THE GOODS BLOG: Erika's Precious Little Life - July Edition

Happy Canada Day! I feel like the major portion of “lockdown” is more or less over. It lasted for 15 weeks. We still have a lot of things that aren’t open (indoor restaurant dining, playgrounds, yoga studios) and we can still only gather in groups of 10 socially distanced people. But things do also feel a lot more “opened up” in Toronto than they used to be. We can go to restaurants to eat outdoors on patios, go to salons, malls are open, many of the city’s attractions are open again, and we can form social circles of up to 10 people that we don’t have to distance from (we do this with Tim’s family). Toronto currently has 795 active Covid-19 cases which is actually a pretty big improvement from last month. It’s been crazy. But it’s starting to feel somewhat more normal again.

June felt pretty low-key. And also kind of emotionally draining. We went to London one weekend to finally see Tim’s family again, whom we hadn’t seen since Christmas. It was really nice to get the cousins together again and for things to seem more normal.

We also had a huge backlog of birthday presents for our nieces and it was nice to finally unload those!! I’ve decided that as each of the kids in the family turns five years old I am going to get them a beautiful Kids Mini Mala necklace made by Kandy Disenos because she does such incredible work. My niece Amelia was the first recipient and she LOVED it! She said that it was the best gift that she has ever been given! ♥

We’ve gotten really used to trunk picnics. We’ll often drive to restaurant (usually downtown) and get take-out and then eat the food in our trunk. Archie loves it and it lets us “be in the world” a bit more again, which is nice.

It was Father’s Day!! We ordered the Father’s Day Brunch from one of our favourite restaurants, Dirty Food, which was delicious. Tim also got to BBQ on our new BBQ for the first time. It was a pretty perfect day!

Yoga is still going very well. I am on day 108 (and counting!) of practicing yoga every damn day consecutively. I still haven’t missed a single day. It would be really great if yoga studios could open again before we move away because I’d really like to get to practice at my Toronto studio for the last time before leaving.

We drove to Kitchener another weekend which is where Tim’s sister Emily lives. It was nice to hang out with them and the best part is that I got to meet my newest niece Penelope for the first time! She was six weeks old. So cute!

I was slightly disturbed to realize that I graduated from high school TWENTY YEARS AGO. That sounds like a lot! I think that I was able to give my 18 year old self most of what she expected out of life (so far). And I was still able to get into my grad dress and it zipped up! (Think about how many times I have moved this dress across the country with me, ha ha!)

We obviously didn’t get to go to the Pride parade this year but we still celebrated!

By now you’ve probably heard the very sad news about our cat Ramona. I’m really quite heartbroken about it and I cried for an entire day. About two months ago we started to notice that she was having a lot of diarrhea and that she didn’t seem to have much control over it. We figured that it would pass and that she just had a stomach bug. But it kept getting worse. It became obvious that we couldn’t expect to put her into a carrier and onto an airplane in her condition. We took her to the vet and she was diagnosed with Colitis. She was prescribed a medication for a week. It didn’t help. The vet then prescribed a second medication for a second week. It didn’t help either. Ramona kept getting worse and was clearly in pain and suffering. During her last week or so she wouldn’t even come upstairs from the basement. At this point Tim and I knew that we had to make the awful decision to have her put to sleep. It was terrible and sad. The day before her appointment was extremely sad saying goodbye to her. She was only 11 years old, which doesn’t seem that old to me. Tim took her to the vet to be put to sleep while I stayed home with Archie... And then we basically spent the rest of the day crying. I already miss her so much and it often feels like she’s still in the house somewhere. It’s hard to imagine our life without her just being around.

This will be the first time in pretty much my whole life that I won’t have a pet. There was a short period of time after Mr. Bojangles died (maybe six months?) before I got Daisy. Other than that I have always had pets. I think it will be a while before we consider getting another pet but I’m sure that someday we will.

The day that Ramona was put to sleep I was a mess all day and that evening my Toronto ladies surprised me by showing up on my doorstep with treats. This cheered me up SO MUCH and was so incredibly kind of them. This was the first time that we’d all been together since February. ♥

Despite the sad situation with our cat, we still celebrated our seven year wedding anniversary. We got a fancy take-out dinner (again) from Alo... Because let’s face it, Alo is “our place” - which is a ridiculous thing to say. But here we are. We enjoyed it after Archie was in bed, which was super nice, and we listened to our wedding reception background music playlist while eating. It was perfectly romantic.

