Ha! You were not correct.

Dude texted me for non-specific and lame reason Tues night. On thurs we had a convo at 3 am. What would we do without text?? He also emailed me on Mon, though I didn't get it until today. And tonight :) several times :) Methinks Sunday might see some action. One can only hope.

I'm back! A week off festering disease, dysfunction and well, I can't think of another dis-word. Anyway, it was good. Calvin developed what we're calling phleboffles - rash and fever - which lasted all fucking week. I think it was psychosomatic. Arrived the day we got there and left as we departed. He shook like a leaf after a few i minutes in the water. Plus Jack got pinkeye and I got a stye on my eye (FYI a tea bag cleared that up so fast I almost forgot I had it!).

Lake Huron was great - it was nice and shallow. Jack tried as hard as he could but even he couldn't drown himself. The waves were HUGE that day we got there and a few other days, and the kids had so much fun in them. Jack would get swamped by a huge wave, tossed on the rocky shoreline, and emerge grinning to do it all again. Pictures will follow when I've downloaded them. I loved the rocks. Fossils everywhere, cool colours, amazing combinations of stones...

The drama - my brother and his revelations - was a bit anti-climactic. I know it was coming, but my mom was so full of drama. She kept trying to tell him what a mistake he was making. That boat has sailed, mom. Me, I was all abut "man up and take responsibility for your kids". He arrived at the cottage without any food. Personally, I don't give a rats arse, but I gave him a good lecture on how he needs to show the kids that he can do the mom-thing; provide properly, take care of the stuff she normally would do. I almost think that registered. I was not impressed.

At one point my mom was sobbing in the car and I just threw up my hands and walked away. When she came up later to "explain" I had no time for it. I said, with no small irritation, that I understood she was torn, but that I was sick of the drama. If anyone had show the slightest inclination towards tears when MY life was falling apart, I might have been more sympathetic, but no one acted like this at all! Stop with the drama!

Wow - that was something for our repressed family.

Steve the dick, when picking up the kids, announced that the numbers I sent him for pour very simplistic child support calculations were off. When I pointed out with incredulity that I had only fixed the number of days in what he sent me, and nothing more, he waffled on about percentages, 40%, changing the formula, blah blah blah.... Even I couldn't take it anymore. Kids present or not I said you've had a month and a half to look at this and NOW you want to change the whole fucking formula??? It's YOUR formula! I was so pissed off I basically kicked him out of the house. He was all, we need to talk about it and I said WHATEVER and kicked them all out. WTF? He's so stupid his eyed are tied on his arsehole.

Got a new phone. It a fancy-arse Nokia E63 which does more that I need but at least I can text properly. Technology is a bitch - it makes me feel old when I can't unlock the GD thing. Ah well. It works with my ultra-cheap Speakout wireless plan and can get email at home. So it took me forever and I never managed to import my contacts, I switched SIM cards with the one from my other Nokia! Colour me pleased with myself. I am giving my old phone to Orly. She needs one for the kids and has zero tech needs. Reduce, reuse recycle.

Yes, Barb - you were right.

I admit it - I'm weak. I emailed. No response. A week of regret. Moron indeed.

I hope I don't turn to food for comfort. Still, the sick feeling in my stomach when I think about it should hold me off for a while.

SERIOUSLY???????

How many child support cheques can one man bounce???? Feh.

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...

Resistance is futile

I have a communication problem. I have no life so when I meet someone interesting, all I want to do is talk. However, I have been very very good. I have not had any communication with my dude since Tuesday night. It's killing me, but I'm resisting. Part of me thinks he will think I'm not interested, but the majority of me screams BACK OFF! So I am listening. For now.

As for the zen buddhist minimalistic vegetarianism, that's actually going pretty well. I made a discovery today, though. Monday through Wednesday I have been eating a pretty normal lunch and next to no dinner. That seems to have been working well. Today I deviated from the plan and had half a salad - a veggie only salad - for lunch. By dinner time I felt extremely weird, and somewhat less than patient. So I think the key here would be to have a decent lunch including some PROTEIN and as little as I like for dinner. Hell, I just sleep at night.

Or not. I also seem to have developed zen buddhist insomnia, which sucks the hairy one. My eye was twitching so badly today it was like being in an electrical storm. I finally cranked up the AC and that seemed to help, so hopefully that'll work tonight too.

And I'm doing Alberto VO5 Hot Oil Treatment as we speak! How long has it been since you've seen that? My hair is a hideous dried out crispy gross mess, so maybe it will help. I don't recall it working before, but who knows?

Some fucker stole Calvin's bike today. Totally unsurprising as it's a cool bike and we left it unlocked. I can't even work up much anger, just a bit of frustration and some relief to get rid of one bike. I do feel bad for Calvin, though. He loved that bike.

