Oh, piss ant
I just returned from my visit to my office where I learned that I probably don't have a job to return to, sigh....
Anybody need a senior tech writer?

Ah Spring! This is what we are saying today because the temperature is shooting up to an unnatural 16C! It's also supposed to rain, but who cares? 16C! People will be out in their shorts and shedding coats and boots. Ben and I have errands to run today. I finally got around to mounting the chalkboard in the kitchen, so I even have a few things written down where I can see them. I feel so much more organized! I may even stop by my office to see my coworkers and enjoy the fact that I don't have to be back there for a couple of months. It seems hard to believe that I have to go back and not be with Ben all day. Steve and I decided that we would try to have one of us home for as long as we could manage, so Steve will be taking his turn at home when I go back. It's a shame that his company won't allow him to work part-time, but he'll probably be able to do some small contracts so we won't be a total single income household.
The funeral service for my grandmother was very nice. The minister knew her well and so it was very personal, and the eulogy given by my cousin was wonderful. All the grandkids got up and said something, mine was short and sobby - I've never been good at composure when it comes to stuff like this. I took Ben up with me though, which I hope distracted people from my shortcomings as a public speaker. I don't think that it's quite sunk in. I'm sure that when Easter comes, I'll buy her some lillies and daffodils like I always do.

My grandmother died this morning. She was an amazing lady. She spoke more than eight languages, she never complained about having two bum hips that caused her to walk with two canes and later a walker, or her gradual loss of hearing and eyesight, or even the bone cancer that was slowly eating away at her body. She loved her garden, animals, books, and the birds that came to her feeders. She was a very patient and extremely kind woman and she loved life. She made the best pickles I've ever tasted and was a pretty shrewd business woman.
I was her first grandchild, the one who received her name. She made tapes of her telling stories so that I would know her even though we lived far away. When I was older and lived closer, she told me stories of how she came to Canada and met my grandfather, toured Europe on a motorcycle, made it through the depression and the war, and eventually learned how to be a country wife.
I wish that she could have lived forever.

I have many things to do, but Ben's decided to take many naps today, so I have some time to blog. This weekend we got quite a bit done and even managed to relax a bit here and there. On Monday we drove out to the townships to see my grandmother who is in the hospital with double pneumonia. We spent the day there and visited in between her naps. I'm glad that we went because her condition has worsened and now she's not very coherent and essentially shutting down. I feel so sad for her, because I know that she was not ready for this. I'm glad that Ben got to hold his great-grandma's fingers and that she knew he was there. So sad.

Magister Mundi sum!
"I am the Master of the Universe!"
You are full of yourself, but you're so cool you
probably deserve to be. Rock on.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
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Yesterday was absolutely gorgeous and sunny, so Ben and I wandered out for a nice, long stroll. After a couple of frigid months, it was nice to be able to walk without bundling up everything and worrying about windchill. We were out for about two hours and Ben hardly slept the entire time. When we got back home, he managed to stay awake as well, but finally passed out for the evening around 7:30 so that Steve and I could watch Matchstick Men. I must agree with Steve that Nicolas Cage is at his best when he plays twitchy characters, the movie was very good. This weekend we got Ben an exersaucer thingie because he likes to stand now and my arms need a rest. It's got lots of toys on it which he's very interested in, and it's perfect for the late afternoon when he's getting tired of playing on the floor and just a bit cranky waiting for Steve to come home. I also tend to get a bit cranky waiting for Steve to come home, but I was unable to find an exersaucer for adults.

Last night turned out to be very productive. Bill came over and between the three of us, and foreman Ben, we got quite a bit of the kitchen unpacked and some shelves put up. Yesterday afternoon was a time for napping. Ben went down for a nap, so I decided to try to get some sleep as well. I was just drifting off when he woke up, so I took him out of his crib (where he sleeps during the day) and brought him to bed with me. He sat up and played for a while, but he couldn't resist the sleepy mommy vibes and the warm sunbeam coming in the window and we had a lovely hour-long nap all snuggled up together - sigh!

I managed to wash the curtains, make some babyfood, and shower yesterday and that was about it aside from taking care of Ben. It's funny how when you become a mom and are staying at home, showering and brushing your teeth become these monumental tasks worthy of trumpets and applause when before they were merely a daily routine. I know you don't want to hear this, but I have gone days without showering because I don't get a chance during the day, and in the evening I'm too tired to move. Steve had his STC presentation last night. We took Ben with us because he likes going out and is generally very good. There wasn't much of a crowd and Ben was in good form, but he was a bit too enthusiastic about daddy talking, so I had to take him out into the hall about two minutes into the presentation. The first two minutes sounded pretty good to me though. We got home around 9:30 and Ben was sound asleep until we took him out of the carseat and out him into bed. He stayed up and watched two episodes of The Office with us, then we all passed out. I love The Office! I wish that there were more than six episodes in the first series. My favorite character is Gareth Keeler, he's so sad that I can't figure out how the actor manages to keep a straight face during the scenes. Bill told me that the second season is out on DVD in England, so I'm hoping that it's available here soon - can't wait!

