I don’t know if homework has changed and gotten more intense since I was six years old, almost three decades ago (let me pause for a moment to say “holy shit” to that). Maybe I just don’t remember properly.

Hayley has homework every day that she goes to school and there’s quite a bit of it, though the teacher always says to use our judgment and not do all of it if our kids are too tired or frustrated. The reading part is fine. She has a reader that she is supposed to work her way through every day, except that Hayely is such a good reader that she read the whole thing in one day about two months ago. The other reading homework is such that the teacher sends each child home with a small book and they have to read it, fill out the log, and then send it back for a new one. That, too, is easy because it’s really basic compared to the reading she does on her own. She also has to do flash cards but we don’t usually do them either.

And really, thank GOD we don’t have to do the reader or slowly go over the little book or do flash cards for reading. Because the other homework is long enough, thanks very much. She usually has a two-sided sheet to do each day. On the front is something that requires writing, spelling, reading a brief instruction and following it (such as “draw a picture of two brown bears, three white rabbits, and one yellow bird”). Sometimes she has to write a story with four or five sentences, such as this:

On the flip side is her math homework. Most of it has been pretty basic and easy but today I had to actually stop her because she wasn’t getting it (she missed a day last week due to being sick, so it’s possible she wasn’t there for the lesson) and I couldn’t explain it to her in a way that made sense to her. It involves number patterns and it would look something like this: 5 __ __ 23 29 35 __ __ and so one. It just seems like such a huge leap for six-year-olds to figure out how to tell that the pattern is skipping by six and to then fill in the blanks accordingly.

After five out of 12 exercises, I realized that a) I was pretty much answering it for her and b) she still wasn’t getting it and she was also c) getting really frustrated with herself, I closed her folder and told her to forget it for today. I wrote a note to the teacher to tell her why it was incomplete and asked her if she could review it with Hayley at some point during the day to help her out.

I had a great deal of trouble with math. I was okay for the basic math, but word problems in grade six totally threw me, especially when I was often able to figure it out but couldn’t show my work to my teacher’s satisfaction. Then I was okay for grades seven and eight. And after that? I hit algebra in grade nine, and you might as well have asked me to understand quantum physics. I want to make sure Hayley gets a good firm grasp on math any time she has any trouble with it and I don’t want her to start hating it in grade one, so I figure it’s best to have the teacher – who has been taught to teach things in different ways – help her out.

But seriously, I do not remember grade one being this intense at all. And the pace is only going to pick up in the new year. Yikes! At this rate, she’ll hit that algebra in grade five!

Last night it was cold but bearable when I took the girls out to see the Christmas lights around the neighborhood. This morning it was snowing and it was still cold, but not too horrible, and was better by afternoon when I took the dog for one of her long walks.

Tonight I took her out to pee after the kids went to bed. It was -16C with the wind making it feel like -25C (that would be 3F and -13F respectively). The wind is howling and rattling the windows beside my desk and it actually knocked our wooden bistro table over. When Pearl crouched down outside, squatting over the cold snow with her butt shivering in the wind, she stared up at me with miserable eyes as though to ask, “why? Why is it like this?”

Welcome to Winter in Montreal Pearl. It’s a long way until Spring.

*******

About a year ago I read a little tutorial on how to create special effects with light by making a lens filter out of construction paper. You cut a circle the size of your lens, cut out a shape of some sort in the center, and then tape it onto another piece of paper that is long enough to wrap around the lens. Slip it over your lens, set it to a wide open aperture, and take some good bokeh shots. Instead of circles like most bokeh pictures, the out-of-focus lights will take on the shape you’ve cut out on your filter.

I wasn’t able to do it with my other cameras but with the current camera, especially with the 50mm f/1.8 lens it’s very easy. I want to try other shapes soon.

The funniest thing to me about bokeh is that I see it all the time with my own eyes. My eyesight is so terrible that if I look over the top of my glasses at my Christmas lights, they all turn into that lovely bokeh circle. It’s built-in!

*******
Hayley was off on Friday and has tomorrow off as well because of the provincial elections. Because God knows I feel like voting again when I just went to the polls recently and may have to go back again in the near future. Regardless, it’s a good thing that she doesn’t have to go to school in the morning because now it’s Hayley’s turn to be sick. She’s not as bad as Breanna was, but she did have a fever today, enough so that we gave her some Tylenol before bed, and she has a very draining cold. She’s not the happiest camper right now, and I’m glad she’ll have tomorrow to recuperate so she can get back to school on Tuesday; she only has four days this week, then she has a full five days next week, and then she’s off for two full weeks for the holidays.

