On the elderly, fear, and Ice skating

As winter begins to present itself in full force, I\m again reminded of more reasons to be mortally afraid of driving with children.
When the First Snow hits, the drivers in the city remind me of little kids playing hockey, falling down a lot, crashing into each other, and usually forgetting altogether about the puck.
When the first melt comes, everyone becomes stock car racers,  trying to urge all puddles off the road by driving as fast and reckless as they possibly can.
Then the final freeze. When all the slush that's left on the road freezes over, and is made 'luxuriously' smooth by those fast tires.
Now, being where I am, it's pretty common for everyone to know how to ice skate, from a very young age, no less. But somehow all that training goes out the window when tires re applied instead of skates. Our insurance here is gov.t regulated, I think mainly because no other competing company wants to have to cash in on so many claims all at once.
Also, maybe it's the snow, maybe the cold, but a lot of people lose their sight really easily in the winter, eyes glazed past the 'baby on board' and 'student driver' stickers, which are pretty much no good here.
Then there are the types of bad drivers to negotiate with:
We've  got teens with novices licences wanting to joy ride and scare the crap out of everyone they drive beside; or Albertans, who are used to speed limits twice that of ours; or little old ladies who just want to get to bingo in their old school tanks that take up two lanes; or the farmers who only follow dirt road speeds and don't pay any attention to any driving sign,road mark, or light. I could go on, but those four types feature prominently, and for that alone the bus doesn't sound so bad.
But then I'm left with a conundrum on the buses too, since toting around a baby in the heavy-duty stroller that's needed for winter is pretty much banned from the bus, and the price of a bus pass costs more than insuring my car and filling the tank every month, ( though I have a pretty old and crappy car, so that cheapens things up a bit too)  and the buses are usually so cram packed with students and elderly, that there's no room for even me, let alone a baby.  So I'm left to drive on side roads to most of my destinations, waiting until peak traffic has passed, which only leaves about 4 hours in the days to drive, and I'm pretty much screwed in the bad driver department, since you'll never escape the little old lady with the penchant for bingo.  *sigh*

Bored, so here!

So bored. Nothing to do, it's kinda icky outside, snowy, slippery, and cold, like -15 degrees cold, (I know, I'm a chicken-shite) so baby and me are staying inside where I have control of the heat. Toasty. I've also been sick the past week, so I have no intentions of leaving this house anytime soon, which limits the things we can do.

Speaking of poo,
Baby has started eating Real People Food, apples, naners and the like, and if you've had kids before, you know what I'm talking about, but if you are child-free, let me tell you that poo from babies that have just started People food, are nasty. Doesn't happen as often as before, but it's like he's packing enough stench to more than make up for it. It's like changing a little Person. No longer do I get to look forward to the poo that looks like it came from a baby-be-mine dolly, but a real turd worthy of Daddy's gags. Nasty stuff, that.
Anyways...

And Now for something Completely Different:



Angry Raspberries!

Random thingers. Again

It snowed last night. and continues to snow this morning. I'm hoping we don't get the alarming 5 inches slated for the north part of the province, but I wouldn't be surprised. Snow is abundant in the winter here. As is cold weather. My friend used to tease me that My good ol' Norse ancestors moved to Saskatchewan specifically for the cold, so it would feel like home to them. Also, that I was pasty and couldn't tan for shit because I had come from Saskatchewan. She was probably right on both parts. Saskatchewan is the one of very few places in the World that can range anywhere from -60 degrees Celsius(with wind chill) and Snow drifts waist high in winter, to +45 in the summer with miles and miles of Sun. Because Saskabusch is Flat, and the wind bends the trees, so there's no cover. Which is partly true, but every myth has to have some semblance of truth in it.

On a sort of related note, When it comes to first snow and all that jazz, I am totally a sucker for my memories. The smell of fresh-baked cookies, wet coats and mittens, fireplace fire, etc, but the one that really stands out is the smell of Hot toddy.
Being one of the Trendiest people of my time, I am always the first one to get sick when winter arrives, and I  remember one specific elementary school year when I was 7 or 8, and both my sister and I caught the flu at the same time. I always remember my dad staying home with us when we were sick, giving us hot lemon water and such, but this one time he wanted to nip the colds we had in the bud, so he tried Grandma's Recipe for curing the ill. A Hot toddy. Now, A Hot toddy is basically a hot lemon-honey tea, but with the added benefit of rum or whiskey. I believe we had the whiskey version. So he made up a batch for both me and my sister, reminiscing to us about how his Grandma used to use this as a cure-all, or something. I don't remember that well people, I was sick!!.
Anyways, I don't remember which one of us started puking first, but one of us caught the other, and it started a chain of puking that lasted quite some time(although to my ill-induced mind, I could be exaggerating- I see it as a cartoon version much like the WB cartoon with the two pigs see-sawing a handcar, but with puke).

yeah, but with the guys harfing when they go down. pretty picture, I know..

