Just Give Me Chocolate and Nobody gets Hurt

Stepping Out, Stepping Up?

2012-01-13T17:03:00.002-06:00

In the past years, I have noticed a certain trend in my life. I used to move around a lot, and every place I ended up, I made new friends. I still have good friends from every place I have lived from Grade One through university. But then there was a very disturbing trend.

I got married. I am still married. and he is a great guy. But though we moved several times, I can't really say I made many new friends. I have no friends from the first place we lived, two friends from the second place we lived (and even then, our communication is spotty...one of those friends has had cancer for at least a year, and I had no idea, the other I "talk" to on Facebook, but I wouldn't say we are CLOSE friends (not that we have a poor friendship, but I'd say we border on friendly acquaintance at this point)), and we have lived in our present city since summer 2001 and I have to say I don't really think I could say I have any real FRIENDS here. I have a lot of people I am friendly with. In Chorus, we all get along, and they are SORT OF friends...we have a lot of fun together at rehearsals, performances, competitions, and parties....but outside of that, we don't really interact. We don't go for coffee one-on-one, we don't phone each other to chat, and in fact in the past little while, I've been the youngest, to the extent that I think they all are closer to my parents' or grandparents' ages. I have one person from my old church here in town that I get together with for coffee once in a blue moon, and interact with on Facebook...but again, she is more of a mentor-friend. She is my Mom's age, or close to it.

It seems that since I got married I kind of folded in on myself, didn't reach out to find someone to connect with. And since my husband is a bit of a loner himself, it's not like we go out with anyone our age together, and with him being so busy, he often doesn't have time to just HANG OUT with me. And lately that has really been getting to me. I have been feeling really alone, really isolated, and with the issues I have had at church, I have been feeling really frustrated, depressed, and especially lonely. I don't think people MEAN to do it, but people sort of avoid me, because they aren't really sure what to say or do to help us. I can clear a whole section of the church easily...I sit and by the time church starts, the majority of the people are sitting in a different section.

So anyway. Just before Christmas, someone I know on Facebook (and at church), invited me to a potluck for something called "Mom's Morning Out". Until then, I had been under the impression that it was for moms with little ones. Which makes sense, considering pretty much all of them DO have little ones. But I was assured that any mom could come. So I went. And I met a few people. And I got invited to a cookie exchange. And I joined the group and so went back today (the first meeting since the potluck). I knew most of the ladies there. I think most of them are a few years younger than I am, but they are a lot closer to my age than the people in Chorus, and even though my children are in school, and past the "little people"stage, I was able to blend in, converse, not look like a total dweeb. And it was wonderful.

I think that this is the first step in a good thing. In taking that big step to get out of my comfort zone, not hide, and GO to the group, I think I have opened the door to maybe making some good friends again. I hope so! Also, it will be nice to have a place to go, where everyone understands the challenges and frustrations of being a Mom, where we can talk and come up with good advice for each other.And I got to hold babies today. :) I don't want any more of my own, I'm done with that, but it's fun to hold and play with the little ones, to make them smile and laugh.

I'm glad I joined the group. And here's hoping I can get back into the swing of things and make some friends in my own age group, my own stage of life...maybe even make some REALLY good friends, in time. I hope, I hope, I hope.

A Tale of Two Kitties

2011-12-12T13:09:00.002-06:00

This year has been a rough one in terms of the health of our cats. We have two. They are members of the family, as we have had them for 13 years now, or more specifically, my husband has had them for 13 years, and I have been a part of their family for roughly twelve and a half.

This summer, we noticed one of our cats had become very skinny. We had not noticed her slow decline, as she had been hiding out under beds a lot, I'm guessing because she was feeling so poorly. She also began to vomit yellow bile. So we rushed her off to the vet and shelled out a lot of money, and had the news given to us that she had pancreatitis, which had two possibilities...well, three...one was to send her off to some specialty vet place that would cost us thousands for some groundbreaking treatment (uh, no...mostly because we don't have that kind of handy cash), we could give her pills and she would get better, or we could give her pills, she would NOT get better, and we'd have to put her down.

So we got the pills and went through the exciting adventure of trying to force feed a cat food and pills. For anyone who has never done this, believe me, this is a challenge worthy of the olympics because
1) The cat does not want you to catch her
2) The cat does not want to be held once you catch her
3) The cat does not wish to eat because she feels bad
4) The cat definitely does not want to swallow pills and
5) The cat has 5 pointy ends (4 paws and a mouth full of teeth), knows how to use them, and has the wiggly snake move down pat.

But we managed. She took pills for probably about two months, and then got a clean bill of health...and since then has become somewhat chubby. Not enough to worry about, but at 13 years of age, I'd say she's allowed to roly-poly her way through the rest of her days if she so chooses, as long as she doesn't go to extremes.

Now this past week, the next adventure began. Our OTHER cat began to look skinnier than usual. His was not such a large drop in weight before we noticed, as he is a much more social animal, sleeping on the bed with us at night, instead of under.

So we took HIM to the vet and shelled out large amounts of money to have him tested, expecting the same result...but it was not to be. Our fluffy baby has diabetes.
What does this mean, I asked the vet? Let me just say that life over the next few years will be drastically different.

First of all, we had been giving the cats their daily allotment of food in the morning and letting them nibble on it throughout the day....now they get fed twice a day, at 12 hour intervals, they eat different food, what they don't eat is put away, instead of left out, after about 20 minutes. And the amount he gets is carefully measured, as is the amount he leaves behind. They are both having a rough time adjusting to this one, as they haven't quite come to grips with the fact that if they walk away from the food, it doesn't reappear until much, much later, instead of being there for their easy convenience.

Secondly, once we determine how much he ate, we have to carefully measure out his medicine. Twice a day. Every 12 hours. He has insulin shots. I must say that giving a cat an insulin shot is a lot easier than it sounded when the vet first told me about it. Because it just goes under the skin, and not into a vein or anything, you just grab a handful of scruff, stick the needle in, pull back the plunger a bit to make sure you didn't hit any vessels (make sure no blood in the needle), then push it in, pull the needle out, and the cat is good to go. Doesn't hurt him, so he just kind of sits there while I do it with an "Are we done yet?" bored look on his face.

Thirdly...the hard one...he needs blood glucose tests every few days to make sure his dose is right. How to get blood from a cat. Yeah. Poor guy gets to have pierced ears. There is apparently a teeny vein by the edge of a cat's ear, so you have to stick a lancet right through the ear at this spot, hope you hit the vein, and get the blood onto the test stick. First of all, this vein is tiny, so if you miss, you have to keep poking your cat in the ear. Secondly, this DOES bother the cat to have something sharp poked through his ear. Thirdly, the cat doe not want anyone touching his ears to begin with, so THIS is a two person job...one to hold the cat, one to poke the cat and get the blood. Then one of the two has to be able to swoop up the tester and get the blood on the strip before the cat decides to sprint off to parts unknown.

Saturday is going to be very interesting...we only had to do it once today, but Saturday will be the one-week marker of the start of his insulin, which means he needs to have a blood glucose curve plotted....meaning we have to test his blood glucose every three hours from the time we get up until the time we go to bed...about 7 times. Something tells me he is not going to be volunteering to come after the first two or three.

Fourthly...snacks and treats. We used to give them a small dribble of milk or the water from a can of tinned fish, kitty treats....that sort of thing, once in awhile. We are no longer allowed to do any of that because it will mess up his blood sugar.
Fifthly, all trips will have to be planned out in detail...daytrips will require us to leave home after 7AM, and back before 7PM. Longer trips will require a stay at a kennel that is able to give him his shots and such. So basically no big trips for a few years, probably, as that gets very pricey, as they charge by the shot, and he likely has a few years left in him.

The vet says that 1 in every 5 cats seems to miraculously get rid of the diabetes, but to not hold our breath on his being one of them. I still hope he will be that 1.

Caribbean Cruise 2011

2011-08-14T21:13:00.004-06:00

I promised some people I would keep a journal of my first ever cruise. I'm glad I did, for my own memories, and here they are for you, too. :)

JULY 30- Well, here we are in Orlando! It has been a VERY long day, to say the least. It was hot at home, and we got up at 3AM to catch our plane, so sleep was evasive. The storm at midnight didn't help either. I found, just before we left, that the storm broke our back fence. So I tied it with rope to hold it while we are away.

There were trees, branches, and signs blown down all over the city. On top of that, the taxi driver had to make a big detour on the way to the airport because of a horrible accident that had the road blocked off by the police.

The trip itself went relatively smoothly, as is to be expected from WestJet. The only snags we had there were a late departure from Calgary because the engine needed a minor repair (Better we leave late with a fixed engine, I say!)and we had one lady have, I think, a diabetic seizure while flying over Tennessee, requiring the crew to ask if a doctor or nurse was on board (a nurse was indeed there) and for us to wait upon arrival for them to get her off and to the waiting ambulance crew in Orlando.

The heat and humidity here were a bit of a shock after 10 hours of air conditioning. It feels like a sauna. Not uncomfortable, just...strange. Like you can grab it in your hands.

There was a shuttle train from the arrival gates to the baggage claim, like a metro, but, well, I guess like a monorail.

The hotel is very nice, with a couch and coffee table, king size bed, 3 lamps, a desk, TV, fridge, coffee maker, safe...and lots of space in between to rearrange the luggage for tomorrow.

The hotel is connected to the mall, so we don't have to go outside to shop. The mall is really big and super easy to get lost in. BUT it has Cinnzeo, Cherry Coke, M&Ms World, and the most amazing Italian restaurant...Buca di Beppo. All the dishes are served family-style...small feeds 2-3, large feeds 5-6. We also had bread with oil and balsamic vinegar. Our meal was Quattro di forno: cheese canneloni, chicken and spinach manicotti, cheese ravioli, and stuffed shells. For dessert, we shared a slice of gigantic cake, which was lemon with marscapone cheese and cream filling with raspberry sauce. The whole meal was AMAZING, and came to about $20 each, drinks and dessert included.

M&M World was cool...giant statues and all the memorabilia you could ever want, plus an entire WALL of serve-yourself M&Ms of every colour and type imaginable, including colours I had never seen before, like aqua and lilac. I got pressed pennies for the kids and I and a pin with my name. :)

Now I shall collapse from exhaustion and sleep well tonight, and dream of the fun yet to come.

JULY 31- We had a GREAT sleep last night. I reset the air conditioner from 12.5C to 20C. The bed was nice and comfortable, and the room nice and large.

Upon discovering the mall did not open until noon today, breakfast at the hotel to be $13.95 each, and our bus leaving around 11:45AM, we headed out the door to find the McDonald's that was maybe 10 minutes away.

8:30AM and the heat was stunning. Our glasses actually fogged up on walking out of the hotel. The humidity was so high you could literally touch it in the air.

Portions at McD's here are truly bigger than back home. So my coffee was larger than expected. No complaints there. :)

On the way back, we saw what looked like perfectly smooth, oval stones. It turned out they were some sort of nut that grows on the local trees, and fall by the thousands.

The bus trip was interesting. So many trees!!! And in between them all, you could sometimes get a glimpse of a plantation, a shack, a bayou. I saw a number of birds, but have no idea what they were.

It was quite the view when we finally pulled in sight of the ship. It is HUGE!!!

We let them have our luggage, then joined the cattle drive of people checking in. Once on the ship, we found our room, which is very nice. #6296.

Our floor "helper" is Marvin, and he is a hoot. Almost every time we left the room, he was there doing something for someone and would ask what we were up to or joke "There you go again!". He is Jamaican.

Lunch at Windjammer (the buffet) was very good, the cheese plate from room service was delicious, and supper was AMAZING!!! I had hot and sour shrimp soup, onion rolls, prime rib with vegetables and baked potato, and chocolate pot a creme. Mmmmmmmmm.

We both got a souvenir cup with our Coke allowance. Bought a pin and inflatable ship. :)

The balcony is very nice. 2 chairs and a little table. Very hot during the day, but nice at night. I saw a shooting star and heard a whale blowing, something large leap out of the waves, and a few times of whalesong.

Watched the Dreamworks Experience Move It! Move It! parade. Cute, but I didn't get very good pictures.

Played minigolf on one of the top decks.

Going to bed around 00:30. It doesn't feel that late.

AUGUST 1- Today was a day of a few surprises and various changes. After a good night's sleep, we woke to the combo of Hubby's phone barking like a dog and the ship's wake-up call. We ordered room service for breakfast, so had an absolute feast of eggs, bacon, baked tomato, hash browns, pastries, fruit, juice, milk, and coffee.

We then headed off to CocoCay, Bahamas, for the day. It was so hot, I was literally dripping sweat. We went on the nature walk, which was very interesting and fun as we learned of trees that could heal warts, headaches, sexual issues, lady issues, and so on, as well as a tree that had poisonous bark. We heard of one couple that had carved their initials in one of the bad trees, and ended up sick and covered in horrible sores that leave a permanent scar. We saw a HUGE iguana and some teeny lizards the size of a finger joint, as well as chickens, frigatebirds, and the "hamburgull"...their gulls are ferocious scavengers. Their feeding frenzies if a tourist plate is left unprotected put sharks to shame.

Hubby went snorkeling while I hid in the shade and tried to cool off. They had a drink on the island, CocoLoco...but I declined it because the virgin one was $6. Bought a $15 t-shirt instead. :) It has the island name, a happy face in a rasta hat, and says "Smile, Mon!" Their sand is very fine and white, like flour.

They had a buffet lunch on the island, so I had chicken, ribs, a burger, feta, corn, and a few other little things before heading back to the ship for some a/c and a nap.

We discovered that, due to very bad weather involving the possibility of a cyclone or hurricane (Tropical Storm Emily), our Eastern Caribbean cruise will now be a Western Caribbean cruise. Goodbye tall ship, St Thomas, and St Maarten, helloooooo Cozumel, Mexico, and Grand Cayman Island.

Tomorrow is a cruising day, so Hubby and I will find fun things to do on the ship.

Dinner was formal tonight. I wore my long blue dress. We took pics of each other because we couldn't find our attendant (Marvin) and the professionals charge a fortune.

I had sushi as a snack today, and then dinner was lobster bisque, roasted duck with blackberry sauerkraut and croquettes, and a chocolate souffle with espresso sauce. And their American version of iced tea. Oh yes! The Windjammer Cafe also had oxtail soup and creme caramel. I snacked a lot today.

Marvin is so funny. He came in to straighten the room while we were at dinner and created a funny creature (a dolphin) on my pillow with a bath towel and my sunglasses. :-D

We sat in the hot tub for a few minutes, but then they turned out the lights, so we figured it was our cue to leave. It was about 11PM.

One thing with dinner is that we eat at 8:30PM and finish around 10:30PM, so have to stay up late to digest.

Stood out on the balcony again tonight. Too dark to see, but heard another splash, heard distant whalesong, and heard a humpback talk. :)

Hubby looks very burnt on his back from snorkeling. He has a spot on his incision, about 3 fingers wide, that is swollen, so I have forbidden him to swim without a shirt for awhile. Hopefully it heals fast and has no further complications.

Sleeping with the curtains open so I can see the stars and maybe sunrise. To bed at 00:45.

AUGUST 2- Today was a cruising day. We slept until 9:15, although I was awake long enough to see sunrise as Hubby's phone started barking.

We ate breakfast at the Windjammer today. So much to choose from! Today I had eggs, french toast with strawberries and cream, fruit, corned beef hash, pastry, coffee, and milk.

Bought 2 t-shirts on Deck 11 at a sale- 2 for $20. One for Mexico, one for Grand Cayman. Hubby bought 2 for himself and 2 for the kids- a glow in the dark pirate one for Son and a turtle one that changes colour in the sun for Daughter.

Attended a really good seminar about speeding up your metabolism, then went for lunch. LOL. Had lamb skewers on a curried veg and bean base. That was in Leonardo's.

Took salsa dancing lessons. It was a lot of fun. Almost 10 years of learning choreo sure helped in learning the steps. :)

Watched "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows(Part One)". Again.

Off to Windjammer for a snack...oh wait, that was before the movie. I had some cake and custards.

Got dressed for dinner (smart casual...black dress t-shirt, knee length black and white flowered skirt, sandals), then off to the show- the Scintas. They were hilarious and awesome. :) Comedy and singing and piano.

Off to dinner- I had a crab cake, sole filet with asparagus and artichoke hearts, and orange chocolate parfait.

Back to the room. Despite watching off and on all day, no visual signs of life on the ocean. But at night I always stand on the balcony and listen hard over the breeze. Tonight I heard a tiny bit of whalesong, plus two types of whale calls. One was a loud "ORRRRR!" and one was an "OOooooooo!". I also saw a few shooting stars tonight. Definitely worth going out there each night to stand in the dark and look and listen.

Marvin made me a towel lobster with my sunglasses tonight.

Bedtime snack....spinach and artichoke dip. Bedtime: 11:36PM

AUGUST 3- Up with the barking dog alarm for room service breakfast and to watch Grand Cayman get nearer in the distance. We took the tender over at around 8AM and wandered the streets for awhile. We kept stopping in shops to take advantage of the air conditioning. I also got a t-shirt and 3 pins.

When it was time, we lined up for our excursion. It was really hot and humid out, so I was soaked with sweat. Ew.

Got on our lovely air conditioned bus and took a ride to a rum factory. For obvious reasons, Hubby and I stayed outside to look at their mini zoo- tropical birds, peacocks, super fat pigeons, a rodent that looked like a tiny capybara, and huge iguanas.

There was a giant spider that got into the bus. Very freaky, like a tarantula, but no hair.

One funny thing about Grand Cayman is that chickens are EVERYWHERE, just wandering around, like pigeons and seagulls do at home.

The second stop was on a semi-submarine boat. We saw tons of fish and coral. We did get stranded out in the bay for about 10 minutes, but it all got sorted out.

We then went to Seven Mile Beach and ogled at the fancy places all along it. We also stopped for a few minutes to dip our toes in. The water was nice and warm, the sand white but coarse, and I found a really neat piece of brain coral, but wasn't allowed to keep it.

We then took the bus to a turtle farm. The oldest turtle there was 78 years old and weighed almost 600 pounds. We saw small ones, too, and I got to hold one.

Then we ate a turtle burger and turtle soup. Different, but pretty good.

Our last stop was the town of Hell. We, of course, had to buy and send the kids a postcard from Hell. :) It was named that because of the brimstone formations there.

Back to the port, we joined the line to get back to the ship. It was really long. It took about 20 minutes to get to the front of the line.

Once back on the ship, we went up to the Windjammer for something to eat and then watched Shrek, Shrek 2, and Shrek 3 before dinner.

Dinner for me tonight was cream of mushroom soup, pea pods, green beans, wasabi mashed potatoes, beef filet, shrimp, and coconut creme brulee.

We then went to the Love and Marriage show where Hubby won us a place on stage by yodeling like Tarzan, ripping his shirt pen (in the process losing ALL the buttons), and throwing me to the ground.

We were both asked 3 very embarrassing questions each (Like the Newlywed Game). We didn't win, but we got a gift basket for participating, which has lots of Royal Caribbean cool stuff, like travel mugs, carry bag, luggage tags, magnets, umbrella, mini backpack, and travel neck wallet.

No whale sounds tonight- it's too late to be out there and too humid anyway.

Marvin made me a bat with my sunglasses on today. He even hung it from the ceiling with a hanger. :-D

Bedtime 00:31.

AUGUST 4- Up around 7:30. Arrived in Cozumel, Mexico, around 9. It was a very busy port, thanks to Tropical Storm Emily. 2 Carnival ships, us, and the Oasis of the Seas. Double wide, same height, nice boat.

So hot and humid. Humidity around 80%. UV Index 10+ Extreme.

So many people, so many shops, so many pushy vendors. I went to a Dolphin Encounter excursion. I got to pet, kiss, be kissed by, dance with, and have my hand in the air touched by the nose of a dolphin. Very cool. Wicked, horrible sunburn because it was all done outside, in the ocean, which I didn't know. Not so cool.

They took really nice pictures of me and the dolphins (John and Eddy), but were charging $60, and wouldn't sell them separately. So no pics to show for it.

Ate a real Mexican burrito plate and got pesos for change. :)

Bought a keychain for Daughter, a pen for Son, and a bobbing head turtle for me.

Hubby did a helmet dive excursion. He enjoyed it very much and got a picture CD.

I came back, guzzled down a drink and watched "Journey to the Center of the Earth" 3D. Very good movie.

Saw a great magic show tonight by a guy who was on America's Got Talent- Drew Thomas. Very good stuff.

A lot of people recognized us from last night. How embarrassing.

Dinner was calabrese salad- tomato, mozzarella, onion, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar with pesto, garlic tiger shrimp, and mint chocolate cake.

Marvin made an alligator today.

So tired and burnt, not even going out on the balcony. Vegging with TV instead. Sleeping in tomorrow.

AUGUST 5- Today was very painful. I was up around 5:30AM because my sunburn hurt too much. I dozed a few times during the day, but had to do cold compresses, aloe burn relief spray, and Tylenol to keep the pain to a tolerable level. My shoulders are already starting to blister. That is what you get from UV 10+ Extreme. Hopefully I can get some sleep tonight and heal fast, too.

Had breakfast at the Windjammer and then Johnny Rockets for lunch. Had a double burger (which I could not finish), a root beer float, frings with ranch and a plate with a smiley face of ketchup, and a chocolate soda. The staff there dances every 20-30 minutes out of the blue. :) And every time someone comes in or out, the staff calls out "say hello!" or "say bye!" and all the customers call out hello or bye to the person coming or going.

Found the area where teens can go hang out. Very cool.

Watched "How to Train Your Dragon" 3D.

Dinner tonight was formal. I wore my short black dress, had my hair up, and had a pearl and diamond necklace (fake) and the new pearl earrings Lloyd bought in Mexico for me (real).

Had seafood salad (shrimp, scallops, smoked salmon and greens), fisherman's plate (veggies, potato, shrimp, and lobster tail), and the desert sampler (cheesecake, some spongy cake with fruit, and flourless chocolate cake). Very yummy.

While standing on the balcony this afternoon, we saw dozens of jellyfish and two green things under the surface (fish? plant?).

Went to a musical tonight. It was based on fairy tales and used popular songs like "Everybody Dance Now" (Cinderella ball scene) and "I Need a Hero" (Rapunzel).

Marvin made a monkey tonight.

To bed at 00:10. Wish me luck!

AUGUST 6- Not a good night. Shoulders very badly blistered.

Did the Walk for Wishes this morning- 4 laps around the jogging track in special t-shirts. $10 each, proceeds to make a Wish.

Didn't do much today. Took a swing dance class. That was fun. Danced to "In the Mood".

Went to Chops for dinner. Had oysters, mixed grill (lamb chop, apple chicken sausage, veal tournedos, bacon, bubble and squeak), and mushrooms and leeks, which had a wine sauce. I got tipsy from the sauce. So funny. Felt sick on the way back to the room. Not so funny. Oh yes. Had chocolate mud pie. Waaaaaay decadent, like the cupcakes we had this afternoon. Too much sugar!!!

Packed and ready to go. Cloudy out. Maybe it will rain. Sailing very slow as we are closer to Port Canaveral than our schedule says, due to the change in course plans.

Hope to hear whales tonight.

AUGUST 7- Up at 6AM. Not a good night again. I was actually up at 3:30.

Watched the ship dock in Port Canaveral. Pretty cool to watch the ship rotate so it was in stern (back) first.

No whales last night, as the water was too choppy.

Off the boat at 7:30 AM. Then we sat on the bus that would take us to our hotel for about an hour. Then the bus actually started to drive. That took another hour. We got to the hotel around 10AM, so I guess it took about half an hour to get through ship security and find our bags.

The room wasn't ready (no big surprise), so the hotel stored our bags and we headed out to Disney World, to Magic Kingdom.

It really was too hot and humid to have been there. Being an icy Canuck, I need to do that sort of thing in Florida's winter. But we rode the rides, reveled in the air conditioned ones, and drank lots. We still had fun. Had beef nachos and a bacon cheeseburger for my meals there.

Saw at least some of the Main Street Electrical Parade- it was delayed by about 30 minutes due to a thunderstorm, and we had a bus to catch, and it was a bit of a commute from the parade to the bus, so I think I missed about half of it. What I saw was nice, though. Waiting for the bus, we could see the fireworks, too. Those were pretty cool, including coloured-in star shapes when they exploded.

The bus ride back took about an hour, in which I was exhausted and headachey. Unfortunately, Hubby was overtired as well, and we had a huge argument in the hotel room over nothing.

Also, the front desk told us the wrong hotel room, so we walked in on some poor fellow in his room. We got Starbucks vouchers for our trouble. I hope he gets a free breakfast or something, especially since it was at around 11:30PM!!!

Repacked everything for tomorrow's flight. Off to bed very late...I think about 1AM.

Today I bought Bullseye (the horse), 2 pins, 3 antenna toppers, and a t-shirt. I THINK that was all.

At Disney World, we were approached and complimented once again on our performance on the ship. We are never getting away from our fame (notoriety?) from that Love and Marriage show!

One more memory from the ship...by our elevators, there were two window boxes. Inside were scenes. One was a mermaid brushing her hair, the other a crab playing a fiddle. You turned a crank, and they moved. Very cool.

AUGUST 8- Saw alligator roadkill. The flight home was long but pretty uneventful. I got body scanned and my hands swabbed, and both checked bags got hand inspected.

Bought a pound and a half of M&Ms at M&M World. Chocolate, peanut, dark, coconut, almond, peanut butter, and pretzel.

So nice to be home. So much laundry to do, though.

Next cruise we will take the kids AND do all the Disney World Parks.

Update on Angry

2011-05-22T08:42:00.002-06:00

Time has passed, things have happened, and answers have been given.
Life is much less stressful now, and we can continue without things pressing down on us so much.
My husband went in for his surgery on April 26th. We went in at about 9:30AM, and he was wheeled into the operating room around 12:45. Lucky guy has no real memory of most of the pre-operative time, as they gave him a sedative an hour and a half before he was wheeled in, and he basically slept all the way to the surgery, without having any memory of being put under general anaesthetic either. (He was, of course)
I wandered for a few hours, trying to kill time, but not willing to leave the hospital, in case he was out early, or they needed to get in touch with me or, worst case scenario, things went horribly wrong. So I wandered and munched on things and drank bubble tea and read a good chunk of a novel and watched soaps and daytime talk shows in the waiting room...and finally at about 5:30 the surgeon phoned me (not sure why he didn't check the waiting room) to tell me my husband was out of surgery, in the recovery room, and would be in his hospital room in about an hour or two.
They had removed a mass the size of a mandarin orange, but the mass did not appear to be cancerous. They had to send it away for testing, to make sure and to find out exactly WHAT it was (they still didn't know).
The first night, they had him in the Cardiac Surgery Unit. I guess that would be their equivalent of one step below ICU...his surgery was pulmonary, not cardiac, but that was where he'd have the best care, I suppose.
The next afternoon, he was moved to the cardio-pulmonary unit down the hall. He was definitely a candidate for the Sesame Street song "One of these things does not belong here"...every other patient on that ward was at least 40 years older than he was. I guess lung surgery is usually not performed on younger people.
He had a few very uncomfortable days, as he was originally hooked up to an IV, a catheter, a lung tube, and oxygen. He very quickly managed to heal enough to have all but the chest tube removed...probably about 3 days, I think. He worked really hard at healing. Hospital beds are not very comfortable when you are 5'11".
Once he was off everything but the chest tube, he started walking around the ward. He was supposed to...kept the blood flowing and helped his lung to drain. He did overdo it a few times, though.
Once the chest tube was out, he was up and out, walking the ward as much as they would let him. All he had to wait for at that point was an xray and the surgeon to look at it and say he could go home. He had his chest tube out on Sunday (May 1) and his chest Xray that night. He was told that as soon as the surgeon looked at it and gave his okay, he could go home, and the surgeon was usually in early in the morning...so we expected him to be home by lunchtime on Monday at the latest.
Nope. The surgeon did not show up until 6:30PM. Interestingly enough shortly after I made it abundantly clear to the nurses that if the surgeon didn't come, I was taking my husband home anyway, permission or not. :-D
So about 7PM we were on our way home. I think he was very glad to be sleeping in his own bed, though it took a few nights for him to find a comfortable position, and he had a hard time remembering not to overdo things....the biggest issue was the stairs. It's easy to forget how taxing going up and down the stairs can be when you have spent a week in a hospital with no stairs.
He had 27 staples in his back from the incision and a few stitches in his side from the chest tube. These were all removed a week later, on May 9.
Since then, he has more or less returned to normal...he still hasn't got full lung capacity yet, but I think he's close, and he still overdoes things some days and ends up sore, but he is back at work, he can ride a bike without pain, and if you didn't know he'd had surgery, and met him on the street, you'd never know.
He's never going to be swimsuit model now, though. :-D
We got the results, finally, on the mass, last weekend...apparently there was some sort of irritant that got into his lymph node in his lung lining, and as far as we can understand doctor-speak (they didn't explain it in layman's terms), his body just started wrapping the irritant, like a cocoon, and kept going and going and going. Now that it has been removed, this SHOULD be the end of all of this.
But no signs of cancer, whatsoever. Big sigh of relief.
He returns to the surgeon to have a fresh xray done, and hopefully to be given a clean bill of health and permission to fly this summer, on June 8th.

Angry

2011-04-17T14:54:00.002-06:00

I am angry. And sad. And scared. Life just isn't going the way I thought it would, thought it should. Why is it that it seems that the people who haven't done anything to deserve it get hit with the worst things?
A few months ago, we were going along as normal. Hubby had a cough that just didn't seem to go away. Not a huge deal, it had become somewhat of the norm...several times a year he would come down with bronchitis. Or so we were told. But this time, the cough stayed. He had antibiotics. It stayed. He had inhalers. It stayed. It got worse. Finally we realized this cough had been going for a good 6 months or so, with the doctors continually giving him something that did nothing. Finally a doctor took him seriously and took an xray. That is when the nightmare began.
I call it a nightmare because it just doesn't feel like it's true. This just doesn't seem like reality...and yet it is, and I just can't wake up from this nightmare. They found a mass. Approximately 3 cm by 3 cm by 4 cm. It doesn't seem that big, but in proportion to a lung, it's got some definite heft to it.
So he was referred to a specialist. The speed in which things have moved along since that xray should have clued us in. The xray took place in late February, I believe. The specialist called us a week later. A week after that, Hubby met him, had some tests done. A week after that, he was in for a CAT scan and needle biopsy.
He was told at that point that it was likely not cancerous, because of its shape. Two weeks later,this past Monday, we were told that the biopsy came back inconclusive. We were told they didn't know what it was. But that we would be referred to a surgeon who would remove it. He was referred on Monday. The surgeon called Thursday. For an appointment on Friday.
I went with him this time (I wasn't able to on the other occasions). The surgeon showed us the images from the CAT scan, which were a huge shock to me, as it showed just how big this thing really is. Then he explained to us what inconclusive really meant. I wish the specialist had read the biopsy report a bit better and explained it properly.
The biopsy showed necrotic tumour cells. The inconclusive part referred to the fact that they had not determined what KIND of tumour cells they were. He explained to us that the cells were very suspicious and that they honestly DO think that the possibility of it being cancerous is quite high.
He will go in for surgery in about a week and a half, exact date to be determined this week. They have to go in and remove a portion of his lung that the mass is attached to (a wedge resection). While he is still under, they will test it, and if it is cancer, they will remove the lower lobe of his left lung (a lobectomy). If it is not, they sew him up after the small piece is out, and he stays in the hospital about a week. If it it is, they remove the large chunk, sew him up, and we look at the possibility of a month in hospital and several months of recovery time...and hopefully that would be the end of it. Because if it isn't, we add to that the possibility of radiation or chemo or other such things.
My husband has never smoked. Ever. He does not live in a smoking house. Neither set of our parents smokes. We do not have friends who smoke. We do not hang around in smoky places. He is otherwise completely healthy. There is no good reason for this. It just isn't fair. And there are so many risks and possibilities and plans that may change. So I am angry. And sad. And definitely scared.

The Scream

2011-03-01T15:07:00.002-06:00

My alarm went off this morning, and as I rolled over and turned it off, I knew my daughter was upstairs, turning off HER alarm. Next thing I know, there is a blood-curdling SCREAM. Sometimes she over-reacts to something, so I kept an ear open, but wasn't immediately concerned...until it didn't stop. She started screaming for me. We are talking that high pitched, half-crazed, someone-has-died, someone is unconscious on the floor, my-brother-is-hanging-from-his-foot-from-the-top-bunk, the-cat-is-dead-on-my-pillow screams. We are talking sheer terror. I don't think I have EVER left my bed and gotten upstairs that fast in my life.
I found her in the bathroom, still screaming. It took a minute to calm her down enough to understand the problem...she had turned off her alarm, and for some reason, the radio part of it had come on, full-blast, and would not turn off, no matter what she did.
To put it mildly, as soon as I got the roaring radio to turn off and got my heart to start beating again, I was feeling less than loving towards my darling daughter.
This was even way off the path of her normal behaviour, so I thought deeply about it over breakfast, and asked her a few things...I guess what happened was that she had a bad night full of nightmares, was only really half-awake when she turned off the alarm, and the best I can figure, it all tied itself into a reaction I would term as a night terror. It was just unbelievable...the reaction was WAAAAAAY out of proportion to the situation.
Poor kid.
But it's going to be days before I can get the sound of those screams out of my head. It was awful.
I hope that we never have to go through that again, either one of us!

