Chaos Theory

George and I survived the trip to Toys R Us today and it was a raging success. We got everything we wanted, it didn’t take us long to find everything, the castle is absolutely beautiful, and the store wasn’t packed at all. Hooray!

We’re not done, mind you, but I am happy because all the big gifts are done for the girls so I can breathe easy now. We still want to get them a few smaller things and we have to get them each a present for the other, but we can do that on the weekend.

We also have to get the gifts for our families, but I have my list made out of what to get for everyone which is much less stressful than the old, “hmmm let’s see what I can find…” That will also be on the weekend or perhaps Monday. We have to see how our plans go.

While we were out I also got a gingerbread house kit because I think the kids will have a blast with that. I always wanted to do them when I was a kid but we were so busy (plus my mom baked a metric ton of cookies, so it’s not like I was deprived). I told George one of the weirdest things about my youth is that I never put together and decorated a gingerbread house for Christmas until I started dating my Jewish boyfriend when I was 18.

I figure whichever day we don’t go shopping over the weekend can be gingerbread day, but even if we’re too busy, Hayley is off school all next week anyway so we could do it Monday if we had to.

George and I also got ourselves an early Christmas gift. We don’t exchange gifts since having the kids, but we usually buy something for both of us. While I would have loved a Wii (with a Wii Fit!) it wasn’t going to be realistic! Our oven’s wiring is shot. The stove part works fine but the oven doesn’t work. Since we can’t really get a whole new stove right now, we got ourselves a Black & Decker rotisserie and convection oven (it’s this one, though we paid much less than that, it was on sale!). You can cook and bake pretty much anything in it. We had a roast beef tonight and it came out perfect and was delicious.

I’m relieved because for totally unknown, random reasons, our Yule dinner tradition is to have meat pie for supper and that wasn’t going to fit in a toaster oven. I was also disappointed that we’d have to leave store bought cookies out for Santa but I can fit a small baking sheet in the convection oven – making the cookies with the kids is part of the December 24th fun.

I’m just glad I survived the first leg of the shopping. Let’s hope the rest is just as successful!

During the late 80s and early 90s there was a lot of commotion about the Beastie Boys and there was no doubt that I liked them. In fact, I enjoyed their music so much that I actually still have four of their songs on my iPod right now (“Brass Monkey”, “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”, “Sabotage”, and “Fight For Your Right”).

However, while a great deal of people were whoopin’ it up over the Beastie Boys, I actually preferred one of their most direct competitors, rap/hip hop group 3rd Bass. God, I loved 3rd Bass. I had a bit of a thing for Pete Nice, I admit it! I liked most of their songs, really, but one of my favorites was “Brooklyn Queens”.

I had forgotten all about them until I saw Gilbert Gottfried on something on TV last weekend (I think it might have actually been an episode of “Family Guy” now that I think about it). I remembered that he had had a small cameo in a video for a hip hop group way back when and had to look it up. Then, as often happens on YouTube, one click led to another and to another, until I had listened to all their stuff. Some of it twice.

They only had three albums and Pete Nice doesn’t even do music anymore (though Wikipedia says he opened a sports bar in Boston and that it ranks as the number one of that kind in the area), but it’s fun to reminisce!

I’m so confused right now. Logically I know it’s Thursday but the week has been a weird blur for me. First Hayley was off last Friday for a ped day, we had a weekend, and then she was off Monday because of the election (they frequently hold elections in schools). She went to school on Tuesday, then Wednesday was a snow day. She went back today, and I don’t know what it really feels like at this point but I think it should be a weekend now, but alas there is one more day.

I can do one more day. Come on Saturday.

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They managed to clear one of our sidewalks so I was able to go out without having to walk on the street or on top of a snowbank, so that was nice. I hate when sidewalks are left behind while the snow removal goes on. Not all of us drive, and it would be nice to not go out walking with a crazy dog in the bus lane during rush hour, thanks.

There was no snow – though they’re calling for more overnight – but it was pretty cold. I found out Hayley didn’t go out for recess or lunch recess today because the yard was mostly ice so when she got home from school I took the girls and the dog out to play in the snow in the courtyard.

Breanna is my daughter. About 20 minutes passed and the fun stopped for her. The wind was blowing, it wasn’t even sunny, and she said, “Mommy, it’s too cold. We need to go home now.” Meanwhile, Hayley was working on her 35th snow angel and would have stayed out until her limbs froze and fell off. Luckily, the promise of hot chocolate is mighty persuasive.

Poor Breanna ended up with snow all inside her mitts so her hands were freezing. I managed to warm her up and gave out the hot chocolate with some peanut butter banana sandwiches, and I thawed myself out with a cup of green tea.

Tomkorrow is supposed to be a bit warmer, we’ll try again then.

