Adventures in dumbness

Locked my keys in the car with the motor running. That takes a special kind of "special".....
An hour later the CAA guy showed up and popped the door open in about 1 minute. Luckily, gas is cheap today.

Adventures in girly-girl land: let me nibble your toes

So, on my quest for refurbishment this year, it is now time to focus on my feet with a lovely pedicure. I had my first professional pedicure a couple of years ago with my friend Libby in Vancouver (I know! what took me so long? Not much of a girly girl). I've been getting by with my own half-assed attempts, but when Maggie started asking, how could I say no? Once again, I called up my girly connection Adriana. She told me about this little place called Tami on Duluth. The next week they were in the newspaper because they do the fish pedicures. For someone who is not a girly girl, I DID know about fish pedicures, and am now surprised that so many people don't. Really people, I am normally the last one to find these things out, keep up! The fish in question are these little carp that eat the dead skin off your feet. It's ok, they don't have teeth. I thought this was bizarre, but I'm up for most bizarre stuff. It took us a while to get organized, but Maggie eventually booked us an early morning appointment on a Saturday and off we went with our other friend Lysanne.

We arrived bright and early and were the first meal of the day. They have two tanks that can take two people each. We were three, so Maggie and Lysanne shared one and I got one to myself (mainly because I was taking pictures for posterity). Maggie was first and she didn't scream, Lysanne had a moment where we thought she might bolt, but she held it together.

After watching them, I was eager to try. Maggie described it best, it's like sticking your feet in club soda, bubbly. I don't have ticklish feet, but Maggie assured me that even sensitive feet are immune from tickles. We were submerged almost to our knees and the fish were also nibbling at our legs. I thought it felt great!

I splayed my toes and they got in between, they nibbled away at my cuticles and heels, everywhere.

The only drawback to sharing a tank apparently is that whoever has more to eat gets more attention. There was some fish sharing that had to be performed between Maggie and Lysanne. I stayed in longest and my feet are still amazingly soft and smooth. We finished the experience with fresh polish, I got some great purple toes. Then it was off for lattes at Myriade and pad thai at a nearby favorite. Another great girly experience!

Ben skates!

Ben skates!
Originally uploaded by dina the m and o

Ben did great skating on Dow Lake in Ottawa. Look at him go!

Shit! Sorry James! Happy birthday!

"... ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
- Molly's soliloquy

Adventures in girly-girl land: some good conversation and a place to park your plane

I went for for first ever waxing appointment last week. I'm not a huge girly girl, so I've managed to avoid a lot of things that involved estheticians. This year, I 'm giving these things a shot. Let's face it, I'm 40 this year and a general refurbishment is probably due. I'm wrinkly, saggy, hairy, and not getting any prettier. This is not a desperate attempt to regain my youth, it's more a reality check and a “this is the best it's gonna get chickie, better appreciate whatcha got”. I know as well as anyone that I'm a pretty good lookin' almost 40, but I can't compete with the young 'uns anymore.

So I call up my friend, Adriana, the bank of all info I need to be hip and cool and smooth and girly. She gave me the number of her lady and on Wednesday, in the midst of a deadline and a snowstorm, off I trudged to have the hair ripped off my legs and bikini area. The lady is question is a middle-aged Romanian who came to Canada 30 years ago and never looked back. It's her business and she's proud of it and you can tell she loves her work. I walked in and told her my name and she said, “I know”. I knew I was going to like her right away. I awkwardly explained that I was a waxing virgin and had no idea what to expect. She looked at me a little annoyed and explained that she would be removing the hair from my legs and bikini. Well, I knew that! She looked up from her appointment book suddenly and asked, “do you want a Brazillian?” I've watched Sex and the City so I knew what she meant. “Oh no!”, I stammered, “just a regular one!”

“Oh thank God”, she said, “I don't think you're ready for that”. I think she was right.

