I'm baaaaaack.....

.......kinda..............

I am back from my trip safe,sound and full of new knowledge. Ok, maybe not the new knowledge part. :)

I hate flying, I hate turbulence and I hate people who hog the arm-rests. I am not a big person but that doesn't mean there is room for both you and I in MY seat! I believe it's a scientific fact that as soon as the drink cart gets half-way up the aisle that there will be major turbulence, the seat belt light comes on, the cart goes away, the flight crew straps down and I am left juggling a boiling hot cup of tea. The person in front of me will constantly put their seat back and forward, back and forward at least 15 times during the flight and the person behind me will continuously kick the back of my seat. Every time I have a window seat the people beside me will fall asleep and I will need to pee. I will then sit there clenching, trying not to think about how bad I have to pee and wait for them to wake up so I can climb out of my seat. I will arrive at my destination, disheveled, wrinkled, extremely cranky and sporting a fabulous migraine. I do not travel well.

Big J managed not to burn the house down while I was gone. He claims to be exhausted and traumatised from being a single parent for 3 days plus taking care of the cats/dog. Is he freakin kidding me!?!? He did not one stitch of housework while I was gone! When he goes fishing for a week at a time I manage just fine AND he comes home to a spotless house. Little J probably did not eat a single fruit or vegetable while I was gone. One would think that he would appreciate what I do around here and give me some sort of props for being awesome but no, I have boobies which makes domestication my job and he has a penis so he builds stuff.

So my biggest news is I AM AN AUNTIE!!!! My brother had his first child yesterday. A little girl named Ava. I am sooo excited! Now I can satisfy my big-ass bow cravings without having to make a girl of my own. I will see my new niece tonight and will post pictures. My mom and I bought their car seat and some supplies as they have ZERO clue on what they're doing. My SIL has 4 older sisters so I figured they would be helping her out but this is not the case. It was nice to finally unload the pack-n-play, fuzzy blankets, swing, bassinet, activity mat etc out of my attic. I've got some room up there now!

My laptop is still getting worked on. I sent it in for a dead battery and keyboard. They are replacing my hard-drive. WTF? I was having no trouble with the hard-drive but apparently it failed some sort of HP Smart test. Stupid me did not back anything up either.... pissybuggerbitchshitdamnfuckmeupthegoatass. I have requested that they send the old hard-drive back so I can transfer the data over. I will unfortunately lose my um 'un-authorized' version of Office Ultimate. Crap. I hope to have it back in another week or so. Until then I will be forced to post at un-godly hours such as 4:30am. Like I am now.

So I am banging away on hubby's desktop. I don't know how he uses this thing. It's so dang slow. I'm sure I could send smoke signals or use drums to get this message out faster. There is an unknown sticky substance all over the keyboard which I will assume is apple juice.

I got a whopping 3hrs sleep tonight and now it's time to wake up and get ready for work. Little J has a cold again and was up coughing and blowing his nose. I end up wide awake so of course the cats think it's time for food and they run around howling which gets the dog excited who starts to bark so I throw her outside. Chaos at my house at 3am and of course Mr Ass-hat sleeps through the whole thing. I have to send J to daycare even if he is sick as I can't call in 'sick'. I'm opening the store..who would I call? Yes, I am one of those horrible parents who sends their snotty kid to school to make your kid sick. If I kept J home every time he had a runny nose or cough he'd never leave the house and I would be un-employed.

I gotta go get ready for work...hope you all had a great week while I was gone and I will try to catch up on everyone in the next couple of days.

