Feb 27

Dear Control Freaks of the World,

After a recent roadtrip which included multiple trips to McDonalds I have realized that many of you congregate at your local Golden Arches. I’m not sure why. I would have thought people such as yourselves would have higher standards, but whatever. The point is, your attempts to subvert the accepted line structure at fast food establishments are totally obnoxious.

McDonalds is set up with a system. A system which customers are expected to follow. It’s simple, really. The restaurants generally have several lanes which may or may not be staffed. When you enter the restaurant you are expected to pick a line. You may or may not pick the fastest line and you pretty much suffer the consequences of your choice. Pick the line where the newest pimply, hungover teenaged employee is struggling to enter orders into the computer and you end up waiting a long time. Guess what? That’s life.

The fact that you may draw the short straw does not give you the right to commandeer all the lineups and force all your fellow patrons to get in one line to advance as a cashier becomes available. You may wish that’s the way it worked, but you may or may not have heard that you can’t always get what you want. True story. I looked it up.

You should be faced with the irrationality of your behaviour when you have to explain your line-up philosophy to every person who walks in the door while passing moral judgment on everyone who challenges your authority, lest each person try to avoid your long lineup and get in a different line, as would be LOGICAL. You should realize this is not the right course of action. But I recognize that your need for control has polluted all rational thought which is the only reason I’ve refrained from starting a fistfight during our several recent encounters, even though I am strongly convinced that a punch to the face would bring many of you back to reality.

Get over yourselves.

Love,
Shannon

Sep 7

Dear Sir/Madam,

The many disturbed minds in the world have not yet devised a form of torture that is painful or humiliating enough to satisfactorily punish you for creating such a fiendishly difficult-to-remove wall covering.  Even when wallpaper removal is going “well” it is still going TERRIBLY BAD and is only marginally better than having two root canals. While giving birth. To triplets. And being run over by a truck.

Those who continue to put up wallpaper are the only beings worthy of more contempt than yourself as they are responsible for the suffering of home-renovators like myself around the world – those of us who wish to make a simple change of paint colour but must first remove miles upon miles of wallpaper!

And don’t tell me that wallpaper is coming back “in” because it’s not. Not into my house, anyway.

Screw you!

Love,
Shannon

Jul 29

Dear Public Beach Lifeguard,

What the hell kind of beach has rules against water wings??? And where do you get off enforcing rules that aren’t posted anywhere and, in my experience, have never been enforced?

While I totally understand your concern that water wings may provide parents a false sense of security, asking me to remove one little bit of confidence my daughter (who is terrified of deep water) has, is just cruel. If you want to make sure kids are safe your rules should require parents to keep kids within arms length. I’m just trying to help my kids learn to be safe and comfortable in the water and your taking away their security blanket totally screwed my strategy.

And you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t totally trust your promise to be watching my children to prevent them from drowning when there are 300 other people in your charge.  I believe it’s my responsibility to supervise my children. Your stupid slippery slope argument (“if we let you, we’ll have to let everyone”) is ridiculous. If you’re making up rules as you go, just make up another one!

Bottom line, you can’t enforce rules that aren’t posted. And you officially cemented my daughter’s hatred of deep water. Consider yourself warned: I’m bringing the water wings with us next time and if you want them, you’ll have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands.

With unmitigated hostility,
A local parent

Dec 1

If you were a Canadian (like me) living in the United States (like me) (or even, gasp! vice versa) you might have to deal with the small unpleasantness of having to sort out the issue of immunizations and school and the territory in between. You might have to show your child’s school evidence of said shots and this may have involved all sorts of trips to and from the doctor and phone calls to and from doctor’s offices, public health offices and hospitals all over civilization and harried conversations regarding records, faxes and PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HURRY. And after these many phone calls without any resulting yelling or expulsion of your child from her (or his) school you might relax and choose to believe that all required faxes have been sent and received and that these things will sort themselves out.

You would be wrong.

Because after three full months of school your child’s school might finally get around to checking out the forms submitted when she enrolled in school and they might call you and leave a message on your phone in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS telling you it’s Very Important that they get your child’s Immunization Records because she May Not Attend School without Proper Documentation of her Vaccinations.

