A snapshot of me right now

Given that I've pretty much abandoned this space of late, I think I'll just give you a quick snapshot of me right now... Actually, it's more for the me of a future since most of the time I figure that's who I'm writing for anyway.

I've made a small change in my daily eating habits that I feel could have some great long-term benefits and just plain makes me feel better about how I'm treating myself: I'm eating vegetarian lunches which must include a good amount of raw vegetables.  Fish is allowable (and encouraged).

I'm completely ADDICTED to Camelot on CBC.  Have you been watching it? If not, watch the first episode and then don't give up.  Watch the second episode and I guarantee you'll be completely hooked.

I'm getting excited about the plans that Isobel (dearest neighbour) and I have for Sugarplum Fairy Homebaking.  I love that I now have a partner in crime to share the burden and generate ideas with! Also, she rules at decorating cakes while I decidedly do not.

Why is it that it is always the same small group of people in any large group that are always the ones who volunteer?  Church, school, the community... always the same few people.  And we same few people are starting to get tired out!

Yesterday I decided that I'm tired of how our house looks inside.  I'm sick of our wood furniture.  I'm tired of looking at late early 2000s IKEA furniture.  I'm tired of our once-beloved earth tones.  I want some bold colours, some great art and a cool mix of eclectic furniture - American colonial, modern, even Victorian.  With some leather here and there.  I want a bunch of money so I can do all this redesign.

Have you seen this photo?  I'll link to it but I won't post it so that it doesn't show up on people's mobiles or iPads as the photo that introduces this post.  You all know that I'm new to Girl Guides of Canada but I love the organization and what they give girls around the world as though I've been a lifetime Guider.  When I saw this I was disgusted and angry.  Maybe you'll choose to make jokes and take it lightheartedly.  But not me.  I've reached my limit on the sexualization of girlhood in every sphere.  Nothing is left untouched.  This is an organization that goes against every message in this photo and to take it lightheartedly is to miss what this is really doing and to miss the messages that our girls and young women (and we old ones) are being sent by the world around us on a daily basis (just the tip of the iceberg is that we are valued mostly as sexual beings).  We in Girl Guiding (not to mention parents, teachers and many, many others who work with girls on a daily basis) work really hard to combat these messages each time we're with our units because a pillar of the Guiding movement is building strong, independent and confident women who are leaders and feel empowered to make great choices for themselves.  To use the very image of a Girl Guide to send the exact opposite message is disgusting at best and downright offensive at worst.  So laugh.  Make jokes.  Shrug it off.  Say you wouldn't say no to her cookies.  Just don't say it to me.

Change-room protocol

I imagine this can be a heated subject but I'm opening up the can of worms regardless.

There is a point when boys should not be in women's change rooms and girls should not be in men's change rooms. This is why most facilities have a family change room or "alternative needs" change room, so that families of mixed genders can change together. For me, that age is around the end of senior kindergarten... around 5 years old. You may think it should be a bit older or a bit younger. That's fine. Maybe you think that we shouldn't set an age and let a family of all girls with one brother, change in the women's change room regardless of their ages.

I forcefully disagree.

No matter how hard we try to make the human body natural to kids, they reach an age when boys giggle about vaginas and girls giggle about penises, never mind if they actually see one... the fits and giggles my girls have over seeing Henry's penis is mind-blowing. Sometimes, even though we've always used proper names in our house, Emily actually calls it his "thing."

Mind-blowing, I tell you and yet totally normal from what I've heard from other parents.

We have an open family that discusses everything. We've been resolute in telling the girls that human bodies are wonderful things, that men and women have different parts, that there is no reason to laugh at that, that it's okay to see each other naked, that you should never be embarrassed about your body, etc etc etc. And yet, while my kids totally bought into that for the first several years of their lives, lately it's been all fits and giggles.

Clearly, this is just part of growing up... a part of human nature.

And so, this is why there is an age limit to sharing change rooms and they should be respected.

And why I was very surprised to find a 9-year-old boy in the change room at the pool this morning. And also why I was very disturbed to find him watching one of my girls shower after I'd returned to our locker to fetch the soap and shampoo. He had no direct supervision, no one keeping an eye on where he was, his mother helping her daughters shower a few aisles over. I became enraged mama bear and told him to leave.... NOW and what he was doing was TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE (would any of us honestly stand in the doorway to a shower and watch anyone we didn't know shower? That's just creepy no matter your age). Maybe he was just curious, yes. But I had to ask him to go two or three times amidst a number of weak excuses about thinking that was his shower and it left me feeling angry and disturbed.

