Nobody wants to get out of bed on Sunday mornings

Yeah, I know it's lame to blog the cat, but I'm still working on the flood post and a couple of others. This is just sort of a place holder, so you don't think I've given up blogging and moved to Peru or become a nun or something.

I heart the Racquet of Death

I'm very fond of my house. But, this morning, for a few horrible seconds, I thought that I might have to move. Seriously. There I was, just after 5 a.m., standing half asleep in front of the coffee maker, wondering if I could psychically will it to brew faster, when I noticed that Max was staring intently at something. Something on the drapes that cover the sliding glass doors that lead out to the deck.

Famed comedian Paula Poundstone once said, "The problem with cats is that they get the exact same look on their face whether they see a moth or an axe murderer." On the bright side, Max wasn't looking at an axe-murderer. But I wasn't lucky enough for it to be a moth, either. No. What was crawling up the curtains, being stared at intently by the Evil Ninja Assassin Cat, were two GIANT FREAKING SPIDERS. And I mean giant. They were black and chitinous and were dripping blood and venom from their oversized scimitar-like fangs. (I don't think it's a secret how I really feel about spiders.)

As soon as my heart started beating again, I threw a handful of teabags at Max to distract him (they were the only thing within reach that wasn't breakable). He was trying to bat at the monsters, and the last thing I wanted was for them to drop to the floor and skitter off somewhere. I would God's honest truth have to sell the house and move rather than live there not knowing where the spiders went. Max stalked off, feelings hurt, and I crept over to the cupboard under the sink and pulled out the Racquet of Death.

(Insert sound of heavenly choir singing here.)

Let me digress a bit to explain that the Racquet of Death is a battery-operated bug zapper shaped like a tennis racquet. Mine was a gift from the lovely and talented Jen, on the occasion of my visit to Jenworld this past August (note to self: which I should blog, now I have the photos uploaded from the camera). It is an amazing thing, this Racquet of Death (RoD). You can zap flies, wasps, mosquitoes and even fruit flies into bug oblivion. But best of all, you can dispatch spiders into the great beyond.

So, screwing my courage to the sticking place (Shakespeare at 5 a.m. Not bad.) I pressed the power button and lightly pressed the RoD against the first spider on the curtain. There was a pop and a sizzle. I quickly fried the other one just as it was about to get away drop down on me and tear my throat out. Whew, it was close, but in the end I emerged victorious, and the arachnids were reduced to crispy little spider balls on the floor.

Alison 2, spiders 0

And don't give me that crap about how it's going to rain now, because I really don't care.

Artist's rendition of Alison battling the giant,
slavering, evil, bloodthirsty, nasty, awful,
beastly, malevolent, malicious spiders.
(Proportions pretty much to scale.)

Breakfast with Robert Duvall

Is it wrong to amuse yourself with pop-culture references at your children's expense? 'Cause if it is, I don't want to be right.

Today, at the breakfast table:

Me (placing plates on the table): Here you go. Toasted bagel with cheese for Leah, and peanut butter toast for Rachel.

Rachel: Mmmmm. Peanut butter. I love peanut butter. I love it when it's all melty on the toast*. I love the smell of peanut butter in the morning.

Me: Does it smell like victory?

Rachel: What?

Me: Never mind.

___________________________

*Please note that Rachel, like her mother, recognizes the superiority of materials being applied to hot, as opposed to cold, toast.

Oh, I have *GOT* to read this

This is an actual book, not a joke.




* Published by Quirk Books *

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

By Jane Austen
and Seth Grahame-Smith

5-1/4 x 8 in; 320 pp ;
Paperback
Published in March, 2009
ISBN 9781594743344
ISBN10 1594743347

$12.95

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains." So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem.

As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.

Can she vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read.

Jane Austen is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature.

Seth Grahame-Smith once took a class in English literature. He lives in Los Angeles.

For media information please contact:
Melissa Monachello
Quirk Books, Publicity Manager
215.627.3581 x 217
Melissa_m@quirkbooks.com
_______________________________

I am definitely pitching this to my book club! Perhaps Colin Firth could reprise his Mr. Darcy role in the inevitable movie, or maybe they could just get Simon Pegg.

