Fortune Cookie Wisdom

On Saturday night Igal and I went to our favorite Chinese restaurant on Spadina. After an excellent meal we cracked open our fortune cookies and the message I got was: “you have so much to be thankful for”

I do.

I have friends who have offered in allsorts of ways to help me with my job search, from sending me leads to editing my resume to just kicking my ass in to gear.

I have parents who are sane. –‘nuff said.

I have a roof over my head and food in my belly.

I live in a country that is not actively at war. It is unlikely that my house will be bombed or that my husband will be drafted in to the army.

I have an opportunity to make a difference in the life of a little old lady who is dieing of lung cancer.

I am healthy. All of my limbs are intact and all function.

I have two lovely Kitties, who are sweet and cute and healthy and always use theire litter box.

I think I am coming to understand some of my flaws. I have been given some interesting opportunities to work on those flaws and (hopefully) will become a better person for it.

My In-laws are not actively trying to destroy my marriage or generally make my life miserable.

I have recently made some very cool friends.

I have the best husband Evah (spelling intentional) He puts up with me being … well, … Me.
He has a job.
He is handy around the house. He takes out the garbage. He’s funny, intelligent, and he shares just enough of my hobbies and interests. He’s also really quite nice to look at.

There is a million other things I am thankful for… But that’s enough for now.

Eerie Calm

In less than a month my contract with the BIA will run out. I will no longer qualify for EI. Thus far there have been very little in the way of nibbles as far as job possibilities go. I really thought by now I would be in a blind screaming panic, frantically applying for any shitty job that came along.

I don’t feel that way.

If I don’t find a job relatively quickly after this contract ends it will not be a good thing. Igal can’t quite hold up the house all by him self.

I know that if I put my mind to it I can have some sort of job fairly shortly. (even if it means I go back to the dreaded Black’s)

I really really don’t want to go back to retail.

But I’m not panicking - yet.

Interesting.

House Shopping part two

Not that its going to happen any time soon, but where will we move once the we decide to sell this house? As I have said before I am not so enamored of the beach any more, and the prices have gone completely out of control any way.

Lately Kensington market has caught my eye. Great food shopping, great “kitsch”, but mostly a very gritty “real” feeling to the place. On Saturday we wandered to the market as a treat after slogging our an afternoon at the gym. We paused at a coffee shop and people watched. Artsy types and Goths wandered by. The air was filled with the sounds of Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, and other languages I could not identify. Across the street at “Planet Kensington” old grizzled punk rockers – Who have clearly been punks since punk was new- sat and drank beer on the patio. We observed a parade of the most astounding variety and creativity of body ink that I have seen out side of a tattoo parlor.

It’s a gritty rough place, there are bums and crazies who seem to have wandered away from CAMH up at Spadina and college, but these days you can encounter that at hoity toytie areas like Yonge and Eglinton. There is of course the lovely Lettuce Knit. (That might a dangerous store to have close by.) So the current runner up is the market and the surrounding area.

Lets see what happens.

House Shopping

Several weeks ago Igal and I visited our good friends Timothy and Shelly. They live out near Ipperwash and there house is walking distance from a gorgeous beach on Lake Huron.

After several hours of body surfing on some fantastic waves, Igal and Timothy and I sat sunning our selves on the beach and a familiar topic of discussion came up. We all idly wondered if Igal and I could one day move to Timothy and Shelly’s neck of the woods.

The idea holds more than a little appeal to me, particularly with the latest round of gun violence and body-parts-found-in-garbage-bags happening in our city. Some times the smog and the noise of the city is grating on the nerves, and let’s not even talk about the pace.

Could I live in a little town? It depends. I have always wanted to run some sort of artsy cottage-industry business. Like soap making, or pottery, or stained glass. In the city I have never had the time for such pursuits. Really, having a full time job has left me no time for such pursuits. Timothy pointed out that if we were to sell our house in Toronto, we could outright buy a house in his area, live off of the rest of the house sale money for a good year or two. (That would nicely solve the full time job issue)

Ipperwash is about 45 min from Sarnia and London. So if I lived there and I had an insane craving for a Starbucks Latte, one could be in my hands within an hour. It would be lovely to wake up to the sound of birds singing in not the sound of a garbage truck rattling by your window.

What would I miss about the city?
The convenience certainly, being able to pick up a liter of organic milk at midnight, Movies, I would very much miss places like the Gem and Kensington Market, and Public transportation. There are a million more…

The point is moot really, as Igal will never want to leave the city while he has his current job. He is paid well and he has one of the best bosses in the world. (And I know from personal experience that those are few and far between.) I asked him if things got foul at work, would he consider moving out to the boonies. He said yes, but only if there was a job waiting. Timothy’s idea of selling the house and living off the proceeds until something came up made Igal kind of squirrelly.

So its unlikely that Ipperwash is it for us. Not any time soon any way.

We know that the house that we live in now is not the last house we will own. This house was supposed to be the five year plan. It has turned in to the ten year plan and now we are looking at the fifteen year plan.

When we contemplated an area to move after selling our current house our first thought was the beaches. I like the vibe of the beaches, it’s a little more mellow and laid back than the rest of the city, and the houses are drop dead gorgeous. But lately I have found my self less enamored of the beach. There seems to be a pretentiousness about it. One perfectly manicured lawn after another. Ugh.

More Later

I’ve been blogged!

“This is Veronica. You're not going to like her.”
Sounds like an ominous beginning to the chunk of blog post about me. But it wasn’t.. Let me explain..

Yesterday I went to the Lettuce Knit grand re-opening. I got to meet the very lovely and utterly hysterically funny Stephanie Mcphee. (Author of “The Secret Life of a Knitter”, “At Knit's End : Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much” and “Knitting Rules! : The Yarn Harlot's Bag of Knitting Tricks”) She was impressed with sweater for Nina and kept declaring “The Force is strong in this one!” She took a photo of me and the rest is history. I was sitting in the shop listening to Stephanie talking to shop owner Megan about child rearing. Stephanie wove this tale of child and cheerio’s horror with such skill and humor that she had a crowd of women listening raptly and ultimately laughing so hard we all that that we would bust a gut.

I hope she comes to Sn’b at Lettuce knit on occasion. It will be a riot.

While at the party I met a woman who works with wood, we started talking about doing your own business, - that led to me talking about my friend Timothy and his harp making business. Turns out the lady I was talking to also played the harp. We chatted some more about what had inspired me to take up the harp and before long she told me,
“You know your making me want to pick up the harp again.”
I grinned.

As I was picking up my stuff to go I ran into another lady who had spent time in my home town of Montevideo, visiting, (among other things) the warehouse of a major wool company. She gave me a scoop on how to get good prices on airfair.

I hope She come to Sn’b too.

It was a fun night.