Oh, the memories that come back with this one. There was nothing like a pack of awkward pre-teen girls hovering around the boys, hoping that they’d get to dance to “Careless Whisper” with the “right” guy. Not because the lyrics were romantic and full of promise since it was a song about hurting someone, but because it was longer than your average slow song played at school dances, so you’d get extra time to sway stiffly back and forth with some guy who held you six inches away (but hoping he’d pull you closer).

Man, I miss Wham! sometimes. Even if I sometimes got stuck dancing with the absolute wrong guy to this song on more than one occasion.

Somehow, though I can’t figure out how, exactly, Hayley turned six on Saturday. How six years have gone by since I was lying in a hospital wondering how I was so lucky as to be curled up beside a newborn Hayley, I will never know.

She really only wanted two things whenever we asked her what she’d like for her birthday – an MP3 player and a Hannah Montana alarm clock. So that’s what she got! George and I gave her a little 1 gig MP3 player and she loves it. Of course, the hilarious part is that she’s completely unable to remember that she’s not supposed to sing along since no one else can hear the music. It’s especially funny when she doesn’t know all the words and kind of mumbles along with the occasional shouted lyric. Granted, the humor may wear thin eventually.

We also got her the clock she wanted and that was from Breanna. She was pretty happy with that, although she’s perplexed as to how to tell the time. I think it’s great because it means I can teach her how to tell time without a digital display. She’ll get it. Hayley was also ecstatic to open my sister’s gift which had arrived the week before, because it was the Hannah Montana “Best of Both Worlds” DVD.

When did my kid grow up enough to want electronics and Hannah Montana products?!

Thrilled with her gifts:

She may like Hannah Montana, but she still loves the Disney Princesses too, so we got her an Ariel cake that came with a little bracelet for her to wear.

Blowing out the candles:

A little bit messy, but the cake was great.

She was exhausted by the end of the day. She tried listening to her MP3 player but the battery wouldn’t hold a charge, despite having charged up all day long on my computer, so the next day we replaced it with one that worked.

That was also the last time that she slept in that bed. The little bed will now be passed on to Breanna. It’s about time, really, because although Hayley liked her bed, it was getting far too small for a growing girl. Her actual birthday was a bit chaotic because George and I spent the weekend switching his larger music studio room for her smaller bedroom. The bigger bedroom will now be shared by both Hayley and Breanna.

A friend came over to help paint on Saturday – two pink walls for Hayley, two light blue walls for Breanna. It looks great!

On Sunday we hit up Walmart and got her a fantastic captain’s bed and mattress. I figured she always had a pile of crap stuffed under her bed anyway, so we may as well embrace it and get her a bed that has drawers so at least we don’t have to look at it. There’s also a matching headboard that has bookshelves which we want to get for her next month; since she loves to read in bed at night before falling asleep it would be perfect for her, as well as providing a spot for her lamp, clock, and stereo.

She loves the bed. It took her a long time to fall asleep on Sunday because she was just so excited about it, but eventually she conked out and had a great sleep.

We still have to move a mammoth bookshelf into the new studio, at which point we can put the smaller bed in there for Breanna. Eventually we’ll get the same bed Hayley has now, but we’ll start her off slowly. I’m looking forward to moving it in there since it’s currently sitting in our living room, which is somewhat annoying.

As for her party, there was some stuff going on for a lot of people on the 20th so several of her friends and two of her grandparents wouldn’t have been here, so instead we’re having the party this coming Saturday. I know she’s really looking forward to it and can’t wait to show people her brand new room. In the meantime, I’m just hoping I’ll somehow find time to go to a PPO meeting at the school tomorrow, do my required work all week long, go to a Terry Fox run for the school on Friday, get everything put back in its place, clean the apartment appropriately, make food for the party, and bake a cake. Possibly shower the day of the party too. And breathe. All by 4 pm Saturday afternoon.

Well, that just made me tired. Time to crash in bed in utter denial of all the stuff I have to do in the remaining days!

(I know, it’s Saturday, not Friday. Forgive me. I spent Friday evening emptying out Hayley’s bedroom which is now in the hall, kitchen, and living room so we could start Project: Switch the Rooms. Joy!)