California Dreaming

2011-02-21T16:28:00.003-06:00

I recently took a trip with my family to California. While I was there, I wrote a journal, to help me remember the fun times we had. Here it is for your enjoyment. :)

Feb 14- Here we are in California. We planned this trip probably about 5 years ago, though the end result is somewhat different.
Originally, it was to be a big family event, grandparents included, but this was not meant to be. It is still a grand adventure, and will be chock full of fun.
We woke up yesterday at 4AM Saskatchewan time, and hopped on our first plane. The only glitch THERE was finding the airport Tim Hortons did not take Tim cards.
Calgary was a little more of an adventure, as that was where we went through customs. Long lines, new wings (hallways) to navigate, discovering we had left hubby's knee brace on the first plane, and the joys of the full body scan, to arrive at the gate just in time to board...and then sitting on the tarmac for 30 minutes because we had to be sprayed for ice.
The first plane ride was about 90 minutes, in which we were served one drink and one packet of pretzels. The second flight was 3 hours, and we were served one drink. Any food had to be purchased and paid for with a credit card. When we arrived at LAX, we had essentially not eaten since 5AM, and it was 12:30. We were STARVED!!! So we retrieved our luggage, found our way to the car rental shuttle, vowing that the very first fast food place we found, we would eat there. So we were giddy with happiness to spot a Burger King just outside of Budget. I tried their jalapeno and cheese burger. Not bad, but not great...a bit overdone. I was thrilled to see different snacks than at home...spicy Cheetos, chili corn chips...lots of spicy foods. I like spicy food, you see.
After soothing our hungry tummies, we headed off to find my friend's house. If it had not been for the GPS, someone would have died by my hands, out of sheer stress and frustration. California traffic is NUTS!! People drive so FAST, and in addition, I had never driven in miles before. Just to avoid being plowed down by EVERYONE, just to keep up with the traffic, I was having to drive 80mph in a 65 mph zone. Even police cars were passing me!
We had a lovely time at my friend's. It was wonderful to catch up with each other. And meet each other's kids. We had a lovely meal and the kids all got along splendidly. We lost a hat, but it was later found and will be returned soon.
Another, relatively short drive, this time in the dark, to our hotel. We arrived in one piece and tired out of our minds, and after a bedtime cup of coffee or hot chocolate or lemonade, we all sett;ed in...and woke up around 4:30AM....which would be 6:30AM at home.
We ate breakfast at Denny's, because it was to early for the motel breakfast, which ended up looking pretty pitiful anyway. So we were quite happy we had gone to Denny's instead.
We then headed out to FoodMart and bought food for lunches over the rest of the week. We found some things that are not available up North, like pineapple pop, 3L pop bottles, and mexican layered dip flavoured Pringles.
We spent the day at the San Diego Zoo. It was tons of fun, including a double decker bus and gondolas. We even, to the kids' delight, saw polar bears peeing and pooping. And some animals celebrating Valentine's Day.
Bought the t-shirt. :)
After the zoo, we returned to the hotel and brought in Mexican food. Burritos, nachos, tacos, quesadilla, refried beans, and rice. Yum. In the morning, at Denny's, I will have a biscuit with sausage gravy. Mmmmmmmmmmm.
Now we crash at about 9PM, to get ready for a new day of excitement.

Feb 16- Another day has passed and it is around 7AM. We are now in Anaheim, at our second motel.
Yesterday was Sea World. It was sunny, but fairly cool and windy, so the crowds were not heavy at all.
We saw a neat show with seats that moved, as if we were in a helicopter, flying through the Arctic. We laughed our heads off at the fact that they considered Moose Jaw and Winnipeg to be part of the Arctic.
My son went on his first roller coaster. It was also one of the rare times I did NOT do a roller coaster...it was part of a log flume, and I was just not up to to it...I hate log flumes. So hubby went on with him, and bought the photo to prove it. We saw lots of sea creatures, a 4D Sesame Street movie, and, of course, Shamu. We even bought the ponchos, though we didn't get very splashed at all...we should have been a few more rows up for that.
Bought the t-shirt. :)
Went to an IN-N-Out burger restaurant for supper. It was okay, but nothing spectacular...locals say these are supposed to be the best burgers around, which makes me wonder how bad the other places' burgers are...
Drove by my friend's house to get my daughter's hat back. Returned theirs, which was wet because my daughter had purposely gone into the spray pads and splash zones at Sea World. I even got footage of her getting drenched by one particularly hard landing of a log flume car she was standing near.
Arrived at the Ramada around 9PM, after passing two that weren't ours and one wrong direction that left me having to gun it, cut across two lanes, and take a corner on two wheels to get to the right spot. Driving on this trip has been a real adrenaline rush.
Did a load of laundry in the tub, then crashed for the night after losing both hubby's passport and all of my son's cash. Happily, everything turned up.
Today is California Adventure. In the rain. Should be good, because it will keep the crowds down and I have a poncho.

Feb 17- We had a great day at California Adventures yesterday. The crowds were small, and the rides were amazing. My daughter and I rode California Screamin' four times! And we plan to ride it again a few times tomorrow. Toy Story Mania was tons of fun, and so was Soarin' Over California. There were the usual rides- ferris wheel, swing ride, carousel. We got wet on Grizzly River Run, but with the rain, it really didn't matter. Our picnic supper for World of Colour was really quite good, and the show was amazing. My picnic had cold cuts, 3 kinds of cheese, including blue cheese, water crackers, sundried tomatoes, artichoke heart, pickled cherry tomato, a pepperoncini (like a mild, light green jalapeno), Coke, and tiramisu. We saw Muppets 3D and Turtle Talk with Crush. We also saw how they make figures from Toy Story come to life by spinning and lights. And a Monsters Inc ride where Roz talked specifically to my daughter. That was cool.
We returned to the hotel happy, slightly damp, and very tired.
Today we went to Disneyland. It is bigger, much louder, was much more crowded, and the rides were less thrilling. It was still a good day. We saw captain EO, rode Space Mountain twice, did the Matterhorn, Big Thunder Railroad, the Haunted House, Safari ride, Pirates of The Caribbean...and a lot of rides that just basically showed the storyline of various Disney movies.
Yesterday I bought a pin. Today I got one free. Tomorrow I will buy the t-shirts for both California Adventures and Disneyland.
Had a great supper at Captain Kidd's...a buffet place just across the street from the parks. The hotel breakfasts here are very good (hard boiled eggs, donuts, danishes, muffins, toast, cereal, oatmeal, coffee, tea, juice...). Lunches have been pretty good at the parks...sicilian sausage yesterday, bratwurst today.
Now off to bed to rest up for tomorrow...our crazed rush of a day to redo everything we want to do before we head home.

Feb 19- It's hard to believe we are at the end of our week. I am sitting in the airport at LAX. We board the plane in an hour. Yesterday was indeed a whirlwind day. We arrived at Disneyland at 8AM and rode Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Big Thunder Railroad, then grabbed some Fast Passes for later. We rode Astro Orbiters and Astro Blasters. We then went over to California Adventures to grab Fast Passes for Flyin' Over California and California Screamin'. We watched the Pixar parade and went to Talking with Crush. Saw the Aladdin show, which was really good, and ate at Captain Kidd's again.
It started to rain pretty hard, so the crowds thinned out a lot. We rode Soarin' Over California, California Screamin' three times, and hubby and son rode Grizzly River Run.
Did some shopping and returned to Disneyland. Saw Billy Hill and the Hillbillies, then went to the place we were to have our all-you-can-eat chicken and ribs. They were closed. After a bit more shopping, we rode the train and returned to the hotel to order pizza. It was too cold and wet to stay for the fireworks, and I suspect they were canceled due to the weather anyway.
We are so tired and run down from our whirlwind week that we are getting sick with colds. It has been a great week, a lot of fun...but it's time to go home. I'm ready. I'm just looking forward to coming back one year and riding California Screamin' over and over, and maybe checking out Magic Mountain, which has lots of coasters. So happy my daughter likes roller coasters. Now I have someone to ride with. :)

Sick and Tired...

2010-10-28T16:24:00.003-06:00

I can officially agree with the saying "I am sick and tired of being sick and tired".
It's something that I suppose has been creeping up for awhile, likely about the past 6 months, but just kind of came to a head about a week and a half ago.

Last Tuesday, I found myself exhausted to the point that simple things like walking up 13 stairs or putting a few plates away left me panting and weak as anything. I also had a headache that had lasted about 2 days, with no relief in sight, despite efforts to stop it. So I grudgingly headed off to the doctor on Wednesday morning.

Anyone who knows me knows that going to the doctor ranks right up there with an enema. I hate going and would do pretty much anything to avoid going. Especially since it seems like every time I go, they find NOTHING wrong with me.

Not this time.

I sat on the little table and told my little tale of woe. He hooked me up to the blood pressure monitor and lo and behold, I had a pressure of 152/100. Not good. At all. I knew in the back of my mind that I should have been watching it better. The last time I went for a basic check up, the doctor said it was high. But I figured I'd do it by myself, just get it down, no problem. Guess not.

So he put me on a prescription and had me go for blood and urine tests. Took the tests Wednesday night. I got a call Saturday afternoon. I needed to come back in to see him about the results. He would be there Sunday afternoon. Great. I had been told the ONLY reason I'd get that call was if they found something. So I had roughly 24 hours to stew over what on earth was wrong with me, what had they found.

Meanwhile I was still not feeling any better, despite my blood pressure decreasing nicely each day. Energy levels were at 5% at best, dizzy as all anything...not nice.

Sunday night, there I sat, back on the little table. My cholesterol is high. This is not only a problem in itself, but of course, that will help cause high blood pressure and do I want to die of a heart attack. Of course not. I'm 34. Anyway.
Also, my iron is practically non-existent. Have I been having any issues with you-know-what? Well...yes...for about 6 months, I guess.

This little meeting lands me three more prescriptions and a referral to a specialist. Meaning I am now having to take a total of 4 prescriptions...5 pills a day, at various different times. Believe me, that was the night I created a checklist chart, to help remember what to take when and to keep track of whether or not I had in fact taken them yet.

Bounce forward to Wednesday morning. I get a call from the specialist's office. Can I come in on Friday morning? You betcha. So I pencil in the appointment.

Today I check out the address on Google maps to make sure I know where I am going, and also check into this specialist's name. Now I am unhappy.

I am finally starting to get some energy back (I'd say I'm at about 25%), so that's good. My issue is with what tomorrow will bring. You see, the doctor is an ob/gyn. And the doctor is a man.

I have a slight inkling of how invasive this appointment will be. We are talking pap, we are talking taking inner flesh samples, possibly ultrasounds and/or little cameras and/or who knows what else. As it is, I am ultra-uncomfortable with the whole concept and will run screaming at every opportunity from most of the above....but the fact that it will be a man performing such personal actions makes it that much worse.

My hubby says I am being silly, that if he were in my situation, he would be just fine because the specialist is qualified and such....but I don't think he has any right to say such a thing unless he is in a similar situation. I know the specialist is qualified. I know there is nothing "wrong" in it....but I really wish it could be a woman, you know, someone who could identify personally with the whole process and all the body parts involved.

I am definitely looking forward to the end of all this...the point when all issues have been identified, everything has been treated to satisfaction, and I have recovered all my energy and well-feeling-ness. But tomorrow will be a toughie.I don't know what is wrong with that part of me.

And I am scared.

Home Renos

2010-10-14T12:37:00.011-06:00

We have been under siege the last month or so...thanks to a very kind grandmother, we have had a pile of renovations done to our house.
It has been, to put it mildly, a nuthouse.
But we are very, very pleased with the results. We started out with the driveway looking like this:

Then we had rubber paving done, which took about a week, maybe a day or two more. So our house and driveway looked like this:

Very nice, but the siding was wood, the paint was peeling, and we needed new gutters and soffits, as well as windows. That was another week and a half. They worked very, very hard and did an amazing job, as you can see in these progressive pictures:

I really like the colour I chose for the house. :)

Isn't it beautiful?
Once that was all done, we had our living room, hallway, and one bedroom floors redone. The carpet was a medium grey, short pile. Original one, I suspect, so it would have been my age...and was FULL of stains that would not come out. The bedroom was a nice green, but a cat was accidentally shut in there and not only soiled it all over but he dug a hole right through it, trying to get out while we were away. I don't have photos yet, but it is now a beautiful dark brown wood laminate.
The poor animals don't know what to think. It's like watching curling some days, they come roaring up the stairs, hit the floor, and sliiiiiiiiiiiide all the way across the room. :-D
When we can afford it, I think our next big project will be the back fence. It needs a makeover. Badly.

Hoarders

2010-08-15T23:04:00.002-06:00

Has anyone else seen the show on TLC, called Hoarders?

I started watching this a few months ago, and had to come to a few tough realizations about myself.

Hello, my name is Deborah, and I am a hoarder.

Thankfully I have not reached the level that the people on this show reach by the time they are on camera, but I must admit, looking around, and watching the show, not only could I see that I had become one of THEM, but, boy, could I empathize with them. I knew exactly how they felt as they dug through their piles of belongings, trying desperately to figure out what to keep, and what to let go of.

A few months ago, my husband convinced me to essentially take a dare...if I could fill up a dumpster that he would arrange to have dropped off in our driveway for a week...a 14 foot one..he would get plane tickets for myself and the kids to go on a flight to visit a dear friend of mine.

It was a painful week, in some ways, but also a good week. We did manage to fill up the dumpster, and, to my shock and horror, even after getting rid of (no joke) a literal tonne of stuff, we still have a LOT of stuff in the house that I am constantly having to clean up, sort, or hide away. I am trying hard to keep at it, to learn to let go of things....but it's really hard when everything either has a use, a memory, or an emotional attachment.

I have several rooms that I have managed to keep somewhat under control lately, but there are a lot of rooms that, well, still need a lot of work.

That week was painful in shock waves, too...there was the initial getting-rid-of-useful-stuff painfulness, then the pain of Son realizing he had mistakenly put a favourite book in there, moments after they had hauled it away...and then several weeks later, the realization that in getting rid of a bunch of old VHS tapes that had stuff we had recorded on them, I had accidentally gotten rid of the one that had Daughter's baby videos on it. That one still hurts, but I know in the big picture, the main thing is that I have Daughter...and the memories are there in my head. I just wish I could have shown HER the videos.

In any case...that is my current challenge...to finish what I started and not get discouraged. Bit by bit, I'm hoping to sort through the entire house, including those scary spots that have ended up being danger zones...you know...the walk-in closet where everything gets shoved just before company arrives, the little cupboard where all the stuff goes "until I find a proper place for it"...places like that.

Wish me luck. Eventually, I will get a handle on this, and then maybe I won't have to clean for 4 hours a day, just to turn around and find it's all messed up again.

Springtime Fun

2010-06-13T13:48:00.004-06:00

I realize I have an on-again-off-again relationship with my blog. Part of it, I suppose, is that there are so many things that go on in life, that time just passes by in a blur sometimes, and you find yourself, months later, going "ohhhh yeaaahhhh....I have a BLOG!"
In any case....here I am once again.
Last month, Daughter and I once again ran the 5km I Love Regina Run. Or I suppose I should say, she ran it, I kind of chugged along behind. I figure she finished at least 5 minutes ahead of me, and I clocked in at about the same as last year....about 45 minutes, though I can't prove it because their timer was broken....I was just going by what my clock said, not knowing for sure exactly what moment the run began (9:00...9:05...8:55...). She did really well, considering we really didn't train at all this spring, with it being cold and snowy and rainy pretty much the whole time preceding the run. I, on the other hand, am proud of myself for finishing, and for never stopping my slow jog at all, except to retie a shoe. On the downside, I know full well that I jog r-e-a-l-l-y slowly...I was passed by a few walkers (as in, people who were walking....I am at least faster than people using the equipment by that name). Ah well. Next year we will attempt it once more, and hopefully I will be a good deal lighter and much more in shape, so will have less luggage to haul along with me, and be able to step things up a bit.
Now that spring is FINALLY in the air, and things are growing (such as my strawberry plants, raspberry bush, crabapples, and more dandelions than the mind can imagine), we have been able to get out and have some fun. For example, this weekend, we loaded up the van with a multitude of camping gear and the dog, and took the kids down to Carnduff for a geocaching event. It was raining on the drive down, so we were somewhat nervous about the weather we would be out in, but it turned out to probably be the best possible weather....cloudy, but not rainy, and not hot and sunny.
We set up our three tents, looking for all the world like a new version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears (we had a small tent, a medium tent, and a large tent) in the smallest campground I have ever seen. It actually worked out really well because there was a larger one down the road, which was therefore more appealing to others and which meant we more or less had the place to ourselves. There were 12 plots, and we took up about 1 1/4. There were two campers and one other tent the entire time we were there....and as far as I could figure, one camper and one tent belonged to the guys who were renovating the bathrooms (kudos to them for timing their work during the day so there was at least one toilet available and getting done before bedtime), and the other camper belonged to someone who worked at the convenience store on the other side of the trees. In that sense, it was a nice, quiet time on the campground. I must admit nighttime was not all THAT quiet, being close to the main road and having one night where some drunken revellers parked their truck just on the other side of the trees by the convenience store...but at dusk and dawn you could hear the birds singing and with so few campers it was a peaceful, non-crowded time. No frills, but didn't really need them.
Anyway...geocaching...it was a great weekend. We picked the kids up from school and headed straight out, with food that required no prep or refrigeration (except that night's supper, which had been removed from the fridge and was consumed very quickly during the drive....one of those Superstore chicken meals, split up into individual containers so I could just hand them out). I think it was about a 3 1/2 hour trip down there. We set up our tents around 8PM or so and just relaxed for the night.
Saturday morning, we were up early. About 6AM, though Son and I were up around 5. Breakfast was cinnamon buns and juice (and kibble for the dog). At 7:45AM, we met at someone's house for a Flash Mob, and to get the coordinates for all the caches that had been released that morning (I think there were 12). 8AM and we were off. We had also loaded the coordinates of all the old caches, since we had never been to Carnduff before. We raced all around the area, to farms, through fields, into parks, up the highways, and had a blast. Our first cache of the day, two other teams had beaten us there, but our second attempt netted us an FTF (First To Find), and we were thrilled. Our next two attempts at caches, we arrived at about the same time as another team (same team, both times). We searched and searched for the first of the two, with no success, until one of the other team almost accidentally shifted something....and found it. We were so close, but they got the FTF. The second one was hilarious...we took different dirt roads, and we got there moments before they did. They went roaring down their road about 100 metres too far, reversed and roared to the spot, while we parked, jumped out, and absolutely RACED through a grassy field (like, knee high grass), laughing so hard we could hardly breathe, squealing, trying to get there first. Both teams searched like mad, but in the end, they got that FTF as well...I must have touched it with my hand but not realized it because they found it in a spot I had checked. Oh well.
We found one cache where we ended up off-roading in a minivan, bumping through a field, next to a herd of cows (they were fenced separately), and through a section of grass later on in the off-roading that was up to the hood of the van. We had a blast!!!
Yes, we did end up with a few passengers during the day...I think I had the worst of it, with 4 or 5 ticks at last count..but we found them and evicted them before they really latched on.
We started caching, as I said, about 8AM. We took about an hour break for lunch (amazing what you can find to pack for meals that doesn't need refrigeration)...individual tuna and cracker packs, juice, strawberries...and had a bit of a rest, then headed out again, caching until about 4:30PM. We managed to log 20 caches for the day...a best for us, in terms of being out as a family unit. Hubby logged something like 25 once, when he was out all by himself in a fairly cache-dense area of Ontario.
At 5PM, all the cachers who came for the event returned to the location of the Flash Mob for a potluck BBQ. Prizes were handed out for FTFs (we got a new cache container), and lots of door prizes were given out. Caching stories were exchanged and suggestions for people to attend other caching events were given (there are some pretty cool places and events apparently in Manitoba and in the south (like Arizona) that would be interesting to attend one year).
We returned to our tents around 6:30PM and relaxed for the rest of the evening. Slept like the dead and then got up at 6 this morning, tore down our camp, ate muffins and juice, and left the campsite around 7:15AM. We arrived home at around 11AM. It was sunny when we woke up, so it was really nice for taking the tents down.

In other news, I did manage to get myself onto a School Board sub list....not the one where I live, but an outlying one, so although I have to drive 30-60 minutes each way to sub, at least in time it should give me enough experience to make my local board happy and get them to hire me...maybe by early 2011. I've only subbed a grand total of 1.5 days so far, (I need 2 months' worth, full time, to be considered by the local Board) but in the Fall, I will be able to sub full days, which will help not only increase the time I will be in the schools with each call, but increase the calls as well.

And my parents got a new dog. Her name is Polar. Isn't she cute? :)

Busy-ness and Business

2010-03-24T10:58:00.002-06:00

It has once again been quite awhile since I posted. I have this terrible habit of thinking to myself "I really should share that on my blog", and then completely forgetting.
In expectation of returning to work in the fall, I contacted my children's school, to see if I could volunteer, you know, kind of get my name known, my foot in the door, since it has been awhile since I was last a teacher. The principal was thrilled but suggested I try applying right away to become a substitute, as they are DESPERATE for French Immersion subs. So I figured, hey, why not, and contacted the head honcho of subbing (not her actual title, but you know what I mean). I was told that I would not be considered for the sub list unless I got more experience, since I have been a stay-at-home mom for 9 years. Talk about your catch-22 situation...I can't get the job because I need more recent experience, but I can't get that experience if I can't get the JOB!!! So I have begun volunteering at the school. I have a feeling it will not do me any good, as the teachers don't really have me doing much rigorous teaching. Mostly just reading with the kids, evaluating their reading, and in some cases helping them learn their alphabet and letter sounds. But I will do it to the end of the school year, just in case. And I have also applied to a school board for the schools in the outlying communities. They sounded like they would consider me, but I find myself in a holding pattern at the moment, as I have not heard back from them in about a week.
In my frustration with the fact that it seemed that all doors were being slammed in my face (there was a period of about a month where everything went wrong as far as my attempts to get paperwork together and such went for teaching applications...references moved or deceased, school divisions who have no record of me "because our records don't go back that far", the whole "get more experience, but we won't hire you" issue...things like that), I had decided that maybe teaching was not where I am supposed to be. I still reserve the right to that opinion, though now that things seem to be moving a little bit (with the school board that MIGHT hire me as a sub), I am willing to give it another chance, if they will give that chance to me.
But if they don't, I decided to try another path. I wanted to do something where my job would be something I LIKED to do, pay or not. So I have started my own business.
I call it Fruits and Flours. I make Montreal style bagels, buns, bread, jams, and jellies. I'm having a blast, and have some neat bread pans, so I can make smaller loaves, or even baby loaves. It isn't making money yet, but then, it's only been open about 3 weeks. I've had 9 orders so far, and only one negative response, and even then, it was more of a preference thing. So I continue to get everyone hooked, one bagel at a time. LOL (Shameless plug: www.fruitsandflours.webs.com)
So now, I am trying desperately to squeak in some time to exercise, especially since the annual Fun Run is coming up at the end of May, and I promised Daughter we would do the 5K again. It's not working so well yet...I get up, read my e-mail, weigh in, have breakfast, dress, clean, bake, eat lunch, volunteer, bake, cook, eat supper, clean, crash. Occasionally have an evening event or have to shuttle kids to an evening thing. So with my business and my attempts to get back into teaching, I'm finding BUSY-ness is taking over my life.
Given a choice, I'd be happy to drop the volunteering and cleaning and just eat, sleep, bake, and sing. :) Ah well. That's what retirement is for, I guess!

A Full House for Christmas

2009-12-29T11:16:00.003-06:00

It has been quite awhile since I last posted. Since Christmas has come and gone, I figure I have something to write about. It certainly was an adventure.
I think the excitement started on December 20th. If you discount all the parties and concerts and all the usual "stuff" that goes with every Christmas in a family with kids and jobs and teams and such.
On December 20th, my sister and brother-in-law arrived. Not bad. Put in the table extender, we now number 6 people.
On December 22nd, my brother arrived. Getting full. Added another table, one more chair, we now number 7. My living room is full any time we want to watch TV or a movie or play Wii, with kitchen chairs or people sitting on the floor.
On December 24th, my in-laws arrive. THEY are thankfully staying in a hotel, but I am still in charge of feeding them. Add 2 chairs to the second table. We now number 9. It's getting a little stressful.
On December 25th, my parents arrive for the day. Add 2 more chairs. 5 at one table, 6 at the other. I am feeding 11 people for supper and there is no space to move in the living room. The two tables plus people basically fill my kitchen. We serve buffet style, with tv tables set up in two spots so half can get theirs in one spot, the rest can get their food at the other.
All in all, it went well. The food turned out, the 17 pound turkey was pretty close to being the perfect size, leaving only the equivalent of probably 7 hot turkey sandwiches' worth of meat, everyone had enough and enjoyed it.
I won't be doing it again, though. It was great to see everyone, it was great to have everything turn out, but it was SO MUCH WORK, and a lot of worry and too little space. Next year will be a very small Christmas...just me, Hubby, Son, and Daughter. (And Dog and Cat 1 and Cat 2)
My parents went home Christmas Day at night. Down to 9 for Boxing Day. Went shopping, out for lunch, relaxed, fed everybody. Daughter got sick. Had a headache, threw up X3, super dizzy, temperature of 102.8F under the armpit. Children's Tylenol, lots of water, darkness, and rest, and a 30 minute chat with the health nurse on the phone, and she was better the next morning.
In-laws said goodbye that night, left early the next morning. And then there were 7.
All but Hubby and Daughter went to church on the 27th in the morning. Said goodbye to sister and brother-in-law in the parking lot afterwards, they hopped in their car and drove off to spend a week at my parents'. And then there were 5.
Relaxed and watched many TV shows and such, then took brother to the bus station for his 13:15 bus on the 28th. Went to Superstore, bought snacks, kids and I watch movies all afternoon. All are exhausted and glad to have to house back.
Now we return to normal life, cleaning up and rearranging everything back to family-of-four status.
All in all, it went quite well. There were some glitches, some personality issues, as there will be with that many people in one space who are not normally together in said space....but we made it.
Next big-group adventure....Disneyland. :)

Sanctuary from WHOM?

2009-10-02T21:41:00.002-06:00

I wrote in my last blog that I would revisit a certain topic, specifically that of the birds in the local bird sanctuary. My friend and I went to see the birds, and to feed them big bags of bread crumbs. The sanctuary is a fairy large, fenced enclosure, with walkways, lots of trees, a nice big pond with fake waterfall, a very nice, supposedly peaceful place to go, see the birds who happen to have landed at that particular moment in the season.
The problem with this particular trip is that there were a lot of birds with very gruesome injuries that day. There were lots of Canada geese with broken wings, at least one with a broken ankle. The same was seen in some huge, gorgeous, white swans. The ducks seemed okay, as did the grumpy looking, sleepy pelican. But these poor geese and swans. The first one I saw, I thought maybe he was the runt or something, and the others had attacked him. But then there were more, and more, and MORE...and we noticed that the angles of these broken wings and ankle were all the same, all very...odd. Not the kind of breaks you would expect from birds attacking birds. And definitely not in that large a number.
My guess is that some stupid people, be they drunk, stoned, or just plain rotten, went into this supposedly safe place for the birds, and thought it would be funny to catch them and purposefully break their wings. It wasn't funny, whoever you are. It was horrible, it was mean, it was criminal, it was torture, and will continue to be torture for all those poor birds. Now they will never heal because of the angles of those breaks, now they will never be able to fly again, and therefore they will die when winter comes. What hard-hearted, selfish monsters do that to animals?
And what about the parents with young children who went in there to have a fun day with the kids, to show them the nice birds, and then have to try to explain the scene worthy of a horror movie to these little kids, who, as all kids do, start asking questions about why that bird is holding its arm out and up and pointing that way, and what about that one and that one and that one and so on?
I took my friend there to show her what a neat place it was, but we ended up leaving sad, angry, and horrified.
I really hope the city has some sort of resource to help these poor birds that have suffered this horrible fate....but unfortunately, I kind of doubt it.

She Finally Made It

2009-09-23T15:21:00.002-06:00

I forgot a very important event when I was trying to catch up. A friend of mine, one of those soul-mate friends you see across a room and know it is them, a lovely woman who I met in my last year of university, finally had the time and the means to come and visit. She bravely hopped on a Greyhound and spent approximately 24-25 hours therein to finally arrive at my place with stories of interesting busmates. Then had to spend that long on the bus home again when she left. That's usually how these things work.
She was able to stay nearly a full 4 days, if you count by a 24-hour clock (she was short by about 3 1/2 hours). It was an amazing time, full of talking and laughter (ESPECIALLY laughter), memories rehashed, and a bunch of exploring. We hunted buffalo (to look at), fed an elk, fed geese and ducks and seagulls and tried to feed a pelican. We saw atrocities in relation to the birds (more on that in a future post) I taught her about geocaching, she helped me deliver flyers. We went to Costco for a hot dog and pop, and, of course, poutine. We went to the cheap theatre to watch "Up". We stayed up as late as we could (and proved ourselves to be old fogies by not staying up nearly as late as planned), and ate chips and such, while watching "Miss Congeniality" and, of course, "UHF" (because that is the kind of humour we like, among other movies, know what I mean, wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
I am so happy she was able to come. She lives a very busy (and seemingly fulfilling) life, so having the opportunity to claim that much of her time was wonderful. I miss having her here already, and hope she makes it back sometime, or that I manage to scrimp and save enough to go visit HER someday.
It was so nice to connect with a piece of those days again, to connect the dots in between than and now, and just realign the friendship to fit the changes we both have gone through over the past 11 years since McGill. And it was nice to have the mix of the Mommy-me, and the Debbie-me going on at the same time while she was here.
Here's to you, sweet Moosh.

The kids already want to know when you are coming again. :-D

Catching Up

2009-09-14T12:47:00.002-06:00

I see, with shock, that is has been nearly 3 MONTHS since I last posted. It isn't that there has been nothing to blog about, but rather that we have been having so much fun and so much stuff TO DO that I just haven't gotten around to it. This will likely be at least a 2 parter, as I am only writing as I wait for Hubby to be ready to go somewhere.
Off to Value Village for their 50% off sale.
Let me see....Daughter finished her softball season with a rained out tournament. All the same, she ended up with a cool t-shirt and a really nice medal. Next year, Son will start t-ball or whatever.
I had yet another birthday. No big, blowout celebration or anything, just dinner and cake. About a week later, I took myself for an evening out. That was nice. I ate at Red Lobster (crab legs, yum!), puttered around Toys R Us (Total Mom, I know), then Canadian Tire, nabbing a few plants for my garden at 25 cents each as they were trying to clear them out, then off to the movie theatre to see "Up". Since then, I have watched the movie a total of three times...the first time was in 3D, the other times, not. The second was with a friend, the third with my family. Can you tell I love this movie?
Daughter finished her school year, and we entered into the madness of summer....Son and Daughter both took swimming lessons for 2 weeks each, one passed, one did not. We did tons of daytrips and such...plus Daughter had 4 days of Art Camp, where she created masterpieces and aside from all parental pride and bias, displayed an aptitude in the artistic field.
There were hot dog sales to run, flyers to deliver, people to see, birthday parties to attend, Chorus rehearsals to go to, a trip to the Science Center, the museum, we went to the Edmonton Ex and while there visited family, we went camping in Assiniboia, and visited family while THERE, Son had a birthday, complete with party....we tried our had at fishing, but only managed to catch our dog (poor baby.....thankfully we were able to get the hook out with no real damage)...we picked saskatoon berries by the ice cream pail-full, we geocached until we dropped, Daughter had a sleepover with two other giggly girls, we celebrated our 10th anniversary with no pomp and circumstance at all....and took our little family out to dinner with the money we received, to Applebees. We will whoop it up at a later date, when time and money are easier to come by.

And then the kids went back to school. Daughter goes all day, Son goes afternoons. Life has settled down a little, and I have hopes of someday soon reaching a peaceful level of clean in my house, as opposed to the harried slap-and-dash attempts to do 3 days of cleaning in 3 hours.
Well, looks like I caught up after all! Hopefully I will keep up a bit better now, so I don't have to try to remember 3 months all at once. :-D

Quirky critters

2009-06-18T14:11:00.002-06:00

It has been a week full of stories I could tell about animals. Two in particular.
First of all, there is Geo-Dog...not er real name, but that is the title she has earned because she comes along as we geocache, sometimes. She is a smart critter. We went geocaching this past week, along a walking trail in the middle of nowhere, pretty much. Searching for one particular cache, we went tromping through long grass and short shrubs, scratching up our legs pretty well. Son was not a happy camper when we got ground zero, and we never did find this cache. We were dreading the traipse back, and as we started out, I noticed that Geo-Dog seemed to know where she was going. I figured things couldn't get much worse, so I let her have her head and followed along at the end of her leash. Wouldn't you know my silly, soppy, half-crazed Black lab/shepherd/greyhound cross picked up the scent of other cachers? She led us along a nearly invisible trail....MUCH easier on the legs than our entry trail...and got us back to the path, goiung in a different direction from where we had come from? Pretty impressive. Now if only she could have left the ticks behind. We are STILL finding them!
The second story is about a little frog named Hopper. We had a lot of puddles in the ditches near our house, and could hear the frogs SCREAMING out their ribbits....so I thought it might be kind of cool to go frog hunting with Son and Daughter. So we went, annd we looked, and listened, and looked....and couldn't find anything because we were looking for frogs to match the loudness of the ribbits. I will never know how a sound that loud could come from a frog that small, but we finally found one, about an inch long. The kids were thrilled and set him up in a huge jar with a rock and water and such....and declared we would keep it forever. How to feed a frog? So I was out in the backyard daily, after some internet research, catching ants and beetles and anything I could find that moved. No luck. Hopper would not eat. One day, just out of desperation, I caught a housefly and got it into the jar. The fly was about 3/4 the size of the frog. Well....Hopper ate the fly....and died. My suspicion, based on the size of the fly was that Hopper either choked to death, or his tummy exploded.
I now have a tiny grave in my flower bed, with a rock saying "Hopper" on it, loving;y dug and created by my children. Silly frog.

