K is very excited as he has managed to book a playdate with his friend T for this Friday. I advised him he needed to be respectful of C's feelings and not rub it in too much that she still has to go to a babysitter while he's at T's house. C seems to be okay with it but just kept sighing and saying "I guess I'll never see Z again" all dramatic like. I mentioned that school is just around the corner, and she'll be seeing Z then, and that K & T are only just getting to be good friends while she and Z have known each other much longer.

Blah blah blah. She got the message though.

Went to my sisterinlaw/brotherinlaw's place for dinner tonight. Brotherinlaw made ham & scalloped potatoes & vegetables. Hooray for decent meal I didn't have to cook! Brotherinlaw's dog is cute but mischevious as would be expected of any apartment-bound puppy. However the dog seems to be pretty well-behaved all in all; hopefully he'll stay that way.

Now off to bed & staring at the ceiling for 2 hours before giving up, getting up, and watching old movies.

My boy K lost his first tooth today!!!!


He lost it at the sitter's house at lunch time. He was so excited when I went to pick them up today.

I have next week as my week off from work - getting the kids off to school and whatnot. I'm looking forward to it.

Time to go fold laundry. Bah I hate laundry.

Say what you want about School of Rock (I have many issues with the movie, mostly to do with the kids, ugh don't even get me started), I think it's awesome that it has my daughter shrieking out the Immigrant Song.

Actually C really loves old rock. She doesn't mind teeny-bopper pop songs but mostly she loves rock. So she's making me download all sorts of things and asking me why it never plays on the radio.

I explained that stations have an obligation to play whatever the program involves, went on to explain each station has a different agenda, and that if she really liked this stuff I'd just toss it onto a disc and we could listen to that in the car instead. K then piped up that I had to make one for HIM then. K loves bands like Ween and the Violent Femmes and Broken Social Scene and Sam Roberts and Weezer. Don't ask him what band sings which, he hasn't discerned em just gloms them all into the category of "hey mom! That's my second favorite song! That's my fourth favorite song!" It's kind of cute actually, he mumbles things like "push the li'l daisies" under his breath when he thinks nobody's listening.

I've been invited to go out with some of the ladies at work on Saturday. We're more or less around the same age; I'm older than a few of them, but not by much. It should be interesting. I hadn't expected the invitation, it more or less was implied I was going to be there if I liked it or not! heh.

My brotherinlaw & sisterinlaw invited us over for dinner tomorrow & my own brother &his girl are coming over for dinner Thursday. Tonight of course is "Wing Night" for SO. That more or less cleans out the last week of summer. Where did the time go???

The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!

Party was fun and we ended up staying over and a good time was had by all. Woke up sleepy but semi-refreshed. I definitely could use some more rest though.

I have to work noon till 8 tomorrow - blech but what can you do right?

School is looming over like a happy little cloud. The kids are ecstatic but nervous.

I'll be happy to get them going again, but also sad. The first day of school always makes me a little sad, I see my babies growing up faster and farther each year. The little table becomes the little desk; becomes the bigger desk; becomes the home room; becomes the college dorm. Time is slipping through my fingers faster than I can blink.

Remember the box of notes and cards I found the other day? I went through it all and filed the stuff I wanted to keep. I started going through the cards and found the only thing I have left to remember my Dad's father by - a Christmas card, signed by him. I looked at his name for a good long while and then I cried a little. It was an unexpected find so it slapped me in the face like cold water. Maybe it was pms a little but even so. Oh how I miss him, even now.

I'm anxiously awaiting a call from my doctor to let me know when my gynecological appointment has been set up. Without getting into the details of why I went to my doctor in the first place, it's been discovered that I have some follicular cysts on my ovaries & fallopian tube and I have a retroverted uterus (that means instead of sitting straight it is tipped backwards). Follicular cysts are standard issue I suppose but they are concerned because of the history of reproductive issues including cancer on both sides of my family. My own mother had to have a full hysterectomy & ovaries removed not long ago due to a great many complications and precancerous cells on the cysts that had formed. I'm trying to be all blase about it and write it off as just a routine check up, bla bla bla but the truth is I am a little bit upset. Not scared. Just... disquieted, I guess. I'm so damn sick and tired of my organs giving up on me one by one and my doctor just shrugging as if to say "ah well what can ya do?"

Ok enough self-pity for one night. Off to the bath I go.

I have that Franz Ferdinand song stuck in my head. It's catchy.

Tonight we go to JG's father's 60th birthday party. I'm not really in the mood for it, but SO already agreed we'd go, so what ya gonna do right?

Next week is the kids' last week before school. They're getting pretty excited let me tell you.

Memo to self; call brother about dinner w/him & his gf next week.

Too tired to write more.

My Daddy turns 51 today. Aside from thinning hairline, he doesn't look a day over 40. I hope I age half so well.

I had a big rant about Pluto no longer being a planet, but it seemed too trite even for the internet. Shocking, I know.

I'm so tired and yet sleep has eluded me nigh these past three days. So if you've spoken with me and I was having trouble articulating things, that's why.

