Yabba Dabba Doo!

The Google Doodle for today tells me that it's the 50th anniversary of the Flintstones today. I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite memories. Don't worry, we'll have a gaaaaaaaaay old time! Not that there's anything wrong with that...

• The Flintstones always came on at noon followed by the Jetsons. I'd always eat lunch at home, watch my two shows and go back to school. It was a perfect routine
• My favourite episodes were the ones where they had guest stars like Ann-Margrock or Stony Curtis. The one where they had Darrin and Samantha from Bewitched and any episodes with the Gruesomes were particularly great. Oh and the one with Uncle Giggles. And when Dino talked. And the ones with Gazoo. And when Fred and Barney accidentally became spies. And the Hatrocks. And the Way-Outs. And Gina Lollobrickida. And when Fred dressed as Wilma for the cooking contest. Okay, I loved the Flintstones.
• I hated the one where Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm could sing and the one where Pebbles grew up and married Arnold the paper boy in Fred's Rip Van Winkle style dream. Arnold was a douche.
• I think The Flintstones jumped the shark when Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm came along.
• The song "I Wanna Be A Flintstone" is the only song I can name by the Screaming Blue Messiahs
• I absolutely loved the John Goodman movies
• My favourite appliances were the pig garbage disposal and the bee in the shell shaver. I really thought that one would work. My dad was the one who explained to me that the buzzing isn't what cuts the hair
• I still (and always will) sing the Flintstones anniversary song at every opportunity 

kxx

To treadmill or not to treadmill. That is the question.

That and: why the eff am I hauling my jiggling carcass around a dark, cold, rainy (and frankly, kinda scary) park at the crack of dawn? This morning when my alarm clock went off, I was having the best dream. Some delightfully profane stuff having to do with Billie Piper and David Tennant as well as the cast of Being Human. Wonderful, creative stuff that I'd really rather keep to myself, thankyouverymuch.

My alarm went and interrupted a particularly awesome exchange between a sexy time traveller and a sexy werewolf and I knew I had to get up. I must be an endorphin junkie because why else would I not go straight back to bed for an hour after I opened up the front door to a fine mist of cold rain? For the 3rd day in a row. It's like God is treating me like a disobedient dog. Then again, I'm not really getting the message, am I? I need my fix, people.

So back to the initial question: should I get a treadmill? At first I said that I'd never run in the rain or cold and this month I've done both. Monday I claimed that I'd never run in the snow but last night I signed up for a 5K that takes place in December. I realize it's beautiful running outside but that's providing you can actually see the beauty around you. At 6am, it's like running in space.

Here's a pro/con list for and against a treadmill:

Treadmill YES!

• I can run any time of day for as long as I like
• I won't get raped or pillaged or otherwise interfered with in the dark park
• I won't get wet
• I won't freeze
• I can run and watch tv/read/blast my music
• I won't have to worry about goose poop and worms (yes, I worry about goose poop and worms)
• I can run in my shorts all year round
• I want one!

Treadmill NO!

• the park and sailing club are gorgeous
• treadmills take up tons of room
• they can be noisy
• outside never breaks down or need servicing
• I'll have to shop for running outerwear (I was debating if this was actually a pro or a con... Scott would be a better judge)

So the debate rages on. I managed to find a reasonable one through a friend on Facebook but it still puts a dent in my Christmas budget. Meanwhile the weather just keeps getting colder and wetter until the fateful day when God switches from the water bottle to something more... snowier.

kxx

Having another off day...

Not physically or even mentally, I mean that the day is unscheduled weirdness. Yesterday I was off work and carless and that put me in the strange position of having to amuse myself for the whole day. I won't get into specifics about what I did but suffice it to say that I started a bunch of things that I didn't finish so by the end of the day it looked like I did nothing.

Today, Audrey is home sick. Not deathly ill but stuffy and "feeling like a spaceman" (a term Henry coined). Having her home messes with my schedule again and throws several of the regularly scheduled things I do off track. That's why the blog is so late today. Anyway, because it's late and my desire to write a proper blog went by the wayside 3 hours ago, please enjoy this Failblog entry that made me bark with laughter this morning.

kxx

Best. Weekend. Ever.