Oh, yes, THAT makes it all better!

2009-06-10T19:26:00.002-06:00

Ever had somebody say something to you that had the absolute opposite of the desired effect? That would be today. That would be me.
I went to one of our local hospitals, to visit a friend. She was signed in on Monday to have a baby. She had asked me to come visit sometime this week, if I could, in an e-mail she sent a few days before she was admitted. So I finally had a spare moment or three today. I dropped Son off at preschool (kids other than relatives are not allowed on the baby ward), and high tailed it to the hospital. Arrived shortly after one, to find that Baby/Mom quiet time was from 1-2PM daily. So I sat in the hospital hallway and read for an hour. I went in, and asked for my friend. The nurse checked her chart, then checked again. "Are you sure she isn't under another last name?" Nope. They asked when she had been signed in, I said Monday. She thought maybe my friend had been discharged, checked, STILL no sign of my friend. Another nurse walks in, so she asks HER. The nurse's response is "Oh,yes, we have her here...family is room 9, remember?" Oh, yes, says the other nurse. Are you family? No...just a friend. I get a strange look from the nurse who had known where my friend was, and she says "I'm sorry, you'll have to talk to her family...I DON'T WANT TO ALARM YOU, but I can't give out information....I'm sorry, but you'll have to call her husband to get information..."
And that was it. I was supposed to leave.
Um...I don't want to alarm you? Excuse me? That, right there, has me alarmed. Very. Because, you see, I still have no idea what that was all about. I don't know if my friend is in danger. I don't know if her baby is in danger. And because they live on a farm about 2 1/2 hours from me, and so her husband is fairly likely to stay in town until she is discharged, I have no clue how I would contact him short of stalking the hospital corridors until I catch a glimpse of him!!!!! And even if it WAS a simple task to contact him, just the looks, the demeanour, and the words "I don't want to alarm you" are enough to have me really, really afraid for my friend and nearly frantic in wanting to know what is going on.
Maybe if Hubby can watch Son, I can go back tomorrow and leave a message for him at the desk or something. Either way, it's going to be a long, worrisome night.

The Stove, The Run, and The Rest

2009-06-06T21:54:00.008-06:00

I seem to have this annoying habit of only writing once a month while consistently reminding myself at least a few times a week that I really want to write about this, that, or the other thing, so those of you who have decided to bear with me....thanks. :) I always seem to have a lot to write about when I actually sit down and DO it, and i invariably forget at least a dozen really good anecdotes along the way.
So...the last I wrote would have been what? May 11. There you go. Nearly a month ago.
Since then, as you see in the title, there has been a development on the stove. Namely, the thing decided to explode again. Same element. So we unplugged it and hucked it into the front yard, where some nice guys hauled it off to the dump for $35. And for $250 plus the $60 (?) delivery fee, I now have myself a nice, shiny, white, 9 year old ceramic top stove. YESSSSSSSSS! I love it! The thing MUST have been absolute top of the line when the people bought it new, they took amazingly good care of it, so it looks nearly new, and it is SO much easier to keep clean! No more having to take the burners out and scrub the metal plate thingies underneath because you spilled something, no more residue causing clouds of smoke if you forgot there was something under the burner.
On May 24, Daughter and I ran a 5km fun run. She did amazingly, running most of the way, and we finished in 46 minutes on the nose. Son was near the finish line and so grabbed my hand and ran through with us. I even have pictures! Next year we hope to improve on that time, but for her first run, that was AMAZING!

It was a lot of fun....and probably one of the only times when I have been fed a hamburger at 9:50AM (that's what all the runners got....a burger or hot dog, and a glass of juice, when they were done)
Other than that, not a whole lot has happened...had a farewell party for a beloved preschool teacher who just happens to be leaving the job after our youngest "graduates" from preschool in a few weeks. I have created sock monkeys for her and the other teacher there, to remind them of my little monkey (son). :)
I just came back this evening from a 24 hour retreat at an amazing place about an hour from here...it's called a "House of Prayer", and is run by a priest and some nuns....basically a place to go for peace and quiet, reflection, stuff like that. They feed you, give you a place to sleep, and basically stay out of your way. It was beautiful. Last year,there were deer just outside the window. This year was birds....bright yellow finches, blue jays, stuff like that. We went to plan our next steps for Chorus, but it was a nice restful place, too....if you discount having to share a double bed with one of my team when I am used to a king sized with Hubby.
Oh yes! And I gave Son a mohawk hairdo. No pics yet, but I'm sure I will get some eventually for you all to see. It actually looks really good on him, which even Hubby had to admit when we surprised him with it on his return from a 2-day trip to Kingston.

Modern Conveniences?

2009-05-11T10:45:00.002-06:00

If you have been following my life the last little while, you will know that we have had some mechanical issues...car trouble, furnace trouble, etc. And the beat goes on.
I have to tell you a little bit more and some discoveries we have made over the past few months.
Our fridge was having issues at about the same time as our furnace. We got the furnace fixed, and our gas usage dropped like a rock, our power usage dropping a bit as well. So...with the fridge having issues, it reached a point where it probably would have been more effective to bury our food in the snow, as milk and fruit and veggies were turning into creatures of another kind. So we got out tax refund and went out to purchase a new fridge...new to us, not necessarily new altogether, but a much newer model anyway, reduced a fair bit because it was a scratch and dent. At the same time, spring started to arrive, so we went out and bought the gear for a clothesline and have started hanging our clothes out to dry instead of just hucking them in the dryer. I looked at our power bill for the past few months and discovered that JUST BY REPLACING THE FRIDGE AND NOT USING THE DRYER, we reduced our monthly bill by 25%!!!!!!!! What a shock!
Our stove has started going on the fritz, too...at least the element part....I was cooking something a few weeks back, and spilled something on the burner...water boiled over while I was cooking crabs, I think it was...and there was an EXPLOSION, complete with a green and orange flash of fire. It blew a fuse, which we replaced, but now it is super finicky...when you turn on the element, you need to have something to kind of push the element a bit further into the socket, and if you happen to be making hash browns, it will constantly turn itself off so that they take forever to cook...so for the most part, unless it's having a good day, we are down to three elements. It's one of the big elements, too. Bah. Give it another year, and that will be replaced, too. That will likely drop the power bill farther, too, as the fridge and stove were a set, so it's as old as the old fridge was, and so not very energy efficient.
We also had been having issues with our dishwasher over the last few months...it hadn't always been doing a good job. But it was "convenient", so we kept using it....until it started leaking. Last night we finally decided that this was it. We would just have to revert to hand washing the dishes. So I washed the supper dishes, and Hubby dried. I opened the drawer to get spoons for breakfast this morning, and was absolutely DAZZLED by the shininess of the cutlery! We got so used to the way the dishwasher did it that we didn't even notice how dull the dishes had become from build-up, we had just noticed the ones that had food cooked on. So we probably are using less water now, I can water my plants with the water from the dishes this summer, thereby reducing water consumption, the dishes will always be done right away, as we will need them for the next meal, so that should make the kitchen a bit tidier, with there being no dishes stacked up, waiting for the dishwasher, it will reduce our power usage even further....all in all, the dishwasher has become more of an INconvenience....by washing them ourselves, they are actually getting CLEAN! What a concept!
Makes you wish for the old days with a true ICE box, wood stove, wash the clothes in a bucket and hang them up to dry, and hand wash the dishes. Well....almost.

Competitions, fires, and Clinics

2009-05-11T07:54:00.002-06:00

It has been nearly a month since I last posted. I can't believe how much time has gone by. I have often thought about how I could post about this thing or that, and then have become busy and forgotten. So I will attempt a mish-mash effort, and hopefully will capture the majority.
My son got to visit French Immersion Kindergarten last month. It was a lot of fun for him in the one hour glimpse he got of the class. The other day he came up to me, and we have this conversation...
SON: Mommy, how do you say "can I"
ME: "Est-ce que je peux"
SON: Essejepa...how do you say "some"
ME: "de"
SON: duh..how do you say "milk"
ME: "lait"
SON: "lay"...can I have some milk?
ME: Est-ce que je peux avoir du lait?
SON: That's what I SAID!

LOL. He's a cutie.

The same week as his visit to kindergarten, I took off to Calgary for Regionals with my chorus. I drove down with three of my riser mates, and it was quite an experience. We had a lot of fun, but it took a lot longer to arrive than I had hoped, with two of them taking medications that, well, required us to stop...a lot. After the first half of the trip, I simply stopped asking if we needed to stop, and kept driving until someone begged to stop. Coming home, we added a car mate, which greatly increased the luggage, as she had just flown directly to competition from a two week visit to Scotland, so with much laughter and creativity, we managed to cram 5 people's luggage plus 5 people into my minivan without having to tie anything to the roof.
The hotel was very nice, and very big, involving escalators and elevators, the elevators being quite annoying, because if you got on the wrong one, it would not let you go any lower than the 3rd floor. There was one that went from the parking garage only to the lobby. And then there were the ones that went from the lobby to whatever floor you needed, but you had to make sure you swiped your room card to make it go...I was up on another floor, helping a riser mate put on her eyelashes, while my roomies returned to our room...I didn't have my key, so had to phone them so one could come up and get me! How embarrassing!
It was the first hotel I've stayed in since joining the Chorus that did not have a mini fridge. I brought all my food with me, knowing how much it would cost to eat out the whole weekend. Thankfully, I had brought a little cooler with me, so I visited the ice machine frequently...but by doing so, I spent about $60 on groceries to eat for 4 days...and I had leftovers!!!! Not bad, when you consider that eating out in the area we were in was costing my roomies about $20-$50 a MEAL.
I had quite an experience with my earrings...when lining up for our competition performance, we sang a song for the other chorus waiting in the lineup (it's a tradition), and right after we sang the last note, my earring fell off, into my hand. The backing was GONE...and there was no time to go looking for it. Thankfully, the costume chair had a clip on, so I traded her my one with no back for a clip on, and wore that. Right after our competition, I found the backing...let's just say close to my heart, but on the other side, all snug in my all-in-one. So I traded back for my earring, and had it on for the Show of Champions. Came down the elevator to line up for the Show of Champions...and discovered I had the backing on the back of my ear, but NO EARRING!!! I nearly had a heart attack! Happily, one of the other Choruses had found it on the elevator and given it to one of my riser mates. So I got it back just before we went off to perform. I was so paranoid, though, afraid it would fall off again....and when performing, you CANNOT be reaching up to check.
Prairie Gold (my chorus) placed 2nd Place Small Chorus, by one point (story of our lives...2003 International Harmony Classic, we came in 2nd by 1 point), and 8th Place Overall out of 16 choruses. Our lowest score ever, I think, but based on the kind of year we'd had, I think we did very well.
The drive home was a fair bit faster, as I drove until they begged, and it was a lot of fun. I arrived home around 9PM, and then standing in my kitchen, talking to Hubby, we heard something like thunder....twice...and THIS happened
http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Fire+damages+northwest+Regina+home/1537066/story.html
This is not OUR house, but rather a few houses down...close enough that there were sparks and embers landing in our back yard. I had two very frightened children, plus the little girl who lived next door to this. She was so scared, poor thing..."What's going to happen to my room? What about my flip flops?"...having that sort of thing happening to the house next to you when you are 5 is a big deal. Not that it isn't a big deal even if you are grown up, but I think it turns little kids' worlds upside down a lot more violently.
Last weekend, we went to a Flash Mob/ Geocaching event. It was a lot of fun. The flash mob part involved a peanut scramble. Son found a white peanut, and as a prize received a travel bug. We are very excited. We have an idea for what to do with it, so now we just need to carry it out and figure out where to hide it.
While we were there, we walked around the lake a little bit, and I had to laugh at how frustrated some poor beaver must have been. You see, there were these saplings near the water, along the walkway. They were supported with wires and sticks and such. A beaver had found one of these saplings, and decided it would make a good addition to its dam, so it had chewed the trunk and managed to fell the tree. One problem. The tree is attached to the ground by the wires! So you see this tree stump that has obviously been chewed by the beaver. Just above that, lying sideways and suspended in the air, is the top part of the tree, the bottom of which obviously matches with the trunk with beaver teeth marks, going NOWHERE. Poor beaver....all that work for nothing.
This past Friday, Son went to the cleft palate clinic, just to have everything given the once over, 4 months after his surgery. He is officially discharged from the clinic, as everything looks wonderful. They said we could get him back in the program anytime we needed, for example, they said when he hits the teen years, as his mouth grows, it may not grow properly and may reopen the muscles or make his adult teeth grow in wrong and his speech may deteriorate again....or it may not....but if anything happens, we can bring him back. Based on the fact his father had no such problem in his teen years, we are optimistic that this will not be necessary.
A the clinic, we met Peanut. This was a very cute, very friendly cocker spaniel, with one very special feature...Peanut has a cleft palate and hare lip. Let me tell you, this makes for an interesting face on a dog. He looked like he was constantly smiling out of the front, left side of his mouth. I wish I had a picture. What a great thing to bring to show to the kids with cleft palates...a doggy just like them!
Oh yes, I am a redhead again, though a darker redhead than usual...closer to my natural brown, but when in the sun, it shows the red very well. Not something that matters to most people, but I know some of you wanted to know if I had done it or not.

The Birds!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-04-16T21:28:00.002-06:00

Okay, first of all, we have a wood stove in our basement. It's all hooked up and to code and everything, but we have never used it. Because it costs a fortune for home insurance if we ever do. Which is fine. It looks nice anyway.
Over the winter, two birds got in, unbeknownst to us. And subsequently died in said wood stove. Not using it, there really was no huge need to be peering in through the little window to count the carnage.
We heard a noise yesterday, and found our dear kitties watching what I will call "Bird TV"...noses pressed up against the glass, they were happily watching a live bird flutter around in the stove. We came up with several ideas for how to get this bird out of the wood stove without major chaos. Having found a suitable solution (big bag over door of wood stove, bird flies into bag, we quickly close bag, run upstairs, free said birdie), we prepare to execute the plan. Open the wood stove. No bird in the bag. No noise. We bang the stove and pipe, hoping to flush it out. Nothing. Close the door, peer through the window. No bird. So I don rubber gloves and hold my trusty garbage bag, and fish out the two dead birds. Still no sign of the live birdie. Go upstairs, grab the vacuum to suck up the soot the birds had knocked out of the pipe. Sucking away. Suddenly there is an explosion of feathers and said birdie emerges from the ashes and flies, you guessed it, past me and into the house. Thankfully the dog was already sequestered in a bedroom from the moment of the wood stove attempt, but let me tell you, there were two kitties who very much enjoyed THIS turn of events.
It took a long time and a lot of effort on the part of hubby to chase down this totally freaked out ball of feathers. In the end, it involved a roll of toilet paper, the top of a clothes hamper, a girl guide cookie box, and a pillowcase. We finally captured the bird and set it free. It flew off as fast as its little wings could go. I returned immediately downstairs to finish the job of cleaning up. I was just reaching for the door of the wood stove to open it and finish cleaning when PLOP...there was a bird fluttering around in the wood stove.
It seems to have found its way back out through the pipe, as it disappeared before we even considered trying another evacuation, but then, who knows...maybe there's a nest up there somewhere. Time will tell, and hopefully we will figure out how to block the thing before we repeat that fiasco.

Well, okay then.

2009-03-26T14:20:00.002-06:00

It's amazing how things seem to sort themselves out. I really need to learn to relax a bit more. This whole faith and testing thing is a real challenge for me.
The short version is that the worries I had in my last post seem to have sorted themselves out, somewhat.
Hubby received a FREE iPod Touch from one of his suppliers, because a customer had returned it, complaining because it had a scratch on it. A scratch people. We looked, and looked....and saw a minute little one on the back that we had to SEARCH for. Anyway.
Hubby goes off to work a couple of days ago. One of his clients says, totally out of the blue, not knowing that hubby even owns one, that his son is looking for an iPod Touch, but hasn't managed to save up enough to buy new, and if Hubby knew of anyone wanting to sell theirs, his son would like to buy it.
Hubby sold his iPod Touch today. He hadn't really been impressed with it in the week or so that he owned it anyway. And so we got $200.
Oh yes, and the work van's troubles magically disappeared. So now we have $200 in a fund, put away for a later date when we have a bit more to add to it, so if the trouble resurfaces, we can get it fixed.
And I rummaged around the living room and dug up a few small things to sell and posted them for sale on a group on my computer. Not even 5 minutes after I posted one thing, someone already responded that they want to buy it. So it looks like there will at least be a few things I can sell around the house that will bring in bits and pieces to add to our Emergency fund and all.My problem is that I form an emotional attachment to pretty much everything. But give me time, and I'll have sold so much stuff that the kids will be afraid they are next. (That's a joke)
Oh, and hubby will be heading out of town for another big job, so that will add to the fund, too. A little bit, anyway.
So there you have it. The plan is working, God is honouring our efforts, and things just keep trucking along. :)

Testing...

2009-03-24T14:32:00.002-06:00

Lately, I wrote a post in regards to tithing and trust. At the time, things seemed to have a definite answer, a "yes, this is the right thing" feeling, as things seemed to suddenly click into place financially, things suddenly were looking up...

And then the true testing came. And still is here, with teeth. I wish I could see into the future, and into the "why's" of it all. It hit so hard this morning that I hit my knees at the edge of my bed, ground my face into the covers, and cried, and prayed. I don't do so well with testing. I fail miserably when it comes to hard times. Anybody who has known me for any length of time knows that.

I wrote the blog about my van and its flat-tire-turned-nightmare-of-broken-brake-parts and such. And I wrote that it was all working out fine and dandy, it was a big ouch, but hey, everything is A-OKAY.

Nope.

Hubby called this morning to say that his work van is making funny noises and the steering wheel shakes as he drives. Now I know next to nothing about cars, but I DO know that is bad. Very, very bad. And we don't have the money to fix it. At all. And with the two kids and the nature of his job and the schedule he and I and the kids hold, one car just isn't going to do it. But we can't afford to fix whatever horrible thing is wrong with his van. Which means we will HAVE to be down to one van until we can afford to fix the work van. Which means we will be at each other's throats because we are going to both need the van at the same times and it's just going to be miserable because life never works on our schedule we're going to need the other to have the van home at certain times and it's just not going to happen. Oh yes, and now he will be out of town for a day and a half in a few days, leaving me with NO car and two kids...
It's a little stressful.

I know it's a test. I know God is testing to see how seriously we mean to stick to the whole tithing and trusting thing. And I DON'T LIKE IT!!!!!! It would be so easy to just use the tithe, fix the van, and move on. But we won't. We can't. We shouldn't.

I just wish it didn't feel so much like we were being kicked down, and the second we started to get up, repeatedly getting kicked in the head. It really does feel like that. We just start seeing the sunshine and get booted in the gut. Again.

I know hubby won't admit to it, but we are in trouble. We really are. Last month, we pared things down to the minimum. this next month, we've had to pare the minimum down even more...we don't have anything going aside for the kids' summer activities, no summer vacation, no clothes. Nothing. Our menu for the month is going to leave our cupboards looking pretty bare by the end of the month, and they'd better like toast and pancakes this month. And now the van.

Would you believe that as I knelt there this morning, the thought actually went through my mind about how much we could get if we SOLD the bed? I think it is coming to that...hopefully there are people out there who will be willing to buy everything I can get my hands on in the house that we could sell. I suppose it's ONE way to keep the house clean...sell all the contents. Ha ha.

Here's hoping we make it through this testing and reach the other side of this dark tunnel soon. I'll keep you posted. Wish me luck and send lots of prayers.

You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to

2009-03-22T09:38:00.002-06:00

Okay. Another round of potato recipes.
My favourite thing to do is to make stuffed potatoes. Cheap, easy, and filling.
Take the size of potato you figure you will be wanting to eat as a meal. You aren't going to want a small one this time, because you need to be able to cut the top off and get the insides out.

So...pick your potato, poke it a couple times with a fork. Put it in the oven at 400F (yes, you heard me right) for between 1 and 2 hours, depending on how crispy of a skin you like. Take it out and (wearing your oven mitts), slice off a thin slice from the top. Scoop the insides into a bowl, and then do one of two things:
If you are picky about the beauty of your meal, mix the scooped out potato with a bit of margarine, spoon it back in, and add toppings.
If you are not picky, mix the potato with margarine and all the fixings you plan to use, then spoon it back in.

I will give you my favourite stuffed potato recipe, but you can create your own. I have a cookbook called Stuffed Spuds in my cupboard...I recommend looking it up if you want more exotic versions than what I make. I will type up a few of the more fun ones another day, ones kids would like.

But as I was saying, my favourite stuffed potato...taco stuffed potatoes.
You need: salsa, sour cream, taco beef, cheese (lettuce and tomato if you want).
As I said before, once you have the scooped up potato mixed with margarine, you can either pile all the above on top,and enjoy, or if you are like me, mix the potato with the salsa,sour cream, taco beef, and cheese, and then put it back in the shell, and top with diced fresh tomato (or I suppose you could even mix that in), and if desired, lettuce.

One I tried recently was a stuffed potato that was essentially scalloped potato with cheese. Cook the potato, scoop it out, mix it with sauteed onions, garlic, and margarine, put it back in, sprinkle (or bury) with cheese, put it back in the oven until the cheese looks as brown as you like it. Enjoy. Or I suppose even mix the cheese in with the potato and then put back in the oven for 15- 20 minutes.

Just a side note: My potatoes are almost gone already! I will have to order more this week. A good sign is that when I mentioned this to my family, they did NOT groan and beg me to stop with the potatoes. They seem to be enjoying this as much as I am.

Budget stretcher

2009-03-20T08:39:00.003-06:00

I guess my blog is going to be a bit about recipes for awhile. That's okay. :) I love to cook. :)
I just had to take a break from the potato thought, and have something different for you today...
Yesterday I made soup. I made a whole STOCK POT of soup. It was a lot of fun. Actually, it took me two days. Wednesday, I rummaged through my freezer for the big Ziplocs full of bones. This soup very definitely was a kitchen sink variety. Into the stock pot went a ham bone, some T-bones, and a turkey carcass. I covered it all with water, nearly to the top of the pot (not too high or it will boil over), and boiled the living daylights out of them, for a couple of hours. Then I turned off the heat, let it sit for a little bit until it wasn't going to burn a hole in everything it touched, put a piece of foam (thick padding) in the deep freeze, and put the pot on top (so it wouldn't thaw things underneath), and left it in there overnight. Yesterday morning, I took it out, scooped out the frozen fat, brought the remainder to a boil (yes there was some fat left in it), and added spices, 3 onions, some leftover green onions, garlic, 6 carrots, a big sweet potato, a medium turnip (rutabaga?), and 8 breakfast sausages, cooked and chopped up. We had some for supper last night, and it was AMAZING...and if you think about it, really, really cheap...
The bones were free because they would have been garbage otherwise, the spices were maybe $0.10 worth, if that, onions...say $0.50, based on what a small net of them costs, green onions...$0.25, garlic...$0.10, carrots...$1.00, Sweet potato...$2.50, turnip..$2.25, sausages...$1.50.
I may be off a little on these, but not by much, so....for $8.20, I made about 9 meals worth..as in 36 servings. Not bad! About $0.91 a meal. About $0.23/person per meal.
Okay, here's my potato plug....if you need a soup to be even more filling and hearty, add potato and MASH it, or add mashed potatoes! It will thicken your soup and fill you up and make you all nice and warm inside, and happily thinking of all the money you've saved...make your own bread and serve that, and for the whopping total of MAYBE $0.30/person, you've made a filling meal! Need dessert? Apple crisp! That should cost about $2.50 to make. A drink, you say? Make your own hot cocoa...$2.00 for 4 servings. Okay, so now you have soup, bread, hot cocoa, and apple crisp. You have fed a family of 4 for $5.70. You can't even get a meal for ONE for that price at a restaurant!
Now do you know why I don't eat at restaurants much anymore? Seriously. Over the past two months, we have taken our favourite dishes from restaurants, and figured out how to make them at home. I'll give you some examples:
Red Lobster shrimp linguini...made it for about $10, or $2.50/person
The Keg T-bone steak,mushrooms,loaded baked potatoes-made it for about $25, or $6.25/ea
Chilis Nachos Grande...made it for about $12, or $4 each
Lee's :Pork and broccoli,fried rice, and chow mein for about $10 or $2.50/person
Tony Roma's Ribs: made that for about $20, or $5 each
Amazing, isn't it???? You just don't realize how much you spend in a restaurant, over and above what it would cost to make it at home!
Traveling?
I will be away next month for 4 days, and was told that restaurant food was very expensive where I am going? So? I am staying in a hotel with no promise of a fridge. So?
I am taking a cooler. I have planned out what I will eat (while away, I will have 3 breakfasts, 4 morning snacks, 4 lunches, 3 afternoon snacks, and 3 suppers), and you know what? Based on taking a cooler, which I can refill with ice from the hotel ice machines anytime I need to, I can eat VERY well....and it's going to cost me about $60 to do it. That's total...as in $15 a DAY....and I'll likely have leftovers.
So there you go. If you are driving, this works really well, because if you get hungry, you just stop and pull something out of the cooler or bag of dry stuff. If you are flying, see if you can get one of those styrofoam ones at your destination, maybe, and go to a grocery store THERE. It's amazing how easy it is to cut corners, when you need to and want to.
I also like to can things...so far, just jams, jellies, juices, pickles, and fruit....but that's another day's story. :)

Potato Recipe Time

2009-03-18T06:56:00.002-06:00

Somebody requested that I post a few potato recipes...
I'll start with one or two, as I don't have my handy dandy recipe book in front of me.
The neatest thing I've found lately (in terms of recipes) is a lady called Clara. You can find her on YouTube. She has a few clips (she is 94 or something like that, by the way) in which she demonstrates how her mother used to cook when she (Clara) was a child, back in the Depression. Let me just say everything has to do with potato and onion, for the most part. :)
The first recipe we tried of hers was called Poor Man's Dinner. Take as much potato as you think your family will eat (it's surprising how little it takes, actually). Peel and cut into small cubes. Heat a pan with a bit of oil in it. Toss in the potato, do the same with an onion. Fry them up. Cut up some hot dogs, stir it in until things are nice and golden and hot. Add salt to taste. Enjoy. I put ketchup on mine. Like hash browns with meat, I guess.

My 75 pound bag of potatoes is RED potatoes, very juicy, too, so I'm not entirely sure how recipes work/taste with other types of potato. Keep that in mind.

Fries. If you have a deep fryer, fries are always good. Take your potato and cut it into strips. Keep the peel on, or not. I don't peel mine. Take a bowl of water and stir in a bit of sugar. Put cut potatoes in the bowl and swish them around, or leave them in there while the deep fryer is heating. Put them in the basket, but don't pile them too high. Lower the basket and cook 10 minutes. At the end, you will have the most delicious fries EVER.

Potato slices. Made this one up a log time ago. Nothing fancy in this one. Works best if you have a baking stone, but if you are willing to hover, a baking sheet works, too. Slice your potato into thin slices (not TOO thin, but not thick). Arrange on the stone, sprinkle with whatever seasonings you like best. Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes. If on a baking sheet, turn about halfway through so you don't burn one side black. :) Good for dipping.

I will bring more recipes later, heartier, more complicated ones. I promise. :)
Enjoy these if you wish.

Ode to Daughter

2009-03-17T16:12:00.003-06:00

LOL...I intended, when I signed in last, to post something, and totally got off course and into the money post. :)
Daughter has a skill. I can totally see her using this as a career someday....if she wants to, that is. She loves doing this, and her teacher has even said we should sign her up for classes. Which, in regards to the last post, we simply do not have the money to do right now.
But someday we will, because I think she has real talent, and I'll show you why I say this...she did this in about 15 minutes, while at her brother's soccer game on the weekend:

She is just recently turned 8, by the way.
Proud Mommy moment. :)

Money, Money, Money....must be funny

2009-03-17T15:42:00.002-06:00

Yeah. I'd like some. :)
Remember that last post, where we had our budget down to a fine science? Well, life happens. With teeth. It does have a semi-happy ending, I suppose, but I have to admit that I will be very happy in a few years, when I am back at work, the house stays clean, the kids are both off at school, and hubby is making multi-millions. Ha ha ha. Okay, I'll settle for us being back on two steady-ish incomes without the need for child care.
In any case...
On Friday I ended up with a major flat tire, as in, the kind where the car goes bumpitybumpitybumpity, you pull over to look at the flat tire, and find it halfway off the rim flat. And my tire iron would not work to remove the partially stripped lugnuts. So I had to walk home, get Hubby's, walk back, and use his to get it off and then get the spare on. Saturday, we got an appointment for new tires. An ouch, but do-able, as we had just built up a $1000 emergency fund, and the tires were going to be about $600. No big problem, we'd just have to rebuild the emergency fund. Right?
No.
They get the van up on the hoists, saying it'll be done in about an hour. Call us about 30 minutes later. Brake drum is shot, brake fluid all over EVERYTHING, not safe, spare is worn down to the core. Okay. Has to be done. Fine. We'll figure something out. While trying to replace the drum, the brake line snaps. Woo-hoo.
So over $1300 later I have my van back. Bye bye emergency fund hellooooo paycheck advance.
This sounds like a bad ending, but it isn't...we had the emergency fund, which is more than we would have been able to say in the recent past, and we will rebuild it, it will just take time...and in our budget, we CAN reduce our payments on a few things to recoup that extra money we technically didn't have. And as we keep on watching our pennies and sticking to our budget as closely as we can, slowly we will get things paid off. Most things will be paid off in about 2 years. The mortgage should be paid off in about 8 years. And then we will be totally, utterly, absolutely debt free. How's that for a concept? I like it.
As Dave Ramsey says (one of my Hubby's favourite authors/radio guys right now) "Right now we will live like nobody else so that someday we can live like nobody else". Get it? :)
And you know what one of the best things about our plan has been? NOTHING has been added to the debt. We paid cash from our income tax return for the new fridge when the old one died, cash for the broken furnace repair, cash for the furnace and vent cleaners, cash for the car repairs (or debit or cheque, but the cash was there, no floating cheques or credit cards or whatever). Nice. As in no interest fees, no waiting for things to appear on a bill.
And I rock with cooking cheaply. 75 pound bag of potatoes from a local farmer =$15
Do you have any IDEA how many potatoes that is, and how many fabulously delicious, filling, satisfying dishes can be made with 75 POUNDS of potatoes? :) Add that to 20kg of flour, farm fresh eggs, and discount meat, you can feed a family for next to nothing. :) Ask me for ideas if you need some...I'm having fun. :)

Budgets and all that fun stuff

2009-02-27T16:17:00.002-06:00

Recently, Hubby and I sat down to figure out our budget. We have been tweaking this sucker every month for the last little while, in the effort to get it to fit our means, our needs, and possibly some desires, too. Lots of fun when you have money, not so much when it's a tight month.
It's amazing how much a little error can cause the blocks of your budget to come tumbling down around your ears. That is the time when a sense of humour, a huge sense of humility, and some creative thinking come into play. For example, our budget for next month. We, of course, base it on the money we have at hand, to determine what we can afford, assuming, of course, that the amount of income does not change a whole lot. Last night, we happily sat down and tweaked the budget so that we had everything the way we needed/wanted it to be, and based on what we THOUGHT we had made, we even had enough to reconnect our satellite. Let me just say I am thankful we have been without that for the past year, so the true withdrawal pangs are gone. And I am extremely thankful we had not yet told the kids about getting the satellite back.
Because, you see, we discovered this morning that we had miscalculated the income from delivering flyers by, oh, about $200. A month. The problem, with this, in case it's not obvious, is that we had accounted for every penny of this $200/month. Scramble, scramble, grumble, whimper, scribble, scribble. How on earth can we do what we said we would do when we are short by that amount every month?
I must admit, I lost my faith for a short time. I panicked. I griped and whined and wanted to cry. I got stressed and even had a few chest pains, at which point, of course, I took a bunch of deep breaths, tried to relax, and prayed a bit. And sat down with the budget to play with it.
The big thing that I felt was important was that, for once, we were going to start the habit of tithing. We had not been doing that, and both felt it was important. So when I was playing with it, I really didn't want to mess with that, despite the fact that reducing our giving would solve everything. I initially reduced it to 5%, but didn't feel right about that. So I fiddled, and I think I have come up with a budget that will still work, AND will allow us to truly tithe.
Oh, it won't be easy. It does involve a lot of careful thought with purchases and a bit of personal sacrifice. Definitely a leap of faith. It can be done, though it won't be "comfortable", and maybe, just maybe, we will be blessed in the end for tithing. I can hope, anyway. If we can make it to the end of the year and have "enough" to cover all the expenses we have, and to start the new year on a good foot, I think it will be worth it.

