setting some goals

My big outing for the day was to bike over to Sears and buy a new HEPA filter for the vacuum cleaner. Every time I vacuum, the house smells like Uma - not that this is necessarily a bad thing but it is quite a doggy smell and I think I’d rather remember her in other ways. I decided to take bike paths as far as I could and ended up biking where I hadn’t before - past the Lincoln Fields transit station and onto Lawn Avenue and so over to Carlingwood. I went in through the entrance near the pet store and of course, I had to go in and there were two tiny yellow Labs, sleeping. They seemed much smaller than I ever remember Uma being. When we got her at 6 weeks (very young) she already weighed 10 pounds. These little guys looked like they couldn’t have weighed 6 pounds apiece. I didn’t get to pick them up however, so what do I know.

I have decided to call Guide Dogs on Monday and talk to them about becoming a puppy walker again. It would be a good thing to do for them but it would also be a better thing for me. I have thought about all the great things I could do with this puppy but I don’t want to write about it in case I am not accepted by them. I don’t have a fenced yard which is one of their strict criteria but then, I didn't have one last time (albeit 15 years ago). I just never let the dog out of the house unless it was attached to me. In fact, all the years we had Uma, I never let her out of the house unless she was leashed, until she got so old that she could hardly totter away, much less run away. So we’ll see how it goes.

I also went to the Home Depot on the bike home and got free instructions on how to refinish hardwood floors. Mine is that inexpensive parquet but it is made out of hardwood. And not all of it needs doing - just the hall and the part with a lot of wear. Minto waxed the hell out of the floors in between renters so I have to remove all that, then sand a little, then refinish. I can’t sand much and will do it by hand because the wood is so thin from past sandings (before they started with the wax) that I am sure I’ll go right through to the underside of the hardwood if I used a machine. My way, it will be more labour intensive but less messy and dusty so it’s a trade off. If I can get my act together by tomorrow, I can do the prep work then and apply the finish on Tuesday and it’ll be dry by the time Peter gets home Thursday. At least, that’s the plan.