Pimpin' the Puppy

This will be my last post until next week. I am leaving on a jet plane for business meetings {and copious amounts of alcohol}. This year I will not fly home for 5hrs hung over. I repeat, I will not fly home for 5hrs hung over. Have you ever tried throwing up in those tiny airplane bathrooms? Ugh. Thank goodness everyone sitting near the bathroom was from our group and they were barfing too. :)

Lappy is going in for warranty repair to fix his battery, mouse pad and keyboard. 5 year olds are hard on the equipment! I should have it back by next week otherwise I will be forced to exchange sexual favours for use of husbands desktop. Not sure I want to go there..... sex makes babies! Did ya know that? I learned the hard way. A lifetime of responstibility for about 2mins of fun. {yep, 2mins including removal of required clothing}

But before I go, I leave you with a few pics of Tahoe pimping out her favorite hockey team. GO CANUCKS GO!!!!!






As I post this, said puppy is busily plotting her escape by digging hole beside the fence. She doesn't know how good she's got it. 3 square meals a day, a warm bed, lots of free slippers to chew and a clean-up crew. Why would she want to leave?

Little J talks to her like she's another playmate. I swear she understands him. She stares up at him, cocks her head to the side and barks when he's done talking. It's the cutest thing. Then Little J gets frustrated when the puppy doesn't do what he's asked her too. He stomps his feet and shouts "Mommy! The Dog isn't listening to me! Put her in time out and take away a toy!"

It works for the kid, why not the dog? :)


Take care and have a safe week!

Riddle me this....

How bad is your Blog when a Dog's Blog gets more traffic than yours? {and no, it's not my Dog, although I may pimp her out a little more to increase my numbers. Effective? Yes. Ethical? No.}

No laughing people, it could happen to you....

Granted, the Dog is hawt and funny but hell, I can't let a dog kick my blogging arse!

And comments.. the damn canine gets more comments..come on people, don't let me down!

My entire self-worth is depending on YOU leaving a comment. Do you really want to be 'The One' who doesn't comment and I go off the deep end in an itsy bitsy yellow polka dot bikini?

I may not be able to lick my own ass but I do know some cool tricks. With enough alcohol, I just may share them with you *wink wink nudge nudge*














;)

Odds n' Ends

Just a bunch of well, random bits that don't really mean a dang thing. I go into a hockey coma in the Spring. It's a yearly condition known as NHL Play-offs. There is Hockey Night in Canada on EVERY.SINGLE.NIGHT. This is better than sex. And did I mention the Playoff towels? I have a playoff towel from the last 10 years my team made it to the playoffs. It's one of those weird things that I collect. Don't you feel better knowing that?

We are transferring/backing up the thousands of pictures and videos from our desktop to an external drive because we are buying a new desktop. Oh my goodness. We spent about 2 hours just watching video's of Little J {you know the quick 30 second ones you get from your camera}. What a cute little toddler he was! There is one video of him at about 2.5 y/o and he's still got his big blonde curls and his daddy is asking him to say "Ravioli, Hospital, Oh My Goodness" and a few others. It is sweet enough to make my teeth hurt. Where did my cute little baby go? Why wasn't I paying attention.

Tahoe is getting BIG! She is now 19.4lbs at 10 weeks old. We should have named her 'Hoover' as everything near her gets sucked into her mouth. If she breaks loose from the kitchen she bee-lines it to the playroom, grabs the closest toy and books it back to the kitchen under the table to happily chew/eat her prize. Big J is quite pleased with himself as Tahoe knows several tricks and is still so young.



..and yes, I know I sound like a braying donkey when I laugh.

I've just started cleaning with vinegar and baking soda and I gotta say.. I am impressed! I was hesitant to give up my bleach, especially with a peeing puppy in the house but the bleach was killing the grout in my tile kitchen. And it's non-toxic

Crud...Big J and I just flipped a coin as to who would wash the dishes. I lost. I always lose. Bloody hell.

I will be out of town and without Lappy as he is acting up and his battery is dead so I am sending him in for repair while I am away. {Is it odd that I've named my laptop? What? Doesn't everybody?} So I may not be around for a few weeks. Try to miss me just a little please? Pretty please?

......Don't forget me while I'm gone {my heart will break}.....Guess the song and band and win a prize. The band was the first CD I ever bought, along with Billy Idol and Platinum Blonde. I love the 80's.