Checking In

2009-01-27T11:56:00.003-06:00

I know, I know, it's been pretty much a month since I last posted. This, according to a friend of mine, is bad blog etiquette, that to have a successful blog, you must write consistently and frequently. Boo. Life marches on, especially with two children, and blogs don't get written.
Son is talking really well, so that pretty much everyone can understand him. I find it harder to understand him sometimes, but I think that's because my Mommy brain is so used to translating his old, mumble-jumble nasal speech into English that now that he is speaking plain, clear English, my brain doesn't know how to process it anymore. If I really focus hard and listen properly, I can see what everyone else means. He DOES talk much, much clearer.
He is getting so tall. His Daddy accidentally put Daughter's sweat pants on Son this morning, and didn't even realize until I watched Son trotting around, clinging onto the legs for all he was worth so they would neither fall down nor drag too much. I think they were maybe 3 inches too long. Considering he is 3 1/2 years younger than his sister, this suggests he will be a tall one. :) No real surprise there, just didn't think he'd be getting such a head start on it just yet.
Daughter just had a birthday this past weekend. That was quite the experience. Three giggly, screamy, silly, computer savvy girls roaring around my house for 3 hours, eating burgers, nachos, chocolate cheesecake, drinking pop...signing up for ePets and that sort of thing. Teaching Hubby just how much he really did need to put on parental controls and keep an eye on them. Then one went home, the others put on their pj's and climbed into bed for a sleepover. An hour later, we were on the phone to have the girl's Dad come pick her up. Old enough to be too smart for her own good, but not yet old enough to survive a night without roaring homesickness.
I am now in the process of what FlyLady would call a Fling Boogie. This means that as I am cleaning the house, I am also trying to get rid of as much STUFF as possible. We agreed to pay the kids a dollar a pound for toys they decided to get rid of. Son made $4 as he was not too motivated, Daughter made $20. She plans to buy a Webkin with it. Not a bad tradeoff...a big box of toys goes out, one stuffed animal comes in.
I am just starting with mine, but I think once I have managed to scour the entire house and have either sold or given away boxes and boxes of STUFF, I will feel tons better, and definitely will have an easier time getting organized and keeping things clean. So goes the theory anyway.
Oh yes. I am back in the saddle, so to speak, in terms of Wii Fit. I also have the Jillian Michaels Ultimate Workout for Wii and am starting back on my program. I NEED to RUN....I can't explain it, it's just this URGE to JOG! So in the spirit of also getting back in shape and back into jogging without reinjuring myself, I am starting slow. Yesterday I jogged 20 minutes on Wii Fit. Today I will do 30 minutes of Jillian. Tomorrow back to Wii Fit and so on. For 4 weeks. Then I will up the times slightly, gradually getting myself up to a level when I will not only be in better shape in general, but might even be able to sign myself up for the Fun Run again this spring. Maybe the 5Km again, maybe the 10KM, we'll see how it looks closer to that time.

Adventures in Motherhood

2009-01-01T08:47:00.003-06:00

Since my last post, life as a Mommy has been....interesting, to say the least. I am happy to say that for the most part, I think things are going to settle down now in 2009. Happy New Year, by the way!
Daughter had the unfortunate luck to catch the chicken pox just 2 days before Christmas Break. That meant she had to miss a fun day with her class at an indoor amusement place, a reward they had won for selling a lot in a fundraiser, and the next day of school, which would have been her class Christmas party. She was understandably crushed when she was told she would have to miss these, plus the evening performance of her school Christmas pageant. Her disappointment was nothing compared to her discomfort over the next few days. She ended up with a bad case of them. We were dotting her with calamine lotion, and counting them as we went. The first day produced somewhere around 200. When she woke up the next morning, we counted 1015, and that was not including the ones all through her hair, inside her mouth, and in places nobody is supposed to look or touch but herself. We stopped counting after that because it would have been easier to just get a big paintbrush and paint her pink with the stuff, but I would venture a guess that she probably made it up to 1500 before she started to scab. Poor thing was wild with itchiness in every conceivable part of her body. She was spoiled rotten during that time when she was quarantined (about 4 days), and couldn't really enjoy it much. he took a lot of baths in an effort to do SOMETHING for her...baking soda baths, oatmeal baths, a combination of the two bath, an epsom salt bath. She looks much better now with just the occasional scab here and there.
This ties in with Son very tightly. Just a few weeks before that,I received a phone call saying he had a surgery date. I believe I wrote about that in a previous blog post. If not, the following pre-surgery interview phone call was quite funny....very definitely a form written for anybody and everybody, and it gave me quite a chuckle as the nurse on the phone rattled off the questions, without really thinking about their relevancy. Everything from "Is he potty trained" to "does he have any problems with drug abuse", "does he smoke", etc. Oh, yes, Ma'am, my 4 year old is a smokin', drinkin', ladies' man! :)
So anyway, his surgery date was a mere 13 days away when Daughter broke out in spots. He was whisked away in the dark, as soon as we saw the spots on Daughter, on a 2 hour car ride, to stay with his grandparents for 4 and a bit days, in the wild hope that he would not get the chicken pox, since that would take him off the surgery list and put him back on the waiting list for a year or more. We waited and watched with baited breath, hoping an praying that nary a spot would emerge.
We made it. On December 30, 2008, at 2PM, Son had surgery to repair a submucous cleft. The night before, I had rummaged through the internet, looking for any and all info on the procedure, recovery info, anything, and ended up in tears as I realized what my son was going to be going through. But I also knew it was necessary. I was brave for my little guy. He went bouncing into that hospital, all happy and proud of himself, announcing to everybody that he was having surgery today to fix his throat and that he was going to have a really sore throat after, but he was going to talk better. We had done what we could to explain it all to him so that he understood what was happening and what to expect....but there's only so much a 4 year old can grasp.
We had to be at the hospital at 11AM....3 hours before the actual surgery. That was one boring 3 hour wait. He was shown to a little room, changed into his hospital jammies, I was asked a few questions, and we waited....and waited...they did not provide him with toys or anything. Luckily I had brought a few for the overnight stay....unfortunately, the long wait meant he was done reading and playing with everything long before he even had the surgery, so needed new stuff for afterwards.
At about 4PM, the surgeon came out and told me the surgery had gone wonderfully, and told me what to expect and how to feed him and all that sort of stuff. And then walked off, leaving me wondering where I could find my son, and when I could see him. About 10 minutes later, I managed to catch a nurse who was able to direct me to the appropriate floor and room number, so I went there, and got settled...and waited....and waited. Husband, Daughter, and my In-Laws showed up at the room....still no Son. Finally somewhere around 5, I guess, he was rolled in, eyes wide with pain and druggedness. Poor guy had bloody drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth, the inside of which was so swollen his lips did not close. He had quite a miserable night, wavering from painful awakeness to drugged and snoring sleep. Poor guy had the nurses coming in every 20 minutes to check his vitals or give him more medicine, so it was a very disjointed night. We were reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories at midnight, and playing with cars in the middle of the night. At least the room was kind of a neat place to be...we had our own room with a sliding glass door. There was a sink, a closet for his clothes and my jacket and stuff, a big armchair that was once a recliner, but now did not recline, the hospital bed with buttons to electrically adjust him to a sitting or reclining position, a bathroom with a huge bathtub in it, and a really cool window platform...like a window seat, but big enough to sleep on...about the size of a double bed, but in the shape of the bay window. Very cool. Our longest stretch of disjointed sleep with him being relatively calm was in the middle of the night when he had been crying because he wanted me to sleep in his bed with him, and the nurses, bless them, shifted things around to move him out of the hospital bed and onto the window shelf so we could lie together under the blankets....no small feat with all his tubes from the IV and the splints on his arms to keep him from sticking his fingers in his mouth. The IV machine had to be plugged into the plug in the bathroom and wired over to the bed. That resulted in us not being able to fully close our bathroom door if anybody except him had to use it, but the nurses were discreet and there was the ever-present curtain by the bed that we just pulled closed when we went in there, both as a signal and as a deterrent to the roving eye of anybody passing by the room at those moments. (The wall facing the hallway, with the sliding door, was glass) He settled down a bit after they did that for him, and we had the fun of looking back at all the pigeons peeking back in at us at the window in the morning.
My heart broke a million times that night. Every time the nurses came in, they tried to get him to drink. They had those medicine syringes that only hold maybe a teaspoon of water at a time, and would put that in his mouth...most of the time he would only get a drop of it down, the rest of it spilling out of his mouth, and when he DID manage to swallow, it was with such a grimace of pain that it made you want to promise he'd never have to do it again. After they made him swallow twice in a row, he'd make a sound that was him TRYING to say "OWWWW". :( They kept telling him that the water would make him feel better. After about the tenth time, after they had left, he looked at me, started to cry, and said as best he could "the water ISN'T helping!". I wanted to just sweep him into my arms and rock him and make him feel better....but all I could do for him at that time was to stroke his hair and face. I felt so helpless.
The surgeon came in at about 7:30 in the morning to see how he was doing. Compared to the night, he was doing a bit better. The doctor asked if he wanted breakfast, to which Son promptly replied "Ice cream and Jello". And that is what he got. The surgeon had brought that one on himself....before the surgery, he came in to talk to us, and told Son that after his surgery that these were what he would be able to eat, meaning that he would be in no shape for, say, cheeseburgers. Here we discovered the true challenge of the day after the repair of a submucous cleft. Ice cream in a little cup and jello in a little bowl, most kids could polish those off in about 5 minutes. Combined. It took him about half an hour to get the little ice cream cup down (about 1/4 cup worth), even once it was ice cream soup. The jello he worked at for about an hour, and never did finish it. He ate about 1/3 cup of jello, I think. If that. The surgeon said if he could drink enough, he could go home later that day. The poor kid ended up with a tray that looked like a line of shots by lunchtime. He had been accumulating them, trying desperately to drink sips from one or the other. By about 1PM, he had a bowl of soup, a bowl of pudding, another cup of ice cream, a glass of chocolate milk, a glass of peach juice, a carton of orange juice, and a carton of white milk sitting in front of him, and a look of bewildered desperation on his face. He finally decided he'd rather not go home. LOL. I don't blame him. I guess he thought he'd have to swallow all of those, and then go home and sit in bed with nothing to do.
The nurse came in and asked him to point to the two he liked best. He pointed to the pudding and the ice cream. She told him if he could finish those, then he could go home. When I told him he could sit or lie on the couch and watch movies or play Wii, he decided that might be worth the effort. So at about 2PM, the ice cream and pudding were gone, he'd managed about 1/4 of the glass of chocolate milk, was freshly drugged and we changed him, packed him and his stuff, and brought him home.
I have to backtrack just for a minute. I must tell you that out children's ward nurses are wonderful. They spoiled him like crazy. When he was first wheeled in, he was given a Christmas bag of presents. That bag had 3 little teddy bears, a plush gopher with a toque and scarf, a Giant Tiger slinky, and a toy carpenter tool set. A little later, the night staff came in, and brought him a gorgeous toy car, about 20cm in length, probably a '70's model, which had doors that opened, a trunk that opened, and a hood that opened to reveal a detailed engine. For a guy who loves toy cars, this was a great surprise.
After filling his prescriptions (poor guy has 4 meds to take), we took him home and planted him on the couch where he watched a movie, ate jello, and fell fast asleep for a few hours. He woke up sad and sore. We managed to keep him relatively occupied to get his mind off the pain between drinks and medication, but he was still really sore. He got to bed around 10PM, and slept until 9:15 this morning. He was supposed to get some pain meds in the middle of the night, but there was no way we were going to wake him out of a deep sleep, back to the world of pain, just to give him that and to have him not be able to get back to sleep. We gave him a whistle to blow if he woke up in pain, and he blew that this morning, when I was just outside his room, so he got his meds right away, and seems to be doing okay, though he was sore and very sad until the pain meds kicked in. Now he's going to have baby food for breakfast. We were told he can move up to mashed potatoes in a week, if he's up to it, so in the meantime, I have an abundance of cream soups, pudding, ice cream, jello, and things like that....and a new blender to create more.
My parents talked to him on the phone last night and said that, even with the swelling and all, they can already hear a difference in his quality of speech. This is great....hopefully when the swelling goes down (we were told this could take 10 weeks), his speech will still be as good as what they hear. I can't tell the difference yet, being the Mommy, but I'm sure I'll be able to tell later whether what I hear is from the swelling or from the repair. And in 3 months, we go back to speech therapy....if he needs it. You never know. He may just do the speech adjustments on his own.

Hard phone call

2008-12-15T20:16:00.002-06:00

I hate calling people on the phone. Correction....I hate calling people I do not know super, extra well on the phone. I am good with family and best friends. Can talk for hours on the phone with several of my best friends (and yes, I do have several, and it is possible to consider them all "best"). But if I have to call, say, Purolator to pick up a package, or a guest to see if they will be coming back to Chorus, or anything like that, I freeze up. My mind turns to oatmeal, and trying to accomplish the call is a real struggle to not look like a blithering idiot. Most times I fail miserably, stuttering or not making myself clear or forgetting important things or whatever.
Keeping that in mind, you will understand what a difficult time I had this morning. Add to my usual phone call woes the extra stress of...having to file a report with Child Protection Services. Something happened in my neighbourhood, and according to their website, if you do not report something, they can fine your butt right off your body, and put the rest of you in jail until you are moldy. So I did. It was hard, it was scary, it was humiliating to have such trouble making my report over the phone and trying to remember everything they needed to know. I think I finally managed to answer all the questions to their satisfaction, and I hope they do the best for the parties involved. And I hope I never, ever again have to make a phone call of that type. And not just because of my stress level. I'm not that shallow. I hope no child in my neighbourhood has to go through this anymore either.

NaNoWriMo, rainbow laces, and other such stuff

2008-10-27T17:07:00.002-06:00

Okay, it's time for me to write in my blog again, not so much because anybody is really waiting for it, but more because my brain is getting backlogged with all the little split-second "gee, I should write in my blog about that" thoughts.
So here goes. This will be somewhat disjointed as, as well you can see in the title, I have thoughts on many different topics.
First of all...if you are in the something like 48% of Canadians who did NOT vote in the election on October 14th...SHAME ON YOU! I was embarrassed to call myself a Canadian, with all of you who have the right, the PRIVILEGE, the duty of making a decision for who should be in charge of running this country of ours. I voted. I knew I would not be in the province on the day of the election, so I made SURE that I presented myself at the advance polls, hopping along on my CRUTCHES with two children in tow! I know of one friend from high school who is doing missions in Niger who made the effort to have a ballot MAILED to her, so SHE could put in her vote. To all of you who did not vote...no complaining. At all. Not a single word, grumble, gripe, or whine. You chose not to vote, you chose to deal with the results. By choosing not to make a choice, you made a choice. Deal with it. Don't like it? Next time, vote, and get all your other friends to vote...THEN if you don't like the results, you can complain.
My ankle, by the way, is getting better...at a snail's pace, but better. As long as I have the brace on, I'm good. Can walk, run if necessary (Shhh...don't get on my case, Hubby...I said if necessary), and more or less ignore the ankle. Take off the brace and we're talking a pretty stiff ache going on.
Since I don't have a cast but rather this white brace with laces you could rope a steer with, I decided to spice it up a little bit, after 5 weeks of white. So I went to the dollar store. They had 4 pairs of rainbow laces for $1. To be precise, they had 4 pairs of laces for $1. The sets were all one design (with varying colours) of rainbow stripes, or dots, or hearts, or a hot pink on white checkered pattern, or camouflage. And being the person I am, I went straight for the rainbow ones. Took two full sets of laces (and could have used 2 1/2 sets if I wanted to have the exact length) to replace the long white one. Should be fun to go out in public. :)
Now as far as NaNoWriMo goes, another friend (Brad) and my Dad indirectly reminded me that this was coming up. This is what got my Dad (Robert Scott) into writing what became the draft of his first book of the three he's got either published or coming out thus far (Advertising Murder [out April 2007], Lost Youth [out September 2008], and Murder Express [coming Christmas Eve 2008]). I have been dabbling in writing for years now, since I started university, and made a ton of notes, and even started typing stuff up....and then started having kids, and things just got busy and it sat and sat and sat. Now, in the same spirit of my friend, I do not have time to write for 2-3 hours a day, but at the same time, I'd really like to get my story out of my notebook and onto paper. It's an autobiography in fiction form (as in, an autobiography told within a fictional setting)...if I can get it done, maybe I can get it published somewhere. Who knows?
Hubby has discovered that his health is not what it used to be...I guess I just cook too well. He has a bit of a beach ball and has discovered his job of mostly sitting at computer desks or behind the wheel of his van leaves him...well...breathless...after a simple walk in the wind. So he asked me today what I thought of an idea of his. I quit doing papers back in May because of the lack of sleep and the severe hatred of being out in the cold in the dead of winter. He has decided HE would like to do papers in the mornings, both for the exercise and for the extra $200 or whatever that he would get from doing a regular route...he stays up late anyway and doesn't mind the cold (I DID, after all, find him up in the NWT), so he'll be fine in the cold and will just switch his habits around a bit to go to bed at a decent hour and get up early instead. Guess who is going to be stuck with being his sub when he is sick, but hey...I guess I can handle doing one route, once in awhile. And the money will help us pay for Christmas and birthday gifts, and slowly beat off the debts, too. And if he keeps it up, he'll burn off the beach ball, get great leg muscles, and together we'll work on getting healthier and end up looking like supermodels. Ha ha ha ha. Okay, we'll get healthier and look better. Good enough.
There's probably another zillion thoughts back in my head somewhere, but they aren't coming yet. I think this is enough for now anyway. :)

Slowly but surely

2008-10-08T15:47:00.002-06:00

I am recovering. It took a week on the couch, and about another week with crutches, but I am limping along now. My ankle will be firmly laced into my brace for another 6 weeks yet, but I'm getting there.
Now if I could just learn not to overdo things. The day I got up and didn't need my crutches (two days ago), I was off like a shot, trying to clean and shop and everything. I was back on one crutch by afternoon and on the couch by evening. Yesterday I just tried to do the flight of the bumblebee for cleaning....and was out of commission, but no crutches, by about 1PM. Today, again, roared around cleaning my kitchen and meandering the mall with Hubby while Son was in preschool...now I am in pain. A lot of pain. So I think I will take myself back to the couch for a bit, then make supper and take daughter off to Brownies, then relax. I was going to bake something, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow. I don't want to have to go back on the crutches.
Jogging on the WiiFit will have to wait. MOST things on the WiiFit will have to wait. First I guess I'll focus on going grocery shopping without coming home exhausted and in pain. That would be good.

Plans Derailed

2008-09-27T10:36:00.002-06:00

My plan to train with my Wii Fit has been put on hold. Hopefully temporarily, possibly more long-term. I was stupid. I admit it. It's all my fault. But it still hurts.
I was jogging, as you know, an hour a night. I was giving it all I had, in an attempt to break my previous night's distances, as always. I was doing it, each night, in bare feet (shhhh....no telling me off)...on a hard floor (I said don't tell me off!). I got this pain in my ankle. Not a big one, kind of like when you feel you have to crack a joint and it's not quite going. So I ignored it. It was a bit worse the next day, maybe even over a few days, I'm not sure how long I was doing this to myself....I just jogged through the pain with the thought that whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger. But then I woke up Tuesday morning. And tried to get out of bed. And discovered I was in a lot of pain. So I wrapped it in a tensor and parked myself in an armchair and took things mostly easy. By evening I was in terrible pain. Wednesday I started to get concerned. By the time I went to bed Wednesday night, I could barely walk. Thursday I broke down and went to see a doctor....possibly a stress fracture, but that won't show up on an xray for up to 4 weeks, so the real sympathetic doctor (yeah right) after manipulating my foot in ways that had me envisioning methods of recreating his face (You know, rip his toes off and shove them in his ears....), tells me to go home and wrap it in a tensor and come back in a week or more. By Thursday night, I could barely limp I was in so much pain.
So yesterday I went out and took matters into my own hands. I have a stiff ankle brace on that laces more than skates, and rented myself a set of crutches. Now I have sore muscles I never had met before. My ankle still hurts a lot, and is very glad of the crutches. By the end of the evening, having been off it, I thought it was better, and that maybe it wasn't a fracture after all...until I got stupid and tried leaving the crutches alone. Took maybe a few steps, and it all came back, with teeth. This is NOT muscular. This is a pain I've never had before, and I've had weak ankles all my life, so know what muscle injury is like.
Today I am trying not to be a hero. I want to try putting pressure on the foot. I shouldn't. I've already done it a couple of times and am already in a lot of pain. Have to suck it up and stay on the crutches. Hopefully in about a week I can go back and they will be able to see something, so I can get the right treatment and get better.
My forced leisure time has meant a lot of sit-down games, so I have played Mario Party 8, Pinball, and Super Mario World (Thanks to WiiPoints)...and hubby was nice enough to buy me Super Paper Mario, which i have yet to try, but will likely do tonight.
And it means the house has not been getting the cleaning it needs, which has been bugging me, though I have been doing what I can in the form of cooking, loading and unloading the dishwasher, doing a bit of laundry, and sorting through boxes of "stuff" from my bedroom closet. Hubby put it all into perspective...at least our house looks nowhere even remotely close to THIS:
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,24396021-5013110,00.html

And no matter how horrible I have been in the past with cleaning (because I was a total slob and am now reforming), it has never, EVER looked like that!

The Little Mommy That Couldn't

2008-09-18T14:26:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time, there was a little Mommy....well...not so little, if truth be told, but a Mommy nonetheless. This Mommy had many things to do, and, being a good-hearted Mommy, set out to do all these things.
This Mommy needed to get her Daughter up and off to school, eat breakfast, dress, check herself on the Wii Fit, return library items, pick something up from someone's house, buy a few grocery items, go to the bank to set up a new bank account for her Son, make lunch, can pears, cook a pumpkin, make pumpkin seeds and pumpkin pie, get 3 rooms of the upstairs clean,encourage her Son to clean his room,make supper, go to a Board meeting, take the Dog to the park, do dishes, and laundry, too!
The Mommy got off to a rough start, being tired due to a family member having a whopper of a night terror, but headed into the morning with high expectations of accomplishment.
She did fairly well, accomplishing most of what she had wanted for the morning...Daughter was sent off to school, the Mommy had done all the personal stuff (ate, dressed, stood on the Wii Fit). Two of the three rooms did get tidied, the library item did get returned in time, the item to be picked up as acquired, the bank account was created, and the grocery items were purchased (plus a few extras because the Mommy did not have very good willpower).
But things started to go obviously wrong. The Mommy was tired. Her lipomas were hurting very badly, with even her shirt aggravating them. Her back muscles were seizing and aching from a very old injury. And yet the Mommy persevered. Lunch became totally non-nutritious, being onion rings and potato wedges on sale at the grocery store, and a cup of coffee (milk for the Son), but lunch was at least served. The pears were canned, but much of the work was done sitting in a chair, and even then, the back muscles were screaming, and because of the chair back, so were the lipomas. But still she kept at it and canned 6 pint jars of pears plus a quart jar of juice. A load of laundry made its way through the washer and into the dryer. The dishwasher got emptied, refilled, and started. A stew for supper was simmering in the crock pot, too, after much peeling and chopping of vegetables. Son's room was cleaned and there was much rejoicing. But the Mommy was so tired and in so much pain that she simply had to quit.
The Mommy was concerned that the Daddy would think her a lazy bum because he was going to come home and find her plushed out with pillows in an attempt to get some comfort somehow, reading a book. The pumpkin did not get slaughtered for seeds and pie, the Dog did not get a trip to the park. It was 2:45PM and she would still have her meeting later, which she would attend.
But to be quite honest, when she really thought about it and considered her options and pain level, she decided that she really didn't care what the Daddy thought anymore, all she cared about was feeling better. So she went off to have a nice hot cup of coffee and to find a comfy spot, in the hopes of feeling better tomorrow.
The End

Chuggin' Along

2008-09-16T07:40:00.002-06:00

Well, I've been hopping onto my Wii Fit faithfully for the past few days...it's been going well, too. I upped my running time to 1 hour, and have been bopping and sweating along each evening, improving slightly each time. There is no way the distance counter is correct, as last night I apparently jogged 10.504 Miles in an hour, and as Husband pointed out, that's just not going to happen. But it does make me feel good to watch the numbers click off like that. Even if I'm not anywhere close to REALLY running that far, that fast, at least I know I'm getting to be better at it, and I am getting my 1 hour of body whipping cardio each night....that's gotta count for something! I know I'm trimming down a little bit, anyway....I was wearing this one pair of shorts that was a little loose, the elastic was gone, but they still hung on via my hips. I wore them as part of my outfit each night...and two nights ago, as I jogged, they fell off! [blush] Thankfully I was behind closed curtain in the privacy of my own home. And to be honest, it was really, really, really funny....and a good feeling to know I'd trimmed down a tiny bit so that could happen. Hopefully I can stick with this through the winter so more good things can happen. :)

A Challenge to myself

2008-09-07T22:10:00.003-06:00

Okay. I have Wii Fit. A friend of mine thinks the Wii is a waste of time and space, that it should be avoided in trade for time outside. To a certain extent, I agree. But to another degree, while he is freezing his butt off in winter, trying to get a jog in, through the snow and ice, or traveling through same to get to an indoor track where he will have to fork out money, I will be in my nice warm living room, in PJs if I feel like it, doing my exercises and even jogging in place. I am much more motivated to do it if it means NOT going outside or to a different location....especially in the cold. Have I mentioned I hate to be cold?
My challenge is this...one of the options is called "free run", in which I choose how long I plan to run (10-20-30 minutes), and as I go, it tells me how far it thinks I have run. I do have a certain level of reality in this head of mine....I am pretty sure that the numbers it is spitting out are probably pretty optimistic....but there is no real way to test this for sure. What I am planning on doing is working with this option daily through the fall and winter, until late spring, at which time (roughly end of May) I will sign myself up for the Regina Fun Run that I did this past spring. The distance (5km or 10Km), I will decide closer to the time. I will run said Fun Run, and see how much time it actually takes, and how good of shape I am in while doing so. This past spring, I ran the course in something like 39'22" for the 5Km. My goal is to bring this down considerably. Or at least to run it in less than 30 minutes, less than an hour for the 10Km. As the fall/winter progresses, I will keep you all updated on how the Wii Fit running is going. Today it said I ran 4.571 MILES (roughly 7.4 Km) in 30 minutes. For argument's sake, let's say I ran 4.571 Km instead. That is probably more accurate, but the Wii Fit number looks nicer. :)

I love this time of year

2008-08-22T19:52:00.003-06:00

Well....this time and on into the fall. I may not be a very good housewife, in terms of cleaning, but the one thing I can do is just that....CAN! I love this time of year because the crabapples are ready, and I can also get my mitts on some pretty cool produce.
Over the past two days, I have made 2 quarts of concentrated crabapple juice (that will make approximately 4-6 quarts when water is added to taste), 8 pints of applesauce, and 7 pints of crabapple jelly. I write in quarts and pints because that is how all my canning recipes go. If you want metric, which is how I usually run, that's 2 litres, 4-6 litres, 16 cups, and 14 cups.
That was made from approximately 28 cups of crabapples.
I managed, today, to purchase a case of peaches....54 fair sized ones for slightly less than $20. Sometime in the next few days, 42 of them will be turned into canned peaches. I am figuring on about 7 quarts (28 cups). I saved a dozen for just eating....3 each.
I have already this year made strawberry jam and saskatoon jam....we could probably live off of toast and jam at this point in time, as I also have, from last year or so, pumpkin jam....I had to dump out about 5 pints (10 cups) of pumpkin preserves because nobody was eating it, and quite honestly, I don't like it. The pumpkin JAM is yummy, though.
Once I get a new jug of vinegar, I will also be making pickled apples....now THOSE are yummy!!!! I first had those when I was a kid at either Ponderosa or Bonanza.
What I would really like is for someone to have a load of green tomatoes or even red tomatoes that they can't use, so I could make green tomato relish (with the green) or tomato butter (with the red). I looooooooove those with my meat or poultry! Yum!
Someday I will try making pickled onions again....they are amazing with homemade baked beans.
Now I'm making myself hungry! :)

One of those days

2008-08-17T12:56:00.003-06:00

I'm just saying....
It's been one of those. The moment my eyes creaked open, it was already starting. The kids were in the bathroom, yelling at a new toy, to see if they could scare it (it's a robot). The cats were meowing to be fed, the dog was waiting anxiously to be let out and then fed. Neither child had decided to concern themselves with these needs.
I crawl out of bed and dispatch them from the bathroom with orders to feed kitties and relieve dog of her distress. Cats get fed, dog is left waiting....and waiting. Until I finally realize my orders have not been carried out. I creep onto the WiiFit board to find that it still considers me a large blob of lard, more so than yesterday. Get dressed while listening to the beautiful sound of children bickering and screaming at me. Up I come, instruct them to eat breakfast and get dressed. We have 30 minutes until we need to be in the car. 10 minutes later, daughter is still in pj's and unfed, son is fed but not dressed. I yell at daughter. 60seconds later, daughter is in her room, unfed, undressed (well...in pj's), and playing with robot. I yell. "I forgot", she says. I storm out, she finally eats and gets dressed. 5 minutes to departure, son is not dressed, and is screaming in tears that he does not want to. Husband storms in, grabs clothes, undresses and redresses son in about 60 seconds flat. Out to the car we go. Everyone buckled in, I start the car, no problem. Start to back out....car stalls. Restart car, and she starts this horrible screaming noise. Will not turn off. Can take key out, and she is still doing it. Try turning the key forward more, car goes into hyperdrive, as far as engine noise goes....the noise you'd hear if you had the car in park and pressed the gas all the way to the floor.....but I don;t have my foot on the gas. Try pressing the brake, jiggling the key, everything....just this horrid noise that has half the neighbourhood starting out their curtains, cursing whoever is disturbing their peaceful Sunday morning. Finally, in desperation, I throw her in drive. She goes RRRRCLUNK and is dead as a doornail. That was pretty much the last straw for me. I fling open the car door, storm up to the front door, and scream as loud as I can "THEREYOUGOSHE'SDEADABSOLUTELYDEADNOTASOUNDNOTHING
(gasp)TOTALLYUTTERLYDEAD!!!!" My husband goes "Oh? What happened?" So I tell him, still in a near-tears fury. I think I could have uprooted a tree with my bare hands, I was so upset and furious.
So once again Bessie is dead. This time for good. No more tow trucks, no more trying to get her fixed. Gonna clear her out and make her a Kidney Car. They can deal with it. In the meantime, I am carless....but hopefully something will be at the auto auction on Saturday (nearly a week from now s-i-g-h), and we can get it super cheap.
I wanted to crawl back into bed, but hubby told me to just take the van and go to church anyway. So I did, and it was relatively okay there....got a gift card for our anniversary from secret sister, and found daughters lost jacket....then got home to discover that, despite the numerous times I have expressed that I will not accept such things in my house, the games that hubby claims are "not THAT bad" are really Dungeons and Dragons games. 9 years I have made it abundantly clear that these are not to be in my house. Neverwinter Nights, Diablo, and apparently Ultima, since he says they are all alike. I am furious. And he seems not to get it. I think he figures that if he keeps quiet, I will either forget or "get over it". He does that about a lot of things. I won't forget, I am NOT going to get over it, and for this, I am now going to be considered a horrible wench. Tough. I cook, clean, take care of the kids, and do a multitude of other things, plus extra things he calls me up to do. I have the right to have a say about the filth that enters my house. I don't allow pornography, why the heck would I allow demonic things?

Too good to be true

2008-07-31T14:13:00.002-06:00

Well, she lasted a day. Exactly 24 hours. Not a minute more. Husband just phoned to say Bessie does not start. Not a sound. Once again. And this time he is on the opposite end of town and I have no car to rescue him with, as his van is in getting tires replaced. She was a beautiful car, even despite the few rust spot, saggy wires, and grumbly disposition. But we just can't afford to keep fixing her. So for sale she goes, a mechanic special. Nuts. I am sorely disappointed. Hopefully we can find another nice, cheap rustbucket that will last a few more months at the auto auction. I can hope, anyway. If we look at it on a per month basis, we paid $125 a month for the use of Bessie (minus gas and oil)....good luck finding a car payment like that anywhere else!

