a lit­tle home improvement

Final­ly the rib­bons have come back! These were such a fix­ture of Avery’s room in New York, proud­ly added to each week­end upon return­ing from a show. But they’ve spent the last four months crowd­ed on a bul­letin board stuffed in a cor­ner of the nev­er-fre­quent­ed guest room, a low pri­or­i­ty com­pared to fig­ur­ing out book­shelves, cloth­ing stor­age, how to keep Wim­sey from using her pil­low as a sec­ond lit­ter box. Then yes­ter­day John, in a des­per­ate bid to keep life worth liv­ing even if he could­n’t go to India, had the brain­wave that if we strung a nice rib­bon around her bed­posts, it would give her a place to dis­play her beloved “rosettes,” as they’re known here. And did you know that in Eng­land, red is first place? Nei­ther did I. So yes­ter­day while John and Avery were munch­ing on a “gour­man­dise” from Paul Patis­serie in the High Street (it’s a cus­tardy ver­sion of pain au choco­lat, if you can imag­ine the indul­gence), I was at Les Rouleaux across the road, a shop devot­ed entire­ly to… rib­bons. Of every descrip­tion you can pos­si­bly imag­ine. Oh, there’s the occa­sion­al pom-pom or bit of vel­vet rop­ing, but most­ly it’s rib­bons as far as the eye can see. A favorite haunt of Avery’s, even though any­thing but plain green is ver­boten at King’s Col­lege. I bought what I thought would be a bit too much red rib­bon, hav­ing esti­mat­ed how much was need­ed by get­ting John to test the bed length against his con­sid­er­able wingspan. (What a treat to have him around for pick­up, I must say, as well.)

At home I strung the rib­bon along and while I cooked din­ner Avery arranged her rosettes, in a com­plex order of event, impor­tance of event, lev­el of achieve­ment, etc. Plus on each side she hung one of her birth­day par­ty favor rosettes that says “Avery’s 9th Birth­day Par­ty, NYC 2005”. John thought it so fun­ny that she arranged them fac­ing in, toward her! “Well,” she defend­ed her­self, “it gets real­ly bor­ing in bed, try­ing to get to sleep. Now I have some­thing to look at.” So cosy! I love this pic­ture because you can see all the things that make her room her room: all the books, dolls, horsey fig­ures, and a view of the gar­den. Plus if you look close­ly, a Tacy facey down low.

Wim­sey sur­vived his vis­it to the Hyde Park Vet­eri­nary Clin­ic quite well and it’s been deter­mined that along with the what­ev­er waft­ing out of the elec­tri­cal out­lets, he also needs, dare I say it, kit­ty prozac. Well, try stuff­ing a pill down this man­ic cat’s throat. It did­n’t hap­pen yes­ter­day and I can’t imag­ine it will hap­pen today. But he seems bet­ter with the plug-ins, so we’ll hope for the best.

Today I shall meet up with Avery’s class at the Queensway Skat­ing Cen­tre, because appar­ent­ly if I do, she can stay after­wards and skate more. It turns out that Ava and Clio have been doing this all year and I nev­er knew. Or Avery nev­er cared until today. But it will make a lit­tle change of pace and I’ll see if I can get a good pic­ture of the three girls.