Funniest cake screw-up EVER.

Today on Canada A.M., which is my favorite Canadian morning news show (and not just for Seamus O’Regan, shush), they asked their daily poll question. This time it was “are you obsessed with the weather?” It’s a common stereotype that Canadians are indeed hooked on weather. I think part of it is just because we have so MUCH weather. Part of it is also because I clearly missed my calling and should have studied to be a meterologist. Alas.

(I voted in the poll. I chose “yes” only because “HELL YES” wasn’t an option.)

Lately I don’t know what’s happening. Our leaves have changed colors but they’re muted instead of the vibrant shades we usually get. A great deal of them are staying at yellow instead of orange or fiery red which is a shame because there’s nothing more beautiful than a tree full of leaves that look like they’re on fire. It’s sort of like the weather stayed too warm and humid, got cold enough just long enough for them to start, and then it warmed up again. The trees got confused and just said, “eh, screw this then” and dumped them all. We went for a family walk in the woods yesterday like we do just about every year, but it wasn’t as breathtaking as it usually is. I took a lot of pictures but I did it because the woods are beautiful anyway, not because the leaves were screaming at me to photograph them.

When we were getting ready to leave, we assumed it was cold out since it looked like it was out the window. Hayley was sick last week and Breanna and I were coming down with it, so we all dressed warmly. When we got outside I nearly died. Between my long sleeve shirt, my sweater, and my fall jacket, not to mention the fact that Breanna was strapped to me in the baby bjorn, I was sweating before I got halfway up the block and I had to take my coat off.

Today I sent Hayley to school in her tunic and knee socks, with a t-shirt underneath. She’s been begging for her tunic but she needs new tights since her current ones are stretched out, and it’s been too cold in the mornings for just socks. Today it was so warm in the morning that she never even shivered once outside. And I was happy I hadn’t made her wear a long sleeve shirt when the afternoon actually ended up humid.

We’ve actually had to put the A/C on a few times over the past several days – not all day long like in the dead of summer, but A/C in late October? What?

It’s not that I’m looking forward to winter, because I hate the cold and the snow, but I also hate humidity. I like October because usually you can wear sweaters and you feel like baking and you don’t break into a sweat over a cup of tea at 10 pm. Lately, that’s just not happening. Thank goodness I didn’t put my summer clothes away yet, I’m making good use of my t-shirts.

And I’m drowning my weather sorrows the best way possible. With Lindt Madagascar dark chocolate. *drool*

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If you have picky eaters who would rather starve than eat a vegetable, I did a review of a nifty book called Deceptively Delicious over in my review blog. Enjoy!

Tonight we had some good friends over for dinner and it was very nice to just relax and eat tasty food (grilled Italian sausage, cheese & broccoli rice, mixed vegetables, wine, cookies & cream cake) and have wonderful conversation with people.

Because of that, the kids didn’t go to bed until 10:30, which was no big deal since I had anticipated that and gave Breanna a later-than-normal nap so she would be okay to stay up a bit. When I went into the bedroom to put her down, she was very quick to drift off, and I gently rolled her off of me and onto the mattress. Usually when I do that, I get her right over on her stomach since she’s like me and sleeps best that way. Sometimes she’ll stay flat like that, other times she’ll turn a bit so her head faces the other way. Either way, she rarely stirs much.

For some reason when I did it tonight, she immediately pushed herself up into a push-up position, looked around (though her eyes were closed), stiffened up, shouted, “Where penguins?!” and then flopped straight down and went to sleep.

It’s like animated movie Tourette’s. I guess tomorrow morning’s movie will be Happy Feet.

A hilarious combination of lolcats and postsecrets – lolsecretz. I confess, it took me awhile to get into lolcats because they always made the grammar freak in me explode, but I came around and now I love them. But lolsecretz is the best.

This time last month, Hayley was still having some trouble with going to school and would either negotiate (“I promise I’ll go to school tomorrow if I stay home today!”) or come up with reasons why she should stay home, such as her toe hurt or she had “stayed up all night” even though she had slept from 8 pm until 6:30 am. She always had a good day once she was there but she really didn’t want to go. Nowadays, she’s not thrilled to go in the mornings, often saying she wishes she could stay home, but she generally looks forward to going and leaves willingly in the morning. In fact, she usually only has trouble getting out of bed and eating breakfast, but after that she’s fine.

Still, what happened today was a total reversal of a month ago. George woke me up to say that Hayley seemed a bit off and that she had said her throat hurt a lot. We decided that we’d let her stay home because she could rest and be better for Thursday and Friday (Friday is both pizza day and library day, something she’s been looking forward to for awhile). About 40 minutes later, she started crying and told me she really wanted to go to school. She told me that her throat was better after having a drink of water and that she felt just fine.

I called George, who had already left, and we said if she was really better then she could go, so I gave her a muffin for breakfast and started getting myself dressed. Hayley is always slow at breakfast (all meals, really, but breakfast on school days is an especially tedious event), but I noticed she could barely keep her head off the table and seemed to be having trouble eating. It turns out that her throat still hurt, she was warm but not feverish yet, and had a headache. And she STILL wanted to go, insisting she was fine.

I called George back, and said with some amazement that our daughter who had tried to fake being sick several times in the past was now trying to fake being well! That’s such a total switch. I convinced her that it was okay to stay home today. She was upset because we had ordered her a hot lunch and she didn’t want to miss it, so I told her I’d make her a hot lunch myself (it was pasta with brocolli and tomato so I’ll make her pasta with peas and carrots since that’s what I have). She was disappointed because she had gym today so I explained that running around is hard with a headache. She said she would miss her friends, so I mentioned what George had pointed out, that she could make her friends sick and then they wouldn’t be at school tomorrow or Friday.

