Me, me, me

After-dinner show

My kids like to watch my neighbour cut his grass. I feel sorry for my neighbours.

On a "head shaking with disbelief" note:

I'm rarely surprised at how low the news media can sink, but even I was dismayed this morning to see an article on the front page of the Arts and Life section of the Gazette passing on the gossip that Brad and Angelina's baby is beautiful. A breathless world now sighs with relief!

What was even more pathetic was the speculation that the baby might have been conceived -- conceived! in Canada. Are we really such sad creatures that we're interested (and even proud!) to know where these people had the sex that led to the pregnancy that led to this baby? Sometimes I do give in to despair.

Here Goes...

Shall I join the ranks of those who post images on their blogs? Why is this a big deal to me and does anyone care? Don't answer; I know already.

But here goes anyway!

Job Ghost

Yesterday I got an e-mail, one that was sent to all the members of a writer's group to which I belong. The subject line referred to a great job, so I took a look at it. I was taken aback to see that it was my old job, posted and looking for the perfect person to fill it! I looked at the posting for it and if it hadn't been my old job, I would have salivated all over my laptop. Great salary, part-time, literary and artsy-type stuff, flexible and fun and high-profile. (not that "high profile" matters, but it makes the job look great on a resume, and hey, who doesn't want to be cool at parties when people ask what they do?)

I felt so weird about it all day. I mean, we need money. Badly. I'm looking for work, and so is my husband. The sane and responsible thing would have been to stay in that job. It's a really good job. My first response when I saw that it was posted was Why didn't they ask me to do it? But after a little thought I realized that, paranoia aside, they probably didn't ask me because I told them a year ago that I didn't want to do that job. But I still felt strange, guilty and insulted...and at the same time GLAD because in the end I'm happy that I'm not doing that job. I left because I felt strongly that it was taking me in the wrong direction, and I try to follow my gut. Finances be damned!

After the rain

Dudes!
I had to change the template again after my friend L. told me that she couldn't read the blog on her computer. I hope this one is better. I rather like it, even if it is almost exactly like my old one.

It has finally stopped raining for the time being, so the wee one and I went out to the library this morning. Man, it does a body good to get out and walk around in the sunshine. When I returned to my house, the house that had seemed to me small and grotty and depressing after, like, 40 days of rain, I felt so glad to be the owner of this cheerful, cute little house that I love. Sunshine just makes things better.

But rain has beneficial effects, for sure. I took a little tour of my garden today and the perennials are huge! The fruit-bearing tree and plants (We have cherries, strawberries, blueberries, redcurrants, raspberries and kiwis) are laden, and it looks like a very promising year for the garden. Our poppy, one that D. planted a few years ago as a single, bargain-basement reject, has nine incipient flowers on it this year. These are those spectacular big red poppies, so I can't wait to see them when they open.

And with any luck we'll be able to sit on our new deck to enjoy the beauty of it all this summer. We now have a back porch with 5 stairs and a perfectly nice stone patio, but the porch and stairs are totally rotten and have to be torn down, so it looks like we're going to have a deck built to replace it. I'm very excited about this; when we bought the house (almost 5 years ago), I had many plans for fixing it up and we haven't been able to afford any of them. A deck would be the first of the long list of things I hope to do within the next 5 or 6 years, given a big ol' lottery win.

One week in May

In the past week I have celebrated F's 2nd birthday, Mother's day, my birthday and our 11th wedding anniversary. It's been a good week, and all those celebrations might be the only things that kept me from running into the street to scream curses at the sky for making so bloody much rain.

Yesterday was our anniversary and a very happy day. I don't know why, exactly...we just seemed to feel the love a little more this year. We didn't do presents, or even cards, but we got Woody Allen's Sleeper from the video store and had beers and had a wonderful evening together. I had never seen Sleeper, despite hearing about it for years and years. Man I loved that movie. I thought it was hilarious and clever and even if I hadn't loved everything else about it, I would have loved watching it just for the design in it. What a fabulous looking film. The cinematography was outstanding, but the design of the future world is just gorgeous and, incredibly, still totally believable as a vision of the future.

