tiffany's spot

Guess who is thinking about New Year's Resolutions! Me! I know, right? The trivia on this blog is mind-blowing. I haven't blogged about anything substantial in quite some time. It's like a trend. I think it'll likely continue well into the new year. Of 2083. I will be really old by then. Practically 30. We've had a busy December. I'm a little sad it's almost over, and I'm a little happy it's almost over. Aren't the holidays always like that? I'm kind of dreading January/February. They're kind of the bummer months of the year. I know, I can't just  be entertained all the time, but come on - the cold, the monotony, the months before anything fun happens, the cold. Ugh. Want to come over for spaghetti? Maybe on a Thursday? Okay. Right, New Year's Resolutions. Make them. 

Mitchell, showing me something he made out of lego : "Look Mommy! A pattawin!" Me, utterly confused : "A what ?" Mitch: "A pattawin!" Me : "Okaaaay . . . what's a pattawin?" (pronounced like pat-a-cake, but with "win") Mitch, using his finger to guide me along : "Blue, yellow, blue, yellow, blue, yellow." Me, laughing only a little : "Ooooh, a pattern ." Mitch : "Yeah! A pattawin!" At this point I'm assuming that he's pronouncing it that way because at school the teacher speaks only french and he doesn't get to hear the proper English pronunciation a lot. Me: "How do you say pattern in french?" Mitch : "Easy! - bleu, jaune, bleu, jaune, bleu, jaune, bleu..." I love this kid.

Monday morning was brutal. The kids were on "let's drive mommy over the wall today" mode and they were doing a good job. I found myself yelling at them for every - dang - step involved in getting from the bathroom for one last face/hair check, to being successfully buckled up in the van. Put on your boot. It's right there. Put it on. And your jacket. Leave the dog alone. For the love of all that is holy, it is NOT time to disappear and play piano. It took almost 20 minutes to put on outerwear. We got the school and I was still seething. Then one of the kids innocently asks "Mommy, can we play?" This meaning "Can we play on the playground until the bell goes." To which I gently said "NO YOU CANNOT PLAY. IT TOOK YOU 20 MINUTES TO GET YOUR BOOTS ON YOU ARE NOT PLAYING. And I'm going to phone the school so if you even think about waiting for me to drive off before coming back outside to play, I'm gonna know about it." Scarily, I ...

I bought a bread maker. It is currently baking a 3lb loaf of white bread. It occurred to me twenty minutes into its baking cycle that it won't be finished until I am not home, and won't be for a while. I'm feeling a little scatter brained lately. Don't even ask me about driving halfway to Winnipeg in the car a couple of weeks ago only to have to turn around and go back after Steven called me to inform me that I had ALL the sets of van keys in my purse and he and the kids had plans. Or that I did the exact same thing just days before (happily, not on the way to Winnipeg), and again last night. I'm going to blame everything/everyone/life/work and not just my own ridiculousness. Kind of too bad about this bread though. It's actually pretty good; or, it would have been. Either way. I won’t be home because I’m taking the kids to see the Holiday Train at 4:00 and the bread will be done at 4:20. It actually irritates me that by the time Christmas is over the kids will ...

1.) This morning at nursery school the kids made little gift baggies containing all the ingredients to make a mug of cake. They are bringing them home on the last day of nursery school before Christmas, for their Christmas parties. Elliot did not want to leave hers there until the last day. She wanted to bring hers home today. The wailing commenced. I managed to get her down the stairs to the shoe area of nursery school. I could not physically get her into her jacket. I scooped up all our stuff in one arm, and the wailing, kicking, screaming little girl with the other and carried her through the parking lot, much to the amusement (or disapproval) of the parents who had been blocked on the stairs by the previously tantruming child. Once in the van she darted (still wailing and shrieking) to the back of the van and said she wasn't coming out. I hopped in, dragged her forward, plopped her into her chair and buckled her up, narrowly missing being bitten. 2.) The drive from nursery s...

A friend of mine took his kid to Walmart to get pictures done today. Why on Earth someone who takes really nice pictures on his own would go to Walmart to let the 14 year olds (who just got fired from MacDonald's but quickly got on at the photolab) do it is beyond me. Especially since over the years I have blogged numerous times about the piss-off that is the Walmart portrait studio experience. It's like I'm only blogging for my dang self! Also, I said dang this morning and one of my kids looked at another of them and asked "Isn't that a bad word?" Whatever. I googled my own self (a wonderful example of my own blogger vanity) and here are the Walmart Portrait Studio posts by Tiffany Verwey from years past. You should probably read them, especially if you have forgotten why we don't get our pictures done at Walmart. Dammit Patrice! http://tiffanyverwey.blogspot.ca/2008/09/not-good-sign.html http://tiffanyverwey.blogspot.ca/2008/09/mitchells-first-...

