Oct 21

I’ve been waiting to do this kind of a post! I’m finally starting to get people coming to this site via weird and wacky google searches and the time has come, friends, to mock them! And so, without further ado…

what can you eat to solidify poop

That, my friend, is a question for your doctor. It’s time for a little conversation about fibre and the benefits of a low-roughage diet.

smoking is a dirty habit. it’s a dirty habit for a dirty little girl.

Well you seem to feel very strongly about that. I would have to agree.

shall i eat pizza hut pizza in pregnancy

Yes, you shall. And lo, you shall eat pizza with strange and delicious toppings. And you shall consume it at unusual times of the day and night and in quantities previously considered unhealthy and with unmatched passion. And yay, though you shall suffer unparalleled heartburn, you shall not be dissuaded from your single-minded pursuit of all that is Pizza Hut.

pedicure smelly

Yes, they usually are a bit, um, aromatic? But that’s a good thing, right? If your pedicure experience is smelly in a bad way you might want to talk to the management. Or consider a change in your hygiene routine. Bathing is always a good place to start.

multi nippled breasts

It never occurred to me that using that term in describing my daughter’s artwork would bring people to my site. My husband suggests dedicating an entire post to freakish body deformities in order to increase traffic on the blog. I’m considering it. Research is required.

high pitched screaming and arching of the back and immunizations

This may surprise you but for many young children being poked with sharp instruments is cause for rather loud protest. I know many adults who feel the same way. Just sayin’.

armpit lumps lasting a week

I’d say this is a weird thing to be googling but since I was doing it myself only a few weeks ago… The good news is, MY armpit lump is gone. As for this wayward googler, I suggest you see your doctor. Lumps in the underarm area should always be checked by a physician.

“facebook is the devil” christian

People, I was being facetious! Facebook may ignorant, but it’s not actually evil. Unless you consider wasting hours in front of a computer screen evil. Which you might. And if I think about it…. Yeah. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.

Oct 20
  • I was out walking in my neighbourhood this morning and I walked past a house that had a sign on the door “Girl Guide Cookies For Sale! $4.00/box. Please ring doorbell.” Are you serious??? You want to make money off me (an outrageous amount of money for a tiny box of completely underwhelming cookies) and you are too damn lazy to even walk door to door to try to sell them? Don’t get me wrong, I am more than happy to buy cookies or chocolates or whatever almost any little kids are selling. I have done my share of selling things door to door and I feel sorry for them. But if they think that I am going to come knocking on their door then they have added a new pot smoking badge to the girl guides that wasn’t there when my generation was going door to door.
  • I took the kids to McDonalds the other day (yes, I take my kids to the soul-sucking golden arches, regularly, but just for a coffee break. We don’t consume fries and burgers most times that we go. Shut up. We don’t.) They like to play on the playland. So we’re sitting there and two women come in with a child. Presumably the child’s mother and grandmother. They are both carrying Tim Horton’s coffee. They do not buy any McDonalds’ products. The child plays on the play structure. The women visit and drink their coffee. Excuse me? Since when did it become ok to use the facilities of a restaurant while consuming the food from another restaurant? I know that McDonalds isn’t going to suffer from losing the sale of two coffees but I was seriously annoyed. Is it just me or is that really rude and more than a bit ridiculous? I mean by an effing muffin or something?
  • I saw a sign for a lost cat this morning. Along with the description of the animal the owner had mentioned the poor kitty’s thyroid condition!!! As if this is something that would be noticeable to a person finding a stray cat?
  • People who claim to speak for God. Using bad English.  You can read about this guy’s insufferably self-righteous “prophecies” (read: stuff he makes up in his head) here.
Oct 20

And this, folks, is creative license at work:

*”She’ll be coming ’round the toilet when she comes! Wahoo!
She’ll be coming ’round the toilet when she comes! Wahoo!
She’ll be coming ’round the toilet, she’ll be coming ’round the toilet,
She’ll be coming ’round the toilet when she comes! Wahoo!”

