Kibbles and Bits

My new iPhone has an "auto-correct" for when you spell a word wrong, it will suggest another word to replace the dubious one. Sometime this is helpful, sometimes this is a pain in the ass and sometimes it's hilarious. (i.e. look up www.damnyouautocorrect.com )
When I text the girls, sometimes I want to put in "honey", as in "ok, honey". Seems inocuous enough, but for some reason, my phone disputes the input of a noun as an endearment, and corrects it to "homey". As in "thanks, homey, I'll see you later", or "Love you, homey". It sounds like I am a particularly affectionate gangsta rapper.

The Mister and I took Thing 2 and a gaggle of her friends to the beach yesterday....it was stinking hot and extremely crowded (Two of my favorite things! Along with blue cheese and accordion music!) The Mister and I huddled under a beach umbrella and people watched.

• I get that lots of people like tattoos; it's not something I'd ever want for myself, but if you do, knock yourself out. But I do puzzle over the choice of tattoo some people get...for instance, I understand the whole "chinese character that means 'strength' " even if you are not Chinese, or a rose or a flag somewhere, but we saw a guy with a huge Teenage Mutant Ninja urtle on his upper arm. That seems like a very strange image to which you would want to associate yourself for the rest of your life. Especially since, in another couple of years, you are going to have to explain what a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle is, endlessly.


• A bathing suit that is too small to cover your bum is fine when you are three years old, but less acceptable when you are thirty three. Why not buy a bathing suit that fits you and does not require yanking out of your butt-crack every twenty seconds?


• Sunscreen is your friend, particularly when you have Irish/Scottish/English DNA that was never designed to see more than 4 minutes of continuous sunlight ever. I'm pretty sure there was going to be some horrific sunburns making some lives pretty miserable around 9:00 last night. A couple of people could even be described as "deep-fried".


• No matter how diligent I am with the sunscreen, I always manage to miss a spot or two, which then announces itself at top volume around 9:00 at night. Yesterday: the tops of both my feet, three square inches at the top of my leg and the back of my left hand.

There is a farmer's market near us that sets up every Friday morning, and I like to go and get a few fruit and veg there every week. (I don't care what the foodie police tell you, the farmer's market is NOT cheaper than the grocery store, but the stuff there is amazing. I like that it's all local and all, but it also means that I can't buy mangos or limes there. I still end up going to the grocery store, too.) There is a family, I think they are Mennonite or Amish, and they have eleventy-two children who are home-schooled who help with the stand, and they all are adorable and blond and terribly earnest and nice. Their job is to get bags and make change and tell the customers the difference between spinach and arugula. Last week when I was there, the oldest kid, about 11, tried to give me 8 dollars in change for my 6 dollar purchase. The problem was, I gave him a 10$ bill. I gently told him to think it out again, and he insisted that that was right, so I said he should ask his dad and he looked like he was going to burst into tears. So I said that was fine, and now I have to figure out next week how to slip 4 dollars back into their coffers without anyone noticing.

Kibbles and Bits

Praise be! Summer is finally here! I was beginning to think it might never happen. We've had the most miserable, relentless winter in recent memory, followed by the wettest, coldest, most tortured spring on record. It never. stopped raining.
When they were predicting the end of the world a few weeks ago, I was beginning to think it wasn't the worst idea I'd ever heard....anything to put us out of our misery.
But on the weekend, it got warm. And yesterday, it got HOT. And today it got torrid.
It was 31°C with a Humidex of 41°C. (Translation: 88°F that feels like 106°F. That's not a typo.) The cat thermometer is registering a record 10 feet of cat. It's a bit of getting used to, this "summer in an instant", but even though I sleep in front of a roaring fan and haven't the energy to boil water, I'm not complaining. It's all I've been wanting for the past 6 months.
Toby is the happiest cat ever.....there's furniture to sleep on! Outside! The people are out; I have company!! There are bushes to hide in to surprise the birds!! (The birds are not so happy.)
Long may it last.