So you, being a responsible parents, would speak with the school nurses and discuss the reasons for the delinquent information (our records are in Canada and apparently faxing documents across the border is Very Hard). The nurses would probably be calmed by your Responsible Parent Voice and give you permission to bring in your personal documentation of your child’s frequent puncturage the following Monday. Which you would go ahead and do because you care about following rules.

When you bring the school nurse the information she requires she would reward your conscientiousness with a damning proclamation; your child is not fully vaccinated! UNCLEAN!!! The USA requires Hepatitis B vaccinations and Canada does not. Your child must not be allowed to pollute the school air with her dirty, unvaccinated little self one second longer (nevermind that she has already attended school for three months)!

And so you might be told to take your child home so as not to defile the purity of the school atmosphere. And your child might be brought from her classroom in tears, not wanting to leave school and you might feel ashamed, as though you had done something wrong, even though you know you haven’t.

If you were like me you might start playing phone tag (once again) with two different Canadian offices to try and get your child’s immunization records faxed to your new doctor’s office so that your doctor can sign a form for the school so they can untie the giant knot their panties are in. But both offices say they faxed those forms back in September like you asked them to. When you ask them to do it again you would probably discover that the number they originally faxed to was incorrect. So you would get them to do it again.

You would make phone calls to the doctor’s office to see if your leperous child can be immunized today so that she can return to school tomorrow. The child would weep because she fears shots like little else in this world. I mean *if* you had that kind of a kid.

And after your child is punctured you would probably ask them to confirm that they received the faxes from Canada. But they would dismiss you disdainfully, saying they had received no such fax. Because that’s the kind of day it is, and apparently fax machines in Canada are made from twigs and leaves and therefore take much longer to cross the border to America, the blessed land of technological ingenuity. 

So you would go home and although you should be making more calls to verbally kick some ass you might be feeling a tad discouraged and you might need to break down and cry for a while. Especially after your husband does some searching online and discovers that the first fax number, given to you in September was actually the right one and not the one given to you today. Then you might just want to lock yourself in the closet for a few years. I mean, that’s how I would feel if it were me.

But it’s so totally not me.

Nov 28

If you got here because you are looking for ACTUAL recipes for some fantastic or unusual vegan Thanksgiving alternaturkey you are in the wrong place. Sorry!

I’m just here musing about what a Canadian family should do when they are in the USA on American Thanksgiving? We don’t have anyone to celebrate with and I already cooked a turkey dinner for Canadian Thanksgiving in October and I’m not prepared to cook three turkeys in less than three months. So we skipped the turkey.

After some research we discovered the local zoo had a Christmas lighting display that was opening Thanksgiving evening and it sounded like something fun to do as a family. So we decided to stop for supper on the way and then tour the lights. 

Guess how many restaurants are open on American Thanksgiving? Go on, guess.

That’s right, there’s exactly NOTHING open here on Thanksgiving. Not gas stations, not grocery stores, not drug stores, not fast food and not restaurants. 

After some searching we found a restaurant that was opening up at 5pm so we drove around and found a park to let the kids play at in the dark for half an hour until we could get in to eat (that’s right it’s totally dark here by 4:30pm now! I HATE daylight savings time!). We had a pleasant dinner and headed out to the zoo, which we found without a problem and was open and everything!

We enjoyed ourselves at the zoo, walking around and looking at light displays and 25 year old moving stuffed animals that had seen better days. But our kids were thrilled. We did not pay $823279 dollars to have their pictures taken with Santa. We did pay $5 for all of us to ride the carousel for 45 seconds. The kids were besides themselves, family togetherness, blah blah,, yadda yadda.

We head home around 7:30pm and as we pull away we realize that our camera case is missing. We argue all the way home about who had it last and who is responsible for losing it. Because that’s just the kind of loving and forgiving relationship we have – the kind that needs to find our WHOSE FAULT IT IS.

So our merry-making, festive mood has been dampened just a little bit when we pull up to the house and the hubby says “I’m going to need your house key to get in the house”. I have a vague recollection of him telling me when we left the house that he had forgotten to replace his house key on his keychain after lending it to houseguests on the weekend so they could come and go.  At the time it never connected in my brain that I had left my key chain in a different jacket in the house because hubby had keys and we were all fine.