In spite of myself I ordered Swiss Chalet tonight. SO would argue that's money that could have been used to buy enough groceries to make 4 meals, but I'm too effing tired to deal right now.

But my sink looks fabulous.

Bwaha!

Got the Sears Wish Book today. They make you cough up five bucks for it now. On the other hand, they also give you a certificate for 5 bucks off your next order, so it's all good. C rubbed her hands together with glee and immediately sequestered herself into her room so she could peruse the catalogue in peace. Thankfully, K was too absorbed in his LOTR video game to notice. (PS Hammers thank you soo much for it. He loves it like hella crazy, though it *is* a little tough. He just likes the fact that he gets to swing a sword I think).

This weekend is my high school's reunion weekend. I somehow can't bring myself to go, although morbid curiousity may get me to at least take a tour on Saturday afternoon of the old school which now houses the french immersion elementary school. We'll see.

High school was a multifaceted fuckton of crazy. I have a lot of mixed feelings about it, as does most of the planet I'm sure. I just don't know what to think.

Ok time to go peruse the other massive Sears book & see about maybe getting new sheets. Ciao!

So it's Wednesday and I checked the calendar and lo and behold, school is a mere 2 weeks away. Where did the summer go?

The kids are just dying to go. Which makes momma very happy; I want them to like school. I'm hoping their social scene will be a bit less stressful - for K it should be because his friend T will be in class with him, "all day mum! For real! And I don't hafta wait till after school to play because he'll be there at recess!" For C we shall have to see. I'm going to make a point of stopping at the school & checking it out.

Memo to self: Kids have eye appointment tomorrow night. Eep!

Confession: we did not file our taxes until today. You read that right. There is a very long boring and convoluted story behind it. Rest assured that we weren't merely tax-evading slackers; WSIB was sort of gumming things up for us due to an injury that SO had while working at his job from hell (months prior to quitting and going to happy job). As a result I did not learn until today that I am getting a tax return this year. Huzzah! I was really worried about that because of my severance from my own job from hell, but apparently I gave so much to charities last year that it evened out plus the few courses I took put me in the very very green. So hooray! Just in the nick of time! SO is also miraculously getting a tax return this year. We don't know what we're going to do with it yet - it will likely be put towards starting our basement. Or we'll just save it and see. I don't know.

Other memo to self: pick up wish book tomorrow.

Ok off to take a bath and rest.

Posts might go to a bit of a standstill for a week or so as I get myself back on track, housekeeping-wise. You can read about it here.

I'm vain and bought myself new contact lenses. Hurrah!

I'm also sleepy and need ot get better rest.

I also have a shiny sink.

School starts very soon, the kids can't wait! I can't wait either, frankly. However my j-o-b is giving me a teensy bit of grief - shift has been switched to be 11 am to 4 pm to accomodate BC branches still getting accustomed to a new program we are using to set up mortgages - and the kids get off school at 3:30 pm. I'm hoping the FIL will be nice enough to pick them up for me. I'd ask my motherinlaw but history has proven her to be quite unreliable.

Ok time to go round up breakfast for the critters before going to the doctor's office and finding out why my reproductive organs are doing crazy things to me lately.

SO and I have been cleaning out the house - garage, basement - preparing for winter and mostly wanting the basement empty so that we can start working on a rec room and a space for me and my eleventy bajillion projects.

In doing so we have upset a lot of spiders, and uncovered a lot of dust. I feel like I've got the black lung, if that gives you a better picture. I unearthed a box full of old notes and letters. Let me tell you, I am amazed that I absorbed ANYTHING in high school, as most of these notes were written back and forth in classes. What is amazing about this is, it's like I've found a missing part of my brain. I can read it and not only remember exactly what was being discussed in the notes, but I can remember the day we wrote them, whose handwriting belongs to who - it's amazing.

I also however must admit that there are some notes with cryptic references that no amount of memory-jogging will dislodge the answer. These notes have amused the hell out of SO as well - he keeps teasing me about "Who is A? And what are they talking about when they talk about you and J? And I didn't know you had a crush on so and so!". My own fault I suppose, I've taken to reading the funnier parts out loud. He said I should just fictionalize them somehow & turn it into a book.

For whatever amount of junk we've managed to give away or put in the trash, I cannot bring myself to let these scraps of memory go. So now I have to come up with a viable solution to store them & preserve my thoughts. Binder, perhaps? I'm not sure. It's a big fucking box.

Time to go putter around with site designs (not for me, I am really loving this red gig).

Am I the only packrat? Or are there others out there with boxes of notes and old diaries?

So my fatherinlaw (who I will now call FIL) decided to have a tequila party while his wife is in Nfld. He invited a bunch of us over. Around mid-day he comes pulling up to our drive while SO was working on cleaning out the garage. "Boy I need you to come grocery shopping". But SO was busy so FIL took me. Good thing too; the man does not know his way around grocery stores to save his life. I also got him to a dollar store to get plastic shotglasses.

