tiffany's spot

And Amy and I watched Twilight: Eclipse - at least I think that's which one we watched. Again, Bella needed lots of rescuing and hand holding, Edward and Jacob read each others minds and commented on how much the other reeked, and Amy and I made fun of the whole thing. Although I think that Amy really really loves it and is just trying to save face. Bella is definitely going to win an Emmy (oscar? academy? participation?) award for this movie. Look at her emoting up a storm in this picture. She's obviously really intensely happy, or sad, or horny, or devastated or high in this picture. Whichever it is, she's totally pulling it off.

Today our toilet overflowed. Elliot went to the washroom, I cleaned her up, there was very little in there and the dang toilet overflowed - all over the bathroom. I didn't even realize it at first. I went back to the living room and a moment later I could hear the splash of pouring water. The toilet does this. A lot. Steven insists it's just because it's a shitty toilet. I raced back to the washroom and started draping towels over the water that ran end to end of the bathroom. I picked up the phone and dialed my husband. "Steven. If you insist that the toilet overflows because of the toilet itself then bring home a new toilet ." "Ok." He must have been able to tell by the tone of my voice that not showing up with a new toilet would equal someone's death. Then I began thinking; we've never painted the bathroom. If we were going to pull the toilet then it would really be a perfect chance to paint the bathroom. I am not one of those people ...

I'm going in to Winnipeg on Saturday to choose two of the following six geckos for my kids for Christmas:

I could start tickers for just about everything, but I probably won't. Not just yet anyway. Christmas is coming, New Year's is coming, and the Manitoba Marathon is a mere eight months away. I should probably start training for that. I'm going to go Christmas shopping on Saturday. I'd let you in on some of what I'll be looking for, but Jordan is sitting next to me, and she can read now. There is no more spelling things out to other adults in the room to keep secrets from kids, no more blogging in front of kids about things the kids aren't supposed to know. Anyway, kind of excited about what I'm going to look at! Jordan is cuddled up next to me. She's ten shades of white and complaining about her stomach. Is it awful to hope that it's food poisoning from the last round of bucket meat and not stomach flu? Yes, I suppose it is.

We've been eating bucket meat lately. I bet you're wondering what bucket meat is too. See that smoking burning barrel in my back yard? Bucket meat is meat that's cooked in there. I have fun telling people we're eating meat out of a bucket in the back yard. Steven spent the last couple of months slowly building (building? putting together?) a smoker. Last week one night we ate a pork roast out of the bucket. I insisted that the pork tasted like whatever was cooking off the inside of the bucket. I like to call it rust roast or burning barrel roast or chemical roast. Steven is adequately irritated at all these descriptions. It's a good thing he's got a sense of humor. I won't pretend to know what was involved in putting together the bucket, and Steven insists that the odd taste (which was really just limited to the very outside of the meat) came from not letting the charcoal get cooking really well before tossing the meat into the barrel. He made ham...

I don't know what's worse, blogging every day, or knowing that as soon as Blogtober ends NaNoWriMo begins. What to write about today? I could talk about the box of zucchini I want to get rid of, the dozens of guppies I'm going to need to get rid of, or . . . there was a third point, but I can't remember it. Oh, right! I could talk about the crested gecko that Steven is trying to forbid, but that I'm totally planning on getting my kids for Christmas. Not only am I getting them one, but I'm pretty sure there will be a second one in there too. I'll let you know how that goes. So far it's: "I want to get the kids a gecko for Christmas." "No. Just don't." I don't know about you but I hear, "I'm not playing with it, but go ahead, you're going to anyway."

Things I did today (October 25, of course): I brought one of Tennyson's friends home from school and the boys played all day. Of course I had to remind Tennyson a number of times that following Mommy around while his friend played on his own isn't the nicest thing to do, otherwise it was a success! The little boy we brought home had never been here before and Tennyson was so very excited to have a friend over. I made a pizza. It was delicious. I used my whopper chopper to cut up the mushrooms, and there were clouds of diced mushrooms over all the pepperoni. I love pizza. Steven loves pizza. I love when Steven eats it and comments on just how good it is. Score! I took four kids to the walk-in to deal with Jordan's aching ear. I was there for an hour and 40 minutes. In that time Elliot pushed a little sad boy and freaked out his mom, resulting in me trying to hold her on my lap for the next fifteen minutes while she screamed and kicked and sweated and turned red. Eventu...

