Holy crap, I'm a soccer mom!

If you catch me buying a minivan, just shoot me...

Seriously.

A short to-do list

In no particular order:

• I must call around and find the cheapest place to buy a new pool filter.

• I must remember, in the fall, that the pool filter has a drain. And, even though it's hidden by the long grass that springs up and thrives around the pool filter because I have a really hard time starting the weed whacker, it is still there, and must be opened at the end of the season so that water does not get trapped inside to freeze and crack the housing of the filter. See above.

• I must teach Rachel the difference in meaning between the word 'tickle' and the word 'gouge'.

• I must buy band-aids. See above.

• I must remember that even though *I* can hear the music when I'm listening to my MP3 player while gardening, other people can't, and are being assaulted by my off-key wailing. I will pay attention next time I see one of my neighbours and her 2-year-old daughter standing at the edge of my yard looking puzzled. It probably means that I am singing waaay louder than I thought, and if the mom hurries off dragging the child with her, it probably means that the song is about drinking or getting laid.

• I must phone and apologise to Linda. See above.
  

• I must get through the picking up the girls from daycare/making dinner/soccer practice/homework/bath/bed routine quickly tonight so I can be relaxed on the couch to watch the first game of the Stanley Cup finals.

• I must draft up a suitably snarky e-mail to the friend who's being forced to cheer for Anaheim due to his wife's infatuation with Teemu Selanne, upon the Sens winning tonight's game. See above.
  

A fairytale, sorta

Once upon a time there was a beautiful young princess named Alison. (Shut up, it's my story. Ever heard of artistic licence?) Alison lived in a small, but tasteful castle on the outskirts of Ottawa with the two mini-princesses, Leah and Rachel.

One day, a wicked sorceress put an evil spell on the princess, and things started to go wrong. First, Princess Alison came down with a sinus infection. The healers told her that it could actually be the plague instead of just a sinus infection, but they were wrong. It still felt pretty awful though. Now the Princess had been scheduled to take some important exams to see if she could read and write sufficiently fluently in the second language of the Kingdom. They wouldn't take away her princesshood if she failed, but her chances on getting promoted to Queen were nonexistent if she couldn't pass the French exams.

The sorceress's spell went into overdrive, and first mini-Princess Leah came down with pneumonia. Then mini-Princess Rachel came down with the croup. All the time that Princess Alison had hoped to devote to studying was spent caring for the sick minis. The night before the exams, Princess Alison could not sleep. Mini-Princess Rachel ended up in her bed, tossing and thrashing. When the princess managed to fall asleep, the evil spell ensured that her dreams were all about oversleeping and missing the exams, and of not being able to find pants to wear to work, and thus also missing the exams.

The next day, the princess dropped the minis off at the Royal Care-Giver's and drove her golden coach to work. She was very tired, and very stressed out. One more wave of the sorceress's wand, and Princess Alison, not paying attention to the road, ran her coach into the back of the coach in front of her on Carling Avenue, right near the Coliseum theatres. "Oh great", she thought. "Now I *will* miss the exams, waiting for the King's Guard to come and fill out a report and with all the insurance paperwork." But, a good fairy had been flying past on her way to sprinkle magic dust on Ray Emery's goalie stick, and, taking pity on the poor princess, waved her wand and it turned out there was no damage to the rear bumper of the other coach. The princess apologised profusely, and the other driver sped off, probably afraid that she would hit him again.

Still quite shaken, Princess Alison arrived at the tall dark tower where she was to take her exams. Waving the dragon smoke away from in front of her face, she passed the guardians of the elevators and ascended to the Floor of Language Training. The tests were a trial, requiring all of the princess's strength and intuition and intelligence. When they were over, she was so tired she was near to fainting while she and the other princes and princesses waited for the results of the exams.

The Testing Wizard handed the princess a piece of parchment with her test scores inscribed upon it. The princess gasped, she had scored a comfortable B on the writing exam, and an amazing C on the reading comprehension exam! (Strangely, a C is higher than a B in this scoring scenario, go figure.) The princess was very happy. She had received her happy ending because she was pure of heart and was always kind to small animals like mice and bluebirds ('cause you never know when they're going to come in handy), and oh yeah, because she'd been in language training 3 hours a week for about a year.