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I meant to mention that I finally finished Breaking Dawn several days ago. The middle was so difficult to wade through, it really was. But the third part of the book was excellent with the last 100 pages being amazing. It got hard to put it down by that point.

And now I have nothing to read. I started something else but it’s not doing it for me. I need a new book. I’m still kind of in vampire mode but I’m not sure. I have a couple of Amazon gift certificates coming my way, anyone have any suggestions as far as books they’ve read lately that they love? Someone mentioned Wake, another young adult novel, and it sounds pretty interesting so I might grab that one, but I don’t know yet.

Suggest away!

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I probably wouldn’t be so tired at Dark O’Clock when I take the dog out and wake Hayley up if I’d stop staying up so late. Good night!

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Don’t mind me, I’m just testing something out. Over at b5media, we often use a site called Picapp for photos on our blogs. I get some pictures from major photo sites, but I get a lot of them from Picapp because it’s free, easy, and they work with a lot of photo agencies so there’s a good chance that if there’s some sort of celebrity event, they’ll have it.

Anyway, because I’m registered with them, they asked if we could try out their new WordPress plugin, and that’s what I’m doing. For anyone who is interested, it works really well, letting you search for images right in your WordPress dashboard, which is really convenient.

Stay tuned for a proper Holidailies entry later today.

This morning I was not a happy camper. I went out in the still-dark world at 6:25 am with the dog and discovered that after it had snowed all day yesterday, it had then turned to freezing rain over night. It was still the case when I went out and as a result, the whole world was pretty much solid ice. The poor dog didn’t know what to do since she always picks soft places to pee; she kept squatting, then looking at me with confusion, and trying to find a better spot.

Within half an hour it had changed back to snow and I was thinking about what a nightmare it would be to go out there with Hayley but then it was Happy Dance time when it was announced that her school – along with many others – had been canceled. Hooray!

Alas, there was no going back to bed. For one thing, Hayley had already had breakfast and gotten dressed so she never would have slept anyway. For another, Breanna had been experiencing stomach aches ever since her gastro last week and I was getting worried so we had to get to the clinic by 8 am.

It was a really bad drive and it wasn’t even that far. The roads were such a mess, thank goodness we didn’t have to go all the way downtown. Almost everyone who works at the clinic was late too because of the snow.

The doctor checked Breanna out, but couldn’t see anything urgent. He said it’s likely residual effects from the gastro and that those can take ten days or so to go away sometimes. He said if she suddenly has any other major symptoms or if it persists past the weekend that we should go to the children’s hospital but otherwise we can wait it out. That’s good news, but the bad news is that there’s nothing I can do for her. When it hurts, she curls into a ball and screams and cries and it just about kills me that all I can do is hold her and tell her it’s okay. I really hope it passes quickly.

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And while writing that, Breanna woke up briefly. She is currently sniffling mightily in her sleep, sounding very much like Hayley when she had her cold over the weekend. Meanwhile George has been shivering profusely despite the heat being up high and is not feeling very well. I am washing my hands every 15 seconds to avoid catching anything from anyone but it’s probably a lost cause since Breanna coughed in my face earlier today.

I swear, Hayley is like Typhoid Mary whenever she’s in school, bringing home every disease known to man. Is it summer yet?

Apparently not.

I’m not a perfect parent (haha, really?). I always said I didn’t want to be that parent who yells at the kids and yet I do. I mean, I don’t scream non-stop at them all day, every day. But I do yell, especially when they’re pushing the boundaries.

I also have clumsy kids who don’t pay attention to their cups of water/juice and who don’t always listen to us telling them to sit still and stop fooling around before they spill something. And I swear, something gets spilled here on an almost-daily basis. Sometimes it’s multiple times per day. It drives me crazy and I have been known to raise my voice at them. When it’s a genuine accident, not so much, but when either George or I have just finished telling them to settle down and they don’t and they knock a full cup of juice onto the floor, it’s extremely frustrating.

And yet, every time it happens, I am reminded of a day when I was about nine years old, give or take. My parents took us to visit with some people who had two kids of their own – one was roughly my age, the other was a couple of years older. My mother and their mother had worked together at Sunlife and she was really nice, as were the kids. The father was a bit of an asshole – my father actually couldn’t stand him, but he tolerated the guy.

I spent the day in one of the bedrooms with the girls, playing and talking and checking out what they had. They ended up getting me into collecting stickers – they showed me their albums and even gave me a bunch of stickers to get me started. I was having a great time.

They lived in a house with a nice, finished basement, which is where the family room was. We all got a glass of Coke from the mom and went to go downstairs to play, which is where the father was sitting and watching television.

(And as an aside, who does that? I mean, family watching TV while you’re over is one thing, but who has company over and sits down to watch TV? Rude much?)