I know this is highly out of character, but I'm going to rant about something that's probably unimportant in the big picture. I watched Beauty and the Beast tonight. This show is about a young woman who watches her mother get murdered and only escapes death herself when some mysterious beastly man appears out of nowhere to kill her mother's killers who chase her through the bush. Eight years later she meets the beastly man again while she is investigating a homicide. Again he saves her life. She realizes it's the same guy, and as their stories intertwine it becomes evident that her mother was killed because of some giant government cover up that centers upon what made the beastly man so, well, beastly . Interesting enough right? Right. You're probably wondering what my beef is. It's this; the woman and her woman partner are crime scene detectives. A victim is pushed off a building in the middle of the night and plummets to her death. The detectives show up ...

I googled "novel ideas" today and I found a good one: Step #1. Get a bunch of plot summaries for existing stories. You can find these on book jackets, TV listings, or movie guides. For example, the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) can be a great resource for generating writing ideas. It provides a brief plot summary for almost every movie ever made. The site has a list of the top 250 films (according to user votes), and the bottom 100, and also lets you browse alphabetically through all the films that have plot summaries. Choose summaries that are brief, perhaps one or two sentences at most. Step #2: Create original writing ideas by changing one thing at a time. Choose one plot summary. For the purpose of illustration, I’ll pick one plot summary from IMDb’s top 250 list. I choose The Third Man , because I have never seen the film, so I have no preconceived ideas about it. (This actually makes it easier.) There are several plot summa...

I was sitting here coming up with awesome story ideas when Steven popped in a How I Met Your Mother DVD. Now I'm back at square one.

Listen people, I know many of you failed to comment with your enthusiastic responses last time I mentioned that in November you should join me for a month of literary abandon and write a novel, but I shall remind you again - NaNoWriMo starts in ten days. Just ten! In the next ten days I highly encourage you to: spend some time with your children, they're really going to miss you in November wash call your mother put together 30 meals that can be frozen ahead of time and just dumped in frozen block form into the slow-cooker get an oil change, maybe fill your vehicle with gas look at baby name websites for awesome character names do laundry buy extra clothes, preferably with elastic waistbands catch up on your PVR. I prefer to call this "purging" and liken it to housework walk the dog come up with a rolodex of believable excuses and set aside the first couple of days of November to convince friends and family that you are not dead eat cake, simply because it...

In the North End we can totally get away with having romantic nights that look like this: And we can eat meat out of a bucket in the backyard, that after ravaging looks like this:   And marry sexy meat eaters that look like this:     And eat our after-the-kids-go-to-bed dinners watching this:  And drink Kool Aid that looks like this: Grownup Kool Aid is WAY better than kid Kool Aid. Way. Better. Steven wants me to delete that Uber-Sexy picture of him. Ha. Neva. Turns out Steven doesn't like his Kool Aid. More for me! Yay!

It's 11:31pm. I bet you thought I was going to cheat and just write a post tomorrow and backdate it, didn't you? Well, I'm not. That would be cheating. Instead, I am posting now. Happy Saturday Night!

Today I woke up at seven and vacuumed the house mopped the floors served breakfast cleaned up breakfast gave the bathroom a ten second tidy babysat Mitchie's good friend Riley welcomed Angela and her kids over for the day whipped up a delicious gourmet hot dog lunch for Amy, Angela and their assorted children let Catherine in ate cupcakes ate tim bits visited with friends around my dining room table all afternoon while our ten children ran amok  kicked everyone out had soup and pie with my husband and children took the oldest child to Awana watched the first ten minutes of a movie before deleting it off the PVR cuddled up with the hubby and watched a few other shows before crashing for the night at 10:30 Have a good weekend everybody!

Steven and I took the kids for flu shots today. As much as that sounds like a super fun family outing I knew it would be trouble. I've been pestering Steven for a week and a half to let his boss know that he had to leave work today so that he could be at the clinic by 3:30. There's no way I could take four kids for needles without help. Three of the four might have been okay, but it was the fourth one that would be trouble. By fourth I don't mean fourth born. If the fourth born had freaked out I'd probably be able to manage it. We didn't tell the kids they were getting needles today. I didn't want to ruin their days with worry and anxiety. I thought it would be best to just surprise them with it after picking up Jordan from school. It really was a surprise. I told them yesterday that we'd go to the library after school today to swap out some books. When Jordan hopped into the van in the pickup loop she pointedly reminded me that today was library day. ...

We're making hamburger helper for the kids. After they go to bed we're going to go get takeout and have it here without them. We're naughty. Happy Blogtober 17th!

