as domestic as it gets here

so yeah, the heating bill is at this point the only thing that stands between me and complete settle-ment, i think. as soon as i see it, at the end of the month or so, i will have hopefully faced all the novelty that comes with a new place.
and it's good to know that i will have some sort of company at least in the cold months ahead:

this monster-plant was sprouting a couple of new leaves last month when we met again. it's one of helene's plants from the old 2011 apartment. i'm glad to see that she's taking well to the move and the new environment. i love plants that bloom in winter, no matter what weird kinds of flowers they produce.

yay, so i bought a muffin tray. for whoever knows me, this is a clear sign of getting serious about stuff. i love making muffins cause using the oven still looks to me as a next-level type of skill; and they are easy, hard to get wrong and somehow manage to look plentiful, indulgent - like an achievement of sorts.
also, they'll never come out the same way twice, which makes it easy to experiment with adding random stuff to the dough and easy to forgive myself when one batch is less than perfect. best of all worlds.

this is what happens when you can actually set the temperature on your oven, and when the oven has gradations in both C and F. these are simple, vanilla (literally, ha) muffins, mainly just to test the oven. i bought a "north-american muffin tray" (read: big!), with the result that one of these babies should be enough for breakfast. seriously, i can't eat two in one sitting. i mean i could if my life depended of it :)).
also, the perils of buying vanilla extract in north america: after searching and searching, the smallest bottle i could find was 125ml. they simply do not sell stuff in smaller batches here, man. or at the depanneurs, where they only have pre-made batter or stuff like that. 

sooo...my breakfast tray! the "tray" is some sort of wooden drawer that i collected from the streets. funny that i've never actually had a breakfast tray before - getting into luxury territory, are we!

next, the adventure of carmen going to do her laundry:
this buanderie is the closest to my place - about 3 minutes walk, corner of 2 sort-of-important streets. it's big enough that i don't think there will ever be danger of it being full whenever i decide to get my laundry done. i went on a rainy sunday afternoon (classic, no?) and it was absolutely empty for like an hour there! ever the lady who was supposed to supervise it picked up and left after i came in, and was going to only return to close the place for the evening.
you know the sensation you get when you find yourself traveling in an empty bus? it was a bit like that, minus the movement. the sense of alone-ness, but also of safety and of moving in a right direction.
i just love buanderies, what can i say.

this one is complete with seating space, phone AND change machine, which is heavenly, and with a soap dispenser of sorts. definitely a bigger operation than our old little corner place on laurier (i miss that cranky quebecoise lady there, and her soap operas. i miss the strangest things, i discover.)
this is what 4 p.m. looks like these days. pretty awful, no? 

look at the...quiet matter-of-factness of it. i don't know, it always touches me. buanderies are like public transport - i've just come upon this comparison, but i'll milk it for all i can - a huge service to the community. i'm a big fan.

and when the secheuses start purring and the clothes fly around, it makes me want to ...sing? tap-dance? something. (luckily i was still alone in there.)

i almost read through the collection of last year's gossip magazines in french they have on display. this photo is just a small nod to how stuff...accumulates in places.

then it started snowing!
seriously, yesterday early afternoon there were flakes coming down, before it all turned into rain. waiting at my bus stop, i saw two squirrels chasing each other up and down a tree, then meeting midway on a branch to cuddle. for all the squirrels i've observed these years in montreal, this is the first time that i actually see them touch and hug. it looked funny and oddly heartening, while at the same time my rational side was going like "oooogh, it's so cold they actually need to touch to warm up, brrrr"

you can't see much in here, so you'll just have to take my word for it: there was cuddling involved. also, look at the nest on the other side of the tree: if not their house, it's definitely a pantry or something. 

so me and an old man at the stop were laughing at the squirrels, a third guy comes by and sees us having a good time, without seeing the cause. all this among flurries of snow. he pats my shoulder and greets us with "joyeux noel!" and passes on.

oh, you, city.