Moe's Home Collection

Moe's Home Collection brought in a selection of Chinese-themed furnishings and accessories to celebrate the Chinese New Year and I was tempted to leave with quite a few things, including this silver-painted wood screen with the carved bamboo motif, the red-painted wood triptych with the carved sakura, and this little Chinese chest with the painted butterflies – all very affordably priced.

Liberty

Liberty, my favourite store of the day – where I found a number of Lazar sofas, and left with this fantastic mirror which measures about 40" wide. My sister talked me into buying it and I’m going to have to somehow package it to mail home because it's certainly not going to fit in my carry-on and I trust Canada Post more than I do Air Canada.

Stafford Sofa

Retro Sofa

West 4th and the sleeping baby

We had a great day today – we started it with brunch at the IHOP, my first time and it was surprisingly good! T&M were raving about it and I told them not to talk it up because heightened expectations often end in disappointment. Not this time though, as it was yum.

We went home afterwards and chilled for a bit before we 3 girls headed out into the city to shop. I didn’t come out thinking I’d do any shopping beyond browsing for home accessories and other small pretties that I could bring home with me at the end of the week. But I did good today. I saw some great stuff and was able to restrain myself from buying too much, particularly when it was my first day.

We shopped along Vancouver’s West 4th Ave after I had been tipped off about a store called Bed that sells hand-dyed cotton muslin bed linens. This store is fantastic, with its wall of bed sheets hung in all the colours of the spectrum. (I’m kicking myself because I didn’t take a picture but perhaps I’ll be able to stop by another day in the city to take one for you.) I bought a pair of blue and white printed pillow cases here that have totally inspired my bedroom scheme which I’ll write more about it at a later date.

I also bought a pair of silver bird tealight holders from Paboom (they carry a lot Torre & Tagus here, more than I've seen in Toronto in one place, but I suppose it isn't all that surprising since it's a Richmond-based company), and a blush pink and brown patterned dress with a lovely chocolate brown sash that teased me in the store window of The Urban Rack, so now I’ve got to find me a pair of brown heels to wear with it.

Little Miss Fire Piglet as sleeping sumo wrestler

Throughout our 4-hour trip into the city, Little Miss Fire Piglet remained peacefully asleep, a rare occurrence, which served her well since the rash that had reddened her cheeks cleared up quite a bit. It wasn’t until we were in the check-out at the Real Canadian Superstore that she awoke wailing and she seemed inconsolable until we got her into the car and were on our way because the motion lulled her into sleep again.

We spent the rest of the night relaxing at home. M went out for an evening with the boys and my sis and I stayed in. She made pasta and I played with baby. After Little Miss Fire Piglet was put down for the night the first time, T went in for her own bath, something she hadn’t been able to do for months because E wouldn’t allow it. But with me there, I could cover off. So when I heard her crying over the baby monitor, I got up to do my auntie thing and rocked her to sleep – something I had to do 3x(!!) in less than 30 minutes because the first time I put her back into her bassinet, she immediately woke up and started wailing again. The second time, I made the mistake of sitting down and she began to cry, but third times the charm. When she fell asleep, I stayed standing, rocking and swaying until my sister came out from her bath and was able to relieve me because Little Miss Fire Piglet is a solid baby at 14lbs – and she’s only 10 weeks! At this rate I’m going to have lean and tone arms by the end of the week.

It amazes me how much I love Little Miss Fire Piglet, and I've known her less than 48 hours.

Meeting the Fire Piglet

It’s just after 7am in Vancouver and the rest of my sister’s household is still asleep. My flight arrived 30 minutes late yesterday and for a little while there, I thought I would be leaving the airport without my bags, but all was well in the end. The drive through Vancouver’s rainy dinner hour traffic to my sister’s place in Port Coquitlam was long since they don’t really have highways here. By this time I was starving since I hadn’t eaten on the plane and the last meal I had was at my lunch hour – which would have been 9am PST, so by the time I finally ate dinner here at 8pm, my body had gone from super-hungry to not-hungry to famished again.

Enough about traffic and food though. I finally got to see my niece in person and hold her in my arms and she’s not what I had expected. Excited as I was to meet her, I was also nervous because I was worried the second I held her in my arms, she’d cry out bloody murder and want her mom – which was what happened the last time I held a baby, my cousin. But EMC was quiet and watchful. She only grew restless and cried when she got hungry and wanted to be breastfed. And when my sister left to pick up the take-out around the corner because M was busy building the futon I slept in last night, EMC fell asleep peacefully in my arms. May I just say how amazing that feels?