And she lived happily ever after.
__________________________________

There. That sounds much more interesting than "Crap, I had a bad week -- I'm sick, the girls are sick, and I was so stressed about my French as a Second Language exams that I have to pass if I want any kind of promotion at work, that I slept poorly, rear-ended some guy on the way to work (fortunately no damage), and sat the tests with a sinus headache, but totally ACED them in the end, doing so much better than I had expected, so I guess the week wasn't all bad then."

We're going to the finals, baby!

Saturday afternoon was the culmination of my ten years of Sens fandom. We took the third-round series from Buffalo in 5, and the cherry on the icing on the cake was that the game-winning goal, in overtime, was scored by Daniel Alfredsson, the captain of the Senators.

Go Sens!

The circus, recycled.....

Before I started this blog, I used to post to my mommies board and tell them the increasingly lengthy stories of life with the girls in Carp. Then I realized I could bore amuse a much wider audience, and launched Party of 3. The other day I was cleaning out some files on my computer, and found the following old mommies group post. It's from quite a while ago, as Rachel was 17 months old at the time, Leah had just turned 4, and I was still married.

I'm posting it now because re-reading it brought back memories and made me laugh. And totally *not* because I can't think of anything to write today. Honest.

________________________

Did you ever get the feeling that the purpose of your life was to act as an example to others on how not to do things? Let me tell you about my circus experience. A few months ago I got a phone call from the Police Retirees Association. They were raising money for children's charities by selling tickets to the Garden Brothers Circus. I thought it was a good idea, so I bought some. The time of the performance was 7:30 pm, but I didn't think too much about it. Fast forward to this past week. Slowly it dawns on me that 7:30 is past Rae's bedtime and maybe I should get a babysitter for her and just take Leah. Too late, not enough notice. Well, OK, I'll just make sure I have enough to eat and drink for her and a few toys, and if she gets sleepy, she can just drift off in my arms. Ummm, right. <- foreshadowing

So I pack 2 milk bottles, a juice sippy, a container of goldfish, a small teddy bear, some teething keys and another small toy, plus diapers and wipes. That sounds like enough for the 2-hour performance. So we get there, and it's a zoo to park, and it's first-come seating, so we're not as close to the front of the hockey arena as I'd like (the 3 rings are down on board-covered ice-surface).

Rachel is a little restless -- yeah, like a small tornado in pink. Out comes the bottle, and that settles her down. The lights finally go down and the circus starts. Leah is just mesmerized, she' s sitting in her Dad's lap and her eyes are as big as saucers. Rachel is fine in my lap, til the bottle runs out. Within 10 minutes, she's worked her way through both bottles and the sippy cup and is alternately trying to kick the back of the head of the guy sitting in front of me and trying to force feed her big sister a handful of goldfish. Then she starts to wail. No amount of jiggling or singing will quiet her. She's thrashing around like a fish on a line and she beans the guy in front of me with the teddy. He's nice enough to return it, and I 'excuse me' my way down the line of seats and out of the sitting area of the arena.

I spend the next hour walking around the perimeter of the arena, where the washrooms and concession stands are, chasing her because she's so giddy with all the open space to run in, and lunging at her every once in a while to stop her from picking up and eating popcorn from the floor. Each time I try to pick her up and go back to the seats, she starts with the wailing and her body goes stiff as a board. At intermission, D and Leah show up. It's almost 9 (Leah's bedtime is 7 pm) so she's tired and wants to go home. She loved the circus. I saw about 12 minutes of the show and now have a giant headache.

Things we learned:
1. Next year we're going to a matinee. Never, never, never take small children to an evening performance.
2. Seventeen months is the wrong age for a circus. Younger, and she would have slept, older and she would have watched the show.
3. Stuffed toys can be used as weapons.
4. Children can run very quickly when motivated by popcorn.
5. You should always carry emergency vodka in your purse for situations like this.

