I’ve Moved

Hey, to all my family and friends who may still be coming here to get updates I wanted to let you know that I’ve moved HERE and that in a short period of time I’ll be deleting Tutus and Rainboots.

 

See you over there!!

 

Hugs,

Jenn

So I’ve Been Thinking

I hope I’m not coming across all discombobulated but I’m battling a headache and lack of sleep at the moment.  Also, I’m listening to S. Geek put the kids to bed and they are loud and distracting.  But, since he’s doing all the work I wanted to take the opportunity to actually write something however disconnected it may seem.

Also, heeheehee, I’m uploading photos while writing this, rather serious topic, and I’m getting cute and funny pictures from last weekend’s Halloween party at my friends house.  Cute kids in costumes are SO distracting.  Also my husband and his buddy hamming it up for photos are funny.  S. Geek was Spock, his buddy was an inappropriate pirate ship.

Anyway…

A few years ago I went through a little bout with depression, since then I’ve been trying to always be aware on conscious of my state of being.  What helped a lot, and what kept me away from taking any medication was talking about it with a couple of my close friends, talking to my doctor, and of course S. Geek.  I also have believed for the longest time that if you act happy it will help you to be happy.  Talk the walk before you walk the walk sort of thing, it works for all sorts of things.

Lately though, I’ve been feeling that creeping set in.  S. Geek is constantly asking me about how I’m feeling and wondering what he can do to make me smile.  I keep telling myself that I’m just tired, and worn out.  While pondering this in my before sleep time the other night, which is actually when I do the most of my non task oriented thinking for the day, I came to the conclusion that being happy is more than just not being sad.

I am going to say that again, mostly for me but if it helps you too then c’mon let’s say it together!

Being happy is more than just not being sad.

S. Geek says to me all the time, you don’t look happy.  Not sad, just not happy.  Thinking about my personality, I told him that’s kind of just the way I am.  I know, I’m the life of the party right?  Strangely enough, the two people I’m closest to are happy people.  My friend Rob, the party host-er, is almost always smiling.  I noticed this the other day specifically that every time she answered her cell she was laughing.  I never do that.  S. Geek isn’t happy like Rob is but he is always full of songs and jokes and tickles.  Both of these two people have lots going on in their lives, they are busy and overworked but they have reasons to be happy too and act that way.

Now, I’m not saying that I’m all of a sudden going to start singing while I make breakfast in the morning.  But I am going to make more of an effort to find reasons to feel happy.  To do something every day that makes me feel good.  The one thing that won’t count is crossing off things on my to-do list.  While the sheer act of using my pink highlighter to go over the words ‘mop kitchen floor’ is highly satisfying it doesn’t exactly fill me with the glee I’m looking for.  At night, when I say goodnight to the kids I always ask them what the best part of the day was for them and from now on, I really want to be able to say something too that will actually sound awesome.  Because let’s face it, to say the best part of my day was cleaning out my bedroom closet to make room for Christmas storage is really really lame!

So, since the day is almost coming to a close I’ll share with you the best part of my day today.  It was, surprisingly enough, while I was waiting to pick Cake up from the bus stop.  Usually I loathe this because Nay is hard to keep entertained while we wait.  Today, to keep him occupied I was playing blast off with him.  I knelt down, counted backwards from ten and then when it was time to blast off I lifted him off the ground and sort of tossed him over my head for a second before catching him.  After I had done this 5 or 6 times, on the last one I tossed him up just in time to hear him exclaim with utter wonderment ‘hey mum look a dooooooooog!!!!’  Nay didn’t want to actually pet the dog, but the owner was chuckling to himself at my son’s reaction.  Thinking of this now, nine hours later still makes me happy.

I work hard, and I deserve to be happy and as usual the only thing standing in my way is me.  Don’t you hate it when that happens?