Except for his house key.

GAH.

Normally that wouldn’t be a problem. Our landlord lives on the other side of our duplex and we can just grab the spare key from him. Except if it’s THANKSGIVING and our landlord is out celebrating with his family half an hour out of town.

And guess which five year old reeeeeally had to pee right about now? Yeah, that one. Forgot about her, didn’tcha?

No problem. We’ll know a couple of our neighbours and we’ll just knock on their doors and ask to use their bathroom…except if NONE OF THEM ARE HOME BECAUSE IT’S EFFING THANKSGIVING. 

So we’re trying not to get Avery more worked up but we really have no idea where we’re going to be able to find a bathroom as every effing thing is closed.  After 15 minutes of driving we located an open gas station after stopping at a McDonalds that LOOKED like it was open but was actually just attempting to lure poor non-celebrating-thanksgiving-rebels like ourselves and then laugh at us while our daughter dances around frantically and we desperately pull on the locked doors.

We call and leave a message on our landlord’s cell and he calls us back just minutes later (THANK GOD FOR A GREAT LANDLORD) and he offers to let his dog eat us us into his place with his doorway from the garage to the living room (we don’t have one of these). We politely offer to wait for him to come home and he says he’ll be home within a half hour or so and we weep in gratitude thank him profusely. We drive home and hang out in the car in our garage, letting the kids climb all over each other until our landlord and his family arrive home to let us in.  Tired children are put to bed. We settle in for the evening and relax. All is well.

Until the next morning when we leave to meet friends for lunch and discover that we left the interior lights on all night and the battery is dead. Awesome.

Nov 15

Dear Hater,

First of all it is totally not classy to leave a hate-comment on an old post. 

Second, while you are entitled to an opinion on my cake-decorating skills, making a bad cake does not make me a bad mom. I never claimed to be a professional, so shut the hell up.

Third, while I certainly could have bought a crappy grocery store cake, that wouldn’t guarantee that it would be nicer.

Fourth, that cake was my daughter’s dearest birthday wish, so the time and energy invested in it was to make her happy. And she was happy. Thrilled, in fact! If you had read more than one post on my blog, you’d realize that. Also, the kids helped me make the cake, so it’s not like I locked them in a closet while I baked and decorated. But thank you for judging me so quickly. Obviously I value the opinion of someone who has never met me or taken the time to read more than a couple hundred words I wrote one day several months ago. So thank you for saving me from myself!

Fifth, leaving a fake email address is so last year. Also? Quit surfing the net while at work. It doesn’t take a genius to find out where you’re located (Hello, Quan, Burdette & Perez P.C. Legal Services!) and luckily I’m married to one badass tech-geek who can probably find out your home address in five minutes.  You’re lucky I don’t call your work and report your lazy ass. Or at least report your fake name’s lazy ass.

Disdainfully yours,
Shannon

Dear Quan, Burdette & Perez P.C., 5177 Richmond Ave., Suite 800, Houston, Texas 77056,

One of your employees is surfing on company time. And besides that? He/she is an asshole. Time for the “respecting company time and resources” lecture!

Respectfully yours,
Shannon

Nov 3

Hours of sleep: 2 less than I need

Times I had to remind myself not to eat breakfast because I had to be fasting for bloodwork: 7

Times I forgot I wasn’t supposed to be eating and tasted the kids waffles: 1

Times I lied and said I had been fasting, despite rogue waffle tasting: 2

Gallons of water drunk before 8:30am: 2

Minutes waited at the lab: 35

Times the elastic tourniquet was tied around my arm: 12

Times my hands or arms were slapped by nurses to encourage veins to “pop” out: 348

Number of different nurses who punctured me and dug around under my skin with sharp needles: 3

Needle pokes in arms: 1

Needle pokes in hands: 3

Bruises from said poking: NONE (So unfair! At least a bruise would earn me some sympathy!)

Heat packs applied to hands to encourage veins to “pop” out: 1

Times I wished to be eating something: 58997

Times I wished I hadn’t brought the 2 year old: surprisingly, 0

Tylenol capsules I am about to consume to treat very sore hands: 3

OW.

