Jan 30

Avery: Tells us something about a classmate bugging her.

The Hubby: “Well, you can’t control anyone except…”

Avery: “YourSELF! I KNOW Dad!”

Kieran: “And ROBOTS!”

May 8

Just a little something I found positively hilarious. Enjoy.

Alternate Link without ads

Mar 4

Mommy: You know, when we were kids we didn’t have computers at all!***

Avery: Really???

Daddy: Yes, that’s right.

Avery: Why?

Mommy: Well, lots of reasons. They cost a lot of money and they were much bigger than they are now.

Avery: But how did you check the weather???

 

***I lied. In reality, both my family and the hubby’s family had computers when we were quite young children. But I was making a point. And when we were young it was still pretty rare for people to own a computer.

Oct 17

This being our first Columbus Day (for Canadians, it was on Canadian Thanksgiving this year), we thought it best to celebrate as the locals do, by shelling out a mortgage payment’s worth of money for the most god-awful “souvenirs” ever created dutifully lining the streets of our small city to watch the annual Columbus Day parade.

It turns out that although Americans apparently are big fans of Columbus, their love does not extend to making Columbus Day a stat holiday. So the hubby had to work and I had the pleasure of taking the rugrats to the parade alone. I decided, on the advice of the neighbours, not to go into Boston for their parade as I wasn’t in the mood for crowds. The site of our local parade was not crowded. I easily found a parking spot just a block away and we settled down on the curb, prepared to be dazzled.

That was my first mistake.

My second mistake was not bringing my camera. Because this parade? Was sixteen kinds of awesome. I am still kicking myself because I am so disappointed not to have any photographic evidence of the tales I have to tell.  I fear the funny will be exponentially less so, without a visual. C’est la vie!

Without further ado, I bring you the first annual Living in the Gray Columbus Day Parade Awards!

Most Unbecoming Parade Attraction: A literal pack of some variety of politicians walking along the street in suits and ties, waving and shaking hands, handing out pamphlets and looking so clean-cut and yet greasy at the same time.

Organization Making Up More Than Half of a Parade: The Aleppo Shriners. They marched, they carried flags, they drove tiny cars and trucks and horse-drawn carriages. I’ve never seen so many goofy hats in one place before.

Float Most Likely to Cause Inappropriate Laughter: A tent-trailer pulled by a half tonne truck, fully extended, with the flaps pinned up and carrying a Shriner quintet singing old-timey hymns and looking suitably somber. And because the one mile parade route was so gruelling for the camper-sitting shriners, their microphones were wired in and hanging down from the ceiling to mouth-level. I’m not going to lie. I laughed right out loud.

Most Annoying Fellow Parade-Watchers: Three chain-smoking moms and their offspring who sat just upwind of us. Even worse, because they made a small crowd, the parade participants kept throwing candy in their direction and just missing my kids. Instead of behaving like grownups and encouraging their progeny to pass some of the candy along to the much younger kids sitting next to them, they scrambled to pick up and eat the candy THEMSELVES! Who the hell does that??? Thankfully the child sitting next to us was mature enough to share some of his good fortune with my kids.

Parade Participant Most Likely to Expire While Marching: A pitiful looking snare drummer who was approximately 128 years old and so hunched over from the weight of the drum and harness, that his knuckles were dragging on the ground. He looked so tired. I wanted to offer to switch places with him, except that I can’t play the drums. And I had doubts about his ability to manage two small kids while simultaneously NOT DYING.

Most Uncomfortable-Looking Costume: One of the marching bands had the traditional tall hats with feathers etc. Except. EXCEPT. The hats must have been designed for people with exceptionally small heads. Because the chin straps were only big enough to fit snugly under each band member’s nose. Seriously! I could not BELIEVE how uncomfortable they looked! I am not exaggerating even a little tiny bit. A nasty plastic strap cutting into your nostrils while trying to march in time and play the saxaphone? No thank you! The band members looked SO MISBERABLE. And who could blame them?

Most Unlikely Entertaining Act: There was a small pack of motorcyclists – I think about 6 of them – who were doing reeeeally slow figure eights where they would criss cross each other’s paths. That was the extent of their stunts. It was totally not what you would call a gripping show. And yet? I was fascinated. On the edge of my seat. Anticipating each figure eight with baited breath. I don’t know what got into me.  

