wuthering

Wow, half the States are snowed-in and here we're having some serious wind and some rain. No power dips yet (and lord, I've probably jinxed the whole province now) but the wind is a constant noise. It's sort of what I imagine living out on the moors would be.

 - A little aside here: There are very few things finer than hanging out with your kids on a blustery night and watching the original Grinch and having the big boy sing along with the songs. -

It's not even really cold. I wouldn't want to hang around outside without a coat for too long, but it just feels damp outside, not at all jingle-bell-y and yuletide-ish.

But we still have time for it to feel like Christmas!  This week is the kids' concert (Rosey has shiny silver shoes) and some great parties - Ho! Ho! Ho! I feel my holiday spirit rising!

Ooh! And I found my notebook! Not really a Christmas miracle, but yay!

transitions

So. daysgoby looks different.

It's not that I hated the old set-up (I liked it! Basic! Easy to fool around with!) but I couldn't set my pictures to 'biggun' size and when I tried to fix it, I.....broke the old template.

So! Here we are. And I (to my surprise; I can be a trifle curmudgeonly when it comes to new-fangled things) .....really like it!

I've got a ten-minute window between cooking and serving dinner, let's see if I can bang out a readable post.

I worked at the hospital today. It was a long, slow (ish) day, which was good because I couldn't find my notes. I've had a little notebook that I've carried around since I started there, with reminders and names of tests and extension numbers and such, and I can't find it.

Well, crap.
I managed not to hash anything up, since I remembered passwords from Friday (the last day I worked) but if I go another three month stretch without working there, it's going to be painful.

I need to have another scour around the house, then I'll panic.

And if the external stuff wasn't enough to drive me nuts, the child factor is killing me.

Rosey: (earnestly) You know Friday? The day after my leg hurt and I came home from school and the day I went to the museum and saw all the trees and the toys and made reindeer food? The day before Saturday which was yesterday?

me: (pouring water down my throat in long smooth gulps and wishing it was vodka) ummm...I think?

Rosey: I remember that day.

ARGH! She lay on the floor the other night and told the dog all about her day and read him several books and asked his opinion and babbled on happily for an HOUR. (Much to the dog's consternation. He tried hard to understand but was too fixated on the word 'treat' which didn't fall from her lips once.) Her brother went through this stage when he was three. I thought we were safely away from it, since she's six now.

Hmph. My grandfather nicknamed me 'Bobblegush' when I was about her age.

 A girl and her captive audience.

 Jasper: There had better be a Milkbone at the end of this story.

Gasp. You don't think I'm raising a blogger, do you???

winter blues

Even though you have to remember that the river is (bone-chillingly) cold, 

the blues are just gorgeous this time of year.

dear people, I am insane

Insane? but why? It's almost C*H*R*I*S*T*M*A*S!!!

To which I snort Christ.

I need a year to get ready for Christmas, and I never seem to find one. Oh, I start out the year with plans! Big plans! Plans about how this year I will buy only meaningful things! We will give more, spend less! This year will be the one my children have less under the tree, but more in our hearts!

And while we're doing more as a family and being careful to be more in the moment, do you know what I did? I went on Chapters last night and bought not only a paper electric guitar (I have no idea either) but an accordian. For a child.

Insanity runs rampant around here at Christmas time....

Add to the usual holiday psychological mish-mash the fact that beginning next week, I will be unemployed, and you begin to see why an accordian seemed like such a good idea last night. I'm out of my mind.

(Unemployment short version, minus the wailing and knashing of teeth: Agency re-structuring and not renewing my position. They gave me a month's notice. I bear them no ill will.)

But it doesn't do much to lessen stress levels. Or obviously, my insanity threshold.
Step away from the Chapters website, Jess.....

halloween leftovers

Brought to mind by Kyran

What? You don't still have a pile of candy? You must not have a nine-year old who is OBSESSED with making it last until Christmas.

No, the costumes. Oy, the COSTUMES.

Between work and life and the crazed-errand-running soft shoe shuffle a few days before Halloween, I had an epiphany.
An epiphany, right there in the middle of the costume aisle.

We had PLENTY of costumes already. They were all in the dress-up box. So, I bustled home and grandly (and not at all nastily) told the kids that this was the last year I was going to buy costumes.

You would have thought I had declared that this year we would be collecting candy for the express purpose of throwing it in the mud and then feeding it to the dog. There was a bit of self-righteous snorting. There may have been some weeping.

But I held firm. After all, part of the fun of Halloween was creating a costume!