Stream of random thoughts while undergoing gum surgery with the added bonus of a bone graft

OK. I'm frozen. Man, am I frozen. My gums, my cheek, even my nose feels frozen. My tongue feels like the Hindenburg. 'Oh, the humanity.' Hee. OK. They're starting. Close eyes. Yeah, probably better not to see what's going on. Think about something pleasant. Yes, pleasant. Ice cream, kittens, the Labour Day weekend in Sudbury. Don't think about what he's actually doing in there. Crack eyes a bit..... CLOSE THEM, CLOSE THEM, CLOSE THEM! Christ, that was a scalpel thingie! HE'S CUTTING MY GUMS! Calm down, calm down. Now think about the weekend again and how much fun it was to see everyone and eat all that great food and....Damn, they're stretching my mouth open a lot. Both of them have their hands in there and there are other things in there too. Fuck. I'm going to look like Jack Nicholson's Joker when they're done, I just know it. When the procedure is over I'll snarl at the periodontist, and then he'll pass me a mirror with shaking hands, and I'll look into it and see this:

and start laughing all manaically and crazy-like.... What's that noise?! The scraping noise. Aaaugh! I don't want to hear the scraping noise. Concentrate. I can hear some music. Yes, over the scraping and the steady sucking drone of the spit-sucking thingie I can hear.......Coldplay! Yes, it's Coldplay. 'Clocks' to be exact. Good song. Most of them are, aren't they? I love Chris Martin's voice. It's so pure and clear. And high. I wonder if the periodontist could hit any of those high notes if I just elbowed him in the goolies. I could do it too. Damn right I could. Except for the fact that he's still DIGGING AROUND IN MY MOUTH WITH SHARP METAL OBJECTS. Maybe elbowing him right this minute would be a bad idea...... Crack eyes a bit..... CLOSE THEM, CLOSE THEM, CLOSE THEM!!!!!!! A drill heading for my mouth!!!! A big freaking drill! I think they use smaller drills out in Fort McMurray going after crude in the tar sands. Seriously. OK, concentrate. Concentrate on the music again. What is it? Hard to hear over the scraping and digging (I feel nauseous) and digging and scraping and sucking.....it's.......Taylor Swift. 'Love Story'. But not the version the girls made me download. Nope, it's some kind of 'rock' remix. The banjo is gone, replaced with some bad guitar track. I like the original one with the banjo better. Hmmm. Banjo. Now there's an instrument you don't hear very often, and when you do, it's almost always in folk or country music. Yeah, you never run into a tall, handsome stranger in a wine bar on Carnaby Street, his tousled hair skimming the collar of his silk shirt, his long sensitive fingers caressing the stem of his wine glass while he gazes into your eyes and says, "I'm a musician. I'm First Banjo with the London Symphony Orchestra." Hardly ever happens. And Coldplay probably won't be bringing a banjo player on tour anytime soon either. A good thing too. Gwyneth would most likely look down her nose at a banjo player and quickly usher little Apple and Moses out of the room. Speaking of rooms, is it hot in here? CRAP! Something just splashed my face. It was cold, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't blood. Hey, the sucking noise stopped. Now the sucking thingie is making a horrible noise -- the kind of noise that might result from a small piece of excised flesh blocking the intake. DO NOT CRACK OPEN EYES TO SEE IF A SMALL PIECE OF YOUR FLESH IS BLOCKING THE INTAKE!!!!!!!!!!!! MUST. DISTRACT. SELF. KITTENS! DANIEL CRAIG! CUPCAKES! Ah, noise is gone. Scraping and drilling finished. Now he's packing in the bone graft material. He's certainly pushing a lot of stuff in there. Holy crap, I wonder if they measure that stuff in kilos. Wait, he's saying something. Answer him: "You're done now? You just have to suture? OK. Thanks." KEEP EYES SHUT. You don't want to see the suturing. Truly, you don't. Can't feel the suturing. Good. Don't think about the suturing. Is that a fly on my cheek?? Nope, it's the extra thread trailing across my cheek while he sews! AAAAAAAUGH!! KITTENS! DANIEL CRAIG! HUGH JACKMAN! CUPCAKES! CHOCOLATE MARTINIS! CHRISTMAS MORNING!

