Allergies, garage sales and other summer adventures.

As the clock continues to tick down on our new adventure, we are trying to figure out what to get rid of, what to keep and what needs to be left in the house.  It's all rather stressful, as there is two perspectives on everything.  For example...we know what we paid for some of our stuff, but regardless of quality, most folks have definite ideas about what it should cost to buy something second hand.  (It seems that $100 is about the max that most people want to pay.)  This theory doesn't apply to Rolex watches, tricked out vintage cars or masterworks paintings, but it does apply to almost everything else.  This shouldn't be a surprise, we understand the logic of it, but it's still disheartening to know that really well produced, long term investments pieces are viewed the same as cast off Ikea furniture.

To top off that, my allergies have returned full force and I'm quite miserable, with an itchy pallet, eyes and constantly dripping nose.  (Doesn't that sound attractive?)  Like all things, this too, shall pass.  I have to say that all those allergy commercials are bunk.  While I get some slight relief of symptoms, they're still there and a 12 hour tablet lasts 6 hours, but heaven forbid you exceed the daily recommended dosage.

Besides that, all is relatively well.  The weather has been fair, with the sun shining most days and the temperatures haven't been too high, for the most part.  In our little bird haven, all the little nestlings are slowly emerging from the safety of the trees and are learning how to forage for food themselves.  It's quite a noisy production, as the young ones get impatient with pecking, only to come up with nothing.  This forces them to turn to their long suffering parents to demand food with much wing fluttering and incessant chirping.  The parents are loosing their patience and more often than not ignore their offspring, in hopes that they'll learn to fend for themselves.  We had another butterfly visit us.  It thought our decorative artichokes were real and tried to have a taste.

Ron worked his last day at his part time job, so he can now concentrate on all the minutiae required to get us down to South America.  It's a big job.  We're getting ready for an indoor garage sale at one of the local community centres, in hopes that we can sell some of our clutter.  I have yet to decide what to do with all my cake making items, but it seems to me that it has to go.  I'm toying with the idea of selling it in one big lot.  Ron's completed some of the items on his to do list...one big job being refinishing the mud room at the back of the house.  It had been wallpapered (fairly tastefully for the time), but it wasn't standing up well, so he peeled it all off, filled, sanded, primed painted and put up some chair railing.  It's much brighter and cleaner now.  He also painted that sad old back door a nice dark purple (not Barney purple, more like aubergine).  His list doesn't seem to be getting any shorter, as he keeps finding other things that need doing.  Keep your fingers crossed for us, as we're both restless and fretful, at times.  It's hard to keep the big picture foremost when you have to take care of all the details.  To those out west, we're looking forward to seeing you!  Lots of love from Canada's smallest province.