Obama, meet Osama.

You know what really bug me about us Canadians? We don't give a rat's ass about our Canadian politics, and we show it by not voting because according to us, all the candidates suck. I was listening to the news in the truck today, and the presidential swearing-in was being broadcast all over Toronto. Apparently, it was also broadcast on a bigscreen in the middle of Dundas Square, and the reporter covering the event said Torontonians were crying, laughing, dancing and overall just celebrating Barack Obama's new presidency.

Just making a point. We won't even VOTE for a new leader in Canada because we're so apathetic about it, but we're all terribly excited about the President.

Not that I blame anyone. I am personally thrilled that for the first time ever, there is a black president in the White House, and it just goes to show you how far we've come, in some respects anyway. I think Obama will do a good job, too. He's fairly young, optomistic, and idealistic, but a realist. In fact, he reminds me of JFK. JFK had his faults, but still, everyone bloody loved him because he had a genuine interest in improving the country.

I kinda knew he was a shoo-in for the winner, too. If you ask me, I think people were getting sick of the good ol' boys club from the South and as far as I'm concerned, John McCain didn't stand a chance.

My only concern for Barack Obama is if he's going to be able to live up to everyone's expectations. I believe he'll keep his promises, but I think a lot of people have built him up as some kind of superhero and that's a lot of pressure to deal with. He'll make some small boo boo and people everywhere will be shakiing their heads in disappointment..When George Bush was elected, people sat back and said, "Well, I wonder how THIS one's gonna screw up the country." Barack Obama, however, got everyone so stirred up I don't think they'll settle down for some time. His slogan promises of hope and change actually made a difference in the way everyone in the world thought about politics, like for the first time, real change was possible.

I certainly hope so, and again, I wish him the best of luck.

I hope that he finds Osama Bin Laden one day and kicks the living shit out of him.

GO, OBAMA!

"Well, if you ask me, I think she's had work done."

Yes, the blog's had a facelift, not me.
Trimmed the fat, added some new features, and went for a more polished look.
The Pepto Bismol pink was really getting on my nerves too.

I leave you with this:




Someone on the net pointed out something interesting in the photos, as you may see in the close up. No wonder the kids won't eat it.

His n' Hers

HEY, EVERYBODY! (Assuming anyone is actually reading this)
I hope everyone had a lovely holiday season, and are now wallowing in post New Year's resolution regrets. But anyway, the new year is always a new start for everyone in some way, and I'm no exception. To explain, I wrote in my last post that Gerry and I finally got our lovely house and we were moving in February.

It's January 10, and the preparations are moving at a mad pace. As a result, everyone close to me is in a state of studied chaos. I've packed up almost an entire house, with my mother's help, and she's still nagging me to "get things done". The kids are going off the wall because I've been going through their things and tossing stuff deemed not fit to enter 'my house'. "YOU'RE NOT THROWING THAT AWAY! I NEED THAT!"

Even Gerry is doing his thing and prepping for the move, which in itself is shocking because he does nearly everything on the fly. He might think about something for six months, but once he decides it's the right thing he wants it done yesterday. He has actually taken the trouble to pack things in boxes. During his last move everything was crammed in like, six boxes and the rest was stuffed in plastic bags or tossed in his garage.

Which brings me to the fact that because of this move, we've talked of nothing but furniture placement, draperies, big screen plasma tv's, schools, big screen plasma tv's, new stools for the island in the kitchen, and big screen plasma tv's. Geez, you think Gerry wants a new big screen plasma tv?

The new house, which is actually about 50 years old and getting extensive renovations before we move in, is actually going to look really beautiful when the contractors are done with it. It has what is basically a dream kitchen, beautiful new floors, and all kinds of bells and whistles. Our friend who owns the home and is doing the renos is basically catering to our wants because he wants us there for a long time. Kind of like the I Love Lucy Show where the Ricardos sign a 99 year lease over to the Mertzes. They added a new fireplace in the living room on the main floor, and lo and behold, isn't there a framed space above it for a plasma. Not just any old tv, but a 55 inch space for an enormous frigging monstrosity of a plasma. I happen to know it's 55 inches because Gerry's already measured it. According to him, it'll look stupid if we put anything smaller there.

My only bone of contention with this lovely house is the shelving. Our friend decided to put built in shelves on either side of the fireplace, and they do look great. My theory is, though, if you're going to have shelves, they have to be functional or they just take up space. Meaning, if I have to have shelves, they have to serve a real purpose, 'cause I hate clutter.