Parade Participants Most Likely to Become the Target of the Local Sniper: The *&^%&$#@% Vendors with big-ass carts full of cheap plastic garbage to hypnotize my kids.  They started peddling their wares on the street before we got there and continued to do so DURING THE PARADE!  This would be less of a big deal if they hadn’t been walking on the street, thus getting between the viewers sitting on the sidewalks and the floats and marching bands on the street. So every 15 seconds, while we were craning our necks to try and see around another stupid cart, we’d hear “Do you kids need something? What can I get you?”.  I almost wished I’d brought money to buy a piece of crap to keep them moving along as they always walked more slowly past the people who weren’t holding five pounds of inflatable hammers and trumpet whistles that could make the ears of a deaf person bleed. Plus, they blocked the candy-throwers! Sacrilege!

Sep 22

Just imagine, if you will, the look of horror on your hypothetical husband’s face when he walks into the room and asks why on earth you deleted EVERY LAST THING out of the downloads folder on the laptop?  And you look at him, and blink, because surely he is joking. While you are ignorant of nearly all things technological, surely, SURELY HE KNOWS you are not stupid enough to delete everything from the precious downloads folder on the laptop!

And then you might just have a flash of a memory go off way in the recesses of your memory of a moment not too long ago when you had the laptop open on the counter in the kitchen. And you *might* have been momentarily distracted by something and as you turned around your eye caught your two year old mashing the keyboard with glee.  

If that happened you *might* look at your fuming husband, who has smoke coming out of his ears, with wide, innocent eyes and say “Why, no! I have NO IDEA what happened!”

Not that it happened to me.  But that sure would have SUCKED if it had!

Aug 30

We’ve had such a stupid week that I have neglected to say what an awesome weekend we had pretending we are still kidless and young enough to rock and roll all night and party evah-ree-day.  Some Canadian friends came down to visit us (it is SO WEIRD to be classifying friends by what country they’re from!) and it was so much fun. While we’ve been having a good time doing the tourist thing here in Boston, we’ve really been missing spending time with good friends who we know and who know us. 

To top off the fun of having our friends here the clouds parted and the angels sang and Tina offered to babysit so we could go out sans kids which was great because we basically acted like kids the whole night. 

First, we giggled at the name of a Chinese restaurant because we’re all 8 years old….

 

Then we went to a bar that had it’s menu in the form of a giant periodic table and lab stools for seating because the four of us are HUGE GEEKS and that’s exactly the kind of gimmick that catches our attention.

Then we annoyed our server because we aren’t familiar with American beers. Once we got the beer we cracked open a nice cold can of Canadian superiority over the lower alcohol content of sissy American beers. Ok, well I didn’t actually have any beer because I’m a big baby and only drink alcoholic drinks that taste like sugar fruity and sweet. 

But it was so much fun to just let loose and laugh! S and T, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR VISITING! And T, thanks for this “Blue Steel” picture. Because it makes me happy every time I look at it.

Know what else made me happier than is reasonable? Spending an hour in a drug store investigating products that are not sold in Canada or that are different between Canada and the US, and having friends who agreed with us when we said “That is just SO WEIRD.” Like why the unit price is posted for every item? Like I care that I’m getting the best deal per pound on deodorant? We did spend a long time searching for the item in the store with the most expensive unit price (I think it was condoms, if you’re wondering). It may have been kind of a lame and geeky night out. But I embrace it!

The next day we went to the beach where we quickly buried our kids in the sand so wouldn’t have to pay too much attention to them:

 

But when we started burying our friends in the sand, too, people started to look at us funny.  

Still, a good time was had by all. My son personally inspected each grain of sand and pronounced it acceptable.

Then we decided to have dinner at the “Cheers Bar” (the outside of the bar was filmed as the outside of the bar in the hit TV show Cheers, the inside was not shown in the show, nor does the inside resemble the set of Cheers) …

…which is not actually called “Cheers” but is actually called “The Bull & Finch Pub“…

…and where everyone did not actually know our name so much as want to take our money. But the service was great, the food was good (and reasonably priced) and we had a fantastic time together.

Our friends cheered up immensely and it is only because I had such a FABULOUS weekend that I did not reach through the phone and pull out the spleen of our contact at the moving company when he told us that our belongings will now not be reaching us until September 11. And by September 11, I’m pretty sure he means December.