Just one more day until I can blow this town again. Then the urge to email will be a mute* point.

* for those that think I'm dumb as a plank it's a joke.

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.

Pop pop, fizz fizz...

Oh, the relief!

I sent him a PoF email spelling out the potential situation on Thursday. I also put in some blurb about me not emailing him too much and should I email or text or call or what. Typical me stupidness.

Really, why don't more people treat me like the dolt I am? I have to C&P this because I want to remember forever that there are some OK people in the world full of psycho, dysfunctional and just plain weird folk.

Frankly I was terrified to open his message. Have I not learned that if you send a message that you're scared to get a reply back from, you shouldn't send it at all? Right? Please channel the Fairycakes "I committed career suicide" email next time you have any doubts, sweetheart.

Anyway...

That sounds nice... But I'm actually working in Kitchener from tomorrow to next Tuesday. I don't usually get home till 10:00 or 10:30. ... you can email me at metrosexual@provider.com if you prefer. :)

Always the smileys. It makes me happy. And the consistency. I knew he was working and he said he was working. How refreshing. (yeah, I made up the email addy - whadda ya want? to tell him he's being blogged??)

But now I'll have to fess up as to how I spell my name...

Vegetarian Zen Buddhist monk angst

Now the handwringing begins.

My mom is picking the kids up for me Thursday evening. Should I get her to stay and ask dude if he wants to meet up? If so, for what? A quicky? - so shabby. Coffee/drink? - better, but he might find that totally pointless. But if he finds that pointless are we in a bang-only relationship all of a sudden? Aren’t I trying to avoid that? And more to the point, what if he says no? What if he makes plausible excuses but says no? Do I write him off? I am pretty done with the excuses but you have to cut people some slack, don’t you?

Feh.

I have done the contacting up until now. He has responded so far, promptly and appropriate enthusiasm, so I think that’s OK. At what point do I step back and wait for him to make a move? Never? Once I start, does that set the precedent for ever on, so if I stop contacting him it’s me saying I’m not interested? Am I totally overanalyzing this? (rhetorical question). I *want* to step back and let him make the next move but I’m worried he won’t (which sounds even stupider out loud than in my head).

Why am I so dumb? If I were giving the advice, what would I say? I'd say call him and just fucking ASK. Pussy.
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The vegetarian zen buddhist monk lifestyle seems to be working for me, except I keep forgetting the vegetarian part. And the buddhist. But I am embracing the zen.

Q. Where to vegetarian zen buddhist monks go to have a big dump?
A. They don't - the don't ever eat enough to ever have a big dump.

Hope sends you emails

I'm not the kind of person who can wait passively to see what the outcome of the other night's adventure is. I need to know the interest level before I work myself into a lather. So I sent Smokey an email just saying I had a good time etc. etc., and he replied in kind! Again, not being one to be happy with that minor success, I then went way out on a limb and said while I was busy for the next two weeks, maybe we could do something in two weeks.

Well, much to my surprise, he said...

I should be around :) let's talk as it gets closer :)

And the smileys are his. I think I'm in love.

No, I'm more realistic than that. It's never going to be a move-in-and-live-happily-ever-after thing, but who knows what it *will* be. I'll take another kick at that can as a beginning (if it even materializes) and see how it goes from there. If it does happen again, maybe we could have some sort of low-key "discussion". Just because I'm that sort of gal :)

Oh, and he texted me back too, even if he was mocking my ancient texterater. I like to cover all my tech bases.

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.

Of moths and miscreants

When Miko's car finally gave up the ghost, she bequeathed it to her mechanic for the low low sum of zero dollars. The only thing she walked away with was her roof rack. One might wonder at the wisdom of her selection seeing as she no longer owned a car, but hey. Hope springs eternal.

One of the less than lovely qualities of that roof rack was that it was slightly too large for her compact car. In fact, slightly too large for any compact car and, I suspect, many midsize vehicles. The ends of the bars protuded menacingly from the sides of the car. There were more than a few victims of the head bashing implements, despite her tendency to scream: "watch your head!" when anyone exited the car. As a result, a few of us got together and knit her some roof rack cozies for the ends of the bars, the purpose of which was to make them more visible and possibly to cushion the blow when it met its mark. (Anyone familiar with the installation of roof racks knows they are located in the opening of the doors - right where you head enters and exits at maximum velocity.)

Anyway, now that my kids are bigger and I no longer need to pack the entire contents of the house, I decided this year not to rent a minivan for the pilgrimage to the cottage and rather put my roof carrier on my car - for which I need a roof rack. Since Miko no longer needs hers, she let me borrow it. I got it half installed, only to discover one bar is missing the bits that actually attach it to the car. (We shall not discuss how long I stood in the driveway fiddling and contemplating before I came to this realization.) So since I couldnit put the other bar on, I decided to tidy up the cozies.