Hopefully we’ll all be done with our various colds, gastro strains, and other fun stuff (cholera? ebola? SARS?) before Christmas gets here!

I’m really starting to lament this whole bound-by-24-hours crap. I need more hours. Or more specifically I need more hours where I’m not responsible for anyone or anything other than what I want or need to do for myself. Between caring for the kids, feeding people, doing the most basic cleaning, doing my work, walking the dog, and lather-rinse-repeat, I find myself trying to cram everything else in.

I have some music I want to rip to put on my iPod, but haven’t had time. I want to take more pictures, pictures with a purpose rather than just to capture memories, but it rarely happens. I want to dump and edit and upload the pictures I have taken but I’m always days behind on Flickr lately. I want to catch up on reading the blogs that I love but it doesn’t always happen. I want to clean out the buffet and turn the majority of it into an arts & crafts center for the kids so that corner won’t look so messy all the time when my little Van Gogh wannabes get into a drawing mood. I want to look up new recipes because I’m so tired of the ones in the regular rotation. I want to try to make the roti that I saw on a YouTube Indian cooking channel. I want to purge and organize and clean my home beyond the bare necessities. I want to finish reading Breaking Dawn which is finally so good that I can barely stand to stop, and I want to read the next book in my to-read pile. I want to catch up on my missed television (I’m two episodes behind on Ghost Whisperer, Grey’s Anatomy, and Criminal Minds). I want to watch some of the movie I’ve been meaning to see.

But time, elusive time. The only way I could manage would be to give up sleep and that just won’t cut it.

At least tonight I did do something I really wanted – I took the girls and the dog on a walk around the neighborhood to see the Christmas lights. I might have to go again another time because I think some people were out, but it was still fun and very pretty, and the kids loved it. Then I brought them home and gave them hot chocolate and a snack before bed, and it was a pretty good evening.

And now here I am, just before midnight, frantically typing this out in order to keep up with Holidailies, always rushed no matter what I do. Just a handful of hours, that’s all I need.

I was going to post a flashback video from my goth days, a song I still love to this day, but perhaps I’ll post that next Friday instead. Because honestly, it doesn’t fit the current theme surrounding me. Today I dragged the tree and decorations out of storage and the kids and I set about making it festive around here. We have a wreath on the door, silver garland draped along the entertainment unit, a lit tree in the corner, and lights in the windows. I’m drinking green tea, eating chocolate, and listening to Kelly Clarkson sing “O Holy Night”, and I’m just a little bit into the Christmas spirit (alas, if only I had some eggnog).

So instead of goth stuff I thought I’d break away from the music and do a different flashback, a flashback to my favorite Christmas movie ever, good old Christmas Vacation. While I can take or leave the rest of the Vacation series of movies, the Christmas movie never fails to make me laugh. Often to the point of crying.

And even better, I’ll make it a three for one – these are three (and there are so many more) of my favorite scenes from Christmas Vacation.

Clark goes OFF talking about his boss:

(That used to be my shut down sound for Windows until I realized a 58-second clip might be a bit long for that purpose.)

The sledding scene:

And the classic:

God I love that movie.

(Hi to all the other Holidailies participants!)

On Tuesday, Breanna was standing in the doorway to the kitchen when she announced she felt like she would puke. Then she coughed, hiccuped, and did indeed puke all over herself. She did a repeat performance two more times (I have to give props to two guests who were here to do some music with George – they were sitting at the table with him, eating some wings for supper when Breanna upchucked for the third time in the living room, all of ten feet away – and they kept eating. That’s what I call iron stomachs!).

On Wednesday, she spent most of the day begging for food while I restricted it to a minimum of bland food so as to not stress out her stomach again. In between, she laid on the couch and watched movies with the dog.

Her stomach decided it was not done being upset and I realized she was still sick last night. Today she was better in that sense, but she spent a good 90% of her day lying on the couch with on-and-off mild fevers and she cried a lot because she just hurt and felt awful and let me tell you that nothing in the world sucks quite like being unable to do much of anything for your crying, sick child than to just hold them.

Here’s hoping tomorrow is a better day.

*******
Hayley got her first report card of the year and she is doing very well. She is equal to or above the class average in everything except one topic (ERC which is like a morals class) and as far as I can tell it’s mostly because she’s reluctant to participate, perhaps unsure of answers to questions. I was really happy with her results and I got to see a bunch of her work at the school, tests with great marks, stories she’s written, and so on.