Anyway, the homeowner went on vacation during Christmas, and the contracting crew were left to their own devices while our friend was gone. One day, we dropped by to see how the place was progressing, and saw they had put in the built in bookshelves. Great. The only problem was, on one side, they had built an abnormally tall, shallow shelf. I assumed they were fitting an extra shelf in between. They told me no, it was to be used to 'put a tall vase or something in'. Hmph. I'm thinking to myself, I don't have a tall vase to put in this ridiculous shelf, I don't want a tall vase, and I certainly don't plan on buying a tall vase to accomodate this young upstart of a contractor who took it upon himself to 'design' our shelving.

Long story short, after much bitching in Gerry's ear and him finally throwning his hands up in the air and exclaiming "ALRIGHT! I'll find some way to split the shelf!" I was happy. I felt a little guilty after and I'm sure that Gerry was suddenly seeing me in a new light. His low maintenance, easy going girlfriend was suddenly morphing into THE WIFE who has an input on all decisions regarding where we live. He knows I'm willing to compromise, though. He gets his big screen plasma, and I get both master bedroom closets. He gets the garage, and I get the bathroom to do with what I wish. It's a win-win situation. He no longer has to rely on takeout for dinner and I don't have to do home repairs all by myself anymore.

And the best part is, now I get to cuddle up to him every night, and it's a permanent thing, not just a date. That's why we're doing this whole thing, after all, and it's something I try never to lose sight of.

What's mine is mine and what's his is...mine.

Just kidding. We got our house. Our beautiful bungalow is going to be ready in February and although it's not that far from where we are now, it's far enough from the dump we live in now!

Gerry lives...like a guy. Who's not Felix Unger. He leaves clothes on his floor. He uses towels until way past the point where they smell of mildew. Let's not even get started about the shaving hairs in the sink and the fruit flies circling above his kitchen sink. I told him today that in a couple of months, he'll no longer have to worry about this, even if it kills me.

Someone sent this to me today:




The caption read, "If light stays on for more than four hours, call your electrician."

Just WHO is running OUR Country?

I don't think I'm getting the bang for my buck at the kid's school, and they've sucked about two hundred dollars out of me since school began.

My nine year old daughter came up to me the other day and told me that if she'd been able to vote, she would've voted for Jack Layton of the NDP 'cause he's nice. The disturbing thing is that she also thought Barack Obama was also one of the candidates for "President of Canada".

A harmless misunderstanding, kind of cute, and even kind of ironic, when you think about it.

The thing is, when I was her age, I already understood that as Canadians, we had a prime minister running our country, not a president. Although I knew who Ronald Reagan was, I knew at that age that he wasn't the one running Canada. Or so I thought, anyway.

So my daughter and I had a little chat about the whole setup, and who runs where and so on. Too bad her teachers are probably running around screaming "Go Obama" and the students don't know a whit about Canadian politics.

A few weeks ago, at our Canadian elections, the one that decided who our next prime minister was going to be, only 46% of potential voters turned out. Most of the non voters cited they were too busy, or too disheartened to even consider voting for the candidates we had. And now I'm ashamed to admit that I was one of the disheartened. For me, there was no 'lesser of the two evils' to choose between, I just thought all the choices were just plain bad.

And yet, I'm willing to bet that 99% of Canadians had at least one ear tuned to the results of the U.S. election, and would have voted if they could.

And now Obama is president. Good luck to him, and I hope he does a good job, because it seems to me that Canadians are just as desperate for a good leader as Americans are.

This neighborhood sucks, seriously

Ok, so this is a bit of a rant. First off, today Gerry informs me that we are NOT getting the lovely house I've been salivating over for the last month. I was tasting freedom from this one horse fucking town I live in and now it seems I have to wait longer. Sucks.

Last week I put together a 9th birthday party for my oldest daughter. I rented the party room in our complex, made all the food, decorated, and all in all spent a small fortune on loot bags and prizes for about 25 kids. I sent out invitations to all the kids in Scarlett's class. Call me crazy for doing that, but when we sat around and tried to decide who to invite, we discovered that one kid would be left out if we invited another kid and so on. So anyway, I was waiting for parents to RSVP, and only about 8 did. Out of those eight, four of those calls were actually from the kids themselves, saying that they could come. The parents actually refused to come to the phone and have the fucking courtesy to speak to another parent. How fucking rude.

One of the kids invited was a neighbor whose mother refused to say whether her daughter could come or not, even when we asked again the day before the party. Sure enough, the day of the party, her kid shows up, and says, "My mother says I can come to the party if you'll let me." Of course I let the kid in, but the nerve of the mother. No class.

