Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



You are here: Home / Archives for Home and Lifestyle / Life with Chris

Our Nephew is trying out for an NHL farm team

by

Our American nephew is coming to Ontario next month to try out for a hockey team. If he makes it the next step could be the NHL. He’s certainly talented enough. I have a feeling that he’s going to be living in Canada very soon.

There’s only one problem .. he’s already a Canadian citizen, which of course isn’t a requirement, but since his father is Canadian his dad was sure to get his three children citizenship while they were young so they are duel citizens – something that I don’t think you can do anymore – the problem is that he doesn’t have a Canadian passport. So my brother in law is calling us and emailing us with questions about the paperwork and of course it’s all a made scramble since there’s only a month or so left before he needs it.

Now I’m sure my brother in law could have figured out most of this on his own and probably a lot earlier than this if he wasn’t a computerphobe. Yep … he’s pretty much afraid to turn on the computer .. although he’s getting a little better than he was a few years ago. At this rate maybe by the time he’s an old man perhaps he won’t need our help with all the Medicare part D plans or other health care related forms that I’m sure he’s bound to run into by that time. LOL

We’re looking forward to seeing the two of them when they come for a visit in July. I think it’s going to be a fairly quick visit. The hockey tryouts are in another part of the province .. closer to my hometown than where we are living now, but my husband might drive out there and stay with them in the hotel so that he can spend more time with them and cheer on our nephew. Wish him luck!





Another lay off coming up for my husband

by

My husband is going through temporary layoffs at work again this year.

He went through them in December of 2009, then for two weeks last summer and then again this past December and now this summer his going to have two one week lay offs. It’s too much.

There have been so many cuts to heath care positions in Ontario that this is what it’s come to in the last two years .. constant temporary layoffs and job cuts. It’s awful. My husband has been keeping his eye out for any other healthcare jobs but there really aren’t any that he likes better than the position that he has now.

I have a feeling that sometime in the next few months he might be in a totally different career. With me on unpaid medical leave and him being laid off four weeks for two years in a row … well somethings gotta change.

We’ve just got to finish our living room dining room reno!

by

I know I say it just about every year, but this year is the year that we’re going to finish our renovations. I think the problem the other years is that I was the one saying it, but my husband wasn’t the least bit into doing it.

This year I think he might actually be starting to get the idea of just how fed up I’m feeling. Plus, hey … I tend to do more than half the work anyway … so what’s he worried about?

Just to prove that he’s starting to get the picture he actually tried giving his brother in law a phone call to see if he could come and help us one weekend. Our brother in law was on the computer looking for new hot tub cover at BeyondNice.com when my husband reached him … I swear he lives in his hot tub – honest, that can’t be good for you to be in it as much as he is!

We need to finish renovating our living room dining room. That means finishing our ceiling – which could mean putting up those tin ceiling tiles that I bought and prepped … oh … 10 years ago! We also need to finish one part of the flooring, plus add molding and quarter round. We also doing have a wall at the basement opening … yeah … big gap. and I’ve been living this way for years! I hate it and I can’t stand when we have quests or if anyone just “drops in”. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. So I want our renovations finished this summer … even if it means putting up a dry wall ceiling instead of the very expensive tin ceiling I purchased. If that’s what it takes to finish the job that’s what it takes.

You might remember that about a month ago or so I wrote a post complaining about how much noise my neighbors were making and how I was seriously thinking of selling our house as a result of how totally exhausted they were making me … well finally finishing or renovations would accomplish a few things … one – it would give us a little noise revenge for neighbors on both sides of us actually, and two if things did get bad enough noise wise that we do decide to sell we’ll have a finished house to sell … the way things are right now we could sell but we wouldn’t get quite as much as we would if we finished the living room dining room the way I’d like to finish them.

Waiting for decent sunny weather to arrive

by

The weather here in Toronto has been so crazy this spring. It’s been rainy and damp and then it will start to get sunny and warm up and then just as you start to think that maybe the weather is beginning to finally get nice a huge wind storm will come up and then the rain and cool weather will return for a week or so.