I was already downstairs and turned to wait for my new friends to join me just in time to see the youngest one lose her footing and tumble head-first down a full flight of stairs. She landed in a heap on the floor at the bottom, sobbing hysterically, clutching herself in pain.

And the asshole father leaped out of his chair and started screaming at his wife to hurry downstairs – so she could clean up the beige carpet before the Coke the girl had been carrying could stain. He berated his crying daughter for ruining their nice carpet. And I was just rooted to the floor, my jaw hanging open, shocked that he never once asked her if she was okay, if she had broken anything, if she was seriously hurt.

I was only little but I was old enough to understand that there was something wrong with a man who cared more about his carpet than his daughter’s well being. She hadn’t been fooling around, skipping down the stairs or balancing her glass on her head, she was just walking like any normal person and she slipped. She could have broken her arm, the way she landed. But he cared about his stuff instead of his child.

I get it, it’s frustrating when your kids ruin the nice things you have, either by accident or on purpose. My end table has so much crayon all over it that I don’t even bother anymore. There have been drawings on walls. We have a stain on the front of our couch from a rogue juice box. But my god, the day I yell and scream at Hayley and Breanna for spilling something while they lie crying on the floor, hurt, I hope someone will grab me by the shoulders, shake me a couple of times, and tell me to get a fucking grip and worry about the more important issues.

The Coke came out of the carpet, and it was fine and you probably couldn’t even tell the next day when it dried. I wonder if SHE was fine the next day. I wonder sometimes if she remembers that day. Because if I can remember it so clearly and can think of it on a regular basis, I have a hard time imagining that she would have forgotten the day her father cared so much about a carpet that he would scream obscenities at her while she lay on it in a crumpled heap.

I don’t know if homework has changed and gotten more intense since I was six years old, almost three decades ago (let me pause for a moment to say “holy shit” to that). Maybe I just don’t remember properly.

Hayley has homework every day that she goes to school and there’s quite a bit of it, though the teacher always says to use our judgment and not do all of it if our kids are too tired or frustrated. The reading part is fine. She has a reader that she is supposed to work her way through every day, except that Hayely is such a good reader that she read the whole thing in one day about two months ago. The other reading homework is such that the teacher sends each child home with a small book and they have to read it, fill out the log, and then send it back for a new one. That, too, is easy because it’s really basic compared to the reading she does on her own. She also has to do flash cards but we don’t usually do them either.

And really, thank GOD we don’t have to do the reader or slowly go over the little book or do flash cards for reading. Because the other homework is long enough, thanks very much. She usually has a two-sided sheet to do each day. On the front is something that requires writing, spelling, reading a brief instruction and following it (such as “draw a picture of two brown bears, three white rabbits, and one yellow bird”). Sometimes she has to write a story with four or five sentences, such as this:

On the flip side is her math homework. Most of it has been pretty basic and easy but today I had to actually stop her because she wasn’t getting it (she missed a day last week due to being sick, so it’s possible she wasn’t there for the lesson) and I couldn’t explain it to her in a way that made sense to her. It involves number patterns and it would look something like this: 5 __ __ 23 29 35 __ __ and so one. It just seems like such a huge leap for six-year-olds to figure out how to tell that the pattern is skipping by six and to then fill in the blanks accordingly.

After five out of 12 exercises, I realized that a) I was pretty much answering it for her and b) she still wasn’t getting it and she was also c) getting really frustrated with herself, I closed her folder and told her to forget it for today. I wrote a note to the teacher to tell her why it was incomplete and asked her if she could review it with Hayley at some point during the day to help her out.

I had a great deal of trouble with math. I was okay for the basic math, but word problems in grade six totally threw me, especially when I was often able to figure it out but couldn’t show my work to my teacher’s satisfaction. Then I was okay for grades seven and eight. And after that? I hit algebra in grade nine, and you might as well have asked me to understand quantum physics. I want to make sure Hayley gets a good firm grasp on math any time she has any trouble with it and I don’t want her to start hating it in grade one, so I figure it’s best to have the teacher – who has been taught to teach things in different ways – help her out.

But seriously, I do not remember grade one being this intense at all. And the pace is only going to pick up in the new year. Yikes! At this rate, she’ll hit that algebra in grade five!

Last night it was cold but bearable when I took the girls out to see the Christmas lights around the neighborhood. This morning it was snowing and it was still cold, but not too horrible, and was better by afternoon when I took the dog for one of her long walks.

Tonight I took her out to pee after the kids went to bed. It was -16C with the wind making it feel like -25C (that would be 3F and -13F respectively). The wind is howling and rattling the windows beside my desk and it actually knocked our wooden bistro table over. When Pearl crouched down outside, squatting over the cold snow with her butt shivering in the wind, she stared up at me with miserable eyes as though to ask, “why? Why is it like this?”