We had a really fun weekend at our Victorian house getaway. Friday we went to the beach an it was actually warm enough to enjoy it. I'd heard of Sandbanks but I'd never been. It sure was worth it. It went on for kilometres and there was actually a bit of surf.

The next day we split up and went a few different ways. My little posse discovered Buddha Dog and going there will definitely be an annual event. Next time we'll go there hungry to most take advantage of those tiny little gourmet hot dogs. I only had one (sweet onion and chevre) and everything on it was homemade from places around the region, right down to the meat and bun. Actually Buddhism and tube steaks remind me of that old joke:

What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
Make me one with everything.

We played lots of music, shopped, ate a lot of rich food and birthday cake and spent lots of time with old and new friends. We need to do this every year in order to decompress. I feel revived, and ready for this crazy house again.

kxx

Flashback Friday

Wednesday night we spent the evening at Elliott's high school getting to know his teachers and classes. As I wandered around the halls I couldn't believe that my baby was old enough to go to school there. And by extension I wondered how on earth I was old enough to have a teenager but this isn't about me (this time).

I remembered this story from the "olden days"...

Monday, December 1, 2008

kxx

When did this happen?

As I was running the other day I noticed that the road sign on my street corner was changed. It was shiny and the newer and white on blue instead of the former white on green that they're putting up around the city. Niiice. But what's that? Where did that newfangled space come from? Hm.

My street name is a compound word. I'm not going to specify because you all know too much about me already and I'd really prefer not to find you camped out on my front lawn when I come home from Costco. Anyway, when they made up the shiny new sign, they put in a space and capitalised the second word. Let's say for argument's sake I lived on Sunnyside but now I live on Sunny Side. It's quite jarring. I've lived on Sunnyside for nearly 13 years. I've always told people my address was "Sunnyside-no-space-one-word". Now I have to change? I had noticed a change in the air lately when I'd seen envelopes with the new spacey spelling and I hadn't been able to Mapquest my own house but I thought nothing of it.

It's not much but it's really weird and it'll take some getting used to. Needless to say I prefer the old spelling... I'm so not good with change. I asked an old neighbour about it and he said that when the neighbourhood was built in the 60s, Sunny Side was the old spelling but it got lost in the sands of time. So what's old becomes new again and I get to whine and stamp my feet in a fit of pique. Another win/win.

kxx

Wordless Wednesday - Zzzzz....

Philosophical sunrise

(good thing, too because it's pouring rain right now). Anyway, I saw it rise yesterday too and while it was pretty, the sky was completely clear. Today there were some clouds in the sky and the sunrise was stunning, all purples, pinks and lilacs. So the thought that glanced through my mind was:

Huh. I guess you can't have a nice sunrise without a couple clouds.

Sounds really profound, right? Like a poet came up with it. I feel like I couldn't have come up with that on my own so give me a second, I'm going to google it...

Okay, peeps, after an exhaustive five minute search it looks like I'm brilliant. I couldn't find one reference to sunrises vis à vis clouds by either Keats, Yeats or Byron.

I reworked it a bit to make it sound more philosophical and less like I came up with it while half crazed on endorphins and voilà... I expect to see loads of Facebook statuses and tweets today that look like this:

"You can't have a beautiful sunrise without a few clouds"  -Kxx, blogger extraordinaire


You're welcome.

kxx

Another day, another cake

Actually this is the first actual cake of the month since I've been all about loads and loads of cupcakes. I'm excited about this one too since it's the dessert for the second annual weekend we call "Moms Gone Wild". It's a coconut lemon birthday cake for my oldest friend. We'll be celebrating in a rented Victorian house miles away from our families (and close to the beach) starting Friday. There'll be chick flicks, fancy food, drinking, shopping, dancing, karaoke and general merriment. Waiting for Thursday night will make this the longest week ever.