Sep 10

FYI: If you happen to have recently purchased a rocking pair of super cute ballet flats you need to be patient while breaking them in. Start with short periods of wear and gradually work your way up to a longer amount of time until you can finally wear them all day without discomfort.  

Or you could wear them for the 1.2 mile walk to and from your daughter’s school first thing in the morning. This will result in quarter sized blisters on each baby toes plus a couple on your heels for good measure, thus ensuring that you will not be wearing the adorable new shoes for quite some time. Damn it.

I officially designate September the month of the flip flop, since that’s all I’ll be able to wear for at least two weeks while my feet heal.

*************************************************************************

I’ve officially been waterworked, just like Anne Nahm, who I love.

I seriously don’t get some people or why they act like complete and total jackasses. But yesterday I had my first taste of the Asshole Parent Smackdown.

When I was dropping off Avery for school another parent started chatting with us about kindergarten and immediately asked which class Avery is in. I told her we were in Mrs. B’s class and… you know what’s coming right?  She immediately launches into a diatribe about Mrs. M and how it was just too bad that we didn’t get Mrs. M who is wonderful and fabulous and got a teach-of-the-year award and who shoots rainbows out of her backside.  

All in front of my daughter.

I was appalled at her complete lack of courtesy! Who puts down a little kid’s KINDERGARTEN TEACHER in front of the child????

Never mind the fact that we had no choice of teachers. Or the fact that I wouldn’t have known which teacher is “better” since we just moved to town. Or the fact that I might not even agree with YOUR evaluation. Or that I can’t change classes now, even if I wanted to. Or that you scoring a supposedly better teacher is in no way a reflection of your superiority as a person.

I tried to salvage the conversation by enthusiastically gushing “Well! We are already SUCH BIG FANS of Mrs. B, aren’t we Avery?! Avery is just LOVING her class!”

My comment didn’t even register. The woman just continued to babble about Mrs. M and then proceeded to say that Mrs. B lacks patience! In front of my kid! Seriously! Who does that? 

Here’s hoping that they teach manners in kindergarten. Maybe the kids can explain to their parents how to interact politely with the other mommies and daddies. Or at least how not to be a judgemental asshole.  Kindergarten is all about LIFE SKILLS, people!

Sep 7

Jessica has tagged me to do the What’s New Meme which has been around since Jessica invented it last week. So I’m supposed to tell you five things that are new in my life. Except that right now EVERYTHING IN MY LIFE IS NEW. And you may not realize this, but EVERYTHING is kind of a big pool to choose from. Nevertheless, I did come up with something and here they are in no particular order:

1. Extended alone time with my son: Avery will be starting school on Monday and this isn’t exactly new since she went half days last year. But those half days were during Kieran’s nap-time and this year she will be gone all morning and a good part of the afternoon which means I will have mornings alone with Kieran for the first time…ever!  I’m kind of excited to get to know him outside of the shadow of his big sister.  I’m also a little worried that he has been so reliant on her for entertainment that we might be in for a rough transition.  Hold me!

2. Garbage Disposals: It appears that garbage disposals are commonplace around where we live. Every place we’ve stayed since arriving in Boston and every rental property and property for sale that we viewed had one.  And they weren’t all necessarily treasures, if you know what I mean. But still they had garburators.  Oh wait. They don’t call them that here. Anyway, in the places I’ve lived they have been much less common and I’m not sure why it’s deemed a necessity here.  I do know that the hubby and I needed some education on what I could and couldn’t put down there.  Turns out that watermelon rind takes a long time to grind up. Heh.  