In case anyone is curious, I’ve also got a quick Pawter update!  His stitches were removed this morning and now I no longer have to keep his bootie on his foot when we go outside.  This pleases me as well because I hated trying to get that thing on and off him without hurting him.  He still has to keep his cone on for another two days but after that I can take his cone off and just make sure that he doesn’t start trying to gnaw off his other toes.  I keep joking with him that he looks like he has a t-rex foot now.  One of the many names I’ve had for him in the past has been Pawter-saurus-rex.  This seems even more appropriate now.  I’m so happy with our new vet, they are so nice and easy going.  I love how they treat Pawter and me, and my only regret is that we didn’t come sooner.  Just goes to show you that familiar isn’t always better.  His foot still looks a little gnarly but in a few days once it gets a bit of normalcy back to it I’ll take a picture of his new err…look.

Cheers,

Jenn

My Brain Sometimes Thinks in FB Status Updates

Dear Everyone on Kijiji:  No I don’t deliver, do I look like Toys R’ Us?  Stop wasting my time, and trying to make me feel guilty about not accommodating you so that you can take a $5 toy that I spent $25 on.

I exercise every day so that I can eat more candy and not gain weight.

Not sure if I’m just getting old or teenagers are getting stupider.

I go to the self serve checkout lane to avoid human contact, yes even when I have a full $250 grocery cart.  Suck it.

Why are so many random people trying to be my contact on skype?  One day I’m going to add someone and then call them and try and have a good long conversation with them.  Most likely about my kids since that’s all I really have to talk about it.  Strangers LOOOOOOOVE it when you talk about your kids endlessly.

My dog just puked into his cone and tried to eat it out of the cone while I fought to clean it up.  Can’t wait until antibiotics are done!!!

I’m going shopping in the US soon, I hope Target has the knee high socks I bought there last year.  They were so comfy and colourful.

With all of Pawter’s recent health issues it’s becoming painfully obvious to me that my dog and cat will not be around much longer.  (Pawter is 7 and Riley is ~13)  This thought brings tears to my eyes, and brings back memories of my childhood cat dying accidentally when I was in grade 7.

I am a grammar nazi but I always keep it to myself.  You’re, your.  Then, than.  Its, It’s.  Except, accept.  There, their, they’re.  People need to know the difference.  When I read blogs from ‘writers’ who make these mistakes it immediately results in *FACEPALM*

I constantly spell RECIPE wrong.  Also, lose and loose, it’s shameful how often I look those words up on dictionary.com.  I do it even to myself.

Becoming a reddit addict has led me to believe that most of the male population is disgusting.  Socks should *NOT* be re-worn, ever, under any circumstance.

Philisoraptor is the funniest meme, even if it is really old.  Second place goes to Socially Awkward Penguin, I empathize with that little penguin often.

My feet are cold, I need slippers.

I found a loaf of Dutch Christmas bread in my freezer that I had wrapped in such a superior manner it didn’t freezer burn despite it’s 10 month stay in my deep freezer.  It’s delicious.  Which reminds me, the Dutch Grocer will be coming out with Christmas stuff soon.  Must acquire.

Having my afternoon tea and biscuit at 10:30 in the morning is highly satisfying and may become a daily routine.  Or rather, I’ll just have two every day.

Google Translate doesn’t translate to binary, however Yahoo UK does.  Interesting.

 

I could go on forever, but I’ll save it for another day.

 

Cheers,

Jenn

 

 

Where Does He Get That From?

So far this month, Nay has said he’d like to be the following things for Halloween:

Firefighter

Ghost

Spiderman

His Potty (I don’t know…but he’s said it on more than one occasion)

He already has the firefighter costume that I bought for him last year that mostly fits so I’ve been heavily leaning him that way but he keeps changing his mind!  He is a bit on the indecisive side that boy, I wonder what horribly annoying parent passed on that trait to him…ah crap, it’s me.

When I was growing up I don’t remember having a choice in the whole hallowe’en costume decision.  It was hey, you’re a clown this year or you’re Strawberry Shortcake or whatever.  Nay is just three and he’s already going through an ever growing list of costume ideas.

Here he is last year in his Captain Kirk costume that he was thankfully able to wear two years in a row.

It’s sort of hard to tell he was Captain Kirk because his jacket was covering his costume, but he was pretty darn cute.  I’m not so sure I’m all over the Spiderman costume for him, though I think I can reuse Cake’s Princess Leia costume to fashion some sort of ghost costume if need be.  Just need a white hat and we’re set.