Which is why I met with the pool manager afterward and asked her to post more signs about the family change room and age restrictions. It's also why, if I see him there again tomorrow (which I likely will), I will be keeping a giant eye on that kid and do what I should have done today.... march him right over to his mother and give her an earful.

My public service announcement for today comes down to this: please don't flaunt the rules of the gendered changed rooms lest your other gendered child becomes creepy and weird. His or her curiosity should be addressed at home, not in a public change room where I then am put in the position of protecting my kids in a place where they should be allowed to feel secure about their bodies and the ability to walk around without covering up. Given his age, his mother should have been all over him to stay by her side instead of allowing him to roam free weirding out all the other women and girls in the change area.

Or better yet, they should have used the family change room.

The noise! Oh, the noise, noise, noise, noise!

There is something lovely about being in a very warm bed under a thick but light duvet in the dark on a winter morning listening to someone else's snowshovel scraping their driveway of the 25 cm of snow that fell. I actually don't mind being woken up by that sound. It reminds me that this is Ottawa. This is our experience. As neighbours we share it together. But I have the luxury of not having to do that before going to work because my work is right here in this house.

I was dreamily listening to that sound this morning when it was interrupted by the whine of a machine. It was a pretty loud machine and in my dozy fog I wondered why someone was running a chainsaw or a lawnmower at 6:00 in the morning. And it didn't stop. It continued to interrupt the sound of the shovels outside and, more importantly, my sleep.

It took me at least 3 minutes to realize that my neighbour, who recently bought a snowblower, thought it was okay to run it at 6:00 am.

Our street has been free of snowblowers until last week. It was an idyllic existence I now realize. Why do people think it's okay to run thouse things so early? They are helpful I'm sure but they are so downright annoying to the senses. I can see the need for them if you are quite old or at serious risk of a heart attack or if you have a crazy long driveway but if you live on my street, a street of attached houses and shared driveways, the last does not apply.

In too many cases, the snowblower is an exercise in laziness.

This year I've enjoyed shovelling the driveway. On a snowy day I go out there and do it several times and the kids play in the snow while I do it or help me with their little shovels. It's lovely. And would not be lovely at all with a snowblower.

And that is the end of my curmudgeonly rant of this morning. Time for porridge.

A backyard for the birds

During our 24Days of Christmas, one of our activities was to feed the birds. In preparation for that I bought a Nyger seed birdfeeder at Lee Valley. It declared itself to be squirrel-proof and given our resident squirrel population that was a must in any birdfeeder we put in our tree.

And so, I hung the birdfeeder in mid-December hoping for the best. It was chalk full of Nyger seed.

The first three weeks there was nary a bird on that feeder. I was disappointed. Moreso than the girls for sure. When we lived for a short year in Peterborough right along the Otanabee River, one of my greatest pleasures was watching all the birds at the feeders and in our garden. I even kept a journal to record all the different birds that visited. There were a lot. I didn't do any of the work of attracting them. That was due to years of work by the neighbours.

Since then, I've wanted birdfeeders but hadn't done anything about it until this year. And then, nada.

Until a week ago.

I was in the kitchen when John told me to look out the window. The feeder was covered in birds. They were mostly sparrows I thought. Nothing against sparrows but I wanted something more interesting as well. And then, when I looked closer, I realized that many of them were finches, their bright yellow bellies dimmed by the winter sun. Hooray!

And then the squirrels knocked the feeder down. Twice. Off to Hope Depot to buy chain and clips and things that squirrels couldn't break. I re-hung the feeder and put up another one: a suet feeder. Now I was getting greedy. Could I actually attract a woodpecker in my urban back yard?

The suet feeder sat unused for the last several days. This morning a chickadee inspected it but swung back to the Nyger feeder.

To add to the complication, my neighbour's free-to-roam cats parked themselves above the feeder in the tree today scaring off everything for a couple of hours. When I finally hit bottom about the cats, I called the city to make a complaint. As I was on the phone with the attendant, I looked out the window. No cats but lots of birds. And then, lo and behold, a bird came out of nowhere scaring off the small birds. The larger bird landed on the suet feeder, its bright red head gleaming in the sun. My first downy woodpecker.

