pre-sale

How do I know I live on the best street in Toronto? Well - my neighbour Gina, a block up, has just put in place her own Little Free Library. So there are not only two in Cabbagetown, there are two on Sackville Street. Hers is very cute.

And then John my beloved handyman came by to fix something else - he does just about everything around here except the roofing and heavy-duty plumbing, which is done by another John - and I took a picture to show you the man who made this lovely thing.

And thanks also to his talented and craft-loving wife Sylvie, who made the ginger ale can rosettes on the roof, which you can't see, but they're there, adding such class. Sylvie is the kind of person who makes sixteen different kinds of cookies as Christmas presents. Very impressive. Incomprehensible.

Tomorrow is the Cabbagetown Festival, the huge local event of the year, with massive crowds and endless activities, street food, music. Parliament Street is shut down and Riverdale Park West is full of quality arts and crafts. Spent the morning piling up all the stuff for our garage sale tomorrow and pricing it, with my daughter's best friends Holly and Nicole, who are going to run the sale. I've discovered that I'm great at buying and very poor at selling, so they're going to do that and we'll split the take 3 ways. Not great for me financially but wonderful in every other way - I get rid of stuff, they make money, we all - I hope - have fun, though the forecast - NO! - is rain. We Googled stuff to find out what it's selling for on-line, found, for example, that a pair of Italian bird figurines of my mother's that I'd wanted to sell are worth $300. So those will not be going in the "Make me an offer" bin. I swear every year that this year is the LAST, I will not accumulate stuff ... but here we are. Well, some of it is Mum's. But not a lot, really. In fact, almost nothing. Somehow, stuff sticks to me.

My friend Penny will be selling her lovely bead jewelry with us too - so if you're in Toronto, come on by. And if you're not - why aren't you? Hmmm - as I write, the overpowering acrid smell of skunk has wafted in. Someone out there is not happy. But that can't be why you're not in the centre of the universe this exciting weekend.