Last night while preparing to serve dinner, the cat was grooming herself in the living room.

George: Angel! Stop licking your ass out here!
Hayley: Dad!* It’s good to keep your ass clean.

Snort.

*When did my first born child become old enough to use Dad instead of Daddy?

(By the way, if you’re not seeing the new design, hit refresh. I went with a goofy header image because I was in a silly, slap-happy, sleep deprived mood last night.)

There is so much constant hooplah about how Antonella Barba shouldn’t be on American Idol because of her racy photos from her past. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the pictures she took. I don’t think she should be on the show because she sings like shit. I wish people would stop voting for her just because she’s pretty. It’s a singing competition, not America’s Next Top Model.

Okay, I have nothing to blog about really. I’ve been trapped in this apartment for too long between weather and an under-the-weather Breanna. Unless you want me to sit here and write about the very exciting walk I took to the store the other day to buy a new digital thermometer for Breanna or about how I love the fact that George is not the kind of guy who is squeamish about the fact that he had to go out and buy me pads today, well I just don’t really have much to say at the moment (though I’ve been keeping busy writing stuff over at PittWatch).

So I’m totally ripping off the so very awesome Chantal who is also automatically cool because she’s Canadian too. She had a blogging blank going on too and so she asked people to comment with some questions for her to answer.

My rules: No more than three questions per person. Go ahead and ask me something serious, something heavy, something silly, or something embarrassing. Keep it PG-13 though please, my family reads here. I won’t answer anything dirty, sorry!

Okay, go ahead, ask away!

After four very long days, Breanna’s fever finally broke. It kept going down and then coming back and it was just ridiculous. She didn’t experience any other symptoms after the fever disappeared so I guess there was no weird virus going on, just the damn teeth. We’ve had some alarming diaper changes but that’s about it.

It was just really nice today to see her smiling and laughing like she usually does. She was still tired and a bit clingy but I actually managed to have a shower without any screaming and I got the dishes done TWICE today, so go me. That’s a vast improvement over the past few days, trust me.

She sure was a cute little sickie though, playing with my old Sesame Street set on Saturday night at 11 pm when she should have been sleeping but was too hot and feverish to rest:

Thank goodness for a return to normal life, such that it is!

So by now, most people know that PayPerPost is a blog marketing service for sponsored posts about various services and goods.

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I’ve been reading a bunch of random stuff today; I ended up looking at this collection of photos of homes and towns in Burkina Faso (Africa), which is often considered the poorest country in the world (and with the highest rate of illiteracy), sometimes alternating with Niger. When you hate your home and your bills and your life, look at these pictures. Talk about perspective.

It’s Friday Saturday (clearly I need a more visible calendar). Let’s sum life up in images okay?

Last night, shortly before bed, I took a picture out the sliding doors from my computer chair. I was feeling a little claustrophobic for some reason, why do you suppose that is?

Apparently we got over 30 cm of snow. That’s almost 12 inches for Americans. Part of the problem is that we face a street with nothing across from us so the wind just blasted the snow up against the windows. By this morning the wind had stopped and the snow had settled and it was somewhat, uh, better. Not that I’ll be opening those doors any time soon.

Meanwhile, today Breanna was on day three of being feverish on and off (more on, unfortunately). I’m 99% sure that it’s teething because her cheeks are flushed and a peek inside her mouth while she screams shows that four (FOUR) molars are all breaking through the gums at the same time. Yippee. She has no other symptoms. Of course, that 1% of me that isn’t sure it’s teething worries she has something more sinister like the plague or something, but I doubt it.

Today I carried her around because she didn’t want to walk and she was just absolutely miserable and uncomfortable – it took two hours for the Motrin to kick in and give her even a little relief. Eventually my arm gave out and I strapped her into the Baby Bjorn for awhile and you can see how thrilled she was about life in general.

Poor Breanna.

Hayley lucked out though because once George’s dad finished shovelling over there, he came to get her and took her shopping (how come no one takes ME shopping?) and they played in the snow. George’s mom always says that he sleeps really well after he spends the day with Hayley because she is just exhausting with her four-year-old energy. At least she got to go out in all that snow on a nice, warm-ish day, and I didn’t have to feel guilty about not being able to take her out myself. Breanna and I just hunkered down and cursed teeth for being so stupid.

Speaking of Hayley, I took a macro of her eye this morning.

There are four things about this picture that are amazing.

