Meg's Menagerie

Here are my kitties...

Frangelica, referred to always as Gellie, is my oldest. Gellie was discovered in the middle of a cold autumn night by my Aunt Deb, who trooped outside in her boots and PJs to rescue a small abandoned mewling kitten, bless her. This little grey gargoyle was my birthday gift. While I have custody, Gellie's other mama is Paulina, my uni roommate, who still resides in Kingston and is finishing her MA. For a young cat (3 years), Gellie is extraordinarily well-travelled. Planes, trains, taxis, automobiles across Canada and back again - Gellie is a wonderfully calm travel companion. She just sleeps.



And below are my first-ever boys. (Unless any of my fish or newts were actually boys. I do not possess the biological expertise to determine...) On the left is Bobolink, or Blink, (or Stubs the Tailless Wonder according to Sue), and on the right is Periwinkle, or Wink. Yes, I know - the names are cutesey. But they somehow bring to mind animated woodland characters in a children's story for me. And yes, I know - the disconnect between imaginary realms and reality that is supposed to have occurred around age 8 or so never did quite happen with me... ;-)


Aren't they adorable? Though they keep me up all hours and make my already disastrously messy room even messier, I love them to bits.

Here they are just the other day, napping atop my mountain of homeless comforters, blankets, and area rugs. On the left is Wink, and on the right is Blink. You can also distinguish them by noting which one is the fattest. That would be Sir Bobolink, who somehow manages to eat more than his fair share, despite my meticulous monitoring of portion sizes, food dishes and eating times...

I'm going to have to buy him a kitty treadmill or something.

(Left = wink, Right = Blink, as above. I guess they each have a favourite 'photo pose' side...)

Made the Headline!

I forgot one more thing...
The partier-vandals!

See the photos? That is the result of one of the former tenants (unconfirmed, as of yet) who came back to pick up the furniture stored in the garage, have a party in the house, break two windows upstairs (only one window had the glass shattered), leave beer bottles all over and cigarette butts in the garage, and then leave and carefully lock every door up from the outside - with a key...

The event made the headline of the crimes section in the Spruce Grove Examiner.

Grrrrr!

But I have a lot to be grateful for, in actual fact. Some dear friends of the family had their house broken into during the day last week. The burglars trashed everything, dumping out drawers and freezers and the fridge. Ultimately, they only took the few pieces of valuable jewelry that were in the house. But then, inexplicably, they went down into the basement and lit a fire. The fire department said that this is the second worst arson ever seen in Spruce Grove and had the potential to cause a great deal more damage than it did. Thankfully, a passing delivery person saw the smoke and called it in. It will still be 6 to 9 months before they can move back in, and most everything will need to be rebuilt and replaced due to smoke and water damage.

So, in addition to my installing a security system at the Farmhouse, my mother is now doing the same. Bonnie was jumping up over all the furniture near the windows at the rear of the house last week (made quite a mess, too), and it could quite possibly be because these same burglars were casing out the house. The RCMP said that they do their research, and watch the patterns of the home owners carefully. They have even built little shanties in the trees in the Participark trails, with cases of tools and whatnot stashed in them. *shiver*

Farmhouse - First Installment

So, I promised some pictures of the Farmhouse as it is being renovated... Here they are!

The first pictures are of the house exterior from the front, one from last week, and another from last winter.















The next photos are of the renos in progress in what will be my bedroom.
First knockdown - see the brick from the chimney peeking through?

The middle photo is taken from what will be the sitting area of the bedroom.


And in the picture to the right, taken from the bed area of the bedroom, you can see where the arch will be going in: It will be about 5 feet, and will stretch from the column at the far left of the chimney until the second last exposed column. (If that makes any sense. :-)

The chimney will be exposed on three sides once the arch is finished.

Perspective

Yay - Exposed brick chimney a go!

I just got back from the Farmhouse, where the currently beloved Mike-the-furnace/chimney-dude took one look at the furnace and stated: "Sure, no problem. We'll just insert a liner into the chimney, and uhm, yeah. We can fix that all up and it will meet code." Then he proceeded to tell me that it would "only" be about $450 bucks for both materials and labour, and as part of that estimate, he will be fixing something that HAS to be done for my furnace to meet new inspection codes.

It all sounded great to me. As I drove away, it occurred to me that my perspective on what is expensive and cheap has altered quite a bit since undertaking this multi-thousand dollar project. If someone had told me that something would cost close to $500 a year ago, I would have thought that a big investment. Today, I beamed brightly at Mike and thought - wow, what a deal!

But the important point is: I can have exposed brick in my bedroom. Merveilleux!

Welcome!

Hello, hello!

I am inspired by so many of my friends who are keeping blogs, and figure this is a good way to keep up my correspondence to my many distant friends. (I'm choosing to disregard Holly's not-so-fabulous experience, in favour of everyone else's good ones...)

If you check in every once in a while, I will have posts on what's happening in the life of Meghan. And I will have pictures, too. :-)

I'm sure the topic that will occupy my thoughts for the next few months will be the renovations to the Farmhouse. For all of you too distant to visit, I will post pix for you to watch the progression of the facelift. Right now, one wall is knocked down, and we're debating whether the exposed brick of the chimney is permitted to be left open or not. (Obviously, I would love to have some exposed brick in my bedroom!)

Anyhow, I will check back in when I have something of interest to write!

Cheers,
Megs xoxo