Before this version of The Bowery Girl, I had another blog, which still floats around “out there”. From time to time I’ll link in some of my favorite posts; it’s called recycling folks, it’s trending….
http://thebowerygirl.blogspot.ca/2010/05/give-or-take-inch.html
http://thebowerygirl.blogspot.ca/2010_05_01_archive.html
Can’t believe it will be three years this week! Congrats LS and C2!!!
There is a new swear word in our house.
G.L.U.T.E.N.
For the past few months, The Big Guy has noticed a bit of a pattern in his health and well being. Due to a suggestion from a work colleague, he decided to go off bread, specifically for the gluten component. He had an immediate response. In a positive way!
So we expanded on the experiment. Ironically, our nephew is gluten intolerant, but we didn’t really understand what that meant. A couple hours of online research gave us a crash course. Firstly, gluten is the glue of human food. IT. IS. EVERYWHERE!!! I challenge you to find a bread, cracker, cereal, or dessert that doesn’t have gluten in it. And if you do, please let me know what it is. Unfortunately, The Big Guy is a Big Lover of all things bread. And cake. And crackers with a smear of cheese. And bread. Did I mention bread? He used to rate Stag and Does based on the “quality” of the kaiser buns and handmade sandwiches he would make with them.
Big bread fan.
However, if that weren’t enough, gluten is in sauces (salad dressings, Worchestshire sauce, marinades and bbq sauce), snack foods (granola bars, pretzels) and pasta (KD?!?!?). This has not only rocked his lunch box, but is has kicked the crap out of my meal planning regimen. I’m not even going to discuss now long it now takes me to find my way through the grocery store, reading the labels on every single product!!
This introduced me to a whole new division of the grocery store – specialty foods! Mind you, I only have a limited selection in the area I living in, so now I’m keeping an eye out at just about every major grocery and bulk food store.
I started with these;
The muffin mix was $4 and change. They went over well.
The cake mix was $5. It was not. Imagine the delicious smell of brownie, followed by the the most dried out, tasteless brownie you have ever had the misfortune of eating. It was worse that that. Yum.
Along with these purchases, I invested in white rice flour, brown rice flour and tapioca flour. And a cookbook. Then I looked into a line of credit to afford this….
This pasta better cook itself, cuz it put me back $10. I now understand why my nephew claims to be the poorest student on campus. While his peers live on spaghetti and other cheap pastas, he’s paying almost as much in rent as he is for his weekly food bill!
Ironically, this past weekend my Dad found this –
…which apparently I’m going to have to drag The Big Guy to, if for no other reason, than I can learn how to cook for him again!
Until then, I expect A LOT more swearing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILBwN_Ut_pM&feature=player_embedded
I think I’m crushing on the Liberals!
Dear Stephen Harper aka Canada’s Bully,
I have just this evening viewed the filth commercial broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party of Canada, or should I say, the Stephen Harper Support Group, which bashes Justin Trudeau, the recently elected leader of the Liberal Party.
This would be my shortest communication ever, if I was to say “Smarten the hell up!”, but I feel I should expand on this somewhat.
First of all, in a day and age when bullying in the classroom, playground and arena is at an all-time high, can we really expect anything of our children, when our elected officials, indeed adults and purported “leaders” are guilty of such childish behaviour?
Your commercial criticizes Justin Trudeau for his background as a teacher, and a camp counsellor. How clever, because NO ONE would have thought that working with children was a lower calling. You seem to think that a strip tease is Trudeau doffing his suit jacket and shirt at a recognized fundraiser. I’m gonna help you out here, don’t Google “Magic Mike.”
It seems fairly evident that you are a little threatened by this supposed upstart. I can understand why. You have sampled all of the political parties (starting with the Liberals yourself in your University days, followed by the Reform Party of Canada – what a swell bunch, and finally the Conservative Party, which you felt the need to rebrand as “The Harper Government” once elected). Perhaps the fact that Trudeau has been a dedicated and loyal member of his party is threatening to you.