Thing 2 and her school band went on a feild trip to Canada's Wonderland, a big amusement park, north of Toronto, full of roller coasters and hellishly expensive junk food.
I volunteered to go along, mostly because I thought they didn't need me, and also, because if they did, I would get to go on the roller coasters.
I absolutely LOVE roller coasters. I would go on just about any roller coaster, ever, except, maybe one that actually might kill me.
(There is one at Canada's Wonderland called the Behemoth that seriously nearly made me cry. It was awesome.)
I've been on school trips before, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that in comparison to the bus trip there and back, the amusement park is an oasis of calm and serenity. Seriously, those kids get on a bus and they lose their shit entirely. For hours and hours on end; they scream and shout and carry on at the top of their lungs, and love every minute of it.
I've come to realize that for the kids, the bus ride is every bit as exciting as the actual destination. In fact, they would be just as happy to drive around on the bus for an entire day as actually go anywhere. I see the bus ride as a means to an ends; for the 14 year olds, the transportation is part of the ends.
I brought ear plugs, the same ones I use to go to sleep, and I was a much, MUCH happier Mrs. Loudshoes at the end of it all.

Thing 2 is an appalling speller; truly, she cannot write a complete sentance without misspelling something. She comes by it honestly, my mother and myself cannot spell to save our lives. My mother writes letters with a dictionary beside her, and I stumble over the words "licence" and "probably" almost every time I have to write them. Thank God for spell-check.
I don't know how her terrible spelling, (which is usually hilarious) came up, but she declared, somewhat indignantly, that there are "LOTS of words that arent' spelled anything like how they sound".
"Give me and example", I said, and she promptly replied "psychology". (She came up with it pretty fast, like she'd been just waiting to complain about it.) "And 'colonel', and 'rhythm'....a whole BUNCH of animals....like 'penguin'! And 'giraffe'!"
Clearly, I had hit a nerve.
"So, what words ARE spelled like they sound?" I asked.
" 'Zoom', 'melt' and 'tomato' ", she said. "And 'ketchup'. 'Ketchup' is spelled exactly what it sounds like. You can count on 'ketchup'." she said, firmly.
Apparently, this was something she had been thinking about for a long time.

Teenagers and cats....who knows what goes on in their heads?

Kibbles and Bits

There has been very little blog-worthy of late....the winter doldrums have rendered me mute. All I seem to want to do these days in live in my pajamas and eat chocolate. (Truthfully, I want to do that all the time, but I especially want to do it around now.)

We've had lots of cold and lots of snow this winter. And somehow, when February 1st comes, I feel like we are starting to see the beginning of the end, and spring is starting to become a possibility. And every year, I'm dead wrong. This year, I'm wronger than usual....we had another storm yesterday, which meant more snow, which means it will never, ever be spring again.

Thing 1 had exams last week, the end of first semester. She's a good student, has very little trouble in school and gets through things like exams without much drama. But on Monday morning, she came upstairs from her room all wild-eyed and panicky: "Is it REALLY 8 o'clock???", she gasped. I assured her that it was......"My alarm didn't go off!! My exam is in half an hour!" she croaked. You know, I've had this nightmare, I totally understood her panic. (Except, usually, when I'm having this nightmare, I'm naked and riding a camel.) I told her to get dressed and put in her contacts, and I'd make her a bagel and drive her to school. She got there in time, and wrote the exam. Except, in all the morning fuss, she forgot that she had a vocal exam right after, and missed that. (The teacher was very understanding and let her do that exam the next day.)

Toby does not like the cold weather, and has decided on voluntary incarceration for the duration. This means that I have been elected to the Entertainment Committee, of which I am the sole member. Toby is deeply disappointed in my performance, as I do not provide ample amusement, such as changing the bed linen daily, or feed him tuna endlessly. Naturally, this means that Toby has to prompt me to pay attention to him,usually when I'm typing, or reading the paper. But mostly, he shows his displeasure when I am sleeping; my sleeping is an abomination, and will not be tolerated. (Which is ironic, really, since he sleeps all the live long day.) This morning, Toby walked all around the pillow, while I was still using it, managing to stand on my hair with almost every step. Then, this afternoon, while I was napping, Toby decided the best place in the world to settle down and purr like a jet engine, was right on top of my head.....I had a "cat hat". Any appendage that pokes out of the bed covers must be ambushed at once. Drooling and head-butting at 4 a.m. is mandatory. If spring doesn't come soon, I'm going to have to take a leave of absence from my job.