Things you don't want to hear your doctor say

"Yes, well, I'm pretty sure that it *is* a sinus infection, as you suspect, but I'm a little concerned about the tenderness over your temple. I want to do a blood test just to rule out biglongscaryname. It's very rare, but let's check anyway."

Great. Now I'm sure I'm going to end up at Seattle Grace where the fact that I have temporal arteritis (also known as giant cell arteritis. Giant cell!? This is not reasuring me any) will be a metaphor for what's going on in the personal life of one of the interns.

I hope it's Alex.

Tough decision

VS

It's Thursday night tonight. Traditionally Grey's Anatomy night at our house. The night that we order in pizza for supper and, in return for the treat, the girls go to bed a half hour early so that Mommy can watch Grey's undisturbed (without dishes to do, yay!). We don't have satellite or cable, so I have to watch it at the evilly early hour of 8 p.m. on CTV. I like to have the girls bathed and in bed, the ringer of the phone turned off, and me settled in the living room, glass of wine in hand, at 8 sharp. I'm stoked! I can't *wait* to see if George will really leave the hospital, if Derek will really pick up some woman in Joe's, and if that was Adele collapsed on the bathroom floor in the previews.

But, this is also the playoffs. And my only other television addiction is NHL hockey. The Ottawa Senators, to be precise. And tonight is the opening game of the third-round series against the Sabres. The puck drops at 7:30, and I want to be settled in the living room, glass of wine in hand, by 7 sharp to see the pregame show. I'm stoked! I can't *wait* to see the Sens duke it out with Buffalo, the team that put them out of the playoffs last year.

So you see my dilemma:




VS




Oh, sure, you say. Watch one and tape the other. Well, that would work, *in theory*, if I had a blank tape and the patience to decipher the badly translated VCR manual: "How to Programme a Recording. 1. Place the taping article into the tape chasm, make the START button depress with gentleness....." You get the picture.

Nope, in order to deal with



VS



I'm going to have to either have a very quick thumb on the 'quickview' button on my remote and toggle back and forth between channels, or beg Natalie to tape Grey's for me tonight so I can watch hockey.

Perhaps she can be bribed with chocolate.

Weekend recap

• What goes "THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump, THUMP-thump"? Answer: a chipmunk in the dryer.

Calm down, I didn't *actually* have a chipmunk in the dryer, that was more of an artist's impression of what it might sound like. But I noticed while doing yard work this weekend that the external dryer vent cover had rotted away over the winter -- UV radiation and cold, I guess -- and nothing was standing between the chipmunks and the interior of my house except the dryer door. Now I like chipmunks just fine, but I don't want them as roomies, so I set off to the local hardware store, bought a new external dryer vent cover,


and pulled out my trusty caulking gun. It took a while to chip off the old caulk, clean the vinyl siding, then cut the metal vent to size, install the new vent, and caulk around the new cover, but my house is now protected against chipmunks, squirrels, mice and things of that size. Leprechauns too, I guess. And I've been whiling away the odd half hour ever since by peeling silicone caulk off my arm like sunburnt skin.


• Took Leah and Rachel to the playground Saturday afternoon. Rae can now go hand over hand across 3 rungs of the monkey bars (!). She's also a pro at the fireman's pole. Leah is too. Leah said that I should try the fireman's pole (hee, no comments please) and I climbed up the play structure. The pole is out a few feet from the platform (red pole on left of picture)
  
  
  and doesn't look that tall from the ground, but standing up at the top, man is it high! I can't believe I let Rachel go down it by herself and she's only 4. But not to be outdone by the girls, I hooked a leg around it and launched myself down. Somehow I banged the side of my knee pretty good and now I have a really attractive dark purple bruise. I am not 4. I must remember this in the future.
  


• Sens rule! Watched the game on Saturday night. Bring on Buffalo! The picture below is from December 2005, but they are still the cutest Senators fans EVER. They watched the first period with me until Rachel got bored and went off to watch Aladdin on tape in my bed (translation: watched opening credits and then went right to sleep), and Leah fell asleep lying against me on the couch. I managed to stay awake for the whole game.
  
