Out of the mouths of ... uh... my kids

I'll be in a cold, cold grave before I call my kids "babes" in any context...

Exibit A:

Pepper: "Where do burglars sleep, since they don't have a place of their own?"

Kind of made me think about one's assumptions. To wit: I just assumed I always understood that burglary was not necessarily about need! More about asshat/dickwads with no respect for property/boundaries/values... I think I *might* have given a *teensy* speech about the difference between the homeless and asshat/dickwads. And I *might* have chosen more age-appropriate adjectives.

Exhibit B (OK, tonights are both Pepper's. Most of the way-out ones are):

Pepper: "When I grow up, I'm going to let my kids watch Hannah Montana"

[That's me: Cold, hard mom. Don't let the kids watch HM. "Beeeyotch!!!"
They'd say that if they knew that it would describe exactly how they feel about
it. It's not really a huge deal. It rarely comes up. The TV, if it's on at that
time of night will either have a movie or a Wii game on it (maybe Treehouse TV,
but that is becoming more and more rare)]

My response: "When you grow up, I'M going to MAKE your kids watch Hannah Montana". The return look said "what are you gettin at?" Oh yeah... messin' wit' da coconut...

R4te My R4ck

Did she just say that? Are things really taking a turn for the raunchy down Harmzie's Way?

Judge for yourself.

Before:

After:

Don't let the clock fool you. This did not take six hours. I managed to squeeze in a complete "Star Battle" on Mario Party 8. Blew away Bowzer & everything. Opened up a new level (got 15 minutes of credits afterward). The kids were thrilled. Which was why I did it, of course. Shut up. It was.

So uh, back to the point. What do you think?

I give it a solid six. In lay terms: it still looks like Hell, but the little demons are all lined up nicely and they've washed their faces. I mean, the spices are still sitting in the wettest, hottest part of the kitchen which, if you've spent any time watching Food TV (specifically Alton Brown >sigh<) you know is verboten.

I dream of individually labelled little stainless steel cups magnetted to a board inside a cupboard far far away (from the stove). But this was driving me nuts so I purged.

They're even alphabetized. I nearly melted when Max suggested this! Yes, it's possible I might have a problem.

And no, I did not invent a whole project to I could write a post called "R4te My R4ck". The brilliant title came later. And it's not even that brilliant, since it's not even a spice rack...

Not my best Mommy-moment

(but not the worst, either)

So just now, Norah just comes downstairs & says:

"Is Stewie 32 years old?" (wtf?)

"What? Why?"

"Well, he's been in a time-out for 32 minutes and..."

"SUNNOVABITCH!!!" (I think it was something like "auugghhh!!" But in my head...) This is what not using a timer gets me. Er, him. I had a 'quick' phone call to make and, hey, I'll just check my email... They were so quiet up there!

Yes, we subscribe to the One-Minute-Per-Year school of punishment. Other than being effective (for us & our kids), it has resulted in some humourous conversations, mostly occuring when I have done something that the youth faction in the household disapproves of:

"Mom, I'll send YOU for a time out! - 38 minutes!" (OK, so we haven't had
this conversation in a while)

"Sweet! Will you send me to my room? I'm THERE!
Wake me up when the timer goes off."

But back to Stewie. It's really serious to throw a book at your sister's head.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Edit Jan 9/08: photo that makes me feel a little better]

10 Favourites

Man, this took a long time...

10 Favorites

Season: Summer - it's construction season!

Color: blue

Time: 12:34. There's a stupid Facebook group called "I make a wish at 11:11". I want to join and tell them that they are all retarded and that the real magic time is 12:34 (I mean, LOOK at it!), but I don't think they'd see the light. They're all just beyond my help.

Food: Sushi. Pasta. Turkey dinner with all the fixin's (YOU can have all the rest of the fixin's, I just need the turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy & cranberry sauce)

Drink: Australian red wine. Some others are good too.

Ice cream: chocolate

Place: At home with everyone at home (second: at home with nobody at home, provided it's clean & there's no pressing "issues")

Sport: meh. OK, soccer. no, hockey. no, squash. meh...

Actor: meh. OK, Brad Pitt. Shut up! He's good! Shut up!

Actress: meh. OK, Cate Blanchett (kick ass Elizabeth II)

9 Currents

Feeling: time to go to bed

Drink: empty red wine glass (d'oh)

Time: 11:16

Show on TV: We don't have a TV anymore. We have a Guitar Hero display unit.

Mobile used: old Samsung flip. Very functional & does what I need it to, but I'm holding out for the Crackberry in spring...

Windows open: 4 Internet Exploder windows & my lookOut email platform (thanks to Albert for those monikers)

Underwear: what??? None of your business! OK, since it doesn't make me look too bad: Lululemon "boy shorts" & Victoria's secret some kind of push up thing. Oh yeah. It works for me baby...