Sigh … I give up!

I tired of this weather and I can’t wait for it to warm up and for the sun to stick around. My plants on the other hand seems to love this weather. They’re getting enough water with all the rain and I guess the cooler temps is just right for my Spring plants. It’s like my garden was reading anabolic halo reviews or something because every time I look out my window at my roses they get bigger and bigger!

The biggest rose plants are along the fence that is going to be replaced next week by our neighbors. See the last post for the back story on that … yeah I still don’t even know how high the new fence is going to be … but I do know it’s going to be very similar to the fence one of our neighbors put up across the street, according to a conversation my husband had with our next door neighbors a few days ago so I guess I can put up with how it will look … but if they’re going to do it they’d better do it soon because my BIGGEST rose is on that fence – literally ON that fence, it’s called William Baffin and it’s a thorny monster and every single day it gets bigger and more brutish .. it’s going to be terrible to put up a fence around it next week!

Later today I’m going to go and knock on our neighbors door and ask some questions about the fence that they are so generously paying to put in or replace. On one hand I’m appreciative that they are paying for the new fence because we cannot afford to pay for a new fence between our houses at this time … and the current fence is truly falling apart – we’ve been repairing from our side for three years now. But on the other hand I’m simmering with pent up anger that they haven’t had the decency to come and do a face to face meeting between my husband and I to tell us exactly what kind of fence they’d like to put in and to get our input. It is after all on our shared property line so we do have a say in it’s height and design.

I don’t think they mean to be inconsiderate, they probably think they’re being helpful and that they’re doing us a favor and they’re partly right in that the old fence will likely fall down by next year if it’s not replaced … but I’d like some say in a fence that I’m going to have to look at daily. OF the four of us (my husband and the other couple) I’m probably the one who will look at the fence the most since I spend the most time in the backyard working in the garden or just plain looking out the window at my garden and thus the fence … so it’s very important to me. Whereas for the neighbors I think it’s just a fence.

Anyway .. back to the weather. Are you starting to get good weather in your area or are you longing for solid sunny weather in your area too?

It seems we’re getting a new fence – free

by

Well … it seems sometime in the next week or so we’re going to be getting a new fence. Well, to be more clear – we’re going to be getting part of a new fence.

What’s really happening is that our neighbors, the ones in the house that’s attached to ours (semi-detached house) are getting a new fence and they are replacing the part of the fence that we share between our houses. They’re paying for it and uhm …. we don’t know exactly what kind of fence they are putting in. Can you tell I’m a little uncomfortable with that????

Uh huh … I think we need to have a talk with our neighbors. My husband did talk to them about our noise problems last weekend and their daughter has been a lot quieter this past week. Thankfully! Unfortunately … when he was talking to them about the noise – last Sunday after I fell down the stairs due to exhaustion thanks to a week of no sleep (yes I’m severely bruised!) he never did get around to asking them about the fence design. I guess if worse comes to worse we can always just say no as the fence people are trying to put the fence in. That wouldn’t be that nice though.

I’m not super concerned about the design. I think that my neighbors really like the fence that another neighbor had put in last year and if I’m right I think they’ll get something similar and if so that will be perfectly fine with us as well.

The only thing that bothered me about the whole thing is the fact that they aren’t telling us much and well we have our roses along that fence and when I mentioned my concerns about them getting damaged the woman actually had the gall to say “Which ones can you live without?” Uhm … you just don’t ask a gardener that kind of question … especially when the roses in question are pretty much irreplaceable! Wow! I’ll be pretty upset if they kill my roses. The good news is that because of the trees in both yards they can’t dig new holes for the fences so they have to use the existing holes so that means my rose roots likely won’t get damaged.

They have one of those steel garages right up against the end of the fence and it borders on the end of our yard … it’s starting to fall down .. I think it might fall down when the fence comes down … that might be interesting. LOL

Anyway, I’ll take some pictures and let you guys know how things progress with the fence dilemma. I’m sure I’ll have a story to tell!

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday