October was all about survival. It was about sleep, doing what needed to be done, and really not a heck of a lot much else.

Why is this? Why is it that whenever there’s a certain amount of momentum and equilibrium, something happens that makes it completely impossible to get anything done?

In early October, my partner and I took a trip to the local home improvement store. We bought ourselves a nice shiny new dishwasher… Considering that ours is definitely no longer operational. The downside? We would have to wait 6 weeks to get it, and possibly longer if there was some sort of a shortage. But it’s paid for, for which I am extremely grateful! It’ll get here when it gets here, but for the meantime, two people who hate doing dishes… have to do dishes…

The kitchen spent most of October in a state of chaos. We cooked as many one pot meals as we could think of, ate out more than we should, and discovered the absolute amazingness of paper plates. 75 of them. months ago, I placed a Costco order and in order to get free shipping I decided that hey why not, paper plates might come in handy at some point. My partner thought that I was completely irrational, but I think I’ve been proven right. Those 75 paper plates, including ones that held our Thanksgiving feast, have definitely made dishes considerably more manageable… Score one for thinking ahead!

Other than the disaster area that is our kitchen, not a heck of a lot got done in October. When it started to get cold in mid-October, I brought my hammock in from outside. I’m not ashamed to admit I may have cried a little bit. That same week, I ordered an exercise bike so that I could maintain my fitness when the weather was too cold or it was too impractical for me to go for a run. My partner spent an aggravating Wednesday afternoon putting it together while I was working, but it is now together and I’ve spent probably more time in the workout room, where the stationary bike sits along with other fitness equipment, than I think I’ve spent in the last 6 years. Here’s to more time on the…. road? I don’t know, how does that work?

Every morning, for most of the month of October, I would inexplicably wake up at 2:00 in the morning. I would be awake for anything from 30 minutes to a couple of hours. This basically meant that my evenings were spent resting, and the ability to get things done was absolutely non-existent. If it wasn’t immediately necessary, it didn’t get done. November, be kind to us. Bring us our dishwasher, bring us some sleep, and bring us back to some semblance of normal, whatever that may look like right now…

August arrives, hot and humid. My legs are exhausted after my birthday half-marathon – it’s been months since I’ve run anything close to that distance. I find myself spending as much time as possible in my new hammock, thrilled with the arrival of the NHL playoffs. But summer is undeniably short – the work we can do outside can’t wait.

I order some paving stones to fill in the trench left behind by the removal of the chipped ones a few months ago. A friend picks me up in her SUV, and we take two trips to pick up the stones – they’re far too heavy for my friend’s SUV to carry home in one trip. My friend, my partner and I carry the stones one at a time from the back of the SUV into a pile on the lawn. The second trip concludes right as the rain starts falling. We hurriedly unload one, two, three, four, five stones, our clothes sticking against our skin and hair dripping wet. My friend drives away as the rain falls in curtains and drenches the ground, the bricks, the city.

* * *

I need to make my workspace my own. It still doesn’t feel like it’s truly mine, even though I’ve spend forty hours a week there for the past three months. Curtains! That’s something I can use to change the feeling of this room. Since the master bedroom needs curtains, why not get some for my office? My partner and I hang them when they and the new curtain rods arrive. I love the new curtains in the office, and I hope the blackout curtains we’ve purchased for the master bedroom will make sleeping through the night easier.

The next sunny Saturday, my partner and I place the paving stones into the trench. We have exactly the right amount, though there’s a small gap between the end of the new path and the old stones that never got moved. One of these days, the whole thing will be done, but having a path with a gap is better than having a massive hole in the middle of the yard.

This productivity has spurred us to action. The shed floor needs to be replaced – the idea of falling through it is not an unreasonable fear. I hold the boards together while my partner screws them in place. We like what we’ve done and how the frame is taking shape. Unfortunately, relocating it from the yard to the patio results in the entire frame coming apart. So we call it a night and have to start from scratch.

It takes three weekends – and enough screws and brackets to make my head spin – to put together the new shed floor. It’s only upon trying to relocate the frame (yet again) that we realize this new frame is HEAVY. We drag it from the patio into the middle of the lawn, proud of the work we’ve done but it’s become abundantly clear that we absolutely need another couple sets of hands to move the shed, put the new floor in place, then re-place the shed on top.

Mike, a neighbor, arrives on a cloudy Saturday in mid-September. My partner and I have already removed everything from the shed, placing tools and lawn implements in disorganized chaos on the lawn. He provides invaluable assistant in suggesting how we can relocate the shed, and adds an extension onto our frame since we apparently can’t measure accurately to save our lives. The three of us clear away the old shed floor, and are horrified by its condition – formerly large portions of sub-floor have rotted into five or six pieces in terrifyingly ominous colours. They are added to the Ecopile of doom that seems to be multiplying at frightening speed.