The Death and Ressurrection of Bessie and Stuff

2008-07-31T11:36:00.002-06:00

Okay, it has been exactly 29 days since I last posted, and once again a million and one things have happened in the meantime that I intended to post....and didn't.....and for the most part have forgotten what they were.
But...we had a gigantic storm here about a week and a half ago, while Daughter was away at camp. Roaring waves of rain, huge claps of thunder with blinding sheets of lightning, tons of forks, too, and a wind that had to be sen to be believed. I kept looking out to see if there was a funnel cloud coming because the wind was roaring so loud and had our tree bending so far that I seriously expected the trunk to snap and the tree to crush the van. When it stopped, it had snapped about 1/4 of the tree so that a ginormous branch was dangling just off the ground, the fence between our house and the next was bent over sideways, my canopy on the deck was a mess of fabric and poles, and Bessie (aka my 1984LTD) was dead. Not a sound would she make....well....after the shrieking sound the one time Hubby tried to start her. He asked around and got the part the so-called experts told him was the problem and did a do-it-yourself job....to no avail. She sat there, stone cold dead, for about a week. Then Hubby fixed the computer of a mechanic who agreed, in exchange, to take a look at her. So we called to tow truck and they hauled her away on Tuesday....and we drove her home yesterday. It was the starter that had gone. NOT the part we had been told. So now she runs again. For the time being anyway. :)

I went to my new family doctor today, having had the blood test I mentioned in the last post....everything was textbook perfect. It stunned him. He seriously was shocked that someone "my age" (great...I have reached "that age") would have perfect results, and I do mean perfect. Cholesterol and EVERYTHING. Next week I go back to prove that my blood pressure is good and to have the pap. Ew, ew, EW! Oh well.
So anyway, it looks as if, as usual, my overactive, somewhat hypochondriac brain was giving me a run for my money last post. Still have lipomas, but nothing more serious than that....and he wasn't even concerned about my weight! That, let me tell you, goes way beyond cool. He just said to keep eating healthy and exercise....more as an "I have to give her SOME sort of doctorly advice....but what?" :-D It was actually really funny to watch him stammer in shock and try to be professional when he realized I was perfectly healthy. Woo-hoo! :)

Hmmm....maybe he should have asked

2008-07-02T21:06:00.002-06:00

I went back to the clinic today. It was the three month point, at which I was to return to have my cholesterol and iron retested. Or so I had thought. I showed up and was ushered into the little room....it's a walk-in clinic, if I haven't mentioned this before...doc bustles in and asks what he can do for me. I tell him I have simply come to get the piece of paper that say I need the tests. He reads my file and asks when I had my last physical exam. I tell him I'm not sure (it's been a really long time....probably about 3 1/2 years?). He turns slowly and asks "Don't you have a family doctor?". No. No I don't. You, sir, would be the one I have been seeing for the past 3 years. He looks at my file again, and says very steadily "You really NEED to have a family doctor, to do the full checkups, you know, the pap smears....the mammograms..." He shoves a paper into my hand of doctors that are possibly taking new patients and tells me to call one and see. He does give me the form, as well, to have the tests done. But what is on that sheet concerns me. Very much.
You see, I was just to have my cholesterol and iron tested. The paper I have to take to the blood lab tomorrow is asking for ALL the stuff they tested 3 months ago....when he told me after a 10 second glance that my lumps were lipomas and nothing more....and he's pushing me to get the family doctor, stressing the pap and mammogram....and over the last week or so my breasts and one armpit have been very sore....and no, it's not time for THAT, so the cause for the pain is unknown. So now I am wondering if he just told me it was lipoma, expecting me to tell my non-existent family doctor, who would then do a full check and maybe find that it was something more, and now because of that, the something more has had 3 months to grow?
So tomorrow morning, I go off to give many tubes of blood and a cup 'o' pee, then in the afternoon, I have made an appointment with my hopefully new family doctor, will tell him of the lipomas, sore areas, and pending test results, get him to schedule a FULL exam with all the works asap, and hopefully finally get the complete, no doubt about it full rundown of what the heck is the story with this body of mine, once and for all. Give it to me straight, doc, 'cuz I want to know!
And hopefully they won't take too long to tell me. My imagination works way too hard sometimes.

A Possible Gift

2008-06-24T10:16:00.003-06:00

I took a gigantic leap out of my comfort zone last night. Anyone who has known me for any real extent of time knows that the mere idea of needles gives me the willies. But Husband did something long ago that came back surprisingly that got me thinking, and realizing maybe I should try to be a little more in-the-moment and hopefully end up helping somebody.
In around 1996, as far as he can remember, Husband signed up with OneMatch.com, through the Canadian Blood Services...he signed up, you see, as a potential bone marrow/stem cell donor. And time went by, and he pretty much forgot. Well, he got a phone call late last week. He is a potential match. Apparently the odds of ever being even a potential match are staggeringly low. Now he has a one in twelve chance of being a match. We now go through a rigorous testing relay (well....he does), and will know within the next two months if he is in fact going to be the donor. He's pretty staggered at the possibility of saving somebody's life. You can check out his thoughts and such on his blog, which is www.geldhart.blogspot.com
He asked if I would be willing to go in the registry (ie sign up), at which point I retreated into the farthest corner of the couch in terror and declared the re was no way I was going through all those needles and the potential of having someone drill into my leg bone, etc, etc, etc....but then I started thinking about it, and realized it was the right thing to do. So I signed up. Maybe nothing will ever come of it, but then, maybe I end up being the exact person someone has been waiting and hoping for and end up saving their life just in time. Despite all the pain and such it will put me through, I'm thinking tht will all pale in comparison to the knowledge that I'm saving somebody's life by getting a little (or a lot) uncomfortable.
I will keep you all posted if new developments arise and either his or my journey takes us through the next steps.
Please consider adding yourselves, too. WWW.ONEMATCH.COM

Just a wee bit of a difference!

2008-06-24T10:03:00.002-06:00

A few months back, we attended a cleft palate clinic with our son, where he was run through a gamut of tests and specialist interviews. He has a submucous cleft which, while really cool to look at, causes him to have to work really hard to form certain sounds, and in some cases, to compensate for a simple inability to make said sounds. He was seeing a speech therapist for awhile, and his speech improved drastically as he learned compensating skills. But that stopped after the clinic, as we were told that he would have surgery sometime this summer. I guess his therapist figured it was no real use seeing her until after the surgery, as he will likely have to learn to talk again with the new mouth structure.
We were thrilled that he would be having the surgery, especially in that time frame, as that would give him time to recover and learn how to talk again before he hit elementary school (he will start kindergarten in 2009).
WELL....we received to official letter saying he was put on the waiting list as of May 29th yesterday. Oh, good, we thought, his surgery should be coming up soon, then. The letter came with a number to call to find out what wait time we were to expect. So I called it. Got the automated answering service, left all pertinent info it asked for...and waited. They called back this morning to let me know his wait time is approximately 15 to 18 MONTHS. We are not amused. I am very upset, because this means his surgery will not take place until he is IN kindergarten, which is going to make it harder for him to fit in, especially when he's going to have difficulty talking for who knows how long, plus he'd probably miss some school....in his first crack at French Immersion...and I may not even be around for his surgery, as I have that International competition in October 2009 (moved from November because it would have clashed with the Country Music Awards).
I wish they had let us know right up front that we were looking at that kind of wait instead of telling us this summer! I understand, to a certain extent, I mean, obviously, there are children whose cases are much more urgent than ours, cancer kids and such...I don't begrudge them that....I just wish they had said it would be a long wait to start with, as Son was very disappointed, too, having had the surgery talked up so that he was prepared for it this summer.
But hey, what can you do. Now we wait and I guess hope they are wrong and the surgery happens sometime while he is still in preschool.

YeeeeeeHAW!

2008-06-18T14:19:00.002-06:00

I am just a little excited....along with about 32 of my counterparts...or chorus mates, if you want to be exact.
This spring at Regionals, we came in 1st place small chorus, 5th place overall (The region being all of BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, NWT, and Yukon). Our scores were fairly good, but we had to wait with bated breath....for the rest of the regions in the world to complete their contests and get their scores in. We finished 7th place small chorus in the world. The top 5 choruses get to go to Internationals on 2009. Based on this, we were pretty much stuck where we were....then the news came in...the top Regional small in the world could not compete as a small at Internationals, as they also won 1st place OVERALL in their region, so has to compete with the big choruses. That put us in 6th. No go, still.
Then...oh bliss....THEN the 2nd place Regional small in the world decided NOT to compete at Internationals! That, by default, put us in 5th place!!!!!!!!! And we are ONLY separated by 5 points from the top small chorus, so this will be a tight competition. Yes, people! Yes! Just what you have likely figured out by now....!
PRAIRIE GOLD CHORUS IS COMPETING IN THE SMALL CHORUS COMPETITION IN 2009 AT INTERNATIONALS!!!!! And where, you might ask, do we get to go?????
Nashville, baby! I have ALWAYS wanted o go to Nashville!!!!! Woo hoo! I am SO going to check out the Grand Ole Opry while there, and all the other stuff. I am SO excited!!!!!
And with us all being mere points apart, there is a good chance we COULD win!!!! We are going to be working our BUTTS off to get our package shiny and perfect and absolutely knock-your-socks-off fantastic and we are gonna GET THAT GOLD MEDAL! Woo!

On another mysterious note, I am trying something over the next couple of months that should be interesting and hopefully kind of fun....but I can't tell you about it until it's done. Hee hee. (And the one other person who knows about this had better not say a WORD!) :)

The Dream and the Reality

2008-06-07T10:31:00.002-06:00

It has been awhile since I last posted, mostly out of sheer busy-ness.
I returned at the start of this week from a trip to Toronto to see some friends. That was the trip I mentioned a few months ago where I got 80% off the tickets through WestJet. It was a lot of fun....one friend I saw last year, but hadn't seen her kids for 3 years....the other friend i hadn't seen for 8 years, when I was pregnant with Daughter, so it was the first time for her meeting my kids, and the first time for me meeting hers.
It was a busy week to say the least, especially when you have 2 Moms and 4 kids....make that 5 when the neighbour boy showed up for an entire day. (My Hubby stayed home and her Hubby was at work and out doing other stuff)
While there, I got to try the Wii Fit. I fell in love with it, and hunted all over the city for it when I got home. Got my hands on one of the last 3 in the entire city. What a crazy race that was, to get across the city before it was snatched up. Nobody else in the city had any or knew when more were coming. Spent more on it than my friend (hers was $80, mine was $100 [plus tax])....but I love it. Everyone in the family has their own Mii on it now and even Hubby is working on losing some weight. It will take awhile for us both. If I lose a pound a week, based on my starting point on the Wii Fit, I have 46 weeks to go....but I'm having so much fun on it that I'm thinking the weight will come off faster than that.
I ran my 5km almost 2 weeks ago, in the rain, with a time of something like 38m22s. I was very happy with that score. Have battled a nasty cold and cough ever since, but hey, I ran the whole way just like I planned, and wasn't even stiff after....just super hungry. LOL.
I had another dream about that person again....and again it was one of those dreams that seems to make sense while you are in it, but upon waking up, leaves you going WHAT THE HECK?!!?!? I was in a living room somewhere and there were two swingsets there. The person is there, and is all dressed up in a dark blue suit. He sits on one swingset, I sit on the other. Someone is with me, but I don't know if it's one of my kids or Hubby or a friend. Person starts working on a laptop while on the swingset as I swing on mine. I feel grubby, so decide to go upstairs to change. None of the clothes I find seem to work. They have grease stains and such. I don't know why. I guess somehow I finally find something, because I find myself at the ATM in the hallway, with a friend from Toronto, taking out cash. I don't know why. I remember looking at the money and noticing the difference between the red of the $50 bill and the red of the $25 bill. LOL. Friend and I go back down the hallway and find ourselves in a classroom where Person is, still dressed impeccably in the dark blue suit and walking around the room. There is a teacher there, who is mad at us for being late, and I can't figure out if Person is helping him or a student. We have a many-page math test, with invisible staples, but everyone's package is different. I can't figure out how to do mine, which I find weird and frustrating, as it seems to be simple addition that we are being tested on. Again through it all, I find myself wanting to talk to Person and find out what is going on with him, and to make a good impression.
Of course, I think after that particular dream, if Person should suddenly show up somewhere, someday, dressed in that suit, I'd probably go stark raving mad from shock, trying to figure out if I was awake or dreaming, and if I was really awake, why on earth I would have dreamed about something that actually happened in the future (minus the weird dream components, of course, like the swingsets in a living room)

Well, at least there is a name for it

2008-05-20T09:14:00.002-06:00

Over the past few months, I have been coming to terms with the fact that I have Lipoma. That, in itself, was not so bad, since, after all, it wasn't cancer. The little niggling problem I had was that a lot of what I read said that they weren't supposed to hurt, or that maybe one or two might hit a nerve once in awhile. The problem with this is that I have a few that are excruciatingly painful, and the others range from mild ache to kind of a burning sensation. And the severity changes. But never are they numb, so to speak. I joined a Lipoma forum, and introduced myself, describing what I was experiencing with mine. The moderator pointed me in the direction of some interesting websites, suggesting that I might have a very specific variation of Lipoma.
I have Dercum's Disease, Type III. Not a great outlook for my future, but at least I now know exactly what I have, what strain of Lipoma, I guess. In a way, it's a relief, because it explains a LOT of symptoms I have had. I wrote a very unhappy e-mail a few months ago, wishing the doctors could figure out what was wrong with me. Be careful what you wish for, I guess. LOL
It's funny because you would think that I should be depressed about this....and I'm not. It's kind of a calm acceptance, and an "okay, where do we go from here?" sort of mentality. I could have them removed surgically, but that would also cause a lot of pain, and they could still come back, making the whole procedure pointless. That, and I don't do so well with anaesthetic or needles. They say losing weight won't reduce them or make them better, and can even make them worse.....but of course, I'm still going to keep on losing the weight, because the least I can do is make myself as healthy as possible, and feel better about myself and how I look. I guess I can use pain relievers when needed. It's funny (in a not-funny way) how fast this has come on and progressed.
But it isn't cancer. It won't kill me. I can learn to live with pain. And now I know what it is and can keep reading up on it and figuring out the best way to carry on for the future. :)

Happy Mother's Day?

2008-05-13T17:34:00.002-06:00

It was not one of those Mother's Days that goes down in memories. Not really, unless you're the type to hold a grudge. I considered doing that, briefly, in my disappointment, but then, what really would be achieved by that?
A number of things contributed to my disappointing day...as we are on a very tight budget, it had already been expressed to me that I was not to expect gifts. While I understand that, I have to admit I had kind of hoped that he hadn't really meant that, that he would do SOMETHING. But no. He meant it. And to top it all off, the day before, I overheard him talking to Daughter....he had thought Mother's Day was on the 18th! So he was less than prepared to start with.
I guess I thought maybe he would try to plan something money-free for my Mother's Day, some special little things to be done or something. No. This is how my Mother's Day went....
I got up at the last possible moment to get ready for church, with hubby still in bed with no intention of getting up. No breakfast in bed from him, nor from the kids. Daughter brought out the plant of dirt with flower seeds in it and cards, all of which she had made at school or sparks or whatnot, and she, at least, had the foresight to make the plant from everyone. Got the kids ready and hauled them off to church where it started well, but ended with Son throwing tantrums all the way home, into the house, and into his room where he was sent, until he could calm down, once we finished our oh-so-fancy lunch of macaroni and cheese (boxed) and tinned beans with hacked up wieners. After lunch, Husband asked me what I wanted to do, I said I didn't know what we could do without money, and instead of his trying to come up with something, he put himself on the couch for a nap, despite having slept in that morning already.
We went for a walk with the dog to mail a letter, which I forgot to bring, so got a scathing look of frustration and a "Well! That's the whole reason we came on this walk in the FIRST place!".
Dog hurt her paw and ended up in a bandage and neck cone. Husband bought me a Slurpee. I made a strawberry crisp to do SOMETHING special for Mother's Day, to go with our chicken stir fry. And that was about it. Whoopee.
Next year had better be something amazing. I know you read this, so consider yourself fairly warned....MAKE ME FEEL SPECIAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Successes and side effects

2008-05-09T18:47:00.003-06:00

I have been going to the gym as frequently as my (and Husband's) schedule has allowed, after papers each morning (which has been 106-109 a day for the past few days, and COLD....where is this spring?). I run for approximately 40-45 minutes, around the track. 23 laps jogging, 1 lap fast walking to essentially stop, since my body reaches a state of equilibrium where it thinks it should jog forever, whether I tell to to stop or not. I always run in lane 4. It's pretty much the absolute center. People who are walking are in lanes 1-3, lane 5 is a jogging lane also, and lane 6 is a running lane. There are days when even some of the walkers are faster than me jogging.....but at least these are the speed walkers, so I don't suck all THAT badly. Lane 4 is 220m long. That means I jog 5.06km a morning, which is good, as my 5Km fun run is in a mere 16 days.
I'm doing well. I plug myself into my iPod (which is an immense help by giving me a rousing, pulsing beat and also drowning out my breathing) and chug around the track, trying my best to ignore everybody else, and not feel too badly about the fact that everybody seems to be in so much better shape than I and for the most part are all faster than me. After all, the main point of this is to get healthier and also to achieve the execution of an actual 5KM run, which is something I have never even signed up for before, let alone actually DONE it.
And to a certain extent, I am reaching milestones and successes. It used to be that 3KM would take me an hour. The fact that I am doing 5km in 45 minutes is a major achievement. My strides are lengthening and starting to get out of the chug-chug-chug look and more into the I-can-run-like-a-normal-human look. I know because half of the days I go, the direction I have to jog has me running 1/4 of the track facing a huge wall of mirrors. The other half of the days, I am directed to run the other way, so that I am running AWAY from the mirrors and would have to make a conscious effort and turn my head sideways to look as I passed them.
I feel better, too. I don't finish feeling like I'm going to have an asthma attack, though I still sweat like a pig when I am done and changing. I am getting the runner's high during my run, too, where I feel like smiling during some laps. I get second winds and don't feel like I'm absolutely going to die if I push on through the wall. I don't get all stiff and sore anymore....any signs of that last only a few hours at most.
I like to think I look better, too. I actually looked at myself in the changeroom mirror today (no, nothing gross, AFTER I was changed, get your minds out of the gutter)....and thought "wow....I really look pretty today!" This, for me, if you know anything about my background, is huge.
Then came the side effects. I stepped on the scale for my weekly weigh-in. I gained 4 pounds. 6 pounds in the last 2 weeks combined. What the hey? I've been eating well, working hard on getting that cholesterol level down....this had better be muscle and water! What a let down THAT was!
The other side effect is that I am SURE I have lost some fat off my arms....they are a little more...uh...floppy. Not nice. And also because of the reduced fat content of my arms, I am discovering new lipomas. I really am becoming lumpy.....or have been lumpy but only now have been in a state where they were find-able. At least they are not visible to others, and are just lipomas, not cancerous. I've read up on my condition and apparently some people get hundreds. I am not at that stage, thankfully.
So on I press, in the hopes of good health, good looks, and the achievement of the 5KM run on May 25th. Oh yes, and in the relief of a good night's sleep that will come with my finally quitting papers after delivery on May 27. Yay.

I've been Tagged AGAIN!

2008-05-05T16:26:00.002-06:00

A friend of mine has recently written a blog about 7 weird things about her, and I have been tagged to do the same because I opened my big mouth once to say I'd never been tagged for it. So now I have to figure out what is so weird about me. Hmm. Here goes...

1) I have lived in 25 different houses or apartments in 10 towns, villages, or cities, in 5 provinces and 1 Territory

2) I can wiggle my ears

3) Coffee makes me mellow, instead of jittery

4) I love having the bottoms of my feet tickled

5) I am petrified of calling people on the phone other than best friends and Husband

6) When I was pregnant, not only did I like pickles and ice cream, but tried to explain to Husband WHICH pickles you should eat with WHICH ice cream. (For example, dill goes with chocolate, bread and butter pickles go with strawberry....)

7) I am insanely obsessed with keeping in touch with friends and do not understand why I seem to be the only one who will automatically try planning a get together any time I am in somebody's neighbourhood, or to actually GO on trips to visit people. Come on people! VISIT MY NEIGHBOURHOOD!!!!!!!! (I mean those of you living outside my city, though anybody nearby reading this [who I know] can call me and we'll do coffee, for sure)

Okay...now I tag....ummmmm....BRAD! KENDRA! Everybody ELSE! :)

I've been tagged!

2008-04-29T07:51:00.002-06:00

Okay. A friend of mine who also writes a blog (and on a much more cerebral level than I), has decided to do this meme, I believe he called it...a Reading meme. http://blog.8r4d.com/2008/04/28/tag-meme-read
I will fill in what was asked of me, then try to think of who I can tag next.

1. Pick up the nearest book.
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis....a new acquisition that I have yet to read

2. Open to page 123.
End of the chapter called "Faith"....how appropriate.

3. Find the fifth sentence.
This is harder than it seems, as C.S Lewis puts periods in the middle of sentences...so based on grammar rules alone, I guess it would be:
The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits.

4. Post the next three sentences.
When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up. They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded. In fact, of course, He knows all about this.

5. Tag five people.
Greetings friend. Do you wish to look as happy as me? Well, you have the power inside you right now. So use it! Send one dollar to me. Don’t Delay, Eternal Happiness is only a dollar away!

Or you could take five minutes and post. Let’s see… I tag:
1. Carrien: so she will have an excuse to sit and relax and read a book for a few minutes
2. Lloyd: so I can find out what strange book he has picked up now
3. Kendra: because I think she needs to sit and read for a few minutes to get away from the craziness of her 4? daughters. :)
4. Ken: because I want to know what strange things HE reads these days
5. Angela: Because I know, just KNOW she is into a new romance book

What??? No blogs, some of you? Better get started! Orrrrrrr send it to me in an e-mail. :-D

Remember to link back to this entry to get credit for the post.

On a separate note, I am back at the track, jogging my little heart out. My 5k is in about 26 days from now. A friend of mine was explaining how in his running clinic, he was told they were supposed to run for 10, walk for 10, and so on....I have found however that this does not work for me. I try that and it looks more like this: Run for 10 minutes, walk for 10 minutes, try to run, smash headfirst into runners wall after 10 seconds, spend next 30 minutes trying to breathe as if asthmatic. So I have decided, right or not, to just go ahead and jog the 5.06km on the track (aka 23 times around the #4 lane) without walking until the 24th lap. Then go home. So far so good. :-D I FEEL good.
Hopefully the feeling will stay over the next few weeks as I train.
And I will be quitting papers as of the 27th of May (that will be my last day)...what a nice feeling to know I will actually get more than 3 1/2 to 6 hours of sleep each night....23 more deliveries. Yay.

It is Time...

2008-04-15T16:33:00.004-06:00

It has been awhile since I last posted, and it seems interesting that this post is all about change, good and potentially bad.
First of all, on the family front, Son had his day at the Cleft Palate clinic. He showed me the cute teddy bear they gave him as a prize for being so good as he did the rounds of speech therapist, audiologist, orno-naso-rhinologist (or whatever an ear-nose-throat guy is called), plastic surgeon, orthodontist, videographer, and so on. I had to leave before he received the bear, for a reason I will mention in a moment.
Anyway....Son came through with a clean bill of health from pretty much everyone. The plastic surgeon confirmed he does, in fact, have a submucous cleft, which they tried very hard to record on video, as he was so cooperative with demonstrating the tenting at the roof of his mouth. He is on the list for surgery sometime in the summer. He has been working so hard on his talking that the improvement is staggering, but he is compensating for the letter sounds that he cannot make normally due to the cleft, and the surgeon says it will make his life so much easier to go ahead with the surgery so he won't have to be constantly fighting with his own mouth and throat to make sounds the rest of us do unconsciously. We are extremely happy to sign the papers for the surgery....we've waited nearly 4 years for this, through doctors who missed it through sloppy, lazy practices when specifically asked to check for this, specialists who would rather have him come back again and again than actually treat the problem, and of course, waiting lists once we finally found a way into the system to get him treated.
On top of this, he recently got glasses. Poor guy was going blind at the end of each day. He kept telling us at supper that he couldn't see. Little did we realize how true it was! He has to wear his glasses all the time, which is a big adjustment for a 3 1/2 year old. He is extremely far sighted with one eye much weaker than the other. His eyes were working so hard to see and to compensate for the weakness that by the end of the day they were so strained and tired that they essentially were quitting on him and he was going practically blind in the evenings. He is at half strength now because the full prescription would be too much of a shock all at once. So he has these ones for 6 months, then they will reevaluate his sight and likely bump it up to full power. He;s really cute in glasses....here's a picture....he looks miserable because it took 6 tries to get the shot and he was tired of posing.

I have no idea how to flip it if it is sideways, so tilt your head. :)
Also in his little life, the second of his tubes finally came out of his ears, so in about a week, he should be able to take swimming lessons for the first time ever.

Now in other news, the reason I had to leave the cleft palate clinic early was that I had to catch a plane. Originally, I wasn't going to be at the clinic at all....I was booked on a flight to Vancouver on Thursday at 9:50AM. I arrived, checked in with 11 of my chorus mates, and we sat and waited for our plane that we were told was delayed by 30 minutes. About 30 minutes before we were scheduled to leave, we found out our flight was, in fact, cancelled. So we went hunting for our checked luggage and returned to the counter to get another flight. We were then booked on a flight Thursday at 1:50PM. Again, delayed 30 minutes, then cancelled 3 minutes before supposed takeoff. Snowstorm in Calgary, apparently. Again we get our checked luggage and back in line. New tickets? FRIDAY at 1:50PM! So I phoned Husband and got a ride home until the next day. I was NOT happy, especially since other chorus members who only SHOWED UP mid-afternoon Thursday got flights leaving that evening or early the next morning, getting their flights AFTER we got ours. Because we left for Vancouver 28 hours later than scheduled, we missed a LOT of the weekend...I missed hanging out with a friend for Thursday afternoon and evening (we did get together for a food court supper on Friday), I missed First Nite and a chance to shop, I missed the Mass Sing and the education class, and by the time I got there, I was just too tired and stressed to go watch the Quartet competition. Saturday was a blur....up, breakfast, mental prep, run-thru, makeup and costumes on, compete, eat pizza, change costumes, do the Show of Champions, change, check out Afterglow, crash into bed. Up Sunday morning and onto the plane to meet with Husband, Son, and Daughter to go see the Wiggles, then a 3 hour drive home.
We came in First Place Small Chorus and Fifth Place Overall (out of 18)....but our chorus is falling apart, drastically. There may not be a chorus by this time next year because so many people are leaving and a lot of the people still here are a part of the problem....if you have ever read the blurb on Somebody, Everybody, Anybody, and Nobody, then you will know what I mean when I say that this is our chorus. I am so desperate that I am essentially changing who I am, and instead of being the meek, quiet observer, I am claws out ready to fight mad, and enough so to try to run for president of the chorus. My chances are slim, but if it happens, I would have the means to DO something to turn this thing around....and if I don't get to be President, you'd better believe I'm going to be the squeaky wheel. People are going to hear some truths they don't want to hear, and they are going to find that just agreeing with me isn't enough.....they are going to have to get up off their butts and show that they really care about this chorus. Growf!

An interesting time of it

2008-03-29T17:55:00.003-06:00

For the past 6 months or so, I have watched my body fall apart in different ways, but none so scary as the one that started back then and hit its peak today. You see, I had lumps. One on the underside of my right upper arm, and one on my left side. Very sore ones at that. I thought briefly of having them checked out, but with my aversion to going to the doctor, decided I would not. In my experience, the second I walk in, my symptoms disappear like clouds and the doctor finds nothing wrong, most of the time.
So I left them. Sort of. I kept feeling them a lot, so couldn't really say if they were growing or not, kind of like you don't always notice how big your kids are getting or how long your hair is getting until it kind of hits you in a bang. I don't think they grew much, but at the same time, they did grow some....and then last night, quite by accident, I discovered I had acquired 3 more on my back. I had Hubby check them out, and he was quite concerned. Me being the worrier that I am, I was on the computer, researching what I could on lumps.
Today I waited for a chance to head off to the doctor alone...this was not the sort of conversation I wanted to scare my kids with, since, as I'm sure you can imagine, cancer was uppermost in my thoughts, especially with my family history. I wrote a few e-mails, asking for prayers and thoughts, called one friend, and when the time arose, I headed off after bursting into tears on hubby' shoulder. I was terrified of what I was going to find out, and Hubby was looking pretty scared, too.
Luckily for us both, the wait was no more than 5 minutes. And the consultation was maybe 5 more. He looked at them (easily, I might add, as Hubby had thoughtfully circled them with an orange Sharpie), felt them, then told me it was Lipoma, and he was going to send me for tests for my fat and cholesterol levels. I looked up the word when I got home, and discovered that Lipoma is basically benign fatty tumours. Better than cancer, but still not great news. I looked at the sheet I have to take to the lab tomorrow, and he is covering all his bases....I'm having tests done for my liver, kidneys, urine, blood, cholesterol....pretty much you-name-it. Which is good. This way I know that when the results are in, we will know for sure that he was correct, and that these suckers are benign.
I texted Hubby right away, and both of us were very relieved. Benign we can deal with.
Now I guess we have a very definite reason to be careful about how much fat we are eating, aside from the weight-loss and general health aspect. I have joined a lipoma forum, and we shall go from here.
And hey, it's not cancer.

It's Done.....and It Was Fun

2008-03-22T04:11:00.004-06:00

My parents came down this past week. They are, as I mentioned in previous posts, making plans to move to our fair province, so as to be closer to the grandchildren, and I suppose to their kids as well.
They flew in on Monday night, and we hustled off to the airport to pick them up....myself, Daughter in her pink jammies with the feet and penguins all over them, and Son in his Cars jammies, as it was past heir bedtimes, but I knew there was no chance of them going to sleep before my parents arrived anyway.
Tuesday brought a day of travel and some disappointment....we spent the day looking at houses in Moose Jaw and Caronport, but none of the houses were right....some were in not so great looking neighbourhoods, some were really small, some had damage caused by water, shifting, that sort of thing....nothing struck their fancy.
Wednesday, we drove the 45 minutes to Moose Jaw again, to meet with the real estate agent, who took us down to Assiniboia. Wow. That's what I say. Wow. We looked at 3 houses. The last one was a definite no. It was a smoking house, and the people were home and smoking while we were looking. Ick, ick, ick. The hallways were narrow, the stairs down to the finished basement were downright deadly....not good. The second house we looked at was massive. It had an upstairs, a main level, and a basement, all finished and full of rooms. I believe, if memory serves me, the top level had 3 bedrooms and a bath. The main had a living room, a huge sunken den,a bathroom, a kitchen, and a dining room, plus a very large entryway and a door leading to a double garage. The basement had a huge family room, an office, a gigantic furnace room, a huge cold storage room, and another room of some sort, plus various closets and such. Too big for their liking and no real yard....not good when you have a big dog. But the first one. Wow. It's an older house, an estate sale, actually. Very well kept house. Nice, quiet street. You walk in the front door to the main level. On the main level is a living room, dining room, kitchen, 3 bedrooms, a bath, and a mud room/laundry room with a door leading out to a HUGE fenced yard with a shed. There are tons of closets everywhere. On the main floor alone, I believe there are 3 or 4 closets for coats, linens, general storage, plus each bedroom has a closet. Downstairs I can't remember completely, but it has a family room, den, bar, cedar closet, tons and tons and tons of storage closets (under the stairs, along the walls, etc)....it's the house they bought. For about $125,000. And the village itself is beautiful. It's got that old-time, community feel, plus it's got every amenity imagineable, a railway line running past it, and it's just....perfect. I want to retire there someday!
Thursday was a relaxed day, as their house was sold, they'd bought a new house....we could just veg and do a bit of in-town shopping.
Friday was the Good Friday service with all the churches in the city. It was good....except the 2 sermons part. One would have been sufficient, especially with kids in the audience. We then went out for lunch at a really nice buffet place, drove off to look at Dog River (AKA Rouleau), and vowed to come back in the summer when they are actually filming so the Corner Gas sign and the Ruby will be up and open for pictures. Then we came home to make homemade pizza.
I had to get up really early this morning....3AM to be exact....to get them off to the airport. They will be back in June, to move in. I think I will go back to bed now (it's about 4:30AM)
Oh! Did I tell you about Bessie? I'll check my blog later to see, and if I haven't, I will have to include that in a future post. I'm too tired to do it right now.

Ohhhhhhhh Dear!

2008-03-11T08:44:00.002-06:00

Well, here I sit in front of the computer....wondering where, exactly, my brain has gone.
I ran my 5.06km at the track yesterday....and had a rough night as my muscles complained about my having done so. I creaked my way out of bed and did my papers and decided I had better go to the track again, so I don't start putting it off and end up unprepared for May 25.
So I went. And I ran. I figured if I just got going the muscles would feel better, stop hurting so much. I ran the full 5.06Km. Again. And then I came home, got daughter off to school, and sat to do my e-mail and all the rest. And now I cannot move. I hurt so bad you can almost HEAR the muscles screaming each time I try to budge. And I can't afford to just stay here in this chair....I have a house to clean, top to bottom. I have less than a week to do so, and don't know how much help I'm going to get. Not fun.

On a really cool note, though, I am now the proud owner of a 1984 Ford LTD midsize. It will take some getting used to, as I have been somewhat spoiled by modern cars. I now have to remember to do things other cars today do on their own. Bessie doesn't even have a fuel injector. She's big, she's got some rust, but she runs. And she only cost $500. Now I have to figure out how to get the kids in safely....the back only has lap belts (and I've heard that the ones with shoulder straps are better), and I phoned around....nobody will even TRY to put a car seat anchor in! Luckily, Son is nearly big enough for a booster seat, and daughter is nearly big enough to forego a child seat altogether, so hopefully that will do. That and a little prayer. Maybe I'll see if I can buy my own anchor and get a drill that can go through metal.