Aug 26

Today I took Avery to Kindergarten Orientation – which she insists on calling OREO-tation, despite being corrected. Because we may not know much about the education system, but we DO know our cookies around here. It’s all about priorities, folks.

We managed to work through the great backpack debacle of 2008 and found a backpack that did not make me pour bleach in my eyes. What design won my daughter’s heart, you ask? Why, a cupcake decal, of course! Because while we DO love our princesses, baked goods come first in our family, my friends. PRIORITIES.

Last year in London (Ontario, not England) Avery became fast friends with a little girl in her class who was petite and girly and so adorable I was tempted to put her in my pocket and take her home many times. (Don’t get me wrong, no one takes the place of my own girl, but this child was so petite I literally could put her RIGHT IN MY POCKET. You’ve gotta admit, that makes it tempting.) When we moved we promised we would send a letter once we were settled and we still intend to keep that promise. Of course we didn’t know that it would take us THREE MONTHS to finally move into our own permanent place. Avery loved to play with little A, but she also dearly loved to chase A’s brother G around on the playground after school.  It developed into a seriously intense obsession crush and she looked forward to playing with both of them after school each day. And now, three months later, what do we hear about every day? The love letters she is going to write to G, how much she misses G, all the things she needs to tell G about her new house, with nary a mention of her once-BFF A.  The girl is lovesick!  Because girlfriends are nice, but girlfriends’ older brothers are waaaay nicer!

Short list of Very Important Things in Life: sugary snacks and boys.

Why, hello teenage hormones! You seem to be about 5 or 12 or 37 years too early!

Aug 21

What I’d like to know is what does this say about the reliability of eye witness testimony?

Aug 11

You know what might suck? If your family took a lovely walk to The Frog Pond at the Boston Commons because it was too beautiful of a day to spend indoors (that’s not the sucky part). And when you arrived at the pool your daughter tore off her clothes, slapped on her bathing suit and hurried off to refresh herself in the water, slowly making her way to the centre of the pool. And as she was doing so an angry sounding man came on over the loudspeaker saying:

“YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. THERE IS NO RUNNING AT THE FROG POND. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RUN. WE HAVE SNIPERS HIDDEN IN THE TREES TO SHOOT DOWN THOSE WHO WILFULLY DISOBEY THE RULES.  RUNNING IS NOT ALLOWED. I REPEAT, NO RUNNING ALLOWED.”

And IMMEDIATELY following this announcement, the fountain in the middle of the pool, located mere inches from where your child is standing, is set off like a f*cking geyser and scares the girl-child out of a year’s growth and before you can say “Old Faithful” she sprints across the water like the hordes of Satan himself are after her, until she slips on the concrete while leaping out of the water and nearly cracks her skull open on the edge. And everyone looks at you like you’re just the kind of parent that make that kind of announcement NECESSARY.

But seriously? If they tell a veritable swarm of young children not to run, which we all know is contrary to the law of nature, the very least they could do is give kids a few seconds warning before letting Old Faithful scare the living shit out of them! 

What else might suck? If your conscientious and generally rule-abiding daughter is attempting to keep your mischievous and generally authority-bucking son from playing with a water hose at the pool. And if she noticed the life-guard making his way over to ask your son not to play with said hose and freaked the eff out and started screaming “I DON’T WANT THE WATER-GUARD TO GET MY BROTHER IN TROOOOOOOUBLE!!!!” and was shaking and terrified like she thought the “Water- guard” was going to cleave off her brother’s head and skewer it on a stake by the side of the pool as an example to other toddlers of what happens when you flaunt the rules. Because apparently the frequent “NO RUNNING” announcement over the loudspeaker had instilled THE FEAR OF GOD in her.

And everyone looks at you again like you are those parents while you reassure your daughter that the lifeguard does not drink the blood of disobedient two year olds.

Not that it happened to me. I’m just sayin’. It might suck.

Mar 22

Here are some of the comments that Avery has amused me with this week:

Oh Canada!  We stand on guard for bees!!  Because, really, where would our fair country be if no one stood up for the helpless bee?

My brother is so squishy! As she pinches big handfuls of his flesh as though it were playdough.  Let’s make the baby into a dinosaur! Or a pizza!  Or a Christmas tree!

My favourite color is pink-with-sparkles!  Pink withOUT sparkles is only a shabby second choice.  All other non-sparkle colors are completely useless.

« Previous Entries