1. I am getting the redesign bug again and have uploaded several new themes to play with so if you come by and everything looks all crazy, don’t panic. This is a good time to be reading me via feed reader so you don’t have to see any explosions.
2. A kind, wonderful, amazing reader sent me – no kidding – a laptop that she no longer used. Tonight, a fairly hot and humid night, I am not sitting in my corner at my desk, sweating. Instead I am sitting directly in front of the air conditioner that sits over the dining room table and I am quite comfortable. Laptops are the bomb. I still can not express enough thanks to the wishes-to-be-anonymous person who actually gifted me with this. Because I am an enormous DORK, my shiny black laptop is called Severus Snape. No, seriously.
   
3. I am seriously considering re-reading the last Harry Potter just because I read it too quickly.
4. I wrote up a book review on my review site that you should check out if you are a parent with an alienated relationship with your older teen/adult child.
5. It is amazing the weird and funny stuff that you can find on the Internet, but it has been a long time since I have been so in awe of something as I was when I saw the 1500 Filipino prisoners re-enacting the dance sequence to Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Holy crap it is awesome.

I believe that is all.

After much anticipation, I spent the vast majority of my weekend reading the last – very last, sniff – Harry Potter book. Although I’m sad that the series has come to an end, I totally loved the book and was very satisfied with how JK Rowling wrapped everything up. I was pretty tired today because I was up late on Saturday night reading and then last night I had to stop reading at 3:30 am or risk falling asleep in mid-sentence. I only had a hundred pages to go but there was no way I could hold out so I finished them today.

Now I’m debating how long I should wait to re-read it. I’m sure I read it a bit too fast (though I find that I’m not as fast a reader as I used to be, likely due to having kids!) and missed stuff.

Now I have to figure out what the hell I’m going to read now.

No, no. I’m not closing up shop or anything. I am, however, pretty much staying offline for the next 48 hours. I’ll be online briefly to do about one hour of data entry work today and another half hour tomorrow night, but other than that, there will be no email checking, no blog browsing, no updating, nothing.

Right now I’m not even really looking while I type because I keep looking out the window every ten seconds to see if any of the vehicles driving by might happen to be the Canada Post truck stopping to drop off my much-anticipated copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which my sister bought for my birthday.

As soon as it arrives I may as well cease to exist as everything other than reading will be done on auto-pilot. I’m going to find out if I can still walk around doing stuff with my nose buried in a book without tripping like I used to do when I was a kid.

I have to stay offline because I have done everything possible to avoid spoilers and I’ll be damned if I’m going to risk being spoiled now (and I don’t intend to ruin it for anyone else when I finish it). I didn’t even go online last night, choosing instead to finish re-reading book six to remind myself of all the details.

And so on that note, I’m off to quickly do my work so that I can get down to business whenever my book arrives. See you on the other side!

Growing up, my sister and I were just far enough apart in age to have trouble getting along. With five years between us, we had a whole world between us. We had our great moments too, of course, but we also fought pretty much daily. By the time I was a full-blown teenager she was at an age where she wanted to copy all that I did, said, and wore and I was at an age where imitation WAS not flattery.

It wasn’t until we were much older that those five years didn’t seem to matter anymore. Then we got along, talking about anything and everything, borrowing clothes (I borrowed every sun dress she owned when I went to Mexico, for instance), and doing fun stuff like the time my friends and I snuck her into a goth club when she was still only 17 years old.

Now she’s one of my best friends. Even though she lives two provinces away and I can’t just call her anymore to ask her if she wants to come over on a boring Saturday afternoon, it hasn’t changed anything else. We still talk on the phone even if it’s not as frequently as it used to be, we email each other several times a week, and she’s still the first blog I race to when I see in Google Reader that there’s a new update. It makes me frustrated now, to think of all the time we wasted growing up, blowing time on yelling at each other, throwing cups full of dishwater at each other, and carefully laying down masking tape on the floor to divide the shared bedroom at my grandmother’s in the summer while screaming at each other to “get off my side of the room!” every ten seconds.

We were lucky in that we actually spent a lot of our weekends and summers together in the same circle of friends, sort of. My best friend up north had a sister the same age as Amanda so ironically we did spend a great deal of time together. We just bickered a lot while doing it. Every once in awhile, we’d have a great moment like the clear night one summer down in Vermont on vacation when we both sat on the rocks beside Lake Champlain and I told her everything I knew about astronomy and she asked more questions, and it was so nice. The next day we probably threw rocks at each other. If only we had had more of the good moments instead of fighting with the person who was so important.

Hayley and Breanna have a little over three years between them. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been better to have even less time between them in the hopes that there would be more camaraderie and less fighting. I doubt it though. I guess it’s just part of two people being forced to grow up with each other in one small space. I still hope though that as they get older they’ll be close enough in age to be, well, close.

They have days where I am amazed I’m not bald what with all the hair-pulling I do in frustration as they poke and prod each other, scream and cry, throw things, hit each other, and drive me up one wall and down the other. Some days it seems like every single time I leave the room to do something frivolous like wash the dishes or cook supper the two kids who were miraculously quiet two seconds ago are suddenly both screaming at each other – and for me.

But they have their great moments too. Times when Hayley shares her food or toys without prompting, times when Hayley asks Breanna to come play in the ball tent with her, times when Breanna walks over to Hayley and gives her a big hug, and times when they are just so damn cute my head could explode.