Mike tells us he has to take off as soon as the new floor has been put into place. Our next door neighbor pops by and offers to help place the shed on top, so the four of us make quick work of it. We need to re-situate things so that the shed is level, and while it’s not perfectly straight, it looks less like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. And, most importantly, no one is in danger of falling through the floor. Our neighbors take off, but the same friend who helped pick up the paving stones has come by for a physically distanced coffee. The three of us make fairly quick work of putting the doors on the shed, and finally – after six weeks – it is all done.

* * *

Ca-thunk! Ca-thunk! Ca-thunk!

The dishwasher has started to make ominous sounds, and the dishes don’t seem to be getting clean. After a third time running the dishes through – making sure a dislocated tea ball isn’t causing a sprayer to get stuck – we call an appliance repair company. We’re able to get a spot the day I book the appointment. The technician come by and tells us that he can try and clean all the parts to see if that works, or he can replace the motor for the approximate cost of a new machine. We agree to the cleaning, cautiously optimistic that this might fix the problem… We are, unfortunately, quickly dispelled of that notion. It looks like we’re in the market for a new dishwasher. Things can’t be simple these days, can they?

There’s not a ton to report for June. It almost doesn’t deserve its own blog post, but hey… here I am.

In the land of fun happenings, the most hilarious occurs in early June. I wake up highly amused by my partner trying to negotiate treat distribution with a 6-pound cat (“You can have three more treats if you leave the rest for Wolfie”). Or maybe I’m mostly amused by walking a propane tank to the gas station for refilling in a lawn seeder.

We start work on the yard – preparing it to relocate the fire pit – but evenings in June prove to be wet, and weekends are either far too rainy or I’m far too unmotivated – or both.

More happens to me personally, rather than on the home-improvement/maintenance front. Wolf is here to stay permanently; she’s keeping Annie young and is happy to be here. The city starts to open – restaurants, malls, etc. – but I’m disinclined to go out when not strictly necessary (even though our first outing to a restaurant includes the staff having an ’80s sing-along). I sign up for a HUGE running challenge, and hope that I have the physical and mental strength to run/walk/move for more than 2000 km… by the end of the year…

May has always been one of my favourite months. The mornings tend to be cool, the birds are chirping and announcing their happiness to the world, afternoons are perfect for sitting on my front steps or back patio, and we occasionally get evening thunderstorms that clear all the yucky energy out of the air.

This May has had all of these, and a couple great surprises – which made some of the crappy stuff a little easier to deal. But while my foot is healing from the bird bath incident last month, my heart got pretty beat up. May was book-ended by bad news, but the bright spots made it better.

May 1-8: (Mostly) Welcomed Additions

I get an email on May 1 that I’ve awaited nearly 4 years to receive. I took a company that wouldn’t hire me to the Human Rights Tribunal in January (three and a half years after filing the complaint). The ruling is not in my favor. To say that I am disappointed doesn’t even begin to cover it. I throw myself into productivity, because it channels some of my frustration and disappointment. My partner and I load a wheelbarrow with leaves from the yard (I load, he transports), then put everything we can into the fire pit in the back yard. It’s too wet to burn right now, but it will burn… eventually. What isn’t burn-able at all goes into the ever-growing pile of stuff to go to the Ecostation. We’re tired of looking at it, so we hire a couple guys to haul it all away for us – and now that it’s gone, there’ll be a new pile of junk to take its place.

Wolf comes over for a visit. From her first night – where she begs for attention until 3:00 AM – to just two days later – where she relocates her kitty cave and snuggles in to get away from Annie and Jenny – it’s like she’s never left. She provides an additional level of kitty quirkiness, and a ton of laughter at her antics.

The barbecue out back is in such bad shape that my partner and I agree that it’s time to buy a new one. It takes two orders – the first being canceled with no explanation – and a package delivery from friends to get the new one over here. My partner spends Thursday afternoon while I’m working to put it together, getting it finished just before the rain comes. It’s time for me to get over my fear around fire, and make some food!

May 9-16: FIRE!!!

I’ve barbecued once before, at a summer camp for the blind where we were taught safe barbecuing techniques. My skills are about 20 years out of date. My partner and I barbecue our first meal, and it’s a rousing success! I’m still a little squeamish around fire, but I honestly think I will get the hang of this and some day feel confident enough to barbecue independently. I’m not there yet, but maybe that’s OK.

In the land of things that are weird and tangentially related, that carbon monoxide detector in the kitchen gives up the ghost. I move the one I installed upstairs two months ago down to the kitchen, where the beep-beep-beep of the dead one mercifully stops. The smoke detector at the bottom of the stairs likewise dies when we take it down so it will shut up when we’re cooking bacon. I guess it’s time for us to buy new stuff, but the fact that all of it is dying at the same time weirds us both out, if nothing else… but the house is still standing, and all of us are alive, and haven’t had food poisoning, so there’s a plus… right?