This is why it’s awesome being a grown up, I can totally wear the same costume every single year.  I am a Jedi Knight.  Dorky, I know but I used to pretend and sometimes while I’m alone in my kitchen still do I’m Jedi material, down with The Force and all that.  Just have to hope that the weather co-operates this year, because last year…that fluffy white stuff came…you know what I’m talking about.  I won’t mention its name.  Even with that ‘stuff’ we had over 500 kids last year, if the weather is good there will be more; must take second mortgage to buy cheap candy type more.  I haven’t bought any yet, S. Geek did and I have gained 3lbs since he brought it into the house.  I’m going to go ahead and blame him since CLEARLY it’s all his fault for bringing it past the threshold of our domain.  The place where I spend 23.5 hours a day, and the fatty delicious chocolate can be absorbed through airborne molecules.

(I totally just googled ‘airborne absorption’ thinking maybe there was a better word for that and um whoa reading even the tiny google blurbs made me just close the tab thinking oooooooookay…..)

That whole airborne thing really made me lose my train of thought.  Focus…focus…I want some candy now, damnit S. Geek!  He can’t hear me, he’s on an airplane currently travelling at 437 mph and 11,700 feet.  I love that little iphone app, even if it is sometimes wrong and I show up to the airport early with the kids and have to spend an extra thirty minutes throwing every cent of change I have on me into the fountain.  Sometimes I wonder if the kids only like picking S. Geek up so that they can go through coins in the ‘waterfall’ as they call it.

(I…I just watched my cat, Riley lick a big tuft of fur off her neck and swallow it…no longer desire any chocolate from downstairs…I feel like yaking now…)

See all the brilliant writing I can output when I’m tired and bored and waiting for S. Geek’s arrival?  MAN, I am GENIUS!  I realize I’ve written a whole post about nothing in particular but that’s what’s on my mind right now.  I had grand plans to sew a nice warm fleece blanket for Nay’s bed since he’s been waking up in the morning with little icicles on his toes and I’m too cheap to turn on our furnace buuuut lying in bed with my cat and more poor amputee dog is far more comfortable than hunched over my sewing machine with no slippers to keep the icicles from forming on my own toes.

Why is it that I can never find awesome slippers?  Do you wear slippers?  I like ones with heal backs on them so that they don’t slip off, also ones that have a good sole but are flexible since when I do get the luxury of sitting down I like to tuck my feet under my bottom. 

Just got a text from S. Geek that his plane arrived early, Flight Tracker still says he’s traveling at 559mph.  Apparently today is one of the non-accurate days for the app.  I’m going to go stalk the front door so that I look nice and creepy for the cab driver when he comes to drop off my husband.

Please don’t unsubscribe, I promise I’ll write something intelligent next week.

Cheers,

Jenn

Family Motto

Last week, S. Geek was in a seminar for work and while I have vague recollections of such things from my own working days I saw that he got some good learning experiences under his belt and maybe a ‘breakthrough’ or two.  One of the things he came home with was the idea of a motto, which in turn of course led me to think about having a family motto of our own.  Maybe more to do with S. Geek and I rather than for the kids at this point but it’s had me thinking about it a lot.  Of course that’s in between the thinking about Hallowee’en and Christmas and house stuff and of course my poor little pup Pawter.

 

Speaking of Pawter, if you’ll allow me to go off on a brief tangent.  His surgery went rather well, he’s had his first check but I’m a huge wuss and had to step out of the exam room while the vet changed his bandages.  I’m still very happy with my vet change, and many people have suggested that I give a good piece of my mind to the old vet I just don’t see the point.  It’s not going to change anything, so I’m just leaving them and bringing my business elsewhere.  This new practice seems very caring and compassionate and they are very flexible about scheduling which was one of my pet peeves about my previous clinic.  Pawter has been actually quite happy even, we have to keep him on the leash when we walk and he’s been trying to chase the kids home after bus drop off and gives me quite the look when I won’t let him run.  He’s also tried several times to run up our wood staircase, we’ve actually had to put up a baby gate to keep him from running up the stairs whenever he wanted to.  We go back for another check on his stitches on Thursday, I’m still probably going to wait outside…because seriously…ew.