I love getting to see how she’s learning. It amazes me. I told her teacher that it’s so incredible to go from day one of grade one to now and see the progress the kids make, how much they learn in such a short time; she told me it will be even more dramatic between now and close to the end of the year because the pace will start picking up.

I can’t wait to see what they start learning next!

*******
I’ve had people ask me about our wacky Canadian government and what is up with Parliament right now.

The short answer is this: We have a minority government led by the conservatives and their party leader, Stephen Harpy Harper is the Prime Minister. Two of the opposition parties, the Liberals and the NDP have joined forces, with the support of the Green Party and Bloc Quebecois to form a coalition government.

And it’s all very complicated. So complicated that I didn’t know what to support. On the one hand, I didn’t think it seemed very democratic or representative to hold an election just recently, have Canadians elect the person they want, only to have everyone else overthrow that (thanks for the $3million cost of that election for nothing!). And dear GOD I hate the Bloc, and while I don’t mind the liberals, Stephane Dion is like a moronic puppet – did you ever see South Park when Mr. Garrison smokes weed and his head turns into a big balloon and floats down the street? He’s worse than that.

On the other hand, I despise Stephen Harper, can not align myself with the Conservatives on much of anything, and never wanted to see them win to begin with.

But to explain it… well, it takes a lot of detailing and I think that rather than try to explain our complext democratic parliament with ties to the British monarch, I’d rather point you to the Yarn Harlot who wrote the best cliff’s notes explanation ever right here. Thank god, because it’s so much easier than trying to lay it all out myself!

*******
I’m STILL reading freakin’ Breaking Dawn. I just want to finish it. I’m well into part three of the book and it is definitely a vast improvement over part two, and it’s making me wish I could be a vampire too (hee), but I’m still having trouble reading it because it was just so obviously rushed and it’s disjointed, and also right at this moment the characters are being stupid and totally letting me down.

I think when I wrap this one up I’m taking a break from the undead.

*******
And that’s what’s been going on.

There are so many reasons to love the Internet. Staying in touch with family, creating a community by sharing parts of your life online, looking information up on the fly (what was life before IMDB? How else can you answer the question, “oh crap, what movie was that guy in again?” without having an aneurysm?), and so on and so forth.

And another great reason to love the Internet is because then you can see stuff like “Proposition 8: The Musical”!

God, I love Neil Patrick Harris so very much.

I owe a lot to this Beagle, Pearl. Mostly I owe her a lot of stress and frustration, as well as the clumps of hair I have pulled out of my head while telling her to GET.OFF.THE.DAMN.KITCHEN.TABLE.NOW.WTF?!

But all that aside – oh puppy joys, to think we could have gotten an adult dog – I owe a certain amount of fitness to Pearl. When we got her at the SPCA, they warned me that Beagles need a certain amount of exercise. They’re not Dalmatians or Greyhounds who require hours on end of running, but they’re not just lap dogs either.

Well, we don’t have a yard so that means walking and lots of it. On your average day she gets two good, solid walks plus several excursions around the complex to relieve herself. Some days she gets three good walks in. But I’m doing more walking with her than the minimum that they recommend for Beagles. When I can walk her for 20-30 minutes and bring her back and get her to look like this?

Then I know I’ve taken her for a good enough walk for the moment.

The thing is, I take her out many times per day. I take her out at 6:30 am during the week (and whenever we get up on weekends), then again at 8 am for a good 20-30 minute walk, again before Breanna’s nap, around 11:30, again around 2, another good 20-30 minute walk at about 4 or 4:30, again after supper, again when the kids fall asleep (around 9) and once more sometime between 11 pm and midnight.

(God that’s insane, isn’t it? Surely her bladder should last longer than that?! But that’s the way it is if we want to avoid accidents and it’s been about three weeks since I mistook her “please take me out to pee” face for the “look how cute I am, scratch my head!” face only to have her squat two minutes later, oops.)

Aside from the 40-60 minutes of active walking with her, just the quick “go out to pee and come around to the back of the building” excursions still include going down four flights of stairs and then back up again.

I will never need to spend money on a gym membership. I don’t need it. I am so fit now it’s not even funny. Down, then up, then down, then long walk, then up… lather rinse repeat and I’ve got some pretty strong legs and butt muscles these days. Not quite to my old kung fu standards where it was kind of like my entire body was made of steel, but fit nonetheless.

You can spend a ton of money on personal trainers but for me, paying for a Beagle at the SPCA gave me just as much hard-ass training – and I can curl up on the couch and scratch her ears until she falls asleep while I watch “Criminal Minds”. I win!