It must have improved my mood because I told the attendant on the phone that I would go over and talk to my neighbour about her cats before I make a formal complaint.

Let's hope she is reasonable and concedes about keeping her cats inside during the day so the poor birdies can feed without being pegged off. Unfortunately her cats have a killer instinct.

So, today I am celebrating my woodpecker in the city. So lovely.

Elbow-deep in shit water

As I noted earlier, things have been hum-drum normal around here with little to report that wouldn't bore you to the point where your eyes bleed. I made the mistake of reporting that below and then the gods who oversee Murphy's Laws and the like decided to hit me with some excitement. But not the kind I like. More like the kind I hate.

The cloth diaper pail was full this afternoon so I put them in the washing machine and set it to cold/cold rinse. I always do a cold rinse before I do a hot wash. My old-timer washing machine doesn't have a "soak" cycle so I have to go old school. Anywho, I left them to do their thing and went upstairs to relax and do some knitting while the kiddies slept. I found it odd that almost right away I didn't hear the distinct sounds of our washing machine grinding away. After a while I went downstairs to check on things, hoping to add the soap and send it on to the wash cycle. What I found instead was a washing machine filled with diapers, shit water and making a click, click, click sound as the agitator kept trying and failing to move, spin and drain the water. I sent it back to the start and noticed that it would add more water (I quickly put an end to that) but still would only click instead of drain.

A quick check on the friendly internet told me.... well, that I had problems. Could be a number of things: jammed hose, sock down inside the agitator mechanism, jammed basin, blah, blah, blah, basically I'm screwed.

I left the problem for a while. Okay, okay.... I left it for several hours during which time the Government decided to inform me that I still owe over $300 on my taxes because they're charging me interest for not prepaying my taxes. That is a rant, and boy, will it be a rant, for another day. In fact, my hands are starting to shake typing this I'm that rant-ready.

Back to the story at hand. I donned rubber gloves, got an old Brita jug that will clearly not be used for drinking water again, pulled out all the sopping wet still slightly poopy diapers and put them back in the diaper pail, then started to bail until I could at least see the bottom. I felt around the bottom of the agitator. Nothing obvious. I pulled on it. I pushed it. I may have kicked the machine. Nothing will move. There is no clear way to remove the agitator.

I think we're seriously scah-rood washing machine and laundry-wise and smelly very wet cloth diaper-wise.

Of course this had to happen: (a) when I was washing diapers; not when I was washing regular clothes with no poop adhered to them and (b) during a time when I am trying not to spend any money. Yes, I do note that I haven't mentioned that little project since I first announced it and that could be because I'm not being as strict with myself as I should be see Exhibit A bag full of new yarn upstairs, $10 baby doll bought for Hope today, little shopping at Ikea last week.

John is currently asking for the manual. This could get worse before it gets better.

Goodbye, Friday

Today could have been better. It started out with potential. Julie was going to meet us at the Museum of Civilization and sign us in (she works there when not on maternity leave) so Emily and Hope could wreak havoc in the Children's Museum. Julie was running behind but called to say she'd left her name and that would be enough to get us in if she wasn't there. We went out to get in the car and as I was buckling Hope into her seat I felt something was missing in the garage. I looked up to see an empty bike hook in the ceiling. John's bike was gone.

Shit.

So, off we go, me feeling so crappy that I have to break this to him and hoping our deductible is less than the usual $500. We got to the museum to find out the parking garage was full. The people denying us entry sent me across the street to the hotel that had parking. I parked the car there, noticed the hideous rates, and then started walking, Hope in my arms, backpack on, clutching Emily's mittenless hands down the street and back to the museum. I didn't have a stroller. None of us had mitts on and I didn't have a hat. The day was not improving.

We went in without a hitch but what the heck were so many people doing there on a Friday? Ottawa doesn't have this many homeschoolers, does it?

Yeah, turns out today is a P.D. day and being that I don't have any kids in the school system yet, I'm not tuned into these things. I vowed last time this happened to me to never go to CMC on a P.D. day.

Again, shit.

So, I chased Emily and Hope through the Children's Museum, heart-pounding whenever we were separated. I saw other parents with the same panic-stricken looks on their faces calling out their child's names, stress lines etched into their faces. There's got to be a better way to do this. Or, we all need to calm down. It would be easier if none of us ever saw an episode of America's Most Wanted.