Everything is going to be AAAAAALLLL right....

2008-03-10T07:34:00.003-06:00

Anyone who has watched Dragon's Den knows what that came from....and by the way I don't thing it was such a good idea either. Cute, but not a big selling idea.
Anyway...I recently got very health minded and decided I was going to push myself to do something fantastic...
So i signed myself up for a 5k at the end of May. This was very quickly followed by a deep sense of what the HECK have I DONE??? I haven't run for months, and just recently discovered my Leisure pass is still valid for another week.
I decided that, since I'm signed up for this thing, and have paid for it, I'd better get my butt in gear and train for this sucker.
I went to the indoor track this morning, and plunked my chunky self in a lane for joggers. 220 metres per lap on this one. So I started jogging along. I am a very slow jogger. I felt like the little old lady toodling along the road in her car, ticking everybody off by going about 20kph. The seasoned runners were bopping by, weaving from lane to lane, passing me, looking all cool and collected. But I kept at it, and kept at it, and *gasp, wheeze* kept at it....and to my own credit and pride, managed to jog 5.06 km this morning without stopping or walking....took me a little over 40 minutes. My hope is to get my time down to maybe....30 minutes? I think that's a reasonable goal for this year's run.
At least I now know for sure that I am capable of surviving the run without keeling over. This is a very good thing.

Westjet ROCKS!

2008-03-06T08:20:00.002-06:00

I just remembered one of the things I wanted to blog about.
I get to fly three times, count 'em THREE times this year. I love to fly. I especially love the taking off and landing parts...that feeling is so cool.
Anyway. Westjet will be taking me all three times.
The first time will be in early April. That will be for Regional competition in Surrey (BC). I got that one on a 40% off sale, which was really cool. To top it off, our plans changed slightly, as we are taking the kids to see the Wiggles on the day I was scheduled to return home....but the show we are going to is a 2 1/2 hour drive from here, and I'd never make it in time. So I phoned them up, and the very nice lady looked into it for me, and got me an open ended flight....Regina to Surrey, then Surrey to Saskatoon. And the cost to change the flight? $21. You see, it costs $40 to change a flight, but the return trip to Saskatoon was $19 cheaper than the original return flight to Regina. Yay.
The second time will be at the end of May. This is the most amazing one. Regina to Toronto (and back)....one day sale....80% off. You heard me....80% off. $39 one way plus taxes, etc... I am going and taking my two kids with me (and kids pay full fare to fly....no more kid rates).....total cost for three return tickets? About $530. Total, not each. Total. My ticket for my first flight, just for me, was close to that amount! That will be so much fun....I get to visit a friend who has two kids only 7 months apart in age from my kids (I had one in January, she had one in August.....then SHE had one in January, and I had one in August), and hopefully will get to see a friend that I have not seen since summer of 2000. And we will get to meet each other's kids.
The third time is one we have been planning for and saving for for a little over 2 years now....Grey Cup in Montreal. Husband is going to Grey Cup, and the kids and I are going shopping, sight seeing, and visiting around my old Alma Mater. I love Montreal. Always have, always will, and want my kids to share that love, too. That one will be covered entirely by airmiles. Woo hoo!
So all in all, it's going to be a very fun year, doing more traveling than I have done in a very, very, VERY long time! Yaaaaaaaay! :)
Oh, and just for the record....Air Canada sucks.

Morning Has Broken

2008-03-06T07:34:00.004-06:00

Finally! Same as last year, I know....but you have to understand that when you work a job like mine, winter is a very long, dark place.
So there I was, walking along, finishing my second route of the morning, when I happened to glance at the horizon. There it was, that glorious lightening strip in the sky, the one I had been waiting months for. If that had not brought a smile to my face, I would have to be stark raving mad. I live for sunshine. The fact that sunshine was on its way was a very, very good thing.
It has been awhile since I have written....I have had many topics buzzing through my brain, but somehow never quite got around to sitting down to type them out. And now i have forgotten what they were. Hopefully over the next little while, I will remember what the important ones were.
I am finally coming out of my shell somewhat. I hate speaking up in public. Hate it. Scares the living daylights out of me. I have this huge complex that has me convinced that if I say what is on my mind, I will look like an idiot, get shot down, not be able to argue my point, have people hate me, lose friends, etc, etc, etc. Trust me, that is enough to make me literally start shaking just THINKING about what I want to say, and it takes monumental strength for me to actually open my mouth and SAY what needs to be said....but I agreed last year to be on the Board for my chorus. That meant that this weekend past, I got to go on the leadership retreat. It was a lot of fun, and an amazing place with deer and birds and squirrels just outside the lodge windows and all, and very peaceful and quiet. But while we were there, we had to plan out the next year. And one of the things that came up was that the focus in chorus was gone, the people were not doing their "job".
It had to be said. It really had to be said, and nobody was saying it. I meekly put up my hand....
-Can I say something?
-Sure
-Well, one thing that's really bothering me is that everyone has been trying to make everybody happy, to keep members from leaving. The problem is that nobody is being kept accountable. When I joined, it was made very clear to me that this was a competing, performing chorus. To be a part of it, I had to do the work. If I didn't like it, I shouldn't have joined the chorus. Now we are telling people that they don't have to compete, they don't need to perform....if we are saying this sort of thing, NO WONDER people aren't learning their music and such like they are supposed to....if they don't intend to compete or perform, why would they? They are getting the impression that it's not important. Our sound has suffered, our music has suffered, we used to win first place all the time, now we don't, and we go in with an attitude that we aren't going to win. We used to go in believing we were the best, and we won....every time! Then we suddenly were told we were expecting too much, we were suddenly told we could only expect to reach certain levels, and now we go in with an attitude of "Well, we'll TRY, but we probably won't win"....and then we DON'T. Even if we can't win, we have a much better chance of getting CLOSE if we BELIEVE it! There are so many people who have done amazing things, simply because nobody told them it was supposedly impossible.

Now let me tell you. I said this to an audience of 10 people. I thought I was going to die right there and then, I was shaking so badly, my heart was pounding, and I was dizzy with fright.
The result? It opened up discussion like nothing you would believe! They were totally agreeing with me, saw that I was right, and we started off on a plan to get the chorus back to what it was supposed to be.

We went to rehearsal on Tuesday night,and the team started recapping for the rest of the chorus just exactly what we had done with our weekend. Problem was, everybody was skirting the issue, nobody was saying what needed to be said when we were telling them what e had gotten out of the weekend. I was wriggling in my seat, I was so uncomfortable, just mentally BEGGING for someone to say it. Finally, at the last moment, when I knew it was going to be me or nobody, I meekly put up my hand...

-The thing I got most out of the weekend was that we reaffirmed what this chorus is really about. We made it clear that we all agree that this is a COMPETING, PERFORMING chorus, and that this is still our MAIN FOCUS as Prairie Gold.

It was so funny. You could have heard my heart pounding in the slight pause of shock...I had spoken up in front of about 30 people. Me. The one who NEVER speaks up. The director started to applaud, but quickly stopped....because I had said what HAD to be said, and she had wanted it said....it was a really nice feeling to know she was so proud of me for having spoken up. So I mentally thought to myself "Ha! So there!" Why? I dunno. It just fit the way I was feeling.
I still don't think they got it. I still don't think the message got across half as strongly as it needs to. But it will. In time, it will. Maybe if I keep speaking up once in awhile, the rest of the board will get on it, to, and make the other members understand...this chorus has a focus on three things....competition, performance, and education. If you want to be in the chorus, you need to learn your music, you need to perform to the absolute best of your ability, you need to constantly be learning more of the music, practicing it until it reaches absolute excellence, you need to perform, to sharpen your skill, and to give it everything you have so that when we go to competition, we are bringing home those gold medals, the high scores, the knowledge that no matter what the outcome, there is no way any member on those risers could have given even one more molecule.
If you are not there to further these goals, if you are not in agreement with where the chorus is headed, then this chorus is not the place for you. We cannot make everyone happy all the time. We have loads of fun, and we love each other like a family AND like best friends....but we work HARD and it's not fair to hold other members back if you aren't 100% committed to excellence in competition and performance. We may lose some members. And we will be sad to see them go....but at the same time, we need to stay true to the whole foundation of the Sweet Adelines International. We are not a glee club, we are not just for fun. It even states in the international bylaws that we MUST compete.
And come on! If we win the gold at Regionals this year, we get to go to NASHVILLE for Internationals next year!!!!!!!! I SOOOOOO want to go to Nashville!!!!!!!!!
Anyway....I'm getting really cold, sitting in my drafty office. Time for coffee, and then major house cleaning. 11 days until my parents arrive!

Finally some answers!

2008-02-15T15:54:00.003-06:00

Son went to the speech therapist today. We had waited 5 months for this appointment. His preschool teacher had asked us to have him referred, back in the fall, because he had a relatively large speech impediment....his speech was mostly limited to vowels, with nearly every word starting with M or N, whether it needed one or not. He was frustrated, we were frustrated, his teachers were frustrated, and the other kids wanted nothing to do with him, because nobody could understand him. I could, mostly, but even I had a hard time sometimes, and it led to a lot of crying and temper tantrums. I can only imagine how hard it must be to try so hard to get your thoughts across, and have nobody understand, to have people look at you and go "Oh, that's nice", in that "I don't understand you, so I'll smile and nod" sort of way.
He had his hearing tested last week, and he has perfect hearing, which was a relief....after all those ear infections in his first 8 months, before they did the surgery to put the tubes in, there was the fear that he would have some hearing loss.
Anyway, as I said, we went today, and met with the nice lady, who had him playing with toys and helping her read a story, so she could listen to his speech. First of all, she was extremely impressed with his huge vocabulary and sentence structures (he's 3 1/2)...but she noticed he could not say any of the back-of-the-mouth sounds like hard C and G, and that when he tried to say any of those words, he was compensating by scrunching up his nose really tight, in an effort to keep the air from coming out his nose. She looked at his split uvula and wrote her notes.
He got a V-tech computer for Christmas, which made a HUGE difference for him, as there is this little monkey that talks on it, and one of the activities is dealing with the sound of letters...."The S makes the sound SSSSSSS"....that sort of thing, so of course we have had nearly 2 months of him announcing to us what sound each letter makes....which has increased his letter sound capacity drastically....all but those hard C and G and that area of the mouth type sounds.
The answer we got was this....she suspects he has what is called a sub-mucal cleft...essentially a cleft of the muscles in the soft palate, as far as I can figure. This would make perfect sense, based on the fact that Husband was born with a cleft palate which required surgery at age 1 or 2. He will see one of the experts somewhere in the next 2 months who will check and confirm this. If he does indeed have this, they can do surgery which will correct it, and allow him (obviously with therapy) to talk properly and make those pesky, elusive sounds. In the meantime, he will go back to the therapist about once a week to play games which will help him to work on those sounds, in the event that it is not a sub-mucal cleft, so that maybe he will learn techniques to help himself say those needed sounds.
Finally some definite answers, some definite solutions, and we are officially in the system, so everything will get done without waiting so long now. It's been a good day.

Stacking dolls

2008-02-14T20:58:00.002-06:00

You know the kind I mean....they used to have a little clip on Sesame Street even, where these dolls undid, danced around, then went together again. One big doll opens, a smaller one is inside. Open that one, a smaller one yet inside, and so on until one teeny one emerges.
That would be the experience I had today when my new computer arrived. After the catastrophic death of my old PC, where it took all my files with it, thanks to a short in the system that made the backup blank, we ended up ordering a Mac Mini. It arrived today in a box about the size of a Vancouver phone book. So we opened it.....to find....A BOX! So we opened it to find.....A BOX! I was laughing by that point. So we opened the box....and inside was a bunch of packaging material, and my new, itty bitty computer. It's really cute...not much bigger than a small, square lunchbox that would only hold a sandwich with a tiny bit of room to spare (as in, no drink or anything else).
The fact that I am writing this is evidence that it works (yay)...and hopefully nothing will go wrong, because, after all, I was super, extra lucky that my novel-in-progress was also on Writing.com, not just on my hard drive, and I'd hate to have to go retrieve it from there again and again, plus all my bookmarks and other stuff.....it's bad enough all my other files are gone.
We had a bunch of snow the other day, which I got shoveled off the driveway and walk....just in time for it to snow again today. That should make papers fun tomorrow....heavy papers and a pile of unshoveled walks. Oh joy. But at least this should hopefully be my last winter of doing this. Now off to bed.

Dreams and Such

2008-02-09T12:42:00.000-06:00

I am sick again. A cold now. The kind that makes you sniffle and snuffle, cough and blow, and sucks every molecule of energy out of your body. But that's okay. I called in sick to work this morning, because I just couldn't muster the energy or willpower to haul those heavy bundles around for 2 1/2 hours in -51C windchill. I got up, I got dressed, I drove over there....but just couldn't do it, I was out of energy, feeling like dirt, and very cold. So I read my bundle toppers at each drop to make sure I had all the info, and called in sick (and yes, I did tell them that I was up and out and had changed my mind).
So why is it so okay that I am sick? Mainly because I am less stressed than I have been recently about my house. Thanks to a one-year tv ban that we as a family have decided to embark on, replacing satellite with passes to the local rec centres, there is more time, less distraction....for everybody. I have been getting a bit more help around the house, and thanks to my f-i-l, I also have a new vacuum that really sucks (in the good sense), and have managed to get the upstairs fairly clean (though it's not as sparkly today, with me being sick and only spot cleaning instead of scrubbing bathtubs and such like yesterday and the day before), and a lot of the laundry done, which is a huge accomplishment after everyone getting the stomach flu one day after each other, creating a giant pile of sheets and towels and bedding and clothes that got puked or pooped on, in addition to the usual Mount Washmore.
So I was able to crawl feebly back into bed and dream for awhile this morning....which leads to the dreams part.
Some people say dreams mean stuff, and I really have to wonder what this dream means. For some reason, lately, I have been dreaming about someone....a reunion in this particular dream. It's odd, because I really don't think I have been pondering on this person much....they live a very long way away, and quite honestly have not talked to me or made contact in any way over the past few years. I have not even SEEN this person for....probably about 10 years now, give or take.
In this dream, I am in some strange place, a shelter, maybe? But it's a comfortable place. That much I know. There are a lot of people there, who I seem to know, but am not sure if actually exist in real life, because I don't remember who else was in the dream. Anyway....in this dream, this person is suddenly where I am. They have come back from the far off place, and they see me. This person is very surprised to see me, and in fact pleased to see me, and incredibly impressed with who I am now, I guess both physically and maturity-wise. In my dream I am very happy about this, and very surprised by his pleased surprise, and his sudden higher regard for me....and for some reason I am slightly taller than him, and that impresses him. Weird.
But in my dream, I am still married. I still have my children. It is not a romantic type dream, more of a searching dream, kind of a this-is-who-I am, who-are-you now? sort of thing. I am very pleased he has come, and very pleased at his reactions. I am somewhat....at a loss, I suppose, as to how to react to this person in my dream, a happy yet sad reunion. I want to appear my best for this person, but am not sure why. In my dream I am not sure what he wants from me, or why he is so pleased by who I am, but it was a very good dream that I really wish I could have finished, like a good book....I want to know the ending, the answers to why, what happened, maybe a bit more as to who this person became (in my dream).
And now that I am awake, I find myself seriously wondering what the real person has become now, what he looks like now, how his life is going (beyond what he does for a job....that I know....and where)....and what he really WOULD think of me if we met again, now. What would I think of him? And wondering why it matters, and where the dream and wonderings came from. I have to think about this some more. It just seems somewhat....important, somehow.

News of the Stupid

2008-02-03T20:40:00.000-06:00

Due to illness and "stuff", it's been a bit since I last posted, but I have three items to blog about, that seem to fit well under my chosen title.
You really have to wonder about some people, you really do.
"AND YOU ARE MAD *WHY*???"
Here is the story about a young man. This young man decided it would be a good idea to try to beat a train. The guard rail had already come down, and the train was essentially to the crossing. This young man was riding his bike, and thought he could make it, I guess. He plowed up to the guard rail on his bike, and luckily for him, said guard rail bumped him off the bike. Bike ends up under the train. Man does not. Train engineer, of course, has to stop the train, back it up, out of the crossing, so as not to tie up traffic while he writes out his incident in triplicate and so on. The grateful young man's way of showing how happy he is not to be a grease spot on the tracks? He flips off the poor, I'm sure extremely shaken, train engineer. Hellloooooo idiot! The engineer didn't tell you to try beating his train, he did not try to run over your bike that you so idiotically tried to ride across the tracks. You should be hanging your head in shame and kissing the ground you walk on for the guard rail that saved your sorry life.
"ALCOHOL MAY HAVE BEEN A FACTOR"
I'm sure all, or at least most of you, have heard about this one. Man in his 20's is taken to hospital in the wee hours of the morning with severe frostbite and hypothermia, poorly dressed for the -51C windchill we had this past week. 8 hours later, he asks about his children, who, up to this point, nobody knew were missing or even existed. They are eventually found frozen to death. Alcohol was a factor. These poor babies (1 and 3) were only dressed in t-shirts and diapers. How much pain did they have to be in before they died? How long did they suffer before the cold mercifully put them into unconsciousness and ultimately death? What person takes their children outside, dressed like that, in winter, no matter WHAT the temperature? I saw that there are those who are asking for him to have a light sentence because of the emotional trauma he must be going through. I disagree. That may make me heartless, but I'm sorry....you killed your own kids out of your own sheer stupidity and drunkenness. "I was drunk" is not an excuse in my book. Ever. For anything. You do the crime, you do the crime. How must that poor mother feel? She lost both her babies, that she carried inside her, BOTH of them, all at once. She never even got to say goodbye. And due to the drunkenness of her husband. That's got to be a hard reality to face for her. And for him. This story had me in tears, as I delivered it as front page news on the newspapers. It had and has me sad, and furious, and in a certain state of disbelief. And just think of the poor RCMP officers whose job it was to find, and remove, those poor, tiny, frozen bodies from the snow. I couldn't do it. Not in my wildest dreams, or in this case, nightmares, could I ever do that job.
"WE WILL BE CHECKING UP ON YOU"
This is an extremely personal story, and as such, will come across as pretty much a vent. We have a Dog. Dog loves us and we love dog. She is our baby, and we spoil her rotten.
The other night, Daughter and I had to go out. Husband was sick, and stayed at home with Son. I put Dog out around 6PM, thinking she would scratch at the door a few minutes later, as she always did, so Husband could let her in. But she didn't.
7:30 comes. Daughter and I are preparing to head home when Husband calls, practically in tears. He cannot find Dog anywhere. Poor sick guy had even bundled up and searched the backyard, neighbour's backyard, under the deck where Dog likes to hide, and up the street. Daughter and i drive the neighbourhood, looking for a black dog at night. No luck. I send Daughter inside, go up and down the street yelling for Dog. A few minutes later, Dog shows up in backyard, magically. I realize Dog had been in next door's house because she is all toasty warm and reeking of cigarettes. We are extremely relieved, as we had thought she'd somehow escaped, run off, and would freeze to death in the -51C windchill. They had fed her something while she was there, and whatever it was gave her diarrhea so bad, it looked like she was peeing hot chocolate out her butt.
I typed up a nice note the next morning (because they work odd shifts and I didn't want to wake anyone by knocking on the door) to say I was thankful they had taken her in, explaining the situation (Husband was sick, I had let Dog out thinking she'd scratch, etc, Husband thought she was inside since she didn't scratch....), and that I would fix the hole in the fence (how she got there in the first place) right away, and if it happened again, please let us know right away and to please not feed her anything anymore because it had made her sick and messed with her feeding schedule, and thanks again.
Next thing I know, that afternoon, Animal Control shows up at our door, saying there had been a complaint that we were constantly leaving our dog out for long periods of time, unattended, in very cold weather, and that she was malnourished! They drove up to our house in their marked van, wearing their huge letter emblazoned jackets, and demanded to see our dog and our backyard. We complied, as I tried to explain to them that we do NOT leave our dog out for long periods of time, ESPECIALLY in weather like this. They, of course, didn't believe me. They told me her doghouse was insufficient because it wasn't insulated. (She's an indoor dog who doesn't really use one anyway) The guy felt her side and said he could sense ribs and so we had to fatten her up. The amount they told us to feed her was unbelievable! We were told to feed her 6 cups of kibble PLUS potatoes and rice and bacon grease each DAY! According to our dog food bag, that would be about what you would feed a dog of about 150-200 pounds. She is 60 pounds. For her breed and size, she is supposed to be 55-70 pounds. Her breed is the type where you are SUPPOSED to sense ribs if you feel along the side. Not see them, but feel them. She is shiny, she is happy, her trainer says she's an excellent size with good, strong muscles, her vet at her last visit said she was a good size....we bought the new, insulated doghouse. That is a fight we will not win, and if having it in our yard will make them happy, so be it....but the dog is afraid to go in it. And she stays outside all of MAYBE 20 minutes maximum each time. But whatever. As to the fattening her up part, that we are going to fight. Anyone who really knows what they are talking about in terms of dog size and weight will back us up, we will go get documentation from the vet, if that is what it will take. And we want them to close the file. We don't need them driving past, peeking into the backyard at regular intervals to see if we have left her out to freeze or whatever stupid fiction our neighbours have come up with. We do not neglect our dog. When it's cold, we even try to convince her NOT to go outside! She eats like a pig, and just happens to be high energy, and built for speed. It's just the type of dog she is!
My theory on why they did this? When we got Dog, their two dogs barked nearly incessantly through the fence at her. She does not bark back, only barking when someone goes by on the hill behind our beck fence. I think someone complained on their dogs (no, it wasn't us), because they bark at anyone and everything that moves. One board in our fence got broken. I think it was one of their dogs trying to get through to our dog, but I can't prove it. Our dog just wants to stick her nose through the gaps, wag her tail, and squeak at them, or run up and down along the fence, as if they were playing tag with no contact. In any case, I've seen their dogs in our yard, and now our dog got into theirs. I boarded that sucker up with heavy pine so nothing is getting through. And that is the end of good relations with the neighbours. Anyone who won't come and knock on my door if they have an honest concern about my dog and who deems it necessary to automatically call in someone who has the power to strip my dog away from her stable, loving home, is certainly NOT someone I want to have anything to do with. You have a problem with something I'm doing? You come TALK to me about it! Or write me a nice note.
For the record, my canine baby loves popcorn, playing tug-of-war, chewing bones, sleeping on the couch while being petted, licking everyone who stays still long enough, and eating pretty much anything, anywhere, anytime. She's a soppy thing, and we love her with everything we've got....so much so that we're willing and ready to fight tooth and nail over this horrible, and false, accusation. We would never, ever, under any circumstances, abuse, neglect, or otherwise hurt our baby....I mean Dog!

Shaken, not stirred

2008-01-22T07:23:00.000-06:00

Despite my cutesy title, this will be one of my serious posts.
I am feeling quite shaken lately.....in my faith, that is. I can't really pinpoint where it started, it's just been an accumulation of things, I suppose.
I am finding it difficult to hang on to the faith that used to be so easy, so much a part of me. I have spent the last few days asking for signs, asking for ANYTHING, really.
Over the past few years, it has seemed that either I'm too bad for God to grant me anything, God isn't the way everyone has portrayed Him....or He isn't there at all.
Now before people jump on me, believe me, I am struggling pretty hard with this one, especially since this has been somewhat the core of my life thus far. And I'm sure most,if not all of this struggle is my own fault.
Things just don't seem to add up anymore. I am considering removing myself from the worship team at church because, quite frankly, I don't belong there right now. I'm not up there for the right reasons anymore. I'm up there because I love the singing.
A part of me knows that God MUST be out there SOMEWHERE....but a part of me is stumbling around, wondering....
I don't FEEL God, I don't SEE God, I can't even say I really KNOW God....and God doesn't seem to be there for me, either. Bible verses contradict what I see. Some passages have me thinking He is definitely NOT the loving God people claim He is, if He's even there.
For example, it says where two or three are gathered, He is there. What you ask for will be granted. Then why is it that scores of people have prayed for a certain person in my life to be healed of a mental/maybe spiritual affliction for YEARS...and the result fluctuates between either nothing happening at all, to the point that this person doesn't even talk about the issue, or the person takes a step in faith, trying to face whatever this is, and having it be a horrifying experience that turns them off for months, even years, from even thinking of trying to face it again.
I pray for the health of my family, and they all get sick with tonsillitis, bronchitis, pneumonia!
I pray a prayer of thanks for a contract that would allow us to pay off some debt, cover recent dental and eyesight costs, and allow me to be a stay-at-home mom full-time for awhile.....and the contract is renegged.
I pray for adequate rest, and end up more busy and more tired.
I pray that I would finally have the wherewithall to get my house clean, and get sick, tired, uninspired, and the entire family somehow forgets to put ANYTHING away and drops it all wherever it falls and the house looks like a bomb hit, when we are expecting company in a few days' time.
I understand that sometimes God says "no", but when the answer is ALWAYS no, you start to wonder if either God has it in for you, or He isn't there to begin with.
As to the part about God not being what they say he is...why would a loving God harden people's hearts so they'd go to Hell if we are supposed to have free will? (Pharaoh in Exodus) Why would a God who tells us it's wrong to murder tell all those armies in the old Testament to go out and slaughter everybody in their way in a quest to obtain land? Why would a loving God who wants everyone to be with Him allow someone to suffer so badly every time they hear about Him that they block it all out during the time, have such a violent bodily reaction during it, and as a result completely avoid the concept afterwards?
I really don't know where I stand right now. I know you aren't supposed to test God, but I'm desperate, I need to know one way or another in MY mind, in MY heart, not from someone else. I am feeling very discouraged because I "set out a fleece" a few days ago, one of those heart-wrenching "If you're there, God, then PLEASE do THIS to prove it!" things....and nothing. Universe shuddering silence.
I just don't know anymore.

It was torture....STOP LAUGHING!

2008-01-11T06:31:00.000-06:00

Okay, I am going to write this, and those of you who know me from high school are probably going to get a good chuckle out of this one...
Over the Christmas break, I had some issues with my throat. In the end, I was cured by a strong antibiotic. I finished said pills on Wednesday. Now here is where you high school chums start the grinning and snickering....you know when you get a prescription from Shopper's, they give you that sheet that lists side effects and drug interactions, do-s and don't-s? Well, this particular one says do not consume coffee while on this medication.
Yes, boys and girls, the drug was going STRAIGHT for the achilles heel, a blessing and a curse all wrapped in one. And I had to take it for ten, count 'em, TEN days!
Day one wasn't too bad, just a faint (well....maybe not so faint) longing to drink my coffee. The next few days were sheer torture. Add the desire for the coffee with all the withdrawal symptoms, peaking at about day 4 with absolute cravings, daydreaming about sweet, creamy, steaming mugs of coffee. I must have been really annoying to Husband, as I must have said a million times, over the ten days, how terribly much I really wanted a cup of coffee. I was practically climbing the walls for want of it. Who needs hard drugs when you can do coffee?
In any case, I made it through the ten days and brewed up my pot of coffee yesterday the moment I got back from papers....Dickens Toffee flavour (for any of you coffee hounds out there who have access to a Save-On-Foods, they have amazing flavours of beans sometimes....I have to go to Edmonton to get mine). I think I had 3....maybe 4? mugs of the stuff. It was really nice.
And for those of you who like to know how crazy I am....my freezer currently holds 7 types of coffee beans...Dickens Toffee, Coconut Fiesta, German Chocolate Mint, Pecan Delight, Raspberries and Cream, Swiss Chocolate Almond (I think....it's chocolate SOMETHING, anyway....), and dark roast.
So there you go. I've made some of you laugh at me, some go "Whoa! She's weeeeeeird!", and some are shaking their heads at me in either mild amusement or mild distain. :) Now I think I'll go have a cup of coffee. All this typing has made me thirsty.

How NOT to treat your customers

2008-01-07T13:00:00.000-06:00

For the past day, I have been berating myself for not speaking up on this issue, but being shy, I didn't have the guts to say what needed to be said to the person at the time.
I went to a liquidation store, specifically to find a new blender, knowing I would need one today, since I had a root canal done this morning, and knew how sore my jaw would be from previous experience, plus I had read that it's best not to chew with a newly done tooth. Anyway....
I was lined up to pay and the following scene unfolded before me....
Man walks into the store, approaches cashier. Explains he had been in earlier, to return a calculator, and was told he had to have the receipt. Man had gone home, dug up said receipt, and driven back to the store. Man provides faulty calculator in original packaging with receipt. Cashier refuses to exchange it. Man tells cashier the manager said he could. Cashier calls manager, manager says yes, that is correct. Cashier slams down phone and starts berating customer, saying it's just a lousy $2 calculator, she shouldn't have to exchange it, etc. Man points out the calculator does not work, simply wants a replacement. Cashier starts on this huge tirade about how he should have brought it back 1-2 days after purchase, and says as far as she is concerned, she is in charge and doesn't have to do anything. Meanwhile there is a sign saying the store will happily exchange faulty items with receipt within 30 days. It had been about 20 days, I assume the man had been off on Christmas holidays, etc.
Man stalks off in hopes of finding the replacement calculator down another aisle. Cashier goes "Oh yeah, go off and cry over a lousy $2!". The other people in line are starting to get a little upset by this, and start taking the man's side. Cashier then starts arguing with each and every customer about it, and complaining to every customer about it who didn't say anything yet.
My opinion is such: This woman should be fired. This woman had no right to say the things she did, no right to treat a customer that way, no right to argue with a whole line of people, and certainly no right to be whining about it to everyone with ears as she went along. The man had every right to return the item for exchange, the sign was right there to say so, and maybe it was just a $2 calculator, but $2 is still $2.
If I'd had the guts to do what I wanted to do, I would have told her exactly what I thought of her behaviour, I would have demanded to talk to the manager, and I would have walked out, leaving my items right where I had stood, loudly declaring I would not buy from a store that would not only not follow its own return policies, but would heap on the verbal abuse as well.
But I am a chicken. Bock, bock. I meekly paid for my purchases, listened dumbly to her ramblings about the poor man, and left. The sad thing is that I had Daughter with me. No child should have had to listen to that kind of behaviour!

A new year begins!

2008-01-02T06:57:00.000-06:00

I am so far behind in this blog because 2007 went out in a busy way, not all of it positive.
To briefly catch up, we all got sick for about a month. I had tonsillitis, a bunch of not-so-good doctors, and a recent relapse which has, thankfully, finally been properly treated with strong antibiotics.
I have to phone the dentist to see if being on the antibiotics will mean I am not able to have my root canal next week.
The kids and Husband are finally recovered or recovering from colds, flus, bronchitis, pneumonia.....as I said, 2007 went out with a bang.
Husband had a big contract that would have allowed me to quit papers and just be a stay-at-home-Mom until Son was in school full time, but that fell through, so I am back to papers and once again working towards the goal of an old second hand car.
It was cold this morning. Despite being wrapped up, I still have hives all over my legs from the cold reaching my legs somehow. (What a weird allergy to have, eh?)
We had a good Christmas. We went to the in-laws' for a little less that a week, saw my sister and b-i-l, took the kids to Drumheller to the dinosaur museum on the way back....it was a lot of fun, and quite honestly a bit mind-boggling, looking at all the real dinosaur bones.
In any case, here we are in 2008. Eight years ago I had just held somebody else's twin babies and started yearning desperately for babies of my own. 23 days from now, Daughter will turn 7. 43 days from now, I will have been married 8 1/2 years. 45 days from now, Son will be 3 1/2. I look back and wonder where the time went! Neither of my babies look like babies anymore!
2008 is going to be a big year. Daughter will be 7. Son will be 4. I will have been married 9 years. My parents will be moving here. My parents will have been married 37 years. My brother might move here and go back to school. I will get to see some friends I have not seen in years. I will get to go to Montreal and show my kids places I've been and things I've seen and done there. And my one major resolution (I don't really make them, so I guess it's more of a goal), is that I will lose my extra weight (about 54 pounds as of today) before I go on my big trip in November. Oh.....and another big one would be to work hard on making my marriage the best it can be and finding a way to separate it from my Mommy-hood.

Who Says I Have to Grow Up?

2007-12-07T09:20:00.001-06:00

The fun thing about having kids is that you get to ACT like one, sometimes even in public. I took Son to see Little Bear live on stage the other day. Sitting in the vast auditorium with all the other parents and kids-under-5, and of course, my son, we had a blast. We yelled and called out for characters when told to do so, we waved our star wands (fibre optic lighted wands), sang and danced with the songs....I mean, come ON! How often do you get to scream like a fool at the end of a show, deep, philosophical comments like "BYE CAT! BYE DUCK! BYE OWL! BYE EMILY! BYE LITTLE BEAR! BYE ZEPHYR!" and not have people looking at you as if you've spilled your brains out along the highway somewhere.
Speaking of which....getting there was not fun. There had been a several car pileup along the highway on the way to the show. Three lanes of traffic squeezed down to one while the police, fire engine, tow trucks, and squished cars got themselves all sorted out. I pity the poor policeman that had to plant himself in the middle of the highway, in the dark, and try to not only direct these three lanes of traffic into one, but also try not to get hit by the fools who were trying to pass the accident without looking for him. I mean, I was going something like 5kph, and even *I* had trouble seeing him. The show people were very smart....they postponed the start of the show by about 15 minutes to allow for us poor people who got stuck on the highway to squeak through and get there. Little kids are not known for being particularly understanding about things like "Gee, I'm sorry, you missed the first part because of the traffic".
Speaking of bears and animals and such, our animals are sure costing us a lot of money these days! We had to take Dog in to get a shot so she is allowed to stay in the kennel over Christmas. That was not cheap. And Big Cat has to go in for surgery next week because he has a lump on his leg. The surgery and the following analysis of said lump is going to run us about $450. Ouch! But he's our sucky baby, so we are going through with it, and obviously hoping it won't turn out to be cancer.