“She’ll be riding sixteen horses when she comes! Whoa back!…”

*To the tune of She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain When She Comes

Oct 18

There’s still a lot of snot around here.  I’m not full blown sick yet but I expect it is inevitable.  My immune system has lasted a record-breaking two weeks in a veritable biological war zone without breaking down but it’s only a matter of time before it runs out of resources to fight the super-germs that have been shooting out of my kids orifices for weeks.  I am not happy about this but I am at the point of having to accept my fate and just hope for it to be over quickly because….WE ARE GOING HOME FOR A VISIT IN TWO WEEKS!!!!  I may be just a wee bit excited (read:  peeing my pants!).  I can not wait to see the people I have been missing and just be, well, home.

What else is going on around here? Well it’s Fall. As in Autumn. I have to keep telling myself this because there doesn’t seem to be any environmental evidence to support this. It is still really warm, high teens, sometimes above twenty and probably 75% of the trees still have their leaves.  They are changing colors, but very slowly.  I have always loved fall but I had no idea it could be like this. I had no idea there were places where you could enjoy fall for so long without the threat of frost and winter snow and ice looming on the horizon.  We haven’t had frost here yet!  The flowers are still blooming in people’s yards. The rosebush in my back yard is still producing roses.  I am really enjoying the beautiful red maple leaves although I have been a bit disappointed by them.  You see, I had imagined the ground covered with red leaves and how pretty that would be.  But, as it turns out, leaves all pretty much look brown once they’re of the trees.  The red ones are nice for only a short time after they fall.  We picked some up to mail to friends back home and in the few days after we pressed them they dulled to a much darker color, not the blood red color they were when we first picked them up.  So yeah, dead brown leaves are still there.  But they are a lot easier to stomach when there are still so many green ones on the trees and the weather feels like mid-summer!  (Don’t hate me, Saskatchewan friends!)

So snot and fall. That’s all I have to write about.  Sorry it’s a little bland around here. I’m working on it. Thanks for hanging in there with me!

Oct 16

I’ve been busy with The Snot around here.  The kids are sick. No one is getting enough sleep. It sucks.  And I want to be blogging but I just don’t have the energy. I fear I am on my way to brewing myself up a big ol’ cold, too.  Back to drinking eighteen litres of water a day.

Oct 13

We did a little pre-Halloween trick-or-treating today at the YMCA Children’s Safety Village in London.  The kids had fun and I had to share some pictures.

 

Oct 11

And here I thought teaching my daughter about sex education was going to be hard. It appears that she already has such a mortal fear of childbirth that that possibility alone will be enough to keep her away from boys.

I was just trying to be a responsible parent, teaching my little angel about where babies come from and how they get into the world.  When we got the latter part I explained to her that both she and her brother had been born by c-section and what that was and why they had been delivered that way (don’t worry, it was at a four year old’s level of comprehension – I only used the words “god-awful pain” and “mind-shatteringly excruciating contractions” sparingly).  It turns out that for months she had been fearfully imagining her  adult self with her stomach being hacked open and a baby being ripped out and how much that could hurt, all because her mother forgot to explain the concept of anesthesia.  She told me in no uncertain terms that she did not want to have a baby in her tummy.

I straightened her out about the procedure and explained that most mommies deliver babies vaginally (I left out the “wanting to die because of a labour that wasn’t accomplishing anything but causing me vast amounts of pain” part) and how, eh-hem, “special” that is.  Her response to this? “I don’t think I would like that.” Umm. Yeah. I concur.

Despite this aversion to pregnancy, she remains fascinated by childbirth, particularly of the c-section variety.  I was watching a YouTube video of a surgeon performing a caesarean delivery the other day. When she came into the room I stopped the video.  She asked what I was watching so I told her but I had no intention of continuing to watch with her in the room. But she asked if she could watch it, too.  I thought about it. I explained that there would be lots of blood and it might look kind of “yucky” (yeah, that’s slightly understated).  She still wanted to try it.  Was it wise or unwise?  I’m not sure. But I let her watch it with me. We didn’t watch the whole cutting part (I had no idea there were so many layers of stuff to cut through before you get to the actual uterus), just the part where they pulled the baby out.  She was glued to the screen.