Done. It's all over.

Thank God. I'm thinking I'll be having soup for dinner. And scotch.

Lots of scotch.

Dear Sympatico, bite me.

Dear Sympatico,

You have been my Internet service provider for many years now. And your parent company has been my home phone provider too. Though you weren't singled out the last time I sent letters to deserving people, please rest assured that you have totally made the list this time.

Pop quiz: Customer Service -- are you familiar with the term? I can't fault the manners and puppy-like enthusiasm of the people who 'helped' me over the last few weeks, but I am questioning their knowledge of modem technology and/or their familiarity with the names for the myriad bits and pieces needed to set up a wireless modem. Training them to 1) politely agree to send me specific items that I should have had in the first place, and then 2) promptly send me random other things by Express Post is annoying and ultimately unproductive.

Allow me to recap the events of the last few weeks with an emphasis on what your customer-service agents agreed to do for me, and what they ultimately ended up doing for me. Now some of these have nothing to do with Sympatico, except to highlight how frustrated I became when I completed all kinds of peripheral tasks and was still unable to log on to the Internet:

• July 24, 2009 - after an exceedingly wet July that had saturated the soil around my house, an intense thunderstorm stalled over Kanata/Stittsville/Carp, dropping nearly 6 inches of rain in 3 hours. My basement flooded, and the modem (supplied by Sympatico) was ruined, as it was plugged into a power bar that ended up submerged.
  

• A few days later - Called Sympatico Internet and asked them to send me a new modem, as the old one was destroyed in the flood

• Explained that I couldn't return the malfunctioning one as it was contaminated by stormwater and in a landfill somewhere

• Got miffed that they still were going to charge me for the modem I would not be returning

• Realized that I could just submit the invoice to the insurance company, and told Sympatico to send me the new wireless modem and bill me for it

• Visited IKEA and purchased a Mikael computer desk, keeping receipt for insurance

• Heaved the two boxes into car trunk with Leah's help

• Dragged/carried the two boxes into the house with Leah's help

• Assembled Mikael computer desk with Leah's help and Rachel's supervision. This took roughly 3 hours, .5 of which were spent reclaiming the various screwdrivers and hardware from Rachel at various points in the building process

• Set up computer on the new Mikael computer desk and plugged everything in correctly!

• Got out the sealed box that Sympatico sent me with the new wireless modem and began to read the instructions. Got to the third or so sentence and read: Contents. You should have the following: modem, power cord, ethernet cable, phone cable, phone-jack splitter, 4 filters.

• Looked in box. Took out modem and power cord.

• Turned box over and shook it. Nothing further fell out.

• Called the Sympatico customer-service number. Spoke to a very nice and apologetic woman in INDIA, who promised to send me the missing pieces (ethernet cable, phone cable, phone-jack splitter, 4 filters) asap. Idly wondered if the parts would be coming from Calcutta by donkey cart or moped taxi.

• Poured glass of wine and played Mine Sweeper on the computer until bedtime.

• Two days later, received a package. Was very excited! Opened it to find an ethernet cable, a telephone cable, and 4 filters. No phone-jack splitter. And since I have only one phone jack operational since the flood, it's needed for both the phone and the modem, so a splitter is kind of mandatory.
  

• Called Sympatico customer-service number. Spoke to a very nice and apologetic man in India, who promised to send me the missing phone-jack splitter asap.

• Two days later, received another package. Was very excited! Finally, I'd be back online again! Opened it to find 4 more inline filters. No phone-jack splitter.
  

• Said a lot of four-letter words. Wondered if helpful man in India knew what a phone-jack splitter was.
  

• Complained about the whole situation to my friend, who told me that I could buy a phone-jack splitter at Dollarama.