I bought a treadmill a few weeks ago, because running outside in a foot of snow is out of the question. (I haven't been running since the snow started at the beginning of December. And you know what? I haven't noticed one, tiny little difference in my weight, my energy levels, my moods, nothing. One more piece of evidence in the "Exercise Is Crap" file.) Man, running on a treadmill is a bazillion times easier than running outside! No hills, no wind, no curbs to trip over, and your shoes don't get wet. One downside? I end up watching "E! True Hollywood Story" while working out, and that shit will dissolve your grey cells. The other day I found myself watching a show about Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown....I mean, what the hell? My quads will be in great shape when I'm in the Early Dementia wing of the nursing home.

Luckily, February is only 28 days long.

Kibbles and Bits

And so it begins....

First day of real snow here. I was out in it this morning....funny how people have to learn to drive all over again when it snows for the first time.

I slept in yesterday morning, a rarity for me. Usually I wake up at around 6:45 every morning, without an alarm clock. (I do have a 12-pound, furry, orange alarm clock, but he can only be counted on to wake me up every day, there's no guarantee it's going to be at the appropriate time.) I usually give myself plenty of time in the mornings, I hate being rushed, so even though I had slept a half hour longer than usual, I was able to get myself out the door on time without too much trauma. The irony? I was dreaming about sleeping in.

We got a new terminal at the salon for credit card purchases. Every now and again the credit card machine has a small nervous breakdown and will only calculate tips of 150% or refuses to recognize PINs that start with 4. Our receptionist, Barb, got a technician out to replace ours, and since he seemed to have only been trained for the job that morning, and by drunken monkeys, he was clueless as to how to configure the machine to suit our needs. The receptionist sent him on his way and asked me to look up the supplier's number on the net when I got home. I did so, and handed her the number the next morning. While I was shampooing my first client's hair, Barb came back to me with a very strange look on her face asking "where the hell did I get that number???" It turns out she had called it and a very breathy, female voice had answered, with a "Hi, baby, so glad you called.....you got some sugar for me?". Not exactly what one expected from a credit card processing company. It seems I inadvertently transferred two numbers when I wrote it down. Oops.

Kibbles and Bits.

A head cold and a whole lot of inertia rendered me incapable of doing anything but the basics this week. I was a complete and utter sloth, and it was so nice to be able to do it with impunity.
Both girls had colds last weekend, so I figured it was merely a matter of time before it hit me. The Mister hardly ever gets colds. (When he does, it seems to coincide with events he does not want to attend. Hmmm.)

I could feel it coming on on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, I was conquered. I came home from work early, and crawled into bed at four in the afternoon. Truly, if there is a more wonderfully satisfying, spiritually gratifying sensation than getting into your own delicious bed when you're not feeling well, I don't even want to know what it is, because it's probably wrong or illegal or both. I ate lots of chocolate and had plenty of tea and watched all kinds of television. It was incredibly restoring. (Just for the record, I watched the entirety of Season 3 of "Mad Men" and it was worth it to get sick just for that opportunity. God, that show is amazing.)

I was feeling better today, so I started knitting a pair of socks for Thing 2. Thing 1 got a pair in the spring, and Thing 2 had no intention of being left out. It's been getting cold here, the past few weeks, and hand knit things have suddenly shot up in value. People think warm socks are nice but unnecessary in July, but they change their tune in October.

Thing 1 got a notice from school the other day wondering if she will be attending to receive her award for Grade 10 science at the awards ceremony in November. (Insert scratching record noise here.) Whaaaaa? Thing 1 is getting an award? For Science??? Not that Thing 1 is a moron, far from it, but science is decidedly NOT her thing, and she only took the bare minimum requirement to get through high school. When she decided last year to drop down from the more demanding Academic science course to the Applied level class, she did warn me that this probably meant that she was unlikely to pursue a career in medicine, much as I might have dreamed otherwise. (I said her father and I were fine with that, just as long as whatever she decided to do it paid enough for her to send us on a cruise now and then.) It turns out that she did very well in Applied science, in fact, she got the highest mark in all the Grade 10 applied science classes. Believe me, no one is more surprised than her. (Although she did say that, because the class was right after lunch, she was one of the only students who A) showed up regularly and B) not high.) I think an award is an award, and we will take whatever we get. We're going to that award ceremony. Especially since her primary career choice involves marrying rich, and I don't think they give out awards for that.