I thought that in celebration of the upcoming Christmas season I'd blog about puke and the weak-stomached today. Because nothing says Christmas like chicken poop and munched on paper. I've actually got a pretty strong stomach. Other people, less so. Oh sure, there are a few things that make me want to hurl (don't ask about the jambalaya that had shrimp tail scales in it. Or fish bones) but for the most part I can deal with weirdo stuff. Have I ever mentioned that I have a craving for lasagna when I watch the Walking Dead? Because seriously, those zombies are like giant human-shaped sacks of lasagna. Although I will admit that this year they're somehow grosser and eviler. But I digress. I like to pay the "I'm an Awesome Sister" card, but honestly, there were certain things I liked to torment my brother with when we were kids. He had the weakest stomach of anyone I know. I'm not even kidding. It's really too bad he doesn't read my blog. ...

For the love of all that is holy, these kids have got to stop sucking at getting out the door in the morning. Honestly. This is going to drive Mommy to drink. Actually, probably the only thing that is preventing that is knowing that at 11 (or so) I have to leave here again to go and run around this ridonkulous town and pick half of them back up, and if I suddenly was without license I'd have to switch the kids to the school down the street from me where I'm sure half those kids don't go every day and the ones that do are likely late for sch.... Huh, kinda sounds like a plan. Anyway. It is such a fricking gong show around here in the mornings, and we've just added another layer of fresh heck to this mess by entering Winter Outer Wear Season . Deep breathing, deep breathing, deep breathing. My half of this morning's conversation(s) in the last 20 minutes before finally turning the key in the deadbolt: "Get your stuff on." "Get your stuff...

So I'm sitting outside of Craig Dunn [I know, I just lost a lot of new readers by starting a sentence with 'so.' I'm okay with that.] where I just brought the husband a donut and some coffee. I put the van into reverse, my phone rings. It's Steven. "What are you doing?" he asks. Of course I'm not still sitting there ten minutes after he went back to work on their roof because I had two different text conversations going on. "Driving, duh," I say, backing out. He laughs. "Now what are you doing?" "Backing up!" He's really kind of slow sometimes. It's not like I'm the worst backer-outer ever. "Tell me when to stop so I don't hit the building." [This is really a service that should be provided at all business.] "Okay, you have like twenty feet." "No I don't. Just tell me." "No really, you could just keep right on backing. Forever." Sigh. ...

This just makes me laugh every time I look at it. See that grey line? That's the line you're supposed to try and hit every day if you want to write your novel in a consistent fashion throughout the month. See that lonely tiny brown line? That's me. It's just so ridiculous.

Remember that time when I reminded you all here and here and here and here and here that Nanowrimo was coming? Remember the countdowns and tickers? I bet you tried to click all those 'heres.' My word I'm hilarious. Anyway, I wrote 700 words on day 2, figured that they were 700 of the stupidest words ever, contemplated rewriting my opening and then didn't write any more ever. It's now November 7th. It's looking like it might not pan out perfectly. Might have to get to work.

Today we took the kids for flu shots. Remember last year ? When Jordan freaked out and ran and hit and then pretty  much had a giant emotional hyperventilating meltdown where we had to finally just restrain her and stick her? This year was totally different. I made the appointment at public health instead of taking the kids to the flu shot clinic, because I thought it might be easier in an office setting without all the line ups and other kids looking scared. I sent Jordan into the little room with Steven first, and then I stood outside the door and took deep breaths and tried to keep myself from crying. I feel so evil for making her do it when she's so scared of it. But you know what? She sat on Steven's knee, turned her head, and got stuck like a pro. I couldn't believe it. She came out smiling and holding her sucker and we hugged and high-fived and all was well. Giant exhale of relief from Mommy. So proud of the little runner.

This morning and a not-so-bright-and-sunny 4:55am I groaned and creaked my way out of bed and ran 8.3 miles to finish off October with a grand total of 100.7 miles run. Booyeah! Just figure I should update. Because I just KNOW that you all wanted to know. Really badly.

I know you really appreciate it that I keep reminding you over and over and over again that NaNoWriMo is coming. And it is! In two sleeps! Today I went to the library to pay some more fees (again and again) and renew the books I have out and as I was leaving I thought "Hey, Nanowrimo is in two sleeps! I should get some super-helpful reading material. So I went back in and grabbed these books. That blue one in the front is one I've read before and it's funny and interesting and actually pretty helpful. Right, so in two days I will start writing a novel. I keep thinking that this year I'll plot and plan a little ahead of time, but no. Whatever. It'll be fun anyway. I do still have two days you know. I actually had a bit of an idea earlier but I can't remember it. This is why I'll never be famous. The only reason. Also, Halloween in tomorrow. And Elliot picks her own outfits and pairings. I know, it's not really related right? Wrong! This is wh...