Cass had changed his mind, again, and now wanted to be a zombie. So off I went to the internet (god bless the internet) to learn how to do zombie makeup. He was mollified when I promised him he'd look cool.

R wanted to be a witch, with the regulation black dress and hat - but not an evil witch, a good witch. Hmm.

I think it worked out well.

 He looked rotten - and rotted! - and old. Several adults took a step back when he showed up on their doorstep and I think he enjoyed that the most of all.

And we added sparkly makeup to Rosey's all black get-up and she was sufficiently not-evil enough to suit her.

So, Halloween was great! Loads of candy, they walked all over and got tired and noone threw up this year (yay!) and I'd told them we were making the costumes next year and noone's face fell off from horrified disgust and well, that was fun, 'cause it's over.

So! To recap: Made the costumes this year, even though I had told the kids we'd buy them this year, make them next year.  Even got their acknowledgements that their friends thought the costumes were cool.

I was pretty darned pleased with myself.

Of course, last week I totally wasn't thinking when I threw a 70% off pirate sword and an 85% off goth-fairy set (wee black wings, headband, wand) into my shopping cart.

I blame the Halloween candy withdrawal.

frustrated foodie

I have a lot of food links. 

I like food, you see, like creating new recipes and old cookbooks and figuring out the kids' latest favourite thing and eating, my god, can't forget eating and planning a grocery list (altho' not so much the actual shopping) and trying to re-create experiments and remembering suppers gone by.

(I mean, holiday suppers. I don't moon around thinking of last Thursday's corn pudding and sighing.)

I am lucky enough to have found some great food bloggers and to have several sites that send me new recipes to try. And I do, really, but there are some things that I just cannot make, no matter how easy they are. Things that would never get eaten.

There should be a sub-set on many recipe sites:
Food that may taste good, but your kids? Are nevah, nevah gonna let any of this pass their lips. Good luck on that one.

Can someone tell me what would possess a person to name a pasta salad "Fruity Pasta Swiss Salad"? Or tout Eggplant Roll-ups as a family favorite? Put zucchinni on a grilled cheese sandwich. Or even use marshmallow in a main dish. Italian Marshmallow Chicken, anyone?

Trying to get my kids to eat that would be an exercise in futility. I can pick my own battles, thank you. And frankly, I'd rather deal with the tried-and-true narrowed-eye suddenly suspicious 'Do I smell onions?' than to break new ground with those horrors.

My kids have had all types of different foods. Some they even liked! And we never stop trying new things. Some recipes, though, are just not worth the trouble.

Although they do love Peanut Butter Pork, so what do I know......

a house on the lake

We've been having a bit of a water problem around here lately. 


It's going down now - thank goodness - but it's been a scary week. Down the road each way are small* bridges, which were both closed when the water began to lick at their foundations. The big bridge across the river here was slated to be closed (leaving us unable to leave the house) so I did a flying trip to rustle the children out of school and buy a few jugs of spring water in the village, and then we hunkered down. We had water in the basement, yes, but we had power and lights and heat and a couple of sump pumps. And if you didn't look outside at the way the back and side yards were disappearing under water, it was fine. We would be on an island! It would be an adventure.

It was a lot easier to maintain the cheery wartime spirit during the daylight hours. And when it wasn't pissing-down raining.

Monday and Tuesday, we were using our old pump, which decided to sputter and die at about three in the morning. Wednesday morning we flew like the hounds of hell were behind us and rented a big gas pump. When we returned, the basement lake was deepening. This was rapidly becoming not-fun. And it was raining. Again.

Last night, though, was crisp and cold and clear and if you pretended the flashing yellow lights of the Ground Search and Rescue truck were stars it was a lovely night.

This morning the water had dropped an inch. And the sun came out. This afternoon, the kids and I watched the side yard began to reappear and the driveway to heave itself out of the muck. We found pieces of wood that had washed downstream - heavy, waterlogged things - and Cass and Rosey lugged them around, enjoying the squelch under their boots, the sun lighting up their faces and lifting the stress and worry of the flood away from their small shoulders.

Bear has been awesome through all this - watching the water levels, manning the pumps, pumping out the neighbor's basement, checking and rechecking and positioning and calling neighbors and keeping the house warm...and by Wednesday, he was exhausted. Today, he finally had four straight hours of sleep and stopped listing gently into doorways and walls. Tonight, he'll watch the water levels and adjust the pump as it needs it so I can sleep (I work tomorrow) and then it'll be my turn Friday night. (he works Saturday.) It's not an exaggeration to say that without everything he's done, we would not have been able to stay in our house.Yes, I married a rock star.


