The Great Staycation: Day 2

Today started at a much better hour, when I crawled out of bed at 10 a.m. to greet a damp (it must have rained over night) but sunny morning.

After handling the morning's business (feeding the cats and fish, reading email, catching up on the day's news, etc.) I headed out to St. Catharines for a little shopping. Dave needed a new pair of shoes... and like any good man, he won't go shopping himself... it's much less painful for both of us if I just do it.

Payless was having a BOGO sale, and surprisingly I didn't buy anything.. I don't know about you but I haven't been impressed with any of their shoes lately... and their men's selection is terrible. But Reitmans was having a BOGO too... and I kinda bought some stuff there, even though I promised myself I wasn't going to buy any more clothes. ( I just gave a whole garbage bag full to my best friend)

You see the problem is this: It's back to school season. Even though I hated school, I always loved back to school, because it meant new clothes. I used to scour the flyers in the weeks leading up to school, picking out outfits and imagining how much better they were going to make my life.

But now I'm pushing 30, and I have no school to go back to, so when I see the flyers... I feel left out. Anyway that's my story and I'm sticking to it, because it justifies the purchase of five more tops and a pair of pants.

After that bit of self indulgence, I headed on into Walmart to get Dave's shoes. I did that and managed not to do any back-to-school shopping for myself there... though I was tempted.

I did hit Giant Tiger on my way home though. In their back-to-school flyer they advertised a collapsible foot stool, and well... my foot stool looks like this:
You see, Tux has a thing for wicker... it's like catnip too him and he has to scratch the hell out of it. The faux leather top was destroyed by Rocky (as pictured) because he decided it would make a good launch pad when he's stalking Peno (or just running around like an idiot).

When I got to Giant Tiger, I discovered I had a choice of faux leather or faux suede. It was a really hard decision because the leather could get ripped up, but the suede would collect cat hair like a magnet. In the end I went with the leather, as you can see to the left.

(Yes Tux we know you're the king of the castle, you don't need to yell it in our ear)

As soon as I took the picture, I dumped Tux on the couch, and put a blanket over it. It should keep it looking new for at least a week or two.

But the best thing about it, is that it's hollow. The top comes off and it's a great place to hide... I mean... store yarn. The old one was the same and when I transferred its contents over, I found a whole bunch of yarn I forgot I had. It's almost as good as finding money in the pockets of the coat you haven't worn all year.

Once home, I set to work on the studio (as I'd planned to do yesterday before my efforts were thwarted). The studio was bad.

Really bad.

This is months (at least since May) of just throwing things in and shutting the door.

I have a whole stack of ironing to do that has piled up because I couldn't even get to my ironing board. And seriously... would you want to turn and iron on in there... I'd probably set the place on fire!

I've been meaning to get to this over and over, but I just kept putting it off. So today I opened the door and under the supervision of the dastardly duo:

I went to work.

It's not quite finished now. There are a lot of bead purchases that need to be put away properly, tonnes of documents that need to filed or shredded, and shelves that need attention, but at least I can get in there again. And iron with out the risk of a four alarm blaze.

After the great studio cleanup, I had a bath, read for an hour, wrote a letter. No knitting today, but I might get some done a little later on.

And now I'm about to head out to Dave's. I'm spending the night there because we have another early morning tomorrow, and another day full of events I didn't plan on.

So, tune in tomorrow for Classic Cars and War Heroes.

(PS Some wanted to know about Mopar's diabetes. The vet said it was most likely his age and the fact that he was overweight that contributed to it, not that he was a large breed cat)