Kibbles and Bits

Thing 1 and I were grocery shopping this morning, and while in the produce department, she remarked that she was disappointed that they didn't arrange the broccoli in the usual fashion, upright, like trees. She said she liked it when they did that, as when the sprinkler turned on, it looked like a tiny, little Amazon rainforest. She is my daughter, no?

Thing 2 had a basketball game today after school, and the Mister and I went to see it. Can I once again mention how over-the-moon thrilled I am that my children do not regularly participate in competitive sports? Because if had to sit through too much of that, I would be a puddle on the floor. When Thing 2 got the ball slapped out of her hands or an elbow to the head, it was all I could do not to go out on the court and slap the shit out of the kid that did it. It was a good thing I had the Mister there to remind me how unseemly it would be if I attacked a 12 year-old girl.
The gym they were playing in was tiny, no more than about half the size of our school's gym. While the home team were wiping the floor with our kids, I snotted to the Mister that I bet they're not so tough when they are playing in a real gym. Then I found out that they won the city championships last year, so I guess they are that tough.

Thing 1 and I went over to the mall after dinner to get her some new shoes. (We are going to Florida for a week on Sunday, and apparently Thing 1 had NO weather-appropriate shoes at all, I think all of last summer's shoes vanished into thin air. So a shopping trip was in order.) It rained most of the afternoon here, and then it got cold...as soon as I stepped off the sidewalk to go into the mall, I suddenly lost my footing, saw my feet up level with my head and felt that awful feeling you get as you realize you are about to get hurt something awful and there is nothing you can do about it. Boom onto my right hand and hip I went...man that hurt. I managed to walk it off for the most part, but my right shoulder still hurts. Good thing I don't have to use my right arm for work or anything....hey....that might be a problem. As long as I can go to Florida, though!

Kibbles and Bits And Some More

Apparently nobody told the weather that it is July. Because it is cold and damp and drizzly and way more like April than July. Maybe the weather got mixed up and gave us England's usual summer weather, because England certainly seems to have ours.
Today I wore a t-shirt with a light cardigan over it to work, and because it was particularly dismal when I left the house, I work a new striped, cotton scarf with it, too. I walked to Starbucks to get a coffee in the slobbery conditions, and when I got back to work, I noticed a distinctly....bacony sort of smell around me. After a bit of detective work, it turns out it was my damp scarf. Lovely. I smelled vaguely of smoked pork product the rest of the day. Luckily, I do not work with Labrador Retrievers.

My nephew Colm has been around for the past week here. He lives in Toronto, but occasionally makes forays to our city to visit. He's a nice kid, chatty and good-humored. We took him to the driving range with us the other day, and he was game, if completely inexperienced. No matter how many times we showed him how to swing a golf club, his hands kept sliding down to hold it like a hockey stick; that is with his right hand about half way down the shaft and slapping away at the ball like it was a puck. When he did connect with the ball, it was pretty impressive; that thing smoked. But unfortunately, that didn't happen very often, usually he ended up taking a divot out of the ground that would break your leg if you happened to fall in it. But he remained chipper and sunny, nonetheless. All golfers should be so blithe.

Thing 1 and her friends took a public bus to the beach, about an hour a way, last Saturday. It's a great deal, only 8 bucks each way, and the only way to get to the beach when you don't drive or don't have a car. The only thing was that the bus didn't come back home until 9:30 at night, and that would have meant that she and her friends would have had to hang around a lot longer than they wanted to waiting for it. I said I'd drive up and get them after work. I dropped The Mister at my parents house, where we were going to eat dinner, and then I drove up to the beach, got the girls and came back. When we came out of my mom and dad's, we heard and ominous hissing noise and found that one of the front tires was almost completely flat. Long story short, I had run over a roofing nail in my parents condo complex on my way back, and the tire had been leaking all the time we were at dinner. Can you imagine if that had happened when I dropped the Mister off???? I'd have been out on the highway with a gaggle of 15 year old girls and a flat tire. (And you can imagine how much help they would have been.) Luckily, we were able to patch the tire on Monday, and it only cost 30 bucks.