Poor baby has a rash on her cheeks that has flared up again – it’s angry and red and makes my heart ache because it looks painful. And the stubborn girl took forever to fall asleep. T put her down but within 30 minutes, we could hear her through the baby monitor fussing and finally crying. According to my sister, they often go a few rounds like that before EMC finally decides she’s teased her mother enough to stay down for a few hours.

It’ll be interesting to watch this little fire piglet grow up...but right now, all I want is for her to wake up so I can kiss her chubby cheeks again.

Women, Virtue and Cultural Tradition

I finished Camilla Gibb's Sweetness in the Belly a couple weeks ago and Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan just last night and was struck by some of the similarities, despite their disparate settings - the former in 1970s Harar, Ethiopia and London of the mid-1980s, and the latter in the first half of 19th Century Hunan Province in China.

Both books wrote about the ways in which cultural tradition dictates women's suffering as proof of their virtue and worthiness - in Sweetness in the Belly, it's female circumcision and in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, it's footbinding. I read both of these scenes while riding the subway home and if any of the other passengers had happened to glance upon me at that moment, they may have wondered what I was reading that had so disturbed me.

My favourite passage in Sweetness is on page 126, when Gibb writes about how a community's history is made:

Once you step inside, history has to be rewritten to include you. A fiction develops, a story that weaves you into the social fabric, giving you roots and a local identity. You are assimilated, and in erasing your differences and making you one of their own, the community can maintain belief to its wholeness and purity. After two or three generations, nobody remembers the story is fiction. It has become fact. And this is how history is made.

My favourite of these two is Snow Flower though - perhaps because it's set in China and I could better relate to some of the customs and traditions that are discussed in the book, or maybe because the ending inspired a 4-hankie cry last night, it was so good.

Central to the novel is nu shu, which may very well be the only language ever created by women for their own exclusive use. I had never heard of it before and was fascinated: nu shu is phonetic and relies completely on context for meaning. It is made up of about 600-700 characters compared to the 5000+ that make up the Chinese written language. Women learned this secret language from their "sworn sisters" and mothers and in this way, they were able to safeguard their communications from men.

Happy Valentine's Day

Brown Sugar Hearts via Cox & Cox

I'm home "sick" today since my boss said I could take a day or two to make up for all the long hours I'd put in on my last project. I slept in until 8:45 and then got ready for a conference call at 10:30 this morning with a couple of my colleagues.

I'll be spending the rest of the day getting ready for my trip to Vancouver tomorrow. My sister sent in a late request yesterday that I'm going to try and fulfill and I've got to figure out what I'm going to pack.

I may or may not see wL tonight, which is a bummer, not because it's Valentine's Day but because I haven't seen him since our date 2 Saturdays ago as he was in Tremblant skiing most of last week and has been working overtime this week tying up loose ends before leaving for 2 weeks in Asia this Saturday. If I don't see him tonight, it'll be a month without seeing each other by the time he returns...not exactly a good thing considering that we'd made a decision to try to spend more time together to see if there's something more here...oh well. Such is life.

I want...

...the Gucci Abbey shoulder bag.

I've never really been a Gucci girl - my Gucci purchases to date have been limited to a couple pair of sunglasses and a bottle of Gucci II perfume - but there's something about the shape of the Abbey that I like.

The US$750 price tag is a major deterrent - although I did have my performance review today and received an outstanding rating...which means I'll be getting a nice bonus this year.

Do I want to spend part of that bonus on a bag or maybe save it to use towards the glorious Montauk Scroll?

Let there be light

Among the many finds at Belle Epoque are their lighting solutions. My favourite table lamp is the one at right below, with the crackled silver finish and pale blue lamp shade:


I also love the happy, vibrant, printed pendant shades - this one I found by bumping into it:

This floor-lamp with the laser-cut floral medallion motif can be found at Visitor Parking:

Living Options

I went back to King East yesterday to browse the furniture stores again for sofas. The Valdese Sofa at In Design caught my eye, as did the Emerson Sofa:


But my heart's desire is truly Montauk's Scroll Sofa with its curved arms and down-filled cushiness that envelopes you with comfort:

Other finds for the living area include these 2 glass tables, also from In Design - my favourite is the second with the flow-y ribbon-like base:

Mad! Mad, I say!

