An open letter to the Dyson vacuum cleaner guy.

Dear Dyson, Thank you for being all chivalrous in your attempt at trying to save us poor, helpless women from vacuuming hell. You took time out of your manly schedule working on (much more) important manly things and tried to figure out how to make the vacuum better where others haven't. I'm glad to see you did the research yourself. Your one day of vacuuming seemed to afford you with a wealth of vacuuming knowledge. Apparently, the only problem with primitive vacuums is their suction, and, naturally, we women just want more of that. More suction! More power! (Us women are really all about power and engines and stuff like that, it's common knowledge.) So I'm glad you didn't even bother to ask us if there were possibly any other vacuum cleaner issues besides suction. Lord knows that it would be utterly pointless to ask us, anyway, since we're all hormonal, we barely remember a thing, we don't even understand how those silly contraptions work, and we definitely have no understanding or insight on what other much needed improvements should be made. Now you say you've solved (at least one) of the problems, hey? Suction? You've got more of it, you say? Well, being the owner of one of your revolutionary, better-than-the-first-washing-machine vacuums, I find that your vacuum doesn't suck up dirt, it just sucks. I would give you more reasons why it sucks and those reasons wouldn't even be related to suction, but I don't want to bore you with my trivial woman nonsense. Yours truly, Idle Wife

I finally organized my spice rack, and I'm on cloud 9

me -- (very excited) Look. Look, come see. Did you see? Did you notice this? At first I wasn't sure if the bottles had dried, but they did. The caps were a little wet still, but I just dried them up and so I was so excited I got to fill them up today! me -- Did you notice it? Did you look at how clean and cute and nice and organized?! me -- And did you notice how all the spice colours work together? It's pure magic! My favourite is paprika. It's so red and nice and pretty. Look! Are you looking?! IH -- mhm... me -- And they're all the spices I actually use! Like, I can just go here, and oh, I need oregano...here it is! Easy to use! Right here! I don't have to go fumbling around for a stupid bag in the cupboard anymore! Right?! I mean, how great is that? Seriously. How great! IH -- uh huh me -- And look! Look in the spice cupboard! It's all organized, too, and clean and practically empty now! me -- (imitating a shoving motion with my arms) I don't have to shove all these spices up in here anymore, and be, like, where's this? where's that? I grabbed the wrong thing again! me -- (running out of breath) Oh, no! It's all right here. Cleaned up. And then the other spice mixes are still there, see? But they're easy to grab, right? Nice and easy and clean and nice! IH -- Yes. I see. It's very nice. me -- (clasping my hands together) I just love it. I love it so much. me -- (rocking a little, still staring at the rack) It's so great. So great...I'm so happy.

Shades of Orange

Fall is coming.

The last drive-in movie night

Idle husband has a bone to pick with these two youngsters. This was my view the whole movie, and I'm guessing his was a lot worse. Except this is before they decided they couldn't hear the movie very well and needed their radio on, and since they couldn't figure out how to hear the radio outside of the truck (hint hint: roll down your windows), they left their door open with the interior light on almost the entire movie. Sometimes I really wonder about people.

Idle Musings

I'm getting new doors installed today. The old ones were letting in the snow -- no joke. So part of that (rather expensive) deal was that we had to have a set of new locks sitting and waiting in case they couldn't use the old ones. Now I find out that they prefer to use new locks because "there's always a problem after the installation" if they use the old ones. This I don't get at all. Having installed more than my fair share of door locks, I find this preposterous. I have honestly made every single lock work in every door I've tried. The only exception being the fancy full handled door lock I tried to replace when we first moved into this house. I couldn't get the bottom holding screw to match up with the old hole and I wasn't about to drill a new hole millimeters above the old one (though I'm sure I could have if I really wanted to).

Is installing any door lock a minor headache, why yes, yes, it is. Is it impossible for me? NOPE. Is it impossible for the so-called experts? Apparently. I did my best to sway him, I honestly did, but I'm past the point of no return.

I'm off to continue my calming chants now -- ommmmm ommmmm

Idle Conversation

me -- Your mom sent these, too. I don't know what they are, but they look like dates. me -- Or maybe figs. Dates or figs, something like that. Idle husband -- (looking closely as if deeply pondering) I think they're nuts. me -- Well, they look like dates or figs. I really think they're figs... [Later that night] me -- (very surprised) Oh, look! They are nuts! You were right! IH -- (completely unsurprised) Yeah. I know they're nuts. I read it on the package. IH -- Nuts. It says so right there. me -- Ohhhh...well, you didn't seem to know earlier! Sheesh!

Idle Vacation

If you can't go to some exotic place for a vacation, why not take a day out of your weekend and do the touristy things in your city? These are from a Saturday we spent at the Alberta Museum.