I really must go back and tell you about . . . duhn duhn duh . . . the snowsuit . I've most certainly kept you in suspense far too long. Remember last winter when there was no snow, but it was still cold enough to freeze puddles and require kids to wear winter clothing? Good, we're caught up. Jordan is really hard on outerwear. Last year she destroyed a pair of skates, lost various mitts and tuques, shredded her first pair of winter boots and left her snowsuit looking like swiss cheese. The boots and snowsuit were done before Christmas. I made her wear the snowsuit for the rest of winter anyway and the boots I replaced after Christmas. It's amazing that a six year old child can ruin a rather expensive snowsuit in a few short months. I blame mother nature. Mother nature thought it would be funny to make it cold and icy out without actually giving us snow. Of course children want to run and drop to their knees or tummy on frozen puddles and slide to the other side. Of ...

I'm sure that most of you are aware that I am a most perfect woman. Therefore, I did most certainly not do any of these things this week/weekend: I did not run and hide in a bookstore after our sons went wild on the escalator, forcing their father to chase them, and a manager to appear. Nope, not me. I would certainly not do anything of the sort. I'm the type of mother who stands up to challenges and rights the wrongs of my children. I did not happily jump at the chance to leave one son with one friend and the other son with another friend for the entire afternoon today. There's no way I could be without my darling boys, even for a moment. Kindergarten is almost too much to bear, I definitely soak up every other second of each day and never let them leave the bosom of my heart. I did not get all teary when going through an old wall calendar when I noticed that it said "Mitchie took his first steps!" on one of the days. No, not me. Not sentimental at all. Ch...

Oh Sunday, glorious lazy Sunday. I spent a lot of time reading today, and wearing pajamas. At four o'clock I figured I should probably get dressed for supper, so I traded nightie for lounging pants. I admit it. I have no shame. I could go on about doing nothing all day, but really, nothing isn't very exciting. Instead I'll talk about yesterday! Yesterday we got up with the roosters so we could head into the city to have our pictures taken by my friend Heather. She's awesome, and kindly gave up her Saturday morning to spend 1.5 hours to drive from her area of the city to St. Boniface. Yes, Winnipeg is that big. We chased the kids around for just over an hour, snapping pictures of them when we managed to get them together, and grabbing a few individual pictures when we'd managed to separate a child from the herd. It was fun. The kids loved running around the St. Boniface ruins and then stompling through the adjoining graveyard.   From there we went to Montan...

Things I have not yet done on this 13th of Blogtober: breathed slept showered blogged eaten had pictures taken had lunch at some entirely unhealthy food venue in the Peggers coined any new cool words watched any nasty movies scared any child tickled anyone until pee came out (nothing spells fun like a laughing child yelling "i'm peeing"!) tucked the monsters angels into bed I'm sitting here yesterday listening to the obvious sounds of thumping and destruction in the boys room. But since this happened yesterday and not now (oh no, not now) I won't go into it. Probably because I haven't actually checked it out yet. You'd think I'd have noticed it last night when I put the kids to bed. You'd think. This was not nearly as clever as I thought it would be. Whatevs. And really, who makes a list with 11 things on it? That's just weird. If I was one of those obsessive compulsive number people I'd go back and change that.

Is it really only the 12th? I have a bazillion more days of this? I mean . . . yay Blogtober. Today I grocery shopped, diaper gymed, made lunch, prepared supper, eventually remembered I had groceries in the van to bring in, and chatted with some friends on the phone. Tonight the kids have Awana and I'm probably going to sit around and wait until I'm annoyed with the dishes before finally doing them. Then maybe I'll go to bed early. Maybe not, but maybe. I always say I will, but then we get watching TV and it's just so hard to get up once I'm sitting. Even if I know that getting up means laying down (another favorite pastime). Tomorrow we're going to run into the city to have family pictures taken, buy whatever snow suits we need (maybe I should get out the old ones and try them on the kids) and be back in time for dinner and a proper bedtime. I really love when the kids go to bed. I mean, I miss them so much when they're sleeping . . . Tomorrow nig...

Today's haul isn't quite as impressive as yesterday's, but here it is: The box is full of pasta sauce jars that I've been saving for years. I'm not sure why really, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, because who knows when you'll need a jar for something? Right. Gone. The mattress is a crib mattress that's in pretty good shape that I'm giving to a friend. I've had a productive morning, despite the lack of a giant pile of stuff to send out the front door. I washed and dried four loads of laundry (haven't folded yet), I took the rest of the meat off the turkey that we had for Thanksgiving dinner (to be made into a casserole tomorrow), I prepared a meatloaf and peeled potatoes for supper tonight and I baked the rest of a batch of cookies that Steven started the other day. The batter was still sitting in a bowl in the fridge and I've noticed that the amount of batter in the bowl seemed to be decreasing despite making any cookies. ...