• Purchased phone-jack splitter at Dollarama for $1.25.

• Finally installed and activated wireless modem more than one month after making the call to replace the ruined modem. Used Canada Post website to calculate that Sympatico probably spent more than $45 to ship me the wrong pieces of equipment, not to mention the cost of the 8 or 10 filters that were sent to me in error.

I hear that Internet service is available through the cable company. I might have to check into that. And I understand that they do telephone service too.

Bite meHave a nice day,

Alison

Canadian Invasion 2009

From Wikipedia: "The Burning of Washington took place on August 24, 1814, during the War of 1812 between the British Empire and the United States of America. British forces occupied Washington, D.C. and set fire to many public buildings. The facilities of the U.S. government, including the White House, were largely destroyed, though strict discipline and the British commander's orders to burn only public buildings are credited with preserving the city's private buildings. Historians assert that the attack was in retaliation for the American looting of York, Upper Canada (now Toronto) after the Battle of York in 1813, and the burning down of the Parliament Buildings of Upper Canada. "

OK, so those guys were still considered British, mostly on account of Canada not being declared a real country until 1867, but make no mistake, those troops were beer-swilling, hockey-loving, 'eh'-saying Canadians.

Fast forward 195 years, and the girls and I piled in the car and headed south. To Charlottesville, Virginia. To visit Jen and her family. We aren't planning on burning anything, but it's a Canadian invasion nonetheless.

So far, we've seen the beautiful campus of the University of Virginia, the amazing Grand Caverns, and the way cool economod house.

Pictures will have to wait until I get home, or find the time to upload to Photobucket from Jen's computer.

Meanwhile, we are having a wonderful time, eating like crazy, and when no one's looking, sneaking the odd "U" into a word that badly needs it -- Plan Alpha Beaver in action.

R & R

Just back from four days at an idyllic cottage:


Did a lot of nothing much.



Some frog catching:

Some swimming:


And of course, lots of healthy food in the fresh air:

Thank you so much, Pat and Gerry! The cottage was heaven on earth.

With frogs.



I'm still without home internet, but the story of the flood will be up soon, I promise!

There is a big giant hole in my front yard

Here, look at this:



Or this: (Mmmmmmm)



Or even this:


These lovely pictures will have to hold you for a while, since I will be dealing with this for the foreseeable future:



Late Friday Night/early Saturday morning, a thunderstorm dropped more than 6 inches of rain in less than two hours. My basement was flooded and I might have lost my computer. I'll know when it all dries out. Also, in a probably related occurence, a giant sinkhole appeared in my front lawn. Approximately 1 metre across and 2 metres deep. Nice.

I have to keep this short, as I am at work. I don't know when I'll be blogging again in any sort of regular manner, but rest assured you'll find out all about the flood and the recovery when I get a home computer up and running again.

How I know I'm a woman, or, Home Depot is stupid

Geary, D.C., 1998. Chapter 8: Sex differences in brain and cognition. In "Male, Female: the Evolution of Human Sex Differences". American Psychological Association Books. ISBN: 1-55798-527-8.

Rabinowicz T., Dean D.E., Petetot J.M., de Courten-Myers G.M., 1999. Gender differences in the human cerebral cortex: more neurons in males; more processes in females. Journal of Child Neurology, Feb;14(2):98-107.

Schlaepfer T.E., Harris G.J., Tien A.Y., Peng L., Lee S., Pearlson G.D., 1995. Structural differences in the cerebral cortex of healthy female and male subjects: a magnetic resonance imaging study. Psychiatry Research, Sep 29;61(3):129-35.

Party of 3, 2009. Home Depot was totally designed and laid out by men and things are put in places that are not logical at all. Idiots. Journal of Common Sense, People!, vol 1.

OK, so we already know that men and women think differently due to physical differences in their brains, blah, blah, blah, hardwired, blah, blah, neurons, yadda, yadda, cerebral cortex, blah, blah, blah, Ginger. I buy this, I really do. It's painfully obvious. And nowhere is it more apparent than in the giant social experiment in gender difference that is Home Depot. You see, Home Depot was obviously laid out by a man. Because nothing is in the places where it makes sense for them to be.