This house has a clawfoot tub so I'm bringing bubble bath to take a long luxurious soak. I'm also bringing my Louboutins to wear at dinner since that's the perfect occasion (sitting) and I get to show them off for the first time. I'm already mostly packed. Is it Friday yet?

kxx

Flashback Friday!

My first ever post. The one that started it all on Wednesday 18th January 2006. Look how far I've come. Okay, not really but here are some of my feelings about this post all these years later:

Like:

• I still sound like myself... kinda funny, kinda weird, and all about me. Start as you mean to go on, eh?
• I just dove in, didn't I? I like that. I hadn't read a lot of blogs previously so I just went with whatever I wanted to do. 
• I used the word "frisson". Ooooh, fancy. I feel like lifting my pinkie.

I wish I had:

• thrown in a photo and more than one link.
• started this blog here at blogger rather than over at MySpace. About 2 years in I decided to move each blog painstakingly over to this site so a lot of posts refer to that place. 
• hidden more about my personal life. Little did I know that people would actually read this and I'd worry about the kids a little. Even though crazy things happen in Canada too, I may have taken a lot of posts down if I lived in the US.
• explained why I decided to blog in the first place and properly introduced myself. But over the course of 4 years, you kinda know me by now.

So there you have it. My first ever blog. It was a sign of things to come, that's for sure. Crazy, crazy things. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Have a nice weekend!

kxx

There's an app for that

Okay so there are times when I post my favourite songs, my favourite tv shows and favourite Youtube videos. If you've forgotten any of them, just go ahead and click on the search box on the top left and enter whichever you like. If you are reading this on Facebook, then you are out of luck. Get thee to blogger. Geez, how many times....?

Anyway, I realize I've never shared my favourite iPod apps. Oh, they are fun. Most of the ones I go for are free with a few exceptions. So without further ado, here are a few of my favourites in no particular order. I keep them on the first page of my toy:

• Facebook app. It's a bit crashy, I can rarely watch videos and I can't filter out your Farmville/Mafia/insert-irritating-game-stat-here nonsense but it's still pretty good.
• Grocery IQ: I love how you put in "corn" and you can choose the brand you want to buy. If I was American, the coupon thing would be handy but I'm okay with that trade-off for tighter gun controls.
• Twittelator: What can I say? I like to keep up with my tweeps. There's nothing like getting a direct message from a soap or sitcom star to make your day complete. It's happened 3 times, people!
• Angry Birds: I can say without hyperbole that it's my favourite game of all time. If I'm sitting for 5 minutes, I'm playing Angry Birds. Do yourself a favour and get the free version to try it. If you don't buy the full version, I'll give up cupcakes for a week.
• Zap2it's TV Listings: Without TV Guide I'm adrift, and this app is the lifeline I need. It's actually the only app that I moved to the stationary bar at the very bottom of the screen so I can find it at a moment's notice whenever I need it.
• MealBoard: The family works on a 4 week rota of meals and I love how this app lets me list them week by week and sets up a grocery list for all the items I'll need. As Elliott says, "cool beans".
• Couch to 5k: Along with my Nike+, it's the way I run. I simply canNOT run without music and cues to tell me how far I've gone or how much time I have left. These do both.
• MovieCat: My newest addition and one that I actually bought. This is movie trivia where they have cute cartoon cats in various movie situations that you have to guess. I never met a trivia game that I didn't like. I actually have a few apps like this on my toy.

Well I have lots more apps (iTunes tells me 129... heh.) but those are the ones I use every single day. Do you have an app you can't do without? Something like Angry Birds where you can't believe not everyone in the world is decimating those horrible pigs that smile at you with their horrible teeth and look at you with their beady eyes and taunt you with their nasty catcalls and whoops and... where was I? Oh yes... tell me about your favourite apps and why.

kxx

Here you go Teresa!

The backhoe guy story...

There's been construction going on around my house all summer. Trucks, blasting, the whole nine. I go jogging every morning at 6:15 and I pass the site as a haul my carcass around. I see the same guys and the same trucks each day so as the polite Canadian girl I am, I greet them. It's just a "hi" or a smile and on Fridays it's a cheery "have a good weekend!".