Have a good coupla weeks and stay safe.

Anyone want to come over and wash some dishes with me?

Ball Hockey is here!

Little J has started Ball Hockey. This is our first foray into team sports and well, we may need to adjust our expectations a tad. Band Camp really isn't that bad.....

Is it? I went to Band Camp and look at me.....perfectly phlucked up. Oh dear...

Little J has the attention span of 3.2 seconds {see Easter Post} so he spends most of the hour spinning in circles in the middle of the rink. He will take out someones eye if they stray too close.

He is the smallest player. Period. Even the girls are bigger! The division is for kids born in 2003/2004 so he is playing with 5+ year olds but still, he looks like a midget. {no offence to Little People}

He comes off the rink at least 4 times 'for a drink of water'. Ya-huh..how dumb does Mommy look?

He has no interest in chasing the ball, scoring goals or even stopping the ball when HE's in goal. Kinda defeats the purpose eh?

I'm fairly certain that the other parents are talking behind their hands about the little, un-co-ordinated, non-athletic but very cute kid on the other team. I swear I can feel the pitying stares. Fortunately, Little J doesn't seem to give a hoot that he sucks, so why do I feel bad?

I gotta learn to chill out. So he might not be some sort of athlete. It's not supposed to be about me. I need to support him no matter what he decides to do with his life. Something like becoming a drag-queen may take me some time to adjust though. :)

I just hope to god he's smart. I can't afford to send him to University on my own. I need scholarship $$$.

At least he's cute. If he learns how to use his baby-blues, he may be able to coast though life without a care in the world. {or employable skills}


Oh ya... and his team is the Delta Yellow Bananas. How freakin adorable is that??


Jock-head


In his uniform..it's so big it looks like a dress :)

Rabid Squirrels and The Easter Bunny

*WARNING* There will be lots of pictures. Deal with it. It's my Blog and I'll do what I want to. :) Sung to the tune of "It's my party (and I'll cry if I want to)



This year for Easter we were all home at the same time. Usually, Big J is off on his first fishing trip of the year, or I am working, but this year the lakes were still
frozen over {yipee} and I started vacation on Friday.

I planned to cram in as much Easter-fun as I could manage. Unfortunately, things never work out the way I plan.

Little J had his first Ball Hockey practice on Friday and um well, that will be a post all unto itself... anyways, we had a limited window of opportunity to colour Easter eggs. I had it all planned out in my head. All of us huddled around the table, taking turns dipping eggs and bonding as a family over a wholesome and fun craft. I apparently had someones elses family in my head.

There were tears, spilled dye, broken eggs, yelling and a child with the attention span of 3.2 seconds. We are not the poster family for Norman Rockwell. We managed to get some of them done before I stabbed myself in the eye with a fork.









On Sat we headed over to the Inlaws for an egg hunt and dinner at their place. Grandma had hidden plastic eggs a few hours earlier for when Cousin Em and Little J came over. Out we go to see what the Easter Bunny left us....

At first it all seemed normal then we got a closer look at the eggs...they were open and EMPTY! Some were cracked open and there were smarties scattered all over the yard. The rabid crazy squirrels had beat us to the eggs! The little bastards stole our dang chocolate!! Oh the horror! You'd think we had the Easter Bunny roasting on a spit over a roaring fire judging by the kids' reaction. Good thing the Easter Bunny had left the good stuff INSIDE the house. :) And the traditional Easter dinner at my Inlaws house in Chinese food. To which Little J asks "How can we eat Chinese food in Canada?". We told him we brought it in from China on a plane. He thought that was pretty cool.









*note the dog attempting to steal the eggs in the basket....



Sunday morning the Easter Bunny came to our house...first we had to find all 22 eggs

{the um, er, Easter Bunny dropped 2 in the hiding process}





Even Mr Fatty-Mc-Butter-Pants got into the action...