Ben's asleep, so it's time for an update. Well, we're moved over into the new place. It's been a crazy two weeks trying to get everything done. Actually, it's been a crazy three months full of projects that were more expensive and longer than we thought, tears, exhaustion, laughter, further exhaustion, and more trips to the hardware store than seem humanly possible. I am now sitting in our new office, crammed with boxes in our new place, also crammed with boxes. The predominant problem seems to be that we already had too much stuff for our old place, so moving into a place exactly the same size with the same amount of stuff was a disaster waiting to happen. There have also been some minor problems, such as discovering that the washing machine drain was a very small rubber pipe coming out of the wall which we had to replace with something much larger, and having no heat on one side of the house for a day because you have to practically hit the breaker with a hammer to get it to turn on. My mother-in-law stayed for an extra two weeks to help us through all this chaos, she left today and I miss her already. My folks came in almost every week for two months to help us out. They may recover by spring, but without their help, we wouldn't even be close to finished. So, my place is a mess, there are boxes everywhere that need to be opened and either unpacked, or edited and stored, and there's still stuff to do at the old place, like clean and patch the walls. Of course there's also putting up shelving, curtains, cleaning, organizing, hold on, why am I sitting here writing? Bye!

Some of you may find this funny
My son discovered that he can give me a raspberry while he's breastfeeding.

What else is new?
Well, we're getting a few more things accomplished over at the new place, but it's very slow going. My folks have been coming in and helping where they can, and Steve's mom is coming in next week which should help if we're ready to paint. Ben and I went out to the mall yesterday and just wheeled around and looked at stuff. He loves getting out, and with the frigid weather that is continuing to plague us, it's one of the few things that we can do without freezing. On Monday we went to a big grocery store and went up and down every aisle. As soon as this cold snap ends (May?) I'm looking forward to spending a bit more time outside. There's a park across the street, so there's no end to the trouble we could get into over there.

Oh
One of my favorite books, One Hundred Years of Solitude, is now an Oprah pick. I'm not sure whether to be happy about this or not.

Jobs

As part of Blork and Martine’s 12 Monkeys project, here’s my list of most of the jobs I've had. I'm sure there are a few that I've blocked from my memory
I was supposed to do this January 14, I'm not usually this late for work...
Farm work - Hay, hay, hay
Senior camp counsellor - In New Hampshire the summer I graduated. Much hijinks and no parental supervision
Ski technician, instructor, patroller - They don't pay much, but you do get free skiing and listen to all the lurid gossip of fellow employees
Filing - I've had so many jobs as a file clerk, it's surprising that I have fingers left. One of the most memorable was a contract for a car dealership garage. Me and a dozen garbage bags full of invoices working nights after they closed - and yes, we do get ripped off - a lot!
Pizza delivery - You get bigger tips when you're a girl, but it's a scary job sometimes
Department clerk/girl friday - Taking care of a load of guys who liked to cheat on their wives while on business trips - I hope all your penises fell off!
Book editor/layout person - No money, but so much fun :-)
Microfilm clerk - Evening shift, which completely rocked because I was young and could get off work at midnight and go and meet my friends at the bar, party til whenever and sleep in all morning-sweet!
Assistant to VP - my first job managing people, the power, the power! They totally screwed me over
Call centre manager - For a telemarketing firm. Although the people I managed were just openers, my conscience made me leave eventually.
Tech writer - First as a contractor, and now something bordering on permanent, it's a career that I really enjoy, for now.
Mommy - The newest addition to my c.v. that has been one delightful moment after another since it started 6 months ago

There's finally a little time to write while Ben has a morning nap. Despite the cold weather yesterday, we bundled up and went to Walmart just to get out of the house and wander around. Our mission was to buy some kid's hangers for his clothes (they were on sale). I didn't realise that you need kid-size hangers until I tried hanging up his little jackets and overalls. I also realised that I never included any of the hangers for baby clothes that I gave as gifts over the years - sorry everyone!
I warmed up and cleaned off the car and packed up Ben for the trip. He gets excited when you put on his snowsuit now because he knows that we're going outside. Large, open Walmart parking lots are about the coldest places ever on high windchill days, but we rushed in and then spent a bunch of time just wandering the aisles and looking at things. I found one of those aquarium things on sale, so I picked it up to replace the mobile. Sadly, the days of the mobile are gone. We've been moving it farther away from him every day, but yesterday morning I walked into his room to discover that he'd managed to get a hold of it and was laying there with the thing bent over while he happily chewed on the giraffe. I moved it to the foot of the crib so he can still look at it from the changing table. He seemed very taken with the aquarium, I've wanted one for ages!

