Warning: This post is serious and kinda depressing. Feel free not to read

When I first became a mom, I vowed I would keep myself, not turn into the mindless automatrons that dot middle class with their PTA, and their stay-at-home goodiness that includes shitloads of home-baking, gardening, paper-maiche -ing, among other Martha Stewart-type things. I've never been able to actually make myself talk to half of these mothers. We have nothing in common, other than our ability to procreate. I believe in discipline and schedule, and I do not believe that my children know yet what they want out of life, let alone what they want for breakfast, and are therefore not quite capable yet of running their own lives. This is what Moms and dads are there for. To run things. Not the other way around. I see all these parents who ask for their childs permission to do things, and I can't help getting the mental image of a parent in a child's backpack leash, being dragged around by the child. and shudder.

When I had my second child, my husband actually asked me whether I would be okay to stay home for the entire maternity leave, or if I would want to switch  off with him at some point, since he knows(so well) that certain parts of domesticity are NOT my style. Also, he'd had a very nice job offer, but it took him out of town occasionally, ande it was one of those jobs that had the potential of moving at some point. I had let him know at the time that I was sure I'd be okay. I'd done this once before, remember? under so much more stressful circumstances too. and I'd be okay shouldering both mom and dad responsibilities every once in a while, again, I had done it before.

So when my husband came home from work yesterday, and told me he was being shipped out to lloydminster for a week, Next week in fact, (after only one week of training for out of town routes, not the 6 that's required)

I have to admit I was shocked. I was shocked that I could go through a whole array of emotions in the mere 11 seconds it took for him to tell me they were shipping him out for a week. Jealousy at the privacy of the job, worried that my daddy discipline abilities fall way too short of the stack,(oh you KNOW my eldest's going to attempt to take full advantage of the situation at some point, he's not a stupid child, and lets face it, Moms command your full respect, but the beautiful line, ' just wait til your father gets home!' is fantastic to whip out when all other tactics have failed.) I was mad that he was taking those failsafes away for the week, mad that I would have to do this all over again, by myself, worried about his being on the road, worried about his safety, and mad that he was leaving me alone for so long.

In my stay at home world, when the baby is new, there's not much going out and uber-socializing. My only regular adult contact was him, from the time he came home to the time he went to bed. It was a reprieve from my children, a time to have an uninterrupted shower, a time to just relax. Now he's taking that away, for a whole 6 days. I get that I'm probably sounding whiny, that there are plenty of moms out there who do this for longer periods of time, who are single moms, but when you are a single mom, you gather people around yourself like a child with pretty stones, and you make sure each one of them are payed attention to, so they return the favour.

Don't get me wrong, I loved every second of being a single mom, in fact I rebelled against having another authority figure to work with when it came to my child. But when my child was asleep, I loved having someone around. Someone that I could be selfish with, someone that would be mine alone. I loved that I got a second chance at having a partner, my personal back-up.

And perhaps I would have been a little more happy for him if this had  been a little later coming on. Would've had mor time to prepare myself for what's coming... or maybe not.

But now I'n stuck coaching a junior flag football team in their final tournament(I know nothing about football, flag or otherwise), dealing with an early teething baby, and a son who's on the fence about joining choir, but won't actually tell us about it. not sure why, but hubby has a way with getting the real reasons out with our eldest, but will wait until sonny is bursting from not teeling anyone, and that bursting is probably going to come  exactly when he not there. sigh.

And husband knows this too, and is sad he will miss it. He is sad he might miss anything that youngest does because he is out of town, he's worried about us, and all in all he doesn't want to feel left out of the family that we worked so hard, and long, to make.

I can reassure him, take lots of pictures and video for him, get internet phone and a laptop for him, lock our  doors each night for him, get a cell phone for him, all these things I can do.

But is this job worth our uncertainties? Is it worth all this fuss just so we can live a bit more comfortably than we were before?

Love Hurts, but making a Baby is killer?

kkay I'm confused, and probably gonna get a bit offending, but I have a question. how is trying to have a baby a battle? do they have to put their armour and helmuts on before they have sex? is it more of a wrestling match? just don't tell me they tag team. No wonder they're not having babies. It's kinda hard to get aroused when someone's trying to toss you across the room as you try to dislocate their shoulder in the process.....

