Letters and Numbers

Wow...I last updated in February.

Well, I guess that would mean this blog is/was officially 'on hiatus" and that if I'm thinking anyone would still be reading this I'm nuts. But I hold out hope that someone somewhere will Google "crazybabyTylenoldrivewaymonkey" and wind up here. (Although i guess now they will for sure).

Anyway, I have so much whining to do! I'm so far behind in my pointless ranting, I'm not sure where to begin.

But here is a good place to start: God, this laptop is beyond annoying. The cursor will randomly scoot all over place whilst I am typing. I often wind up suddenly typing back in the middle of a sentence 3 paragraphs prior for no discernible reason, which means there is an excellent chance you are reading typos that I missed or am just to damned irritated to fix. My apologies, I am indeed a poor workwoman blaming her tools.

Next, I've been working for the past month from a different office than usual. I'm on loan from my regular job and for a few months am working on a huge international political event that, apparently, cannot be named on the internet. Well, I could say what it is, but there is an entire security group here who spend their days plugging the name of this event into search engines to track every single mention of it on the web. I know this for a fact because not too long ago somebody who posted something like "I can't wait for this (event that cannot be named) to be over" on Twitter got hauled into some top floor offices and roundly chastised. So, for my purposes here let me call this event the Letter-Number Meeting. (Ha! take that security goons!).

However, I will say this..I totally agree with my Twittering co-worker. (I like him even though he Twitters.)I think I speak for all Letter-Number employees when I say that none of us can wait for this to be over.

The worst thing about working here at Letter-Number is the amount of meetings. These people think that nothing can ever be accomplished without a meeting. A long one. Preferably one where people are joining in via video conference and where agendas are passed out that include a "lunch break - user pay" and a couple of "health breaks"(which is ironic since many people use it to smoke). I don't know what they think they accomplish at their huge meetings because it's clearly next to nothing. Mostly, everyone fiddles with their Blackberries (which has replaced pen-doodling of years past) while one by one, we are expected to speak about the status of our particular task. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the people who are working on broadcast don't care about carpet colours and the people working on signage don't care about warehouse load-in but there we all are. Attendance mandatory.

Anyway, enough about Letter-Number for now. I'm sure it will be a rousing success and we as host country will bask in many international accolades. There. Now they can fire me.

Retraction

So, clearly, I need to retract my most recent update. Imagine that, I'm away from this blog for months, come back here to write an irate post about Canada's Olympic athletes crashing and burning and now, here I am, during the Closing Ceremonies writing a happy retraction. In fact, I am happy to report, that after an iffy first week of the Games, those athletes DID rise up and claimed more Gold Medals than any other country has ever done during the Winter Games. Yay!!!

But perhaps, since it was during the writing of my last blog that the tide turned in our favour, so I thought I might as well just go out on a limb and take credit for the turnaround. I write...they listen.

But, as usual, I am sad the Games are over and have to go back to regular life and routine. As of right now, I can go back to being oblivious and totally unconcerned about things like the weather conditions at Cypress Mountain.

I do take solace in the fact, however, that come the next Winter Olympics my children will be 6 and 8 years old and hopefully, will allow me to watch the Games uninterrupted. Today, during the Gold Medal Hockey Game that had this entire country gripped in front of their plasma screens, Kieran must have asked me 4000 questions... could we...say...play Hide and Seek, build his train, take a bath, decorate cupcakes, go outside, watch Mickey Mouse, watch Scooby Doo, read him Pirate Pete, go to the "lunch store", listen to music, have hot chocolate, have juice, and on and on and on. Although, he did learn how to sing O Canada. It's his new favourite song. He fell asleep tonight singing it to himself.

Go Canada!!!

OW! The Podium!

Oy. It's not like I have nothing to blog about.

In fact, now that I have finally decided to devote some time to updating this , I feel like I could be here all night recording all the exciting happenings of the last few months. OK. Not exciting. And I'm here because I think if I watch one more second of the Winter Olympics my eyes will begin to bleed. It was this or Ice Dance. Again.