 

I’ve been trying quite hard to utilize my time better the past week and I have to say that I’m finding some success.  I’m not feeling nearly as harried as I had been previously but now I’m getting worn out far earlier in the day.  The last few nights I’ve really had to push myself not to quit exercising after forty minutes and go the full hour.  Mostly my motivation has been that I know I’ve eaten a few of those damn mini Halloween chocolates and the scale won’t be very forgiving in the morning if I don’t finish my workout.  Luckily a large chunk of my household work is about to come to a close.  Outdoor crap is almost done!  I’ve cleaned out my vegetable garden, save for celery and rosemary; which are both so hardy right now I am going to try and transplant them indoors to see if I can use them up a bit longer.  The rosemary had a rather slow start but it’s really coming in now, and rosemary is one of S. Geek’s favourite flavours so it would be great if it would keep going all winter!

 

I also finished a HUGE photo project today that has taken me a very very very long time to do.  I can’t really share what it is because it’s a gift but the fact that it’s done is so good for me.  I love photography, love it.  Editing?  Yeah, not so much.  I learned on film back before digital editing was done and, man oh man, what I wouldn’t give to go back!  It’s not ever going to happen, this I know, but I’m still resisting this whole digital wave a bit.  Did you hear that?  I think that was S. Geek’s heart dropping to the floor a little bit.  He loves technology, I just got a new iphone and he’s asked me about twenty times if I was happy with my new phone…uhhh yeah, it’s awesome?  I don’t know what to say, I guess I’m a little to analog for him sometimes.  Hmmm…motto…some kind of play on analog and digital?  I’m going to get back to that when I’m on a fresh caffeine high.

 

I have grand idea’s of cross stitching a geeky family motto…of course, then I’d need to learn to cross stitch…I think you know where I’m going with this.

 

My handsome little boy has been learning to peddle a bike properly recently.  He’s always been a shuffler, but I was hoping to get him a bike for next summer so we need to practice.  S. Geek told him that everything you do is practice until you don’t need to do it anymore.  Hopefully before the snow falls we’ll get some good momentum and be able to make it down our street. I need to be more patient when I’m teaching him, if I was teaching me I wouldn’t like me.

Cake is excelling in dance class, she is in with 3 and 4 year olds and is quite a bit more physically advanced than anyone else.  In the winter she’ll be in with the 5 and 6 year olds and I think she’s really going to miss her little friends.  She loves running around and following her teacher, not always gracefully but always dutifully.  I think dance is something we’ll continue with her, despite her strabismus her balance and hand-eye co-ordination seem quite good.

I have quite a bit to share about our at home learning but I want a clear head when I write about it since I’ve got two quite different programs for each of the kids going.  I’m feeling very happy with the results though, and as I’ve mentioned before it really is quite important to me.

Hope you’re all having an awesome week!

Cheers,

Jenn

Universe, Thanks

So with my new found resolve in my back pocket for one whole day, the universe decided to test me. Thanks, how awesome of you. Wednesday, after dropping off my kidlets at their respective schools I headed home with my plan in mind: walk the dog, clean the kitchen, sew bibs for craft fair, marvel at my awesomeness, go and pick up kids from school. Plan right, it’s nice no? Yep, I thought so too. So I get home retrieve Pawter’s leash, grab a couple of bags, and in the excitement of the impending walk Pawter got his paw tangled in his leash. I knelt down to save him from the octopus like tentacles of the retracting leash and barely graze his paw and he cries out in pain. ‘Oh NO!’ I whine outloud to him. His paw is not a happy paw. Over the last two and a half years I estimate we have spent $800-$900 on this paw, or more specifically his outside toe. The last time was in August and I had a terrible time dealing with my vet office, they were unfriendly, un-accomodating, and generally not compaissonate to the pain my dog was suffering. It was after that debacle that I decided that the next time he needed care we’d try a new vet our neighbour recommended.