My goal this week was to get five bags (or the equivalent of five bags!) of junk out of my house. I think I did pretty well today! This is the stuff that is leaving our house right shortly: A bag of garbage, a box of recycling, a box for MCC, a Halloween costume for a friend (if she wants it!), some leftover Epicure supplies to give to my consultant friend, and some photo albums that aren't mine. Also out of the same computer room: an old Nintendo that doesn't work anymore, an old computer that will cost more to fix than it's worth and an old laptop. My thanks to the nice guy at the recycling depot for taking this stuff off my hands even though I brought it over after regular drop-off hours!      The jury is out on this chair. I pulled it out of the computer room too, being that we don't really ever use it, but Steven thinks we shouldn't get rid of it. He's practically a hoarder. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle the gam...

Remember yesterday how I said I wanted to take the equivalent of five garbage bags of stuff out of my house this week? Remember how I start projects and then never ever finish them, and most of the time don't really get started to begin with? Well ha! Today I decided to get cutthroat with the computer room. The pile of crap is growing exponentially. I am excited to downsize the amount of useless stuff in this house. Pictures to follow. Wait. Maybe I'll give you some before pictures . . . I'm a little embarrassed even posting these pictures because I normally avoid letting people into this room at all, but being that I am pretty darn close to posting a few after pictures I think I'll be redeemed.

I'm cleaning dining room windows today. See that giant pile of windows on the table? Those are my inner windows in the dining room. See the windows still in the wall? Those are the outer windows. Don't even ask. My "dining room" was salvaged from a tornado-destroyed trailer park. I've actually cleaned that stack of windows on the table (there are 14 in all, and most of them had dried food smeared all over) and now I need to work on the windows still in the wall. See the rivers of condensation running down them? Me too. I'd probably be done already if I would stop petering out to check email, phone messages and blogs, but I am really not looking forward to cleaning windows that aren't going to look nice anyway. That's my pout about that. Jordan came home early from school today. She's not feeling well and says her stomach hurts. She actually does look pale and is now camped out on the couch. I am not looking forward to the first round of the ...

I'm basting a turkey right now. Well, roasting a turkey. It's not time to baste again for another little while. Other things I've done today? I took Jordan to piano lessons at 2 o'clock, I ate a moderate amount of Steven's fantabulous cookies, I hung out in bed for an hour after I woke up, until Tennyson yelled "Daddy come here!" from the bathroom. Our toilet tends to plug up and overflow everywhere if there's more than a pee and one square of toilet paper in it. Not much else. I researched hair cuts online. I'm a little tired of mine. Although, cutting it all off is kind of scary too. I just really don't know. You know what I need? For somebody to come over every day and do it for me. That would be awesome! We're going over to my sister-in-law's for Thanksgiving dinner tonight. I'm bringing a turkey. It's roasting as we speak. I need to start running again. For real. Not just two or three times a month. I threw a raw tu...

I told Steven to give me a blog topic. He grunted from his computer and did not comply. I am a little suspicious that he didn't even really hear me. It's a little mean. I didn't get married so I could come up with  my blog topics 100 percent of the time. Today's Top Ten List - The Top Ten Reasons I Got Married: so I wouldn't have to mow the lawn. so I wouldn't have to take out my own garbage. so I wouldn't have to make pizza by myself. so I wouldn't have to live in a bachelor apartment with ducks on the blue walls forever. so I wouldn't get to watch  my favorite movies anymore (wait, maybe not that one). so I wouldn't have to visit a sperm bank.  so I could have someone in my home with an awesome sense of humor who doesn't mind gentle (or sometimes not-so-gentle) ribbing. so I would have someone to snuggle up with and watch movies after putting the crazies to bed. so I would have someone to beat at checkers, until he stopped playi...

