1. Draw and draw more. Three portraits.

2. Get outside and bring enormous tome of Old Garden Roses to peruse and pursue.

3. Amuse sous chef by singing “Life of Pi” to the tune of...

4. Caffeinate and attend ballet.

5. Take in stride. 6 hours ago

1. Consider fireworks. doesn’t appear to be my day

2. Draw and write in the treehouse. It’s hot out today, and the scent of lilacs will perfume the whole garden. yes

3. Plant watermelon seeds. nope

4. Join Mr. Sunshine for second Sunday. (I think he invited me.) it’s nice to be the gal invited

5. Find a good spot for Miss Heritage, the rose-bush. I think she might be the first rose to grace the east bed. still asea

6. Water the lanugo grass that now covers bull terrier lawn craters. yes1 day ago

1. Practice ballet in the back yard.

2. Plant wild purple impatiens, watermelon seeds and a pretty pale pink rose named Heritage.

3. Dig up neighbour’s lost and forgotten patch of violets. Stash ‘em in the secret garden.

4. Write in the treehouse.

5. Draw in the treehouse.

6. Enjoy and match the indulgent pounce of Mr. Sunshine’s Sunday.

7. Wear capris, décolleté, ballet flats and big black-rimmed glasses with aplomb.

8. Read.

9. Plan charming and mischievous month ahead.

10. SOMA for hot drinking chocolate. 2 days ago

1. Git outside. First for yard sales (as soon as the sous chef is up) and then for flower-picking, tending, scolding and everything else. yards sales, yes – got 6 t-shirts for a loonie and a Le Creuset mini tagine for a toonie

2. Draw. not enough

3. Limit gasoline to one half litre per tinderbox. what tinderbox?

4. Sit in treehouse composing streams of lyrical poetry. still writing, no treehouse

5. Do that sculpture thing. Really. tomorrow3 days ago

1. Upgrade computer so Safari doesn’t crash a hundred times a day.

2. Draw!

3. Pick bouquet of muguets-des-bois (lilies of the valley) for nightstand.

4. Get knitty.

5. Clean up pawprints.

6. Time to make candy. 4 days ago

1. Gratefully – and I mean gratefully – approve my friend’s promotional page design.

2. Gratefully follow tax advice and get more work done on the appendices.

3. Attend sous chef’s open house/student orientation. Getting ready for September!

4. Replant errant myosotis plants. There aren’t many this year, but the familiar burst of blue is welcoming. Why are blue flowers so enchanting?

5. Find out what the “stealth shrub” is that’s in the rear of a perennial border. I do not recall planting this…

6. Baseball game tonight!

7. Enjoy “lazy miso” soup, a gift from Yumi brought by Teru yesterday.

8. Begin sketches for the wedding portrait.

9. Affections.

10. Git outside and snuffle in the lilacs.

11. Figure out how to bring a vase of lilacs inside without major and instantaneous drooping (the lilacs, not me).

12. Poetry and port in the late evening. 5 days ago

1. Gather souvenirs! Teru is visiting this afternoon before heading back to Matsuyama!

2. Work on a loopy wedding portrait and fun gifs.

3. Gardening: git to it! The weather’s lovely and beckoning!

4. Get the promotional artwork sent.

5. Make more pappardelle.

6. Eat pappardelle with beef daube.

7. Send poems to sister ballerina.

8. Be affectionate and quasi-alluring. 6 days ago

1. Heartbroken Nation: Get over the mind-numbing horror show that was the Leafs’ loss last night.

2. Arrange fun, frolicsome wedding portrait for friends’ upcoming nuptials in June and plan an Audrey/Dita hybrid dress for the occasion.

3. Make a beef daube.

4. Take a ballet class in the evening.

5. Knittiness. 1 week ago

1. Snort.

2. Remember: the pen, pencil, series 7 watercolour brush and tubes o’ Winsor-Newton are mightier than the sword.

3. Make a sauce from dried morels (snort), a mushroom demi-glace and some other good stuff.

4. Think fondly of post-facto invitation to Sunday.

5. Write a poem of friendship, utilizing motifs and imagery common to Rat writings.

6. Teru is coming to Toronto! Find ultra-Canadian gifts for him to take back to the family in Japan.

7. Game seven of the Stanley Cup playoffs. It’s come to this: don’t do anything to jinx. 1 week ago

1. Collect and freeze a small vial of hail from the morning’s hailstorms.

2. Finish a poem.

3. Graciously allow the sous chef to vacuum and sweep.

4. Indulge in chocolate and wild dreams of triumph.

5. Knit a tail for a docked dog.

6. Hint to the sous chef that dining out is entirely an option.

7. Oh yeah – the pappardelle! Make a sauce to go with it! 1 week ago

1. Make a delightful weekend breakfast for the sous chef: rashers of double smoked Berkshire bacon, scrambled eggs, fried grape tomatoes and yesterday’s gougères. (The rest is saved for a Rat meal later.)