I called the new vet minutes after I discovered that his toe was starting to swell, much to his unhappiness because you see even faced with pain in every step a morning walk is still the epitome of awesome when you’re a dog. So, the vet office told me to come right in and they would take a look. They were so nice and so friendly and had an idea of what might be the problem almost immediately. They asked me if the other vets had every suggested a number of things to me, they hadn’t. They told me that Pawter needed x-rays and some tests and would likely be headed towards a humane de-clawing. Ummmm you can de-claw a dog?!?! So at this very moment he is at the vet clinic, hopefully not in any pain, getting some attention while I wait at home trying not to eat away my impatience.

It’s no secret that I’m HORRIBLE at being patient. So despite the fact that I woke up almost every hour last night worried that I had slept in past my alarm I’m still trying to have a productive day…just a rather caffeinated one.

At least Cake is home from school now, she can keep Nay distracted.

Cheers,
Jenn

Update:  Just heard from my vet and she says the P3 bone is completely rotten and should have had surgery years ago.  Pawter is heading into surgery Friday morning.

A Little Unscheduled Hiatus

A whole month and a half has gone by since I’ve had the drive to write anything more than overly emotional dribblings in my personal journal. I’m feeling kind of rusty, so please excuse my lack of finesse for the time being. I’ve thought about what I wanted to write, and I thought that maybe I’d talk about how hard it was for me to send Cake off to kindergarten but decided against it since I have almost sort of come to terms with it. I thought maybe I’d update you on all the goings on that have consumed me for the last 6-odd weeks but really you probably don’t want to hear about my potty training battles, my new haircut, but maybe about how I’ve managed to lose myself in the to-do’s of real life?

A couple of days ago, I sat on the couch attempting to work my way through my reader which has accumulated thousands of entries and I thought to myself that all that I do has become a chore. Get up, do this, do that, go to the bus stop, go to preschool, go to the grocery store, cook, cook some more, clean this, organize that, declutter here. UGH, so BORING! I don’t want to be boring anymore!

But how, how can I make room for wonderful interesting things without sacrificing the things that I’m already doing that are important? It takes me sometimes an hour and a half to make dinner because preparing good food is important to me. I’m not saying I do that every night, heck a cheesy take out pizza happens at least twice a month ’round here! But for the most part, I like cooking for my family and not just because it’s healthy but because I actually like to cook!

I’ve started doing twenty minutes of ‘workbook’ time with each of the kids as well. I’ve heard a couple of stories from some other parents about kids loosing abilities once entering kindergarten so I give each of my kids twenty minutes to do something educational. Cake usually chooses to do an actual workbook, or to do flash cards. We’re currently working our way through analog clocks and simple subtraction. Nay, on the otherhand usually chooses something like puzzles, or question cards. When Cake was little it was easy for me to see that she had an easy time with sequences and patterns, I haven’t quite figured out Nay’s strength yet but he’s only just three and I have a whole year with him before I send him off to kindergarten. I’ve been preparing a little lesson about the human body for Cake and I think I’ll do something about art or music for Nay. This time, is quite possibly the most important during my day. It’s very, very rare that I don’t make this the number one priority of the afternoon. Twenty minutes is the perfect amount of time too, long enough to make some progress but short enough that little attention spans can handle it.

Today was an interesting day for me though, I woke up in the morning to many facebook comments telling me to hang in there, or that everything would work itself out. But, I’m not a wait and see person; I knew that if change was going to happen then I would have to make it happen. I paid close attention to my time today, trying to figure out where I was losing minutes. The bus stop is one of them, I can honestly say that it’s a lot faster for me to drop off Cake in the morning than it is to wait at the corner for sometimes twenty minutes. She enjoys the bus so I think I’ll keep letting her take it until the snow falls, then it’s a whole new ball game.

I wanted to make sure that today I made the time to look at my blog. I’m running out of space on it, so I knew I had to go out and delete some posts to make room for new ones. I deleted a few, not enough to make a significant difference though. I just feel so attached to my words, it was hard to let them go. This will be a work in progress, much like life I suppose.

To those of you who have stuck around, I thank you. And to those of you who have left me messages wondering when I’m coming back, I thank you for your patience. My pent up writing energy has needed an outlet for far too long, and as I said my little journal here in the cupboard is getting sappier by the day!

Cheers,
Jenn

Wordless Wednesday – Bubbles and Chalk

Just a snapshot from my week that brings a smile to my face.