My new Love.......when I have nothing better to do

I have a secret.
Shhh!
Promise not to tell?
I have a virtual boyfriend. That my Husband knows all about.

Lemme explain.

I have an extreme ignorance with video games. I just don't care for them, they don't keep my attention for very long. So my husband went on a search for something he thought I might like, since I'm at home all the time and have nothing better to do, and after the multitudes of fishing, dance and cooking games, (yeah, I know, my hubby's kinda umm... clueless in what chicks like) he found this game called Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility. It's somewhat an RPG game, (role playing game), part Farming Game, and part Sim-style game, with mini-games and a few sub-stories included.

You choose a character, then buy land, build a house, start a field of crops,(which you make money off of) get animals and raise them and take care of them, (which you also make money off of), all the while searching for these little flowers that turn into fairies when you water them ( wow, sounds a little fu*ked up there, but it's true) and tell you the story of this Harvest Goddess that's been trapped somewhere for who knows how long, and that's why this island you're living on sucks so bad, but if you get them ingredients for their little potions, they'll make a rainbow that you can cross to find more little fairy flowers, and eventually the Goddess. And this will restore the Island to it's former glory, and you shall be hailed across the lands as the person who saved the World!!!!

Well, Island.  Sounds like one funked up trip hey?

But I digress.

So the other part of this story is making friends with the folk on the island buy giving them gifts, and eventually, if you give the right gift to the right guy/girl, or at least enough of them, they ask you out, you go on a few dates, get married, have children, build the kids a home, and teach them how to be Great Farmers like you.
So I went around the island, met all the folk and befriended them, and then picked out a lumberjack to woo. Apparently he likes mayonnaise. Not unlike my hubby who, if he could, would eat it straight out of the jar like a 3 year old who just got a taste for butter.

So I shower this guy with mayo for a few days, and then he asks me to this little festival the island has, to the fireworks show. *insert squealing like a little girl because, as a stay-at-home-mom, I have nothing better to do than woo video game people*

I go.

The fireworks are shitty little pops not unlike a defective sparkler  Fantastic!

Our eyes meet.

He takes my hand, and says, 'we should definitely go to the Fireworks next year!'

Then, these little animated hearts shimmer up his body into this great big pink heart floating above his head!

He likes me! He really Likes me!!!!



Wow. So sad.

That I can get all school-girlish over an animated character that totally has a Heart-on for me.....





p.s. this entire post was written just so I could say the heart-on punch line. Sorry.

And then I got high.... or did I?

Okay, so I don't do drugs myself, I'll admit I've tried some in the past (who hasn't?), and I know people who still do. And by drugs I mean Pot. Marijuana.
None of that commercially made I-died-in-a-bathtub-fire-trying-to-make-this-chemical-cocktail-for-you, no. The homegrown stuff. Stuff that should be legal so the Govt can tax the shit out of it. This is Canada People! Do you know how many people actually smoke or eat this stuff? You'd be surprised at the real numbers. Do you realize how fucking beautiful our Country could look and do you know how easily our economy could bounce back? All because the Govt decided to legalize and sin-tax Pot.
But enough about me and lobbying to legalize things, I just got this video today, and it made me so glad I live in Canada, yet really sad about the world I'm putting my children in. Hopefully when they're older the people who put this Zero-Tolerance policy into place will be gone and the next generation can put a more personal policy in place.  When did simply talking to a kid to see what's going on in their lives crap out against finger-pointing and accusations?





Again, I say wow.  I really have nothing to say.

Extra curricular sports, and how I don't want to be like my mother

My son started Flag football this past weekend. What fun. The best part is that My hubby put his name down for volunteering at the Community association, and since he was the only one to actually volunteer, he's now the coach for my son's team. 

But- He thinks since I only put down my e-mail address on the form, that I want to take part in the coaching experience, so I have been enlisted as the informal secretary and resident e-mailer, since I signed up only my e-mail address.... yay! well, whatever, gives me something else to do besides clean my already despicable immaculate house... 

They play on Saturdays and Mondays. This past Saturday's game went extremely well, each team had two touchdowns, and lots of fun. This Monday, however, was a different story.