And I want to wear every outfit that Diane Keaton wears in that film. Yum.

Now what am I gonna do? I've run out of celebrations!

Better late than never...

Happy birthday to me. La la la la la laaaa...

Go BJ and Tyler! Woohoo! Whichever of the final 3 teams won The Amazing Race would have been fine with me; once Monica and Joseph were eliminated the rest was gravy. But I did like the hippies a lot; they were fun to watch and approached the game with a philosophy, and the fact that their philosophy gave way to human weakness just made them more likeable to me. Plus I developed a crush on Tyler about halfway through the season. While I rarely like blond, I do so like lanky.

I have to restore commenting and do the blogroll thing on the side over there, with links to my friendly neighbourhood blogs. Unfortunately I don't have much time to muck about on the computer and I'm soooo lame, so it'll be a little while... Not that I get many comments on this blog. But that's okay, I still know you love me even without constant reassurance.

In a new skin

Thought I needed something new and funky-fresh. I am going to have a birthday in 2 days after all. If only all changes were this easy.

A mother of a day

Yesterday was the best Mother's Day I've had yet, despite the fact that my oldest child was away at Brownie camp for most of it.

The morning was breakfast in bed, with homemade cards, cuddles from my son and a toddler whose bouncing on the bed spilled most of my tea. My husband and son worked hard making the cards and making the breakfast, and when I came down after a lovely lie-in there were presents: a hibiscus from my son, a pretty red box with a zebra finger puppet in it from my 2-year-old, and, surprise! a card telling me that I had a spa day set up for me at Le Sanctuaire, to take any time I want in the next 2 years. Yay! I've never done anything like that before and I am so stoked!

Then we lazed around, watched The Wind in the Willows, had a nice lunch and then got our butts up and went to Westmount Park. Well, we were supposed to go to the greenhouse beside the park, but we seem to have this uncanny ability to make the greenhouse close down whenever we intend to go there. It's true; we've tried 5 or 6 times in the last 2 years and every time, no matter when we try, the greenhouse is closed. I mean, a Sunday afternoon in May? What is up with that? Anyway, so we hung out at that beautiful park until we had to tear ourselves away to pick up my sodden daughter off the Brownie camp bus. It poured the whole time they were up at camp, but they went out anyway and had a good time and made little ladies out of pine cones for Mother's day gifts. Mine was a hula girl. Then home to watch another movie together and have an early supper (spaghetti with homemade bread rolls and salad), and bed for the kids and Survivor finale for the grownups. (The end of Survivor is so rarely satisfying. The most deserving person rarely wins, and one of the final two is always someone who "flew under the radar" and contributed little to the camp and sucked at the challenges. It's like life, though, and that's what makes Survivor good. Even when you're sure you know what's coming next, you don't.)

Anyway, a classic Mother's Day. One to remember.

Misc.

I did go back to listen to Richard Rohr on the third night of his series, and found the whole experience very enriching and inspiring. In one way he didn't tell me anything I hadn't already heard, but everything he said made sense and reminded me that my soul is on a journey in this life, and that I need to be more aware of that journey if my life is going to have anything like the meaning it could have.

Just got a little e-mail from my team leader after sending in some writing. She gave me a little compliment on the work I did, and I couldn't believe how good it made me feel. A little affirmation goes a long way, especially when you work from home and don't get the positive feedback that friends and colleagues give you in an office setting. I've never even met my team leader, despite having worked with her for the last 6 months!

A small baby note: As her language develops, it's interesting to see how F. puts things together when she has to say something that she hasn't heard from us before; in other words, how she creates grammatical structures on her own when she's not mimicking them. This morning she laughed at a dog on TV and said to me "Look mommy, he's peeking a boo."