Hugs,

Jenn

Pawter

Pawter stressing after seeing the suitcases come out for one of S. Geek's trips

Strangely my son and my dog share a birthday.  Pawter of course is several years older and will be turned 7 on Sunday while Nay is just three.  Pawter is a Pembroke welsh corgi, he is adorable and aside from when he is depressed about S. Geek leaving he always has a smile on his happy little face.

Pawter loves people and is super friendly, though very protective of the kids.  He loves to be outdoors, though he’s not much of a walk lover.  He prefers the cold weather to the hot and will often choose to bury himself in the snow when laying outside in the wintertime.  His favourite spot to ‘hang’ is underneath our kitchen window in a little cove, one day when I have spare time I’m going to make a sign to hang up above it.

Pawter loves getting brushed but hates getting his teeth brushed.  He barks at everything that passes by our front door, even if it’s not alive.  He barks at you when you sneeze, I’ve no idea why.  He loves to eat, he has been known to open the bottom door to our composter and eat out the soil.  This was very gross, again I’ve no idea why.  His favourite people food is banana’s which he gets pretty much every morning.

Pawter sleeps in my bedroom with me every night, but because of his short legs he can’t climb on or off the bed so we have a pet murphy bed for him in our bedroom.  He is still getting used to having kids in the house, Cake and Nay try to play with him sometimes and he’s still unsure.

Sometimes I think he will drive me crazy but he really is a wonderful dog.  He is happy and friendly and is very well behaved aside from the barking of course. I love his crazy radar ears and his short stubby little paws.  I love the colour of his coat and how it’s water resistant.  I’m trying not to think about the fact that as a dog with a lifespan much much shorter than that of a humans he is now entering the last half of his life.  I feel guilt for not being more attentive to him during the early child years, and also for not walking him as much as I should.  He has had weight issues and I know that if I don’t get them under control he will be having hip problems so that has been weighing on me quite heavily.  He deserves to live a happy healthy life, and I think for the most part he does.  I’m not really sure where I’m going with all of this, only to say that I’ve been really evaluating my status as a dog owner and I think there is room for improvement.  Challenge Accepted.

Happy birthday Pawter!!  This year will be the best one yet, I know it!

Hugs,

Jenn

Three

This boy:

He is three.  He eats with utensils, he pees in a toilet most of the time oh god I hope that the preschool teachers won’t mind that he’s not completely potty trained.  He makes car noises when he plays with hot wheels.  He likes Lightning McQueen but the Cars movie scares him. Nay is Three.

I asked him today if now that he was three does that mean that the ‘terrible two’s’ are over.  He said no, now it’s the terrible threes.  I couldn’t help but laugh at his honesty.  This is my boy.

He likes peanut butter sandwiches with honey, and pasta with my homemade sauce and LOTS of shaved (not grated) Parmesan cheese.  I’m trying to think of foods he dislikes but can’t really think of one since he’s really easy going when it comes to food.  In other words he is the complete opposite of Cake. Oh, well actually he really likes frosting but never eats the cake so there you go.

Here, he is about 7 months old.  So, yeah he’s always had those eyes.  Strangers and friends alike always comment on his eyes they are so blue they are hard to miss.   I miss that baby.  He had lots of chins.  Now my ‘baby’ is 35 lbs and 40″ tall and growing every day.  He sometimes lets me cuddle him, but then again Cake was the cuddly one not Nay.  Nay likes his space, he is like me.

Another blue eye picture, he’s got no hair here so it’s from when he was a baby but I can’t be sure exactly how old he was.

I’m getting a little teary.  Maybe it’s because I have no more babies, maybe it’s because Cake’s first day of school is looming.  Oh, hell I have to go find some kleenex.

Also, Nay always wears his ball caps crooked on purpose.  If I try to straighten is, he just pushes it off to the side again.  It’s pretty frackin’ cute right now but I have the feeling if he’s doing it when he is 15 whilst wearing baggy pants then I won’t find it quite so adorable.  But, let’s not talk about him being fifteen yet, I need to adjust to having a three year old first.

I’d love to show more pictures from his party however I failed to actually ask any of the other parents if they minded me posting pics of their kids online so you’ll just have to use your imagination.

Hugs,

Jenn