So while the back yard is still gone (see photo above - the edge of the watershed is on the other SIDE of the foreground trees) we....are....relieved.

And enjoying, sort of, the memory of the week we owned a house on the lake.


*last three pictures, this post. The bridge at the other end of the road is much the same.

fresh

It's been raining here. For the last four days.

And not gentle rain, either - this is pelt-your-face angry rain, the kind that makes the trees unsteady and leaves the mud to suck at your shoes. Dent the lawn with footprints kind of rain.

Have I mentioned before that I live between a watershed and a river?

A very angry, rising river and a disgustingly bloated watershed? Oh yes.

So far, the sump pumps are doing their job, but it's a bit disconcerting to see the yard disappearing. And the ducks cavorting through what were flowerbeds. (hee! I originally typed 'fowlerbeds' - appropriate!)

No sign yet of the beavers. Maybe they don't like rain?

The rain is supposed to continue until Thursday. We're all going to be prune-y and weather-spotted by then, methinks.

the sawmill

In the midst of my statistics project, I discovered something interesting...
Bridgewater (one of the towns near me) had a drive-in movie theatre.

It was closed, of course, and up for sale in 2001, but it hadn't been knocked down for a factory or cut into a thousand house-lots that I could find out, so

maybe....maybe I could find it?

I love drive-ins. I grew up going to them, snug in the back of my parents car, a sleeping bag tossed over our legs, squabbling about pop-corn and laughing at the talking candy-bar concession stand ad from the fifties they played before every show.

I would love to own a drive-in theatre. And I think it's a family-friendly idea from the past whose time has circled back around.

Bear was nonplussed. 'You want to drive around and look for what?'

I forget sometimes that B doesn't know every rock, every tree and every hill in the five county area. His job means he's intimately aware of so much of the surrounding countryside - there have been very few times I've stumped him.

We drove and drove and drove and finally conceded defeat. R was getting a little whoopsie (she gets carsick, something we figured out three days before we left for our marathon-driving vacation, more fun for us) so we pulled over to the side of the road to let her walk it out and discovered.....

an old sawmill.

Grey and weathered boards were all over the place, with giant fallen sentinels here and there.

Far back in the corner, there was evidence

that someone was still using the machines. 

Fresh piles of sawdust and clean sweet new boards lay,  waiting to be used.

We never did find the old drive-in.

But walking around the milled wood and the overgrowth interested us all enough so that the long ride back in the gathering dusk was contented and quiet.

Next trip we'll get directions. Sometimes, though,  poking around is just as fun.

une multitude de billes

On the desk here is a tin box full of marbles. This being Canada, it's imprinted with both English and French.

Turns out, a box full of marbles translates to une multitude de billes.

Which is a direct metaphor for this morning.
  Cass is finishing an....ambitious....project for his third grade class.It's a desert habitat, complete with research, figurines, and a diorama. While the research part went smoothly, and his papers are typed*, the painting and finishing of the diorama has been.....well, a challenge.

(I'm currently hiding out in the living room so I have to interact as little as possible.)

Not that he's not doing an awesome job. And I'm certainly not against giving him a hand with colour choices and detail work with a toothpick, should it come to that.

But holy God, he's like a room full of weasels to get to concentrate on the task at hand. Three hours, three figurines. And we haven't touched the plants yet. I've finally called a time out to go to town and get more yellow paint and I don't know....break up the drama or something?

And now I'm got the music up loud and I'm listening to them giggle over their lunches. Tempest departed.




*By him. This summer I discovered that Cass likes to write much more if he can type on the computer. Win-win, as far as I'm concerned.

Pinky Boo

Rosey is SIX. It's sort of incomprehensible. I mean, yes, I know she's not a baby anymore, but SIX YEARS OLD?

She's the happy, bubbly one on the family - she'll chat your ear off - and my girl has a good, strong heart. 

She loves the outdoors and jumping and her stuffies and smiles everyday when she sees the cat has started sleeping in her room. She colours enthusiastically, cuts and pastes and glitters and tapes and stickers and would give everyone a rainbow if she could. She dances to everything (Black Eyed Peas, anyone?) and goes on amusement park rides until the rest of us have passed out from exhaustion.

She wants to be a dancer, a teacher, someone who helps animals and to drive a camper into the desert. She loves makeup and earrings (we'll be getting her ears pierced soon) and playing with her brother and the clean, loose joy of pumping your legs up into the sky and swinging.

I'm really enjoying being your mamamamama, Miss Rosey. You're a joy.