Little J mentioned that the EB didn't do a good job hiding because he found all the eggs so easily. "Mommy the Easter Bunny needs a lesson in hiding". Well geez..I had to make them easy to find. I wasn't about to lose any hard-boiled and raw eggs in my living room. It's not a pleasant smell when those babies start to rot. Don't ask me how I know :)

After finding all the eggs we could look for the 'Big Basket'

Found it!



He loved his stickers and sidewalk chalk. He didn't even notice there wasn't a whole heck of a lot of candy in it.

The Easter Bunny even left a present in Little J's room {ok ok, I forgot to put it in the basket the night before but J thought it was 'super-way-cool' that the EB snuck it in his room while he was sleeping. Why aren't kids freaked out by the thought of strangers sneaking into their bedrooms at night?}}



We headed out to my folks for Easter dinner there. We came back with one less person.
We seem to have left our child behind. :) Little J is having a sleepover for a few days so Mommy and Daddy can get some work done. Mostly so Mommy can have a mental health break. I love my child with every breath in my body and soul but dang, he drives me completely bonkers. He can drive Oma and Opa crazy for a few days and I'll head out and pick him up on Wednesday but for now, I am enjoying my kidlessness. I may even sleep in tomorrow. If the hubby lets me, he's a slave driver.

I hope everyone had a happy holiday!

HAPPY {Fill-in-the-blank}

Happy Easter!

Happy Passover!

Happy Visakhi!

Happy Easter Bunny!


Peace

Really?

I got nothin to contribute today. Too dang tired. But....

I wanted to post a pic of something I saw on the weekend.



That my friends, is a French Fry Vending machine! Have you ever heard of such a thing? How would one even think of needing a Fry Vending machine?
I can't even fathom how that would work? What kind of person actually BUYS fries out of a vending machine? How do they fry? Are there Leprechauns hanging out by a deep fryer tucked in the back just waiting for the Twoonie to clink? {note: Twoonie is a Canadian $2 coin}

I watched it for a while hoping some schmuck would come up and buy some so I could rubber-neck but alas, no one ventured up to it. And I work too damn hard for my $2 to buy some myself. So um ya, if anyone has tried it let me know!

A little bit of this, a little bit of that.

I got this fabulous award from Trace, thank you ever so much! So now I have to nominate 5 blogs to share this with. How can I pick just 5? I love all the blogs I read. I also do not want to ruin my so-far-so-good Monday morning by making decisions. {and truth be told, I have no flippin clue how to so the linky thing, you know, where you just click the word and poof! you are at the site? Ya I suck, I know}
You have no idea how long it took me to figure out how to get the pic on my post!

So, I nominate ALL of you! Go on and spread the joy to everyone!!! You can do it!!


It is a balmy 16.7C here this morning. {61F for my non-metric reader}. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping and my flowers are blooming. I love spring. We have had so much rain/snow the last few weeks. I am very sensitive to air pressure changes and when we get back-to-back weather systems of high pressure/low pressure my head feels like it's going to explode. Picture a balloon inside my head inflating and deflating..not fun. Thankfully this weather system will hang out for a few days so I should be headache free to enjoy it!

Popcorn Thought.... Metric vs. Imperial. I am odd and I use both. I speak in terms of distance {kilometres} and temperature {Celsius} but use pounds, inches, feet, height in Imperial. How confusing is that? I could not tell you how far 300 metres is but I can eyeball 300 feet. I weigh 45.5 kilo's. How many Lbs is that? Pop quiz Nurse Julie!