I suspect that deep down she still has a healthy amount of fear.  But really, is that so bad?  Childbirth is scary.  If that fear keeps her from making bad choices, especially as a teenager, then I think I’m ok with it.  Would it be bad if I occasionally dropped a few words about the varying, disgusting and painful horrors of pregnancy and childbirth as she grows up? Maybe that would be taking it a bit too far. Effective? Yes.  Appropriate? Probably not. :)

Oct 10

On the nights that you want to be held and rocked to sleep I am sometimes tempted to let the frustration flood my psyche. It is so easy to go to that anxiety-filled place where you and I were, together,  just a few short months ago.  That time when you didn’t just want me – you needed me. You couldn’t cope, couldn’t settle on your own.  But tonight you just wanted me.

The reality is that it is an increasingly rare moment when you want nothing more than your mama and when you lay in my arms, peaceful and happy.  When you snuggle close and turn my face to look in your eyes, even though it’s dark, I am undone.  I can do nothing but inhale your sweet baby-scent and wish that I could remember you like this forever.  I know that I can’t hold this image very long. It will be a lingering apparition, always in the shadows, that I will try to conjure as the years pass.  But it will never appear as clearly as this moment.

When I look at you I try to picture what your man-face will look like in 15 years.  Then I try not to picture it.  I don’t want to waste this moment. Because what I want more than anything is to be able to see this sweet and innocent baby when I look at you today, tomorrow, twenty years from now.  The child who has no more hurt in his life than when his mama scolds or puts him to bed without an extra kiss and cuddle. So thank you for that moment. It will always be precious to me.  I hope it haunts me forever.

Oct 10

Our trip home from Northern Ontario was meant to be uneventful. But as we all know, that only takes place when you don’t have a blog.  When you do have a blog,  what you get is this:

A couple hours north of Toronto we joined the entire population of Ontario, all on their way back from their cottages. After driving 30kmh for an hour or more we came to a complete stop.  There was an accident several kilometers ahead of where this picture was taken.  It was such a severe accident that both sides of the six lane highway were shut down.  After a minute or two people started climbing out of their cars and walking around.  It felt like the apocalypse.  People were pulling food and drinks out of coolers. All the cars were shut off. There was a spirit of camaraderie as we complained about the heat and the wait and climbed the hill up to the bridge to peer into the distance, trying to see the accident that was holding us up.  Many people ran around on the opposite side of the freeway just because they could.  Look!  I’m lying down on the highway!  Wheeeee!!!  In the first picture below you can see Colin in a green shirt carrying Kieran on his shoulders in the bottom right corner.

Traffic eventually got going again, at a pace just slightly slower than an average person walks.  We drove at that pace for probably half an hour before we finally passed this:

 

Not the clearest picture but this is what was left of the carnage when we drove past.  What stands out in my mind is that this car is completely mangled but there doesn’t appear to be even a tiny scratch on the barrier.  How did it get all the way over without so much as grazing the metal rail?  All I can say is yikes!  An emergency helicopter transported victims to the hospital and we waited for the police to clear the road and begin to direct traffic around the accident site.

So after a total of about a two hour delay we finally got back on our merry way.  The one thing that was really enjoyable about this trip was the beautiful colours. Southern Ontario is full of trees changing colour right now and there were some breathtaking scenes. Saskatchewan doesn’t do orange and red so I was thrilled! Unfortunately, my pictures don’t really do it justice at all. But you get the idea.

Oct 9

It was a crazy whirlwind weekend of travel for our family. Times were had. Not necessarily good. But nonetheless, they were had.