One of the features I can put on my blog is a counter, down at the bottom. I love that counter, I check it every day to see if anyone has looked at my blog. And they have, YOU have, and it thrills me every single time I see it. Recently, I've found a place where it shows me on a map of the world where the last 10 viewers are from, and this has enthralled me like nothing else. I check it all the time....Vancouver! That must be the Tattooed One! Calgary! That must be James or Lisa! GERMANY! My friends Anne and Jack are in Germany on an exchange for 6 weeks, that must be them! INDIA! YUKON?!? SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA!?!! I don't even know people in these places!! Strangers are reading my blog!! I'm ready to black out, I'm so excited! I have to stop myself from checking that little map every hour, it is unseemly. So, thank you, everyone, you have no idea how exciting it is to see that people read my stuff.

Kibbles and Bits Some More

Things are very quiet here at Chez Loudshoes this week, which is just the way I like it. "Boring" and "uneventful" are positive things, in my books. The world could do with far more "boring" and "uneventful", I think. My calendar is very white, meaning it hardly has anything written on if for this week. (When the calendar is dark, with things written in sideways and along the margins because there's too much to fit into the little boxes, it makes me very stabby.)

Thing 2 will be celebrating her 12th birthday this week, and I was trying to remember what I was doing 12 years ago this week. Oh, that's right, bitching. That whole last trimester was one big bitch session, as I recall. I had pretty easy, low-drama pregnancies, but I recall being fed up of the whole adventure around month 7 with Thing 2, and I announced, loudly, that I was going to be monumentally cranky for the duration. (The Mister replied that he was going to be hard pressed to tell the difference between that and my usual demenor. Brave man, him.) Anyway, Thing 2 is very excited about her birthday; I think the fact that she's only celebrated 12 of them might have something to do with that. Once you've celebrated, I don't know, 30 or 40 of them, they lose their shine, somewhat.

The weather has been blissfully mild and non-wintery this week. The snow has been melting, and I've even had some of the windows open, to air out the place. (Shhh, don't tell the Mister....he will make fatherly grumbles about heating the whole of southwestern Ontario.) Toby approves very much, and spent most of the afternoon in the window of the ensuite bathroom,

making sure the squirrels did not get up to any hijinks. Or if they do, he can tell on them.

We went for a walk last Sunday to feed the ducks on the pond near our house, and the ducks were hilarious. Who knew? The pond had mostly frozen over, but there was some open water and the ducks were all crowded into that. They had to come over closer to us to get the bread, and that part of the pond was all icy. The result? Duck Bowling! They skittered and staggered all over the place in a most entertaining fashion. Then we witnessed a mallard ass-kicking, where two ducks seemed pretty determined to beat the snot out of each other. The Mister got involved and separated them, but they went right back at it. Just goes to show, testosterone is toxic in large doses, no matter what the species.

And the fact that that is all I can think of to write about will tell you how boring and uneventful my life is at the moment. It's perfect.

Kibbles and Bits, Yet Again

Things Going On At The Loudshoes House Lately.

Last night, as I was diligently working on the computer (read: wasting ginormous amounts of time on "Bookworm") I heard a noise from outside that made me sit up and take notice. (read: stop trying to figure out how to make the word "aquaduct" without a "d".) I went out the back door to see Toby charging after a very slow, but nonetheless, impressively brawny raccoon. This thing was huge, easily the size of a Buick, I'd say, and there was all 9 pounds of Toby, hissing and puffing up and squawking, chasing the raccoon up the locust tree. I stomped on Toby's leash and hauled him inside right quick. Lucky for Toby, that was the dumbest raccoon God ever made, because if he had thought about it for one second, he'd have rounded on Toby and thoroughly kicked his ass. Toby was mightily pissed at me for taking him away from his triumph, but he doesn't have to pay the vet bills, and I do. So there.