1. She stood still long enough for me to take it without making it blurry!
2. The color of her eyes – that’s not touched up.
3. The length and darkness of her eyelashes.
4. The fact that her eyes are so drastically straight compared to when she was a baby before she had her strabismus corrected. It’s amazing what they can do surgically.

Clearly, I am not doing anything exciting tonight since I’m posting. I’d watch a movie or one of the episodes off the first season DVD of “Criminal Minds” but Breanna’s sleep is spotty at best right now and I figure I’ll just get interrupted. Maybe I’ll go read a book and have some tea and cookies instead. Let’s hope Breanna feels better tomorrow!

I hope you’re having a good weekend.

For the record, if you aren’t already tired of reading me right here, you can also go read my submission to Urbanmoms.ca, where I lament my lack of privacy in the bathroom.  Then when you’re done laughing with (or at) me, I am now also going to be writing daily (or just about) about the goings-on in the Angelina Jolie-Brad Pitt household over at Pittwatch.com – and seriously, I’m excited about that because God knows I have an inexplicable fascination with her and it’s a relief to have a legitimate reason to read and write about her now.  Of course, I also still write for Montreal Metroblogging although I’ve been very bad about updating and I must get on that before they boot me out.

So yeah, I apologize for leaking my words all over the Internet!

I’m pretty sure I mentioned that after my grandmother passed away, my mom and uncle told me to think about anything that I wanted to take from her house before they packed the rest of it up to take to the church. I ended up taking her bedroom dresser, as well as some other odds and ends. then the dresser ended up sitting in our hall for, like, a MONTH because George couldn’t move my old one (a.k.a. the freakin’ Titanic) himself. Finally though, we were able to get our friend to come and help and the switch was made.

I wish that I had it for some other reason, like that my grandmother got new furniture and gave it to me. It’s hard to be excited about furniture you got because someone passed away. That said though, I really love it. It’s not as wide as my old one was – which is part of the appeal – and it has fewer drawers, but the actual drawer space is pretty much the same so I haven’t lost storage for my clothes. It’s beautiful and old and so solid.

Also, the fact that the surface is smaller means I feel less inclined to pile stuff on it. As it is, I’m thinking of taking some of the little knick knacks off so it doesn’t get cluttered. Yes, I still have unicorns on my dresser. Yes, I’m 32 years old. Leave me alone.

It’s funny, the things that you think about though, after it’s too late. Now that everything is gone I can think of a few little random things that I wish I had taken. Like the glass lamps that she used to have on the dresser, they were really pretty, and since they were glass even a little 40-watt bulb made the room bright. And strangely I wish I had taken her little butter dish. I rarely use butter since we get margarine, but we ran out last week and I used a block of butter that we had in the freezer. We just kept it wrapped in foil on the door of the fridge, but I remember my grandmother always kept hers in the cupboard (keep dairy refrigerated be damned!) in a little tin butter dish. It’s silly I guess, but I have weird attachments that way. That’s why I love my great-aunt’s wire wish so much.

Anyway, when I had to move things from one dresser to the other, I decided it was a good time to toss out some stuff, like the socks that have holes in them, or put things I don’t wear into a bag for charity. Underneath a pile of shirts I hadn’t worn in years, I found some old pictures. One of them was my grad picture. And I ask you: What were we thinking back in 1990? Who told us that we should make our hair as big and puffy as possible? Why did we curl and tease our bangs? Why did no one ever intervene and gently introduce me to a pair of tweezers? What on earth made Stephen Moore look at me that day and decide, “yes, I will ask HER out”?

Why was I channeling Lori Singer?!

No seriously. That’s me, circa 1990, age 16, and thinking I looked damn hot.

Forget asking what’s wrong with Britney and her bald head. What the hell was wrong with ME?!

One of my favorite things about having two kids is the moments where they get along and do cute things together. Because of the age difference, right now there’s a fair amount of squabbling because Breanna wants to do everything her big sister does, and naturally Hayley is NOT cool with that, but at least a few times a day they do something that makes me smile and hold on to the hope that they’ll be friends when they get older.

My own sister is five years younger than I am, and growing up we fought A LOT and it was only when we got older that we started getting along and now she’s one of my best friends in the world despite living two provinces away. I would love if my girls could get there while they’re younger.

Yesterday they sat on the couch, each with a magna doodle, drawing pictures together.

And the night before that, in a rare moment of humanitarianism, Hayley shared her granola bar at snack time when Breanna climbed up on the couch beside her.

Sometimes they really are good little buddies.