We drove to the wasteland that is Northern Ontario – a total of about ten hours driving. It shouldn’t take that long but the speed limit is about 10kmh in most of Northern Ontario so it takes longer than an equal distance in almost any other province. We made reasonably good time considering our travel companions, a.k.a. Whiny and Screamy. We stopped for lunch and a mid-afternoon leg stretch. But it was our dinner stop that was infuriating. We stopped at Pizza Hut, thinking to get something different than a typical burger joint. Everyone was starving so we ordered an appetizer to keep us busy while we waited for our pizza. We waited for half an hour before the server finally came to tell us that our order had been “lost”. (In Restaurant lingo “lost” usually means “I’m totally hungover and forgot to enter your order into the computer.”) We were not pleased but the server promised to hurry things along. Another twenty minutes pasted before our APPETIZER arrived (total time wasted in New Liskeard thus far = 50 minutes). We told her to just bring the pizza as soon as it was ready. No need to wait for us to finish our appetizer as we are in a hurry. Now I must point out that this is a small town restaurant. It was not overly busy. We did not order an obscene amount of food. We did not expect our food to arrive five minutes after we ordered. I have worked as a server. I usually try to extend a lot of grace to people in the service industry. I try. But I was rapidly running out of patience. We threw the lady some dirty and “unsatisfied customer” looks. She didn’t even appear contrite. She was just lucky I was busy being completely baffled that there were three or four groups of diners visible from my seat that were ordering and drinking wine by the glass as though they were at a four star restaurant (Dear Pizza Hut patrons of New Liskeard, You can do better!). Wine! At Pizza Hut?! If we didn’t have several hours of driving left maybe I would have joined the other happy drinkers. They were almost certainly having more fun than we were.

So our pizza finally arrives (total time wasted in New Liskeard thus far = 85 minutes). The kids stop chomping on the vinyl seat upholstery and chow down on the pizza. It is gone quickly. The server has the nerve to ask us if we would like to order dessert. And no, she wasn’t offering us free dessert as a peace offering for screwing up so royally. We tell her to move her caboose and bring our bill. I was really expecting the appetizer to be free, at the very least. But I opened up the bill holder to reveal full charge for our food and not even an apology for the extremely shabby service. I did something I almost never do. I paid and left no tip. None at all. You have no idea how hard it is for me to do. But in this case it was totally warranted. (total time wasted in New Liskeard = way too frickin’ much). (Dear Pizza Hut in New Liskeard, It probably breaks your heart to hear this: We won’t be back.

The other weird thing was that when we asked for parmesan cheese, instead of bringing us the shaker with the powdery white cheese-substance, we were given mini dixie cups of real grated parmesan (like you would put on a ceasar salad). I’m a fan of cheese and all, but wtf? Maybe the cheese, combined with the wine was New Liskeard’s attempt at a classy restaurant? No powdered cheese for them there Northerners! They done do things the cuh-lassy way!

So we made it up north to our destination. By the time we arrived it became clear that both children were sick. The great head cold of 2007 has descended upon us with the wrath of a thousand sleep deprived mothers. The kids are producing record-breaking amounts of mucus and I spent my weekend wiping runny noses and administering overdoses of cold medication. And then, because in my last life I pulled the whiskers off newborn kittens and set little bunnies on fire, God decreed that I should come down with some bizarre type of flesh eating disease all over my face. On Saturday morning I woke up with a rash all over my neck and face that felt like a sunburn but was more itchy. It looks scaly and red and I feel compelled to call out “Unclean! Unclean!” when I go into public places. What was the cause of this leperous condition? Karma? Stress? Divine judgment? A psychological manifestation of my feelings towards certain extended family members who shall remain nameless? You be the judge. All I know is I look a bit like I walked off of a movie set involving zombies or the undead.

To sum up the visit: visiting, food, drinks, no sleep due to children hacking up internal organs and spewing forth fountains of snot.

And then the fun part! Driving! Home! Again! It’s a bit of a story so I’ll save that for the next post. There will be pictures! Tune in tomorrow!

« Previous Entries Next Entries »