This week is the first week my foot feels strong enough to do anything more than casual running. I find a perfect 3km loop around my neighborhood, and log multiple 6km runs, each with less pain and swelling in my foot. It gets me and Jenny out of the house – even though Thursday’s lifting of some public health restrictions means that more shops and restaurants are open – and for this, I am grateful.

The first day it’s dry and calm enough, my partner lights a fire in the fire pit, burning some of the yard waste we had loaded into the wheelbarrow. I turn on the hose that leaks like crazy to make sure there’s enough water to keep the area around the pit wet enough to act as a barrier. We discover quite quickly that we need a new hose, pronto. And maybe a new tap… but we hope it’s just the hose – replacing the tap on the side of the house just sounds like an exercise in frustration.

We add more backyard leaves to the wheelbarrow – more stuff to burn! – and start yet another Ecostation pile. The shed has been completely sorted, if not completely organized. My backyard no longer looks quite as much like the scary nexus of doom that it has for the past little while, but there’s still a lot of work left to do. And we’re so lucky to be able to barbecue regularly and sit outside and enjoy the beat-up patio table while we can.

May 17-24: Cohort

It’s a quiet week here, really. The weather is mostly gloomy and grey, and while I’m able to get out for a run a couple times, my motivation seems to be in direct correlation with the sunshine. The yard can generally wait, though we do pick up a new hose and some extra supplies – we realize there’s no seal on the hose, but it looks like we won’t need a new tap. The new hose seems to have solved the problem of leaking – I can stand by the tap and not get absolutely drenched along with the patio! – and the new nozzle works like a charm!

The air conditioner I fought to price-match arrives on Thursday – the soggiest day all week. My partner takes delivery of the package and puts it together while I’m at work. I hope that it will make my upstairs less like an oven than it’s been for the past several years; it looks like I’ll find out next week!

We have been generally doing so much stuff outside that inside has looked a bit neglected lately. With the exception of taking care of the aloe and Happy Plant, which are both thriving, we’ve let the inside of the house generally be ignored. So Friday night we do a moderate clean – floors, counters, carpets, furniture. My partner locates and dislodges a blockage in the vacuum, which makes cleaning so much easier. The tables and floors and couches look suitable for company, even the idea of which fills me with boundless joy.

Public health measures here in Alberta include the concept of a cohort household or family. This is a family or household who primarily socializes with another family or household, without as much attention required for physical distancing. Obviously, certain considerations such as frequent handwashing and not sharing utensils or common food items (like chips or dips) are still recommended and followed, but the recommended six foot distance isn’t required in cohort families. Our cohort household arrives on Sunday afternoon, and we sit at the beat-up patio table in the sunny afternoon, with drinks and food (barbecued, of course) and laughter that feeds all of our souls.

May 25-31: Sadness and Hope

We’ve got a problem in our house: a shortage of doors, a need for some sort of barrier, and a strong dislike for the closed-off feeling of traditional doors. Last week, we ordered a couple of bamboo beaded curtains to cover a couple door frames. One takes less than fifteen minutes to install, and they suit the spaces perfectly. There’s something about that transition that both provides a separate space and a feeling that you are welcome in that space even as it “belongs” to someone else.

The weekend is glorious and sunny. The air conditioner gets its first couple of uses, and it’s already worth the investment. We take advantage of the warm weather to clean the yard some more, burn more of the leaves in the fire pit, and barbecue some yummy food. But my mood is dark, and in some ways I don’t feel like I can enjoy the perfect spring days.

I got a call on Tuesday afternoon. A friend passed away suddenly, with no known cause. The shock has sent me reeling, the grief so intense that I have no place to put it. I somehow finished off the work day, then slept for hours. Over the coming days, I waffled between numbness and sadness and anger, sometimes without warning. I curled up under the afghan she made for me – and hurriedly dropped off when the Human Rights decision arrived, because she “knew I was having a bad afternoon” – and talked about her. I laugh at the time we went to Dairy Queen (something we did regularly over the past year or so) and the pop machine refused to dispense my Dr. Pepper, then wouldn’t stop once it started, and then she threw her drink into the garbage can instead of the straw wrapper. I talk about her kindness, because she was truly one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. I want to scream at all my wonderful supportive people who say all the right things just because I want some place to direct the anger I feel. I know it isn’t fair, and the people in my world are nothing short of supportive and amazing; I would like to think she’d understand, but a part of me thinks that in her gentle way she would show me grace while kindly checking me and telling me to smarten up.

Happy plant is happy happy happy!