2. Make pappardelle like Avittorio’s.

3. Draw a small likeness of Jamie Oliver to fit into an illustration of Julia Child walloping willy-nilly with a rolling-pin.

4. Tidy up extraneous illustrations – put ‘em in bankers boxes and cart ‘em to the attic.

5. Finish de-fuzzing the studio.

6. Knit or sew or make a polymer sculpture.

7. Write a poem that is half-fanciful.

8. See about some fuchsia ivy geraniums.

9. Clear out old lotions and hair tonics and the like. 1 week ago

Git things done that were unthinkable during the misery of an aguey cold.

1. Dig out all the images for the promotional page of artwork.

2. Clean out bathroom cabinet of extraneous old hand-lotion samples and dried-up zombie makeup.

3. Git the sewing machine out and take ‘er for a test drive.

4. Begin round one of inventing a cocktail for Mr. Sunshine. Something tells me it should have an orange-yellow-gold hue. “A lager,” said Mr. Sunshine, brightly. I gave him the Peg Bracken look (narrowed eye, compressed nostril) which he did not see over the phone.

5. It’s Friday! Attentions! Affections! A dance to celebrate the weekend.

6. Put on a Leafs cap and hope for the best. 1 week ago

1. Attempt to get some thinking past the cotton-wool consciousness of my cold-addled brain.

2. Once achieved, begin on a promotional page of artwork.

3. Create a tax appendix.

4. Make gougères with the sous chef.

5. Sip port and watch a baseball game in the eve.

This is what a head cold and fever sound like, but in a much better way. 1 week ago

1. Get over woozy cotton-wool-brain of misery brought on by a diabolical cold.

2. Try to get poem writ.

3. Make salsa with a lot of cilantro.

4. Try planting watermelon seeds again.

5. Try getting to bank to deposit cheques.

6. Try to tackle tax hoohah.

7. Try to tackle design of promotional page.

8. Find Mr. Sunshine later for hangin’ around the mall and messin’ about the Seven-Eleven. Maybe we’ll split a slurpee. 1 week ago

1. Listen to Spidey sense.

2. Assemble artwork for promotional page.

3. Keep Angus’s snout out of the lemongrass.

4. Ballet in the evening.

5. Call Leonardo to catch up on life’s rich pageantry. 2 weeks ago

1. Have a bit of fun.

2. Do taxy business. Spreadsheets. The opposite of a bit of fun.

3. Resume fun.

4. Garden fun – poke through soil just a little to see if things are germinating.

5. Cull and shelve the last four neat stacks of books.

6. Drag out Leafs ballcap for sous chef’s recalcitrant fandom.

7. Write poem of love or wit.

8. Call old client and ask about painting a faux magazine cover for his upcoming wedding. 2 weeks ago

1. Coffee and used food thrift and consignment shopping with Dr. Lulu.

2. An invitation to the day from Mr. Sunshine.

3. Plant the hollies and hope for the best.

4. A day of ELO.

5. Plant lavender, lemon grass, golden lemon thyme and geraniums.

6. Straighten up.

7. Self-pedicure. 2 weeks ago

1. Energized by yesterday’s sweeping of the front porch, attempt to sweep the back porch and artfully arrange the sous chef’s kitchen garden pots. done

2. Sit in the treehouse with the computer and poke around looking at people’s blogs and stuff. great fun

3. Write two poems, one for Mr. S. and the other for Mr. S.
Hah! one and a half

4. Get rid of (i.e. shelve) massive piles of books in the bedchamber of Ratopia. done

5. Self-manicure. attempted

6. Continue playing musical plants.

7. Figure out how hollies like to be planted and then plant the pair of them, prince and princess.

8. Either paint or sew. Leaning toward painting.

9. See about thieving a patch of wild neighbourhood mint, since it seems to have disappeared here. How can mint disappear from anywhere?yes

10. Find out what the yellow flower that grows in the back garden is. 2 weeks ago

1. Go to Bob’s Garden Centre or Summer’s Best and pick up pots of herbs: thyme, rosemary, lemon thyme and basil. Each spring, when I say “Hello, Bob,” Bob is very quick to point out his name isn’t Bob. done – but Bob wasn’t there and neither was lemon thyme

2. Plan for a delightful evening, affectionately late. yes

3. Write poetry in the tree-house. yes, today, too

4. Plan to build a rustic gazebo in the secret garden. thinking ‘bout it, not doing it

5. Attend to tax and advertising hoohah. oi

6. Try a gentle bounce or two on the sous chef’s trampoline. not ready yet2 weeks ago

1. Like Wilbur, stand perfectly still outside in the afternoon sun, thinking about the loveliness of spring and being alive in the midst of it.