Jordan woke up to pee at six this morning. She had to knock on her door for someone to come and help her out because Elliot was sleeping against it. Steven had her move (drag? heave?) Elliot just enough to open the door and then he put her back in her bed. Five minutes later Ellie was crawling into bed with me. You'd think that an opportunity to cuddle up with one's sweet, soft two-year-old while she fell back to sleep would be awesome. It is - for the first few minutes. She fell back asleep, nice and warm and heavy in my arms. Then she flung an arm over my neck, and not in the sweet way. Then she had some sort of dream and was twitching and lurching around. I didn't fall back asleep. Closer to seven the boys woke up, which preceded the childhood joy that always comes with a lot of squealing and laughing and turning on lights in their room and the hallway and not turning them back off. They make a lot of noise. Elliot woke up and joined them. Someone made someone else ma...

. . . dary. Oh that felt good. Today was awesome. It felt like a snow day. To be fair, and give slightly less credit to the universe, there wouldn't have been any school today even if it had been 40 above, but it still played out like a snow day. I was actually supposed to go to an awesome friend's house today, but she lives about 20 minutes East of Winnipeg and she called me this morning to see what my plan was, and whether it would be smarter to postpone our visit. The snow was blowing fiercely out in her neck of the woods and we agreed that risking life and limb on the highways wouldn't be the best idea. I stayed home. It was okay. I showered and got back into my pjs. My kids ran around like hooligans until they decided to colour. I tidied and did some laundry. I filled a garbage bag with random unwanted things in my bedroom closet. I made pancakes for lunch. I did not burn them. That would be silly (heh heh heh). Later in the afternoon a friend came over and b...

I didn't even try. Please for the love of all that is holy tell me that you can't read it either. If you can I'm going to start working on my braille training already.

What is the deal with proving you're not a robot? You know what the blog comment identification words prove? That I can't read stupid things written stupidly. Good lord. It just took me three tries to leave a comment on a blog post. I like to think I'm not really this slow. No offense if you're slow. It's really okay. I just secretly think that I should be able to read a word. I bet the robots could read those dang words. And no, I don't count this as my Blogtober 5th post. It's still coming. It's going to be legen . . . . wait for it . . .

The kids definitely needed school to start. Bringing back the daily routines has made everyone more level again. I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy summer holidays and all the camping and sun and fun that came with them, but by the middle of August the minions were becoming monsters. You know what we definitely didn't need? Snow. Not that we've gotten any yet, but I know they're getting it in Winnipeg and we're supposed to get some of the less-than-joyous stuff here. Great. I was hoping for a snowless Halloween again this year. I am really not looking forward to cold, and wet muddy dog, and cabin crazy children. I'm going to make each paragraph different. Not that it was my plan when I got on here, but now that I've started that seems to be the way things are heading. I'm going to Dugald tomorrow. Exciting things happen in Dugald. It's one of many long weekends this school year has to offer, and when  the kids are all home it's an excel...

I am on hold with some guy at Apple right now. My way-cool iPhone is not working right now. That is a little uncool, but not quite as uncool as the on-hold music at Apple. You'd think they'd have access to an assortment of cool songs, being that they have itunes. Go figure. Now I'm back on with the guy. He's a little more confused than I am. Wait, I have phone again!!! Woohoo! Live blogging at it's finest.

Jordan started piano lessons this month. It's something I always wanted to do as a kid but never did. Over the years I had a short stint with piano lessons, but it didn't really work out. I've managed to teach  myself a little and know how to play a few songs thanks to the tutorial in my handy dandy electronic keyboard. A couple of years ago we bought a piano on portageonline. It's 100 years old but is in awesome shape. We had it tuned and we've played around on it but nobody has taken up any serious learning on it. Until now. Well, as serious as a seven year old can be. I couldn't wait to enroll her. I phoned around at the end of August and managed to get her on the waiting list of a well-recommended home piano teacher here in Portage. Imagine my joy when I surprised Jordan with the news that she would be taking piano lessons! Imagine my disillusionment when her shoulders slumped and she said "Really? Why?" Apparently I hadn't asked ...

Happy Blogtober 1st! For those of you who are already complaining about having to blog each and every day (and Sonya and Candice are seriously not going to get away with just posting pictures everyday...), you're going to have lots to say when I bully you all into writing a novel in November. I have a long long list of things I should do today. The floors need to be de-grossed (it's okay, we don't have to use real words in our blogs), the washrooms need to be cleaned (because my mom is coming tomorrow), lunch should probably be put away, the list goes on and on. That's not even mentioning the dining room windows I took out to clean a week ago and haven't done, or the walls I need to wash so I can hang the family pictures we took two years ago. I may be a bit of a procrastinator. What I really want to do is put the littlest to bed and nap on the couch. That would be blissful. I'd also love to eat a very large bowl of something really sinfully delicious fi...