No one would blame you for being intimidated by someone 12 years your junior, and who received 80% of his party’s support in the first vote. Then there is the obvious; in our society, a man who is young, attractive, articulate and open to new ideas is much more appealing than a man, uh, hmm…. who isn’t.
Let’s face it, your brand of “leading”, which more closely resembles “dictatorship” is dated. Your regime would fit in nicely with Diefenbaker’s. Welcome to the 21st Century, where taxpayers like more support for the Environment, the Arts, Education and a little less importance on supporting your corporate cronies.
I would like to say that I believe our government can do better, and show leadership, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Although we are years away from an election (unfortunately), you have authorized attack-style election ads. Do you really thing the Canadian voter is that simple? It’s not our style. It never will be.
Why not earn your office through integrity, innovation and class, instead of degrading yourself and smearing the competition? Why not try to relate to the people you govern? And I don’t mean by playing The Beatles. All you have to do is look South to see a man elected to the highest office who people can identify with. Canada has become the laughing-stock of the free world, thanks to RoboCalls. But at least you were able to throw an intern under that bus.
What it comes down to is a bully has to put others down to feel better about themselves. If this week is any indication, I wonder how low your opinion is of yourself.
Yours in Democracy,
Sarah
It’s been quite a week.
Whenever a holiday rolls around, it seems like time moves twice as quickly and my list of things to accomplish is twice as long. In the case of this week, we are down a day as well. I really enjoy Easter for a number of reasons, and look forward to it all winter long.
I wanted to be mindful of the religious meaning of this week; to take things in stride and be flexible when something popped up. But for some reason, it was the “Let’s See How Much Shit Sarah Can Tolerate Week”. Unfortunately, I didn’t get that memo.
Monday to Thursday was filled with tests and challenges. Kids who were seeing how far they could push each other, and me; days at work that went from slow and monotonous to being assigned a mountain of work; barely speaking to my husband, and not because we didn’t want to talk, but because he was just as busy as I was. Trying to sympathize, empathize and take the high road.
A friend of my was caught in a bind regarding the care of her horses, and being faced with no alternatively, I offered to help her out. It was something I found myself looking forward to! Which did help somewhat with the ongoing frustrations of the week.
Each time I looked at these events as challenges I could deal with. The kids were tired, and coming down with colds so I tried to get them to bed sooner. Well, I tried – they argued and resisted and ended up going to be a the regular time. I tried to think of improvements at work that could fill my down time and worked efficiently when the work load suddenly doubled. I gave a lot of thought to how we could accommodate the various schedules over the Easter Weekend so that everyone was happy.
That’s when things really started to hit the skids.
Every now and then, I find I go through a couple of days, or in this case – a week, where I could say “Hey, How are you today?” and the person I’m speaking to would hear “WHAT THE F— IS YOUR PROBLEM?” I’ve been told this is a problem for Virgos, so when I saw it starting to rear its ugly head, I made a point of gearing down and measuring my words. Sympathize, empathize, high road…… Rinse and repeat.
Yeah, that bombed.
So by Thursday afternoon, two people thought I was a Grade A bitch, ironically, the two people I had gone out of my way to accommodate. Massive FAIL. In both cases, the exchanges ended with me removing myself from the conversation so I didn’t say what was really on my mind.
On Thursday afternoon, I’m fighting my way through the throngs of people. People who leave their cart in the middle of an aisle in a grocery store so they can look for FRIED ONIONS THREE FREAKIN’ AISLE OVER! People banging in to you, and your cart, which is overflowing. People who think the day before a long weekend is the BEST time to catch up with their neighbors, five feet inside the store doors.
Throughout my tour at the grocery store, I noticed two women; one about my age and her daughter, who would be the same age as First Born Son. I noticed them look at me in the meat section. Then again in the frozen foods. I could feel someone looking at me a couple more times, and thought I was getting a complex.
Finally I navigate the humanity that is a grocery store at 5 p.m. on Maundy Thursday, and I end up in the line behind these two women. They look at me, look at each other, and then START WHISPERING.