Then I went over to their house and helped him chop up a bajillion veggies and things for the Mexican feast he was serving with the boozery. SO and the kids came over shortly after and there were a bunch of other friends there as well. When planning this he asked me what kind of tequila to get, I told him Jose Cuervo never let me down, but it has to be gold. He didn't even know tequila was available in a color other than clear. Last night he was converted over, as were a few of his friends.

A good time was had by all and the kids even had a ball as FIL's friend brought over his two kids and they all had a sleepover type thing going on.

Was yours truly drunk? Not hardly. I can handle my booze and besides I didn't really start drinking until the kids were in bed. Plus I was in hostess mode - cleaning up the food when everyone was done, etc etc. Woke up with nary a hangover, to which SO was amazed. "How did you do it? You drank just as much as so-and-so's girl and she was a trainwreck." I'm Portuguese, man. We are practically bottle-fed alcohol; we can hold our own. Sure there was a point shortly after I had the kids where smelling booze would make me dizzy, but those days are over, baby. To which he laughed.

We also had an exchange on his Dad's front porch last night - nothing like an argument, I mean a conversation. You know, with words? And we were talking about high school and that one person you were seeing/dating that will likely always be "the one that got away" and I said "yeah, but if you had an opportunity to get together with x again right now, would you take it?" and he looked at me quite earnestly and said "G, I wouldn't trade you for anything. Nothing is worth losing you." He asked me if I remembered his toast at our wedding, I said yes. He said he realized he wasn't eloquent or poetic or anything, but he meant it. I told him brevity did not necessarily equal lack of poetry, and that I was glad he meant it, and means it still.

What he said was this. "To G, once my secret crush, then my best friend, and now my loving wife. Thank you for making me happier than I could ever imagine. I love you."

Anyway, a good time was had by all and we were silly and had fun. Below is photographic evidence of said silliness. A photo of ME & I being dorks for the camera.

"I try to believe," she said, "that God doesn't give you more than one little piece of the story at once. You know, the story of your life. Otherwise your heart would crack wider than you could handle. He only cracks it enough so you can still walk, like someone wearing a cast. But you've still got a crack running up your side, big enough for a sapling to grow out of. Only no one sees it. Nobody sees it. Everybody thinks you're one whole piece, and so they treat you maybe not so gentle as they would if they could see that crack."

Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Mischief is home now & all crankypants at us, for not only taking her to the vet to get operated on but also for dropping her off at my parents' house for the weekend so we could go have fun outside - and her most favoritest place to be these days is outside. Putting her under house arrest for the next few weeks should be interesting - she's already started to complain. I feel terrible for the poor girl - being spayed is tough enough, but her poor little paws. Awww man. SO says I'm a sucker and it's for the best and bla bla bla.

So we packed up the kids and went camping for the weekend. Somewhere along the line we managed to spend the better part of our days in the swimming pool there. As a result my upper back and shoulders are now a FIREY MANTLE OF DOOM!

But we had fun and I feel sleepy. Probalby from the sunburn. I haven't had a sunburn literally in over 20 years. DAMN YOU BALL OF FIRE!

Now I'm going to rub aloe all over myself and bask in self-pity aka lie stomach-down on the bed and fill in word puzzles. I love logic puzzles by the by and am trying to find a book full of them. Any leads?

Still too tired to think, yet somehow I managed to revamp the blog. That's the way my mind operates, I guess.

My birthday - so I went to the spa on the day of and got legs waxified and etc. It was all good and not painful at all in spite of what most thought would happen it was no worse than getting a tattoo done.

I got to take a nap on that day too which was marvellous and needed to chase away the blues that were lurking underneath the surface.

The weekend was all planned for me. SO & our friends ME &JG took me to Toronto. There I was taken to Fionn McCools for brunch - delicious! We checked in to our hotel & then walked around King for a while. Then I was given the credit card & several hours of fun at the Eaton Centre, hurrah! We had a late lunch there & then walked back to our rooms, got ready for dinner. Dinner reservations were made for 9 pm at 360 in the CN Tower. We were dorks and got dressed up because what the hell, right? It's my 30th damnit & SO knows I hella love men in suits.

Because we were dorky & dressed up, we did not have to wait in a single line. Literally it was red carpet treatment and no waiting for our table or anything. We were seated by the window & got a magnificent view of the city all lit up at night. The dinner was superb as was the company.

The next day we spent a good portion of it at IKEA - Have I ever mentioned that I love IKEA? It's true. Then we came home & I snuck in another nap.

All in all, it was the best birthday ever, and I'm only really giving a bare bones account of the events, but trust me - it was. The best.

Mischief got taken in to the vet today to get declawed & spayed. I lost the "let's not declaw the kitty" battle - outvoted 3 to 1 in favor of it. Now I keep thinking of her while it's all stormy out and thinking the poor thing just got gutted and now she has to spend a night alone at the vet's in stormy weather. The poor dear.

Ok time to go to bed I guess - if I can get sleep I don't know but I'm going to try.