My husband now insists that we call him "The Dog Whisperer" because he can talk to animals. According to him, Tahoe is the brightest puppy to ever walk the earth and he is just the expert to tap into her potential. I'll believe it when she stops peeing in my kitchen. Perhaps he can teach the puppy to do dishes? vacuum? The lack of opposable thumbs may make some tasks quite difficult so we'll keep it simple.
She is showing true to her Retriever heritage. If it's not heavier than her she will bring it. I have quite the assortment of um 'things' up on my deck...tree bark, pine cones, buckets, rocks, a piece of 2by4 lumber and a few balls. She is going to fit right in with this family as I also have the Retriever instinct. I bring lots of stuff INTO the house but not much LEAVES it. :)

Big J has figured out the combination of Little J and Tahoe equals Chick Magnet!
He's taken the 2 of them out together a few times and all sorts of people, including cute young girls, come up to pet the puppy and pinch the kids cheeks. Granted, the kid and dog ARE both cute and somewhat furry. Should I be suspicious now that Little J is more than happy to run errands without ME but with the Dynamic Duo? Hmmm......

From the "They Really Do Pay Attention" Dept... heading out to drop off Little J at school this morning, I stopped to show him the flowers that were starting to bloom.
He sort of nodded and started running at the mouth with his random bits of conversation that I usually tune out as it makes no sense to me but all of a sudden I heard...."Then the bees will come and polnate the flowers to make honey to go to all the little boys who like peanut butter and honey sandwiches" Can you spot the smart part of that sentence? The kid knows about pollination and bees n' shit. I asked him how he knew about bees/flowers making honey and he looked at me like I was stupid, sighed dramatically and said 'Mommy, I watched Bee Movie, weren't you listening when they said how to make honey?" Oh.....! Moral of this story is, parking your kid in front of the TV watching DVD's is educational not neglectful, lazy parenting. :)

The downside to TV is the commercials. I used to hear "Oh Mommy that xyz is sooo cool! I want that! Can I have it?". I think I've managed to convince the child that most of the stuff he sees on TV is only available in the US. "Oh honey, I don't think we can get that here in Canada..let me check the website....Nope, only in the US. Sorry Dude". Will I go to hell for this? Do I care?


We went to a school {daycare} friends party yesterday. It was held at a local playplace we had not been to before and we will never be going back again! It was in an old casino and was, I don't even know how to describe it, um...dirty? cheap? old? creepy? It was dark and dingy. They had about 10 or so ancient arcade games they must have picked up off Free-cycle, bumper cars {which were ok}, lazer tag {cheap} and a bouncy slide. Everything was so freakin expensive. I think it was $15 per kid for 10 tokens {and most games took 2 tokens} and greasy pizza. The guys who worked the bumper cars and lazer tag looked like they were out on parole or hiding out from the law. I didn't take my eyes off the kid and was Mama Bear all over his arse. And of course, Little J LOVED it and we were the last ones to leave after 3 hours. UGH!

Popcorn Thought......kids bday parties. We are going to see the same group of kids/parents over the next few years as 8 of the daycare group are the same age and will be going to the same elementary school and will most likely be in the same classes. What the hell do you do for their Birthday party without breaking the bank?
I don't want to go to Chuck-E-Cheese or other stupidly expensive playplace. I want to do it at our house. We can rent a HUGE bounce house from a buddy for cheap. We set up some games in the backyard like horseshoes/ring toss, badminton etc and the parents can sit and hang out on the deck. This would be perfect if the weather is nice. I can fit 40 people in the backyard/deck. I can fit about 10 IN my house. No way we could have the party inside. See my dilemma? Little J's birthday is in June and we have been rained out 3 out of the last 4 years! But, we only had family parties so it was ok. The adults had beer, the kids ran amok in my house.
Am I crazy for stressing out about this 3 months in advance??

I am off to nap. I am working graveyards this week to finish inventory prep for work.
Inventory happens once a year and it is a BITCH! We have millions of $$ in inventory and every.single pen, file folder, ink cartridge, software, chair, pack of paper etc. must be counted.
Guess who lucked out and booked vacation during inventory week? ME!! SCORE!!
But I have to spend this week making sure my side of the store is clean, tagged and organized for counting. Ask me how happy I am to not have to deal with people this week? So a week of graveyards, then a week of vacation and then I fly out of town for 4 days for a training symposium.
I am off the floor at work for almost 3 glorious weeks. It just may be long enough for the bitterness I feel when dealing with insane customers to subside. Maybe.