These cosies are NASTY. Before the car died they were at the mercy of the elements for a good while. Since then, they have been sitting in her basement for...at least a year, I think. The cozies are made of wool. I could explain, but I give you a visual instead:


On a technical note, I was interested (but unsurprised) to see the blue and pink - both kool-aid dyed, had faded significantly, where the purple, dyed with acid dyes, was almost unaffected. The moths liked the purple one best. The pink is Paton's merino, the blue is chunky BFL and the purple is.... I don't know. Maybe BFL? Maybe corridale? Can't remember.
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And just for entertainment purposes...

I was supposed to meet the mushy hotel dude at noon on Saturday for a drink. Just before, I check and I see he's online. Now he lives at the border between Toronto and Mississauga, so I knew something was not right. I emailed him to ask if we were still on and if so did he plan on teleporting there, and he says "24 hours and counting". Yep, dude said he got the day wrong and thought it was on Sunday. Deeply apologetic, blah blah blah.

Fast forward to this morning, I check my email and he suddenly has to go out of town on business and can't meet up. Deeply apologetic, blah blah blah.

Sound familiar? Sigh.

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.

Dudes

Over lunch today we decided that, unscientifically statistically speaking, internet dating has to pay off at *some* point. Not everyone can big a loser or have some fatal flaw. We decided the magic number is 10. In 10 dates there's got to be someone who is reasonably attractive, has a job and a place to live and their own teeth, and no intolerable personal habits or mannerisms.

10 seems a bit low to me, but we shall see. So far we have had:

1. Frisbee. He was socially acceptable, except for the spandex shorts, basically attractive though his upper lip was not too my taste. And a bit presumptuous - "that kiss (little, lame, quick) must have got your heart pounding". Surprise, yes. Passion, no.
2. Flicky. The post office dude with the spittle. Flicky because of his weird habit of flicking the very fleshy and separate lobes of his ear. Ew.
3. Toothy. Last night's dude, who decided he didn't want a relationship but rather just dating (AKA sex) and talked about how his ex never put out all night. Plus, when he discovered I drove to our "date" said he wanted to go… parking. Yes, parking, like park somewhere and make out. Ummm… no. He was too eager and basically unemployed and lived on someone's floor and laughed to hard and showed his teeth too much. If they were nice teeth, sure, but they were splayed out like someone had sat on his head when he was a child. Yuck. I have a tooth thing.
   

This weekend I am supposed to go out with Sergio the hotel dude. I will find a nickname for him once I meet him. Girly-man probably, due to his penchant for romantic comedies, holding hands and skipping though the daisies. That will be 4.

And don’t forget Earl the helicopter dude. He seems interested and is back from "Croatia", whatever that is code for, on Sunday. His pics are hard to judge but he seems to have a bulgy eye issue in one of them. Something weird is going on anyway. I fancy him as being like Fairycakes in my mind, but I think I will be grossly disappointed by the reality of the situation. He'd be 5 if it pans out. Half way.

Volume, my friends, volume. If nothing else I'll be able to write a dating book by the end.

Crazy cat ladies

In the spirit of general thriftiness and being willing to make an easy buck, I get these emails from time to time asking if I want to do a survey on X, Y or Z. Usually they don’t apply to me or it's $25 for a hour, which isn’t worth my while, so when the cat food one came up and they were offering $90 for two hours, I thought that was OK. I'd done on of them before (years ago) and it was sort of fun.

Right.

Got a babysitter and trekked up the Yonge and Eligible - roughly a 45 minute trip. Hmmm. That should have been a clue. I get there and there are eight other ladies waiting in the office. They look a bit… down-market, but hey, whadda you expect for a survey company? Anyway, we go around in the circle and introduce ourselves and our cats and the problems immediately become apparent. Some of my favourite personality types are there!

A. The long talker. She pauses before everything like she's about to make a life-changing announcement, and then goes on at long and slow and boring length about something so basic we get her meaning before she's done the first sentence.

B. The truly crazy. Her cat is her best friend, she has a hundred boring stories about it that she thinks were all dying to hear, and she has absolutely no concept of what a focus group is for. FOCUS group, people. Not group therapy. Not a advertorial for Walmart. Focus group.

C. The my-cat-is-special type. We had a couple of those. My cat is too old or too fragile to do what normal cats do. I would buy that but my cat can'tcope I like variety but my cat can't eat fish because of the ash the ash you know the urinary tract thing and the vet said about the ash the ash the fish the flavours aaarrrggghhh!

