My immediate neighborhood seems to be going through a lot of changes lately.

I think I mentioned a few times that my Karaoke neighbors on the other side of our semi-detached put their house up for sale something like last October. Well they finally sold their house in February and the new neighbors haven’t moved in yet but they’ve been doing renovations like tearing down the ugly fake stone wall and the popcorn ceiling and stuff like that. They expect to move in at the beginning of August.

Then there’s the house beside us where my stalker oops I mean elderly neighbor Sofie lived. She had a small stroke in February was hospitalized and then she moved in with her youngest son. So her house has been empty, but the family plans to either sell it in the fall or put it up for rent. I kind of hope they sell rather than rent. I can just imagine a series of really bad neighbors if they rent the house out. If that happens maybe Chris and I will look towards getting out of here. Hey I hear Wilmington real estate is pretty nice. Now that’s an idea.

Just a week ago one of the houses across the street and one down the street from us went up for sale so that will mean two more new sets of neighbors in a few months or so.

In general we have a very good neighborhood and most of us are fairly friendly with each other. Heck, at least three of my neighbors give us food when they are celebrating. Remember the Greek Easter feast that the neighbor behind us gave Chris and I in April? Yum!

Other neighbors come over to our house or backyard to party or we go to their house to party. I think our newest neighbors who are renovating right now will be like that. The man is in a band and plays guitar and as you probably know my husband also plays guitar so they already get along famously. The wife is really nice too and I think we’ll get along well.

I just hope that the houses going up for sale end up having really nice people buy them that fit into the neighborhood well. Hey people don’t have to mingle, but hopefully they are nice and say hello every now and then.

Midnight has been doing something really strange lately. It started a week or so ago.

She’ll come over to me and say I’m lying on the couch with one or both feet over the edge she’ll lift her front leg so that her body is over my foot/feet. Obviously she wants her belly rubbed.

Then, after a minute or two of having her belly rubbed by my foot, if I’m obliging that is, she’ll move forward and lift one of her back legs and then sink down so that she’s sitting on my foot. Now this is a dog that weighs at least 60 lb so it’s not all that comfortable for me! She does this with my husband too but not as often as she does it to me.

Once I pull my foot out from under her she’ll back up so that I can scratch her bum with my foot, then she’ll start the whole process of getting my foot underneath her again - over and over until I get tired of having my foot abused and sat on and pull it back onto the couch.

Anyone else have a dog with weird habits like trying to sit on one foot that happens to be sticking out?

Weird dog.

Oh yeah did I tell you that on Saturday she chewed on my refinished staircase? The one that took me three weeks to scrape paint off of, sand, stain and coat with varnish? She’s lucky she’s still living here!

Pretty much ever since we moved into our house (2001) I’ve been saying that we needed a new mailbox. I can’t believe that we still haven’t purchased one!

It’s not that I haven’t occasionally looked for a new mailbox when I’ve been in a store that sells them or even looked online - it’s just that I haven’t found the perfect mailbox yet.

I’d better find one soon though because the lid on our current wall mount mailbox creaks when you open it and then stays open unless you push down on it to shut it. It used to fall back in place nicely once you’d removed the mail. It’s just in sorry shape.

So earlier today I did a search online for Mail boxes and I managed to find a few styles that I liked over at Mailboxixchange.com. I seriously thought about getting one of their post mounted Mailboxes as they have some very nice designs, but our front yard is extremely small (10 F x 10F at most) and a post mounted mailbox just wouldn’t look right.

Since we have an enclosed front porch a wall mounted mailbox is perfect for us. We can open the door and collect the mail easily no matter what’s happening with the weather outside, plus the mailbox is protected from the elements as well so it should last even longer.

If you’ve been thinking of purchasing a new Mailbox for your home take a look at the selection at Mailboxixchange. They are a well known distributor of high quality residential and commercial mailboxes. You can select from over 2500 mailbox and curbside products including wall mount mailboxes, post mount, single unit, multi unit, commercial mailboxes, mail slots, address plaques and numbers and many more items. Take a look I’m sure you’ll be impressed with the selection and quality.

I’ve just been browsing a site that I think would be perfect for kids and anyone in general who loves animals. The website is called Zoo Country and it’s chock full information and pictures of all kinds of Zoo Animals. Are you starting to see why I think kids would love this site?

It’s time to start summer vacations and I’m sure that some of you might visit cities with Zoos. Wouldn’t it be great to brush up on some interesting facts about some of the animals you might see at that zoo? Or perhaps you’ve just come back from a trip to the zoo or perhaps an exotic vacation and want to find information about that odd looking creature you saw - visit Zoo Country.

There are lots of Animal Activities and Crafts plus Animal books and toys on the site. Any of which would keep your child occupied for hours as they have fun playing games, creating an animal art project, reading an animal related book or playing with a stuffed animal toy.

I really like how they’ve organized their wild animal information and pictures. Rather than organizing the animal categories in a more traditional way they’ve arranged their animal categories based on animal characteristics like The biggest animals, the cutest animals, the ugliest animals and so on.

If you love looking at photos and reading about wild animals definitely check this site out.

Tomorrow is Canada Day. It will be Canada’s 141st birthday. Our country seems so young, but we have a history that goes back into the 1600’s.

I hate it when the holiday falls in the middle of the week. Some employers give either the Monday or Friday off closest to the holiday to compensate for a mid- week holiday day, but there are lots of Canadians out there that had to work today - my husband included. He’ll have tomorrow off though and that’s the main thing.

We’re trying to decide what to do for the holiday. I already mentioned in my last post that we’ll probably have nice thick sirloin steaks and fresh corn on the cob for dinner, but what else will we do …

If you guessed go to see some fireworks you’re probably right. If the weather is decent we’ll likely head over to Ashbridge’s Bay to watch the fireworks. They load all the fireworks onto a barge on Lake Ontario and set them off over the water. It’s spectacular. Naturally I’ll try to take some pictures if I can - fireworks aren’t easy to photograph! BTW if anyone has tips on how to photograph fireworks properly I’d love to hear from you.

If you’re in the Toronto area you might be interested in learning about what’s going on in the city for Canada Day. I surfed the web and found some other bloggers talking about their Canada Day plans and some Canada Day Event listings. Here you go:

Canada Day Around Toronto - Although Ottawa is, bar none, the best place to celebrate Canada Day, Toronto is no slouch in the festivities department:. 8:00 pm, Mel Lastman Square The official City of Toronto celebration. A concert and fireworks to music …

Canada Day Fireworks - Find out where and when to check out Canada Day Fireworks…

Canada Day - Coming soon to a more convenient day near you? - When I was a teenager, Canada Day meant gathering with my friends at Majors Hill Park, drinking (sorry, Mom) and generally having a good time. The bars were packed, the buses were free after 10 pm (another something Toronto might …

HOLIDAY WEEK - Our Annual Canada Day Preview - Finally, if you want to catch me, please come down to the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Johnada will be celebrating the only way I know how - by attacking people with blow up donuts at the first Canadian Donut Olympics. Only in Canada …

I hope that all the Canadians reading this have a great Canada Day - even if you just stay home and relax.