2. Prune out deadwood from the rose canes and be fascinated to learn it is one word: “deadwood”. Not “dead wood”.

3. Plant purloined scilla and snowdrops.

4. Drop hollyhock seeds in random gateways.

5. Think about a Chinos Locos burrito for the evening, which shall be eaten (the evening as well as the burrito) with enthusiasm and maybe an invented cocktail.

6. Attend to tax hoohah.

7. Attend to website hoohah.

8. Revel in yesterday’s ballet class and figure out a strategy that may allow me another class per week without the usual unaffordability factor.

9. Look smart in glasses.

10. Perhaps Mr. Sunshine will think of me and say, “Gosh, she looks smart in glasses. I am thinking of her and hoping she writes a poem for me,” and then I may write said poem, feeling spurred and somewhat special. 2 weeks ago

1. Savour the spring air.

2. Pick wild-at-heart magnolias, violets, forsythia and muscari for a cheerful little bedside posy.

3. Check out the price of pussywillow shrubs and consider.

4. Make a zesty fresh tomato sauce.

5. See if Cindy’s daffs are coming up. They’re late or they’re hiding.

6. Back to poetry.

7. Delight the sous chef with gifts from afar.

8. Ballet tonight!

9. Plant cilantro and other frilly herbs in beautiful castoff terracotta pots. 3 weeks ago

1. What was that the crocodile said the other day about beauty of spirit? Remember it is truth.

2. Simply – have a delightful day.

3. Love and be loved.

4. Try to write a little poem or so. 3 weeks ago

1. Focus on goodness, truth, beauty. “You will always have great beauty of spirit, Ratty,” says Miss Crocodile to Rat, waving from her barstool. “Do not lose sight of that.”

2. Calm.

3. Look for a little package of Jiffy biscuit mix for the sous chef.

4. Aim for good times.

5. Think well of.

6. Find a box of Trix.

7. Try to write the last poems of Na Po Wri Mo. Make ‘em full of truth and beauty or something like truth and beauty.

8. Make a sauce and cook with Mr. Sunshine. 3 weeks ago

1. Plant stuff in the burgeoning garden.

2. Look for bargains at Williams-Sonoma.

3. Find odd presents and things for the sous chef.

4. Consider, poetically, some pretty triumphant crocodiles and their epiphanies.

5. Indulgence, partnership and tarpaulins. 3 weeks ago

1. Travel and stuff.

2. Meet! Greet! Affect! Sip red bull and orange juice!

3. Sit in a garden swing with Cindy, popcorn, red wine.

4. Pounce.

5. Achieve one of those cake batter flavoured coffee things.

Friday

1. Waken properly and achieve pedicure.

2. Everything is different today. Close eyes, breathe in, breathe out.

3. Do not swim.

4. See what’s what at thrift shops.

5. Get to a local jukebox and indulge in transitory apple cider.

6. Explore. Confidence, come, take my hand. Exploration! Discovery!

7. Poems. Catch up, there, eh, swami rattina. 3 weeks ago

1. Mind my bussiness.

2. Blood test.

3. Poem. 3 weeks ago

1. Block sleeves.

2. Wax poetic.

3. Make a pact with a grrrlfriend.

4. Find and sort insurance and tax information, which, though dry as toast, is necessary to find and sort.

5. Sew a fine seam, et cetera. 4 weeks ago

1. Correct mistakes.

2. Write a love poem.

3. Git to Mr. C’s for tax help and direction.

4. Hie to Dr. Art for the usual: advice, not so folksy wisdom, blood assessment, post operative calm and peace of mind.

5. Eat a Five Guys burger, with everything plus bbq sauce and relish.

6. Staunch. 4 weeks ago

1. Affectionate preamble.

2. Work on knit and sewing projects.

3. Think about drinking chocolate at SOMA.

4. Clean up.

5. Enjoy whatever the day brings my way. 4 weeks ago