I will start by addressing my long absence from this space. It's not that I have lost interest or have naught to say. It can be partially explained by the fact that my job only allows for "blogtime" during the summer. At the beginning of the NHL Hockey Season all bets are off that I can reliably devote more than 9 consecutive minutes to crafting even an email response to my mother, let alone a full on blog post. And my other blogging window, which was on weekend nights when Eric was out playing with his band, dried up when the female singer of said band was gestating/birthing/breastfeeding a baby which necessitated a several month hiatus from performing. But, whaddya know? The band is onstage somewhere right now, the Olympic brain seizure is in effect, so blogging it is.

And you know, I could go back and start chronicling all that I have missed (Christmas..awesome. Winter...where snowflakes only ever fall during my commute. Registering Kieran for Kindergarten...Yeehaw!!) but I think I would like to talk about my current/recurrent obsession, which is the Olympics.

If you know me in person you will likely know that I am not a sports fan, and yet I am, and have always been, an Olympic addict. I remember during the 1988 Games in Calgary, re-enacting Olympic Figure Skating routines with my friends in our basement. I remember the following September watching Ben Johnson win the 100 metre in Seoul and, even more clearly, the horror and collective mourning that followed two days later at my high school when he failed that drug test and lost the Gold. But being Canadian, I identify more with the Winter Games... Lillehammer, Albertville, Nagano, Salt Lake City, Torino (and no, I did not have to check with the internet to verify the order of the cities...I do remember them all.)

And now we can add Vancouver 2010 to the list. Hopefully, years from now I will have forgotten how the Games opened, that unfortunate juxtaposition of a jubilant torch run that cut to the sight and sound of a Georgian luger smashing into a steel girder and knowing right then that, even though they wouldn't officially say it for at least another 90 minutes, that he was dead. (This was the one and only time that having an HD Plasma screen installed three feet from my head in the office was very, very bad.) But things have been brighter from there...at least now all I hear all day long from the huge TV beside my head is the collective suck of Canada's best athletes. It's like they are just now saying: "What? OWN the Podium? Dude...I thought that read "OW! The Podium! Because it really, like, hurt when I careened off the hill and smashed into it "

But, even still, I am a fan. I think I can come to terms with the undeniable fact, that, with notable exceptions, no matter how much they try, Canadian athletes can rack up World Championships, International Accolades and World Records...until the Olympics. Its like we see those mascots, hear the orchestra swell in a David Foster-esque theme song and dive for cover. I accept that. And I love the Games regardless. Which is why, I must now return to Ice Dance.

ETA: While I was writing this, Canada won a Gold Medal. Ah, sweet irony.

A Tale of Two Appliances

When we bought our house 4 years ago, it came with some of the lousiest appliances around. The stove had to be replaced almost immediately since, when you turned the oven on to say 350 degrees the entire oven, inside and out, heated up to 350 degrees. So, after a few months of singing my pregnant belly followed by a few more months of fearing for Kieran's young life, our stove was replaced on my first maternity leave. Then mere days into my second maternity leave, our dryer stopped drying and with a baby due to born any second (seriously I had been on mat leave for such a short time the baby hadn't even been born yet) this was not the time to be running to the laundromat. And, since it's cheaper to buy these units in pairs, in came the new washer/dryer (and the new baby!)

Now, the two remaining large appliances, namely the Dishwasher and the Fridge, have been battling for the title of "worst performing" and "most annoying" for years. In fact, the dryer dying was a complete shock because it was not on the bottom of my most-hated appliance list. But, about a year ago, the dishwasher - ironically called something like the "Whisper 2000" - started to make a loud hour-long buzzing noise during its cycle. Noises which we studiously ignored and instead, just learned that it was best to run the dishwasher while not at home and definitely NOT while trying to watch TV or sleeping.