Welcome to Winter in Montreal Pearl. It’s a long way until Spring.

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About a year ago I read a little tutorial on how to create special effects with light by making a lens filter out of construction paper. You cut a circle the size of your lens, cut out a shape of some sort in the center, and then tape it onto another piece of paper that is long enough to wrap around the lens. Slip it over your lens, set it to a wide open aperture, and take some good bokeh shots. Instead of circles like most bokeh pictures, the out-of-focus lights will take on the shape you’ve cut out on your filter.

I wasn’t able to do it with my other cameras but with the current camera, especially with the 50mm f/1.8 lens it’s very easy. I want to try other shapes soon.

The funniest thing to me about bokeh is that I see it all the time with my own eyes. My eyesight is so terrible that if I look over the top of my glasses at my Christmas lights, they all turn into that lovely bokeh circle. It’s built-in!

*******
Hayley was off on Friday and has tomorrow off as well because of the provincial elections. Because God knows I feel like voting again when I just went to the polls recently and may have to go back again in the near future. Regardless, it’s a good thing that she doesn’t have to go to school in the morning because now it’s Hayley’s turn to be sick. She’s not as bad as Breanna was, but she did have a fever today, enough so that we gave her some Tylenol before bed, and she has a very draining cold. She’s not the happiest camper right now, and I’m glad she’ll have tomorrow to recuperate so she can get back to school on Tuesday; she only has four days this week, then she has a full five days next week, and then she’s off for two full weeks for the holidays.

Hopefully we’ll all be done with our various colds, gastro strains, and other fun stuff (cholera? ebola? SARS?) before Christmas gets here!

I’m really starting to lament this whole bound-by-24-hours crap. I need more hours. Or more specifically I need more hours where I’m not responsible for anyone or anything other than what I want or need to do for myself. Between caring for the kids, feeding people, doing the most basic cleaning, doing my work, walking the dog, and lather-rinse-repeat, I find myself trying to cram everything else in.

I have some music I want to rip to put on my iPod, but haven’t had time. I want to take more pictures, pictures with a purpose rather than just to capture memories, but it rarely happens. I want to dump and edit and upload the pictures I have taken but I’m always days behind on Flickr lately. I want to catch up on reading the blogs that I love but it doesn’t always happen. I want to clean out the buffet and turn the majority of it into an arts & crafts center for the kids so that corner won’t look so messy all the time when my little Van Gogh wannabes get into a drawing mood. I want to look up new recipes because I’m so tired of the ones in the regular rotation. I want to try to make the roti that I saw on a YouTube Indian cooking channel. I want to purge and organize and clean my home beyond the bare necessities. I want to finish reading Breaking Dawn which is finally so good that I can barely stand to stop, and I want to read the next book in my to-read pile. I want to catch up on my missed television (I’m two episodes behind on Ghost Whisperer, Grey’s Anatomy, and Criminal Minds). I want to watch some of the movie I’ve been meaning to see.

But time, elusive time. The only way I could manage would be to give up sleep and that just won’t cut it.

At least tonight I did do something I really wanted – I took the girls and the dog on a walk around the neighborhood to see the Christmas lights. I might have to go again another time because I think some people were out, but it was still fun and very pretty, and the kids loved it. Then I brought them home and gave them hot chocolate and a snack before bed, and it was a pretty good evening.

And now here I am, just before midnight, frantically typing this out in order to keep up with Holidailies, always rushed no matter what I do. Just a handful of hours, that’s all I need.

I was going to post a flashback video from my goth days, a song I still love to this day, but perhaps I’ll post that next Friday instead. Because honestly, it doesn’t fit the current theme surrounding me. Today I dragged the tree and decorations out of storage and the kids and I set about making it festive around here. We have a wreath on the door, silver garland draped along the entertainment unit, a lit tree in the corner, and lights in the windows. I’m drinking green tea, eating chocolate, and listening to Kelly Clarkson sing “O Holy Night”, and I’m just a little bit into the Christmas spirit (alas, if only I had some eggnog).

So instead of goth stuff I thought I’d break away from the music and do a different flashback, a flashback to my favorite Christmas movie ever, good old Christmas Vacation. While I can take or leave the rest of the Vacation series of movies, the Christmas movie never fails to make me laugh. Often to the point of crying.

And even better, I’ll make it a three for one – these are three (and there are so many more) of my favorite scenes from Christmas Vacation.

Clark goes OFF talking about his boss:

(That used to be my shut down sound for Windows until I realized a 58-second clip might be a bit long for that purpose.)

The sledding scene:

And the classic:

God I love that movie.

(Hi to all the other Holidailies participants!)