As I sat outside Jordan's piano lesson in the van, it occurred to me that today was bloodletting day. I called Canadian Blood Services , and lo and behold, I was right! Jordan's lesson ended at 7:30 and the lady on the phone informed me that they'd take people right up until 7:55 so I figured I could make it. I raced Jordan home (good thing too, because I followed a police car halfway to the blood clinic. they really mess with your road times) and walked in the door of the church at 7:50. Booyeah! I happily chatted up the lady while she marked me in for the appointment and gave me the card. I'm sure that by the 10th hour they're pretty happy when people walk in the door all excited to tell them about how they haven't given blood in months because of busy schedules and just how happy they are to be there tonight! I know! It's true! I told the iron-checker lady (these are real titles. look it up) the same thing. She was genuinely happy for me I'm sur...

I walked through the door of the nursery school at the regular pick up time, and as usual, Elliot saw me from her place at her snack table and beamed happily at me. I'm always glad she's had a good day, especially since there was a week and a half near the beginning of the year where she'd start crying from the moment I brushed her hair in the morning in the washroom, all the way until I had left her at nursery school and made it back out to the van, the whole while berating myself for leaving her there if she wasn't having any fun. Apparently she was happy the minute I left. I wonder what that suggests. Anyway. I was a few minutes early so I went and sat on the floor near the climber and visited with other moms while we waited for the little "darlings" to finish eating. Elliot gobbled up her snack and stood in front of me, announcing "I have a pumpkin!" I had almost forgotten that the kids usually get to take home a pumpkin around Halloween. S...

Tennyson and Elliot have swimming lessons on Monday nights while Mitchell is at Beavers and Jordan is at gymnastics. Mondays are a little crazy. Tennyson is actually a pretty good swimmer, even if his report card does suggest he pay more attention. Elliot is the bravest little three year old ever. It makes me both nervous and proud. Probably more nervous.

On Saturday mornings, when we remember to take them, Jordan and Mitchell have swimming lessons. They love the water and it's fun to watch them learn to swim and float around and grin like little crazy people because they're just happy to be there. It's crazy too, how much they can do that we don't give them credit for. On Mitchell's first day of class the instructor took them to the side of the pool in the deep end and said "Okay, now you guys are going to take turns jumping in and swimming as far as you can so I can see how far you can go." I'm not even kidding. They weren't even wearing life jackets. I was kind of prepared to jump in the pool and save his little life. He jumped in, went under and popped back up, and then swam the next ten feet on his own , before she turned him around and helped him swim back to the side. I was a little floored. We've never let him swim anywhere deeper than his waist without a life jacket. I had n...

I looked further on my camera, and I can't stop laughing. It would seem that the picture culprit is INDEED Elliot. In fact, she had it on the video setting for a while and took 48 two-second videos of herself trying to snap her own picture. What a dork. I know that this is the stuff of "it's only interesting if it's your own child," but it's funny! Only one more and then I'll stop. This one is funny: she's totally practicing her duck lips for when she's a teenager and duck-lipping through all your selfies is cool. Good thing she has . . . oh let's say "full" lips. 

My kids think they are so dang sneaky. They certainly try to be, but a lot of the time they fail big time. I'm going to pretend they're not actually pulling off a lot of not-fail sneakiness that I'm just not aware of. Let's talk about the camera. I never see them "borrow" it. Ever. They slip it off the counter, or out of my purse, and snap a bunch of pictures of random things (you can tell the general age of the child by the whuckness of the pictures) or go into the basement and film each other dancing around, and then when they're done they slip the camera ever-so-sneakily back into it's original place. It never seems to occur to them that I eventually see the pictures. Unless Steven is trying to be all artsy and start a portfolio entitled "Through the Eyes of the Child" I'm pretty sure that this is the kids' work. Even the little one is a sneaky little devil. Every once in a while she'll disappear. Eventually I'll ge...