Tim has now stopped working for Ubisoft and has begun working for BioWare. It seems to be going well! Nothing much has changed on our end. Tim seems to be really happy about being back with his old company.

Our move to Edmonton has really ramped up and it finally feels like it’s really, really happening now.

Our movers are booked and will be packing our house on one day and then loading the truck on the second day (same as usual, we know the drill). During this time we’ll be in a hotel (also booked) so that we don’t have to be stuck in close contact with the movers. We leave Toronto and fly to Edmonton on August 8th and the flight is booked. Once we arrive we will be living in a temporary corporate apartment in downtown Edmonton while we wait for all of our things to arrive. Then we will move into our house.

Our house!!!

I am very excited about it. Several of you pointed out that this house does not allow cats... At the time of choosing this house we were already 99% sure (sadly) that Ramona was not going to make it to Edmonton with us. I mean, I was hoping for a miraculous recovery but it didn’t seem likely. So that is why we were able to rent this house.

It’s a little bit weird that we’ve never actually set foot in this house. But we had a really great virtual tour and everything about the place really ticks all of our boxes. The benefit of moving back to a city that we know really well is that it’s a lot easier to make these types of decisions. This will be the first time that I’ve ever had a garage (besides living at my parents’ house - but I didn’t drive then). We’re also very much in love with the glorious porch situation. I’m simultaneously very excited to decorate the whole place and stressed out about decorating another entire new place. Ha ha. Because you’ve met me and that whole house will be DONE in like a week. Maybe in a couple of years (if we love the place) we’ll just be able to convince the landlord to sell it to us.

Life with Archie:

Not much to report with Archie this month! He’s enjoying the summer. He continues to be doing very well with being toilet trained. He has had a few accidents here and there but generally seems pretty used to the toilet now. I feel like he might be getting a bit antsy and restless with having less entertainment options because of the pandemic... And I’m feeling less motivated to come up with all sorts of ideas. So that’s been a bit tough lately.

He’s had a good month in terms of excavators though, HA HA. The excavator is his all-time favourite construction truck.

Archie seems to be handling the loss of Ramona well so far. I don’t think he really understands what happened and I also think that he might assume that she’s still in our house somewhere. When Tim returned home without her he asked where she was right away. We told him that she died and he didn’t have any follow-up questions. I’m interested to see if he asks more questions as time goes on. He loved her and I’m certain that he’ll start to notice her absence and that he misses her.

I am super excited that today is the day that we are going to be eating in a restaurant again!!! On a patio. I am clearly someone who values the restaurant experience a lot and it is certainly the thing that I have been longing for the most.

I am getting a tattoo done next week!! Ahhh! This tattoo was originally scheduled to be done in April but clearly that did not happen. It is going to be a floral bouquet of all of the provincial flowers for the provinces that I have lived in. This means a lot to me because I really feel that each place that I have lived has given me so much and has shaped me in many ways. The artist doing the tattoo is named Ola and she is extremely talented at florals. Which is why I wanted to get this done before we moved!

We’re going to have my friends over for a farewell BBQ in our backyard. It’ll be nice to have the opportunity to do this, especially since all of our other plans over the past few months have gotten cancelled.

We were *supposed* to have a family cottage week in Muskoka at the end of the month... But Tim’s family isn’t comfortable with going there. They feel that we’ll encounter too many other people. So instead we’re planning to all meet up in London and have family hangouts there for a few days. Kinda a bummer and I’ll miss the lake. But I’m sure that it will still be fun. It will definitely be nice to see them all and for us all to be together before we move away.

THIS MONTH’S SHOUT-OUTS!:

July 5th is Candice Weingartner’s 38th birthday!

I hope that you have a special day to celebrate and like I say EVERY YEAR: I shall picture you floating on a lake with a cocktail in your hand. Because that’s your natural birthday environment. Love you! ♥

July 8th is Crystal Hawker’s 38th birthday!

You are also going to celebrate your birthday floating in a pool with a drink in your hand!! You know, because you just installed a pool in your backyard. ;) I’m so glad that we’re in touch on a regular basis! Love you! ♥

July 15th is Robin Checkowy’s 38th birthday!

Wishing you lots of birthday festivities! I hope that everyone around you spoils you a ton and that you get to do all of the things that you enjoy best. I hope to see you a lot more now that I’ll be so much closer to Regina. Love you! ♥

July 26th is Nadine Ottenbreit’s 6th wedding anniversary!

Wishing you and Kyle a special time to celebrate! ♥