I Just Couldn't Do It!

2007-11-29T08:46:00.001-06:00

Anyone who knows me knows I don't like the cold weather.
Today was day 3 of a cold snap....the basic temperatures aren't TOO bad, based on winter (I think it was about -20C this morning), but the wind bites pretty hard. (It's ranged between -31 and -40C)
I got up this morning to do my papers (121 today), not feeling my best. Got dressed and dragged my butt out there, in a parka, wool socks, boots, gloves, ski mask type hat. Drove to the pick up location. No papers. So I climbed back into the car to wait, still not feeling great. I sat there for about half an hour, maybe a bit more, before the truck came and dumped off the bundles....11 bundles of 10, 1 bundle of 11. I shakily got out of the van and went to load them up into my vehicle...got about 4 bundles loaded and just stopped and stared at them for a minute. I was so cold and miserable I couldn't even think. Even dressed as I was, even having sat in the car, my toes and fingers were in deep pain from being frozen.
I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't. So I unloaded the 4 bundles again, called the office and left a message that I was sick. Came home and sent an e-mail to my boss-of-the-week, letting him know I had called in sick, and asking for a smaller route instead, for future days, as cold, timing, snow, and health have been causing problems for me, mostly in terms of finishing on time.
I sat at the computer for an HOUR....and was still frozen. So I filled the tub with water as hot as I could stand (which is pretty hot, I might add) and hopped in. I soaked for at least half an hour....and when I got out, I was STILL frozen in the middle!
It is now 4 hours since I got home, 2 1/2 hours since the bath. I am still a bit chilly, exhausted beyond description, stiff jointed, my muscles are fatigued and sore....and I didn't even DO anything!
I was talking with Husband about how my job (which I have been doing on and off for at least 5 years, minus maternity leave and several weeks of time off due to injury of a wrist and stitches in an ankle)just doesn't seem to be working for me anymore. I used to enjoy it, now I dread it every day. He gave me an option....with a big contract he got recently, if I forego getting my clunker of a car in the spring, then as soon as he gets paid for this contract, I can quit. I am thinking this will be a good idea....I will get full nights of sleep instead of a short sleep plus a nap, and I will have that extra time to work on keeping the house the way it should be and to spend more time with the kids and Husband....and I think it will definitely reduce my fatigue level, boost my health, likely help my mood and my interactions with others....all in all, I'm thinking it would be worth it to stay a one-car-family for awhile longer, in trade for my sanity and health, and focus on being a stay-at-home mom full-time for awhile.
I hope he gets paid quickly.

I Forgot!!!!

2007-11-26T06:41:00.000-06:00

I just realised, thanks to an e-mail from a friend, that I never posted about how the show went! Oops!
The show went really well. We had 304 people in the audience, and it seemed to be well received, based on the comments people got afterwards.
Daughter and her friends did a wonderful job as the "Kidz Chorus" and have begged to be allowed to do something like this again. I wholeheartedly agree....they were a great addition to the show and did such an amazing job.
We older folks had a great time, too, and other than the fact that the lighting guys had no clue how to run the lights properly, despite the technical run through the night before, I think it went forward without a hitch. It certainly flew by, time wise! We reached the intermission, and as we were changing, were panicking, thinking maybe we had forgotten a song or something. It was an absolute blast, and my double quartet did a great job of "Silent Night"....my debut as a tenor (I am a lead in the chorus).
Coming up in a few weeks, we (the chorus) are singing at a seniors' home and at the Rotary Carol Festival....it's too bad that one or more of our double quartet will not be coming, or we would have been singing a song at the home! Oh well....maybe the next performance.
I had a few parts where I was out front, ahead of most of the chorus. It was a lot of fun. My first part was as a drunk person hanging out with others in a pub. Considering that is soooooo far from my reality, it was a real hoot, swaggering and swaying as we sang "Oom-Pah-Pah". The second part, right after, I was an orphan, again part of a small group, singing "Where Is Love".

Now....HOW ABOUT THOSE RIDERS!!!!!!!! Woo-hoo!!!!!! We went to a Grey Cup watching party at church last night, where they had it projected on the basement wall and big screens in the sanctuary. Pot luck supper and football. :)
We were hooting and hollering and cheering and groaning....it was a real blast. We were a little concerned at the beginning, and it was a very close game in the end (and for those who don't know, there is a HUGE ongoing rivalry between the Bombers and Roughriders, so the fact they were playing each other for the Grey Cup was excitement enough to start with!), but we sure are proud of our team! They played their hearts out and it paid off. :)
Husband already has his ticket for Grey Cup next year, so all of you out East, get ready, because we are COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Tonight's The Big Night, Julius! Tonight's the Biiig Night!

2007-11-17T08:51:00.000-06:00

I always loved the bird saying that particular line in the original "Nutty Professor", the one with Jerry Lewis.
And tonight IS the big night! Tonight Daughter and I take the stage and perform our hearts out for an audience that could be as large as 1000, I think. I can't remember how many seats the theatre has, and I don't know how many tickets were sold and/or how many people are buying them at the door. I do know there will be 4 people in the audience who I sold tickets to. And with 40-something other members of the chorus, plus parents of the "Kidz Choir" (and grandparents, relatives, etc), there are bound to be at least 150, at the most pitiful. (And I highly doubt it will be that small of an audience.)
Daughter is kind of nervous, especially after last night's technical run-thru where she discovered we are having spotlights and such pointed at us at various points. But they have worked so hard, and they are bound to steal the show from us so-called professionals. After all, who can resist a bunch of kids in pj's, holding stuffed animals, and singing really well? :)
I must admit I am not nervous....not yet, anyway. After 6 rounds of competition and 3 or 4 shows, plus the yearly performances at seniors' homes and the carol festival, plus the paid (and unpaid) performances we get now and then, nerves don't really play a big part anymore. We've practiced, we have beaten the songs and choreo and timing and staging to death by this point. We know it, it's ready, if we mess up, oh well. Besides, we also learn how to fake it when something goes wrong so hardly anybody notices if we do. And if they do notice, people are generally good enough to shrug it off and let it slide. It's going to be a lot of fun tonight. I love singing, and I have a little bit of time in the spotlight, though obviously not by myself. It's a big night for me. If we can pull off our little spotlight moment, a number of us have the chance to go on and perform again, together, in future performances, and potentially eventually go on to perform for events! This is apart from the big group, so as I said, this is major stuff for us (and me)....I love it!

What a perfect choice!

2007-11-09T18:16:00.000-06:00

I took Daughter to the movies today. We both wanted to see "Mr Bean's Holiday". Now, we went to that one because we liked his silly antics, and were in the mood for mindless giggles. So we arrived, bought our popcorn, junior mints, and drinks, and waited. Much to our surprise, it was the perfect movie for more than the reason we had expected...
The basic plotline is that Mr Bean wins a vacation to Southern France, things go wrong, as they always do, and his trip is much more complicated than he anticipated, but he is determined to get there.
We all know Mr Bean really doesn't say much more than a few muttered lines, most of his work is of the physical nature. But what about the other characters in the movie? To our delight, we found ourselves watching a movie that was essentially in French, with subtitles! For Daughter, who is in French Immersion, it was a real treat, because she got to watch a movie in French, but was still able to understand because her reading is sufficient enough to catch most of the subtitles. For me, I just love French, period, and didn't need the subtitles unless somebody spoke really fast or mumbled.
We both drove home happy, chatting back and forth in a mixture of English and French, with Daughter begging to be allowed to speak only French with me. I, of course, explained that wasn't going to work, since she didn't quite have the vocabulary to do so....but that we could certainly speak in French once in awhile, and eventually she would understand most, if not everything, I would say to her.
I'm sure Husband would appreciate our not always talking in French as well, as he is not really a languages sort of guy,so doesn't know a lot of French, and would probably start worrying that we were plotting a hostile takeover behind his back, in front of his face. LOL
My review of the movie, by the way...it's really good. If you like Mr Bean in any way, shape, or form, definitely see this film. It's cute, it's funny, and it really does have a storyline to it, beyond the getting to Southern France part.

I Did My Part

2007-11-08T09:10:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the provincial election. I put in my vote, and although my candidate did
not win in my riding, the party won the election. I am very happy about this. I am hoping this new premier will be able to keep his promises, and that things will improve in certain areas. At the very least, it is good to have some fresh ideas and new people to take a stab at running this wonderful place we live in. For it IS a wonderful place to be, it is beautiful....it just needs a bit of housekeeping to make it run even smoother. It was nice to see that so many people actually took the initiative this time to give their say. A lot more people voted this time than last time. It is good to see that people are getting out of the mindset of "why bother, my vote will not change anything" (my apostrophe isn,t working today)...in some ridings the results were very close that just a few people COULD have changed the results if they had simply chosen not to vote.
I have a full blown head cold today...got it from my poor family, 2 of which are down with bronchitis. I looooooove Vicks Vaporub. And Buckleys. Yes, Buckleys. I love that stuff. I seriously don't understand why everyone says it's so bad!
The kids are now home from school for a 5 day weekend. Luckily for me, it snowed last night. :) They are happily frolicking around the backyard with Dog while I get a few things done. When they tire of that, maybe I'll get them (hey! it's working again!) to play on the Wii or something, and then Daughter can watch Belle et la Bete, which she borrowed from the library. She's doing great with her French.
I have created a new plan for my days, to help myself get back on track (in combination with an herbal supplement that boosts your mood). If I can follow it, even loosely, I should hopefully have the house clean and running smoothly in a couple of weeks, and be feeling more rested, too. I get to be a kid and take naps after lunch. Hee hee.
Anyway, I'd better get going on following this plan of mine....running a bit off schedule. Today I hope to get the upstairs, maybe minus the kitchen, done before lunch. Wish me luck! :)

Sick and tired...

2007-11-06T07:21:00.000-06:00

of being sick and tired. I have not been feeling well for about a month now. Up and down, between colds, coughs, general feeling green, aches, pains, exhaustion...some days are better than others. Today is not one of them. Sometimes I think it would be easier if I had cancer or something, because then I'd have a definite SOMETHING to blame it all on....but then I retract that thought because nobody REALLY wants cancer.
I think this is my version of a mid-life crisis. I have no energy, no motivation to do the stuff I need to be doing, no "oomph". I don't enjoy doing papers anymore, I don't want to cook, clean, eat, or do anything at all. I want to sleep forever, or at least for about 3 days straight, not have to worry about the kids, Husband, Dog, or cats, not have to do ANYTHING. Every muscle and joint in my body hurts. Emotionally I'm feeling a little tender, but that's also related in part to the feeling sick, sore, and tired.
But I don't get to take a day off. It's not in the job description of Mom/wife/homemaker/substitute paper carrier. If I don't do the job, the world crumbles. Kids don't get fed/dressed/off to school, house doesn't get cleaned, dishes don't get washed, laundry doesn't get done, animals don't get cared for, people don't get their papers on time and I get the complaints when I return to work, even though it was somebody else doing the papers on the day they are complaining about. And of course if I don't work, I don't get paid, and as Husband has made fairly clear, if I want a rust bucket to drive around in the spring, I have to work forever. If I don't get the rustbucket, I still have to work until April. I feel trapped.
On top of home life is everything else. It's like that song on "Oklahoma".....I'm just a girl who can't say no. I am the one who takes Dog to obedience class, I help lead the singing on Sundays every few weeks, which means a practice on Wednesday nights, then being at church 9:30 Sunday for a run through, getting out at 12:30 (at which point we have a quick-ish lunch and then drive Daughter to her chorus practice at 2) and having to be back again at 5:30 for the evening service which goes until about 8. If Husband is working, I have to get Daughter to Sparks one night a week. The kids have gymnastics once a week. I have chorus practice for 3 hours each week. I am on the Board, so that's another evening gone each month. I recently put together the programme for the upcoming show. I have been asked to help with Membership, I am going to be helping with the fitness challenge at chorus. I'm getting to the point where I wish I could just tell everyone, including my household, to just screw it, and then just walk away. But that wouldn't be very nice, now would it? Oh well. Maybe one of these days I'll snap and they'll put me in a mental hospital where I can get some rest. Insanity never sounded so good.

We-Are-Fa-mily

2007-11-02T13:46:00.000-06:00

On a day like today, when I am coming down with something like the flu, it's always nice to find something happy to talk about. Today is just a short one. This summer, i was privileged to attend a family reunion. Coming from a small family (Mom, Dad, 4 grandparents, 1 uncle, 1 aunt, 2 cousins, 2 siblings, I had to marry into a big family to attend one. :) It was a lot of fun, and I got to be a part of the family photo. I will attach it for your pleasure. :)

Sorry if it's sideways....if I figure it out, I'll fix it later.

Dog Training 101

2007-10-30T09:54:00.000-06:00

Well, last night was our first class of dog training. It certainly was an experience, and explained a lot about our dog as well.
The first thing the teacher had us do was to curb our instinct and just let the dogs of the class interact with each other uninhibited. That was hard, especially when you end up with two dogs having a disagreement. And one of those dogs was mine.
Basically what was happening was that the dogs were all meeting and greeting each other, and establishing pecking order. There were 5 dogs in all. Lowest on the totem pole was a big german shepherd. She wouldn't even come into the class, the other dogs had her so scared. Next up was a golden retriever who basically lay down in submission, tail tightly under her, in front of all the rest. Third was a little "puddle" (half pug, half poodle....actually a cute dog) who didn't really assert herself too much, but wasn't cowering much either. Second place went to a bull terrier (remember Spuds Mackenzie?) who thought he was the top dog and wanted everyone to know it....but top dog went to our silly thing. She wasn't having any of it. I am ashamed to say my furry daughter gave a classmate a bloody nose on her first day of school. LOL.
My dog was top dog and she was not about to back down. Morris (second place) kept jumping up to try to get her to submit, trying to get his head above hers. She just jumped up right with him, placed her paws on his back, and smushed him into the floor with her feet until he rolled to the side in submission. Over and over this scene played, until finally he stayed down with her having one paw on his shoulder....but he did get a bloody nose in the process because they did have a brief growl-bite-and-scratch argument amidst the jumping and holding down for submission. It was VERY obvious that our dog was the dominant one, and everybody, dog, owner, and trainer could see it. Morris, however, is stubborn, and kept trying to argue the point, to no avail. *grin*
The fact that she sees herself (and has proven herself) as top dog explains a lot of her behaviour, both towards me and towards the cats. We had originally thought she was a bit thick, that as much as the cats yowled and growled and swiped and protested, she just kept trying to get them to play....now we see it's actually an ongoing battle for rank...the cats saying "we are dominant", and Dog saying "No you're not" and back and forth like little kids....
yesiam-noyou'renot-yesiam-noyou'renot-yessiam-noyou'renot. LOL
And with me, she still needs to learn that *I* am the Alpha female around here. Heh heh
She is doing quite well, considering, for just one 1-hour class. I can now get her to lie down on command for treats. It's a start. We still have to work on walking with a loose leash and the "leave it!" command. Next week, I believe we start work on keeping them from jumping up. I sure hope it works!
Well, back to house cleaning and such.
Oh! For those of you wondering, Daughter actually did not fall on her head. Her teacher did not see the accident, so had been given false info by the others. She was doing a flip on the monkey bars at school, flubbed the dismount and smashed her face about eyebrow level into the bar on her way down. Big goose egg the first night, swelling the next day that made her unable to open her eye the whole way, which has disappeared and left her with a very colourful black eye that almost goes all the way around, but not quite. With 4 teeth missing (just from being the age she is) and the black eye, we told her she should be a hockey player for Halloween. She was less than impressed. LOL

I Told You So

2007-10-26T14:43:00.000-06:00

Words every parent wants to say a million times over the years. But today is one of those days when we bite our tongues and give the sympathy that is so deeply needed. Daughter's teacher called a few minutes ago. During recess, Daughter was hanging upside down from the monkey bars and fell off.....onto her head. Husband has been phoned and sent off to pick Daughter up, because, according to her teacher, she has a nasty lump and is bruising up badly, and is really hurting.
I am worried. Very worried. Head injuries are not something to fool around with. I am hoping it will be nothing, but knowing it will be something....just how severe is the question.
She was told not to do that unless she was being watched/helped, until she got better at it. I guess she forgot. That's what happens at that age. So we will not say I told you so. Not this time. Not now, anyway.

I Wish

2007-10-25T20:42:00.000-06:00

I wish for 8 hours of sleep in a row each night. What a wonderful dream....what a bunch of dreams I could have in that period of time. My sleep deprivation level is catching up to me. The past 2 years of getting up at 3:30-4AM, 6 mornings a week except the occasional day plus statutory holidays is wreaking havoc on my system. I am running on 6 or less hours of sleep a night, sometimes as little as 3 if it's a rough night.
Go to bed earlier you say? No can do....in order to get the required 8 hours, I would have to go to bed and be asleep before my kids even go to bed. Get up later? Nope. Have to be up at 3:30-4AM in order to be done on time. Nap? Nice wish? I have a zillion and one things to do each day, most of which I never even get done anyway, and each time I accidentally doze off, that is just that much less that gets done that day. I very rarely can stay awake for a one-hour tv show anymore. I zonk out partway through, and that quality of sleep is really bad, leaves me even more tired.
So I dream of a few years from now. Our finances will be better off, my paper money will not be needed, maybe by that time the kids will all be in school full time and I will get a day job, and then I can sleep normal people hours. I can go to sleep at 10 or 11 and get up at 6 or 7, and actually feel like I ACCOMPLISHED something, like I actually touched that vast well of exhaustion that is getting deeper and deeper at the present time. That will be really nice.
I have to find a decent way of bringing in some money while I stay at home with Son that does not require selling for commission or whatnot, like Melaleuca, Pampered Chef, Regal, or any web-based schmuck job, telemarketer, or whatever. Maybe I can make casseroles in individual servings and sell them, like a caterer. I dunno. I gotta get some sleep.

Beer

2007-10-22T16:59:00.001-06:00

There's a title you don't expect to see in my blog, if you know me at all!
When I turned 18, I bought some "near beer" at the grocery store (and yes, the legal age where I was living at the time was 18). Hated it. Could not STAND it! Over the years I have not really been much of one for alcohol, sticking mostly to daquiris and pina coladas, fruity red wine, coolers. In the past few years, joining in with the pre-and post-competition parties with my roomies and chorus mates, I have expanded to Bailey's, Grand Marnier, and various other mixed drinks, but not on a grand scale, as my alcohol tolerance is pretty low. I tend to skip right over tipsy and go straight to "I don't feel so good". In a year, I probably have 4 or 5 drinks total, including competition time. But NOT beer.
Anyway, husband has joined a speech-makers group, where they learn about and practice making speeches. Husband, before I go any further, cannot have alcohol. At all. Not one drop. His liver is missing an enzyme that processes the alcohol, which meant his 18th birthday was spent in the ER...he had one beer with his friends and dropped like a stone at the table from instant alcohol poisoning.
Husband this week, needed a prop. Husband went to a liquor store and bought 2 cans of Molson Canadian cool shot! He is obviously never going to drink them, and I was somewhat curious as to why it is so popular when, in my memory, it was so bad. So with his permission (and his promise not to have any major injuries requiring me to drive him to the ER while I am under the influence), I cracked one open. Smelled it. Hmm...smells like beer, but actually doesn't smell that bad. Poured it into a glass. Looks like...well....beer. Deep breath and take a sip. Hmm....it....actually wasn't too bad! I guess "near beer" (aka .5% beer) is quite different from the real thing. So I sit here, typing a blog about beer while I slowly drink it down. My conclusion is this: It's not as bad as I thought it was, by a long shot. To a certain extent, it's kinda good. If everyone I am with is having a beer (and I have a ride home with hubby who I KNOW can be trusted as a designated driver), I might have one, too....but just one. But it still isn't something i am going to make the effort to go out and GET. I would MUCH rather have my pina coladas and such. But beer has moved up a couple of notches in my esteem. Here's to you, beer. Don't get all proud of yourself, though....you still aren't THAT great. :)

Where IS Everybody?

2007-10-17T15:46:00.000-06:00

I have this neat little thing for my blog....it tells me how many people have checked out my blog on any particular day. My numbers have been extremely low lately. Everyone's off desperately trying to catch the last dregs of fall, I guess, before we head into the long, dark, cold weather. I don't blame them.
I've also noticed nobody is ever on Windows Live messenger, or very much on Facebook either (yes, i am addicted, but for the most part, I'm just continually looking to see what my friends are up to and see if i can reconnect with any other old friends).
As a stay-at-home mom who finds these ways of connecting with friends to be as refreshing as a drink of cold water, this leaves me high and dry....and awfully lonely. Some of you may say (and have in the past)that the friends that really matter are the ones you talk to on the phone and get together with on a regular basis....and to a certain extent, this is true....but I also have a lot of very close friends with very busy schedules, a crummy phone plan, and who live 3 provinces away. They are no less good friends, and these methods (Facebook, Windows Live, etc) help us stay in touch so that when I travel THERE or they travel HERE, we will not have to do a lot of time-wasting catching up and shock at how much the other person has changed, and can just go straight into the enjoying the visit, hanging out, and all that sort of stuff.
Well, when winter sets in and people start making their way back to communication on the computer, I'll be here for you all, just waiting. In the meantime, i think I need to go off, rest, and hope I stop feeling so green. (Have not been feeling well the past few days)
Oh, and for those Facebook people out there.....be careful....I've been scunnered by a few people's FunWall posts....some NASTY pics and videos out there!

How Can I?

2007-10-15T18:46:00.000-06:00

I know somebody. This somebody has in the past done something bad. This somebody promised me it was not going to happen again, I could trust this person. This somebody broke that trust once again, but tried to minimize it by explaining they had not done ALL that they had done before, just a portion of it.
How can I trust this person? This person has shattered my trust over and over, and I am in little pieces right now. I can't do this! I can't keep going through this over and over.
I KNEW something was up, something in the back of my mind said so, but I ignored it, put it aside as paranoia and blamed myself for doubting...and my little voice was right! I am so disappointed and hurt and angry and shattered and shaking....I can TOTALLY understand what can drive people to drink, to try to drown their sorrows. I, however, haven't got the money to try.
So much for climbing out of my depressive slump. I give up.

What would you do?

2007-10-14T17:00:00.001-06:00

What would you do if you theoretically had a secret....something that in a sense you wished to tell somebody, but at the same time dreaded anybody finding out? Would you tell somebody and risk the consequences? Would you just keep it to yourself and hope nobody finds out? Do you hope somebody finds you out to get it off your chest, or do you do whatever it takes to keep it a secret so everybody stays happy and nobody gets mad?
Just a point to ponder, get some comments flowing maybe.

Absolute Humiliation

2007-10-13T12:53:00.000-06:00

I have never been so humiliated in my whole life.
I woke up at 3:30 to do a 142 paper route, came home, climbed into a hot bath and almost fell asleep in there, prevented only by Son continually yelling through the door. Still feeling depressed, more so after staring into the mirror for a long time before I got in the tub.
Went to a ladies' breakfast at church....they were drawing names for secret sisters today. Anyway. I arrive, and sit down at a table with 5 or 6 others. Some lady i don't even KNOW comes bouncing up, and in a huge voice says "SO! I hear you are expecting?!?!?"
-No, I quietly answer.
-No?
-No! I'm not!
-Are you sure?
-YES! I am NOT pregnant!
-Oh! Well, somebody told me you were!
-No! I'm NOT PREGNANT!
-Oh. Well...I was told you were!
-*silent shaking of head as I try to control my emotions*

That has pretty much shattered my day.
A) somebody looked at me and said "hmm, I do believe that woman is pregnant!"
B) That somebody felt the need to TELL somebody I was pregnant without asking me first
C) This lady who she told has a very loud voice and drew a lot of attention
D) This lady didn't have the grace to back down and try to preserve some shred of dignity for me, and somehow felt the need to argue with me about something I really ought to know about, after all, I do live in this body and know what is and is not possible.
E) In order for her to keep at the topic, I obviously look bad enough for people to feel they are justified in trying to convince me I am pregnant.
Definitely NOT what I needed today. Couldn't feel much worse if I tried. Feel so bad I even feel too bad to cry. Couldn't cry even if i wanted to.

Mayday! Mayday!

2007-10-12T17:17:00.000-06:00

Aaand my old nemesis kicks in. Hellooooo depression. Not sure why, not sure how, since I KNOW i wrote a very happy post earlier today....but right now I am super depressed and lonely and just HUMMING with the emotion that comes with it and has no name.
I am trying to stay "sane" for the kids' sakes, as it is just them and I for the evening as Husband is off making our millions. But little things bother me, I get really easily annoyed by them when I get like this. I'm not a danger to them....I just might yell needlessly at them over some little thing, and then of course they will be sad and I will feel a million times worse.
Maybe I will crawl into bed as soon as their bedtimes come and go, maybe with sleep it will at the very least ease up so I don't hit a crisis level. I hate this.
Does anybody else ever get like this? I feel like people must think I'm some annoying freak when this comes on.
And for all your sakes, I will stop typing now, because we all know how I will ramble, complain, whine, and self-depreciate in this state.
Hang in there....this plane is going down. Hopefully the landing gear will pop out before I crash and burn.

Me and my Tunes

2007-10-12T11:58:00.000-06:00

For my birthday, I received an iTunes card. Until yesterday I had no clue how to use it, and would only have been able to download them to my computer anyway....but Husband had won himself an iPod awhile back, and then got one through his parts supplier. He lost the smaller of the two, but it finally turned up, months later, yesterday, between the bed and the wall. This meant I now had an iPod. A little, itty bitty square one in my favourite colour....green. This is a marvel to me. This is technology that goes beyond me. What can I say, I'm kinda simple when it comes to technology.
In any case, I fired up the computer, figured out (through Husband) how to get songs with the card, and downloaded for myself 19 songs (on a $20 card).
Husband laughs at me because my choices were incredibly diverse, and so when I plugged my iPod into some speakers so everyone could hear, some songs were a bit of a shock, going from one to another (as in, a slower song would play, and then jump into a really fast, techno-beat, run on a treadmill kind of song.).
But I am thrilled with my choices, having procured songs from some of my favourite artists, and in the majority of them, they were songs I was looking for specifically. So today, as I scrubbed down the counters and filled the dishwasher, I boogied, sang, and in one case, cried, my way through my songs. The ones I chose, for those of you who are curious, are:
Amy Grant- Sing Your Praise to the Lord
- House of Love
- In a Little while
- Got to Let it Go
Michael W Smith- Cry for Love
UB40- I Can't Help Falling in love
- Red, Red Wine
Techno-exercise versions of-Wonderful World
-Somewhere Over the Rainbow
-We Will Rock You
-Puttin' On the Ritz
-I Just Called to Say I Love You
Unknown (to me)-Bing Bang
-Come On Baby, I Want To Party
Tim McGraw- Please Don't Take The Girl
- Live Like You Were Dying
Crazy Frog- We Wish You a Merry Christmas
- Jingle Bells
- Last Christmas

So, as you can see, I've been having fun. :)
Daughter is practicing for her appearance in our Sweet Adelines show in November (or will be when she gets home from school), I'm singing my stuff. Son is singing his little songs as he plays, and Husband sings along to his iPod songs, so when we all get going, I'm sure it's a horrible collision of sounds to anyone going by, if we had windows open.
I listened to my songs while I delivered papers on the two routes I had this morning....it was kind of nice to have an orchestra following me around. LOL. The only problem was that I couldn't sing along, both because it would sound really weird to the average passerby...and very few people want to hear somebody belting ou a song on their doorstep between 4 and 7AM.
I have re-started my weight-loss efforts today, with my head hung in shame. I am starting 3 pounds lighter than when I originally started in May....but about an inch thicker everywhere. Not a good thing. I haven't been getting to the gym lately, because if I did, Husband would have to get Daughter up and off to school on his own, and I would only see her when she got home from school. I have bought myself some of those cookie thins you see Colin Mochrie advertise on TV (those Oreo Thins and Chips ahoy ones), so hopefully if I'm going to snack, I can eat one of those and be satisfied until the next meal...and of course I need to watch my portions and drink a lot of water. The goal I have made with my friend is to lose 1 pound a week. No excuses. Following this plan, I will be where I am supposed to be in exactly a year, just in time to buy new clothes for my trip to Montreal and to wow all my old friends there with the new and improved me. :) At the very least, I want to fit in my old university stuff, which was size 12-13 at the most.
Well, off to let Dog in and set her loose on her latest Dino Bone. What an amazing thing THAT is! It's basically a cow leg bone. They don't splinter, they last her about a month of HEAVY gnawing (she is the sort of dog that can chew straight through a gigantic rawhide type and eat the whole thing in an hour), and keep her from getting into trouble, as without one, she will chew absolutely ANYTHING....couches, deck benches, plastic ANYTHING, stuffed animals.......

Mary Had a Little Lamb

2007-10-08T18:16:00.000-06:00

With mint sauce.....or at least *I* did.
We decided, since we had been eating a lot of turkeys and chickens lately, to go for something different. So we trotted off to Superstore after a harrowing morning involving blowing a tire on a 100kph road and remembering that our jack had bitten the dust a few months back and we had forgotten to replace it. More on that in a minute...
anyway, we went to Superstore and bought a few things, including splurging on a small box of raw shrimp for Husband to get creative with, and the smallest leg of lamb I could find....approximately $15.50. Took all our groceries to the cash, where we were asked if we would like our PC points checked. What a wonderful discovery THAT was....we had forgotten that we had been collecting these points, and our $61.43 grocery bill suddenly became $1.43, because the points can be used in increments of $20. And we still have points left. Woo hoo!
The lamb was delicious. I haven't had lamb in at least a few years, and the way I cooked it was fabulous....put a few cuts into the meat, sprinkle the surface with lemon juice. Rub in a clove of minced garlic. Mix together 1 tsp of mint leaves, 1 tsp of basil, and some pepper. Rub this mix into the lamb. Place in dutch oven, on a small rack (toaster oven broiler pan rack works well), add about 3 cups of water to the bottom.Put the cover on. Bake at 325F for about 2 1/2 hours (it was about 4 pounds). It made not only a delicious, moist roasted leg, but made a fabulous gravy, too. Add mint jelly and it was a true feast, alongside our mashed sweet potatoes, mixed vegetables, salad, and pumpkin pie with whipped cream.
The shrimp, by the way, was made into a fabulous garlic shrimp and mushroom (and carrot, onion, and sticky rice) stir fry. Yum!
Now, back to our harrowing experience the other day. Good Samaritans are few and far between these days, and apparently so are people who know the protocol for passing stranded vehicles. We waited about half an hour for the tow truck to find us and put our spare on for us. In that time, only ONE truck stopped to see if they could help (and the poor guys discovered their jacks weren't working properly, either). Everybody else just kept on going, despite the fact it was blatantly obvious what the problem was. I guess we must be pretty scary. Ha ha.
Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE went roaring by at 100kph, including the 18-wheelers, which create quite a back breeze, let me tell you! The poor tow truck guy was getting a little nervous.....you are SUPPOSED to slow down to 60kph when passing something like that. And even if you ignore that blatant disregard for the law, it might be nice if you at least CHANGED LANES so you aren't breezing by 40kph too fast, inches away from the poor stranded people or the tow truck driver who is just trying to do his job, changing a tire on the driver's side. Where are the police when you need them? Give these people the fines they deserve....maybe people will get the hint and think a little bit more about the reason for these laws, and even if they don't, will at least follow the laws so they won't have to pay the fine again. I can't wait for cars to have a special chip in them that can read some sort of device that tells what the speed limits are, and will not allow the cars to go any faster than that. It would not only make things a lot safer, but would certainly reduce the issues the police have to deal with on a daily basis, including the horrible crashes you read about so often where speed was a factor.
Anyway...life goes back to normal tomorrow....Daughter goes back to school, hopefully we get our tire changed, finally, I will be back to delivering papers after a few days off with a back injury, and also back to cleaning, sorting, laundry, taking care of Son, and trying desperately to get a handle on Dog.

Let's All Get Training!!!!

2007-10-04T06:57:00.000-06:00

This week has been full of suggestions for certain members of the family to get training.
Daughter is getting extra help at school to help her catch up on her French. This is a good thing, teaches her humility and a taste of the real world where not everything comes easily. I'm having fun brushing up on my French by reading her French bedtime stories. Soon we will try some French TV, maybe play the French version of some of her favourite DVDs, too.
Dog needs to go for training, too. At the end of the month. Obedience training. Having had no training in her first year of life, and being such a big dog, it's causing problems. She's a wonderful dog, but she is way too enthusiastic about....everything. She wants to play. Always. All day. Every day. With great energy. She jumps up and chases the cats, thinking they are playing tag. She jumps up to the table and steals food, she has destroyed plant pots, watering cans, a broom, all sorts of things in the backyard because she chews on them. She still doesn't have the hang of housetraining,and specializes in the submissive pee every time she gets in trouble as well. She needs to learn to listen and come when called, so we can let her loose in an off leash dog park and let her fly and burn off some of that energy. She is so eager for praise and attention, but her boundless energy has nowhere to go and she hasn't learned to control it yet. Should be fun for all of us, learning how to do things right.
Son's teacher has recommended that he go for speech therapy...he changes the first letter of each word, among other things, which makes him very hard to understand and frustrates him as much as it does everyone else that he can't get across what it is he wants to say. I agree with her wholeheartedly....to a certain extent, you never want to have to take your child for therapy....but if this will work, and he is able to get his point across more often, I think it will make life a whole lot easier for everyone. We shall see.