I was driving home from the other end of town this afternoon, and while at a red light, looked in my rear view mirror to see my friend Mary Hickey in the van behind me. I start waving and "woo-hoo"ing and generally calling all sorts of attention to myself, and then realize that the bewildered woman behind me is not Mary Hickey after all. But all the other people around me waved.

A young woman I work with went to Saskatchewan last weekend to visit her boyfriend, who's temporarily working in a small town near Saskatoon. (When she told us the town had 250 people in it, another woman I work with remarked that she's been to weddings bigger than that.) She liked the place well enough (said it was just like "Corner Gas") but said that it was fairly unremarkable. One thing she noticed, though, it's so flat that "at night?, you can look straight ahead and still see stars".

Kibbles and Bits, Again

Sorry there was no blog last night; the Mister was "tweaking" my computer, which usually means that I am without access for at least 24 hours, and then it takes me another 18 or so to figure out how it works all over again. This time, he put the latest Windows system in, which looks cool, but seems to work pretty much the same as it always did. Once he "tweaked" my computer and the upshot was that the keyboard was completely discombobulated, and all my question marks came up as exclamation marks, which made it look like I was ridiculously excited about everything ("How are you!") and everything else had French punctuation, with little squiggles under the c's and accents over the e's. It certainly gave my writing a more European flair, but did little to enhance the overall coherence.

Thing 1 got a cell phone on Monday, and has not let it out of her steely grip since. I'm sure you were aware, since it was all over the news, but Thing 1 was the only Grade 8 student in the entire world that was without a cell phone. Grade 8 students in Mogadishu had cell phones, for God's sake, but not her. That was recitfied 48 hours ago, and no doubt it was on the BBC World service. She claims she doesn't sleep with it, but I am tempted to call her at 3 a.m. to test it out. (The only problem is, she is likely to actually still be awake at 3 a.m, whereas I am not.)

It has been a very warm and rainy June here, and everything is lush and green and fertile. It is like living in Brazil. When my parents and I were in Calgary at the beginning of last month, it was brutally hot here, 32°C, with a humidex of 40, or some unholy number like that. (In Calgary, it was about 9°C, with gale force winds and rain in Biblical proportions. When we were sitting in the chuch waiting for the wedding to begin, I was all decked out in my sleeveless linen dress, and turned to my dad and said that I wished I had a sleeping bag to tuckle up in.) It has been so humid and sticky that the doors and jambs have swelled so that Thing 1 has twice been trapped in the bathroom. (It never happens to Thing 2, because she rarely closes the door when she's in the bathroom.)

I have embarked on a new project, my "First of the Month" project, whereby I take a picture of the same bit of the garden on the first day of every month. I plan to make a fabulous scrapbook page out of it, and then I get sad because I realize I am spending my time planning scrapbook pages. How old am I?

The air conditioning stopped working on the van the other day. (Himself spent an entire ride home from work with his hand over the vent asking "does this feel any cooler to you?", like he had lost all powers of thermal detection, and needed my superiour skills to suss it out.) The Mister went to the dealership today, on the off chance that it was still under warrenty. We knew that that was a distant dream, since anybody who takes anything into a dealership is told that, whatever the problem is, it's not covered under the warrenty. (The warrenty, in case you didn't know, is much like the Russian constitution: on paper, everything looks wonderful, but worthless in the real world.) The guy at the dealership assured the Mister that it would be covered under the warrenty, provided, of course, that it was not damaged or tampered with. I figured that meant "used as it was supposed to", but as it turned out, it was covered under the warrently, and we will get it fixed for nothing. Now, we do have to wait for a part to come in, which will likely take about 6 months, and there will probably be some nefarious charge that will be passed on to us. ("Sorry, you have to pay the fifty dollar "Monday Through Friday Surcharge", which we have to charge you because we work on Wednesdays.") The Mister is a bastard, because he purposely lead me to believe that we would have to take out a second morgage to pay for it, and nearly made me have a stroke until he relented and told me otherwise. Hate it when he does that, and I fall for it every freaking time.

And that is the state of the Loudshoes house for another day. How was your day!

Kibbles and Bits.

Sorry, I couldn't add a post yesterday because of some computer trouble. You know that annoying little pop-up that says "update virus definitions now"? Turns out that is important and you should click on it.


