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the_siobhanAnother week older and deeper in debt.
Today I went over to dad's place to see if I could be of use. I helped with some unpacking, did some tape measuring of spaces to help with decisions around ordering furniture, carted empty boxes and trash down to the recycling, and was the designated tall person when boxes need to be retrieved from stacks or things to keep were put into the storage locker. Then I hung out with dad while The Wicked Step Mother did a grocery run for things she can't get close by.
The new condo seems to be working out well. NO STAIRS. Dad has an en-suite bathroom so he's not getting lost when he gets up in the middle of the night. Their main grocery store is across the street, so TWSM is taking him with her for a short daily walk and he's been doing really well with it.
That specific stress-meter can be dialed back to a 4.
***
Daughter came over twice this week and that was enough time to finish the digging out of the drainage pit. I got past the sand layer into Yet More Fucking Clay so that was when I said right, 5.5 feet (ish) is deep enough. I shaped it into a rough V and now we are filling it with gravel.
Now that the highly hazardous part is out of the way I can go back to going outside and working on it for an hour or so during the week.
***
I came home one day last week to a hand-written flyer stuffed into my mailbox offering to clean my bins for $5 each. The houses in Toronto get three bins, one for compost which is collected weekly, and two for garbage and recycling, which alternate. The compost bin especially gets rank in the summer and I had been meaning to give it a scrub for months and never got around to it. So I'm like yeah, that's a reasonable price, I'll do it. And I texted the number on the paper.
I'm not sure what I expected. What I got was a very serious kid of maybe 13 years of age? (I suck at children's ages, but he looked like he would be around the same age as the gang of supposed 11 year-olds in Good Omens.) He brought a power washer, spoke authoritatively about psi and the merits of metal vs plastic hoses, and when he was done asked me very seriously, "How would you rate my service?" I was utterly charmed, tipped him well, and will probably text him next summer to see if he's still doing it.
***
The bird feeder I put on my window is now my favourite daily soap opera. The sparrows have gone from a half dozen to thirty or so little gangsters, fighting and yelling about who gets to be the one to sit in the feeder and toss seeds down to their fellow bruisers.
The cardinal shows up two or three times a day and there is much squawking and huffing when she shows up. She's about twice their size and will chase them all off so she can sit and daintily eat her seeds without dropping a single one.
Once a bluejay showed up. I have never seen one that close before and had no idea how much bigger they are - easily over twice the size of the cardinal. I think he just showed up to see what all the fuss was about, because he grabbed a few seeds but hasn't been back.
Then yesterday I was brushing my teeth and could hear the usual clattering and squawking that meant the cardinal was throwing her weight around - then a loud thump and an exceptionally loud burst of upset bird voices. So I went to have a look.
There was a wild turkey on my deck.
She hung around for a while. Ate all the scattered seeds, took a long dust-bath in the pile of dirt in the yard. Ate some bugs. Then wandered off.
(For context, in downtown Toronto one sees rats, raccoons, skunks, and coyotes regularly. Rabbits and foxes frequently. Possums and groundhogs occasionally. The turkey is new.)
***
Have started watching The Other Bennet Sister with the GF. So far I'm enjoying it, it's an enjoyable tribute to Austin's characters.
I think we're 4 episodes in? So far I just really want Mary to get past the point where she falls for every man she spends more than five minutes in a room with. I have never seen a woman who needed to get laid quite so badly as she does, but given that isn't available to her at least developing an actual social life would be the next best thing.
The daughter and I have just started Ride or Die. Hannah Waddingham plays an assassin and she's so James Bond coded it's hilarious. In the first episode she literally kills a guy, escapes on skis, and then picks up the bartender at the ski resort. It's the usual mindless buddy adventure film but it did make me laugh out loud a number of times.
And the way it centres female relationships is something I don't usually see in media. Not just the two central main characters, but there is a scene in a hostel where they are hunting down a con-man, and they tell the other girls in the hostel it's one of their ex-husbands - using the story of how the actual husband asked for a divorce. All the 20-somethings are so outraged they unite in an act of solidarity and hunt this guy down through an instagram photo. The scene is very Hollywood, but the actual dynamic is one I've encountered in women's bathrooms at clubs more than once so the spirit of it is very real.
Octavia Spencer plays the best friend. Having two middle-aged women who are treated as attractive by the narrative, especially two women who are not Hollywood skinny - definitely a thing I approve of and would like to see more often.
Today I went over to dad's place to see if I could be of use. I helped with some unpacking, did some tape measuring of spaces to help with decisions around ordering furniture, carted empty boxes and trash down to the recycling, and was the designated tall person when boxes need to be retrieved from stacks or things to keep were put into the storage locker. Then I hung out with dad while The Wicked Step Mother did a grocery run for things she can't get close by.
