Before Cheruby went away, I bought him a present - The Writer's Toolbox. It has some gidgets and gadgets to help writers come up with things to write about. As we were exploring his new toy, he told me that he wanted to read more of my writing. That's a bit intimidating, but I'm game. It was the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up - a writer.

I was a voracious reader as a child. I used to sit hunched over with my night light shining over my shoulder onto the page when I was supposed to be sleeping. I made a fort in the bottom of my closet so that I didn't have to hunch in front of the night light anymore. I only got caught a few times, but certainly not enough to discourage me from doing it. Sometimes, I'd even go back to it the same night just after I'd been caught and told to go to sleep.

Those two ideas, writing and reading, come in a package for me. It was from my love of reading (which I still have, I just have a lot of other obligations that keep from doing just what I want - stupid needing to live and have money and be clean) that came my desire to be a writer. Then I tried it once in grade 7 and wasn't very good at it so I didn't really bother trying again after that. There are a lot of things that come easy to me on the first try and when something came along that I didn't easily pick up, I just chose to go another direction - like bowling. Bowling reasonably well is way easier than writing reasonably well.

In my foray into writing a story for my sweetheart, I realized that once I'd envisioned the ending, which I always thought was my "hard part," I was done writing the story in my head and the effort to get that down on paper, reasonably well, wasn't worth the end product for me. No one would be able to definitively tell me that I'd done a good job. I needed that a lot as a kid. Good marks meant I'd done a good job. A high score in bowling meant I'd done a good job. Someone could read my story and really like it, but someone else might think it was kind of lame. No real way to tell whether my efforts were good or not.

So, I'm going to do my best to finish my story. And read it and edit it and make it pretty and make it into something of which I can be proud. (And with that I'm reminded of the line from Alien: Resurrection, "...I am not the man with whom to fuck.")

I had high hopes for getting stuff done today. It's 3:45 and I have a clean tub, but not a clean bathroom. I have made a few Scrabble moves on Facebook. I've watched the end of The Hunt for Red October which I've come to really love after first thinking I would hate it. I started catching up on some blog reading. And now I have a sleeping cat on my chest as I blog.

I missed farmers' market, but I still have time to finish cleaning the bathroom. Tonight, I have some process writing planned for work. What could be more fun? I'll probably stick in some Lord of the Rings to keep me company.

The one thing that I love about the heat is the sleeping cats. They are so hot they don't want to move just as we humans get, but they can actually sleep. And they look dead on the carpet, other than the breathing.

So, here's an effort to get something else done today, I'm going to go get some magazine racks for Cheruby's music. I'm hoping to colour him impressed when he gets home.

There are tons of shows on television that tell us what beauty is and I'm not even going to talk about commercials. The show on right now is Plastic Makes Perfect and this particular episode is having a teenager getting a nose job. She's already a model and her parents are going along with this and even paying for it. Is it a good idea? Will it give her short term happiness that will translate into long term happiness? Just because someone doesn't have to learn to love themselves in spite of perceived defects and they have the money to fix those defects, is it really a bad thing?

Probably.

What I love about me is me. I am who I am, but I've had some rough times with liking myself because of my weight. The biggest thing that bothers me about it now is the unhealthiness of it.

I guess the thing that breaks my heart is that it takes so long for some people to learn that. I'm so scared for my niece because I don't want her to have to have that pain. The pain for me was part of what made me humble. If I hadn't gone through that, I don't know if I would be where I am today.

Everyone is different and learns differently. Maybe pain isn't necessary to learn, but maybe it is.

So if I reach my goals, I can increase that to 94 which I like better.

Well, I did it. I finally got up the nerve yesterday to talk to my neighbour. Apparently crying in front of his wife on Wednesday morning had an impact, because he wasn't angry when we started talking like I figured he would be until I gave him the letter I got from my contractor and he had to face the fact that I wasn't lying. He was nice enough and not being angry at all that I started to cry about 2 or 3 sentences into what I was trying to say. I gave him the letter and Cheruby's and my names and our phone number in case there was anything else he wanted to talk about.