Hayley loves to “put Breanna to bed” and playing Mom. She’ll give Breanna a pillow, a stuffed animal, and cover her with a blanket (which is how you know Breanna’s not actually going to sleep because GOD FORBID you cover her up if she’s going to bed). Sometimes she’ll sing a lullaby to her, other times she’ll climb in beside her and snuggle her.

I hold on to those moments because these days they’re fleeting. We’ll see if they become more common when they’re older. It’s my big hope that they realize what a great friend they have long before my sister and I clued in.

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I have two reviews up today. I did a book review for a great fiction novel called Lost and Found and I also did a review of one of our favorite toys around here, some of the animals from the Noah’s Pals playset. Go check them out!

Tonight, after supper, Hayley asked George if he would play ponies with her. George asked how you play ponies and her answer was, “you just take them and do whatever you want!” He said okay, so she ran to her room and collected a handful of her My Little Ponies and brought them out to the living room.

Hayley took one of her ponies and, in that high pitched voice all girls seem to use when making dolls talk, said, “Hi there! How are you?” to George’s pony.

George made his pony chase hers while making loud farting noises. Every time Hayley tried to get her pony to talk, George would lift his pony’s tail and make a louder fart noise. Hayley was almost crying from laughing so hard.

Breanna, who had been sitting on the other side of the living room, ran over and starting crouching down, making loud fart noises while shaking one of the other ponies around.

And me? After I wiped my own tears of laughter, I announced, “I AM *SO* BLOGGING THIS!”

One more reason for me to eventually acquire and learn to use a sewing machine – turn an adult sized shirt into a child’s dress.

This is fascinating to me. Go to this site and click on portfolio. Then choose one of the thumbnails, and when the photo loads, put your mouse on and off the picture to see how touched up celebrities are. Click the photo to close. It’s amazing to see how all these perfect people aren’t actually perfect; I know we know this logically but it’s still a big shocking to see it so blatantly.

On Saturday afternoon, while George was out for a bit, I took a long, hot shower. Okay, it wasn’t THAT long, I do have two kids, but it was long enough to give my hair a good washing and conditioning. When I got out, I didn’t just rub my hair with a towel and call it a day – I used the hair dryer, I busted out the heat-activated shine enhancing gel, I used a big round brush, and I actually (gasp!) styled my hair. I even used a touch of hairspray and I can’t even remember the last time I did that!

When I put Breanna down for a nap, I came out and sat on the living room floor with some nail polish. I painted my toenails a vivid red, and my finger nails a soft, sparkly pink-white shade (then I did the same for Hayley).

After supper, I put my contacts in, put on a bit of eyeshadow and eyeliner, and threw on a long flowery skirt, a black tank top, and a pair of shoes that would show off my red toenails.

And THEN George and I put the girls in their car seats, whisked them over to his parents’ house, dumped them off, and left. On a DATE. We went on a date. Just the two of us, no kids, no friends, just us. Do you know the last time we went on a date with just the two of us? Do you? Because if you do, I would love for you to tell me because I can’t actually remember. *

Where did we go? HELLO, DO YOU NOT REALIZE WHAT WEEKEND THIS WAS?! We went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, duh. And I nearly peed myself from the excitement of finally seeing it. I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but in general, I loved it tremendously and although they left out a few things I would have loved to have seen (no kidding, the book is over 800 pages long, of course they couldn’t include everything or else I’d still be there), overall I thought they did an amazing job and I loved it. Also, it bears noting that Daniel Radcliffe is becoming a better actor with every movie.

When the movie was over, I babbled excitedly, filling George in on the extra stuff that didn’t make it into the movie (not that he wanted to know, being perfectly happy to live life without ever reading the books, that heathen) and talking about how I am – no joke – setting my alarm for 7:30 next Saturday so I can be up at the store when it opens at 8 am to buy the final book. If my kids were a bit older I would very seriously head downtown and park my ass at the big bookstores for their midnight release.

Anyway. Dork, I know, but I love me some Harry Potter.

On the way out from the theater, George called his dad and found out the girls were still up, which I had expected since Hayley never sleeps if she can avoid it and Breanna had napped until 4:15 that afternoon, and told him we’d be there in about 45 minutes. We swung by to see our friends Dean and Joanne so that I could meet their new puppy. Since Joanne made such a fuss over how nice I looked, having made such an effort, I got her to take a picture.

After a quick beer with them, we headed out to pick up the girls. Breanna was very jolly when we arrived but was also very happy to see me arrive at the door. Hayley insisted on putting on a brief show so she sang for us before we finally headed home. Breanna conked out within five minutes, at 11:30 and Hayley hung in there until just about midnight.

I love being with my kids and I love going places where they’re welcome too, like last weekend when we went up north – family fun is definitely a big priority. But I have to say that getting all ready for a date like I used to once upon a lifetime and just going out somewhere with George is something that I enjoy and really need to do more often.

But not until after next weekend when I’m done my reading marathon and find out who lives and who dies at the very end (SOB) of the Harry Potter series.

* Oh wait. I remember. The last date we went on together like that was when we saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban back when Hayley was about a year and a half old. We missed seeing Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire because I was busy pushing Breanna out of my body the same day I was hoping to see it. I am nothing if not predictable, right?

If I didn’t live in a place where we still got one last ditch snowfall in May, I would love to own a porch house.

I thought that this was fascinating, but alas there is no slit in my medicine cabinet.