It's curtains for me! Again. One condition of sale was that mom is to leave all window treatment on the windows, so we have to come up with some substitute curtains that look like the ones she already has. She forgot to remove Mike's good foam backed insulating drapes when he moved, now he wants them back. So I have to make curtains that look exactly like the ones he took away, only from cheaper fabric. I think I can handle that!
I will be looking after Rachel the Tarantula until January. I hope to get her larger terrarium soon. She needs more space to run, or whatever tarantulas do. I plan to get her a new water dish and give her a hiding spot for the days when she feels less social. I was reaching into her tank a few days ago and she came up to me and touched my hand several times with her pedipalps, then with her front legs. She then stayed right by her water dish as I took away a dead uneaten cricket. She didn't shoot hairs at me or anything. Cool!
Coming very soon is the annual Christmas market at City hall. this is always my "official start to Christmas" event. http://www.christkindl.ca/ It's full of food, decorations, and people, lots of people. There are a few people that I almost always see there, including aardvark Dave. He's almost always in a good mood, especially after a visit to the Bavarian nut guy! My relationship with Dave can vary from weirdly awkward, to amicable, to warm and genuine, to bristly. I never know from time to time how he's going to be -although genuine is probably the rarest and most welcome of all. Dave being genuine is like finding a silk blouse in a rack of polyester shirts, you know when it real because it's so different from everything else around it. But at the Christmas market it's all about happy times and sparkly things and it's difficult to feel angry or sad or anything else, so it's always warm and fuzzy. We will always be each other's Rebound Relationship. I always get some Summer Sausage from Cloverleaf farms, and there are a couple of vendor who sell gluten free Christmas cookies and treats. YAY!
One thing does need a comment: German Pop Music. All of it is horrible ear-worm stuff that gets stuck in the brain and never gets out. To my ear mush of it sounds the same with a vague polka type beat. There is one vendor of CD's VHS tapes and DVD's of German Pop Music and every year he has a big screen TV and he runs an endless loop of that sort of creepy looking white haired white skinned guy singer and his sort of disturbing blond haired Teutonic warrior princess sidekick. These two made several of their only outside-of-Germany appearances in Kitchener. In the mid 60's early 70's they sold out a for a week at the Auditorium a few years in a row. He always appeared in a suit and dark glasses and his side kick often wore gingham dirndls with white batiste pinafores. In a German city like Kitchener, I grew up seeing posters of these two in many stores downtown and hearing their music blaring from some of these stores.
And to this day they seem to be fondly remembered by the older German residents of the city. The seller of these CD's and DVD's say that his stuff is always their top seller every year, so he plays the previous year's German television special because of popular demand. His booth is right in the back of the main floor and these video play right along the benches in the back of city hall where everyone sits to eat so we have no choice but to watch ad listen to this vague polka like pop and these two oddly creepy singers. Last year was different. There wasn't one creepy white skinned guy and dirndl clad valkyrie...there were HUNDREDS! apparently this guy is a national treasure or icon or something and they were playing a tribute concert and everyone dressed like these two. They featured a one hundred person dance troupe doing a five minute tribute dance to these two. I think my brain melted around minute two.
There's also plenty of good food including smoked pork chops, giant turkey legs, sausages of all types and lots of hot chocolate and apple cider. One could get very plump eating German food.
So tomorrow's Danny's birthday. He'll be 24. I think. Yeah...24. He grew up okay! We did a good job. The hard part is over.
Something I have ranted about: Carbon offsets are useless and do more damage to the environment because they make people think there's nothing wrong with their big polluting car or constant jet trips. They are nothing more than a new form of "papal indulgences"
And that's all for now. I have to get my stuff together to take to mom's. I need scissors, tape measure, pins, and other notions. And i need to wash my hair. Later!