After a lunch of cold french fries in the cafeteria with Julie (she found us amazingly amongst the other families), we headed back to the car. I paid the parking ($12!) at one of those pay machines which promptly told me I had fifteen minutes to leave the parking lot and went down to the car, loaded the kids in, drove to the exit where I was supposed to stick in my ticket that I was SUPPOSED to have retrieved from the machine when I paid.

Shit, shit, shit!

I threw the car into reverse and somehow navigated the 1960s car park with Austin Mini-sized corridors back to a parking spot. At this point, I may have been testy with Emily's one thousand questions about what we were doing. I may have.

I unbuckled both kids, picked up Hope, grabbed Emily's hand and ran, yes, ran, back to the machine. Remember, I had 15 minutes to be out of the parking lot. I got the ticket (thank my lucky stars it was still there), ran again back to the car, buckled both kids in (I really wish I was a mother in the 1970s today, when I could have thrown them in the back seat and made that El Camino sing!) and drove like the Dickens to the exit where miraculously I made it out before my 15 minutes was up.

We drove home. Hope went to bed and I sat down, called my insurance company and the Police to report John's bike stolen. I called John and told him. He was extremely relaxed about the whole thing which is a lot more than I can say about the way I was feeling right about then.

And, our deductible is $500. So, we're getting a cheque for $580. John had a nice bike.

The sun will come out tomorrow.

Seems that Mother Nature has screwed me again

Yeah. Remember this post? If you haven't read it yet, go ahead. I'll wait.

Okay, so now that you're up to speed and know that I didn't get winter tires put on my car two days ago, this is what I woke up to yesterday morning:


Yeah, that sucked. And this morning I came downstairs to find there is more falling. A LOT MORE.

A sprain in the ass

I trucked the kids off in the bike trailer this morning to the park. Our local city park, Greenboro, has a great wading pool and sprinkler plus a decent playground. The library and community centre are right there making it a childhood (and tired mother's) mecca. We're there a lot.

I dismounted the bike, had Hope in one arm, our bag of gear in the other, Emily tagging along. I took one step and my ankle rolled off the paved path and into the soft sand beside it. The distinct crack I heard told me there was likely a torn ligament. Me hitting the ground like a bag of wet cement told me that I was going to have a shitty time at the pool today. I do credit myself however for hanging onto Hope as well as I did. She held on and giggled thinking my wincing and yelping was part of a new game.

As I gasped in pain, holding Hope and trying to answer Emily's questions, I flagged a lifeguard who brought me some ice packs. As I was on City of Ottawa property, the (very) young male lifeguard had to do an incident report. He asked my age. "Thirty-five," I said. "Oh," he said, "I would have said twenty-five. " Flattery will totally get you everywhere. I truly believe this boy deserves a raise.

The lifeguards propped me up in a couple of lounge chairs with my foot elevated. They were great. We girls ate our snack. Not wanting Emily to miss out on her swim, I changed them (somehow from my chair) and then painfully hobbled over to the shallow area where I plopped down Hope and prayed that Emily would listen and stay close. She did. I actually couldn't have had a better behaved toddler this morning. She did everything I asked, she played in the water without me with no complaints, she helped me carry things and even got ready to go home with no crying.

I'm so glad I biked there this morning. I was able to bike back without too much discomfort. I wouldn't have been able to walk back. I would have had to take Mr. Lifeguard up on his offer to piggy back me home.

The sprained ankle sucks but I'm choosing to look at it from a different angle - this gives me an excuse to sit on my ass and be pampered for a bit.

We're off to the cottage again tomorrow with some good friends, Meredith, Ron, and their kids, Ella and Duncan. More hands to fetch my drinks and fluff my pillows.

I think the ice did help at the pool. Here is the swelling I've got now. Left is bad ankle, right is normal ankle (I guess that was kind of obvious) - no comments about my skinny, bony feet, please - they keep me upright, well, most of the time:

Desperate for a bamboo stake?

Can you ever imagine yourself in a situation where you are so desperate for a bamboo stake that you poach one from a neighbour's tomato plant? No, me either. But apparently there is someone who lives in my area who finds him or herself in this sad situation because we arrived home from the cottage tonight to find one of my plants sadly lacking in support but still in possession of the pieces of cloth that tied it to its stake.

Honestly, what on earth?