  

• Picked Becca up on Sunday and we took the girls to the leisure swim at the pool in the Goulbourn Rec Centre in Stittsville. It was great. Especially the relaxing-in-the-hot-tub part. That sure eased the aches and pains of firepole bruises and sore muscles from yard work/spider dislodging.

• Went home and barbequed some chicken, made some pasta and Caesar salad. Mmmmm. After dinner, we drove Bec home and then I had plans to watch a movie and have a Keiths or two, but all the swimming caught up with me and I crashed around nine.
  

• Pretty good weekend, really.
  

Gardening for the arachnophobic

My back yard earlier today:

Shhhhhp. [sound of weeds being pulled]
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
[pause][sudden intake of breath][realization that crawly sensation on arm is just breeze ruffling arm hair][relieved sigh]
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
[pause][a more-panicky intake of breath and slight scream][realization that what was thought to be a spider was only part of a dead leaf][slight embarassed laugh and relieved sigh]
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHH!!!!! Fuck! It's on my arm!! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off! Oh my God where did it go? Where did it GO? It's up my SLEEVE! AAAAAAUUUUUGGGGH! CRAP! [wild flailing of arms and shoulder shrugging, like a volunteer in a nerve gas experiment] THERE IS A SPIDER UP MY SLEEVE! [attempts are made to take long-sleeved teeshirt off right there in the yard] Shit! Shit. Shit.

[small black thing falls out of sleeve]

Oh..... It's just a cricket. Well hello, Mr. Cricket. You gave me quite a scare. Run along now like a good six-legged bug.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
[delayed case of the willies, because it *could* have been a spider up the sleeve]
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhp.
Shhhhp.
Shhhhp.
Screw it. I'm going in for a beer.

OK, I get it now. Also, seven things about me.

If I have any male readers, and I don't know that I do (at least not regular ones), please delurk now and give your opinion about something.

Supposing you are not gay. And you have been sort of dating someone on and off for a couple of months, but you haven't spoken in a week or so. And the woman in question calls you up at 11 a.m. on a Sunday morning to chat. And you chat for a bit, sounding distracted. And then you announce that you'd like to keep talking, but you really have to get back to the movie you were watching:

"The Sound of Music"......

(wait, it gets better)

...in French.

That's a blow-off, right? Yeah, I thought so. Points for originality though. Much, much more panache than "It's not you, it's me". Sigh.

And, in other news, Briana at Life with Boys tagged me with a meme. The "Seven things about me" meme. I'm supposed to list seven random things about myself that you don't already know, and then I'm supposed to tag seven people to do the same. Well, most of my loyal readers (all four of you, lol) have been tagged already, so I'll do like Alissa, and just say that if you'd like to do this, great! Leave me a comment saying you're in and I'll be sure to check out your answers. But I'm not requiring it of anyone, OK?

Here we go:

1. I have a love/hate relationship with laundry. After living in apartments for most of my adult life and having to use laundry rooms or off-site laundromats, buying a house with a laundry room seemed like a dream come true....at first. See, here's the thing: I'm really good at washing and drying, but I really suck at folding and putting away. Here at our house, we're always clean, but we're often wrinkled.
2. I lived in four different countries before I was five years old: the UK, Germany, the U.S. and Canada.
3. In 1987 I spent the summer working in a geological survey mapping camp in northwestern Ontario. It was like getting paid to go camping. One of the best summers of my life.
   
4. I turn the ringer on the phone off if I don't feel like talking to anyone. Often, I forget I've done this and then wonder why I no-one's called me in a few days.
   
5. I have five Hello Kitty figurines on my desk at work. And I have a Hello Kitty change purse. I know I'm too old to like Hello Kitty, but I don't care.
   
6. I make really, really good cinnamon rolls. From scratch. Really.
   
7. I've seen "The Sound of Music" about 14 times. In English. And I'm not sure I like it anymore.