The new condo seems to be working out well. NO STAIRS. Dad has an en-suite bathroom so he's not getting lost when he gets up in the middle of the night. Their main grocery store is across the street, so TWSM is taking him with her for a short daily walk and he's been doing really well with it.
That specific stress-meter can be dialed back to a 4.
***
Daughter came over twice this week and that was enough time to finish the digging out of the drainage pit. I got past the sand layer into Yet More Fucking Clay so that was when I said right, 5.5 feet (ish) is deep enough. I shaped it into a rough V and now we are filling it with gravel.
Now that the highly hazardous part is out of the way I can go back to going outside and working on it for an hour or so during the week.
***
I came home one day last week to a hand-written flyer stuffed into my mailbox offering to clean my bins for $5 each. The houses in Toronto get three bins, one for compost which is collected weekly, and two for garbage and recycling, which alternate. The compost bin especially gets rank in the summer and I had been meaning to give it a scrub for months and never got around to it. So I'm like yeah, that's a reasonable price, I'll do it. And I texted the number on the paper.
I'm not sure what I expected. What I got was a very serious kid of maybe 13 years of age? (I suck at children's ages, but he looked like he would be around the same age as the gang of supposed 11 year-olds in Good Omens.) He brought a power washer, spoke authoritatively about psi and the merits of metal vs plastic hoses, and when he was done asked me very seriously, "How would you rate my service?" I was utterly charmed, tipped him well, and will probably text him next summer to see if he's still doing it.
***
The bird feeder I put on my window is now my favourite daily soap opera. The sparrows have gone from a half dozen to thirty or so little gangsters, fighting and yelling about who gets to be the one to sit in the feeder and toss seeds down to their fellow bruisers.
The cardinal shows up two or three times a day and there is much squawking and huffing when she shows up. She's about twice their size and will chase them all off so she can sit and daintily eat her seeds without dropping a single one.
Once a bluejay showed up. I have never seen one that close before and had no idea how much bigger they are - easily over twice the size of the cardinal. I think he just showed up to see what all the fuss was about, because he grabbed a few seeds but hasn't been back.
Then yesterday I was brushing my teeth and could hear the usual clattering and squawking that meant the cardinal was throwing her weight around - then a loud thump and an exceptionally loud burst of upset bird voices. So I went to have a look.
There was a wild turkey on my deck.
She hung around for a while. Ate all the scattered seeds, took a long dust-bath in the pile of dirt in the yard. Ate some bugs. Then wandered off.
(For context, in downtown Toronto one sees rats, raccoons, skunks, and coyotes regularly. Rabbits and foxes frequently. Possums and groundhogs occasionally. The turkey is new.)
***
Have started watching The Other Bennet Sister with the GF. So far I'm enjoying it, it's an enjoyable tribute to Austin's characters.
I think we're 4 episodes in? So far I just really want Mary to get past the point where she falls for every man she spends more than five minutes in a room with. I have never seen a woman who needed to get laid quite so badly as she does, but given that isn't available to her at least developing an actual social life would be the next best thing.
The daughter and I have just started Ride or Die. Hannah Waddingham plays an assassin and she's so James Bond coded it's hilarious. In the first episode she literally kills a guy, escapes on skis, and then picks up the bartender at the ski resort. It's the usual mindless buddy adventure film but it did make me laugh out loud a number of times.
And the way it centres female relationships is something I don't usually see in media. Not just the two central main characters, but there is a scene in a hostel where they are hunting down a con-man, and they tell the other girls in the hostel it's one of their ex-husbands - using the story of how the actual husband asked for a divorce. All the 20-somethings are so outraged they unite in an act of solidarity and hunt this guy down through an instagram photo. The scene is very Hollywood, but the actual dynamic is one I've encountered in women's bathrooms at clubs more than once so the spirit of it is very real.
Octavia Spencer plays the best friend. Having two middle-aged women who are treated as attractive by the narrative, especially two women who are not Hollywood skinny - definitely a thing I approve of and would like to see more often.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-24 02:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-24 04:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-24 05:08 pm (UTC)That’s probably an adult female, or it might be a not-yet-adult bird, of either sex.
(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-24 04:00 pm (UTC)Your bin washer sounds enchanting. Go him!
(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-25 03:35 am (UTC)Hey, turkey. my parents had a few that would come and eat around the back porch like we weren't even sitting there.
And yay to the young business man
(no subject)
Date: 2026-08-25 03:34 pm (UTC)We have to be real careful about spilled seed though because rats have shown up in response and set up house in the backyard to be close to the food source. So now we have to have an electronic rat trap nearby baited with peanut butter, which is usually more appealing to them than the seed, and constantly be filling their holes in the backyard with steel wool.