Chez Louise

It's not actually summer yet, but it's beginning to feel like it, in the typical Ontario way: hot and muggy and buggy. Today I was helping work on the deck that we're building for the house. Mostly it's been Dad and my brother working on it, and they've been sort of lucky to have cool overcast weather, because it's a lot of hard work. Today it was still overcast, but we've had some nice hot weather in the last couple of days, and it's still hot even without the sun. It's the humidity which is the killer at the moment, though. You sweat, but it doesn't evaporate. This morning we had some shovelling to do, and it was really quite gruelling. (Maybe it's just me and my twiggy arms, who knows...) The trouble is that the soil around here is pretty much all clay, and in our yard in particular, it turns out to be clay mixed with gravel in places. Let's just say that stuff is not easy to shovel. You swing the shovel as hard as you can into it, and the shovel pretty much just bounces off the surface. It was such hard work that at one point I actually felt light-headed, saw stars, and my ears were ringing, which likely means I was about to pass out if I didn't take a rest. It's unusual because I basically never get that feeling - not even when I'm dancing in the heat, or dancing after I've been sedentary for weeks at a stretch. It was weird. Luckily after a drink of water and a couple of minutes sitting down, I was fine again.

So this afternoon, I took a break from that and went downtown to shop for a wedding gift for my friends Henry and Chantale, who are getting married tomorrow. I tried to find them something a couple of days ago last time I went downtown, but I came home empty-handed. I'm not very good at gift-shopping in my opinion. I am a big fan of originality in gifts, which usually means I put myself through cruel and unusual punishment trying to decide on what to get someone, with the criteria that it be unique, original, and perfect - criteria that usually aren't quite met, but not for lack of trying! This was no exception. My original idea was to try to find a nice figurine (like Lladro) featuring a couple, that won't lose value over time, and that doesn't take up much space. Well, as it turns out, first of all Lladro is nearly impossible to find in this city, and second, it doesn't matter anyway because it turns out that even the smallest little Lladro figurine is well beyond my price range. Who knew the stuff could be so expensive?! I just love Lladro though - the figurines are so beautiful. My dad gave mom one of those once, and I think it's my favourite thing in the house.

Anyway, it took a whole afternoon of browsing all sorts of places at the Rideau Centre, on Sussex, and in the Byward market area before I found something at a cute little nondescript shop that I never knew existed until today. I hope they will like their gift! In any case, wedding season has definitely begun, given the jostling that was happening in the Hallmark shop in front of the display for the wedding cards!

Tomorrow it looks like it should be a nice sunny day for their wedding so I'm sure the whole thing will be very beautiful. I hope I don't cry during the wedding! (I'm such a sap... :-))