To make a long story short, with the exception of my kids and Gerry's kids and like, two kids from Scarlett's class, the rest of them were rude brats. Demanding, yelling, screaming, throwing things rude brats. My kids can be brats sometimes, definitely. But the difference is, when they attend a party, they know they'd better behave and display their best manners..I don't know where Scarlett's classmates learned their manners, but I have a distinct feeling that the rude parents who couldn't even be bothered to speak to me about the party are somewhat to blame. Not only did these kids trash the party room, they also completely messed up the park right outside the room, and despite the fact I told them several times not to do it, they insisted on throwing juice boxes and candy wrappers right on the ground. Little pigs. I knew the party wasn't going to go perfectly smooth, they are kids after all, but God, I've never seen such mouthy, greedy little ingrates.

I was cleaning up near the end of this debacle, praying for the parents to show up and pick up their little deviants, when the Drunken Lush of the Complex shows up. She's one of the neighbors I don't care to really talk to, the one who starts drinking at 7 in the morning, has four kids to take care of and spends most of her time wandering around the complex bothering the other neighbors. Believe it or not,she walks right into Scarlett's party and asks if her kids can come in and have cake, and a loot bag. Practically speechless, I agreed, and then this woman actually proceeds to start cleaning up and washing dishes and packing away food and tearing down the party, I shit you not.

Being a former bartender, I know that you can't always predict the actions or moods of someone who's under the influence, so I sucked it up and let her stay for a bit -- she seemed calm and I didn't want her to snap or something in the middle of a party filled with kids.

God, I hate this freaking neighborhood.

Oh, yeah. I'm at work today, and we're doing a house that's undergoing a complete reno. It's about eighty years old and totally gutted inside, save for the new framing and ductwork. I'm up on a ladder when this woman appears behind me. "Hi, do you live here?" So I told her, no, I'm working here. Then she starts asking all the other trades if they live in this house. From the bemused looks on their faces I could tell they were thinking the same thing I was. The house is completely gutted, there's no walls inside, holes in the floors everywhere. Why she would think the house was fit for habitation was beyond me. I couldn't resist. "Yes, I LIVE here." She kind of got it after that and gave me a dirty look. Turns out she was canvassing the neighborhood, campaigning for the Liberals. "I'm here on behalf of Marilyn Churley, and she'll work really hard for you, and I hope we can count on your vote."

Obviously she must really believe in Liberal propaganda, because she had to climb on up to a front porch that has no stairs to tell us that. One of the guys tells her that no, none of us live there, at all. "Well, are the homeowners here?" Um, is this thing on, did we not just tell you that nobody lives here?

Parasites.

I know it's my responsibility to vote and all, but I gotta tell you, I don't even want to. I don't like any of the candidates for Prime Minister. I've got the choice of Jack Layton, king of the NDP who doesn't have a chance in hell of winning, ever, then there's Stephen Dion, who takes every chance he can to trumpet about his bullshit policies in broken English, thankyou very much, and then there's Steven Harper, the cardigan clad asshole, and any Canadian knows how that turned out already. I'd rather stuff all my money under a mattress then put it anywhere the government can get their hands on it. Worse than cockroaches.

The stupid woman finally goes away, and later when we're sitting outside taking a break, we see her packing herself and her fellow canvassers away in a car. "Oh hi." she trilled at us, from across the street.

I still ain't voting for you.

Who, me? Meh.

My son, at three and not quite three quarters, is still toilet training. Well, rather, he has people trying to toilet train him. Brody has a rather cavalier attitude toward potty training. He can take it or leave it. We've tried: Bribing (a treat for using the potty). We've also tried reinforcing the idea with books. He loves hearing the book about Henry using the potty. Little man has about 42 pairs of new underwear and is proud to say he has peed in most of them.

It's not that he can't do it. He knows how. He'll walk up to me and announce he's just done his business in the toilet, and then ten minutes after I've finished praising him to the skies he'll take a slash in a corner somewhere. This is the kind of stuff that worries me even more than when his sisters are playing house with him and hand him a purse to carry. I'm getting lots of nosy questions lately about whether I've 'tried' to train Brody, and all I can say is that it's a work in progress, and if they don't like it they can 'piss' off. I just hate it when people offer unsolicited advice about my kids and look at me like I'm a Bad Mom.

A couple of weeks ago, Brody comes over to me and wrinkles his nose. "Something smells bad." I guess this was his way of dropping me a broad hint, or he honestly doesn't know he's the one responsible for creating the stench, or doesn't care. You see what I'm up against?

Other news. Gerry's parents are moving into their new house, are having a hard time selling their old house, and are contemplating renting it out for a while. I love that house. I WANT THAT HOUSE.

Poor Gerry. The man has been having a painful kidney stone attack all day. He thinks it's because he's dehydrated. He seems to think having a couple of beers with the neighbor down the street will help. Whatever works, baby.

A couple of pictures of my little man:
At a few months old

With his sister

Wearing my work boots