Clothes: My Facebook status hints that I was in my pjs with bedhead all day, so this one doesn't make me look too good. It's late now, so pjs would be OK. Fleece pj bottoms are toasty

Thought: "Just crank out some answers & get to bed, dumbass!!"

8 Firsts

Nickname: Would come to close to revealing my true identity. Plus there isn't really one. One that's worth discussing. [Edit Jan 9/08: "Harmzie" - d'uh]

Kiss: Ick. I'm not going there. Suffice to say the super-mature boys in my high school had material for days (pretty long considering their attention span)

Crush: First *real* long-term one was one of the aforementioned super-matures. Probably long-term because I didn't have ANY kind of guts to pursue it (and thus get either affirmation or, y'know, closure - bitter cut-to-the-bone-painful kind of closure. Gee, why didn't I have the guts?) I didn't really have very good taste in crushes until Max

Friend: I'm not about outing people here, but I met her in grade 8 & it was the first time I discovered that people could like me for me. Kind of still wrestling with that...

Vehicle I drove: Drove? As in the first time I controlled anything large with a gas pedal? 1972 Dodge van (was a farm vehicle in an open field). First road-worthy (and I use the term loosely) vehicle generally considered to be mine? 1976 Toyota Corona station wagon (excellent durable vehicle despite the fact that it had practically no front quarter panel). First vehicle registered in my name? 1985 Chrysler LeBaron. Totalled that baby.

Job: Goose-tending-girl. Crappy, crappy job. Got good pipes though, hoisting all that grain in a wheelbarrow.

Date: Whoa. Too far back. Couldn't have been memorable. I think it was a movie.

Pet: a cat named "Glasses" I know. It's stupid, but I think I was, like 5 and I was under enormous pressure to name the damn thing. I looked around the room & saw my mom's glasses on a shelf and the rest is history. Including Glasses II & Glasses III (OK, so I wasn't very creative in that department)

7 Lasts

Drink: I've been out of wine (I know!!!) since before New Years, so Max just bought a box tonight. Where have you been, my precious darling??? I missed you so...

Kiss: Max just got back from Calgary last night, so... [bown chick bown bown] Oh, crap. It was actually Pepper's bedtime kiss. OK, so maybe I'm a little preoccupied with the return...

Meal: Mexicasa Taco Express (or some damn thing). Hey, Stewie ate a taco shell WITH MEAT & CHEESE IN IT!!! OMGWTFBBQ???

Website visited: blogger.com. Hello? Oh. Real website. Other than FaceCrack (or CrackBook, if you will), and LifeCandy (to cut & paste this), it would have to be Cracked.com. Sorry. Not very interesting today.

Movie watched: "Hancock" with Will Smith. It was OK, but not really challenging, y'know? Max suddenly realized that Charlize Theron is hot. Yay. Oh crap. That's the last movie I watched where I chose the movie (which technically, I didn't choose, Max did). The last movie I watched (like, 200 times since Christmas day) was actually Kung-Fu Panda.

Phone call: some squash date dude for Max (I should be more respectful. I think it was the guy that owns the store where Max got my awesome Christmas present - see photo at left). Filtering out all the "please buy my crap" (telemarketers) and "what time is dinner? What if we swap cars & bake half dinner here... etc" (my Over-Complicate-Things family, of which I am a full card-carrying & founding member) phone calls, it would have to be a nice long chat with my friend after her New Year's party (which she hosts the weekend after New Year's every year).

TV Show watched: I don't think I watch TV any more. I just commandeered the first season of "Arrested Development" from my folks and intend to watch that soon. Jason Bateman was one of the highlights of an otherwise bleak "Hancock" (see above). Other than that, I tried to watch "The Tudors", but found I wasn't intrigued as much as I had hoped and Henry's hotness (which was supreme, I'll tell you) only lasted so long... I find that a good brain-numbing hour is any of the CSI franchise. It's so bad it's good...

6 Have you ever...

...broken the law: That's what they're there for, no? (Oh wait. That's "rules", not laws... dang)

...been drunk: Do you even know me at all?? Of course I haven't.

...kissed someone you didn't know: I don't think so. There are far too many accounts of "kissed someone you didn't really want to", so I'm glad that wasn't the question. Then I'd have to get into the story of my first kiss, the old creepy retiring guy who said "I'm kissing ALL the girls before I leave" (FUKKETY that still pisses me off), the date-that-I-didn't-know-was-a-date-until-it-was-over in first year... That's about it, but it's far too many IMHO.

...been close to gun fire: Yes (grew up on a farm - the hunting, the rats, the cans, the precious antique cans)

...skinny dipped: Yes.

