Tricia's Musings

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



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The most disorganized family!

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Well, it looks like at some point this weekend we’ll be going to my husbands hometown to see his parents. His dads birthday is on the 10th of the month, and of course Mother’s day is this Sunday … double whammy!

What’s really strange about Chris’ family is most of the time they don’t make any plans.

They know special occasions are happening and they’ll call at the last minute expecting us to drop everything, bring this, bring that, don’t forget the folding chairs, and a desert and we’ll see you in an hour. Or else they totally go the opposite way and over plan everything a couple of months in advance. Right down to the smallest detail, but of course the details change daily and are completely different from the original plans by the time the special occasion actually happens.

It’s so strange!

I mean there’s no word yet on what’s happening this weekend but I’ll bet we end up going out for dinner with the whole family or gathering at Chris’ parents place … and then there’s Chris’ brother calling us twice already this week to make plans for early July when he plans to come to Toronto for a visit with his son. By the time that happens his visit will end up taking place at the end of July and he won’t even come to Toronto at all. LOL Happens all the time this way!

Families are so weird.





Getting back into cooking

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I’ve really been on a real cooking kick this week. Yes, normally I do cook our meals but we’d fallen into a bit of a rut and it was the same ol thing time and time again. I mean, with my tummy troubles I do have to be careful what I eat, but still … unless I’m feeling really bad who says food has to be boring?

I once thought that I might become a professional chief. I enjoy cooking that much. Actually up until a month before my wedding I was going to cook the meal for oh … 150 guests! Right. I’m glad someone talked me out of that! Still I did manage to make the wedding cake and many of the pastries, deserts and finger foods.

Of course in those days we often had people over to our house each week for full dinners. Perhaps five nights a week we had guest and I’d make up seafood meals, Roast beef, marinated grape chicken and so on. I was right into the whole cooking thing. I thought of taking courses at the kitchen academy or another cooking school who’s name I’ve forgotten at this moment.

I grew tired of having guests over almost every night. It was my own fault of course because I was feeding them delicious meals. If you were the recipient of free and tasty meals would you stop dropping in? No I think not. I think we got out of that cycle by suddenly having other plans almost every day for several months in a row. It took a while to get out of that habit and train our friends out of dining at Cafe Tricia but it worked.

We still do have dinner parties, and our friends drop over several times a week, but not always for meals this time round. Most of our dinner parties begin about this time of year and slow down by mid-fall. We have the winter to ourselves for the most part before the entertaining season begins anew each year.

Do any of you enjoy cooking an entertaining as much as I have at times?

Do you email your spouse?

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Do you think it’s strange that I send my husband email, or is it just a sign of the times?

We do spend a lot of time together, but still, when he’s at work or perhaps busy working on the other computer I’ve often sent him an email with a link to a site that I think he might be interested in. When he eventually gets around to checking his mail he often gets a new message from me telling him about a cool music or guitar site that I came across that he should check out.

Do you think that’s strange?

BTW I don’t email him at work. I only send cool stuff to his personal email addy.

Chris’ Wish lists

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Did I tell you that I spent several hours on Sunday doing our taxes? Ughhh yeah, I did, and I finally got them in. We sent them off Monday morning.

Luckily we are each expecting refunds! I don’t know how we did it, but if I filled everything out correctly it looks like we’ll be getting a combined total of just a little more than $3000 in tax refunds!

The only problem is – this isn’t on this years taxes! I was sooooo sick last year I never did do the taxes when they were due. Yeah I’m bad, slap my hand. Hey I was home sick and not earning any income, and Chris had been sick and off work for a period of time that year as well when we thought he had a rare heart problem. There was no way I was going to come out owing taxes!

So yeah, I’ve still got 2006′ taxes to do too, but with any luck we’ll get a refund on that one too.

Two weeks ago, I made a lot of money in one day through some work on the net. A lot of money. Chris got all excited and started talking about this special piece of equipment he wanted to get for his guitar. It only costs $500. I wasn’t thrilled. The money I earned that day could pay off a lot of bills and keep us sitting above water for a while. So I told him we’d wait and see how our finances are when I do get paid that money and if we’re really in good shape he can get his new toy.

Well I guess our tax windfall on Sunday got him thinking about more guitar equipment because he was searching the internet yesterday for a special peddle for his acoustic guitar. This new item on his wish list is only $250.

Gee thanks Chris … I haven’t even thought of anything that I’d like to get – other than totally debt free. It’s not like he’s whining that he wants these things, but he is making a list. LOL

So I made a deal with him. When I get paid that big windfall that I made a couple of weeks ago we’ll hold on to it, or use some of it to pay bills if we have to. We’ll wait and see if the tax refund that I calculated for our 2005 taxes really is just over $3000 and if it is, he can use about half of his share of the refund to get his new toys. See I’m smart. His list is up to about $700 to $800 now and that’s about half of what his tax refund is supposed to be. Ha!

Guess what he did when I said that? He got back online and started cruising through the free auctions looking for guitar equipment. I’m ok with him finding the items that he’d like to get for lower prices, but I’m worried that he might find something else to add to his wish list.

If, when I do our 2006 taxes, it turns out that we’re going to get another decent refund, I might get another laptop. No I don’t need one. Not really. I’d get it for Chris to use. We both want to use the laptop when we’re sitting watching TV in the evenings. Trouble is, with only one, we can’t both us it can we?

It looks like if things keep going our way financially Chris is going to have a good year.

I’m hiding!

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Chris came home from work a while ago, and I asked him if he’d go out to the store to pick up a few things for us. His first stop was to the corner store, and as soon as he came back he quickly closed the door and said “Hide, the Jehovah Witnesses are coming!”.

Now, we have nothing against Jehovah Witnesses but we don’t subscribe to their beliefs and have been caught in the past standing in our door way discussing the pro’s and con’s of such beliefs with them. Frankly we really don’t care to do that. They can leave their pamphlets at the door if they’d like and we will look at them, but in general we don’t like opening the door to people that appear to be selling things whether that be a product or a belief.

After Chris shut the door, he closed our living room curtains and turned out the lamp beside me. Yeah he really wasn’t interested in talking! Well, actually he was still going to go out to the store and I guess he was attempting to hide me.

So … Chris just went out to the store and I’m sitting in the dark, on the floor listening for that fateful knock on the door.

The Jehovah’s were on the other side of the street when Chris was busy closing the curtains and turning out lights. I’m not sure when they’ll get around to knocking on our door, but I have no doubt that they will. So here I sit, typing away on my laptop as I sit on the cool uncomfortable hardwood floor.

I’m going to give it 15 more minutes and then go back to life as normal. With any luck they might already think that no one is home since they probably saw Chris leave with the car.

Is this crazy or what? What lengths have you gone to in order to avoid something?

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