Marketplace

2007-10-04T06:36:00.000-06:00

A witch hunt...that's what it was, purely and simply a witch hunt. And i am MAD!!!
Last night, my father in law phoned and told us to watch Marketplace. So we did. And as we watched, we just stared in shock and horror as they aired a show they titled with some catchy name like "Is the Computer Tech Ripping You Off?"
The premise of the show was that they set up hidden cameras and broke a very small part in a computer. They then called in 10 in-home computer techies, including a Doctor Dave tech who Husband actually knows. They had these young guys watching the footage, and commenting on the service and all, and, well, I could have just slapped them silly...they tore every single tech apart, and some of the things they said were either dead wrong, or made no sense. For example, this problem, they said, was easy to diagnose....so they tore a strip off the techs who got it wrong. Problem is, in the space of time in which these techs were making their diagnosis, in some cases, the wrong diagnosis was understandable. What they did NOT consider was that human error does occur, and given a bit more time, these techs most likely would have realised they were wrong and looked some more. For the record, our guy got the diagnosis right.....but they made him look bad by putting in some sound byte where he was making some noise. I don't know if he had been singing to himself or whatever, it really doesn't matter....they made it look like he was making strange noises to "talk" to the computer. Whatever.
Anyway, the biggest thing that bothered me had to do with the prices. I don't know what their source of prices was, but they were way off. Maybe they were looking at one of these cheapie websites where you get what you pay for, and there is no guarantee, no warranty, nothing. I don't know. But in every case, they said the Tech was overcharging the customer. Not once did they consider that the tech has to make a living. Not once did they consider that part of the cost was labour. Our guy tried to sell the customer a part that was much bigger in memory size, which, of course, did cost more than the smaller part....it held something like 4X more space or something. He didn't have the same size as the computer originally had. Why? Because that size part is hard to find, it's pretty much been phased out. The tech tried to explain that, but the narrator made it look like he was trying to screw the customer.
Basically, the whole show set out to prove that computer techs are out to scam you.They were even compared to used car salesmen! That's a low blow, and totally untrue.
Now, I am sure there are SOME techs who are out to gouge the customer and don't care about service and customer satisfaction, but I know for a FACT that there are a whole heck of a lot more who are NOT, and who are now going to suffer because of this show. Now we are going to get less calls, and a lot of the ones who DO call are going to harass Husband and accuse him of overcharging and all the rest.
Sure, it's good and cheap (comparatively) to buy the part and fix it yourself....if you can do it, all the more power to you.....but for the people who don't know how, and NEED someone to do it FOR the, come on! You HAVE to factor in labour and a small markup so the tech can feed his/her family!!!!!! We aren't out to get people. We are NOT scamming people. At least in the case of our company, our prices are fair, you get guarantees and warranties, our techs are TRAINED and know what they are doing....and if they make a mistake, they make it right!

My five rules for naming a kid

2007-09-21T09:23:00.000-06:00

A friend of mine posed a challenge....he listed 10 questions, had each person pick one, and they must write a blog on this topic.
My chosen topic is the 5 rules for naming a child.
1. It must not rhyme with the kid's last name. This is just cruel. It doesn't allow the child any dignity....I mean come on....Mara O'Hara.....you're just asking for a kid with a complex.This child will be teased forever. A friend of mine even had a name change after she got married, as she would have ended up as Suzanne Vann.
2. No cute, play on word, or just plain weird names. Again, where is the dignity. Dweezle Moon Unit....Candy Cane....Mary Christmas....Cookie Crumble...Soda Pop Johnston....nobody is going to take you seriously. Probably this is why I was not allowed to name Son as Christopher Robin Johnston. I thought it would be cute, and I like Winnie the Pooh....but of course Husband vetoed that right off the bat. *grin*
3. If at all possible do NOT name the child after a family member....a father, grandfather, great grandmother twice removed. NOT a good idea. This is how rompin', stompin' family feuds begin because no matter how hard you try to justify the choice, SOMEBODY is going to get offended, and then someone else gets offended at that person who originally got offended, and....well....you get the idea.
4. Don't make the name too long. Unless you plan to shorten the name, or allow the child to pick one and ignore the others, do not name your child William Alexander Timothy Franklin Toby Aloysius Johnston the Third. Even William Alexander is a bit long when you think of the poor kid trying to learn to write his name in Kindergarten. If you MUST do this, then allow your child to go by Will, Bill,or Alex at school.
5. Do not close your eyes, open a name book, waggle your finger in the air while fanning the pages, driving your finger down and naming your child whatever name comes up....you will end up with a boy named Theresa Engelbert Johnston, or a girl named Buddy Bertha Johnston....use the book, sure, but look at what you are doing....and make sure you have a name for both a girl AND a boy (or plurals if it's multiples), because even if you go ahead and "find out" what you're having.....the doctor could be wrong. It happens. Rarely, but it happens.
Good luck to all of you out there actually being in a position of having to choose a baby name. And congratulations.

Was Blind, but Now I See

2007-09-18T14:43:00.000-06:00

No, this isn't a rendition of "Amazing Grace"....
this past weekend, I got myself a new pair of glasses after, oh, probably 8 years. My old ones were really scratched, and my eyesight had worsened. We finally had enough to go to the optometrist,and get new glasses if needed, thanks to our home equity line of credit. I had no idea it was as bad as it was, though. I suspect my recent headaches and tiredness had something to do with the glasses. I picked them up on Saturday afternoon, took off the old ones and put on the new ones, and my reaction was to almost yell "Whoa!" aloud in the store (I didn't, though, just mentally thought so and then picked up Husband and spent 30 minutes trying to impress on him the difference....and to my frustration discovered he is unimpressable)...the difference was shocking....I could SEE!!!! I thought I could see okay in the old ones, but comparatively.....whoa! You know those Claritin Clear ads? Yeah. That was the difference between the two sets of glasses...it was as if I had been walking around in a heavy fog for a long time, and didn't even realize it because that was simply what I lived with, day by day, and it was a lot better than my eyesight without the glasses. So with these new ones, it's like popping new eyeballs in every morning....I can see better in the dark (except today, and that's a different story), I can see a LOT farther, things are MUCH clearer, colours are so much more vivid....it's AMAZING! I got new frames, so look a little different. I took a pic with the webcam, which didn't work out very well, but I will post it here anyway, to give a general idea anyway, until a better photo can be taken...

As I said....bad picture.
For those who are wondering about my comment about not being able to see today (and even if you aren't), this morning I was downtown, delivering papers in a not so great area of town. I was in a seniors' apartment building, on the 6th floor, just having pushed the elevator button...power goes out. Pitch blackness. I'm a little nervous....strange building, I don't belong there (aside from delivering the papers), I can't see, and I can't get out because the elevator won't work (that, and I still had 5 floors to deliver to). Lights came back on, I continue. I leave the building into....you guessed it....pitch blackness. And I mean PITCH BLACKNESS! The apartment complex had a generator to light the halls. Once outside, that light cannot be seen. There are no street lamps, no traffic lights, no house lights, no car lights. I know there are people walking around, but I can't see them. And it's a bad neighbourhood. I decide I'll try to fumble my way through the route (how I was going to figure out what the addresses were, I don't know), take a few steps into unknown territory....stumble because I can't see the dips and cracks and holes in the sidewalk....I can hardly see my hand in front of my face! Decide this is not worth it, turn around and stumble my way back to where I KNOW my car is parked. Feel it up until I find the key hole, get in, sit for a few minutes, and wonder what to do...I had to be home early so Husband could go off to a meeting, it was a new route, I had no idea where the addresses were, no idea how long it would take, and couldn't even do the other apartment building because that would require an electronic keycard which, you guessed it, would require electricity on the outside of the building. So I drove around a bit. Power was out in most of the city. I had a grand total of half an hour where I could see enough to read house numbers if I walked right up to the houses from the first scraps of dawn until I had to quit and get home. I managed to do (including the seniors' complex) 52 papers out of 116. Not good. But at least they (at the newspaper office) were understanding and ready to deliver them for me.
On the way home, the radio said that 60% of Saskatchewan had the power failure. Somebody must have messed up really badly somewhere!
Tomorrow I have a different route to cover. More apartments, but I think I've done it before....and this time I'm hunting down my flashlight before I leave home! I'd rather look like a burglar than be mugged by one!

Dying a slow death

2007-09-14T13:54:00.001-06:00

That is what this blog seems to be doing. I started off as a real keener, posting every day, even if what I was posting was more diary than public interest.
But I have been busy....and distracted....and tired. Very, very, very, very tired.
The Dog has been keeping us busy, on again, off again with cooperating with the whole crate idea. When she's agreeable, she's in within a few seconds, but on days when she is not, she whines, howls, pees all over, runs crazily all over the house, bouncing wildly off furniture (and unfortunately several times off Son or Daughter), and it takes two of us literally picking her up and shoving her in to get her to go. And when the Dog happens to be over 60 pounds, this is no small feat! If I'm alone, I have had to abandon the effort and stick her outside on her rope, which results in her tearing the screen off the back door, breaking plant pots, and making a horrible ruckus what with her whining and barking and throwing herself at the door and scratching at it. But I can't just ignore her or she makes a mess on the carpets in the five seconds I am out of the room. Even if she's just gone.
Still getting up at 4AM to do papers and go to the gym before getting Daughter ready for school. The last few days have been absolute torture, though. I have had a never-ending headache and been so tired I could sleep all day and night if given the chance. To be quite honest, it's been so bad that I haven';t achieved nearly as much as I should have this week. Take today, for example...got to bed last night around 10:30. Up this morning, 2 routes, gym, home by 7:30. Get daughter off to the school bus for 8. Grab a cup of coffee, sit down for a few minutes to drink it and watch Fat Albert (the old 30 minute cartoon version) before starting on the daily cleaning...3 hours later, hubby is waking me up from a VERY uncomfortable position in the chair (luckily I finished the coffee before going unconscious). Took the Dog for a walk, came home, made lunch, ate it, unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, took out the compost, and tidied the bathroom, and now I sit here quite honestly ready and willing to go to bed and sleep until tomorrow (it's 2PM). Husband has been complaining of the headache and fatigue since last night. We've got a CO2 monitor and everything, so it isn't that. The only thing I could find on the internet was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, of which I have quite a few symptoms.....but I reserve judgement on that one for the time being, as I have a tendency to become slightly hypochondriacal.
Anyway, I will try to keep up with this blog a bit better, but if I don't....I'm probably asleep.

Back To School

2007-09-03T10:07:00.000-06:00

Well, time has once again flown. According to the date on my last blog, I was away from this page for about a week and a half. It's been a very busy time.
The Dog is settling in quite nicely, though she is incredibly energetic and enthusiastic in her love for everyone and everything. The Cats are not nearly as impressed with the new addition and take every possible opportunity to try to explain this fact to the dog, who is, very amusingly, absolutely clueless. The harder The Cats hiss, spit, yowl, growl, and slash, the more she thinks they are playing and so tries to get them into a rousing game of tag. Tail wagging, barking, lunging playfully, running away and back, tongue hanging halfway to the floor....if it weren't for the fact that The Cats are in such obvious fury, it would be absolutely hilarious to watch for hours.
We are crate training, as she is a year old with no training of any kind. This is a tough one, as she tends to whine and cry for the first little bit after being put in the crate. She settles down and seems quite happy to be there after the first little bit, and the accidents are nearly nil, since we can get her straight out of the crate and into the yard, and when she is not in the crate, it's because we can be right there with her and hopefully catch the signs and get her out before the dreaded squat....but those sad eyes and the squeaking when she'd rather not be in there is heartbreaking. But I am told that it will be worth it for all in the end, once she is trained enough to be allowed access in and out without having to close the crate door, and it becomes, simply, her "space".
We will be taking her for a major outing today to a Duckie Race....they are dropping 25000 duckies in the river. We paid for 4 of them. We realize our chances are pretty slim, but it sure would be cool to have one of our duckies place in the top 20.
Daughter is back in school now, and loving French Immersion Grade 1 with a passion, which is wonderful to see. Son starts 3 year old preschool this Wednesday, and is excited about that as well, and for ease of remembering, it also happens that both kids' teachers have the same last name.
I'm enjoying having Daughter in school all day. I love her dearly, but it's a lot easier to only have one child (well, one child, two cats, one dog, and an overgrown kid) to worry about for 8 hours. Once The Dog settles down (she gets fixed this week, too, which I'm told will help *crossing fingers* to settle her down), hopefully it will be easier to focus on keeping the house clean and other stuff, without having to constantly keep an eye on her or clean up after her.
I have been going to the track lately, to jog, since the weight room has been shut down for yearly maintenance. I haven't been going as often as I should have, but I am quite proud of myself when I do go. I am the slow jogger on the track....I pass the walkers about once every 3 laps. The regular joggers pass me about every 2 laps. But all the same....I do 10 laps each time (plus one of fast walking to stop my legs from running away with me on automatic), and each lap takes about 2 minutes. They posted the length of each lap, and so on Saturday, I apparently jogged 2.2 km in 20 minutes. Not bad, I suppose. A friend of mine started a routine where he was going to record how far he ran on his treadmill each day in an effort to "run" as far as Vancouver. If I were to do that to my dream destination, it would take me halfway to forever.....but it would be an incentive to go to the track, I suppose. I went twice this past week, so i jogged 4.4 km. That doesn't get me very far. If I go by Google maps, to get from my house to Montreal is 2975km. At that rate, it will take me a little less than 1353 days at the track. If I go as often as I intend to, it will take me almost 270.5 weeks. A little over 5 years. Ouch. Oh well, maybe in time I will increase my laps and thereby reduce the time.

Presenting the New Baby

2007-08-24T08:13:00.000-06:00

It has been a very eventful time over the last....13 days? Wow! It's been awhile!
I managed to get the house looking relatively decent before my parents arrived. Daughter had an absolute blast at camp and wants to go next year. I celebrated my 8th anniversary on the 14th, though we didn't CELEBRATE until the 18th, when we did dinner, a movie, and a hotel for the night while the Grandparents babysat (though we had a horrid thunderstorm that knocked out the power after about 30 minutes in the hotel, so it was a very DARK night)....it also knocked our satellite dish off center so we now need a tech to come fix it so we can watch TV.
Son turned 3 and celebrated with two of his little friends...nothing too complicated....out in the backyard, they were allowed to run free (under supervision, of course), blowing bubbles, playing in the sand, and so on. Then it was cake and ice cream....then playing.....then presents....then playing....then goodie bags, and everybody went home. Then we, as a family, went to Chuck E Cheese's, and then to Burger Baron for some REAL food, and rented "Barnyard" for an evening movie.
Showed my parents all over the city and some places outside the city, so they now have a good idea of where they might like to look when they are buying a house next year. As long as they can sell their house in Victoria, they could probably have any house they wanted and have change to spare, which is always nice when preparing for retirement. They had a blast with the kids and look forward to being around them more permanently, especially since this visit, Christopher was twice as old as when they last saw him.
They went home early Wednesday morning. We did a ton of errands that morning, and then headed over to check something out, after checking this particular place out several times, once with my parents, to no avail.
And now, let me introduce to you my new baby. Her name is Mabel. She weighs about 57 pounds (and needs to weigh around 70). She has black hair and big brown eyes. Here is a recent picture:

She is around a year old, and based on her weight and certain behaviours, had not had a fun time of things before the Humane Society got her. She is a total sweetheart and a real suck. She loves everyone and everything and can't understand why the cats do not share her love. She doesn't bark, wants to please EVERYONE....but has absolutely no training whatsoever, not behaviour training, not housebreaking, nothing....so we have a lot of work to do to keep her off the counters, keep her from jumping up to kiss everyone, obviously to train her NOT to go on the carpets....but she is so eager to please that once the adjustment period is over and she settles down a bit (and is more sure of herself....she has a VERY high guilt level), I'm thinking she will be relatively easy to train.
The Humane Society had listed her as a Rottweiler/Pyrenese cross, but when we took her to the vet, they told us no, she was certainly not....she was more likely a german shepherd/ labrador cross, which is even better. And I tend to believe the vet over the HS, because through past experience, I know the HS often makes mistakes like that, and worse.....that and the previous owner only had her for a few days so really didn't know much about her.
So that is my new, sucky baby who wants attention every second, and is going to need it whenever in the house, even if she IS confined to the downstairs right now while we do crate training and housebreaking.
Well, off to finish my busy day of hanging out with Mabel and (yay) running my newly fixed dishwasher. Maybe I'll even get to read a little bit while puppy is resting (if she will ever settle down enough to rest).

Busy week.....getting busier

2007-08-11T07:36:00.000-06:00

This week seems to have flown by at an alarming rate. I am trying to get the house presentable before Wednesday night, when my parents arrive, but as all of you with know, this is an exercise in futility. I spend 2 hours cleaning and sorting toys in Son's room....15 minutes later, you'd never know I'd been in there. At least I seem to have finally removed the mystery sludge from the floor under the kitchen table. I'm terrible at getting to the point where I can legitimately mop, so the sludge was starting to breed. It's nice to see the pattern on the floor again.
We have a ton of things that we just don't use anymore. I have tried and tried to sell them, but nobody wanted them, so now we have a pile of stuff that is simply getting donated to Value Village. That should help clear things out a little. I posted a Dora flip-out couch and a Pooh bear foam armchair on my Freecycle group....for THOSE I got a huge response...as of this morning (because some people respond even after the item is gone, I had something like 20 people wanting the couch, and 10 wanting the chair.
We had a big scare on Tuesday night....I was just on my way to my Prairie Gold rehearsal, when I got called back home. Son had been jumping on a bed. My little monkey, of course, fell off and bumped his head. Got lethargic, woozy, unable to stand or walk properly, said the back of his head hurt. So off to the ER we go. We got into the room right away.....and then waited almost 3 hours for the doctor to actually come in. By that point, Son was bored to death, hyper, and completely fine.
In mid-September, we will have another addition to the family, which will require a bit of preparation as well. We are excited and impatient, and I have already started buying a few things that we will need.
Now I must go get ready for the day....or I guess the REST of the day....I have already been up for almost 4 hours and done 3 paper routes, and drunk a cup of strawberry steamer from 7-Eleven (yummmmmmmm). Now I have to change so i can sell hot dogs for a few hours as a Prairie Gold fundraiser.....then clean the downstairs.

My Famous Father

2007-08-06T15:12:00.000-06:00

This was supposed to go up last night, but the internet connection was down, so just pretend the following was posted Sunday night...
Once again, my Dad has been interviewed for a newspaper....I believe this is the second article, plus the radio interview, about his book.
I'm so proud of him. This is what the article says:

"John McKay/Times Colonist
[Pastor Bob Scott, the chaplain of the Langford Volunteer Fire Department, with his recently released novel, a book that’s noteworthy for an exciting plot written without profanity or gratuitous sex scenes.]

He believes in miracles
Mystery-writing chaplain encountered an answer to his prayers at a writers’ convention
BY LAUREL BERNARD
Bob Scott, a 60-year-old Langford resident, decided to write a mystery novel. He wrote it in a month, took it to a writers’ conference, got a 10-minute pitch interview with a New York publisher’s editorial director and, nine months later, had a three-book contract with royalties and a healthy advance cheque.

“It just amazes me that it happened the way it did,” Scott says. “I think I said, ‘Sure, thanks very much,’ and stood up, and the world just kind of started to spin.” How on earth, you ask, did he do it? It was easy, aspiring writers. All it took was a miracle.

Bob Scott, author of the just launched AdvertisingMurder from Avalon Books, is a former pastor of the Congregational Christian Churches in Canada and still preaches every Sunday at two seniors’ residences, West Shore Lodge and Alexander Mackie Lodge. He and his wife, Shirley, believe in the power of prayer.

They both prayed over the book project, especially when the manuscript was sent off to New York, although, as Bob Scott says, the prayer was more “your will be done, not a ‘give it to me.’ It always works for me.”

Initially, he says, “I wouldn’t say I was praying, ‘Dear Lord, make this a successful book.’ I was essentially going through the process to see what kind of suggestions I might get from an editor.” But Shirley certainly was praying “just for success” on the book, and Bob believes there’s a pattern in life.

I would say everything is part of the plan. I’ve been feeling it is part of the plan.”

Scott was born and raised in Montreal and, after getting a BA at what is now Concordia University, took his Master of Divinity at McGill. Three years after he became a minister, he went to a Billy Graham film.

“It made a change in my whole approach to my ministry and life and everything else. Over the course of the ministry from that period on — that would be 36 years this year — there were a number of things that took place in our lives that I would call miraculous.”

When he was living in Fernie, his son, then 18 months old, badly burned himself. He was hospitalized and doctors expected he’d have to endure many operations and skin grafts over the course of a long recovery. But five days later, after friends and his parents prayed and fasted, he was healing so quickly that the hospital was ready to send him home. He’s never had plastic surgery or skin grafts.

Then there was the operation Shirley was supposed to have. In the morning she was admitted into hospital and scheduled for surgery, but by day’s end, they’d sent her home. “The doctor said I was fine,” she says. Again, the Scotts and their friends had prayed for her to heal.

Bob, too, had a providential escape. One the reasons he started his book in 2003 was because he’d just received bad news: a bladder cancer diagnosis. It was discovered thanks to a mysterious and still undiagnosed infection, was treated and “within five months of the diagnosis, I was completely clean.” He’s been free of the disease for four years now.

Besides the power of prayer, you might argue the Scotts have also built up a lot of good karma. Shirley is a special-needs teacher’s aide at Pacific Christian School and, besides paid part-time work with Sands funeral services, Bob holds administrative positions with the Congregational Christian Churches in Canada and volunteers as secretary to the Colwood Rotary Club and chaplain to the Langford Volunteer Fire Department.

OK, but AdvertisingMurder’s success can’t have been that miraculous. Bob Scott probably spent years turning out manuscripts, sweating blood over each line.

Scott writes a monthly article in Ladder a fire department newsletter, and has written humour pieces and other short articles. AdvertisingMurder is his first full-length work. After writing it in a month, as a participant in National Novel Writing Month, he edited the manuscript during 2004’s National Novel Editing Month. He loves to write, loses himself in it:

“When I’m writing, I know I’ve got a manuscript that has to go out, but the excitement of seeing or feeling a story unfold … I go into another world.”

So he must have knocked on hundreds of publishers’ doors, right? And then he selected Avalon and honed his pitch to perfection.

In fact, Avalon was the first and only publisher he approached. He wrote his pitch to editorial director Erin Cartwright-Niumata on hotel notepaper the night before.

Then he probably has one of those careers designed for writing crime fiction. He can write about what he knows — just like John Grisham, who was once a lawyer, or Patricia Cornwell, who worked in forensic science.

Jack Elton, AdvertisingMurder’s hero, is an ex-cop. “My only police experience,” says Scott, “was in Expo 67. I was a security guard on the minirail at Montreal.”

What about Avalon? It sells to libraries and has editorial rules restricting drinking, profanity and sex in the 60 books per year they produce. The editing process was probably difficult.

“They’re a very easy company to work with,” Scott says. On his first book, the editing suggestions consisted of a single sheet read over the phone and then a few followup points. In any case, based on his own values, Scott is comfortable with Avalon’s approach — not that he chose Avalon because of it or wrote his mystery with a moral intent. It just happened to be a match made, well, in heaven.

At this point, the publication of AdvertisingMurder does begin to look like divine intervention. But don’t give up hope, because Scott’s story also exemplifies the axiom that God helps those who help themselves. Bob Scott worked hard at the project and made some very smart decisions.

For aspiring writers, here are some of his steps to success.

1. He joined the Crime Writers of Canada: “It was the best $100 I ever spent.” Besides all the resources on their website, the organization provided priceless publicity and contacts.

2. He signed up for the magazine Writer’sDigest, joined its book club and immersed himself in other writingrelated sites, listservs and research books. By the time he got to the pitch, he’d already read advice on how to do it.

3. He belongs to a writer’s group that meets weekly from September to June. Shirley read his manuscript, too, and, Scott says, “does a good job of pointing out basic errors” as well as helping with syntax and spelling.

4. He’s dedicated and has good work habits. Scott’s preferred writing time is midnight till 4 a.m. For example, on Wednesday he might write from midnight until 6 a.m. the next day, go to his Rotary meeting, come back, sleep a little, and then write in the evening. He feels comfortable if he’s written 2,000 words a day.

5. He goes to the annual Surrey International Writers’ Conference. Scott says it’s a standout among these types of events, and it’s where he pitched his manuscript.

6. He offered what an in-house editor wanted. He says of Cartwright-Niumata: “I’ve heard comments from her like, ‘Your stories are well written.’”

When she was asked about Scott, she sent back this message through her assistant Faith Black — and there’s hope in it for all aspiring writers:

“Erin met Bob at the Surrey writers’ conference in Vancouver, and they had a great meeting. Bob delivered a great pitch on his book, and Erin knew she wanted to work with him before even reading anything. It was a good, short pitch that reeled her in and got her interested in the project.

“If you write well and you submit properly (following the correct guidelines for submission), anyone can write for Avalon. We are always looking for new and first-time authors.”"

Those of you who have not yet read this book, and like a good murder mystery, I seriously urge you to find this first book and read it....it's funny, intriguing, just an all-round good read. I kept shaking my head every few chapters as I reminded myself that my FATHER had written this book. It was wonderful! I await his next two books with impatience, and hope he will have the opportunity to publish even more after that series is done.
My parents arrive in about 10 days and 2 hours. We are excited and scrambling madly to put the house in order before they get here. The cats have shredded the bottom stairs carpet, for which I am ready to hang them by their toenails (no, not really), so I will have to come up with some inventive solution, requiring tons of thought....and potentially duct tape....to cover the holes.
Now it is getting late, I am sunburnt once again, and as tomorrow is a provincial holiday, I am looking forward to a good, long sleep tonight before a day of frantic cleaning, a multitude of errands, and a round of indoor mini golf.

Human Guinea Pigs

2007-08-04T12:49:00.000-06:00

I have been having some issues over the last few years since son was born. Nothing life threatening, just really annoying, really gross, and really uncomfortable. Anyway, I heard this ad on the radio a few months ago, basically saying that if you had these symptoms (and they proceed to list off all of mine), they are looking for test subjects for a new drug, and to call this number or check this website. I kept thinking I should check it out, and then would forget the address and all, as it was always while I was driving in the car, and we all know the way life runs is a great memory eraser.
Well, Husband, who has to live with me, heard the ad a few weeks ago, and he remembered the address, looked it up, and pointed me to it, not even knowing I'd been wanting to do so. I looked at it. I filled in their application and fired it off. A few days later, i am contacted, asked a zillion questions. Yes, it sounds as if I am the kind of person they are looking for. The lady then begins telling me about what will be expected of me in the screening process and all. I am getting a bit nervous. She says she'll mail me all the info about everything to do with the test. About a week later, the envelope arrives. I read it through and form my own opinions, and then pass it on to Husband for his input. He simply stated if I didn't want to do it, then I just shouldn't do it. So helpful.
In any case. The screening process would involve ultrasounds, a biopsy, a pap smear, some scan involving a catheter, a trillion blood tests, etc, etc, etc. Sounds like a real party to me. Oh yeah!
The test itself would take up to 6 months, and had 4 streams, two of them, of course, placebos, and it was, of course, to be a double blind test. One of the options and its placebo sounded okay, the other not so good (but I wouldn't get a choice)...and then I read the page on possible side effects. Now, I realize they have to cover their butts and list everything, but there's only so many side effects that I'm willing to run the risk of having to deal with.
That and there was the task of collecting and sending them certain things during the test.
I wanted a solution to my problem. I wanted to maybe find some relief. And I could have used the $75 per visit they would have paid me. But after all that, I have decided that I will just suffer through what I am facing at the moment, in the hopes that someone ELSE will have the guts to go through those tests, that those tests will result in a solution, and that somewhere down the road, I will benefit from this solution WITHOUT the indignity and discomfort and risk of the testing process of something that could ultimately, in the end, be a dud anyway.

Happy news, and little boys

2007-07-30T11:25:00.000-06:00

Well, we found out that the home assessment people made a mistake. My initial response when Husband told me was to slump in dread of the lower actual number that he was going to tell me. Imagine my delight when he told me our house is actually worth DOUBLE what we paid for it!!!!!! Alriiiiiiiight! :) If this line of credit come through, we should have our mortgage paid off in maybe 15 years instead of 23, plus will have an easier time paying things off and being able to do things as a family.
Now I must put in a little story about me and my little guy. Son is nearly 3 and therefore everything is exciting and interesting, especially if he can pick it up. He has just reached the age where he feels himself to be too much of a big boy to ride in the stroller. To his credit, he can walk for 45 minutes without a complaint, but at a very slow pace, partially due to the above statement. Anyway...I don't like bugs. I don't like creepy crawly things. I just don't. Son does. Son very much does. So Mommy had to swallow her fear and jittery feelings and allow Son his time of wonderment and excitement when he found....and picked up....the most humungous dragonfly I have ever seen. It was dead, obviously, since he was able to pick it up. He brought this thing home, and it sits in a little container at his tiny desk in his room, waiting for Husband to come home and see his prize catch. It's actually a pretty thing, a shimmery blue with sparkly wings.....but it's huge. The body is about 15 cm long, and the wingspan is probably close to that....maybe closer to 10cm. He talked to it the whole way home. He told this dragonfly that he was taking it to his house, he was going to take it IN his house, he told it the colour of his house, too. He's pretty happy about his bug. And, I guess, in a way, behind all my icky jittery feeling towards it, I'm kind of proud of his catch, too. After all, what's the fun of being a little boy if you can't catch bugs, and big ones, at that. :) Now he has his own dragon. Hee hee

We Bought at the Right Time!!!!

2007-07-25T16:02:00.000-06:00

We bought our house in February of 2006. It was the most expensive house we had bought (which isn't saying much, but more on that in a minute). We knew the bank had done a home assessment, but they never told us what the house was worth. We thought the house was maybe worth a little bit more than we paid, hopefully not less, but we had no idea whatsoever.
We are currently in the process of trying to get a home equity line of credit, which requires, you guessed it, a home assessment. Well, THIS time, the company we are working with on getting said line of credit showed us the results. We are very, very, very, very happy....our house is worth about 186% of what we paid for it. That's right.... it's worth 86% MORE than we paid for it! Needless to say, we were shocked and ecstatic. But of course, for those of you thinking we are stinkin' rich or something, let's put things into perspective...
Our first ever house we bought was 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, double lot, small town. Very cheap. Sickeningly cheap to all you poor people who live in, say, Calgary or Edmonton, or the states or something.
Our second house cost approximately 4 TIMES as much, but still not remotely close to what you pay in the places I mentioned above...again, a 3 bedroom, 1 bath, but single lot, not so good part of town.
THIS house cost us nearly FIVE times as much as the second (or over 17 times as much as the first house....what a staggering statistic)....for a 4 bedroom, 2 bath, 1 lot in a good area of town.
Here is the staggering figure to make all you big city, non-Saskatchewan people jealous....if I add up what we paid for all three houses into one sum, I have bought 3 houses for an altogether grand total of $146,500. Not each, not averaged out (that average would beeeee....about $48,333 each) Those of you math whizzes out there can play with this one for awhile. I am giggling with glee and very happy that we live in our wonderful province....with the way our income has been, we never would have even been the owners of ONE house by now in a place like Calgary!
Heh heh heh

My apples are grapes

2007-07-23T07:41:00.000-06:00

You should see my apple trees this year. I'm not sure exactly what happened, I guess the conditions were just right and the bees were busy this spring. I have two crab apple trees. one grows little red ones, one grows medium yellowish ones. Both trees have a good number of apples on them, but the yellow apple tree, WELL, the number of apples on each branch is just stunning. The branches are starting to bend all the way to the ground because there are so many apples that it literally looks like they are giant clusters of grapes. I tried counting just one branch worth of apples, and based on what I came up with, and extrapolating to how many branches there ARE on this tree, there are well over a THOUSAND apples on this tree! I could open my own crab apple business if they ripen! Yikes! The red apple tree has maybe half that, but still, 500 apples, give or take a hundred or so, is still a lot of apples, just on its own!
It is so horribly hot here that I am considering keeping Daughter home today....she usually goes to a day camp sort of thing, but the forecast says it will be 36 C today, with a humidex of 49C!!! She burns like me, even with sunscreen, and this heat will really get to her, especially since they don't always let them get water.
I made it back to the gym today, for which I am proud of myself. Today is the start of a new run at losing this extra weight of mine. Hopefully i will not sabotage myself this week, and will actually get somewhere in this.
Anyway, it's already getting too hot to think. Time to go weigh in for the week and have some breakfast and a litre of water.