On Fridays, we give the aloe and Happy Plant some extra water. For some reason we’ve noticed this makes them happy. I’m watering Happy Plant and I realize something: my friend who passed away earlier this week was the same friend who was with me when I picked up Happy Plant. I stand at the table where Happy Plant blossoms merrily, and I think for a moment that my friend would be proud, that she’d tell me I might just have a green thumb after all. I’m still sad, but I realize that little pieces of her story are woven with pieces of mine. It’s now up to me to take the lessons she quietly taught me and extend kindness and optimism and generosity. The world lost a great person – I just wish I could’ve told her.

What is there to say?

When I started on this journey, I wanted to create a home where I could be proud to host guests, turn it into a sanctuary for myself and others to lay our heads, to put our feet up, to feel safe enough to laugh or cry or rage at what’s going on in the world. For the past six weeks, that’s been various levels of impossible, with new rules around physical distancing, shops being closed or on reduced hours, and a very real and present fear of a virus that strikes seemingly at random with varying levels of intensity.

I didn’t do lots in the months of March and April, but maybe I’ll just have to be OK with doing what I can and letting the rest go. Who knows when I’ll be able to have friends over again? But when I do, I’ll have done a ton of work behind the scenes.

March: “Say…. What?”

The world as north America has known it is altered drastically in the month of March. The first case of Coronavirus is announced in Alberta on March 5. Around this time, I’m contemplating buying a couple of low-maintenance plants – something that surprises almost anyone who’s met me. I kill plants. I don’t know what makes me think I can keep one plant – much less four – alive, but a friend and I go plant shopping. I bring home two aloes, an air plant, and an unspecified succulent I like. I alter their placement once or twice, settling on one aloe in the dining room and one in the Holey room, with the air plant and succulent in my beading room.

I get a brief rush from getting rid of a few objects that serve a practical purpose, but bring up seriously bad memories. But after that, I struggle to find the motivation to keep on top of even maintenance cleaning. My body is beat up from marathon training, and the more news I hear, the more likely it seems that the race in Vancouver will be canceled. When the announcement of the BMO marathon cancellation is made on March 13, I spiral down down down…

I spend ten days self-isolating – a word that’s become as common to me as “coffee”. I sleep a lot, I have a cough that’s not frequent, but when it hits it’s fierce. My other symptoms come and go in waves, and while they are mild, they are weird. I’m bored and restless and scared and confused and sad… and have no energy for anything besides feeding my cat and dog, sometimes feeding myself, remembering to water my plants. I am glad to get back to work after ten days of this nonsense, and am even more grateful to be symptom free. The streets of downtown Edmonton are ghostly quiet, and it takes a huge amount of energy to do my job, go home, and keep things going with some semblance of normalcy.

April: “We didn’t Do Much, but We Got a Lot Done”

My partner arrives in early April. It’s like he never left in February. I’m feeling more settled, more rested, more like I can take on things. But life is different. Physical distancing means I can’t run with a human guide, so I’m taking Jenny out for shorter runs and hoping we can build up her speed and endurance. Buses are run on decreased frequency, so commuting presents some interesting challenges. I find more stores that have reduced hours. I seem to luck out and find slots of time where I can order grocery delivery. Friends pick up groceries sometimes, too – for things that go bad prematurely, or things that couldn’t be found in big grocery runs.

Three of my four plants survive. One of the aloes appears to have gotten too much sun, and becomes crispy at the tips. The other is salvageable once it gets re-potted. If I kill an air plant, I’m not sure if I should be impressed or horrified. but the unnamed succulent – heretofore known as Happy Plant – is sprouting flowers almost daily and spreading out happily.

The last weekend in April, the snow is gone. My partner and I tackle the back yard. We move a bunch of stuff to a pile that’s meant to go to the Ecostation when we have access to a truck. We clear off the back patio so we can sweep all the winter gunk off of it. I drop part of a bird bath on my foot, which means I’m relegated to carrying things that are very light, and walking gingerly. The shed is cleared out, and an informal inventory taken. There’s an abundance of shovels and a scarcity of rakes. I discover I’m creeped out by wasps while removing the biggest (dead) wasp’s nest I’ve ever seen in my life. The back yard looks like a garden shed blew up on it…. but maybe it’s okay.

“You know,” my partner says that evening as we’re preparing a steak dinner, “we didn’t do a lot, but we got a lot done.” I ponder that sentiment for days, and there’s a lot of truth to it. Effort is important, but sometimes you can accomplish a lot by doing a few little things that make a big difference.


I can’t wait until the day when my home can contain the laughter of a group of friends around a communal table of food. But until then, I’m content. Spring is in the air. I’m healthy and happy and safe. A brand new coffee maker has taken up residence where a broken-down Keurig made it’s last pod of coffee this morning. I can make plants grow. The beading room has been converted into an office. I’m slightly less intimidated by my house itself, coming to compassionate terms with my part in its prior neglect. I have a feeling that things might just be okay.