Dirt, snow and a camera

I decided yesterday that today would be the day that I would finally take the car to be detailed. Normally, I just vacuum it out myself, dust, etc., but the level of dirt in the car is such that it really is a job that should only be tackled by professionals. I'm not even going to post a photo of its current state because I am too embarrassed. It is covered in Cheerios, goldfish crackers, orange juice stains, leaves, probably barf here or there. I don't even know anymore what is actually causing that smell that makes my stomach lurch and Emily say: "car pretty stinky."

I woke up this morning to the first real winter day in Ottawa. I was going to call off the car cleaning but decided to go for it. I mean, this is Ottawa.. a little or a lot of snow shouldn't deter me. If it does, I should move to a warmer climate. So, I took all the crap out of the car - papers, CDs, toys, what have you - and loaded in the kids and drove to the car place. Normally the drive should be about 15 minutes. It was about 30 today. The ploughs were only just starting and being the first big dump, most people had forgotten how to drive in it.

I pulled into the car wash place to find a sign that said the following: Closed due to weather. Huh?

Maybe no one has explained to this establishment that this is OTTAWA - if you close due to snow, you are going to have a pretty lean winter. Also, IT IS AN INDOOR CAR WASH. Seriously. I don't understand it. Emily said: "Mummy fustated?" Damn right.

So, since I was very close to a good camera shop, I drove over there and bought a new camera. Yay! It was cheap and takes decent pictures. Exactly what I wanted. I'll rely on my dad and Beth to take the good quality photos.

I'm rather happy that I bought the camera today because I went into the kitchen today and saw this empty box that yesterday was filled with water bottles:













A quick look around and I found this:













I think Emily might have a career in retail.

And on the seventh day, Hope created poop

Yes, it's true. I went to do the last change of the day yesterday, and, ureka!, there was the poop. Finally!

And, thankfully, not in the volume I was expecting. Since then, there have been several more so it seems she has broken the great barrier and is back to her old self rather than being miserly with the poop.

Now I am sort of nostalgic for those several days when I didn't have to deal with poopy diapers.

So, onto the crappy news. Our window in Hope's (soon-to-be) room is (still) leaking. I thought it was a problem with the window that could be fixed with some caulking. It seemed to only be happening when the rain was blown towards the window. But, today it is raining and there is no wind so no rain is being blown under the eaves at the window and yet it is leaking profusely. So, I figure it must be the roof. Crap.

I'll be getting another roofing quote this week, I hope, and look forward so much to spending a few thousand dollars that we don't have sitting around. In the meantime, it being Ottawa in (sort of) winter, I guess we'll have a leaking window, wet wall and damp carpet until May or so.

Warning: you may not want to tune in here tomorrow

If you have a weak constitution, seriously don't read the blog tomorrow. John has a monster cyst on his back that we have been nursing along the last few days and he has given me permission to post the ugly details. This sounds gross, I know, but being that this has consumed us the last week or so (particularly the last 3 or 4 days) and essentially turned this house on its head in some ways, I have to talk about it. I have completely kept silent so far assuming that John didn't want it discussed but he has given me full permission.

So, as I said, weak constitution? Don't read tomorrow. Sick interest or medical profession (Erika? Marlene? Jannie? I'm looking at you), then this is the place to be!

There may be photos.

It shall be mine

I'm going to (try to) sell three of our strollers/bike trailer and buy this:
The Chariot Cougar 2. Can be a jogger and bike trailer (not to mention that you can also buy skis for it for x-country skiing trails). Hopefully will have it by the end of the weekend. Yeehah... just in time for the snow/ice that arrived this morning. Blech.

Yes, we have three strollers to sell. In actual fact, we currently own five stroller type things: a pram, a double Peg Perego, a Burley bike trailer, an Evenflo "mall" stroller, a BOB jogging stroller. Yikes. I always said we wouldn't be people who acquired a lot of baby equipment. So, we're getting rid of three strollers and replacing with this one. I'll keep the pram (of course, it was used for Beth and I when we were babies and will go to Beth should she need/want it someday), and the "mall" stroller for use in, well, malls while Hope is in her existing car seat (it clips onto this particular stroller). So, each has had its own use but I really wish I had just got the Chariot at the beginning of this whole kid thing and avoided the BOB, the Burley and the double Peg Perego. Anyway, lesson for anyone else out there - think carefully at the beginning about what you will want to do through the year (outdoors) and how many kids you think you will have. And then shell out the big money for something that will keep your number of strollers to a minimum.