I followed her to her waxing area, a couple of repurposed electric fondue pots simmering with green wax and a reclining chair with a comfy stool in front of it. My pants came off and I got comfy in the chair and she started doing what she does, starting with the bikini area. Keeping in mind that I am new to this, I watched as she took more and more off. More than I have ever shaved. I now have what is called a “landing strip”. She worked very diligently to get the sides even, and even implied that she could have taken more off. I'm thinking that I'd like to keep it as is at least. We will have to have a discussion the next time about shapes and such.

Next came the legs. I'm not particularly hairy, so the legs went pretty fast. She told me that a few more visits before the summer will probably have me nearly hair-free for the summer. I have thin hair, she knows these things.

During all the waxing and ripping, we talked about books and politics. When she started a sentence with, “I was reading last week in The Economist”, I knew why Adriana loves this woman so much. She made me promise not to shave and to come back in five weeks. She refused to take a tip because she's the owner, which may force me to bake for next time. I may like this girly girl thing!

Gonna miss you dude....

"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I know it made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before."
John Updike - "A&P"

Random thought

If wishes were fishes, I'd have a freakin' city aquarium right now.

MmmmmmMyriade!

After reading about it in the local paper and hearing about it from a few friends, I finally got a chance to check out Cafe Myriade for myself. Wow! Tiny place tucked in next to Concordia. I went with fellow coffee lover, Roberta, this morning before the crowds. We had the place mostly to ourselves, and we were able to have a lovely and informative talk with co-owner, Anthony. Not only can he make a perfect latte, he can also impart his extensive knowledge on coffees and teas in a very open and friendly manner. You get excellent coffee, you get it without pretension, a perfect combination.

I started with a latte, lovely, excellent temp, and beautifully presented. Then Roberta and I shared a pot of Ethiopian Yergacheffe. We were so impressed that we each bought some beans to take home. One more latte and we were wired and ready to go home to lunch just as the rest of the city was walking in for their fix.
I will be returning very soon :-)

Text addict

If you were to tell me a couple of years ago that I would become addicted to texting from my phone, I would say that you were crazy. Why would I text from my phone? Hitting the keys multiple times to get the right letters, each word taking forever to spell out, those annoying abbreviations and shortenings and using numbers for sounds (l8er, or is that l8r?), how is that writing? And yet, here I sit two years l8er staring at my cell phone bill and realising that I have been charged an extra $24 in texting fees. This is also why I am on hold with my provider to extend my text plan so this doesn't happen again. Messaging has become so common place and natural to me that it has extended to my phone. My friends have also become bitten by the texting bug and text me, I text them back, the cycle repeats over and over. Why call them when you can write? Why bother them when you know that their phone can buzz and they can choose to read and respond or not depending on their day, as opposed to having to immediately answer an insistent ring? What is it about texting that is more appealing? Whatever it is, it is now costing me $4 extra per month.

epiphany

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead."
- James Joyce, The Dead

Resolutions - or, could you be *more* self-involved?

Ok, the last time I posted resolutions here I didn't end up keeping them and they were fairly simple – learn to juggle and write my friends each a letter over the year. I felt pretty pathetic about it come the end of the year, how lazy can you get? This year I'm not promising to master anything involving hand-eye coordination or anything involving my friends.
This year, I am going to try to be happy. Seems like a very simple thing, and yet sometimes, well, it might as well be learning to juggle. I've been doing a lot of thinking about transitioning and what I would have to change about my life to be happier, but it seems the easier course is to just decide to be happy from moment to moment and make decisions that make those moments happy, if that makes any sense. Perhaps it's selfish.
Last year brought a lot of revelations: life is short and beautiful and should be taken advantage of and savoured. I also feel as though I returned to a place where I can feel the possibilities in my life and the endless potential that is waiting inside me, jumping up and down, eager to run. Perhaps I will do something with it, perhaps not, but I will embrace it this year instead of pushing it down with self doubt and negative thought.
I know that I should say something like, “this year is about family”, or “this year is about making the world a better place”, but I can't. This year is about me, and figuring out what I want. If I manage to save the world too, that's just a happy side effect :-)

And so that was Christmas

My Christmas in a bullet list:

• Ate too many cookies.
  