There was no doubt in my mind as to what I would use for this week’s flashback video. Hayley’s birthday is today, the 20th, so of course I had no intentions of going out anywhere without her. However, that being said, if it wasn’t her birthday today, I would be heading to downtown Montreal this evening. Why? Sad or not, it would be so I could relive a bit of fan mania from my youth – I’d be seeing New Kids on the Block in concert tonight. I was all set to buy myself a ticket, even if I ended up going alone, and then I saw the damn date.

I’ll live. I’m not sure how well it would stand up to my memory of their first time in Montreal, which was my first concert ever. I screamed myself hoarse, like Donnie Wahlberg might hear me over the other thousands of people who were also screaming.

I don’t really have one favorite song by them, I loved most of them, but I chose this one in particular since it features my homeboy (see what I did there? All old skool?) Donnie so heavily.

Hang tough, yo!

This made me snicker the other day.

Breanna: Oh! That’s ridicuwous!
Hayley: Ha ha! Ridicuwous?! I know how to say it properly!
Sherry: Oh yeah?
Hayley: Yes! It’s ridicklious!

I giggled for a good five minutes.

And in other Hayley and Breanna moments, an example of how younger sisters copy everything:

I had another video where she counts all the way up to fourteen before jumping but I liked this one just because of the way she says, “my turn now!”

When did they both get so big?

Today’s flashback goes back to my very early teen years, the days when I had a poster of Morten Harket in my locker and I listened to A-ha on a near-constant basis.

I loved the song “Take On Me”. I loved the lyrics, I loved the way Morten sang it with that super high note that many girls can’t even hit. And the video! The first time I saw the video I was in awe. I couldn’t believe they could combine real video with animation that seamlessly. It was so mind-blowingly cutting edge back then, and watching it now, I can see that it’s still a really fantastic video.

The best thing? Sometimes the hot, young stars get a little rough and worn around the ages. You’ll see someone you lusted after decades ago and see what they look like now, and think, “oh HELLO, just say no to drugs, what happened to your face?!” But Morten? Sorry, but he’s still hot.

This video nearly made me pee my pants.

People often ask me about working from home, mostly out of curiosity. They wonder how I do it or what it’s like. Every once in awhile I get a vibe that someone thinks I’m sitting around in pajamas all day, lazily tapping at my keyboard when in actual fact it’s a lot of work. Mostly though, people genuinely want to know and will ask how I go about it.

I laid it all out over here where Deborah Ng was kind enough to host my list of tips. If you’re just starting out with some work-from-home jobs or would like to, you might find some good ideas.

I also reviewed a great anthology with stories collected from around the mom blogs, called Sleep is for the Weak and I tell you why it’s great to read right here.

Enjoy!

It’s a shame, really. Poor Pearl, our new beagle puppy, just isn’t adjusting well to life with our family AT ALL. She’s having a rough time of it. Can’t you just see how incredibly agitated and upset she is?

Yeah, right. Obviously, she’s adjust quite nicely. She has really good energy so she loves having two kids to play with. That soccer ball was her favorite, but alas, a dollar store dog toy is no match for Pearl because it’s already destroyed. We’ll get her a new one. The kids both love playing with all of her toys with her, but it makes me laugh that some of the specific dog toys hold little to no interest for her. Other than the soccer ball, she really only plays with the two pull toys. She is full of disdain for the squeaky toys, and really? I’m FINE with that, thanks very much.

The things she generally likes to play with are an old dish towel and a rubber glove. Hayley in particular enjoys throwing the towel over Pearl’s head and calling out, “Oh no, where did Pearl go? Where’s Pearl?!” until she rushes out from underneath it, tail wagging.

We’re still having accidents, obviously, but I’ve figured out her rough schedule which appears to be a need to pee every hour and a half. I’ve managed to keep the accidents to a minimum just by watching the clock or by taking her out the second she starts to wake up. Crate training is going exceptionally well, which is a relief since I had zero experience in that area. Luckily she enjoys it and often goes in on her own to curl up for a snooze. I only close it up if no one will be with her (such as when I’m putting the kids to bed) or at night when it’s bedtime. George walks her late at night and then she stays in there until I take her out first thing in the morning and so far she’s held it in until she gets outside – perfect!