Case in point, I went to Home Depot to pick up 3 things: a new burner for my barbecue, a strap wrench to replace the one I borrowed from my neighbour and then misplaced (Connie, if you're reading this, please don't tell Cliff. I bought the exact same one to give back.), and a replacement 12-volt battery for my cordless doorbell. Simple, right? You'd think so, wouldn't you? But no.

The barbecue burner was easy. It was in the Barbecue Section. One down, two to go. The girls were enjoying themselves riding in the giant shopping cart.

Next, the strap wrench. A strap wrench is a tool, right? So I headed out to the Tool Section. Silly me. What was I thinking? I cruised the aisles in the tool section: hammers, clamps, screw drivers, bits, pliers, wrenches. Ah, here we go. Hmmmm, strap wrench, let me see, mmmmm, nope. No strap wrenches. Look up at sign at top of display: Pliers and Wrenches. Nope, still no strap wrench. WTF? OK, there's one of those guys in the orange apron.

"Excuse me, could you tell me where I'd find a strap wrench?"

"In Plumbing? But it's a tool. It's called a strap wrench, so why isn't it with the other wrenches in the part of the Tool Section that is clearly marked 'Wrenches'?! I mean, I figured that a person could find a strap wrench with all the other wrenches in a display which actually says 'wrenches' on it. It's just common sense."

"No, I will not lower my voice and stop saying 'wrenches."

"This place is stupid."

So, we slunk off and found the strap wrench. In the Plumbing Section. Idiots.

Next, the doorbell battery. Now where would a sane person (read: woman) put the battery-operated doorbells? Now I might be going out on a limb here, but I do think that perhaps it might just make the tiniest bit of sense to put the doorbells, oh, say, in or near the Door Section? You know, just for shits and giggles? So, undeterred by our wrench debacle, off we went down the wide concrete aisles in search of doors. And we found doors. Hundreds of them. Wooden doors, steel doors, screen doors. Oh, and door knobs -- fancy ones and plain ones, ones with deadbolts, ones with keypads, brass ones and nickel ones. And in the next aisle, the numbers that you put on the outside of your house, next to the door, so people know if they're at the right address.

Hot damn! The doorbells ought to be right around here. Because, you know, they're usually on the outside of a house, next to the door, about the same height as the handle, underneath the address numbers, and all of those items are in the same section.... But again, no. Nope, no doorbells and no doorbell batteries. I turned and looked for one of the 'associates'. I think I saw the tool guy off in the distance, but he ducked quickly behind a display of routers when I started in his direction. (Coincidentally, I'm sure.)

A new orange-apron guy informed me that doorbells and batteries for doorbells are in the Electrical Section. Right. Because battery-operated doorbells that don't even run on household electricity should really be found in the Electrical Section, instead of the Door Section, which, God forbid, would actually make sense. (Note: I do know that a battery is a device that converts chemical energy directly to electrical energy, I do know that AC/DC is more than just an Australian band with an old guy who still thinks it's flattering to strip out of his schoolboy uniform and show his scrawny ass to crowds of adoring fans, but come on. In the broad scheme of household items: things you plug into the wall = electrical, things that run on batteries = not really electrical-> battery-operated. Seriously.) But there they were, amongst all the light switches and outlet covers and other non-door-related objects.

Yeah, I know. Grumpy much?

I do think a fitting revenge for the guy who assigned items to the various sections in Home Depot would be to send him to Bed, Bath & Beyond with instructions to buy a set of cotton shams. Poor bastard would probably go crazy looking for the Automotive Care Section.

These aren't the droids you're looking for

I know what I want to be when I grow up: a Jedi knight.

Seriously, what's not to like? A cool lightsaber; a choice of flattering garments, from brown robes to more form-fitting white leggings and a tunic; totally awesome martial arts skills; and the ability to use telekinesis to bring things flying to you from across the room -- like the aforementioned lightsaber -- or, more practically, a new roll of toilet paper when you really, really need one.