Anyway, I'm sure we totally grossed out my dad, but in the end it did us little to no harm, and my dad learned a very important lesson. And as my husband makes this after he eventually catches my colds, I cringe a little inside. To this day I cannot drink whiskey in any form, unless I try really, really, Really hard. *shudder*

And now for something Completely different-

My eldest son is obsessed with poop. Or at least the word poop. He's 6, so I'm not really surprised when he starts singing 'Mary had a little poop', or 'This old man, he had poop', but also with his extreme science knowledge,as he can now berate my husband about their head-farting contests,(charming, I know) letting him in on just how one gets pink-eye and the like. *sigh* My house is a never ending battlefield with new horrors every day. I would have my youngest stay small forever, so I don't have to endure three half-grown males all at once.

I have one of those pretty water features everyone raves about. Apparently.

My child's been singing 'I've got a moldy basement", to the tune of I've Got a Golden Ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Which is funny cuz he's never seen the original movie with Gene Hackman, and he's only heard the South park and Family Guy Versions of the song.
And yes, our basement is moldy, we've had so much rain here that our ground is fully saturated and it just kinda pours through. We had a plumbing guy who came in when we first moved into the place, and he replaced the taps in our tub and tightened up the connection to the tap in the backyard because that's what the landlord said needed fixing. (I found a lot more stuff over the year, btw) So this spring, when the snow had thawed and the grass was green again, my son found the irresistible urge to play with his water guns, and tried to fill them with the tap in the backyard. (the first time we've used that tap since the guy came and "fixed" them) So he comes in the house, all happy and smiley and said,' hey mom, when you turn on the water in the backyard, it makes a waterfall!'
and I was all, whaaat?.....
So I go check, and sure enough, when the tap is turned on, the water drips down under the siding from one edge of our wall to the other, giving it a waterfall effect. And where does this water go? The Basement.  So the tap is not allowed to be used right now until the landlord gets it fixed properly.
And from the two of these things combined have left my basement wet and musty smelling, little white moldy patches sprouting up from cracks in the cement (at least the basement was mostly unfinished, if that'd been carpet, it would have really sucked) and The only three cardboard boxes in our plastic mounds of  storage, just happen to contain all the baby books and pictures. Which are now all grey and bubbly and before the time of digital so there's no backup shots and we just have to salvage what we can.
And since no one goes to that side of the basement, no one realized what had happened until a couple of weeks ago. so that sucks.

ps. oh and the bathroom taps gave on us a couple weeks ago, so until the plumber came last week to fix (different plumber this time, really yummy to look at too, you could tell he was fresh out of an apprenticeship and still full of hopes and dreams, not like those old experienced plumbers who are now wishing they'd chosen a different vocation, because at some point digging around in other people's Shit just isn't fun anymore) So for a coupla weeks we had to use a pair of pipe wrenches to turn the tiny little knob that's hidden inside the tap just so we could have a shower.


pps. what my son neglected to tell me until after I found the sopping mess that was my memories for when I get Alzheimer's, was the amount of time the water was on in the backyard that day. thinking a couple of minutes? try almost two hours, because my son thought it was pretty and didn't want to turn it off. heh heh...

Aww, a hemmorage? for me?

I'm going through menopause. At 24.
I have been having hot and cold flashes for the last couple of days, and dizzy spells to boot. Something's not right.
My husband says that it's due to the humidity,(cuz it's like 100% right now, which is practically unheard of for prairie land!) that I'm just getting too hot, and I should drink more water. or I have an earworm and I'm going to die.
Thanks a lot jackass, now I'm going to spend the rest of my day in the bathroom with a pair of tweezers, trying to look deep enough in my ear to see if I have an ear worm and try to get it out. I'll probably have a dizzy spell while I'm in there and crack my head on a mirror and have hemmorage in my brain, and then it will be your fault stupid husband. Thanks a lot for the hemmorage.