It was a mad week that saw the last 2.5 months or so of work culminate in a 1.5 hour meeting Friday morning that was attended by about 30 people, including a dozen of the key people on the strategic team (yours truly among them), 80% of our executive committee as well as the members of the committee that meets to approve capital expenditures. I was making changes to the business model Thursday - even though the numbers were supposed to be "locked and loaded" by end of business Wednesday - and revising the presentation 30 minutes before our 9:30 start Friday - not ideal, but not surprising either considering all the moving pieces. In a nutshell, the meeting went really well, and by 11am, I was relaxed, bouncy and smiley - a dramatic change from the tense, busy-bee rushing from meeting to meeting of late.

We had our monthly team status meeting afterwards and my manager and big boss made a point of calling out all the time and effort that I'd been putting in the last while so it was gratifying to know that the long hours were not unnoticed. I celebrated the pat on the backs by taking off a little early and indulging in retail therapy!

I hopped on the subway and headed up to Yonge and Bloor where I picked up essentials like MAC's StudioTech and Studio Moisture Cream, I stopped off at Sephora for Philosophy's Purity Made Simple Cleanser which I was test-driving, and even though I hadn't intended to, I picked up a pair of new Citizens' jeans at Aritzia.

I also stopped at Tiffany, where I picked up this round pendant for my sister, who will be turning 30 during my visit in a couple weeks. I am so excited about this visit, partly because it's a very welcome break but mostly because I'll finally get to meet EMC and hear her coos and giggles up close and personal, instead of over the phone in the background! I know every aunt thinks their niece is the cutest thing but this little girl makes my heart melt every time I look at her picture - and I do NOT consider myself a baby person:


My final retail therapy fix was at Belle Epoque, a lovely little shop filled chockablock with beautiful things, including a mirrored jewellery box that had caught my eye last month. I didn't get it at the time but I had promised myself that I would go back for it, and if it was still in-store, then it was meant to be mine...clearly it knew that too, since I brought it home with me. :)

S, W and I caught up over wine and cheese at Carens, an unassuming wine and cheese bar in the heart of Yorkville, and stayed for dinner. We rounded out our evening at the Avenue Bar at the Four Seasons where we went in search of Creme Brulee but ended up sharing a yummy warm apple cinnamon pie and pecan tart. All in all, a lovely way to celebrate the end of a work week. :)

Anthropologie in CAD!

I was browsing Anthropologie and noticed the little Canadian flag at the top right corner of the page - Anthropologie has Canadian pricing now! Here're some of the pretty things I found, the mirror being my favourite:

Backyard Sparrow Teapot, Who's The Fairest Mirror, Maryland Placemat, Fern Forest Bathmat, Orchid Pillar Plate, Grassland Coasters, What A Hoot Glass

Week One

It's almost a week now since wL and I had "the talk" and it's amazing to me what a difference it's made. He's more open and we've talked every day since then. I'm usually the one to call him up to get together, even if it's to go for a run, but he called me Monday night and we made a date to go running the next day. We had made a date for a dinner and a movie last night, but it was thwarted by both our work schedules, as was our tentative dinner date tonight.

The good news is that we're set for Saturday - I got us tickets to see The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the Elgin, a musical that I've wanted to see since I first read about it a couple years ago while researching things to do in NYC. We're having dinner prior and he's picking the restaurant, which isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it's significant because I've always been the one to choose the destination when we dine out together. In times past, when I asked him if he had any preference, he'd just defer to me, and I'd throw the ball back into his court by giving him a shortlist. I wonder what he'll come up with...?

Light at the end...?

It's been very busy at work this and I'm rather frustrated by it given that the project I've been working on since mid-November has been far too fluid for my liking. Decisions are made/reversed/re-made again all the time and it's hard to keep up. BUT. There is (hopefully) an end in sight since this project goes to committee next Friday, and if it's given the greenlight, it's my hope that my part is done. Keeping my fingers crossed...

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen

I picked up Syrie James' Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen last Sunday at Costco and finished it 5 days later.

From the backcover: What if, hidden in an old attic chest, Jane Austen's memoirs were discovered after hundreds of years? What if those pages revealed the untold story of a life-changing love affair?

It was a quick and easy read of Austen's fictional romance interwoven with the writing of Sense and Sensibility. I'm by no means a hard-core Janeite, but James does a good job of creating characters in Austen's society that supposedly inspire many of those that come to life in her books, including a Mr. Morton that is so clearly the pompous Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice.