But the best thing, the coolest talent that I'd have, is the Jedi mind trick, the ability to use the Force to influence the minds of others, just like Obi-wan:

I could use it on my daughters at home, so I could have more time for blogging, reading and sitting on my ass doing nothing gardening:


I could use it at work, to decrease the stress of my heavy workload:

If it works on customer service drones over the phone, I could use it to effect a positive cash-flow situation in the family budget:

Hell, I could use it on everyone in the whole wide world!!!!

Sigh. I guess even the Force has some limits.


But the ultimate use of the Jedi mind trick, the Holy Grail of mind control, would obviously be this:

May the Force be with me.

I'm not making this up, you know.

Leah has a thing for words. She loves to read, to write and illustrate stories, to leave me notes, and she has a passion for those word puzzles where you have to find and circle words in a large block of what looks like random letters. She's even created her own -- slaving over the paper and then presenting me or Rachel with the finished product, the lines slanting and wavering, but the list of words at the bottom are always found in the letter block.

Knowing this, my mum gave Leah a giant word-search puzzle book at Easter. It languished for a while in her bedroom, but she's been working on it lately. Last Thursday we were at Rachel's soccer game, sitting on the sidelines, hoping that the rain would hold off (it didn't), and Leah was working on one of the puzzles in the book. She was using a bright red marker to circle the words. I glanced over at her just in time to see her circle the word plastered. Excuse me? What was that again? I leaned over for a better look. Yup, plastered. I checked the title of the puzzle: 'Drunken Stupor'. Nice. The word list included addled, bender, blasted, blotto, crocked, loaded, stewed, stinko, tanked, and wasted. Hmmm, the cover of the book didn't say anything like 'for ages 16 and up'.

Later that night, after Leah was in bed, I picked up the puzzle book and started leafing through it. The first puzzle was called 'Critical Condition' and contained words like adjudge, appraise, analysis, evaluate, partisan, review, regard, unbiased. OK, fine.

The next puzzle was 'Of High Standards': accept, admire, credence, curtsy, gratuity, ratify, tribute. I can't see how those words relate to the title, but still, OK.

Number 3 was the aforementioned 'Drunken Stupor'. Probably an anomaly, right? All the rest were probably lists of barnyard animals, or cities in Florida, or cooking terms. (And yes, all those were in the book, but they weren't the next ones, oh no siree.)

Number 4, 'This is a Bust': addiction, bong, bummer, charge, dusted, freebase, habit, hooked, kitchen, loaded, mainline, needle, overdose, posession, rush, score, wired.

And the logical follow-up, 'Dead End Street': acidhead, addict, candyman, connection, dealer, dopehead, freak, junkie, pillhead, pusher, runner.

So, of course, the next one would have to be 'Arresting Factors': accessory, bandit, bookie, conman, crook, felon, hooker, hooligan, killer, mafia, mugger, racketeer, thief, tong, vandal.

....?

I'm torn between tearing out the offending pages and letting them stay. She hasn't asked about any of the words, they're just patterns of letters that she's looking for. And who knows, perhaps this vocabulary can set her on a career path as a Crown prosecutor. Or a writer for Law and Order or CSI: Carp.

No, they're not

"The rich are different from you and me." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"No, they're not." - Alison

See, we're all the same underneath, whether we're royalty, or just that guy who thinks it's funny to give his wife a Dutch oven in bed after a night of beer and chili.

Random thoughts

• Random thought upon seeing a bunch of highschool boys at the ice cream stand trying to impress the girls: Just because you can grow a beard, doesn't mean you should.



• Random thought upon first noticing the unusually large number of robins in Carp this spring/summer: Awwww, it's so nice to see all the birds around. It must mean that the environment is doing well, at least around here.



• Random thought upon seeing that Norwalk Furniture has changed its name to Lûxe Home Interiors: It's about time. Really, who wants to buy furniture from a store that shares its name with a virus that causes nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. Kind of like bragging to your neighbour, "Yes, that couch is stunning, isn't it. We got it at Stomach Flu Fine Furniture -- you know, down on Carling Avenue?" That was probably the worst business name since "Ayd's Meat Market" back in Windsor.