A sip for a thirsty soul

Did something unusual last night. My mother and her friend were attending a 3-night lecture series by a Franciscan Monk named Richard Rohr. Rohr is a big name in the world of contemplative theology ( a rarified enough world, but still) and he was talking about the contemplative life and the non-dual, trinitarian mind. After their first night, my mom called me and told me that I should go to the second night if possible, because it was right up my alley and this man is a great teacher. Well, I looked forward to it all day and went, and I'm very happy that I did. Rohr is not only a great teacher but an enlightened soul -- a rare creature. I'm always grateful to meet (or hear) someone who is more spiritually evolved than I am, and everything he said just went straight home to my heart and soul.

I've done a bit of studying of world religions over the years, with an emphasis on the contemplative and mystical side of the spritiual life. I've been interested in this since I was a young child, when I sometimes thought I would like to be a nun because nuns seemed so free to pursue their spiritual interests and then to go out and work for good in the world (my experience of nuns was very positive, obviously). What's strange is that I had been thinking about doing something called spiritual direction at the Ignatian center near my home, and this series was sponsored by the center, so I picked up some literature on their programs while I was there.

I hope to return this evening for the last installment in Rohr's series. I feel lucky to have been alerted to this event, and feel that somehow I needed to be there last night and to hear what this man had to say.

"I'n NOT a baby!"

Our beautiful baby girl turned two yesterday. It was a wonderful day, full of balloons and presents and cake and people who love her and think that everything she does is so cute and funny we want to stop time just to drink her in, just the way she is now, a little more and a little longer.

Two is so amazing. It's the age where a baby becomes a little person, with her own views and opinions and sense of humour and so much more. I secretly cringe when people automatically say "oh, terrible twos eh?" when I tell them that she's (turning) two. I know it's just something to say, and people don't think about what they're saying when they say that sort of thing, but two is so wonderful I feel like I want to share it and tell them that two is the age where my children became my friends, people I want to hang out with more than anyone else in the world.

My daughter, F., is so good at talking and so smart that she's been like a 2-year-old for the last few months, joking and sharing her thoughts, and this morning when she woke up she told me something that I think might have been what she was dreaming before I came up and got her from bed. I like that. I like it when my kids tell me about their dreams.

Last week my older kids were doing their homework in the dining room while F. was playing nearby. I was in the adjacent bathroom when I heard her say in a loud and forceful tone "I'n not a baby. I'n a big guhw!" It was so cute and funny that since then the kids keep asking her Are you a baby, Fi-fi? Her answer varies, but she has amended it to include both her baby and big girl identities. She's in between the two, and that's fine.

I took lots of birthday pictures with my new camera, but after D. spent hours trying to figure out how to load them on to the computer, we still can't do it. We are missing some software that we couldn't find on the web. Sorry! Technical difficulties, innit?

Really obvious hinting...It's not just for kids anymore!

Some of you may have noticed that I've mentioned my lack of (and desire for) a digital camera in a few of my recent posts. This was not, believe it or not, conscious hinting, however obvious it looks to me now that I read back. In fact I am against the idea of using one's blog to get stuff or money from others. (IMHO "wish lists" are just crass; you'll never see one on this blog.) However, I had been feeling like I wanted a digital camera for many reasons, and one of them was to help to jazz up my blog. So I guess I mentioned it a few times, aaaand...

My friend Maggie came by for a visit and pulled a digital camera out of her purse and gave it to me! Thankyou M! The kids are so excited and so am I. This is a real luxury for us, and something I wouldn't have bought myself, because there are just too many essentials that should be bought first. So I'm pretty chuffed about my new (to me) camera. Unfortunately I can't put up any pictures yet, because the battery died and I haven't got a new one yet. But stay tuned! I hope to get a new battery and a pic before the Magnolia tree loses its flowers.

This is the first time I've turned on my computer in almost a week, and the holiday was good for me, if not for my blog. We went to the bird sanctuary at the Lachine rapids on the weekend and had a lovely time. It's a very beautiful and relaxing place. You can see nature up close, including muskrats, turtles and not-yer-garden-variety birds. And the rapids are impressive of course. They inspire me. When I saw them and heard them I immediately felt as though I live in a small section of time that, if I knew how, I could expand so that I could look into and touch the past and the future. Nature enlarges me and makes me feel as though my consciousness could be unlimited if I only knew how to release it.

Coming soon...pictures!