I may not be posting as much this week but I'll be reading ya'll at 3am to stay awake on my breaks. I'll be drinking A LOT of RedBull, here's hoping it really does give me wings and not a heart attack. :0

How does your garden grow?

After reading this post most of you will wonder how in heck I managed to raise a live human being without causing lasting and permanent damage {the jury is still out on that one..}

Little J saw a commercial for Chia Pets just before Christmas and begged me every.dang.day to ask Santa to bring him one. I figured I could use this as a learning opportunity to teach Little J responsibility for caring for something living. Watering, putting in light etc.

I am full of ideas that sound fabulous in theory and make me sound like an intelligent involved creative mom. Dazzle them with Bullshit. :) If only real life worked out as well.....

Chia did very well at first, we kept him watered, moved him around the house to the best windowsill and left the radio on so he wouldn't get lonely. As Chia began to grow we noticed something was terribly wrong. The 'stuff' was growing off it's head. It looked nothing like the full, succulent, happy Chias we saw on TV. I felt ripped off. Could we have screwed it up? A chia pet? Easier than freakin Sea Monkeys?

I dug out the instructions that I had tossed oh so nonchalantly on the table assuming that they were not needed. Come on people, what kind of moron needs directions for a Chia pet? But I digress....
Imagine my surprise to read that there are 3 applications included.

We had shmushed ALL of the seeds onto poor chia's head at once. There was of course no cure or 'fix' for our error and we could only wait and watch.

I tried to fix Chia, pulling off excess seeds, stretching delicate strands of green to even it out {similar to an old man comb-over} but I couldn't fix him.

This is how Chia turned out before all his 'hair' pulled off his head and plopped on the counter.




..................... it's ok, I wait here until you stop laughing............I've got nowhere to be...........did you need some water?............ready?..............

Shortly after this picture was taken, he shriveled up and he got recycled as a planter in my real garden.

Then last week Auntie Bones stops by for a visit and brings a Grass-head. Auntie Bones brings Little J a present every time she visits {Auntie Bones is my BFF} She laughed so hard when she heard about the Chia pet that she just about peed herself {she also birthed a 10lb child with no drugs!} So to torture me, she brings this stupid grass-head. I fear we may be in for another disappointment but so far so good....we have kept Mr.Grass head alive and well for a week now :)





He looks kinda creepy now that I think about it, maybe I'll put him outside tonight.

Lost and Found

I have become one of 'those' people. You know the ones. The crazy people who drop big bucks on their........animal. The people you silently pity and openly mock.

I actually bought the damn dog freakin reindeer antlers and a jingle collar for Christmas. Ya, the holiday that happens in oh, about 8 months. In my defence, it was 70% off so it was a bargain. Petcetera is going bankrupt so we headed over to pick over the leftovers like rabid vultures. The dog got MORE chewy toys {anything to save my slippers}, and the kitties got catnip and food.

If the puppy would stop peeing on my kitchen floor I would be so happy. There always seemed to be a puddle of pee right in front of the stove, even though the dog was outside and the floors had been mopped and dried. It would just appear. Big J was convinced it was a vision, a sign of Divine Intention like a weeping Madonna or the image of the Virgin Mary burned into a piece of toast.

I burst that bubble pretty quickly when I pulled out the broiler drawer to peek under the stove. Oh sweet mother of pearl.....there were things under there I didn't even know we lost!

2 matchbox cars
1 tennis ball
3 balls of unknown origin
6 pieces of lego
2 fridge magnets
The letters D, X and Q
1 water bottle
2 beercan tabs
Dust Bunnies the size of Okla-by-god-homa.
$4.92 in coins
5 pens
1 broken salt shaker

So I guess the dog would pee and it would run under the stove and then seep back out. The sad part is it took dog pee for me to discover {or care} that the broiler drawer pulled out. :)

And just to prove how crazy my family is, here is a video of Little J dancing and Tahoe in the tub.







Cheers!