• Random thought upon noticing all the bird poop, mostly from robins, on the driveway: Wow, there are a lot of birds around this year.



• Random thought upon purchasing LCBO gift cards as end-of-year teachers' gifts: Nothing says "Thanks for educating my child" like alcohol.



• Random thought upon skimming bird poop out of the pool for the first time: Hey, bird poop floats! Who knew?



• Random thought upon skimming bird poop out of the pool for the second and subsequent times: Freaking birds, stop CRAPPING in my pool!



• Random thought upon being woken for the first time at 4:20 a.m. by the sound of birdsong: How beautiful! Back when I lived in Ottawa, it was sirens from the fire station that woke me in the night. This is so much nicer and gentler.



• Random thought upon being woken for the second and subsequent times at 4:20 a.m. by the sound of birdsong: Shut up, shut up, Shut Up, SHUT UP! OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU PLEASE JUST SHUT UP AND LET ME SLEEP!!!!!!



• Random thought upon finding the remains of a robin on my front walkway that had run afoul (afowl?) of a predator during the night: Yesssssss! (accompanied by Gretzkyesque fist pump.)



• Random thought upon hearing coyotes yipping and howling down in the valley in the wee hours of this morning: Wow, the hair on my arms just stood up. What a wild and amazing sound! How lucky am I to hear that haunting noise coming in through the window on the night breeze while I'm tucked up all safe in my bed? Nature is beautiful.... I wonder if coyotes eat robins.

I don't think I want to know what's going on here

I went into Rae's bedroom the other day to put away some laundry, and I found this little tableau. I would have asked her what was going on, but she was on a playdate at someone else's house. (By the time she returned and I asked, she simply shrugged her shoulders and said, "I don't remember".)

I tried to figure out a scenario that would take into account Bride Barbie and Belle in the car with Aladdin lying on the hood, naked except for his little cap and his gold pointy-toed boots, while Erik (Or Derek, I can't remember which) sprawled face-down in front of the jeep. Because I'm telling you, it looked disturbingly like a couple of Michigan hunters with a deer tied to the hood of their pickup; if, you know, Michigan hunters were wearing full wedding regalia and a ballgown and driving a cute little roadster, while the deer was a clothing-challenged Arabian kid who's best friends with a genie. I can't even factor in the drunk/sleeping/dead guy on the road ahead. Competing hunter, perhaps? Friendly-fire collateral damage from the deer/naked-guy hunt? Too many Barbie Budweisers? The mind boggles.

There has to be an innocent six-year-old explanation for this. Maybe BB and Belle were out for a drive, when Aladdin, driven from the shower by a wasp, pulled on his boots and ran out of the house......no.

OK, how about this: Derek/Erik and Aladdin were taking a walk, and it was hot, so Aladdin stripped down, when Belle and BB......nope.

OK: Aladdin is sunbathing face-up on the hood of Belle's car while she's changing the radio station, and D/E is sunbathing face-down on the ground. Bride Barbie is just heading off to bring back iced tea for everyone.

There. There's an explanation I can live with.

Victoria's Secret, meet Red Green

It was not the best of days yesterday. I got up at 4:30 a.m. in order to try to fix a mistake I'd made the night before with the swimming pool. The pool is up and running but I'm still fighting with the water quality it to make it something that one might want to swim in, rather than something one might stock bass in, and I got up early to try to rectify the problem and still get the girls up, dressed and fed and dropped off early at daycare so I could be on time for an early workshop at work. (What I did wrong with the pool would take an entire blog post on its own to describe -- suffice it to say it involved 3 kilograms of stablilizer granules, a black stocking, a tug-of-war, and much angst. But I digress...)

So there I was, half asleep, trying to get dressed and moving. The high humidity of the morning, coupled with the fact that I had run out of hair conditoner, meant that I looked disturbingly like this:

And to top it off, my last good bra had popped an underwire -- making it even more of a medieval torture device than it is already. What could I do? I was running out of time. While brushing my teeth, I was seriously trying to figure out which shirt I could put on that would best disguise the fact that I was reduced to wearing a bikini top to work, when suddenly, the solution came to me.

