bits and bants vol.37

it's been a while, so here are some updates!

Hello, dearest reader, how have two months flown by so quickly?

My answer would be because it may have been the two busiest months of my life! Moving house with a household of seven to a new home an hour and a half away, having three high school aged kids start going to a hybrid, in-person school situation twice a week, homeschooling two other kids, moving into said new house, painting, cleaning, unpacking, oh, and a little thing like flying away to Ireland for a dreamy ten day pilgrimage that had been planned for over a year(!), really take up a lot of one’s time.

Every week I think naively to myself, “This will be the week that feels more normal!” And so far I have not reached that week. I am trying to allow myself time to adjust to this new living situation, but so many of my old routines are now out the window and you know how much I love my routines. Not so much the exact nature of the routines themselves, but the comfort of regular rhythm and expectation that routine brings. It just allows me to be able to get more done, feel more grounded, and wards off burnout in all areas of my life. The difference of this new house and living just five minutes from civilization has been a wild change from my old house where practically every social event, kids activity, and basic grocery shopping involved three hours of driving minimum and commonly what equates to an entire work day to achieve. Now I can fly out for an errand and be done in less than 20 minutes. I can drive my kids to school and be home again in 15. And even when my kids want to hang out with friends on the other side of the city it takes less time to get them there than it used to take us to get to the nearest town. All very wild!

I’m about 99% unpacked, and frankly feel that anything left to be unpacked could probably just be lit on fire. The house is feeling generally organized, which is mostly in thanks to moving to a house three times larger than where we were. I know there are so many positives to living in small homes, but the constant need for organization just to house what you need to live is exhausting, and I’ve really noticed a difference in just having more closets. That being said so many rooms are very unfurnished because we practically had no furniture! No room for furniture in a small house! So I’ve spent a lot of time scouring marketplace for deals, have had some success, but lets just say that the Facebook marketplace of Edmonton, Alberta is not rife with the antique and unique pieces I see everyone who lives on the eastern seaboard showoff on instagram. It’s full of a lot more oak and mahogany stained furniture from the 80s. Because I’ve been dreaming of decorating a larger house for years, my expectations are not being met as I put some rooms together, and while I know it requires time, time, TIME, (and money that has been spent on the actual house already) I’m impatient and it leads to me questioning all of my tastes and preferences. Maybe things I like don’t look good?? Existential crisis!

The weather here is still fantastic for early November, above freezing with no snow! It’s all bonus time at this time of year. I was able to clean out my old garden after I returned from Ireland, dug some dahlia tubers and put them into storage, and get things in general order which is always something we gardeners of the north worry about because we really could have snow that stays for the entirety of winter in October. I made the executive decision to only dig a third of my dahlias because I was just emotionally and physically exhausted for tackling 150 clumps. And then I went completely crazy and divided tubers and put them into storage with zero labelling. If you’ve ever done this job the labelling makes up 80% of it and is so tedious and annoying. So next year it’s going to be surprise dahlias the entire summer! I tried to only dig and keep the varieties I love and know do well here, so we’ll see what happens. We tried to get some landscaping done in our new yard in preparation for next spring, and while the weather has been good that means landscapers are very busy. Where we want to put the garden is going to require some levelling, grading, and other earth moving and it’s become a fairly expensive project, but one that we really need or else I could lose my mind. So decent tradeoff. I also decided to use the emergency maneuver of planting all my spring bulbs in temporary raised beds because we just couldn’t get into the ground quick enough. I think it’ll turn out fine, another imperfect but practical choice. Wow so much gardening talk, I can feel the subscribers unsubscribe from here!

And finally, I had such a wonderful time in Ireland and it turned out to be such a great trip! A million thanks to

Katie Marquette

inviting me to work with her on this trip, for taking my crazy itinerary ideas, and for risking it all having never met me in person! There’s always a risk that working with someone you have only known online may blown up in your face, but thankfully Katie turned out to be as great in real life as she appears online and probably way more fun you’d expect! We had the best bunch of people travel with us, and it felt like such a tight knit group full of inside jokes by the end. It really is a completely unique experience to visit amazing places with a great group of people who you have never met before. Ireland was completely beautiful, we saw so much of the countryside and it’s varying landscapes, all in what may have been the most blessed weather we could hope for! Visiting holy sites of pilgrimage that have hundreds of years of tradition was amazing. Drinking in Irish pubs was of course such fun, and learning more facts and reasons to hate Cromwell proved richly rewarding. I hope to write more about it when I reach that fantastical place of having a normal week. Until then, Katie of course has written much better than I ever can! And this post is a must read!

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bits:

• we won’t talk about how much political content I have consumed this week. I would like you to know that prior to the assassination attempt I was fairly checked out of this election cycle and had thought I was greatly morally improved. So… humility. And once a political addict always a political addict?

• My brain has been scattered and I wish I could tell you I’ve been reading lots of great things, but I did read this piece on Taylor Swift and it is the best piece of writing written in the past two years that I wish I could have written. Wrote? I need an editor at all times. It is from The Lamp and you need to register to read it, but do it, it’s worth it for this article alone.

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reading, watching, what have you:

• My reading is obviously suffering but I would like everyone to read How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key and listen to Emily’s podcast on the book and then immediately talk to me about it. When you get a minute. But report back. I’m almost done the book and then I hope to unload my thoughts upon you all.

• Anyone else slogging their way through WRM’s Elizabeth Goudge book on St. Francis? I don’t think I’m going to finish it. It’s slowly killing me. Every chapter feels like an eternity…

• Watching nothing! Seriously. Time. But of course I watched Nobody Wants This and it was enjoyable.

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I hope you’re all having a lovely weekend. I really will one day post more regularly. Surely. We can hope.

sending warm thoughts,

Christy