Home discoveries

I look after homes around the city. From time to time people give me a call and I go and look after their animals or plants while they are away. Over the years I’ve realized a few things that are pretty essential when it comes to going into a new place.

Find out where the can opener, scissors and cleaning supplies are kept. This includes garbage bags.

Everything else you can kind of figure out on your own but if you don’t have a clue where to start looking for those 3 things it can be rather frustrating (especially looking for the cleaning supplies which are usually time sensitive). You might be asking why the can opener is first in my list? It took me an extra half hour one time to make a simple can of soup because I didn’t know that they had their can opener mounted on the underside of their cabinet.

Stepping into someone’s life is always interesting for me because I get to see what people take for granted as normal. I always ask what people can think of as a little quirk to their home, which has had some pretty interesting results. My favourite one has got to be the phones that didn’t work when it rained. Unfortunately I happen to be staying during a particularly wet summer.

On occasion I get to really enjoy something unique to the area. Most recently I was looking after a home and discovered the best idea for a residential area: loading zones.

The more time I spent there the more I wanted them on every street. I’m all about efficiency of use. Having the ability to run back into the house to retrieve something I had forgotten saved me a lot of hassle in terms of needing to find a parking spot. Additionally my pet peeve, people disrupting the flow of traffic by double parking to pick someone up, was eliminated.

For a while there looking after homes had become a fairly consistent thing. People going away for weeks leaving me to look after their place had friends of mine asking if I will ever give up my apartment to do house hopping full time. But that way there wouldn’t be any transitions. The feeling of a job well done comes from handing their home back to them in as close to the original state as possible with very happy animals. But it is actually by going home after that I get enjoy more fully the life I have and my own brand of quirks. And of course my own bed! You always appreciate your own bed over others… and if that is not the case for you I suggest you invest in a mattress better suited to you.

What is something unique to your home that you love?
What is a unique trait that you would warn people about?

The best winter

I've made a pact with myself this year to not let the dislike of the cold and winter from years past drag me down.  I had to make this agreement with myself in order to keep my sanity for the next few months.  After almost 7 months of winter and then minimal amounts of free time to actually be out in the heat of summer I spontaneously started cursing when I woke up to the first snow fall.  I could not accept that winter had come again.  The warning shot of winter melted, and I realized that I had to change my attitude or I would not make it through this year.

An important aspect of this pact was realizing that I just can't talk to people about the weather ever this winter.  When I'm around someone who hates the cold as much as me I join in on the cold smack talk and feel worse.  If I'm around someone who loves the cold it becomes a conversation stalemate with nothing more to say until the topic changes.  All this week I've been using a lot of humour about the weather to shift the topic and it has been working nicely.

This is all thanks to last week helping to wean me off of my desire for a longer Autumn season.  I spent the majority of my time on the road.  I drove up to Saskatoon with their noticeably higher levels of snow.  With the bright sunshine and warm wind it was a perfect couple of days to get used to the snow again.  Driving then further on to Price Albert I found where winter has been hanging out for much longer.  With Semis Jack-knifed on the highway and an army troop carrier truck on its side in the ditch we were pretty careful on the roads.  It was this gradient of progressively more white as we went up that helped ease me into it rather than the shock of a sudden dump.  On the way back it was just solid snow the whole way.  Winter had snuck back to Regina and set up camp.  But thankfully I had my game plan ready this year for how to cope.

I found my car encrusted by the ice rain and then about 2-3 inches of snow on top. 

I set to work with the first part of my plans.  I now keep my ice scraper in the back seat on the floor.  It seems so simple now.  When I go to get it, the avalanche of snow will land in the back-seat and not the driver's.  I've only had a chance to store my car in garage for winter approximately 3 times in my life so I'm pretty used to having snow on my car but this year I'm purposefully not going to be lazy about removing all of it.  I've got a few other little things planned like lifting the wind shield wipers off the glass at night so they don't cement themselves down. 

I've always been one of those people who doesn't layer enough for the cold, or if I do have enough layers for heat then there is the wind chill factor that sneaks in through every seam.  This year I will not skimp on preparation and layering clothing.  Even if I don't think it is going to be so cold I'm going to always have my big coat, small gloves and mittens, extra layer of either outer shell pants or having some tights on under my clothes.

I'm also think about getting one of these little jaunty ice scrappers but it might not help me stay positive.  Maybe I'll go with an ice scraper that is also something to keep my hand warm.  Keeping my mind off the cold with creative projects and having an emergency stash of scarves (my socially acceptable blankets) will hopefully be enough to make this my best winter.

Please share any ways that you make winter barable, and if you love winter then what aspects do you love?  

Spy or crazy

So today at work it came to my attention that everyone I have just started working with were of the opinion that I was a mole, a plant, or a spy.  There are three major reasons for this. 

1) The people I work with (by their own admission) are a paranoid lot
2) My dad works for them as a private investigator
3) I'm always writing

This last one is the big one.  I always have something to write on.  For the most part I use my phone's note sections or send myself emails.  But that constant use of a phone doesn't really go over well with people in a work setting.  So I got a notebook to keep my thoughts in order.  I collect up all my ideas and just keep my mind from being overwhelmed by keeping track of all this new information coming in.  But it freaked people out. A lot.

I was asked around my 3rd day not to write any more during lunch.  They didn't like that I was making a list of ideas for what to bring for lunch or writing down my plans for the weekend.  They got rather creeped  out by it.  I was a bit embarrassed but kept writing because that's just how I think.

Today last day of my second week my office mate somehow got to telling me that she thought she was going to loose her job from all the stuff I was writing down.  I was completely thrown off.  I had been making a list of pros and cons for traveling next year and told her so. 

Pro: Adventure                    Con: No stability     
Pro: Having a hot winter       Con: Not being able to afford a house

She just started laughing.

I tried to let people know through the day that I wasn't a spy and just this is how I think... which means that people now think I'm crazy.  I prefer people thinking I'm a spy.

One good thing that came out of this is that my office mate has declared that she thinks I'm cool rather than crazy (which is always nice to hear).  She asked why I didn't blog, and it got me thinking about this blog that I just stopped working on.  So I found a list of writing prompts to get me back into the swing of things and have started pulling together some thoughts for the next few months.