This blog is going to just turn into a daily dump of random thoughts until Blogtober is over. More randomness. ***** I am in the midst of baking cookies, not for my children's lunches, but for the cookie sale in support of Unicef. You can rest assured that my cookies have no nuts in them. Or cat hair. Have I ever gone on about bake sales? Maybe? Well here it is again. Tiffany does not like bake sales. Whenever I think of bake sales, I think of the Austin town-wide garage sale day, and going from garage to garage glancing over everyone's junk (I never really browse, couldn't be bothered) and inevitably coming across the . . . gag . . . baked goods table. Nothing says sudden onset nausea like the giant table laden with weird little squares, melting in the sun, cling wrap stretched tight and glistening over top of the disintegrating confection inside. It makes me want to puke (I know, you shouldn't say puke on the internet). Whoever thought that was a good idea? Se...

I don't know why, but this just makes me happy. He's such a funny little boy.

Steven mowed the garden. This is the nicest it's looked all summer!

Steven's working on my room. Not sure if you can call it a room when it doesn't actually have four walls, but still. One day, it'll be a room. Probably in 80 years when we die and our estate sells it to some slum lord who slaps up some panels and rents it out to the poverty stricken who don't care that the kitchen taps leak.

1. We'll see if I can come up with ten. 2. I hear it's snowing in places near here. I don't like it. I'm really missing camping already. :( 3. It's Friday! I told the kids yesterday that if they cleaned up their rooms, the living room and the basement and it was still clean tonight after supper that we'd have a movie night. They did, and we will! I've got Epic, and tons of popcorn kernels just waiting to be popped. 4. Whoever thought Colonel was a good spelling. Ridiculous. Must have been an American trying to be decidedly non-British. Jeez. 5. I'm totally kidding about that last one. Pretty sure Colonels were around long before Americans. 6. My dog is cuter than your dog. 7. I should probably phone and RSVP for a birthday party we were invited to. Tomorrow night. 8. Come on, come on, two more... 9. We are having leftover Turkey Pot Pie for supper today. Steven had leftover Turkey Soup for lunch. See how I capitalized those? They're t...

1. I used a thesaurus to find a T word for mediocre. I was going to do Today's Top Ten, but there's really nothing "toppish" about grocery shopping. 2. I grocery shopped. I figured if the kids could somehow be encouraged to eat the money itself it would save me a lot of time at Walmart and Sobey's each week. 3. Steven told me one day last week that I should either get a haircut or start wearing little hats. The other day he commented on my "helmet hair." Methinks either I need a haircut or he really wants me to start wearing pajamas that look like this: Hi Tarynn! 4. I bought Elliot new shoes for school. Seems that all of her current running shoes have conspired to fall apart at exactly the same time. 5. I really love mayo. In the "lick the spoon" way, or even enough to just take another small spoonful and eat it. I eat it on sandwiches, burgers, french fries, you name it. It's just too good. 6. I started watching Biggest L...

Hello bloggers! Laziest day ever today. Jordan stayed home "sick" today so of course I had to lay on the couch and cuddle her, else she not recover. It was really my motherly duty. We watched cartoons. I may have dozed off. There may have been a movie. It's all good. Tonight Jordan and I (and the rest of the Brownies) canvased a street here in town in the hopes of selling tons of cookies. We sold a few. Our little group ran around like crazy people and took turns ambushing unsuspecting homeowners into buying Girl Guide Cookies. It's actually kind of tempting to just buy up all Jordan's cookies. And eat them.

Last night we had some super-fun friends over for Thanksgiving. It was fun. It was also very loud. I'd like to pretend that the noise is brought by other peoples' kids, but come on. Have you met the little devils that live here? Anyway, fun was had by hall, and the kids had a blast running around and being crazy and eating cookies and voting on their favorite pumpkin pie. I must say, considering that kids will just vote for their own parent's pie, we have a definite advantage. I'd also like to confess that the real winners were the people who didn't have to actually make the pie, but instead were forced to endure the eating and judging process. Today is Thanksgiving Coma day. I was actually going to take the kids to school and run this morning at 9am, but the more I progressed through my morning, the more I really just wanted to crawl into my yoga pants and 9 year old sweater and curl up under a blanket and watch the tv shows that only I enjoy all by myself. So ...

Hey remember when I was vowing to actually blog every day and not just back date posts? I know right? It's because I am awesome. Super, extra awesome.

And I am. I am thankful for my husband. Like for real. Not only does he provide me with pages of blog fodder, that he is a pretty good sport about, but he's pretty awesome in general. He has a great sense of humor, is a good dad, and makes us all feel pretty taken care of. Except for the dishes. But that's okay. Seriously. I'm good with it. The kids. Even the bad one - even though (s)he just makes me wanna . . .grrrr. My kids are awesome. And they're most definitely the awesomest. And the other day I went to pick up Jordan from school and she was sitting on top of the highest point of the play structure reading a book. I'm not even kidding. She is her mama. Did I ever tell you I used to ride my bike home from school while reading a book? But really. My kids are the best. Kind of makes up for all the times when they're the worst. My job. I can't write much about it because of confidentiality and respecting people's privacy and such, but there are so...

