mountain cabin.

OK, so they may have been close in their guess-timation of our lives here, but not anymore. The four of them, and their sudo-Uncle Andy, will get to inhabit the entire, now nearly finished, root-cellar basement. Which, let me tell you, now with flooring installed (almostly completely), does not feel like a root-cellar basement. Gulldurnit, it feels like a real part of the house, suitable for human children inhabitation and human adult inhabitation, alike.

So, it will be complete. But let it not go unsaid, for something like this I will continue to ensure gets said- repeatedly… over and over and over again, never ever to be forgotten… I will be completing this seemingly endless project myself.

Secondly, Filipes is taking the small people camping. With a neighbor and his own small people. In our new-to-us tent trailer. They will also be taking a tent. For neighbor. I believe Filipes will be manning the tent trailer and five, chile-weinie-marshmallow-chocolate-potato chip encrusted small people, himself, from his perch upon the convertible dining table/twin bed. Oh, God. I’m really sorry I will not be there…

NOT!

This will be a glorious time. Just me.

Just me and a pile of laminate. And the table and chop saws. And hopefully all of my fingers.

The dark imaginings have begun to take shape, seeping insidiously inside my squirrelly, compulsively over active little brain ever-cautious mind. I picture this night, the first alone in so many, many years… picture my peaceful WHOLE EVENING/NITE/MORNING ALONE ruined by the fact that a sawblade has chopped off most of the fingers of my right hand, save for my stubby, little thumb. And my WHOLE EVENING/NITE/MORNING ALONE is spent first, in shock; followed by bleeding to death, my life slowly draining from four dull-blade ravaged stumps, unable to get to the phone due to aforementioned shock; concluding with my perish-ment in the root-cellar new, clean and recently floored, oh-so-liveable downstairs space.

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Yes, it’s Saint Paddy’s Day. Yes, I completely forgot!

It was a busy weekend full of Nancy Green ski racing wind-up. I did have to bring the chips, after all.

We are, of course, also still preparing for second round of company. To arrive this Friday. It seems that preparing for guests has completely monopolized our lives this month. Why?

Because our cozy, little cottage house is no longer capable of storing our increasing collection of crap and has been reduced to a dumping ground of stuff. Work stuff. School stuff. Recreation stuff. Construction stuff. Hobby stuff. Kid stuff. Gardening stuff. Dog stuff. Food stuff. Laundry stuff. Never-ending and multiplying stuff.
GD STUFF!!!

And the basement, 1000 square feet of largely ignored useable space- grounds for dumping excepted, of course- has remained in varying stages of un-done/done. It is now time to get fully done. Painting. Flooring. Mouldings. Baseboards. Organize. Tidy. Clean. What better time, than when you are expecting guests. This is when, and only when, I am motivated enough to take this on. Why? Because…. I will not be judged.
Yes, we should probably, after eight years of perpetually moving and re-moving shit from room to room to room to room (rinse. repeat.), build a garage. And if I had the 50 grand to build a garage… I probably wouldn’t. The money would go immediately, without thought or hesitation, into creating a Mexi-home out of our little Mexi-shack and we would just flee this cozy, little cottage house altogether for the heat… sand, sea and surf- and no friggin’ stuff- of our little pile of sand along Mexico’s Gulf Coast!

Maybe instead of that afternoon snooze I took yesterday, I should have been preparing for this school week ahead. Then, as the responsible parent/teacher I am, would have known it was friggin’ St. Patrick’s Day. And created some nasty sweet treat of an appropriate shade of edible nauseating green.
Upon reflection however, and as I consider that after school this morning, I still have a room of laminate flooring to get down… unless an uncharacteristically productive hoard of cute little Leprechaun’s show up to lend a few tiny hands, St. Pat’s is gonna go pretty much unnoticed.

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It’s been a great week. Despite, or perhaps because of, HIS relations having to cancel their travel plans, we have been uber-productive. Work, on top of. Both of us. School, for a few different reasons, is going like gang-busters. Both of us, as well as Zip when it suits him, are making serious progress in addition to staying really quite motivated.
No doubt taking this new opportunity to get shit done before next batch of visitors arrival. Next Friday. Seven days.

This string of nice weather has probably helped. I was even able to get myself and the kids out for little adventures a couple of afternoons.

Speaking of Zip: Loveable. Zany. Sensitive. Middle child. And therefore, by his estimation, utterly unloved with no one EVER who wants to do ANYTHING with HIM. EVER. Earlier in this, a week for the recordbooks in fantastic, attentive mothering, as Sally, Fidge and I watched photos downloading from camera to laptop (OK, wha?!?!?), Zip… feeling rejected, dejected and stuck in the pit of middle child ignoredom, jabbed me hard in each temple with his little thumb.

Jab. Jab. “Hmmmph!”
Looking up from screen, “OK, Zip. That was just weird.”
Averting mindless gaze back at screen, I hear from somewhere under my lovely chenille sofa blanket,

“My thumb was just up my butt.”

“………………..,” I’m still speechless.

Fearing potential of deep seated emotional middle child issues, have made a firm pact to be sure to spend special Mommy-Zip time with my dear, nurturing early psychotic tendencies, Zip.

It must be working. I have not had butt infused thumbs jabbed into my temples since.

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Here I sit.  Alone in my home.  All alone.  No husband.  No boys.  No girl child.  There’s the Beast, but she is crashed on her lovely Kirkland so-very-best-Doggie bed she got from Santa.

There are ladies- my age, ahem- getting frumpy to fantastic makeovers on Oprah.  These are women who live in sweatpants, drop-waisted dresses and oversized t-shirts.  Jeez.  What are they thinking.  Just cuz yer over forty, doesn’t mean you morph into your father’s mother.  Or does it?

I am not yet forty.  No, I am surely not.  Not until December.  And I am one hot mama.  I still wear jeans.  Sometimes.

I have jeans, but I am especially proud of my mean collection of MEC fleece pants.  They are NOT sweatpants.  They are built for comfort in the outdoors.  And I am nothing if not outdoorsy.  I go outdoors.  I do, in fact, most days.  I walk my Beast.  Not in sweatpants.  In MEC fleece.

Oprah.  Oprah, I will not EVER wear a cape.  No.

They will not go with any one of my collection of MEC fleece pants.  No.

Here I am.  Alone.  And this was all I could come up with to do.  Inspired.  Really.  Shhheeeee-uuuut!

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Our yesterday… a Monday.

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Like the majestic Columbia…. I go with the flow…

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