I have so many blog posts backed up in my head that I’m quite sure my brains are about to start leaking out my ears any minute now. My life is in one of those whirling dervish phases, and it’s all I can do to hang on – there’s just no room for blogging!
Here’s but a sampling of the blog posts I’ve been dying to write but haven’t yet been able (not to mention a few that I’m dying to write and probably won’t ever be able to!):
- Child care. Ugh. Still looking for care for Lucas for next month. I thought we had a lock on a spot in a daycare centre, but it turns out that we were lower down on the waiting list than they had vacancies. I’m still interviewing, with increasing desperation. Last night I was so sick of it all I cried it out for a little bit, then shook it off and lined up three more interviews for this week. Cross your fingers for us?
- Blog Out Loud Ottawa! OMG, did BOLO ever rock the house down this year or WHAT? The readers were this amazing mix of raw, gut-wrenching honesty and side-splitting funny and jaw-dropping insightful that it was just a roller-coaster of entertainment. I had an amazing time, despite the fact that I was starting on what would turn out to be a four-day doozy of a migraine. If you get the chance, though, you should head on over to the BOLO site and click through to some of the readers for the night. Man, we are blessed with some amazing writers here in our community!
- Social Capital Ottawa: The SoCapOtt social media conference is coming up fast! Do you have your tickets yet? I’ll be doing a co-presentation with Lara and Vivian on how to choose the best social media tools for your business, whether you’re a sole proprietor, a not-for-profit or a government department. Come on out and check us out!
- Critters: There are many, many benefits to living out here a semi-rural community. There’s more birds, more trees, more space, more bugs, and more critters. While Willie didn’t turn out to be much of a mouser, what he didn’t take care of a trap did — let’s hope there’s no more of those! But my real concern lately is a GIANT raccoon that keeps tipping over our garbage can and green bin. One of these days I’ll get around to blogging about the time Beloved chased him away from our garbage at 3 am one morning using the swiffer. But in the interim, HELP! I am so sick of picking up picked-through garbage — what can I do to keep this bear-cub-sized raccoon from tipping over the bins? The worst part is that I’m actually thinking of not using the green bin anymore, it’s just too much work cleaning up the food bits from the curb every single week, and now he’s started tipping it over at the back of the house, too. Ideas?
There’s more, oh so much more, and I’m hoping my life slows down enough in the next week or two for me to get back around to blogging it all in real time. Really, I think I’ve forgotten how to live the life unblogged!
Raccoons are notoriously resourceful and have even been known to *roll away* a locked garbage can to take it back to their shop to work on (something experienced by a Peterborough neighbour we had). The only solution that we’ve had work at our cottage is to put the bins in an enclosure of some kind, like a shed. You can also build a rudimentary one with a lifting lid that will make it easy for you to access the garbage and green bin but make it too heavy for puny raccoon arms.
we had a small garbage bin shed in Toronto. Worked like a charm.
I agree, keep the garbage and green bin in the garage or shed. Our last house in Bells Corners had only a carport so we kept the garbage in a shed (one of those old-fashioned metal ones) in the summer (make sure the doors are firmly closed … we used a bungee on the shed doors). At our new place in Kanata we keep them in the garage.
Are you having trouble with gnawing (do your bins look like ours see photos on this post http://parenthood.phibian.com/?ID=574), or is it just the tipping?
We have found that bungee cording the bin to the deck during the week keeps it upright and away from raccoons. We take ours out to the curb in the morning now too. I don’t have a good solution for the gnawing though. We’re experimenting with those odour proof bags to see if that helps.