Steven's working on my dining room. Not even sure if it's a dining "room." Dining skeleton. Because that's what it is. All I wanted was linoleum. And then he was all: well the room is sinking. It's slanting. We need to level it. if we are going to do stuff in there we should probably worry about the windows. there's no insulation. It's cold. We should probably insulate.  the paneling is ridiculous. Let's gyp-rock.  I hate smacking my giant head on the light fixtures. and on and on and on. So my "Hey, let's put new linoleum in the dining room to replace the carpet that somebody thought would actually be a good idea to put under the dining room table" has now become a completely gutted room. It's frightening. Here's hoping it's done before it snows. Because right now we have no south wall. I kind of like south walls.

Steven: Jeez, like only 11 days of blogging and you got nothin'? Some people fill reams of these things. How are you supposed to write a novel if you can't blog for ten days? Steven is the worst! It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times.

S: Did you pick colours? T: (trying to internet) Hmm? S: These (indicates colour swatches). Did you pick some? T: No. S: Well you could work on that tonight at work. T: Yeah, that would be awesome. Let me pick the colours we have to live with for the next ten years at three in the morning. S: Well, it would be interesting.

Tonight at work I made a movie reference and my coworker had never heard of the movie. Was it some weird obscure movie that nobody had ever heard of?  No.  It was GHOST. With Patrick and Demi.  My coworker is a grown up. A fellow woman who should know about Ghost. We are the same! Right! Right? I took a deep breath. "How old are you?" I asked.  "Twenty," she said. Gasp. She is twenty. A grown woman. She's getting married next month.  And I am referencing a very popular movie that she is too young to remember.  I guess ... I suppose ... It's almost like I have to sort of accept that ... I just can't do it!! Now I know how old people feel!

To think I almost forgot to blog! Darn eh? Not much new today. I spent pretty much all of this afternoon doing laundry. I was going to say "Bloody Laundry," kind of like the way I'd say "stupid laundry" but I figured that people would interpret that as blood-soaked laundry and possibly call the police and then they'd come and I'd get taken away and have to sit in a holding cell all by myself for days . . . . Wait a sec, definitely bloody laundry. Seriously though. These kids wear so many clothes ! My mom used to say cotton pickin.' All the time. It was actually kind of funny. But we didn't laugh. Because cotton pickin' was serious. Tonight I work. I kind of feel like maybe I should plan some sort of supper for my family before walking out the door at 5:15 but people are talking to me online and that's way funner than cooking. It's really your fault. You and you and you know who you are. Happy Thursday people.

My friend Sherri and I have challenged ourselves to run 100 miles in October. Okay, well I challenged her and she's a good sport and now she heckles me and tries to discourage me from running all because she wants to win. What kind of good sportsmanship is that? Pretty crummy Sherri, pretty crummy. For instance, this is the text I received from her the other night during my run! Anyway, having the accountability is nice. You know what's not so nice? Being so busy that I have to squash 25 miles into three or four runs.This week I work two night shifts and I have two boot camp classes that run from 5:30-6:30am, so that's four mornings right there that I can't go. I also somehow accidentally volunteered to help chaperone Mitchell's class on their swim trip, I have a morning doctor appointment (don't even get me started on that - I called to make an appt a couple of weeks ago, and my doctor left! and nobody told me!)(this could really be multiple posts...

Me: "I have only eaten like, X number of calories today." Steven: "That's not enough. You're gonna die." Me: (snort) "The day I die of being skinny will be a cold day in hell." What I was actually getting at was that I have loads of room for TV viewing snacks this evening. And yes yes, I know this doesn't really count as a real blog post.

I'll admit it. I am so over them today. Steven and I went into Winnipeg to run an errand today, and we took the kids out of school at noon so they could come with us. They got it in their heads that we were going to go to the spaghetti factory for supper. We said maybe. We went to Home Depot. They were a normal amount of naughty. We went to the bank. We told them that if they'd behave perfectly while we met with our banker that we'd take them for supper. By the time we had been there for 10 minutes they were throwing things in front of  fan, singing into it, and Elliot was screeching with delight. It was loud and we were entirely unimpressed. We said no supper. Jordan had a tantrum for the next 30 minutes in the van. We are now at home and our less-than-spaghetti-factory dinner has been eaten and cleaned up. Steven is sitting in the living room and trying to get Jordan through her piano practice. Jordan likes to be intentionally difficult with piano practicing an...

  And finally: "When we get home, I'm gonna bite you!"