Well, that might be a tad misleading. You see, I'm not pregnant, my sister is, and she's due any second now. We're just waiting for a phone call. I gotta say, being an aunt is pretty easy so far.

Yesterday, she dropped off her dog. I volunteered to take care of him for a while (gee being an aunt is a hardship... ) Her dog is 170 pounds of small horse, and I was a little concerned about how our 11 year old cat was going to take this. He still hasn't quite forgiven me for bringing home "the male human" (aka my husband), so it was with a little trepidation that we introduced him to "the beast" (aka the dog).

It turns out that we needn't have worried. All four of us slept in the bedroom last night and all was peaceful. Breakfast was interesting though.

All quiet on the home front.

Just the sound of kibble...

Hey, that's not the same as my food

Dog: 'Can I have some?' Cat: 'I can't heaaarrrr yooou....'

Right about here is when the cat discovered that having "the beast" visit may not be all bad. He drips kibble when he eats.

Aaaannd so long as "the beast" doesn't move too quickly, he can be tollerated...

Dog: "Hey, if the "small snobby dog" (aka the cat) gets dessert, then so do I!"

When the beast's away, the cat will play...

Nice try furbrain. This is so getting picked up once the dog's done with it.

Ottawa was hit with a monster amount of rain today. After a record breaking May of rain almost every day, (which did nasty things to the strawberry harvest) we must have just broken another record today. The official amount hasn't been posted yet, but they're estimating 50 to 75 ml (2 to 3 inches) of rain in the past 24 hours. All I can say is thank God for my sump pump. It's been kicking in almost constantly for the past 8 hours, but my basement is as dry as a bone.

My mother-in-law wasn't so lucky. Her basement flooded and she ended up with about an inch and a half of water all over the floor. At eight o'clock this evening we got a call for help, so we packed up our mop and bucket and headed over. When I got there, she'd managed to get the water to drain away, but she had wall to wall carpet and the water skooshed up over your feet every time you took a step. She was in a bit of shock at first, but we finally managed to convince her that she needed to get everything up out of the basement, and that the carpet had to go to the curb – immediately.

One exacto knife, seven people, two pizzas and six hours later, her basement is now pretty dry again. The carpet is gone, the cement floor has been mopped and there are about 5 fans on full tilt. Have I mentioned thank God for my sump pump? It's now two thirty in the morning, and I've had a shower and a change of clothes. And this was only an inch and a half of water in the basement. I can’t imagine what it would be like to go through something worse, like hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

It's the May 2-4 weekend, which in this neck of the woods is traditionally the time to plant the garden. There are other traditions for this weekend too which mainly involve a BBQ and copious amounts of beer, but for the purposes of this post, we’ll stick with the plants.

For the past few weeks, I've been preparing three 8' x 4' garden beds. The soil in my backyard needs a lot of tending to, it's almost pure clay. Seriously – next time I break a plate, I'm going to go out back, dig some up and make a replacement. Anyway... I've double dug the beds (Robaxacet anyone?), mixed in some sand and some nice black earth. (Next week's project is a compost pile.) Then I made some quick frames, installed a few hoops, and voila! Not-so-instant garden beds. Hey, it did take two weekends – my back can only take so much punishment at a time.

So, Saturday being the first sunny day in almost two weeks, I took full advantage and planted all three beds. I think the little toe on my left foot doesn't hurt, but it's now the only part of me that doesn’t. Apparently I'm just not cut out to be a weekend warrior.

All three garden beds.

The first bed: roma paste tomatoes, jalapeno peppers (for hubby, I've promised him homemade poppers), yellow onions, sweet onions and Egyptian onions.

The second bed: carrots, green peas, snow peas, yellow beans, green beans, lettuce and other salad leaves.

The third bed: white pattie pie squash and potatoes.

I was originally going to keep the tomatoes and pepper plants apart from each other because they're from the same Nightshade family. Then I realized that they're both warm season crops, and if they're together, it's easier to keep them warm. So, bed 1 is warm crops, and I'll put a plastic tarp on them, bed 2 are cold season crops that the birds love, (hence the bird netting), and bed 3 is whatever's left. For disease control purposes, I'll just practice crop rotation and won't plant any potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, etc in bed 1 next year.

So now that that's done and I still have one more day before I have to go to work, I'm kicking back and enjoying the other May 2-4 traditions. The BBQ is kinda out though, it's raining AGAIN today. Oh darn, that just leaves the beer...

I learned to knit because of the NHL.

It's not as nutty as it sounds, honest. You see, my husband is a hockey fanatic, and he loves to watch hockey games, especially if his beloved Toronto Maple Leafs are playing. (What is it with Leaf fans anyway - they haven't made the freaking playoffs in 6 years and haven't won the Stanley Cup in 44. With only 30 teams in the league, even statistically, that's pathetic.)

Anyways, I digress. So, I have a thick-skulled hockey freak in the house, who watches hockey like it's some kind of religion, and like all good followers, he wants me to convert (aka, watch hockey games with him). I tried. For years I tried. But I just can't see the point of strapping bits of metal to your feet, chasing a piece of frozen rubber with a stick, occasionally breaking up the tedium with a squabble worthy of a four-year old, and stopping the game every four minutes of play time for a commercial. I mean come on... People honestly get excited over this? And how can three 20 minute periods take 2.5 hours anyway? How many commercials is that?

After a while, I started falling asleep during the first period every game and even hubby had to admit I was a lost cause. He wasn't happy though. He still wanted me to watch the stupid game with him, and I wanted to actually see him during the eight looooong months of hockey season. This is where the knitting comes in. It's a relaxing hobby, it doesn't cost much, it's productive and it can be done anywhere, including on the sofa in front of the TV while you're ignoring the hockey game. It's also addictive, which is why if you see some crazy lady knitting on the OC Transpo bus on the way to work and back, that's probably me.

Now knitting on the bus can be interesting. The regulars on the bus have gotten used to me and don't sneak sidelong glances anymore. But there are always a few new people, and they can be fun to watch when they're trying to watch me without getting caught. I'm sure some people think I'm a freak. Meh, whatever. Most people are mildly curious and will sneak a peek or two before they dismiss it. Every now and then though, someone will be truly interested and will have the courage to ask me about it. I love these people (so long as they're nice). I once met a lovely gentleman from the Maritimes (eastern Canada) and he shared his experiences of how the women from his small hometown still get together for quilting bees. A few weeks ago I met a lady who loved the NHL reason for knitting, and decided she was going to start crocheting so she could ignore sports on TV too, and because it would be a shared experience with her elderly mother who has crocheted for decades.

For those of you who want to learn about knitting (or crocheting) for whatever reason, I'd recommend YouTube. There are LOTS of very useful tutorials that can get you started. I'd also recommend starting with small projects. After a few really bad scarves, I started with a patchwork quilt, which is just a bunch of small squares "sewn" together with yarn.

The advantages of this project are that you can practice a new pattern on each patch, work towards a larger project and if a patch is really messed up or ugly, it's not a huge loss.

Getting there...

I'm still working on it, and I'm still learning new patterns, tricks and techniques. It should be done by next winter and then I'll have a nice warm throw for the bed.

I love Annie Leonard and her message. Last year I linked to her "Story of Stuff" video, which was both entertaining and informative. It turns out that she's been busy, and has been focusing her razor wit on the bottled water industry, and the toxic chemicals in our cosmetics.

Check it out - it's a good watch.