Not too much has been blog-worthy the past few days. After a couple of days respite from the cold, it's gotten icy again, and I am even more loathe than ever to venture out. The past couple of days were blissfully mild, and then last night it rained, the wind picked up and the temperature plummeted. Everything is encased in ice, the wind is punishing and it is hellishly, bitterly cold. Apart from the fact that I am almost completely inert these days, it is hard for me to even think about anything other than "Reasons Why I Should Not Immigrate To More Civilized Climates", let alone think of things to blog about. (#1 on my list? "Immigrating would require considerably more gumption than I am willing to generate right now. And it would require going outside.") So the following post is mostly the dribs and drabs of what fills my head these days. Thank your lucky stars you are getting the edited version.


Holy shit those Americans can drag stuff out. Are they ever going to vote for, you know, an actual election? Because these "practice" elections are never going to friggin' end, are they? I think voter turn out is so low in the States for presidential elections because everyone has died of boredom by then.


There is very little on tv these days, and although there were only about 3 or 4 shows I watched anyway, I do miss them. (Especially "The Office".....I've waited 3 seasons for Jim and Pam to finally hook up and now that they have? No shows.) There are plenty of filler shows you know they are broadcasting because they have a million of 'em saved up, like "Deal or No Deal", which is essentially dumb luck, or the eternally frustrating "Don't Forget the Lyrics" (no shit I can't remember where I put my car keys or what my postal code is; that part of my brain is full up of KC and the Sunshine Band lyrics, apparently.)
And, God help me, I found myself watching "Good Times" last night, which, if I recall correctly, was barely tolerable back in the 70's, and is even worse now. (Good Lord but those shows from the 70's are clunky and preachy. I'm sure they were groundbreaking and revolutionary in their day, but now they are just tiresome.) Once, when I was up nursing a baby in the middle of the night, I ended up watching "Green Acres". It filled me with despair and fear for the human condition, it really did. I also found myself entranced by a "Biography" of Antonio Banderas recently, and I realized I had better turn off the tv and pick up a book before I slit my wrists.

As I mentioned earlier, the wind was howling like a banshee early this morning, and it woke me up around 4 a.m. I hate the sound of high wind, and even with the ear plugs in, I knew I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep. (There is a big locust tree out back that hangs over the house, right above our bedroom. I kept waiting for that to break free, drop on the house and come straight through the roof onto my side of the bed.) So I went down to the spare bed in the basement to get a few more hours of shut-eye, but I had not bargained on Toby. Toby was at first, thrilled that someone had the good sense to be up during the night, and he was ready to party. Imagine his deep disappointment when he realized that I planned on going back to sleep; and it became his mission to thwart those plans by whatever means necessary. I put up with him only because I feared being crushed by a giant locust limb, but it was a fierce struggle there for a while. He was finally threatened with Kitty Jail (a.k.a. the laundry room), and he bitterly accepted defeat. I expect he will exact his revenge tonight.

On my way home from work today, I stopped off at the grocery store to get milk and Babybel cheese, of which Thing 1 has become completely enamoured. On my way out of the store, I vaguely noticed a woman in her late 50's or early 60's on her way in, who was walking towards my van. I was still a ways away when I went to use the remote lock to unlock it, but managed to hit the "lock" button instead, just as she came level with the vehicle. It honked, loudly, and it scared the shit out of her....honestly, I don't think I ever fully appreciated the meaning of the term "jumped out of her skin" before. She was NOT amused, and gave me one hell of a stink-eye as she passed me. It was all I could do to make it into the car before I fell all over myself laughing. Honestly, it was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I should totally do that on purpose from now on.

Thing 2 came up to me recently, with a worried expression on her little face. She was a bit upset, because, she told me, that one of the kids at school told her that day that if you held you hand right up to your face, and your hand could fit right over? It meant that you had cancer. Thing 2 was a bit worried because she had implemented this very sophisticated diagnostic tool, and the conclusion was that she was going to die. I was able to assure her that A) that particular kid had the IQ of a carrot, and B) this is why we do not take our medical advice from 10-year-olds.

And this is life in the Loudshoes house this week.