may, scattered highlights

1. so, i bought some furniture for my place.
it's a long story, but it can be condensed down to a picture, so i really don't know how to proceed now :). first i bought a bookcase, and ...the rush of just spending money and having stuff delivered is so tempting, next i wanted a sofa.
no, correction: i've been wanting a sofa forever. a blue fake leather one if possible, a 2-seater to match the lost sofa we used to have in my first real place in montreal, on des erables. somehow a sofa like that has come to respresent...stuff to me: being home. reaching dreams long in the making. the exact texture of individually-tailored happiness. so.
of course i can't find a sofa like that. a new one would cost a ridiculous amount...and besides nothing of what i've seen in furniture shops is really satisfying. even armchairs are hard to find. some pieces of furniture in second-hand shops are tempting in the short-run...until i think of transport, of maintenace or until i take a second look and see hidden stains, broken springs, wear and tear. no.
so i solved the problem by buying a new bed + mattress and folding my old futon into a sofa, in my kitchen. (which, again, was a plan i'd had ever since i saw this kitchen last october.)
yay?

part of the fun: signing for delivery and realizing you're in possession of a box of wooden boards, and you have no hammer and no appropriate screwdriver in the house.
anyway, the assembling stage somehow...came together. with long breaks in between. 

for a while i was indordinately proud of my new screwdriver (not pictured here) and its 6 (!) different heads. until i discovered that everybody i was telling about it considered it an absolutely normal and ordinary implement. also, in the time it took me to buy this tool from the depanneur, my hockey team had 5 goals scored against it. so i dunno.

so the final result is boring (spoiler: it looks almost like a normal bed!) (although the mattress is pretty cool, i'll give it that) . which is why i only present you with partial results. this is pre-putting in the drawers. yes i slept on the floor for like 3 nights, which is still better than not having a sofa in the kitchen.

i mean i don't know about you, and frankly i don't really care cause it's not you living here, but it does feel like a 'new season, new home' - scale change for me. i practically spend my whole day here now. it's very good for naps too. situated just by the kitchen table, two steps away from the fridge. right by the back door (which for like a week was the only exit, cause we've had our front stairs redone too). with the window open at night, there are sounds it's funny to call urban. crickets, songbirds. sitting on this futon, in summertime, feels closer to the village than any other place i've lived in so far.
so i am glad.

my plants seem to be enthusiastic about their home too. i love it everytime i get a flower, or even a fresh, shiny, unfurling leaf. 

i almost forgot to mention this little anecdote about home. i had a visit (totally unplanned for, but the more exciting for it) from my friend elena. of course i showed off all the tiny tidbits that i love about my place. among them, my tiny pantry window, where i've been known to keep bottles of wine to cool earlier in spring. and elena tells me this window is traditionally the 'milk bottle window', built specially for milk delivery back when. that many houses still do have it, not only here, but in toronto too, and presumably other towns in canada.
how was i supposed to know?:)

2. gah, there's no smooth linking to this, so ok: i've re-taken up spanish, with a vengeance.
it helps that i can take classes at the same place where i've been volunteering to teach english. and (not to say that i'm super-proud of my clever deal, or something) but because there are few people who come there for spanish, i pretty much have a bunch of different teachers almost all to myself. so it's cool.
in spite of my grammar sucking, here are some things i've been able to do in spanish this month:
- have a haircut in spanish (went to a mexican hairdresser's, and realized soon she spoke neither french nor english. si, se puede!)
- listen to a local hispanophone singer and understand what she was singing
- after 2 hours using only spanish, start ordering coffee in spanish at the cafe, and finding it horribly difficult to switch to french (from spanish to french is the HARDEST thing)
- go to a trilingual reading and understand (mostly) everything

this is the poster for the reading! which i got through my usual methods: a combination of youthful enthusiasm, puppy eyes and telling people my sad life story. ok, only parts of it. i.e. reading a poem on open mic. alright, the truth is, i have no idea why it works when it works. and by 'it' i mean everything, anything. but it was a wonderful night and i almost don't want to jinx it by thinking of it. 

3. i don't know how aware you guys are of it, but it's summer.
the cremerie at the corner, swarming.
swings in the park across the street.
people hosing their sidewalk.
ants at my kitchen door (so far they haven't been annoying, so i'm not spraying them yet.)
sandals.
flowers.
heat.

the lilacs are almost gone, and i barely got to breathe them in. i must have stolen one branch from every bush in the neighbourhood, but they last so little. now it's wild roses.

in the funniest joke of the weekend, my friends offered to drive over and pick me up to take me on this great adventure, to...marche jean-talon, which is 10 minutes`walk from my place.
but the laugh was on me a bit when i realized that i could actually be there every day, but i hadn't gone back since easter. wine tasting: a newly-opened charcuterie giving away free sausages,:candy floss; balloons; fruit and veggies everywhere; and other market-y stuff. a real excitement, and it's like this every weekend, and it's my neighbourhood.  

summer is a good time to love this city. you really can't go wrong.

walking by the st-laurent, on the other side of the jean drapeau bridge

weekend sun in parc jarry. (i.e. in my neighbourhood :) )