(But if she doesn’t stay off my table I swear I’m buying a super soaker water gun.)

As I mentioned last night, yesterday one of Hayley’s friends had her birthday party at an indoor amusement center. I had never been there before but heard good things about it. It was no lie – the place was amazing! Unlike a lot of similar places, parents are encouraged to go ahead and join the kids, so I did. In the end I got more exercise in three and a half hours than I do in a full week I think.

They have a small section for kids three and under so at first Breanna started off there. They had a ball pit, little slide, foam blocks and whatnot, and a trampoline, which she loved.

But then I decided, after about 15 minutes or so, that I would show her the rest of the play structure. When she realized that she was allowed to go play with the big kids, she never looked back. They have a triple slide which is pretty high, about one full floor up from the ground floor. Hayley wasn’t too keen on it, but Breanna was curious. I held her in my lap the first time; the second time she went on the slide beside mine and held my hand; after that I was no longer allowed to touch her. In fact, I was lucky if I could catch up to her long enough to even slide with her at all. That child is pretty damn fearless. Once Hayley saw Breanna on the slides she decided she might try it after all and she loved it. I must confess: I loved it too, proven by the fact that I can not tell you how many times I went on them but it was definitely more than 25 times.

Don’t mind my crazy hair. Also? Those people coming down behind us totally got in trouble with the monitor for not waiting for us to get to the bottom and clear the landing pad before sliding down. Ha!

Another very cool thing at the center is their nerf pit. They have about two dozen air “guns” that you can load with the – literally – thousands of nerf balls so that you can shoot at each other. I got one full-on in the face, it totally doesn’t hurt anyone. Hayley got hurt only because she was rushing so much to load her gun that she banged her head on it. I felt her pain – in my hurry to get down to the floor to collect more balls, I dove down a slide and conked my head on the rim at the bottom. Ow.

They also have huge cannon type of things on the ground which you can load up with up to a hundred balls at a time, then you press the button and it sprays the balls all over everyone. It.is.AWESOME.

I had one mini war with a boy who looked to be ten and he was faster than me and had a larger stash (they have all kinds of fabric bags lying around which you can use to collect the nerf balls) and he totally kicked my ass. I made myself feel better shortly after that because I accidentally got some dad right off the top of his head and when he retaliated I used my higher vantage point to my advantage and slammed him with nerf balls.

It was kind of fun. Just a little. They may have had to twist my arm to get me to leave to go eat supper in the birthday party room.

(Seriously, it’s like paintball for kids!)

They had nuggets and fries for the kids, pizza for the parents, and a fun animator who kept the kids entertained. He was great – I really don’t think I could do his job. They played some games, had birthday cake, and then everyone went back out for another hour and a half.

There was only one slide that neither of the girls liked. It was about two stories high and spiraled down to the ground. I went with Hayley and she didn’t like it because her shirt rode up in back and she got that plastic burn many a kid has suffered at parks and the like. She also didn’t like not being able to see where she was going. I convinced Breanna to try it but Miss Fearless was so eager that instead of waiting to go down it WITH me, she ran ahead and pretty much threw herself into it, landed on her butt and took off like a shot. I raced down after her, and there was no screaming or crying, but when I reached the bottom she stood there wide-eyed and very soberly told me, “that slide too scary. I go on the other ones now.”

I went back up all by myself with my camera just for a 365 Days photo op, because I am a DORK.

We’ve already decided that we’re going to go back as a family some day (possibly with others as well) on a ped day just for fun. The kids really had a good time, and uh, so did I. We’ll go around 4 pm since it quiets down a bit by then compared to earlier in the day, we’ll have supper there, and let them go crazy until it closes at 9 pm if they want. It’s decently priced and it’s a fun way for them to burn off energy, especially with the colder weather approaching.

It was definitely a big hit and I’m looking forward to going back!

(Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo, my month of posting in November. However, Holidailies sign-ups start tomorrow, so I’ll still be a posting fool. Or just a fool, your mileage may vary!)

Today, friends of ours held a birthday party at a kids’ play center with a mammoth spread of ladders, slides, nerf ball guns, and obstacle courses. Not only did the kids have a great time, I actually reclaimed my youth and my energy and ended up running around for most of the three hours as well. I can’t even tell you how many times I climbed up to the top and slid down. I’m sure to be exhausted tomorrow but in the meantime I just got the best exercise I’ve had in ages.

Pictures to come when I’m not so tired!