• Am running slower than before Christmas. But I'm running, so that's something.
  
• Got new running shoes, they rock! And a gc for lululemon - gateway to pants that promise to make my butt look divine!
  
• Kids got too much stuff, I blame the grandparents.
  
• Everyone crowded into our tiny place and ate and drank and were generally merry.
  
• The kids were amazing when they weren't too tired or hopped up on sugar.
  
• Four of our five houseguests got sick after they left. I blame the children.
  
• Managed to enjoy some eggnog/fireplace time.
  
• Weather lovely and mild, although this made it icy as well.
  
• Baking almost all gone, will have to make sure it's gone by the end of the week.
  
• Made soup.
  
• Made a couple of great salads. In-laws found them "interesting".
  
• House still a disaster area. Must get things organized!
  
• Dad got pneumonia and ended up in the hospital. He'll be ok, but it's still scary.
  
• Didn't manage to get to see everyone over the holiday, but there's still a few more days!
  

I'm not biting

So I finally finished the first two teen vampire books by Stephanie Meyer. I wanted to know what the fuss was about. I hadn't even heard of the books until just before the last one came out and then the movie was released, so I already felt a bit under the rock on this one. How could I have missed this big teen girl cult following? Well, after reading two of these I can say, they're no Harry Potter.
The books are incredibly disappointing. They have all the components that make them so appealing, but they are so poorly put together that you just sit there thinking, “this could have been so good”. My biggest beef is that they clearly lacked a competent editor to help the author pare down the repetition, build the plot and fix the huge holes, and create a story that isn't a bunch of jagged scenes thrown together within a binding.
I realise that a few of my friends loved these books as-is, and that's fine. I understand the appeal, I've admitted that all the key ingredients are there: sullen troubled incredibly beautiful man, super powers, protective, impossibility of their love, the protestations, the revelations, the plain girl who is the object of total love for this god-like man, it's female bait, a checklist of it. In fact, you can almost hear the author checking them off one by one as the story goes on – and then repeating the list over and over until you just want to say, “enough! we get it!”. When you finish you want to scrub your brain with something really good and apologize for making it sit through it.
I'm amazed that these managed to get picked up by a publisher and sent out to print in this condition. On the other hand, if something like this can get published and make the author a very happy rich lady, surely there is hope for other bad writing to make it big out in the world, perhaps even mine some day ;-)

Don't know where she gets it

Getting ready for work/daycare/school earlier this week. Kids are dressed and playing in the living room, Steve is cleaning off cars, I am sitting at the table eating cereal. I hear a child come running down the hallway. It's Naomi, starkers except for a fake pearl necklace. She walks in casually, does a small turn, gives me a smile and runs down the hallway again. We have so much to look forward to........

dough, dough, dough

Got four cookie doughs in the fridge ready for tomorrow. Spice, cinnamon sugar, and two types of gingerbread. I also have a batch of ginger bens done. Stephie's coming over tomorrow for some baking which is great because we haven't seen her since the end of October. One of the things I love about Steph is trading crazy parent stories, between the two of us we have a truckload. She's also a crazy artist, so her view of life is nicely skewed. When we were first looking for a shadow for Ben, I put an ad on the university sites for a cheap student, hoping to find someone in psych who was interested in autism. We found Steph instead, an art education student, older than most of her class, from St Catharines so her French was so bad that she was looking for an anglo job that didn't involve telemarketing. What we ended up discovering was a perfect match for Ben in so many ways, she truly understands so many of Ben's quirks and sensitivities. A kindred spirit. Even after she left, we've continued to be good friends and she's still incredibly attached to Ben. In fact, everyone near Ben forms a strong attachment to him, it's part of his charm. His ability to become part of your heart so quickly has made finding people to work with him, and even go out of their way to help us, so easy. He's learned the first rule of people, and while I'd like to teach him not to abuse it, it has served him well.