On the first day of school I jogged as usual and said hi the the guys I've started to call "my boys". Dumptruck Boy, Foreman Boy and Stop/Yield Sign Boy are the ones that I see daily. When I took Audrey to the schoolbus, I saw Backhoe Boy for the second time that day and I waved again.

Yesterday after my run he drove by and actually stopped the backhoe in the road to talk to me. We've never exchanged words before. This is the way it went:

Me: Morning!
Backhoe Boy: Hey! Did you marry a white dude? **I'm serious... that's exactly what he said**
Me: Uh. Yes...
BB: Your daughter is really light but she looks just like you. And she's got your exact shape.
Me (not too sure how to take the shape comment): Er, thanks.
BB: She's got great hair, too.
Now cars are starting to back up behind him
Me: Thanks... it is pretty crazy.
BB: I hope she's proud of it. It'd be really sad if she was embarrassed by it.
Praying the truck would please for the love of God get moving
Me: She tells me it makes her feel special... oh look, cars!
BB: Oop, gotta go!

And off he rumbled.

I told the story to Audrey when I got home and we had a good laugh about it. When she got home from school she said that Backhoe Boy waved at her in the morning and she waved back. I love my neighbourhood.

kxx

What shall I blog about today?

I've got lots of ideas (for once) so shall I talk about:

• The fact that I'm baking cupcakes again? This time 36 chocolate and vanilla with pink and white icing for a baby shower.
• My poor hungry cat who has absolutely no food?
• The backhoe driver, who I wave to every morning on my run, backing up traffic to ask me if I was married to a white guy?
• My feet. They are freezing and it's only September. What will they be like in January?
• Not really wanting to blog today?

I think I'll just go back to my cupcakes and spare you all my crazy for the day. Lots to do. As Scott says, "pitter patter let's get at 'er!"

kxx

Embracing the geek in me.

After the embarrassing debacle where I tweeted to Leonard Nimoy asking why he ended each entry with "LLAP" (OMG, *phasermenow*), I felt my geek cred receptor inch back into the red zone when, during yet another viewing of Star Trek: Nemesis, I yelled at the screen "OMG, Riker, where did you learn how to fight? Risa?". For those of you who are non-Trek fans, it's like asking if you learned Krav Maga on Club Med. And how much do I love my family?... Scott and Elliott laughed.

Yes, people, I'm a geek again.

kxx

Flashback Friday!

Here is some craziness from when I was a kid. Looking back we really had some fun, weird times at our little house.

20 March 2007

Have a great weekend! I know I will. I have a dragonboat festival tomorrow in Carleton Place where we have at least 4 400-metre races and the weather is expected to be stunning. I can't think of a better way to spend a Saturday.

kxx

Saddest advert EVER.

I really don't think this is what they were going for but every time I see this ad, it makes me want to cry. The fact that the Skittles version of King Midas can't dress himself or hold his baby? Heartbreaking.

Then comes all the stupid questions:

• How does he go to the bathroom?
• Why doesn't he just wear gloves? Maybe the gloves turn into Skittles...
• How did he get this job? When he held the pen to fill in the application, didn't it turn into candy?
• It's obviously just his hands because his ass isn't turning the chair into Skittles. 

I don't know... maybe the cloudy weather is making me feel melancholy. Maybe I'm too old to "get it". That or I'm the biggest wet blanket since Debbie Downer. Either way, I'm glad I hate Skittles.

kxx

From the "I thought this was a good idea at the time" file...

I joined the Canadian toy testing council a while back. Sounded like a lot of fun. They give us age appropriate toys and we have our children test and we write up a report about them. They take the data, rank the toys and publish the results. I thought it'd be a great way to find out what my kids like without having to commit to buying anything, and my results will help other Canadians choose Christmas gifts this year. Win/win, right?

Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

The first 2 weeks we got no toys. Cool. Later, we got two toys at once. Hm, okay. Then the flood. Tons of toys started coming week after week. It was crazy. Each toy was to be played with for about two weeks and then a report needed to be completed. A 14 page report. I'm starting to force the kids to play with half these thing. It's not often you hear of a mother threatening time-outs all around if the kids don't play Mad-Libs one more time.