He told me he didn't want to be a bitchy neighbour either which I had thought. This incident just coloured that a little. In the winter, he shoveled the sidewalk in front of the house and this spring, he put some stuff on my cedars for me. Yesterday, he mowed the part of the lawn next to the street which is impossible to get with the push mower. That's what gave me the nerve - he just did something nice for us.

Every time during this thing that I started to get upset with him, I had to remind myself that he was a nice guy and think of all the things he's done for me. (Oh yeah, he pushed my car out of a snow bank last year, too.) And remind myself of his point of view and I always felt bad for the state of his basement. It was definitely the exception when I was calling him names and Cheruby can attest to that. He got into trouble for dissing the guy a few times. Of course, that was at the whim of my moods too.

After talking to him last night, I came back into the house and let the apparently enormous amount of stress I'd been carrying around out through the usual way. (Tears, you pervs!) And then I finally got a full night's rest last night.

And today, I'm not scared to spend time in the backyard (that was a surprise to me when I realized it) and in fact am feeling inspired to do just that.

So, after my last update on my house, things have gotten a little crazier.

I finally got my estimate from the roofing people for eavestroughing on July 3. I phoned initially on April 27. That's how backed up everything is. I likely won't get eavestroughing until September or October though. It's really, really awful. I guess that's not the true awful part - that would be the registered letter I got from the City yesterday just after I got the quote for the work. It says I have to have eavestroughing on the house by July 27 or I'm going to get fined $10,000. I do get to appeal, but if that doesn't go through, I'm kind of screwed. I'm so worried about my appeal getting lost in the mail. You know, one of those things where nothing goes according to the way it normally works. I think I might send it Express Post or registered just so that I can track it.

On the other hand, I was just looking over some notes to ensure I'd done all the to do items and I saw that I had written down something cool that happened on our camping trip a few weeks ago. Cheruby and I were sitting at the picnic table and our first thought at a new sound was, "That's one HUGE mosquito!" Then we both instantly were looking around to catch a glimpse of what had to be a hummingbird, not a mosquito. It hovered just a few feet from us and let us have a good look. It was a wonderful, brief moment on our trip worth remembering.

In celebrations this weekend, we did some pretty cool stuff.

Friday after work, Cheruby and I stuck around for a while and slowly packed up to go to Lumsden for International White Trash Week. I thought I was being wimpy when I went to bed, but then I saw that it was 4 in the morning. Of course, at that time Jill was still pouring very strong spice-ed rum and cokes for a few of her guests.

We woke well after the crack of noon the next day to go gaming much later than Cheruby wanted. He went to Games Day with Jill while Ril, Kaz and I made up werewolf characters for the vampire LARP that night. We played a pack of Get of Fenris who were grumpy with the leech-ridden city. They were being contained by the Wendigo but were getting pretty uppity so we went in to show them how powerful we were and that they should stop rattling their cage. We all made it out alive too which was great. We took down five of them including the prince and sheriff. Not quite what we expected, but it worked out well for us. I did feel a little bad about killing off PCs, but Jill gave us cart-blanche for our actions. If they were stupid, we got to act accordingly. We really were looking for a fight, but we got one sooner than we thought.

To finish off our fabulous evening, we went back to the loft for more International White Trash Week celebrations. I was mixing the strong drinks this time. Gin and juice was very yummy. Ril thought so too. Heh.

Sleeping made it impossible to make it back in time for Low Life this afternoon with Drang and family, but we did get to have barbecued hot dogs for Canada Day which was yummy.

We're off to Cheruby's mom's for supper shortly and then tomorrow is more hanging out with Kaz and Ril maybe. And a friend of Cheruby's from Vancouver. Another busy, fun weekend.

Oh, and happy birthday to His Nibs. That was another fabulous reason to celebrate this weekend.