The fridge, which loves to freeze random items in the fridge part, but which cannot keep ice cream hard in the freezer to save it's pathetic life, has also been on a downhill slide. And here we learned that you had to 1) check if it was closed every time you walked into the kitchen because it doesn't seal properly and 2) to not keep anything that really "needed to be frozen" in the freezer door because they wouldn't freeze (which is why Kieran spend a lot of summer eating liquid freezies.)

Anyway, in recent weeks, the dishwasher's annoyingly loud buzzing noise has started to become increasingly more alarming and now whenever you open the dishwasher door this smell of something akin to animal feces would seep out. (Dinner at our house, come on over!)

However, Eric, aka "the man of-a-million-useful-contacts" has a client who works at a huge appliance company which, once a year, hosts a "friends and family" sale where they sell their appliances at employee pricing, minus 10 per cent. (40 percent off)

Anyway, even with Eric not working, our dying (if not quite 100 percent dead) dishwasher, made us decide to not skip the sale this year. After getting a babysitter and standing in the freezing cold for an hour and a half to get into this sale where we found the dishwasher (crazy cheap!) and figured that while we were there, we might as look at the fridges. Due to space restrictions, our fridge options were few to begin with - we basically had to buy the smallest one they sold - but buy it we did.

So, now since all 5 of our big appliances, all purchased at the worst times imaginable and therefore completely devoid of anything that could ever be called a "bell" or a "whistle", have finally been replaced. (Maybe in some other lifetime I will get my water-dispensing dream fridge
or have a washer with a superfluous "steam" cycle.)

Merry Christmas to me!

Parsley and Crossed Fingers

So, we waited for close to four hours in line yesterday to get our H1N1 vaccinations. I am annoyed? Yes. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.

I'm not so much annoyed that we waited for four hours...I was more annoyed that the municipality's fancy website said the wait would be less than an hour. We could have been prepared for 4 hours but weren't...we were prepared for less than 1.

The plan was for Eric to pick up the kids early from daycare and come get me at work and head out the clinic. I told him to pack drinks and snacks and toys - which he did. We had to make a stop at the garage to pick up our car that was being repaired and while Eric was inside I opened the bag to realize (although I should have known) that my idea of snacks (crackers, granola bars etc) was quite different from Eric's, which was Halloween candy.

Yep...the 18-month old holding a little bag of mini-Doritos and my three-year-old with a Halloween size Pringles with a Twizzler chaser? My kids. (Although they were very happy...so it wasn't all bad.)

Anyway we stood for two hours before being ushered into a waiting room for another half hour. Then we were called to register and ushered to yet another waiting room for another hour. At least the third waiting area was very spacious and even had a supervised play area for kids - complete with volunteers wearing rubber gloves and disinfecting toys every 30 seconds.

After the shot...both my kids screamed as though they were getting their arms cut off...we were ushered to yet another waiting area where we were handed a thimbleful of juice and told to wait for another 15 minutes to make sure we had no adverse reactions.

By the time it was done the kids were fine just plain tired and hungry. Kieran talked about food the entire way home. He wanted pizza, noodles and french fries with ketchup. "And when I get big like a grownup, I want to eat hamburgers, pop and coffee and drive a car." They fought over a single stale rice cake that was kicking around the van. We got home and while I was unbuckling Kaya from her seat, Kieran was standing in the rain on the doorstep eating the parsley that is (inexplicably) still growing in a pot outside the door.

But anyway...it's done (although the kids have to go back in three weeks for a second shot). I know the shot is not going to be everybody's choice. It's surrounded by controversy and mismanagement and some unknown risks...but I do know this. I know that if it was one of my kids who ended up on a ventilator in the ER I would never forgive myself. I do know that the regular seasonal flu that kill hundreds of thousands every year does not kill otherwise healthy 13 year old hockey players. So, I can wait 4 hours for a shot or wait 4 hours in an Emergency waiting room to see a doctor to get Tamiflu when they do get it.