Folks, I nearly lost my mind right there. After trying so hard to not feel negative, to try and look at things from other peoples’ points of view and trying help out friends and family who have need help throughout the week – only to get slammed, I was ready to put my fist through their carton of eggs. Very. Ready. “WHAT THE F— IS YOUR PROBLEM?” was on the tip of my tongue – and I would have meant to say it!
As we crept toward the cashier, and I started unloading my groceries, when the mother spun around, leaned in towards me and said,
“Your hair ROCKS! I LOVE it!!!!” with the biggest smile I had seen all week. The daughter, behind her, was smiling and nodding vigorously.
In a instant I felt horrible for being such a mental bitch to her, combined with a mix of feeling flattered and pleased, because one does not expect to receive compliments, never mind in public. I gave her a big smile and said thank you. She and her daughter continued to converse, but now I could hear some of it, “awesome” came up a couple of times.
Once I got in my vehicle, I thought about how things can spin on a dime. All week I had worked so hard to make everyone else happy, and not a single person recognized me for it, or in fact, told me I had made things worse. Here, I go about doing my own thing, and a complete stranger comes up to me and gives ME a compliment; something that I myself have made a habit of doing to other people.
And the hair….
Totally ROCKED!!!!
Happy Easter, Happy Passover!
A number of you have asked what the process was for painting the cupboards, so here’s the saga that was, THE KITCHEN!!
I wanted to change the hardware as it was dated, and since the hinges were mounted on the outside and not hidden, I had to
– take the doors off the cabinets
– remove hardware
– fill the holes remaining with wood filler
Before the wood filler, I wiped them with an environmentally friendly version of TSP from Home Hardware, by Natura. It gets them really clean and lifts the finish (not that these ones had much finish to lift!!!) so the paint adheres well.
I then put three coats of paint on – this is because the originals were so dark and I wanted to go lighter. I painted the cabinets, then painted the doors in the laundry room so they had space to dry.
The Big Guy put on the new hardware – and swore. A lot.
He pulled off the old grout from the counter top to the back splash and TSP’d the counter top.
We used a melamine paint (also from Home Hardware) in the dark brown to help tie in the colors. It went on rather light, more like a milk chocolate, and he panicked, as the walls are more espresso brown. However, when it dried, it darkened down nicely. Although The Big Guy would tell you “IT’S NOT THE SAME COLOR”, it certainly is very close and with the varied colors in the tiles of the back splash, it doesn’t bother me in the least.
We didn’t used the countertop for a week, and even now, are very careful with it. It takes 21 days to fully cure, but when we did this in the last house, we put a small scratch in it within three days. So far, we are doing well!!!
At the time, I told The Big Guy I never wanted to paint cupboards again, but now that I see how well the kitchen turned out, I’m looking at my bathrooms!! lol. Vanities would be MUCH easier as they are smaller. Not nearly as big a project; since there are two bathrooms, we would also have an option. It’s hard having the kitchen out of commission especially with kids that are hungry all the time!
I’m not here to promote a specific product, or company, just sharing what we used based on the resources in our community.
Good Luck!
Nothing like being laid up for a couple of days to help you catch up on the little things you don’t seem to have time for.
Such as downloading photos. Ironically, this coincides with a large project we have just finished, and I’m quite proud of! The kitchen.
When we purchased this house, the kitchen was…..something.
Warning! This image has been known to cause seizures!
It was quickly determined to be one of the priorities when we bought the place, and two years later, we finally tackled it. Here’s what we started with;
The backsplash is so old, it’s actually en vogue!
Spot the Difference! Paint, light, window and about 2 lbs less of finishing nails.
Last fall I bit the bullet and decided to paint the cupboards. It took two weeks of almost no activity in the kitchen, thanks to the work schedule, and if I knew then what I know now…..
Then came the painting of the countertop. We had done this in our previous house, and while we could have paid four times as much for new countertops, or twice as much for a fancy stone-look application, we know this is not our forever kitchen. We just need to give the old girl a touch up, not an overhaul!
A countertop that looked like someone threw up butterscotch pudding.
We stayed off that counter for a full week. A blessing in some ways, a curse in others. Suffice it to say, we are not having fish and chips for a long, long time!