...broken anyone's heart: If the drunken slobbering ex-boyfriend blithering "I would have married you!" is any indication, then yes. But that's the only actual heartbreak "evidence" I have. There were countless others, let me tell you. when I pointed at Max and said "You. Me. Now." (Never mind that the post script to that is "who the hell are you?")

5 Things

...you can hear right now: Since I first read this item, my brain has snapshotted (have I mentioned that I get to make up words here?) a number of "what I'm hearing right now". The first time was the hum of the fan on my computer and that was it (my computer really needs the dust sucked out of it soon); the next six times had something to do with that fucking intriguing Guitar Hero... Right now, it's "Hit me with Your Best Shot" (at least GH picks good songs), 10 minutes ago it was "Talk Dirty To Me", which Max has been trying to master for a couple of days. The shrapnel of ear-worms has spread around the house and now my three kids run around our house singing "In the driveway; in my old-man's Ford; behind the bushes; until you're screaming for more more MORE!". At least I like the song.

...on your bed: uh... pillows? (Those ARE pillows)

...you ate today: Alton Brown's (he's my back-up guy if Max ever goes on a chef's strike. He knows he's replaceable too, so that's why I'm set for life) Home-made lemon meringue pie. OMFG it was good. (I made it, for the record - Max does the sustenance stuff, I do the fluff stuff.)

...you can’t live without: Home-made lemon meringue pie. Sorry. Lapse... There's nothing you can't live without. It's all about adapting. There are a number of things I would be devastated without, but "can't live without" suggests (to me) something like suicide should they disappear and I like to think that I'd not venture down that path. This also opens up the definition of "live" (like you'd be breathing, but would you really be "living") but then I think I'm overcomplicating the question a little (hey, it's what I do).

...you do when you get bored: I don't get bored because I never get enough done, so there's always something to do. But I surf the Internets a lot (I swear that will become a word if I have anything to do with it)

4 Places you have been today:

the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom, the basement... yeah, I didn't leave the house either.

3 Things on your desk right now:

Only 3? OK, weirdest 3:

- Guardrail from Speed Racer slot car set (cheap piece of crap);

- Green paper crown from Christmas cracker (opened Sunday - yes, Jan 4. It was either bring them to dinner, or my sister was going to throw them out);

- "Steamboat Hardware Kit"- Max gets the weirdest shit in his stocking at the farm. I wish our scanner worked because the package is priceless. It depicts a wonderfully crafty little wooden boat - beautifully painted with the steamboat hardware embedded with it. In fine print, it states "wooden structure not included". On the side, some key quotations include: "...an ideal inter-generational project"; and "It requires only very basic woodworking skills, a few handsaw cuts and one drilled hole". Yes, I'm going to say that at the Emergency Room Desk...

2 Choices

Black or White: WTF??? I'm not falling into this racial trap. But I wear black a lot. But I wear white a lot too. Usually together. Side-by-side. In harmony. Oh, lord, why can't we?

Hot or Cold: Hot. I hate being cold. One time Max pointed out to me that I hate being too hot to (he says a lot of stuff about me being too hot, but I won't go into that)

1 Place you want to visit:

Italy. OK. I saw my cousin's photos from her trip last spring & I'm really, really jealous. Could be that it takes me back to when I was 16 & went to France for the summer (sounds so worldly, classy, extravagant & worldly, doesn't it? Well, it was all of those things. It was also the first time I kicked myself in the ass and said "you WILL do this" and then did it. The Eiffel Tower rocked pretty hard too.)

Stand back...

My Christmas present to my dad this year:

I'm just dying for dad to wear this the the next round of Clean Environment Commission hearings... (I have no idea if there's another round of CEC hearings)

For the record - #35 on Discover Magazine's top 100 Science stories of 2008. He's not personally listed, but he co-authored the paper. Them sciency-type-people, they know the score...

Personally, I think it's the nerd equivalent of People's "Sexiest Man Alive". I mean, like People, it's not like it's a *real* recognition from your peers (which he's received as well), but it's got WAY more mainstream coverage!

Oh, and it was made and hand-delivered by my secret crush: Randall Munroe at xkcd.com. (It is possible that part of that might have been me mixing up my waking & sleeping memories)

He's holding two beer because it was Christmas at the farm and everybody was doing it. Or he was just tidying up. There was a lot of both (having 12 people in an albeit large house for three days requires a lot of both), so I can't recall.

Suddenly Feeling All Naked & Exposed...

My mom caught wind of my Christmas card and wants to know what all the fuss is about.