Opening a door

While it was at times endearingly awkward, and at one point mildly infuriating, wL and I finally had "the talk" that I was about ready to give up on yesterday when he emailed me in the morning to bail out on dinner because of a last minute get-together with university friends who were back visiting from Australia.

Perhaps I should rewind a bit: I called him up Wednesday night and to say that we should do something Saturday night. I emailed the next day to suggest sushi and a movie and he replied yesterday to say that he had to take a raincheck because of the get-together. I wrote back and suggested Sunday and he never replied so I thought, forget it, I'm banging my head against the wall because he has the habit of not responding sometimes and I don't like being left hanging. (I know, I could have called instead of going the passive-aggressive email route, but who really calls anybody anymore?)

So, I got a call tonight about 6:45 - he wanted to know what I was up to and if I still wanted to have dinner since his friends had disbanded without dinner and his brother wasn't going to be home. I said I was just going to make something but we could still have dinner if he wanted to.

About an hour later, he was at my door and we headed off for sushi. I'd sent S a text to say that wL and I were still on - she knew that I was getting rather frustrated with him - and she wrote back to say that I should be sure to have the talk otherwise it would nag me forever...and she's right of course.

We get to the restaurant, and clever girl that I am (heh) with the sneaky investigative skills, I brought up the Thirty-Two Questions on Love in Letters of a Portuguese Nun and asked him a few questions from the list, including #13: in love what is the greatest crime, to be refused or not have dared to ask? I didn't ask it in so many words, but you get the idea. His answers were all very interesting and telling...I found out for example that in 3 of his 4 relationships, it was more of a slow-burn situation in that he laid his cards out on the table straight away, and the girls took about a year to come around to his way of thinking - I will come back to this later.

We paid up the bill and he drove me home and we carried on with our easy conversation even as we were parked on my driveway for another 10 minutes or so before I decided it was now or never. I told him I wanted to ask him something and prefaced it all by saying that it may very well be awkward, but I wanted to know if he thought that there could be anything between us beyond friendship.

So he paused for a bit and said, among other things that he was open to the idea of a relationship between us. Turns out that he'd had a crush on me for about a year when we first met 5 years ago. Why he never said anything, I don't know, but I will certainly ask when next we talk, because if this works out, it would again follow his pattern, only he never declared himself upfront and it took me 5 years to come around to the idea of us together. As a random aside, I've always thought that he had beautiful hands...I noticed them when we first met.

He himself had been thinking about the idea of an "us" for awhile now too, and his reservations were around religion, as he's Christian, goes to Church and teaches Sunday school, and I'm completely ambivalent about being baptised Anglican. Now, he's never been particularly vocal about his faith, and it's only in the last 6 months or so that I was aware of how important religion was to him. In one of my earlier probes, I had asked him what his dealbreakers were and while he hadn't said religion, he did say that it was a preference...so he brought that up tonight.

We sat there for another hour or so in honest, open conversation. The infuriating part was his answer about what being "open" meant because he kept talking about the reservation he had - essentially, he didn't want to be unfair or hurt me if it turned out that his Christianity, or rather, my "just be a good person" school of religion became an issue. To which I answered, "It seems like you're closing the door without even opening it to see what's on the other side." He stopped, thought, and said, "You're right." Of course I am.

So. What does this all mean? It means that neither of knows what will happen but we're going to spend more time together and see what happens. We jokingly laid out some ground rules - in regards to phone time (there was a girl he dated who complained that he didn't care because they didn't talk on the phoen all the time) I told him we're not in high school anymore so I don't expect us to talk every night on the phone - in fact, I'd probably be the one to say, I gotta go, I need my beauty sleep - but I did expect that he replied to my text messages. If things work out and there's a happily ever after for us, yay. If not, well that's fine too.

The good-bye was the really funny part, and I'm rather embarassed to admit how awkward it was, because we were both sitting in our seats and staring at each other, probably wondering if we should kiss, and laughing nervously because it's suddenly weird, and then he opens his arms and I lean in for an awkward hug and then we said goodnight and I went into the house, all happy and glow-y, I'm sure, because I looked in the hall mirror. :)

I've decided that the first thing we'll do when next we see each other is to get the first kiss out of the way immediately so as to avoid another awkward goodnight.

Ortho-loot bags

I left Mandarin class early today because I had an orthodontic appointment at noon to have my braces put in.