The Big Guy, being the handy fellow he is, finally got around to the little job that has been a thorn in my side since we put in the dishwasher. I pulled the cupboards out when we installed the dishwasher, and the remaining hole has been a catch-all. I’d like it to be a space where the boys can store their lunch bags, and a tidier look for the dish rack.
Ok, so he needed some help….
But in the end, I think it was work it!
On a sunny day, this room glows!
Yes, that is the World’s Largest Fridge. What about it?!!
Almost makes the floor look better. Almost.
A big job off the To Do List. The only problem now is, this room is making other rooms looks pretty shabby. (Master Bedroom, are you listening?)
Some day, he’s going write a memoir and this will be the moment he will recall that pushed him over the edge….
HAPPY SUNDAY!
These conversations actually happened in my house.
Honestly, I can’t make this stuff up…..
Second Born Son: Having a girlfriend is expensive.
Me: How do you know this?
SBS: Everybody knows this!
Me: (Ok, I’ll indulge him) Hmm. So how is having a girlfriend expensive?
SBS: You have to buy the gifts for their birthday, for Christmas, Valentine’s Day. So I’ve figured it out.
Me: Oh, have you?
SBS: Yup. I’m going to break up with them. Right before their birthday or Christmas or Valentine’s day.
Me: Oh, you think that’s going to work?
SBS: Yup. Then I won’t have to buy them any presents.
Me: Well, I think that’s only going to work for you once or twice, then the word is going to get out.
SBS: What word?
Me: That you are a lousy boyfriend!
Followed by this gem…
First Born Son: I think I’ve figured out the Valentine’s Day thing.
Me: What’s that?
FBS: It’s not what you do on the 14th that counts…
Me: Ok… (I’ve got some hope here!)
FBS: Ya, it’s what you do on the 15th! And besides, everything is on sale then!
I can see I have my work cut out for me!
So what do you want to be when you grow up?
Harmless enough question. Except when you are the one who has the answer it. We recently sat down with First Born Son and his high school guidance counsellor to discuss his second semester course selection, which was somewhat jumbled. It ended up being a discussion about where he wants to go to college, and ultimately, his career.
Since FBS’s Plan A is not to be, we are looking at ways to get him where he wants to be; on a farm, even if we can’t start him off on one. He needs to make enough money in his primary profession, so that he can eventually buy his own piece of land.
As FBS is half way through Grade 10, we thought it might be a little premature to start the college convo, but according to the counsellor, it’s never too early.
What a change.
When I was in school, you filled out a form half way through Grade 11. It listed your likes and dislikes. The Big Guy did this as well and was advised he would make a wonderful undertaker. My results were inconclusive, and when I went to my guidance counsellor for clarification, and get his opinion on my thoughts for a college education, he suggested that I enrol in university. His only qualifier for this was a random comment about my appearance. I left his office confused and slightly disturbed.
As far as career planning, it was left to my interests at the time and my lack of faith that I would actually be accepted to any college. There was never a conversation about employment options, or earning potential. I applied for Journalism at College 1, Graphic Design at College 2 and Flight Attendant at College 3. I figured wherever I was accepted to, that would be where I attended. So much for a plan. Months later, I hear back from the applications. I’ve been accepted at all three; color me amazed!
But now, it is best to have a plan from Grade 9. The level of study you enter will determine if you will attend university, college or trade school, or enter the work force directly from high school. Each year you narrow your options, putting a finer point on your field of study. FBS had a fairly sharp point on his future, but learned the hard way that he’s going to have to keep on taking Math, English and Science for the next two years!
I wasn’t sure who was more excited during our meeting, FBS or The Big Guy. The counsellor kept coming up with awesome college courses, more awesome college campuses and EPIC career options. Studying outside, high employment ratios, not tied to a desk!!! I gotta say, it was sounding so good that I was ready to sign up, except the commute is brutal. Apparently the “best” programs were the ones farthest away from home.
Of course they are….
At least I have two more years to get used to that idea, and find ways to keep The Big Guy from stowing away in the luggage!
The Bowery Girl 