Duct tape.

Good for everything, including emergency underwear repair. And the silver colour is so sparkly and feminine. Red would be proud.

(Keep your stick on the ice.)

Because we just don't have enough gold lamé parachute pants in our lives these days

Take that, you skinny-jeans-wearing clones!!

Nuns. Wine. What's not to like?

Sometimes a joke shows up in your inbox that you just have to share:

Mother Superior called all the nuns together and said to them, "I must

tell you all something. We have a case of gonorrhea in the convent."

"Thank God," said an elderly nun at the back. "I'm so tired of

chardonnay."

Dr. Strangelawn, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Weeds

As a single mum with a full-time job, a commute, a house, and two girls in soccer, you can imagine that my schedule is, well, a little on the full side. And one thing that often gets ignored is the dandelion plantation lawn.

And really, to call it a lawn is to besmirch the word 'lawn'. (The fictional motive I created for the murder in CSI: Carp, episode 1 is totally believable to anyone who has actually seen my lawn.) After casual perusal careful study, I've determined that the breakdown of the plant species in my lawn is as follows:

Dandelions 45%
Plantain 35%
Pricky things that I step on when I go to retrieve toys off the lawn barefoot after dark 10%
Grass 7%
Clumps of daisies and violets that I am forced to mow around or the girls cry 2%
Weird plant that resembles the unholy offspring of Devil's Snare and a mutant blackberry bush that send up shoots into the lawn from its lair under the pool 1%

Not exactly the stuff of golf greens. My real-life neighbour has a lush carpet of emerald perfection that just mocks my poor excuse for a lawn. I used to worry about it. I used to worry that if I didn't get around doing something about the weeds or mowing the lawn on time, then all my property would need would be an old washing machine in the back yard and a rusted out pickup on blocks in the driveway to look like it was inhabited by people named Cletus and Brandine.


But the time involved in trying to make my lawn into something resembling Glen Abbey is not something I have any intention of spending. And really, unbroken expanses of green are a little boring. Dandelions are cheerful. And so are the violets and occasional johnny-jump-up that have colonized the grass in the back yard.

I started thinking about how to make the most of what's growing there now. Hmmmm, if the planned LCBO strike happens, I have the raw materials to brew up enough dandelion wine to keep most of Carp happy through the summer. And plantain is an amazing natural remedy for bee stings -- you pick some leaves and chew them up and then put the wad of chewed up leaf and spit on the sting site, and it relieves the pain. According to my calculations, if the girls get stung by 18 bees/wasps per child per day for the summer, then I'll be able to use up most of it. Mind you, I might get a bit tired of chewing up plantain and/or run out of spit before hitting the 18-sting mark.

So, I do what I can in the mowing department, fitting it in around soccer practices and games, pool maintenance and laundry, grocery shopping and dentist appointments, trips to the library and the splash pad. I don't worry about how much of the lawn is really weeds, because a having perfect weed-free lawn is not as important as all the other good stuff going on. And as my neighbour Chris told me: "If you mow it short, it all looks like grass anyway."

Literally

When Rachel was much younger, she provided us with a lot of unintentional humour. One time, when she was about three years old and could use the toilet by herself, but still needed help with the, ummm, post-activity clean up, she cracked me right up. Leah had fallen and cut her knee, and I had her sitting up on the kitchen counter so I could put a band-aid on her ouchie. Rachel was yelling at me from the bathroom, "I need you to wipe!" I was busy, so I called back, "Hold your horses, Rachel, I'll be there in a minute." There was a pause, and a sad little voice answered back, "But I don't have any horses, Mummy."

See? Literal can be funny.

And this is the funniest thing I've seen in a while: literal videos, where the lyrics have been changed to match what's going on in the video.

It just gets funnier the longer it goes on. The ending damn near killed me. I laughed til I cried, and I might have peed just a little bit too.