If you weren't real I would make you up

Wednesday. I missed garbage day again. It's seems a trifle cuckoo the way that bothers me - but missing garbage day feels symbolically pathetic. I missed the opportunity to have all my garbage taken away from me and so it has to linger another week in the garage. I hate that.

This morning I went downstairs to the kitchen to make coffee and toast, taking Little Puppy with me because I prefer to keep her in my sight when the boy pups are free. Sometimes they are too bouncy with her. So I closed the baby-gate that keeps them upstairs and went to make breakfast. I was only gone ten minutes but by the time I returned they had managed to steal a tube of lip gloss from the top of my desk and smear it all over their blanket and consume enough to give them both fantastically shiny dog lips.

I've canceled my newspaper subscription. Otherwise I would have rolled up a paper and swatted myself on the nose with it for leaving that out for them to get at. They never miss an opportunity. It's me who's not so sharp sometimes, especially before the coffee is ready.

This morning the home inspection on the Vancouver house is taking place. I'm really hoping for good news. My parents seemed to think it was a bit crazy to buy a place with such an enormous yard; crazy, really, to buy a house based on what the dogs want. But what the dogs want is important to me. And even without dogs, I really can't imagine anything nicer than looking out the windows and seeing trees and grass instead of other houses. So my fingers (and their paws) are crossed that this home inspection goes well.

I have this idea in my head about building a koi pond. Seriously. With a little bridge and a waterfall and koi fish swimming. Not this summer; it will be too late by the time we arrive. But next summer, maybe. My father in law says people have tried this and learned that raccoons will hunt for koi in their gardens, but I think they've simply built their ponds too shallow with a ledge for raccoons to hold onto. A sharper drop and deeper water should alleviate the problem, I think. In any case, I'm going to do some reading and planning and see if it's possible. If not, just a water garden. With water lilies.

I'm also thinking a lot about all the tulips and daffodils I am going to plant. Hundreds of them, literally. Maybe thousands. I guess I'll have to put all the flowers in the front yard so the dogs aren't stung by wasps when they play.

I've been looking at all the photographs of that soaring wooden ceiling and growing more and more in love with the log-cabin feel of the place, the wood burning fireplaces, the strange mix of modern and quaint. Unlike the current house, swathed in white and beige, this new house is busting with character and personality.

When we moved in here we knew we weren't staying. Of course we assumed we'd be living in the other new house, but the point is that we knew we were leaving this place. And so we never painted it. We never put our pictures on the walls. All my paintings are still wrapped in brown paper in the basement. I haven't seen them in two years now. Living in all this blandness has had a strange effect on me. So much so that when I first looked at those gorgeous wood ceilings I thought they were kind of awful and wondered if they could be painted white. I'm starting to remember now, that I actually like colours and natural wood and stone. I'm just starting to wake up to how beautiful this house really is on the inside and how much potential it has to be the house we live in for the rest of our lives. There are, of course, some things that we will want to change. Like getting rid of alllllll the carpet and linoleum and putting in hardwood floors and tile. And swapping out the light fixtures and kitchen appliances. And painting.

But how I could have considered painting natural wood ceilings white is symptomatic of living in a monochromatic sea of beige for two years, and a true sign of how ill I really became. The fact that I looked at the real stone, wood burning fireplace and thought it was strange instead of beautiful is bizarre. (My current fireplace is framed in beige ceramic tiles with a painted white mantle shelf.)

Shawn says I'm not supposed to get excited about this house until the home inspection is complete but I'm finding that hard to manage. I like myself better with enthusiasm.

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