How cold is it?
It's so cold out my mailman is delivering mail in his car. Brrrrrrr!

I don't normally do this, but...

you are the cute but psycho happy bunny. You are
adorable, but a little out there.


which happy bunny are you?
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Merry Christmas, Love, and Joys of the Season to All!

Chaos update
Well, it's past the middle of the month and almost nothing is accomplished at the new place. The biggest problem is that I can't work over there during the day because of Ben, and after Steve gets home, we're both too tired. That leaves the weekends, when we've also had to do all of our regular errands - ack! My downstairs neighbour is helping me knock down a wall in the nursery that had about two feet of space behind it that I can use for storage. Of course there were big old heating ducts there and when we took them out, part of the hallway wall came with it - oops! Now we have to fix that as well, and have an electrician in to take down a register. She's also going to add some plugs for us in January some time. If she's going to do that, we have to remove some baseboards to make her job easier, which means that we're going to have some wall issues which will make painting impossible until she finishes. We should be able to start with the kitchen and bathroom though because we're not doing anything in there until we buy the the place. We've had huge piles of snow falling on us recently which makes wandering around with Ben a bit more difficult. On the up side, the snow is beautiful and Christmassy and Ben looks very Maggie Simpsonesque in his snowsuit. I've almost finished the shopping too. We went downtown on Tuesday and got most of it completed. I pushed the stroller and Steve carried Ben around from store to store, which is easy when you live in a city with such a great underground network. Ben, of course, got a lot of attention. Part of being carried around by someone who's 6'4, is that you get a great view. He looked like a figurehead on a ship, all wide-eyed and smiling at everyone. He's really becoming an atrocious flirt!

Let the chaos begin!
We are now renting two places until Feb 1. Yup, the lady moved the last of her stuff from next door and hopefully cleaned up a bit. This means a month of cleaning, painting, sanding, and organizing for the big move sometime in January. Steve's mom arrives for a visit tomorrow, so I should be able to start getting stuff done over there Wednesday. It will be great to paint in a place without furniture! I've almost decided on paint colours, but I have to take the colour chips over and stick them up on the wall and have a look.
Yesterday officially ended something called black powder hunting season. First it's bow season, then two weeks of rifle, then black powder.I can only assume that this means hunting with muskets. I suppose that the deer have more of a chance this way, as you only get one shot, and then you have to reload, but it just seems silly to me. Do you also dress up in period costumes? To me, hunting is fine for food, but I've never appreciated people heading into the woods with their new red hats shooting at anything that moves for sport. My grandmother puts orange coats on the dogs for a month, because you hear all kinds of stories of city folk coming up with their rifles and shooting cows, and horses, and dogs, mistaking them for deer. My dad used to hunt when we lived in Alaska. He and a group of friends would get flown up north into the middle of nowhere for a week and hunt moose and bear. They normally came back with a couple of moose (mooses?) that they would split between them and we would have meat for half a year. When we moved back here, my dad retired his rifles. He didn't think that it was fair to shoot something that couldn't defend itself. My dad's opinion is that if you're hunting a moose or a bear and you miss, that animal has a pretty good chance to kill you (of course, not as good as if it had a rifle with a site and opposable thumbs), but what's a deer going to do? Blink you to death?

Ack!
Ben's been feverish since Friday night - probably because of his latest round of shots. Must not panic. Tempra's great!

It's a beautiful sunny day and with any luck Ben and I will be going out for a walk when he gets up from his nap. We celebrated our friend Terences' 40 birthday on Saturday and Ben was an excellent party guest, although he did conk out on his daddy, at least he wasn't wearing the lampshade this time. On Sunday, Guislaine came over for a belated birthday supper. Normally, we join her and other friends for a delicious meal at a French restaurant,but this year we couldn't make it. Steve made beef bourginon and I made a chocolate layer cake that was very yummy.
I'm starting to really think about paint colours for the new place. I have to decide soon, we must start painting at the beginning of December. I'm not sure if I'll be using the same colours as I have now, it's probably time for a change. Maybe I'll use some of the colours, but in different rooms. I keep having dreams that I'm walking through the place and it's huge, wishful thinking! It's going to be a whirlwind this Christmas with so much going on. There's a transit strike going on here, so Steve drove himself to work today. It kinda sucks because he bought his bus pass and now has to shell out for gas and parking. Ben's going to the doctor for his next set of shots on Thursday. The first time we went I was so anxious for him - I hate needles. He took it like a champ and only cried for a few seconds, then slept for most of the day. I almost forgot! He tried cereal for the first time on Sunday and seemed delighted with the texture and taste. It must be bland as cardboard, but I'm sure that just to try eating something off a spoon is fun. Most of it gets pushed back out and then shoved back in with his hands. We videotaped the event for posterity. Sigh, he's so super!