Flower Decals, Bike Trials, Silly S and Stinky Pee

3 May

Ah, Sunday night. The end of the weekend and the time we’re mere hours away from being back at work. Tomorrow being Monday usually causes me some sadness, but seeing as how the Franz Ferdinand show is tomorrow night, I’m a wee bit excited for it. I lent Natalie the band’s latest CD on Friday so that she could give it a listen over the weekend. I’m hoping that she had a chance to listen to it and that she liked some of the songs.

The weekend’s been pretty busy. Friday night we came home and just about crashed. S cozied up with a book and I dusted off the Heavenly Sword game I hadn’t played in a long time. It was one of the games S got me for my birthday last year; all of the hype around it made it sound like a great game. I gave it an honest try, but couldn’t get into it. While the graphics were amazing, the controls and game play were awkward and redundant. I found playing it again to be much of the same, but boredom has lead me to play it a few times throughout the weekend.

Saturday was spent out and about. We had made lunch plans with S’s former colleague, Cynthia. This would be the first time we’d be visiting her at home. Unsure of what to expect, we found ourselves inside a home that was still stuck in the ‘70s. There were stuffed animals, doilies and floral decals everywhere. The kitchen cabinets had apple decals on them and it looked like an old country house. I kept thinking about what Colin and Justin or Sophie Allsop would think of the home’s design.

Cynthia’s house backs onto a ravine so while she and S talked shop, I took the pup for a stroll through the ravine. When we got back, we enjoyed some lunch and caught up on what we’ve been up to.

After being entertained by the gal pal’s incessant staring out the window at squirrels, we bid good-bye to Cynthia and drove over to P’s place. We figured since we were in the neighbourhood, we would stop in and pick up our bicycles that were still in P’s basement.

There was a bit of confusion around the bikes since S and I bought new ones last year. P suggested S return her new one and just use hers – P’s – since we’d only be biking out in the ‘burbs. (We were leaving the bikes at her house since we didn’t have anywhere to store them in the condo.) Now that we have a house of our own and storage, we figured we’d bring the bikes to our place. S got the feeling that P didn’t want to part with the bike – even though she said S could have it and she never rides it. S said we would bring both bicycles back with us but she’d buy a new one and then return P’s. P said that’s not necessary, but we’ll see how it goes.

We visited for awhile and then loaded up the bikes in the truck and came home. We settled down at our computers and surfed the intertubes. We didn’t have much to make dinner with as we hadn’t thought to take anything out to thaw. “What should we do for dinner?” I asked S.

“There’s a bunch of books being released this month, I need to see this!” S answered. S likes to buy and read craptastic lesbian fiction. Apparently, one of the major queer publishers was releasing a slew of titles and she wanted to thoroughly check it out.

After asking me what it was we had, I went into the kitchen and called out what we had in the freezer. S walked into the kitchen and said, “Lets have chocolate ice cream cones for dinner!”

“Uh-huh,” I replied. “We’d be hungry again in an hour.”

S went into her wallet and pulled out thirty bucks. “Is this enough for that take out you speak of?”

In between bursts of laughter, I let her know that it depended on what she wanted to order. I said I could go to the bank machine a few blocks away and get more cash. “No, I don’t want anyone to have to leave the house,” S said.

“What about the booze we forgot in the truck?” I asked remembering that we hadn’t brought in the wine we’d bought earlier in the day.

“Well, that’s okay, but that’s all.” S replied.

I went out to the truck and retrieved our paper bag full of alcohol – classy, I know. I came back in to the house to find S perusing the take out menu of a local pizza joint. “Can we get roasted potatoes on our pizza?!” S asked excitedly.

“Huh?” I asked, totally surprised.

She laughed as she grabbed the wine bottles out of my hand to put away. When looking at our wine shelf, she noticed that it was nearly full. “Oh look, we didn’t really need to buy more wine,” she said. It had been one of those, “I see it, I want it, lets get it,” things while in the liquor store.

Wine put in it’s place, S turned her attention back to the menu. She named off a few different toppings and then narrowed down her selection. Thankfully, she left the roasted potatoes off of the list.

I called up the pizza place and put in our order. The guy on the other line sounded like a real eye-talian. “Where you live-a, anyway?” he asked. I hung up with him after completing the order and S and I continued surfing.

When the pizza arrived, we took our slices and settled down with this week’s episode of 30 Rock. (Side note: how awesome is that show?!) We capped off our night with an episode of Law & Order that we barely made it through, we were so sleepy.

This morning saw an early start to the day. I took the pup out for our walk and it was gorgeous out; the sun was shining, it wasn’t chilly and there weren’t many other dogs out in the park. We were out for awhile as I left the pup roam around and enjoy the walk.

S and I had our breakfast and I set about getting some laundry done. While that was going on, I gave Heavenly Sword another spin. Shortly after, S told me that the handy guy had arrived – we’ve had a friend of S’s over to re-build our fence in the backyard and take care of some other small repairs.

S went out to talk to him and we figured we should get a start to our day. We went and got groceries and came home to discover the fourth burnt out pot light in the kitchen. It was getting quite dark in there; we didn’t have any bulbs so we’d have to go out and get some. A friend of ours had shown me how to change the lights, but when I tried it on my own, I was worried about causing damage. The whole putting the entire light fixture out of the wall left me feeling uneasy. I didn’t want to put a bunch of holes in the ceiling.

I managed to pull out one of the fixtures today but couldn’t get the bulb out. Out of desperation, S asked the handy guy to come in and he got the bulb out. S and I decided to make a walk of it and took the pup with us to get the bulbs.

Once back home, I set about changing the bulbs. I didn’t want the handy guy to do it because I couldn’t exactly call him over every time a bulb went out. And damn it, I wanted to feel like I could do something sort of handy. It took some swearing, getting plaster dust everywhere and few tantrums, but I managed to get all of the bulbs changed. It was a pretty victorious moment – even if it was something ridiculously simple.

The afternoon progressed and the handy guy finished up for the day. S noticed that our back room (where the pup’s pee pads are) was really stinking of pee. Her nose led her to the welcome rug which was still wet. “Sophie’s peeing on this too!” S exclaimed. She had caught the cat peeing on another rug last weekend. A further look led to the discovery of pee all over the blanket on the couch in the room. “God damn it! I’m going to open the door and let her free!” S yelled.

While I’m not enthused about the peeing on furniture and rugs, I would feel pretty shitty giving her away. I’ve looked online and there’s a bunch of suggestions. S and I changed out her litter tonight so it’s completely fresh. Hopefully, that’ll curb the peeing. I’ve also put aluminum foil on the couch in the hopes it will deter her from climbing on there. If anyone has any tips that have worked for you, please share.