So now I have 5 14-page reports to fill out by the end of the day. I don't think I'll continue with this. I'm a stay-at-home-mum. If I wanted reports to fill out, I'd work as some kind of public servant. Sheesh.

Anyway, those reports won't fill themselves out so I've got to go. Have a terrific rest of the day. Think of me and my writer's cramp today.

kxx

First day of school... once again.

This is the first day of school for my kids. Not only do I have to get them all off on time, but we have to rearrange our summer schedule which had previously involved a lot of relaxing and lazing around. As of today it's all alarm clocks and battle stations.

I actually forgot I had to work today and the baby arrived with my hands wrist deep in Audrey's hair. Already a scheduling issue. The good thing is that they all start school at around the same time so they all get up at 7:30. The bad thing is that they all go to different schools. A high school, a middle school and an elementary school. It'll be a military operation to try to get them off with everything they need and still keep my sanity in check. Plus the baby. Whew. Here's a partial list of the things they need on any given day:

• flute/saxophone
• homework 
• library books
• lunches
• money for trips/special lunches
• notes to teachers
• permission forms

Then there are the hygiene issues that we go through on a daily basis. "Have you showered?", "Brushed your teeth?", "Are you wearing deodorant? You smell like ass", "You wore that (insert dirty/stained/smelly article of clothing here) yesterday. Go change", "Come here let me comb through that rat's nest"... am I the only one with filthy tweens? I can't wait for the day when I have to bang on the bathroom door because they're showering too long and I have to pee.

Anyway, all that said, I actually was sad that I had to send them off today. They've been my constant companions for months and now that they are older we all hang out together with a lot less "(s)mothering" involved. They are really nice kids and great buddies. Of course, fantastic mother that I am I completely forgot to take photos of them dressed for their first day this morning. But they all have their lunches, cheques combination locks and assorted school supplies, so it's all good. But, boy, the house is sure quiet.

So I thought it'd be fun to check out the first day of school post from previous years. Well, fun for me anyway. And apparently I was so self involved in the fall of 2009 that I didn't even mention their first day of school. Mother Of The Year Award? Yup, right here.

First day 2006
First day 2007
First day 2008

kxx

I know the Emmy's were weeks ago...

But it's a holiday today and I really didn't want to spend the last day of the kids' summer vacation composing a compelling blog. So here for your perusal are my most and least favourite Emmy dresses.

Kelly Osbourne

I actually squealed out loud when I saw this dress. I love every single thing about it. Stunning, stunning, stunning.

Holly Burrell.

She's married to Ty Burrell from Modern Family. Girl, your husband is brilliant but your fashion sense is on life support. Scott and I were geekily giggling calling it the "Tribble Dress". It also reminds me of those tissue paper flowers kindergartners make for Mother's Day. Even Ty's suit needs help. And he's wearing brown shoes, people. Brown shoes with a grey suit. It's like they were disobedient toddlers who got into Mr. Dressup's Tickle Trunk. Oi.

Happy Labour Day!

kxx

Flashback (and Far Side) Friday!

Mmmm bacon jam....

http://kayeway.blogspot.com/2010/01/ive-been-having-ball-staying-home.html

kxx (Have a nice weekend!)

I'm the mother of 3 and the wife of one

No thanks, Martha, there are far more important things to know than how to fold a flippin' fitted sheet. I also can't press a shirt in less than 30 minutes unless you want the creases ironed in, dust or sweep behind anything, or make a moist roast. Sorry. In your eyes I must fail the housewife test.

What I can do is fix my daughter's unruly hair so it looks gorgeous and ringletty, make my husband laugh until coffee comes out of his nose and make a birthday cake that looks like a dirty kitty litter box.

Where that puts me in the spectrum of good/bad mothers/wives I don't know, but what I do know is that I'm managing, thank-you-very-much. We all have our priorities and for me, folding sheets properly isn't one. Nor do I think that it ever will be. Ever. So nyah.

kxx

Wordless Wednesday - Dragonboat Joy