Firstly, hubby was sick. And he never gets sick, so you can imagine how big a baby he is when he does get sick. He comes home around 1pm, and lets me know that I need to find a coach for tonight, cuz when he goes outside into the cold-ish air, he 'feels like he's going to throw up and pass out' *insert big whiny baby voice here*. That's my big strong man.....

So I e-mail around, and wouldn't you know, every dad wants to coach, or at least their wives' think they do. So I header down to the playing field, which this time is ALL THE WAY ACROSS TOWN, which in a city of 300,000, isn't really that far, it only takes 20 minutes to get anywhere, but looking for a specific field in a specific park in a new area of town is still confusing no matter where you are. I did find the park after a bit though,(yay for me and my mad directional skills!) so I lug all the equipment, my junior Peyton Manning, and myself down to what I assume is the right pitch. Luckily, all the parents found the same field that I did, so big plus points for me~! However, somehow our rival team failed to produce themselves, and judging by the area and field, that's not really surprising, but it still gave me a little glow of pride to know that even though our team is a bunch of spoiled little east-siders, they still showed up for the game, and then, stayed for the inevitable practice that ensued, since the replacement coaches and I decided that they should do something so as not to feel that they wasted their time. (and the spoiled little east-siders I'm talking about are the parents, as the kids aren't yet aware that they are over-privileged.)

Best line of the day from the parents: 'You would NOT BELIEVE how hard I had to search to find a decent coffee place over here! Do they even know what a Starbucks is?'

Best line of the day from the pseudo coaches: 'Ummm... so how do you play this? my wife made me come...'

Best line of the day from the kids: 'Aww, where's real Coach? I want to show him my snot-swing-back-play' ( proceeds to drool a loogie to the ground, then as it touches icky-grass and mud, suck it back up in a swinging fashion as he throws the ball right into one of the pseudo coaches nards. I'm not even shitting you! It was uber gross Fantastic a horrible indecency to the coach who totally did the classic America's Funniest Home Videos' thing, grabbing himself, falling over, and wheezing 'ohh my balls'!  which apparently is still only funny to me...)

All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening, and my sad litte sicko at home got a smile out of how, even though they've only had one game, he still made a lasting impression on the kids, and a good one, which is rare. (hubby has a way of sticking his foot in his mouth whenever he decides to open it)

Now if you'll excuse me, my littlest just managed to spew INSIDE my shirt, and it is currently trickling into my armpit...

All Hail the Patron Saint of all things Sick, Sleepy, and Slightly Irritated...

 Tonight  I was the Saviour of my dog. My big 80 lb, Black Lab-cross-Pit bull-cross-Mutt, happy and dimwitted dog.

He must have either ate something that disagreed with him,( ie. the cog's poo) or caught some kind of bug, or, god forbid, he has worms...

I went out with him about 20+ times  tonight, so he could do his very loose business all over my backyard. I swear, that dog could give my youngest a run for his money. Get it? Run? haha......

I hope he's okay, both of us were up pretty late tonight, way past the time of my youngest's first nap of the evening, which means no proper 3 hour reprieve and REM cycle for me...

I changed his water, gave him a fresh blanket to sleep on, opened the door to the basement, (so, if he happens to need to loose himself in my house after I pass out he can at least go on cement that's easily cleanable. I love my dog, he's so well trained.) checked his temperature,(which believe me, if you don't have a baby ear thermometer, is not a comfortable experience for either pet or owner, and can be quite messy if that's the hole the dog is sick out of...) checked his gums for funky colours, and put my ear against his chest to listen to his heart, (I'll be fucked if I can tell the difference on a dog, so I don't know what good that did, other than to make me feel like I was being productive) and so far, other than pacing in front of the door to go out every 10 minutes, and of course the constant shitting, he seems perfectly healthy. Even been eating, and just now I heard him drinking, although that could be the cog, he's fucking loud and clumsy..

Hope for the best I suppose. Hope He doesn't need a vet...

And by the way, I'm not misspelling dog or cat when I say 'cog'. My Kitty was basically raised by my dog, which means he's clumsy as hell, a loud eater, begs for table scraps, sleeps with the dog, does his business in the backyard, goes for walks with us, (even to the park, the crazy bugger) and shares the dog's various mannerisms.

Hence, Cog.

Fuck I'm tired.... Okay Goodnight.

What? one more time? ...alright, but then after this it's the basement for you, dude...