It's a crapshoot and I made my choice. Fingers crossed that it was the right one.

Fishy, Fishy, Fishy Fish

We got Kieran a fish for his bedroom. And because Kieran is three, the fish is called Nemo. (Yes, we WOULD also let him name a cat Garfield and a dog Scooby Doo). Eric picked up one of those small little mini-aquarium starter sets meant for kids at some clearance place last week and thought it would be perfect for Kieran's bedroom. He then suggests a fun family outing to go to the fish store and pick out a new fish - yay says Kieran! -so one night after dinner, we pack up and off we go. Once we are all in the car, it's already getting sort of late and Eric mentions that he wants to go to a fish store in Chinatown that his brother has recommended. But is late and I think we should just go the the big box pet emporium that is 5 minutes from our house. Eric relents because, after all, we just need to get fish for a three year old and how hard can that be? (Yes, you do already know the answer).

We get to the store, find the fish section (where Kieran loudly announces that he would like to buy a whale) and wait 15 minutes for the lone saleswoman to give us some help. Eric has found a tank similar to ours on their shelf, and tells and asks her to recommend a good fish for that model.

With barely, and I mean barely, concealed disgust, she points to a large aquarium, swimming with literally hundreds of identical goldfish and says: "One of those." The box Eric is holding shows pictures of quite a few fish that would be suitable for the aquarium so we tentatively ask if that is our only option and she says, more snappily than necessary, that yes, a goldfish is all that will work.

So I tell Kieran to go to the aquarium and the lady will catch his new goldfish. She opens the tank and catches a random fish and I ask how long we can expect the fish to live.

"In ideal conditions, properly feed and cared for, these fish will live 30 years."

"Really?" I ask, quite surprised. "That long?"

"Well," she practically spits, "with what you are going to put it in, I would say it will live a year, if you're LUCKY."

Now, Eric tries. He had really been hoping for one of the funkier options that the box shows. "Well, is that our only option? We were thinking of maybe getting more than one." He is thinking that if we get a smaller fish we can maybe have more than one.

Again, she barely looks at us. "Uh no. That tank is too small for even one fish."

And so much for our happy little family outing to get fish. Now, which was surely her intention, we feel like bad parents and bad people.

But, then I look over at the tank that she has just taken the goldfish from. It is teeming with hundreds of fish and the irony seems obvious. Does this woman actually think that fish was better off where he was? Or was she still holding out hope for the one in a million chance that someone with a huge house with a lovely temperature-controlled indoor pond is going to come in and their drop 27 cents and spirit our little Nemo off to goldfish utopia?

Sheepishly, we grab our little plastic bag and make our way out of the store.

On our way home, Eric is completely annoyed. Not just at the horrible, scary saleslay, but also at me for squashing his plans for Chinatown to begin with. As it turns out, he had been warned to avoid the very store we had gone to.

To make matters worse, after Eric follows all the proper instructions and tries to make sure that the fish has a nice happy integration into his new home, in less that 24 hours Nemo is not only not moving, he is listing alarmingly sideways. Of course, now I feel twice as guilty (The lousy saleslady was right!We ARE murderers!) and worried (How are we going to explain to Kieran that his new pet is already going to be flushed down the toilet?) and sad (Poor Nemo.) But then the next day, we are witness to a fishy miracle. We wake up to Nemo swimming happily in his little tank. Well, I have no idea if he is happy or not...but he is upright and alive and he doesn't have to visit the "fish doctor" as I warned Kieran he might. Take that, Fish Lady.

Sushi anyone?

People in Glass Houses Shouldn't Call the Kettle Black

A former co-worker of mine coined a phrase that I have more or less come to live by. She was having an argument with an employee in our accounting department and I remember listening to her side of an obviously painful phone conversation with said employee which ended with her slamming down the phone and then turning to me and saying: "Don't you hate it when somebody who you think is stupid actually thinks YOU'RE the stupid one?" And she had a fantastic point, because, yes, I DO hate that.