The have really wonderful vignettes of animals native to Alberta. They look so real!

They have every gem and stone imaginable.

This is Spammite. The rarest of the stones. Ok, not really, but we thought it had quite the resemblance!

Native history, of course.

Dinosaurs! My personal favourite!

I loved it here. I would definitely go back. Most definitely.

Waspy

My mom brought me two half wine barrels this spring, and I didn’t have enough dirt to fill them, and I didn’t even know where to put them, so I decided to hold off. Instead, I flipped them upside-down and I’ve been using them as tables for my tomato plants. About two weeks ago, I discovered there were wasps living under one of them. They didn't seem to be bothering anyone, so I just left them there figuring that I'd deal with them in the fall. Then one day, I was mowing the lawn (finally) and noticed some bees going in and out of this crack just under the siding. Great. As much as I hate killing bees (especially), I had to do something before things got worse.

As soon as I could, I went in search of a bee/wasp spray, but I couldn’t find anything (in the one place I looked). So, that night, I thought, ok, wasps. I can't do anything about the bees, so I'm gonna do something about you. I went out around 10ish and tipped the barrel on it’s side. My aim was really to tip it all the way over, but once I heard buzzing, I became way too nervous to do any more.

In bed, I kept thinking and dreaming, they’ve funnily decided to build their home in a barrel that holds water, so I have to tip it all the way so the next time it rains, it fills up. Right. Well, that morning I got up early, Idle Husband was still in bed, and it was raining a bit. Sprinkling. And I look out and the barrel’s there, on it’s side. I got excited with this overwhelming desire to tip it all the way over. It just seemed like the perfect solution, and it was pretty early. Surely they're still resting.

I put on a coat and went out. Immediately, I can hear them buzzing. Ok, ok, just tip it then run away quickly. Tip. Run. Grab, tip, run. Repeating my mantra, I did it. I managed to catch a small glimpse of the mini-fortress they’d built, when they attacked me. It was a good thing I left the door to the house a wee bit open, because it was all I needed to run in and slam it on them. Only two managed to come in with me. One followed me as I ran downstairs, arms waving, squealing, waking Idle Husband up in all my commotion. We squished him then found his partner buzzing in the window upstairs.

I have since found wasp/bee spray (in the second store I looked), and I let Idle Husband deal with the rest of it. I was way too traumatized to deal with them any longer.

The other day, I’m outside, happily watering my tomatoes and filling up my watering cans, when I notice a wasp. He lands and crawls into this half-empty bag of dirt I have on the deck. Then one comes out as another flies in. I have never been so irritated. Are those little bastards making a nest in that bag of dirt?! I took my hose and sprayed water all over the bag, filling the loose plastic up with water. Watching as a few wasps tried desperately to paddle to safety. Determined, I filled the barrel (that still has their house in it) with about 2 inches of water, flipped the other barrel over (there’s no nest there — yet) and filled that one, too. They are not building another nest anywhere near my backdoor again, so help me!

I’m officially on wasp detail now until winter.

Free? Did someone say free?!

It’s summer, which means free drive-in movie night at the Millwoods mall!

Much to our dismay, they were showing Disney’s Earth. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it's not a very interesting movie for either of us. We considered leaving and coming back for the next one, but since this was the first one we've been to, we decided to stay and see whether it was actually worth coming back for.

When someone decided it was time to bring out their laser pointer, we really started to enjoy the film. And while James Earl Jones calmly narrated the story of a polar bear mother and cubs, the laser pointed and jiggled all over the screen. Wait, ok, that’s not the best part. The best part was this rather large, biker-looking dude in a very festive Mexican poncho who decided he had had enough of the laser pointer. He was storming around swearing that if he caught the laser pointer guy he’d “drag him outta there by the hair.” We dubbed him the Poncho Police. It was too funny. The pointer would appear and he would come charging from his vehicle, only to have the pointer disappear again. This went on for a good 10 minutes. It's really hard to take someone seriously when they're wearing a poncho.

They’re playing Up next week and we’re definitely going to that. It’s free, the sound is great (we had the radio tuned to the station for a bit, but realized we didn’t need it at all), the picture is great (getting there early is a pain but worth it), and Up is relatively new with great reviews. I’m really looking forward to it!

Nice to meet you

Hi! I'm Kristin and I live in Canada in a little city you may have heard of called Edmonton.

I used to think fussy things were the way to go but I've now realized that I like crafts that take less than an afternoon to construct and recipes that take less than two bowls to make. And that's the sort of thing you'll find here along with a smattering of local stuff, thrifting, decorating, and photography.

I hope you like what you see.

email me!