They could have paid me $200 and it would have been barely enough. I gotta give the woman who ran the group credit, though. She shut down the long talkers and the whack jobs just as fast as she could. I bet she just loves her job.

I will never misuse the term "crazy cat lady" again. If I use it on you, you're in serious trouble.

...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.

There'll be peace in the valley tonight

Some nights just seem to fall into place seamlessly, and this was one of them. I wonder why? Maybe because I spent more time lecturing them about being nice to each other, about not *actually* hitting one and other and their friends. Calvin just seemed more at peace tonight. Less fractious, like the world was giving him the short end of the stick.

Whatever it is, I am delighted. This is what having a family is about. Letting them sleep under the desk if they want to. Making yogurt popsicles and saying they can eat them for breakfast. Showers instead of baths. Picking the big battles and letting everything else slide, especially when it doesn't matter at all.

And my central park came home. Phew!

Sing it with me, baby.

Another one bites the dust

OK, I really gave this guy the benefit of the doubt. He said he was average... and he was. Not fat. He has a job, a kid, seemed relatively intelligent despite poor poor typing skills.

But...

In person, he had some serious flaws. He talked a mile a minute (kind of like his multiple emails) and got...brace yourself... spittley at the corners of his mouth. OK to talk to, a bit too agreeable. but whatever.

Major flaw - manners. He had a drink when I arrived. Fine, but he had already paid for it, didn't ask if I wanted one certainly didn't offer to pay for it. He's a cheap tipper and bitched about the cost of the beer. And it was hot today and he was sitting in full-on sun when I arrived. He didn't ask if I wanted to move to the shade and he sat with his back to the sun while I had it full in my eyes. Never once took off his sunglasses.

Really? Can you make a SMALL effort? Would that kill you? You got an hour to make the best impression possible - and you didn't. Your mother would be ashamed. No wonder these people are single.

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My central park hoody might be a victim of the Tottenham bluegrass debacle. I left it in my brother's van and I'm scared to ask for it back in case he doesn't have it. All that Malabrigo... *sob*. All that work. Back and two almost completed fronts. Sigh. That'll teach me.

Philosophy 101

Here's a philosophical question for you. Actual responses encouraged.

Are people meant to stay together forever? Over the span of 10 or 20 years, it is reasonable to expect that people will change and grow apart?

If the answer is yes, who's responsibility should it be to deal with the fraying threads of the relationship? Let me rephrase that - why does it always seem to be the woman's job to stay "stable" for the sake of the kids, and the man's job to go off and seek happiness at the expense of everyone around them? Why does a man's happiness seem to be so pressing that they feel it's acceptable to make everyone in their previous life miserable?

Early 40's are bad times, my friends. Unfortunately this late-onset adolescence doesn't seem to be limited to a certain age.

Speechless

I am so sad and angry and discouraged and sad I can't even find any words. This is going to be a shitstorm.

Trauma

My kids both have night terrors. I don't know anyone else's kids who get this and sometimes I think my plate is just too full. Am I traumatizing them so much that they need to let it out at night? The books say no, but I don't know that I am convinced.

It's charming. They start screaming - usually No, no, no! or Stop stop stop! in increasingly panicked tones. The will stand up in bed and wave their arms like they're trying to grab something, or push something away, or...? I don't know. The best/worst part is that they (according to the books, and my experience) don't even know I'm there. I can't comfort them, calm them down, anything - they really don't seem to know I'm there. It's tough because they seem SO upset but there's nothing I can do. On the other hand, I just have to be there to make sure they don't hurt themselves. I say nice things occasionally (mostly just to feel like I'm doing something) but other than that I don't have to be concerned or sympathetic. Just there.
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I am spending the weekend at the Tottenham bluegrass festival with my brother and his two kids. I am trying not to think about all the things I should be doing instead, but having cleaned the most dire parts of my house today I have alleviated much of the guilt and plan to enjoy myself. Even if it is in Tottenham.
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I have a new victim on PoF. He has a kid and claims to be educated and literate, but his emails are BRUTAL. Run on, little punctuation, no caps, typos galore.. I freely admit to being a snob when it comes to communication and I called him on it. He said he actually could spell but couldn't be bothered to spend the time to do it "properly", and maybe he has a point. He spelled algorithm properly. Anyway, he's certainly interested - he sends me two emails for my every one (weird?) and he's not hideous and might be OK. Maybe I'll find out one day.
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And finally... I have been chosen from a cast of thousands, selecting the appropriate answers in not one but TWO questionnaires, to do a survey. It pays $90 for two hours which seems worth the trek to Yonge and Eg and a babysitter. But... it's for cat food. Yes, cat food. I've officially been certified as a crazy cat lady.