3. Transit Rage: The uncommonly muggy weather definitely played a part in the explosive and distressing scene that played out on the subway today. It was hot, it was very crowded and everyone was feeling cranky. So when a lady with a bad attitude and a short temper started pushing her way into a train car and cursing at the slow moving crowd and her loud-mouthed husband it was not exactly surprising. We all felt on edge. But the lack of restraint and social awareness was appalling. As was the fact that another such unrestrained person with several children who let a string of curse words fly that would make a sailor blush when she was verbally assaulted for getting on before Bike Lady and her ill-mannered husband had disembarked. I’m not overly protective of my kids hearing “bad” words. I use appropriate language around them (most of the time) and I don’t want to make a huge deal of every little naughty word their delicate ears might hear. But I can’t excuse repeated and deliberate shrieking of c*nt and f*ck in front of other people’s children, let alone your OWN kids.  My 5 year old was really upset by the encounter and my 2 year old would have been if he wasn’t sleeping through all the commotion. Besides all this, I’m not a confrontational kind of person and this kind of screaming and raging made me really anxious. Hours later, I still feel tense. 

4. Video Games: I bought the hubby a used Wii for his birthday and we have been eagerly trying out a variety of sports, cooking games and old school Mario.  I didn’t grow up with video games, although I did play my share of Super Mario 3 at friend’s houses. But any skill I may have had as a kid has long since returned from whence it came.  Bottom line: there was a lot of cursing. (I didn’t say I didn’t approve of all swearing – just not in front of the kids or at random strangers on the subway!)

5. Politics: I have never had a passionate interest in politics, other than an unwavering conviction that EVERYONE has a duty to vote. But recently I find myself at least wanting to be more informed about both Canadian and American politics. Being in the US in the final months gearing up to an election has proven interesting. It has also inspired me to develop a better understanding of the Canadian system as all too often I find myself saying “Does Canada do X, too?” or “How does it work when Y in Canada?”. All too often I have no idea.  Just this morning in Canada parliament was dissolved and an election called for October 14.  Meanwhile the American election campaign has been going for something like a flobbity-gillion months (Why yes, I did just start watching the first season of How I Met Your Mother.) and still going strong.  It is interesting to see how our two countries do things differently and the ways in which that affects our cultures, governments and ideologies. 

So there you have it. I’m not going to tag anybody this time. But if you need inspiration for a blog post, consider yourself tagged!

Sep 2

Oh hey! Are you still here? Funny story…I kind of forgot about the blog for a few days. It’s nice of you to wait for me though. I’ve been busy with moving all our stuff our one duffel bag per person and unpacking hundreds of boxes buying air mattresses, pillows, blankets, towels and other necessities we can’t do without until our stuff comes next year in the next week or two.

This may come as a surprise to y’all (as it did to me) but living without *stuff* is extremely inconvenient. Little stupid things like not having paper towels become one huge pain in the ass when you have nothing else to improvise with. Good thing I am so longsuffering. *cough* Ah hem.

Also, while the kids are loving the huge empty house to run around in like rabid greyhounds racing around a track, they have been unusually crabby since we arrived in our ocean paradise. I attribute this mainly to the fact that it’s yet another strange place (the 10th different place we’ve been in since May 31st if you count hotels) and once again, we aren’t settling in for real yet.  I blame the moving company and their constant procrastination and their shitty delivery schedule.  For everything. They can expect a letter:

Dear Allied Van Lines, We are out of orange juice, you bastards!

Dear Allied Van Lines, I am constipated and it’s all your fault, you animals!

Dear Allied Van Lines, My son ate macaroni off the floor. Where is your humanity????

To top off the annoyance factor this week, the hubby has to go to the west coast. Again. And then come back for the weekend. And then fly back to the west coast for all of next week. Which sounds a hell of a lot more glamorous than it is.  

What that really means is that IF our belongings are miraculously delivered next week, the movers will have the privilege and delight of my wrath and/or shrew-like demeanor.  It won’t be pretty. But it will be fun.

That said, the house is amazing. The landlord did a great job cleaning, patching, painting, and even refinishing the floors where they had become worn.  Also? Did I mention THE OCEAN IS OUTSIDE? It’s hard to stay grumpy when the ocean is in your back yard. Plus, I have a jacuzzi tub the size of a port-a-potty in my master bath! (I know, the analogy is kind of gross, but that’s the best I can do in my current state of mind. Hopefully better posts to follow soon! Thanks for sticking with me.  I am now going to fall asleep to the sound of waves breaking on the shore. PS- The bragging probably won’t stop any time soon. If it annoys you, I apologize don’t let the door hit you on the way out.)

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