Tonight, I came home at 7:30. I was tired, I was cranky, I was hungry - and I was annoyed that my apartment is a mess. I went away for the weekend, so the clutter that I'd accumulated during the previous week was still there. I reached under the sink, grabbed what I needed, and started cleaning. When I finished cleaning the bathroom, I went to put the spraybottle away. Only to see the cleaner still in the cupboard. So I looked at what was still in my hand - what I'd been using for the past 20 minutes. Insecticide! Hee. That bottle is an embarrassing secret already: I have insecticide. See, last winter, the umbrella plant got brown scale. I tried all those eco-friendly remedies: I washed it with soap, I tried picking off the nasty little bugs with my fingernails, I tried talking to it (that one, though, happens all the time: 
when you live alone, sometimes, you talk to your plants. And your couch, and your radio, and... you get the picture). So, back to the brown scale: I trundled to Canadian Tire, and I scrutinized all the bottles of bugs-be-gone they had, and bought the least noxious sounding one, and slunk to the cash in shame. I smuggled it home in a plain paper bag. I waited for a warm day, and sprayed that sucker. And the brown scaled died. And I hid the evidence under the sink.
And now, I've insecticided my bathroom! My butt sits on that toilet seat, would you want to sit in insecticide? No, you would not, unless you have some rather unsavoury things going on, I guess. So, I grabbed the "green" cleaner, and I re-cleaned the bathroom (and keep in mind, I was cranky when I got home). Interestingly enough, the green cleaner in my small, poorly ventilated bathroom caused respiratory distress, the insecticide had not. Hmmmmm.
That anecdote alone should tell you all you need to know as to why no updates: Johanna is turning into a batty cat-lady minus the cats. Too. much. work.
Though, that being said, I did escape up to Collingwood again this weekend (for the third time since Lorenz bought a condo at the base of Blue Mountain). I had originally claimed too much work, but on Friday at 8:30 p.m., I threw my skis into the car and drove up in time to consume some beer with Lorenz by the fire. On Saturday, my plan was a little bit of outdoor activity and then going home, but we took the dog for a big walk - stopping at the coffee shop and at the base of the slopes where I started looking for people wiping out, dawdling in the weird subdivision where we had to make fun of the houses, and then an hour-long loop in the deep powder of some mountain bike trails. At the end of it, the dog flopped down on the kitchen floor and refused to move for the next 12 hours. I did much the same, except I picked the couch, and I moved to eat dinner, hang out in the jacuzzi while Lorenz went out, and later crawl into my bed and sleep for over 10 hours. It was lovely. And Sunday morning, after demolishing some croissants, I was going to go home, but I hadn't used my skis yet! They are cross-country skis, and thus Lorenz humoured me and rented some equipment and we went to Scenic Caves and it was fairytale pretty and super fun and I took no pictures because I forgot the camera so you'll have to take my word for it. And I got no work done this weekend.
There. That's the sum total of my fun in the past few weeks. Except the night I took a gazillion goofy pictures of myself. Because I must work on my crazy cat-lady persona some more, and I still don't have a cat.