Stupid technology getting me all used to it and everything

Ugh. For some reason I can no longer download the pictures from my camera onto the computer. Not sure if this is a camera issue or a computer issue but it royally sucks. Until such time as we (a) figure out and fix the problem; (b) get a new computer; or (c) get a new camera there will be no pictures. I may explore the option of downloading to John's laptop and then blogging from there but it seems like a lot of effort with all the software downloading required etc.

And I had a great photo and post to put up. Will have to delay that one.

What no one else will tell you....

that hemorrhoids are possibly as bad as the labour, birth and delivery all put together. I thought I had avoided the worst of it, being that it is now three weeks later. I was suffering a bit but able to manage it with a daily routine of Preparation H. But then, today happened... welcome, constipation. Welcome, a marble-sized (we're talking the large guys, not the cat's eyes) hemorrhoid that is requiring me to walk like there is a piece of lumber between my cheeks and to ensure that I always take a pillow to the car with me. The thing about it that is different than labour etc is that there is no obvious end in sight. My midwife gave me a list of some herbal remedies to try that are supposed to cure even the most chronic case of the roids but could I get them at my local natural food store? Of course not. Instead, according to them, I need to call a Shaman (yes, you read that right) or an herbalist. I'll be on that first thing tomorrow because the idea of pooping right now has me completely and utterly terrified which isn't exactly helping the problem. Beth, does Marlene have any quick fixes beyond the piece of witch hazel-soaked toilet paper that is currently wedged in my bum?

Squirrel is asking for it

It also seems that the squirrel has a death wish. John watched him climb the screen door again this morning heading towards the hole again. John was in the kitchen so scared him off before he got there (the glass door was closed anyway) but it seems we might have to take some serious action against squirrel. And I'm not talking cayenne pepper.

What happened to my spine?

I was taking a nap this morning after I dropped Emily off at Dawn's. After sleeping for an hour, I heard a noise downstairs. I went to check it out and found a black squirrel sitting on the bake table in the kitchen. I had left the glass patio door open so it was just the screen door there. But, this is something I always do and it's never a problem. It wasn't ajar. However, I could see two smallish holes about chest height (see photo evidence). The damn squirrel had obviously jumped from the deck railing onto the door and clawed its way in to get at my oh-so-delicious banana bread.

It was freaked out when it saw me. In my infinite wisdom, I yelled at it (hoping to scare it back through its entry way) and then when that didn't work, I smartly chucked something at it. Of course, all this did was force it to leap through the opening to the living room and hang out in there. So, I opened the screen door hoping it would return to the kitchen and run out the back.

I grabbed a mop and went into the living room. I jabbed towards it trying to make it flee back through the opening to the kitchen. No luck. It ran by me towards the front screen door and took a flying leap onto that screen which, of course, only frustrated the squirrel. It took another run at it. By this time, I was on the phone with John who encouraged me to use the mop, chase it, etc, etc. My biggest worry was that it would head upstairs. I didn't want the thing in the bedrooms and I didn't want to have to follow it up there.

Of course, its next course of action was to go upstairs (you could've guessed that, right?). So, back on the phone with John. He suggested I go get Kumar (our neighbour) to help me. Of course, Kumar wasn't home. So, rather than chase it upstairs, I propped open the front screen door now giving it two wide openings to the outside and I sat in the living room (mop in hand) and waited for it to come back downstairs and peacefully make its way outside.

I should say at this point that people with spines would have just gone upstairs but here's the thing for me: I hate squirrels. I hate them in houses, cottages etc. I don't even like them much outside. Last summer I became known around the cottage as Mengele because I waged war on a brood of squirrels that were constantly coming into the cottage, eating our food, running along the wiring in the ceiling etc. They were hissing and climbing the walls. I tried the humane approach but eventually about 6 squirrels ended up going swimming and being buried behind the shed (and thus the name Mengele was applied to me). It was the killing fields.

The squirrel of today was a large, black squirrel rather than the smaller, red squirrels at the cottage. This was a different league. These guys seem a little more vicious and I feel pretty vulnerable when squirrels are in my house/cottage and are perched above my head where they can easily fly towards my face, claws flying. So, that is why I wanted no piece of chasing it upstairs. I also wanted to see it go out a door and I thought that if I chased it from upstairs I wouldn't necessarily see it leave (leaving me to wonder if it was still somewhere in the house/vents).

