sweet nothing(s)

1. i'm on a peanut butter on toast kick. i love how peanut butter melts a little bit and gets all gooey. i love that i have found a place to buy bread where it is cheaper than making it. about 61 cents a loaf. so i can eat peanut butter on toast with wild abandon.

2. tomorrow is my partner's birthday. yes, he was born on earth day. we're out of eggs, milk, soymilk, all sorts of stuff, but i wanted to bake him a cake or brownies tonight. it doesn't look like it's going to happen. i'll get some groceries tomorrow and hopefully have something birthday-ish to feed him for dinner. he's requesting liver and onions. cooking liver makes me want to vomit.

3. i applied for a job over the weekend and i was soooooo excited because i was certain i'd gotten it, but then they never called today like they said they would. so now i'm questioning myself. did i misinterpret their apparent enthusiasm at the prospect of hiring me? are they devious and sneaky and act like that with everyone? will they call tomorrow? will i ever get a job?

4. my maternity benefits end in july. i need to find a source of income by then. any ideas?

5. is a round number. i am going to bed now. here are some random, amusing images to see you off.

an apple tree in the living room

my roomate's son and i started a bunch of apple seeds last month. we wrapped them in damp paper towel, stuck them in a ziplock bag and left them on the windowsill. when one of them sent out a shoot we created a little greenhouse for it.
you can't really see it, but there's a little white finger sticking out of the soil. the greenhouse is a water bottle cut in half, with three layers inside. in the bottom is eggshells (for drainage) then a layer of old jasmine tea leaves (for nutrients) topped with about 1 1/2 inches of soil. the top lifts off easily. i watered it until the water was up near the top of the eggshells, as you can see.

after a couple of weeks the little plant hadn't grown, but it had turned reddish. i was puzzled. i thought maybe that seed had something wrong with it and went to check the other seeds i'd started germinating in the paper towel. one had grown much bigger than the original one i'd planted, and it turns out that apple seeds send out roots before leaves! i dug up the first seedling and threw it in the compost and planted the whole of the second seed. i didn't take a picture since there was nothing to see.
the next morning i had this:









a baby apple tree!
two days later it looks like this:

trunny roubles

i've been financially challenged for my whole life, some times more than others. i'm very, very good at living frugally. i'm not so good with money-related stress. i tend to do stupid things when things get bad, like stopping eating and developing ulcers. not so good.

i've been reading about the american economy and keeping track of what's going on - it doesn't look good. and when the USA takes a dump canada has to turn the bathroom fan on. all this means that i'm not likely to be suffering from excessive affluence any time soon. and things are bad for us right now, thanks to some unexpected, expensive events. so i'm feeling the money stress. but if the economy is tanking i need to learn some better coping skills. i can't spend the next five years obsessively reworking the numbers, skipping food and not sleeping. those things aren't my idea of fun. i need to find new ways to be.

so we have a new budget. i think it's going to work. i don't feel guilty and wasteful every time i eat something, since i know that my meals fit in our budget. and i can ride a bus without panicking about the bus fare for the whole ride. in fact, i can buy the things i need and the things i want, within limits. because i've told myself that the amounts for each thing are set in stone and i can't change them just because i'm neurotic.

so instead of seeing how many vital things i can cut from our lives i'm trying a new challenge: how good of quality of life can i provide within the budget? i've begun baking, knitting, making soy milk. cooking, attempting to clean more, trying to use creative, homemade solutions. plant pots made from flyers, homemade biscuits when i want a snack, things like that. if i save enough up i'm going to get the supplies needed to make cheese. in the meantime i'm buying the odd avocado or kiwi, savouring really good coffee.

homemade fugliness

i haven't posted much lately. i've been starting seedlings, cooking, budgeting, doing the usual childcare, and sock knitting. yup! it's ugly, but it's mine! and it keeps growing! it might even be done soon! and i'm in love with the process that brought it about! (ok, so that's a lot of exclamation marks and i'm making my sock sound like an ugly baby. but i'm so proud!)
pics:

in other news, the boy is walking around saying 'peace out, bro!' with the appropriate hand gestures. he also chants 'rock the casbah! rock the casbah!' at regular intervals. i'm mighty fond of him. the baby is teething and crawling and pulling himself up on things. he gets up and can't figure out how to get down, so he falls and cries. and he has a mighty big bum.

that is all.