The same philosophy, I have come to realize, can be applied to parenting. It has come to my attention that someone who I think could probably lay off the reading of the parental manuals for a few minutes in order to properly apply the lessons, actually had the nerve to openly criticize the way I handle my kids. And this makes me crazy.

Let me explain. This woman is a friend of friends. We usually only see each other at a mutual friend's house where it is quite clear that we have nothing in common with each other save children who are the same age.

I could relay the entire story, but for the sake of brevity I'll just say this: Kieran still uses a soother. Yes, he's just past three and he uses a soother - not all the time, strictly for soothing purposes and at bedtime. I wish he didn't and I do understand that the permanent removal of said soother lies in my hands.

Anyway, by the time we had arrived at this party Kieran was already, God help us all, overtired and I could see we were likely going to wind up in some sort of meltdown, which we did. I tried to calm him but he was inconsolable and it was getting sort of embarrassing. Then I remembered with huge relief that I had Kaya's soother in my pocket, which I fished out and handed to him. It worked, as it always does, like magic. Crying stops, party resumes. Three minutes later I take the soother away and off he goes to play.

So apparently, in the world of judgemental parenting, allowing a three year old to use a soother is a transgression of relatively epic proportions. We left the party relatively early, I mean, after all, I had a clearly tired child on my hands who needed his own bed and a good night's sleep. And after we left, apparently, the woman who is, if I may borrow loosely from 30 Rock, the Patron SAINT of Judgemental Parenting (PSofJP), felt it necessary to point out to the other party guests, the colossal error of my ways.

Now, I'm not going to pretend that I have never been critical of anyone else's parenting. I am the first to admit that I have occasionally enjoyed the smug satisfaction that surely all parents feel when they hear of some serious questionable way that other raise their kids, but has it come to this? Party flogging over soothers?

I would have dismissed this episode as sheer bitchiness, except that this is not the first time I have borne the brunt of this woman's parenting wrath. The last time was because we were sharing an anecdote of Kaya waking up from a nap with a fever of 105.1. It had been the dead of winter and we didn't want to rush off to Emergency to sit there for four hours, so I had called Telehealth. I knew about spiking fevers and febrile seizures but I wasn't sure at what point we needed to get to a hospital, but the Telehealth nurse walked us through her entire checklist and by the time the nurse said that based on the symptoms we definitely did NOT need to go the Emergency, Kaya's temperature was already coming down.

Anyway, I was telling this story to our PSoJP and she couldn't seem to get OVER the fact that we didn't go to Emergency. She was citing seizures and brain damage and I told her that I thought brain damage didn't kick in until the fever was much higher, but since I hadn't been expecting any sort of inquisition on the matter I hadn't done any research, so I just said that we listened to the nurse and that Kaya was totally fine. But apparently, again after we left, I was told that a huge discussion took place about how horrible it was that we never took our poor sick baby who was possibly on the verge of death, to the hospital. Out of fury, I did an Internet search and for those of you who may be interested...I was right - the risk of brain damage starts at a temperature of 107.6.

Still, even though I think this woman could learn to be a bit of a nicer person in general, I actually do think that all parents - not just her - need to take a good long look at themselves before they so freely criticize others.

Parenting is not easy and every kid is different. It seems like every decision you make is fraught with the peril of potentially life ruining consequences for your innocent baby or child - it starts in the hospital with the old formula/breastfeeding debate and just goes on from there.

Do we really need to criticize others just to make us feel better about ourselves? What does it matter to her or anyone else if my three year old needs a soother now and then? This culture of "Holier than Thou" parenting is just annoying, because as far as I'm concerned we all live in glass houses.

All I know is this...my kids are loved and safe. They have bedtimes and routines, clean clothes and vegetables. They are happy. And if that isn't enough for you, here is a soother (not Kieran's because he might need it later) to shut you up.