I waited about 15 minutes before being shown into a room to have the "before" pictures taken for the record. This is my second time around with braces. Back in high school, I had the clear porcelain ones but this time, since we're just correcting the bottom front teeth which have inexplicably crowded, I've got a mouthful of the old-school metal ones.

The big difference in the experience this time is I left with a serious loot bag of orthodontic goodies! In the bag, I found the usual paraphenelia: a couple packs of orthodontic wax and toothbrushes, floss threaders, expandable(?!) floss, sugarless gum, toothpaste and a few travelling brushes. The new addition was a product called Gishy Goo - I am not kidding, that is what it's called - which is a "sillicone bracket relief aid" packaged in a double-barrelled syringe. It's essentially a newfangled substitute for orthodontic wax which comes in 5 colours, including blue, green, red and yellow. I chose the latter since it's the least technicolour of the bunch. I got a t-shirt too, which will be perfect for the gym.

I'd forgotten what it felt like to have braces - I could feel the wire doing its job as soon as it was fastened into the brackets because there was a tightness that was new, yet not completely foreign to me. My gums are a bit sore now and I'm speaking with a bit of a lisp thanks to the new hardware, but it's only for about 8 months. I hope.

Letters of A Portuguese Nun

I came across Letters of a Portuguese Nun several years ago while browsing at the book store and jotted it down for future reference. I finally ordered it online over the holidays and finished it in about 6 hours - which is about the collective time I spent commuting home after work last week.

The letters in question were first published anonymously by Claude Barbin in Paris in 1669 and are believed by most scholars to be fiction written by Gabriel-Joseph de La Vergne, comte de Guilleragues.

Myriam Cyr argues that the passionate love letters, of which there are 5, are authentic in her thoroughly-researched history of the forbidden love affair between Mariana Alcoforado, a Franciscan nun who lived in a convent in Beja, Portugal and a French officer, Noel Bouton Chamilly in the mid-17th century.

Having finished the book, I'm not entirely convinced that they're real, despite Cyr's many endnotes and references. I will be the first to admit that I can be rather cynical, but I'd like to think that my jaded lens is tempered by a deep rose shade. Despite this, the love letters are just over-the-top in their desperate love and yearning.

The end of the book includes Thirty-Two Questions on Love, which are attributed to the Marquis de Sourdis, ca 1664 for the salon of the Marquise de Sable. #13 in particular struck a chord:

In love what is the greatest crime, to be refused or not have dared to ask?

Bathroom

I’ve been hunting for the perfect shower curtain to complete my bathroom look. I’d picked up soft and plush bath towels in clean white and fresh meadow green for my white and chocolate bathroom and had my heart set on Marimekko’s Kaiku shower curtain, except for the fact that my best friends’ S&W saw it first. (Incidentally, it's available online at Anthropologie)

Long story short, I was inspired by the fresh, graphic quality of the print and had it in mind for my own. It’s silly to say that, among other things, I’ve been focused on finding a suitable shower curtain.

I know what you're thinking. I’m a freak. Because I know how ridiculous it is that I’m not moving for another 6+months yet I’m anxious to find the right shower curtain. I know I have issues. But it’s the little hit of instant gratification that satisfies…it’s a small enough buy that I won’t stress about it too much if it turns out I made the wrong decision (which I didn’t.) Besides, it’s also small size-wise so won’t take up much storage space until I move.

I found this at Urban Barn today and after some consideration, decided it was perfect:

I look at it and see the Tree of Knowledge, or the Tree of Life, in slumber as it were, with its’ vast canopy of leaves and deep roots - you can't see the roots, but I know they're there. It’s bold and graphic and symbolic and it’s perfect.

Condo Update!

My wall of glass is up! This here is the view of my side of the building, which is south-facing:

Suns and Stags

I spent the afternoon along Queen West, wandering along the stretch between Bathurst and Dovercourt. Much of this territory isn’t new to me, but I never tire of browsing, and I found some great stuff today, some of it I want and on sale!!

I spied this sunburst mirror at Dexterity, which I love and would hang above my bed…I will need to double-check whether it’s the right scale:

The Avenue sofa at Pavillion caught my eye, with its tailored, clean lines and slim, low arms:

I saw this stag bust at Urban Barn and I love it because it’s fun, but my girl, S, is freaked out by it:

Incidentally, the T-Table and Crystal Stool are on sale at Quasi Modo and I’m wondering whether to pick it up now or hold off…what to do? The sale is on until the end of the month so I do have a little time to consider…