Why my husband does not want me to write the Christmas letter

Hi Everyone,
What a year! Actually, that's a cliched way to start a yearly letter, you'd think that I could do better than that, but the fact is I can't really remember what kind of year it's been. As most of you know, I have the memory of a gnat, so when I look back at the year I remember very little. In fact, the only things sticking out at the moment are the following:

• We got bedbugs from our downstairs neighbour and it was a pain in the butt.
  
• The kids have been particularly challenging, the girl especially. It's really a miracle that she's still alive.
  
• My workload has increased exponentially without financial compensation.
  
• My house is such a disaster that I've considered throwing out everything I own and starting over.
  
• I think I've needed a nap since June.....
  
• Wait! Ben started kindergarten! That's a good one. He now has more ped days than I have vacation days.
  
• Steve is still alive. Our friends and family continue to be awed over how he copes with me.
  
• The cat who pees on everything is still alive, although honestly I can't say why. This year has been non-stop sniff and launder....
  
• Christmas is in two weeks and I have done no shopping, baking, cleaning, crafting, decorating, or party scheduling, and part of me doesn't really care.
  

Hope you all spend the holidays drunk and happy,
dina

To the person microwaving popcorn at 10:30am

What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously dude, don't you have a lunch? Save the waves of fake buttery smell wafting through my office until the afternoon when I can stomach it.....

An instructional recap

I originally posted this 4 years ago, but it's obviously time for a refresher.....

How to use an elevator:

When you arrive at the elevator, decide if you would like to go up or down and press the appropriate button ONCE. Frantically pressing the button every 1/2 second upsets the elevator god.

When the elevator arrives, stand back from the doors and give the people in the elevator a chance to get out. Barging into the elevator and pressing your floor number before people can get out will result in a thrashing.

When you get out of the elevator, keep going. I know that you think that you are very important and that the people behind you are either capable of walking through solid matter or, in fact, not even there, but some of us cannot walk through incredibly dense material. Be understanding.

When you see someone coming towards the elevator as the doors are about to close, OPEN the door. Do not pretend that you are pushing the open door button and shrug your shoulders.

freakin' nitwits

Adventures in momming

There's nothing like walking into the bathroom, stepping into a puddle of urine, and having no idea which child it came from.......

The Supermom conundrum

For the past two days I have been in charge of getting the kids ready in the morning and dropping them off and picking them up at daycare/school. It's actually gone a bit better than I expected. What I expected was quite a bit more screaming, which is what I normally hear. It seems that the novelty of having mommy do it and my ability to put on boots and coats in front of the tv has kept the hollering in check. Everyone at the daycare and the school seemed surprised to see me. I suppose I could feel guilty about never doing it, but I choose not to. I work outside the house by choice, and that means that the roles are reversed in my house a bit. I still do many tasks that are traditionally “women's work”, but childcare is something that mostly gets done by my husband. He shuttles the children, he takes them to doctor's appointments, he arranges haircuts, and shops for birthday parties. Part of me does feel bad about sometimes being disconnected from the majority of their out-of-the-house activities, but staying at home and working like he does just doesn't work for me, and frankly spending that much time struggling with the kids would kill me.
The whole supermom concept is so daunting. We feel guilty if we want to do less than everything perfectly. I think that I still try to do too much, but the only reason I can try is because I have the support of my spouse who does his share. Of course perfection is impossible, and we all realise that, but there's that desire to try and get everything right. Just remember when you're up making those cupcakes at midnight that there are loads of women in your boat, surrounded by laundry and dirty dishes and screaming children all trying to be perfect and keeping up that pretense, which is why we never invite each other over for coffee.