Monday, Monday

I have a basket of guavas in my apartment.

I know this because the gorgeous, fresh scent of them greets me the moment I walk in. The aroma is incredible and the smell is so strong it permeates everything. So I've decided that guavas are the new potpourri.

We hit up Chinatown for produce this weekend and among other things, guavas were $3/dozen. I haven't figured out what to do with them though. They're sort of like tomatoes in that it's pretty much impossible to get at the flesh without eating a few seeds. The difference is that the seeds are hard and not particularly edible. So I'm thinking there must be some trick to it, but I haven't figured it out just yet. But honestly, I'm just happy to smell them, I don't really care if we eat them.

We didn't get up to much this weekend.

Friday night was popcorn and V for Vendetta on TV. I love that movie.

I was super productive on Saturday. I did all my laundry, baked bread, finished knitting my first sock, sewed pillow covers to match the drapes, made sauce out of all the leftover overripe raspberries, planned out the next week's meals \ and cleaned the apartment from top to bottom. I'm still figuring out the whole work/life balance thing so a lot gets put off to the weekend.

On Sunday we decided to head down to the St. Lawrence market for some stewing beef but when we got there it was closed. Apparently they shut down Sundays and Mondays. So instead we headed back up to Chinatown for more produce, dumplings and pastries. The best finds were pineapples for $1, Spanish onions 5/$1, and peppers for 20 cents each. We paid closer attention to the prices this time and the best guess we can come up with is that they take the price of everything, subtract $5 and then don't charge tax. It's the only way we can explain how we go up with $17 worth of ridiculously cheap produce and when they ring it in, it's $11.

We stopped for BOGO blizzards at the Chinatown Dairy Queen and then headed home to drop off our groceries. Then we headed back out for a walk around our neighbourhood to see if we could find a little butcher somewhere. We headed up Yonge and then back down Mount Pleasant, but all we found was an organic butcher which was too pricey for us.

But we had a nice walk in the 17 degree weather. I commented to John that Autumn feels like a season here whereas in Halifax it felt like a week. It actually makes sense here to buy transition weather clothes because there's lots of time to wear them. Today it was 19 degrees!

I'm also in love with the squirrels here. I loved them when I lived in Waterloo and then I totally forgot about them when I moved back home. They're black and as big as cats with the fluffiest tails! And they're friendlier than regular squirrels and not as afraid of humans.

By the time we got home, I was pretty tired so we just made some snacks and watched cartoons for the rest of the night.

John was up at 5am this morning, excitd for his first day of work. I packed him a bento and we parted ways. Turns out he didn't need it though, they took him out for lunch. When he came home tonight he was super excited about his new company. He said the people are wonderful and that for it only being his first day, he's already seeing lots of ways that he can contribute to the company's success. It makes me so happy to see him so enthusiastic about it.

So life is good. I feel like we're pretty far off the track that we planned for ourselves when we were in Halifax planning to come here, but I'm really happy with the track we're on. I'm starting to be able to see how our lives are going to shape up six months down the road which is the furthest I've been able to guess at yet.