Walking her is great because she’s really caught on to the “heel!” command. She walks pretty well anyway, but if she starts spending too much time sniffing a post or tries to pull up ahead, I just have to give the leash a short tug and say, “Pearl! Heel!” and she comes right up beside me again. More often than not, the leash is slack which is exactly what I want. Meanwhile, she knows her name and comes when you call her, she gives kisses on command (Hayley LOVES that), and she’s just starting to get a grasp of “sit”. When they say beagles are trainable, they’re not kidding.

The kids are both loving having a dog. Breanna takes a personal offense to any time Pearl goes to sleep. She’ll see Pearl going into her cage and she’ll yell, “Mommy! I don’t want my dog in there!” It will take some time for them to adapt enough to her presence to understand that it’s okay for her to take a break when she’s tired, but they’re learning that when Pearl is in her cage, that’s her space, and we don’t touch her. We can call her if we see she’s waking up but no poking at bothering.

George is happy with the dog too. He’s much more of a dog person than a cat person so he never bothers much with Cricket (who is totally unimpressed with the arrival of a dog but isn’t concerned either since they have mostly separate turf). As for me, I’m ecstatic over having a dog. She’s good for me too. I told George yesterday that my legs were killing me from all the walks and going up and down four flights of stairs so many times a day. Getting a dog was cheaper than a gym membership, will apparently give me the same benefits, and is way more fun.

I realize I missed last week’s Friday Flashback, but it was only because I was doing something very important. I’m sure of it. I couldn’t tell you what it was, but I know it was important. Seriously.

(Okay, I forgot and was busy enjoying some wine and a book.)

This song not only takes me back to my youth, it takes me back to a time when I wish I could pat myself on the head and give myself a hug and reassure myself that those boys? The ones who never liked me as much as I liked them? They weren’t worth it anyway and screw THEM because who needs that shit, you know?

(Besides, I’ve seen most of those heartbreakers on Facebook. I didn’t miss out on much, trust me. So nyah.)

Still, at the time, when I was a teenager full of angst and full of “true love forever and ever oh my god look how good my first name looks with his last name this guy is THE ONE I swear and I will prove it by doodling all over my diary and maybe even this notebook as long as I remember to never accidentally take it to school because I would DIE of embarrassment if he knew I like him before I know if he likes me too WOW” hormones, I rarely got a first glance, let alone a second glance from any of the guys I was into. If I was REALLY lucky I got to be “just friends”, and seriously, when you’re 14 years old, being stuck as “just friends” blows big time. Especially if your “just friend” is “way more than friends” with one of your good female friends. That happened to me a lot.

So I spent a lot of time in my room in the evenings hitting rewind to listen to this song over and over and OVER again. I always put it at the beginning of my mixed tapes so it was easier to rewind it to the beginning of the song. I must have listened to this song at least a thousand times. And that was just in grade nine.

Thank you, Cheap Trick, for “The Flame”, the song that pre-dates Emo but still managed to summon all the same emotions. Without you in my life, I would have been crying in my bedroom without a soundtrack.

Our family grew today.

This is Pearl, our new Beagle puppy. Her name was originally Ava but Hayley really wanted to name her Pearl and she’s young enough that it wasn’t a problem to change it. So far she’s been an adorable nut. She’s not trained on a leash yet but she’s surprisingly good for a puppy who doesn’t have any leash experience. I don’t think it will take her long to get the hang of it. She’s not housetrained yet either, so she’s had several accidents, which was completely to be expected, but she did poop once and pee once outside, so that will just take some time too.

The kids are in love and I’m shocked that Hayley went to sleep before 8:30 pm considering her utter excitement over the new addition.

We were so lucky to get her. I had expected to get a mixed dog, possibly a Lab mix, and the average age of dogs at the SPCA seems to be roughly a year to a year and a half so that was what I was assuming we’d find. It turned out that the best dog for a family with young kids was a Beagle puppy – I hadn’t even seen him when I went in to check the dogs out for one we liked.

That being said, goodness the SPCA is depressing. I mean, it’s a great place and the people who work there are amazing, and I really liked the girl who took care of us today a lot. But it’s just so sad to walk in that room and see all these dogs just staring at you and barking and running around their cages in the hopes that maybe, just maybe you’ll take them home. It makes me want to move to a farm and go rescue ALL of them.

Apparently Pearl’s owner had to give her up because her mother was very sick and being hospitalized so no one would have been home to train her or spend time with her. That’s sad, but it was good news for us, and I’m glad we were able to save Pearl today.

Even if it means I will NEVER sleep in again.