I also told her that when I was little, I used to cry when I had to stay home sick from school because I loved going so much, and that it was okay but that it was also okay to stay home and rest when you’re not well, and that teachers and other people appreciate not having germs brought to class.

In the meantime she’s been keeping quietly busy. We did some of her usual morning routine that she has at school, discussing what day it is today, singing some songs, and dancing the hokey-pokey. She had her snack, and she’s done some art work and practiced writing by making a card and paper puppet because today is also George’s birthday.

In general, it hasn’t been too bad. Now she’s sitting on the couch, looking at some of her new books that she received from Scholastic the other day. She got some great stuff!

Soon I’ll make her lunch and convince her to do her post-lunch quiet time that they do in class – she doesn’t have to sleep, just rest quietly. Later I’ll let her help me make a cake for George if she promises not to cough in the batter.

Hopefully with the low-key day she’ll be okay to go back to school tomorrow because clearly she really wishes she could have gone.

I don’t know how accurate this is, but this site has photos of families from various locations around the world and their groceries for the week, plus what they paid for them. It’s pretty awesome.

Happy Feet is playing on the DVD player even though no one is really watching it; it’s mostly there so that the kids can stop what they’re doing and then run over to dance along when the penguins do.

Hayley is making a card for one of her new friends in the other Kindergarten class and has gotten glue and eight metric tons of gold, silver, and green glitter all over my tablecloth. Which is vinyl so it can be cleaned, but glitter takes three weeks to fully clean up, and of course she’s doing her artwork at my spot at the table so that I get to be the one to ingest it with my food.

Breanna has a blue tongue because she grabbed one of Hayley’s ink stamps and licked it. Now she’s running around the living room with her blue tongue sticking out, waving a Dora purse stuffed with random toys over her head and stomping her feet in time to the music.

George is trying to catch up on some sleep since he played last night and only got a few hours of sleep before Hayley woke him up.

I’m trying to ingest some caffeine and haven’t gotten out of my pajamas yet. I slapped out a bit of work and have to do a bit more later but I really just want to go curl up on the couch with a thick blanket and a good book. And some SILENCE which will not come until about 8:30 tonight if I’m lucky.

Welcome to Saturday in our home.

One of the most annoying things about living in the province of Quebec (and there are many) is the roads. Not only are our roads utter crap, but they will then re-pave the roads, using the same crap stuff as last time just so that it will need to be done again several years later. This keeps the road construction companies rolling in dough. And seriously? You can tell you’re in Quebec without road signs. Years ago, my sister-in-law lived in Ottawa. I was dozing in the car on the way home and the car was rolling smoothly along the Ontario roads. All of a sudden, it was like driving over crumbled gravel; I opened my eyes, and saw signs showing we were now back in Quebec, land of the atrocious asphalt.

Anyway. The point of all that is that our suburb has been undergoing so much road work that it’s chaos to drive to half the places we want to get to. One day we had to go to George’s parents’ house and what should have been a five minute drive ended up taking us 20 minutes because we had to go so far out of our way just to avoid the traffic caused by rush hour combined with construction. Thank God I wasn’t trying to get to the hospital to give birth or anything because I would have been having my baby on the side of the road.

Right now our own streets are being ripped up and redone, which is LOADS of fun. Traffic is insane and the noise levels can get quite appalling. On the one hand, it was kind of fascinating to see the machines they use. Like this, uh, “thingy” which shreds up the asphalt and then spits it all out into a big truck to be hauled away to lands unknown:

And then this little zamboni-esque vehicle comes along behind it and essentially dusts and sweeps away all the leftover debris. I like it because it’s cute and also fairly quiet, not making any more noise than your average street cleaner does.

But the steamrollers. Oh my LORD, the steamrollers. I’ve never been so close to one before and I had no idea that a) they are just about as loud as a plane breaking the sound barrier, and b) they can make an entire apartment complex vibrate, right up to the fourth floor. Breanna has been freaking out for two days now because it scares her. It will start up and she’ll shriek, “What’s THAT?!” with big, round saucer eyes, and then she climbs up my leg like a monkey on a tree and clings to me, asking, “Steam? Okay! Okay Mommy! It okay!” as she waits for my confirmation that it is indeed okay.

Right now they appear to be on lunch break since it’s half past noon and all is quiet out there for now, but Breanna is napping, so inevitably they will most likely start up soon, waking her up before she’s had a decent rest, which will make her lovely company by late afternoon. The steamrollers already ruined supper last night, what with the fact that the overachievers were still working at 6 pm – I got to eat my meatloaf with Breanna perched on my lap, and she ate bites of her own meal in between “What’s THAT?!” wails. Fun times!

Do you know what they sound like? If you’ve ever seen your basic sci-fi movie you’ve heard similar sounds. When the heroes of the movie are hiding in some underground bunker or in the storage area of a space ship, or whatever, and the evil robot-esque villain is searching for them, there’s a sound that signals it’s getting closer, and you sit with baited breath, wondering if they’ll be found. And it sounds just like the steamroller in this video that I took from Hayley’s bedroom window:

Seriously. I’m living in my own sci-fi movie. I just have to close my eyes and I’ll find myself in some post-apocalyptic story, hiding out with my family and waiting for Vin Diesel or Ah-nold to come rescue us. I hope I get a really big rocket launcher to protect myself. Or to use to blow the steamroller up if it wakes my daughter up.

Between the apple crisp that is cooling on the counter and the meatloaf that is cooking in the oven, my kitchen smells so damn good that my stomach can’t stop growling.

(Aside – every time my stomach growls when Breanna’s close by, she looks at me suspiciously and asks, “fart?” Sheesh.)

I can’t wait until supper.