So after I came back from confirming Kumar wasn't home, John phoned to tell me he was borrowing a car and coming to help me. Thank me stars! He came home and within five minutes the squirrel was flying out the front door (really, it was flying). I closed everything, told John he was my hero, he laughed at me and my pathetic (yet well-grounded) fear of squirrels and was on his way. I went back to the kitchen to clean up (luckily there wasn't too much of a mess). As I was sweeping I saw a movement on the deck.

It was the squirrel. He was peering up at the hole he made and clearly wondering if he could get back in. Honestly, can you blame me for waging my war on these things? I don't think the gene pool is missing those six from last summer. Natural selection. If these guys dare to come near me, then they deserve what they get. Unfortunately, there is no lake nearby for me to test out his swimming skills so I'll have to put up with him until something else higher on the food chain gives him what's coming to him.

The plus side to all of this, is that I'm hoping the stress/excitement will put me into labour because I'm really ready to have this baby.

I thought I'd left that behind for a while

When I walked out of the office on my last day on July 28 I thought I'd said goodbye to the bureaucratic annoyances in being a civil servant that I often complain about here (and anywhere else I can). No such luck. Last Wednesday went by with no pay. Then Thursday, Friday and so on. I emailed my pay clerk who was away and left no forwarding name. He's back today and to his credit, answered my email at 7:43 this morning. In another example of government efficiency, they stopped my direct deposit. I guess they figured I will have all the time in the world to be depositing cheques when I'm on maternity leave. Who finds direct deposit handy after all? To top it off, they didn't even mail the cheque to my house. Oh no... they decided it would be more convenient if they sent it to my division so that I could drive across the city and pick it up! Needless to say, I have politely requested that direct deposit resume, which it will from now on.

If this was a one-off I wouldn't complain so much. I'd chalk it up to human error, too much to do, yada, yada, yada. However, this exact same problem happened at the beginning of my last maternity leave! Oh yes, it did! I guess you can't fault them for being inconsistent in their inefficiency.

Enough to ruin the day?

What is that horrible sound that has the potential to drive me round the bend and ruin this glorious day? Ah, yes, the ear-bleeding sound of an innoncent child, with eyes for glory, practising Claire de Lune on the recorder.

Outside.

Behind my house.

Junk I recently received

Dad, if you read this and are offended, I'm sorry, but I couldn't pass up a blog entry on this. It is just too good.

My mum died in January 2005. My dad recently remarried and decided to move to Toronto to live where his new wife lives. This meant a giant divesting of stuff because Donna, the new wife, has a small house and of course, already had her house filled with her own things. I went up to my dad's apartment in Sudbury one weekend after Christmas. Picture this, as it is important later - I drove, by myself, to Sudbury from Ottawa on a Friday, went through everything (and I mean everything) in the apartment, then saw a major snowstorm was coming and drove back to Ottawa Saturday night. It was nasty and yet I did it to help out and ensure that the things that my sister, Beth, and I wanted to keep were not thrown away and the things we didn't want were left without labels on them. Okay, that's the background.

My dad very generously paid a moving truck to bring the things I wanted to Ottawa. It arrived about two weeks ago with the large items and several boxes. As they brought in the boxes it struck me that this was definitely more than I had labelled and as I opened them up, my suspicions were confirmed. Here is what I found: crap and more crap. Crap I wanted thrown away. Crap I did not want sent to me in Ottawa. Crap that I now had to take the time to go through (again) and throw away. Crap that would now occupy some of my precious and limited spare time. Was I annoyed? Oh yah... that's an understatement. My dad wasn't entirely to blame - Donna was an active participant as well so we can blame them both. Now that I've thrown away or given away most of it I look back on it and laugh. Apparently, according to Donna, there isn't a Sally Ann or Good Will to be found in Sudbury. Who knew?

I'm so glad that I took that trip to Sudbury. I see that it was very helpful.

Here is low-down of my favourite items: entire box filled with old spices. Some of the bottles were empty. One slipper - no match. At least one whole box of sewing stuff that I said I didn't want. A white lump of coral or rock. I have no idea where it came from. A small musical Easter egg that I had clearly made fun of while going through the stuff in the apartment. A very dirty and ripped tea cozy. A big bowl of plastic fruit. A box of 6 keychains. No keys.

To really get you in the moment, I've attached several photos (mainly for Beth's benefit).