So I considered a number of ways to go about this:

Option A: Actually mail her one - she is currently working overseas. To mail anything takes, I am told, six weeks. To get a Christmas card to her in time, I would have had to NOT pull the idea out of my ass on Friday, December 19; run to Staples at closing time; crank them out of the printer - including all the mailing & return labels; [hosted a major (for me) annual Christmas function]; scribbled some deeply meaningful & personal greeting on each one; instruct Max to deliver them to a Canada Post receptacle that picked up at 10 am (as opposed to the ones that only pick up at 5 pm) on the Monday; and rely on that Wonderful Canada Post to make me look like I didn't do a, b, c, & d. (They arrived locally TWO FULL DAYS before Christmas! The day after they were dropped in the box!)

In other words, I would have had to have been someone else. I come from a long line of Perfect Planners. People who get their Christmas shopping done in July. People who actually DO put meaningful & personal greetings on their Christmas cards (my definition of "personal" from above: I remember your kids' names. And mine). And get them to you in MID December. People who don't send their husbands out into the wilds on Christmas Eve saying: "Oh my GAWD!!! We left out AN ENTIRE KID!!!"

I'm pretty sure Grandma's mailman was not like that, and that line was - shall we say - interrupted. Just sayin'

Option B: Post it here - Yikes. Hi Mom! I have done the blog-equivalent of quickly scanning your apartment's living room for stacks of newspapers, stray underpants and empty vodka bottles in the time it takes to ride the elevator up from the entry buzzer to your door. For the record, that never happened (not with her anyway). I quickly scanned my entries so far. Fortunately, because I am a lazy ass, there weren't that many.

So here is the outside:

I stole [ahem] borrowed [grr] was inspired by an ad I saw for a company that will create & print cards for you.

Here is the inside:

I was inspired by the nuthouse peaceful sanitarium sanctuary in which I live.

Happy Arbitrary Day!

So another season has passed.

The children are nestled all snug in their... uh... couch, while visions of... Kung-Fu Panda dance in... their TV screen. Parenting at it's finest.

So I'm grabbing a moment that it seems I haven't had in about six weeks to reflect on the past & the future. I feel like that should be printed all wavy & spooky like it sounds in my head - with my arms waving around too. But I can't find an HTML code for that. OK, ok - I'm too lazy to *find* an HTML code for that.

2008 summarized - what I accomplished last year:

Not much really:

• Kept three humans alive and somewhat challenged (may have had some help with that one. Especially the feeding - some say essential in the whole "keeping alive" phenomenon). And they don't hate me entirely, depending on the day/moment/way the wind is blowing. The "bad mommy" is a new one. I mean, I always knew, but it was never said *out loud* until now y'know?


• Stayed married. Not sure which one of us this is a bigger accomplishment for. Depends on the day/moment/way the wind is blowing.


• Got a new job. When I started this, I promised I wouldn't write about work (I mean, that's just stupid). But this is about me, and the new job (same bat-office, I don't like my changes to be TOO massive!) was a seriously new direction with seriously new challenges. As I spent most of this past fall I sick in one fashion or another, Max pointed out that I was probably stressed. I'm not stressed, I said. I love my new job. But further reflection revealed that I am actually absorbing and processing an awful lot of information & with relatively little down-time (self-inflicted, I know). So, to kick you square in the ass, stress doesn't have to necessarily be the They're-All-Out-To-Get-Me-And-Make-Me-Fail-And-I'm-Going-To-Lose-It-All-And-My-Family-Will-Starve variety.


• Turned 40. So maybe I didn't do this and it's more something happened to me, but I like to think that I had some part in my *making* it this far. Plus, I think I handled it well. I mean you don't really have a choice in the matter (and it certainly beats the alternative), but some of my learned colleagues (IMHO) have not taken the beatings of time with such gentle grace & good humour as myself.


• Started a blog. woo hoo. I feel like I have joined the children's table at the Nerderati Banquet. Like I get to hear all the grown-up conversation even though I don't 100% get what they're talking about. Like I chirp up now and then and mostly get ignored, but once in a long while I happen to accidentally say something profound - comment the right random thing at the right random place and some grown-up gives me a pat on the head and says "good one!" People I know - though I love them - don't count. It's like your mom saying "good one, dear!" (Which, by the way, everyone still needs to hear, but it just doesn't take you away from the kids' table!)

This year:

• Get fit/Gain weight. Sorry, but it's true. Why is it that someone can come up to me and say "you're so skinny! I could just pick you up & toss you across the room. I hate you! haw haw!" If I were to walk up to someone and say "wow your ass is huge, how do you get through doors?" *I'd* be labelled the big nasty BeeYotch. But that's not why.

This is:

And this:

(omgwtfbbq???)

There's more I'm sure but after looking at these pictures, I'm done reflecting for a while. That's all the reason I need for pretty much everything. Happy New Year!