Tata!

I'm off on vacation. Wish me luck. Me, my mom, my deadbeat brother and four kids - should be a laugh a minute. Ask me how much wine I'm bringing. Fortunately zen buddhist vegetarian minimalists seem to have a strong affinity for red wine. One of the more delightful parts of their character :)

Today's lunch involved protein. This seems to be the key as I survived the onslaught of five children hurling themselves down the as-yet unsecured waterslide in my back yard. Kind of like this, but with three more boys, much more mud and ton of chaos. Only three minor injuries, miraculously.



My lawn's gonna need the week to recover...

Don't need no drama. No, don't need no drama

Sorry kids, no relationship drama for today. A couple of happy email convo's in which, yes, I did have to explain and justify the spelling of my name which is such a PITA but necessary, I suppose. Dude seems so NORMAL. Not overly needy, not evasive, just interested and normal. Go figure.

I would like to go on record as saying I will NOT disappear. At least not for long :) Given the choice I will take the opportunity to engage in as much male-female activity as I can, but not to the exclusion of my friends. Yes, I know I have precisely 52 hours of spare time per two week period (including sleeping, which can be sacrificed in certain situations). But with the implementation of the New and Improved Child-Custody AgreementTM , set to be implemented in August, I should have acres more time! (Or at least a few more evenings.) That should help.
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Sounds like my bro has decided to jump ship. Fucker. As I told my sister:

Also - your deadbeat motherfucker of a brother seems to think it would be a good idea to leave his wife and children of 18 years and shack up with a ex-heroin addict, ex-prostitute white trash bluegrass whore. Colour me disgusted. He wants to be "happy" and being stoned and drunk all the time while playing stupid bluegrass music and fucking this tramp seems to make him happy. Fat tramp, too. Grow up, you irresponsible little twat. What is WRONG with men? Sure, leave you wife, I'm all about embracing the change, but man up and do it properly, not waffling around and screwing up everyone's lives while moaning about being unhappy.

Feh. I'm so pissed off and mom could happily kill him (which is refreshing)

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And for those of you that are worried that my zen buddhist vegetarian minimalistic philosophy is sending me off the deep end.. It's a JOKE, people. I just need something to call my sex instead of food philosophy which is more socially acceptable. I can't remember to be a vegetarian. Plus, what's wrong with exploring options? I might be at the top of a mountain meditating next year instead of slogging away at a job that bores me to tears. Would that be bad? You can knit on a mountain top.

Vacation update!

Ah, July. And what a July. Hot humid and disgusting - in the city, at least. Fortunately the kids escaped the first week of July and I followed last week, giving them a glorious two weeks up at the cottage. I did not, not once, hear them say "I want to go home". Oh joy.

I give you a pictoral summary of the week.

Serenity... briefly.


This was more like the norm:











Guess what we watched on the rainy day?




This was moments before Jade's near-death experience, where her hair got tangled on the bottom rung of the ladder, holding her head under the water. Longest minute of my life, and I shook for an hour. All's well that ends well, though.


My most favourite niece EVER. I adore this girl.



There was lots of this... better than tv.


Looks so peaceful, doesn't it? While just steps away chaos reigns.


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Minor dating update: Talked to someone last week - let's call him Jim - who seemed nice and normal and not too good to be true. Came back from vacation and he'd deleted his profile. WTF? In a knee jerk reaction, I then decided to go out with someone who emailed me that very day - I never do that. WTF? So he's a smoker - that can't be any worse than any of the flaws in the other freaks. We'll call him Smokey.

Turns out, we met for drinks at 7:30 and I rolled home at 11:30... the next morning. Had to do the walk of shame, my friends. Beer, music, young male musician friends, VERY hot little body, metrosexual apartment. I would DIE to live there. I'll let you use you imaginations as to what transpired, but it was good. Smokey's a pretty nice guy as well as being a hotty.

Breakfast in the morning and we left it totally up in the air so I will probably never hear from him again. Too bad, he was pretty interesting and ashtrays don't taste too bad when you're drunk.

Canada Day

Well, happy Canada Day. While most of the country is enjoying a stat holiday, I am at work. However, as you will notice from the time stamp, I am blogging from work - how awesome is that? Due to some peculiar abberation in our company's security/anti-timewasting software, I have access to everything today. I doubt it will last long. but it's fun while it does.

My boys left this morning for a week at the cottage. While I miss them inordinately, this time without them is so precious - it's my yearly recharge. Time to do whatever I want, whenever I want without whining, putting on shoes, being woken up in the middle of the night, rushing to pick them up, cooking dinner that goes uneaten, and so on. What am I doing, you might ask?

Tidying
Sleeping
Knitting
Sewing
Building steps for the new slide (all the neighbourhood kids will be pleased)
Drinking
Maybe dating? Maybe having wild gorilla sex with the man of my dreams? Yeah, pretty funny.
Cleaning up both the front and back porch, the state of which which make my house look like Kentucky.
Drinking some more
Playing with my friends. Yay yay yay!

I am also teaching myself the guitar. This is not easy as I am slow and have no memory cells left and my fingers are tender like a baby's butt. My hand on the strings resembles an arthritic claw - is it supposed to be like this? My main goal is to get somewhat minorly proficient so I can play basic tunes (I wonder how hard K'naan's Waving Flag is? - Calvin loves this) and encourage my kids to sing. Calvin especially loves to sing and gets no opportunity at home. Yes, bad parenting example number 7,493.

And my ever-loving mother, in her helpfulness, weeded out my weed plant last night. It was barely two inches tall, located safely between my lettuce plants in a window box where no-one could step on it by accident. Five weeks of molly-coddling down the tubes. Feh.

Guess I'll stick to drinking.

...followed by tremors

A multitude of tremors:

My child, sweet as pie on evening, awakes like the spawn of Satan, kicking his brother, throwing my stuff, using his attitude voice.

Me, starting the day in a foul mood due to said son and the ex who cannot seem to show up on time for love or money. Stomp, stomp stomp. I am a three-year old. Got to sit in my office all morning and listen to an ACIP webinar and finished the body of Barb's chicken to keep my hands amused. I've got to keep emergency knitting for days like this. It stopped me from killing anyone.

Actual tremor - 5.5 on the Richter scale, apparently. Centred in Ottawa but very noticeable here. I was in the library or I wouldn't even have noticed it. I was walking though the stacks and I though to myself, I really am too fat if I make the shelves jiggle like that. I stopped walking and they kept jiggling so I figured it wasn't me. Looked around and other people were looking around too so I figure it was a quake.
Not nearly as scary as being stuck in the possessed elevator last week though. I really thought I was going to die then, clutching poor Jackie's hand.

And another emotional tremor when I went to meet my psych gal today and she said they were going home "just in case" because of the earthquake - was that OK? Feh. I had the cloud of doom over me all afternoon after that. What, you call the suicide line and they put you on hold? That's how I feel.

Relatively peaceful evening, though. Thank goodness for small mercies.