week thirteen 2024

Monday was Al’s birthday. I made him eggs for breakfast (with a candle in his toast) and ravioli for dinner (with a candle in his ravioli).

I don’t remember much about the week, work has been slow so I’ve been doing what I can to fill the time, working from cafes and getting more obsessed with making collages. I bought a lot of old books at the thrift store this week to cut things out of. One of the tasks for The Artist’s Way (week 6) was to send postcards to 5 friends, so I decided to make them. Maybe you’ll be a lucky recipient.

Five postcards for five friends

Thursday was Jeudredi. Thats what you call a Thursday when it’s the last day of the work week (Jeudi + Vendredi). It was also girls night at N’s in Masham, and we all stayed late smoking ciggies in the kitchen.

Al and I spent Good Friday doing chores around the property, pruning the apple tree and making more maple syrup. We ended up with around 1.5L this year. Not bad for golden liquid treasure pouring out of trees for free.

On Saturday we went to L&J’s place to stand around their maple syrup boil, and then drove to Ottawa to see Dune 2 with B&E. On the way home, we stopped in on karaoke night at Kaffe and saw N&N. Life is so full. When we moved here 4.5 years ago, only knowing a couple of people, I never would have thought we’d have days like this. If we moved back to Toronto now, we’d know less people there than we do here. It feels like a slow motion miracle.

On Sunday, we started our extension project, which will probably define the next 6 months while we chip away at it. My first job is to strip white paint off the wooden beams outside by holding a belt sander over my head. I’d like to jail the people who painted them.

Here’s another collage I made this week, inspired by the moon rising over the Gatineau river last week. I’ve been using a lot of pages from a book of art by Vilhelms Purvītis, a Latvian painter who died in 1945. He’s doing a lot of heavy lifting for me and I appreciate him for it.