Boom!

Hooray for Chrysler! For fun google dodge caravan belt...and get a picture of my evening. Yesterday was my first productive day back at work, I was just feeling better and dreading a suddenly overbooked weekend. Task number one, take the boy to swimming on a Friday night I was supposed to have off. So, I packed him up, packed up my stitching and off we went. I got a fair bit of stitching in on SB's Robert's Stocking :) Alex is out in record time, showers in record time and even dries himself properly so I wasn't attempting to unroll pants that stuck to his clammy little butt cheeks. Hop in the van, drive home, get about 2 km away from the house and BOOM! I thought it was me hitting a branch or something as it was quite windy. I pulled over to assess the damage and nothing. I get back in and my power steering is completely shot. I somehow managed to negotiate the left onto my street but left the van on the side of the road. Matt assessed what he could, nada. Called dad and he didn't have a clue. Walked out myself as soon as there was some sunlight and noticed I was missing a belt! Go chick mechanic. Arranged to have it fixed, towed before the boys awoke ;) Apparently the belt tensor went into complete failure and blew apart, like every other person you'll encounter in google. So my trip to Value Village and the dump has been postponed until another weekend. Of course the crap I was looking to get rid of has been waiting this long already. I'll be lucky if I can take Alex to his Beaver outing to Mactaquac, but they assured me I should be back on the road by 11:30 giving me enough time to get to Mctaquac by 1 and maybe a quick trip to Cathey's while I'm in the area ;)

C'est la vie

Birthday's are Killer

Birthday’s are killer! ;) Apparently my body didn’t get the memo that the birthday girl is NOT supposed to come down with the flu the day after the festivities. My birthday itself was great. The boys prepared breakfast for me and presented me with my gifts, Warcraft playing cards, a replacement G ‘n R CD and the Mummy DVD collection, then there was one last gift from Matt, some very sparkly ½ carat earrings. I’ve wanted a nice pair of earrings for soo long, bling is good ;) We had breakfast and headed to market for a cupcake which was fun as usual. Later in the afternoon mom, dad and Jazz arrived for the remainder of the festivities. Alex had fun stuffing leaves in dad’s crocs and pockets while we played outside. We then headed to Boston Pizza for supper, yum! We took a bit of a breather before partaking in the yummy pound cake mom had made. I opened my final gift from mom and dad and was very excited to find a three whicker drawer stand PERFECT for my craft room! Now I have a space to put my in progress projects and not re-sort them to all of the other places in my craft room :) After all that excitement Matt and I unwound at the theatre (our first date in ages). What a birthday :)

Sunday we had a fondue with mom and dad. Alex was on cloud nine! Sadly after lunch they had to return home so I climbed back into bed only to wake up with a killer sore throat. Sigh.

Monday and Tuesday kind of went by in a blur, I was just feeling so yucky and not looking too hot from coughing so much. I had to return to work Wednesday as there’s a thing about how many consecutive days you can be off without a note and I couldn’t get in to my doctor and I think I’d rather be miserable at work than at outpatients. Today I’m taking another day to recoup. I actually got some sleep last night (oh yes, combine having difficulty sleeping with a hubby who happens to be on call this week…arghhh).

Now this week hasn’t been all bad. I did finally pick up my JCS ornament issue, now to figure out which one to do first ;) Also, I finished my sophomore Halloween/Fall SAL that Cathey, Faith Ann, Shannon and I have seemed to gravitate towards. So here it is LK’s Velcome :)

Happy Birthday to Me

Omigosh, where did the last 30 years go? More info later, I have a date ;)

Against The Current

Do you ever have one of those weeks where you're just swimming against the current. Such is mine. We're adjusting to Matt not carpooling. Yesterday it involved him getting up after we're in the swing of getting ready, taking a 15 minute shower while we're waiting to get in and me entering the bathroom to find my flat iron that I'd been waiting to use unplugged, 3 minutes before I had to walk out the door. There was a Scrubs/Alley McBeal kind of moment where I got great satisfaction having my imaginative alter ego beat him with the flat iron but lucky for him, I'm just not that way ;) This morning I got out to do the supper prep and the dishwasher has yet to be unloaded and two piles of dishes were waiting in the sink. My alter ego took a walk down the hall and dumped a couple of dirty pots on him but I was reduced to searching in three spots for every measuring spoon or cup. Needless to say there is a lecture coming.

Last night was Beaver registration and I figured I'd check my facebook account before I went out only to find my 8 year old cordless keyboard dead, no amount of new batteries would revive it. Thankfully after shelling out money hours earlier for basketball and again for beaver's I had some Futureshop giftcards tucked away and went back to a corded keyboard. I really wasn't in the mood to spend 70+ on a keyboard mouse combo (I'm fussy and only buy Logitech) so the 19.99 cord came home with me. I settled in to watch House and goofed on stitching a section over again but meh, I have the one night a month were the stars and moon align for me to get out of the house sans les garcons! I imagine they'll be scrambling to find me a birthday present in my absence ;)

Friday I'm apparently taking the morning off and going on a field trip with Alex's class. Not really how I'd normally spend a vacation period but I'm running out of years he's going to want me tagging along. Then it's off to a fun filled lunch with the girls to celebrate the last day in my twenties.

In other news our annual Thanksgiving dinner has been moved, hooray! We'd been having it on Mondays based on when my brother would be coming back to university here but really...I'd like to have Monday's to relax and eat leftovers. Now that he's at a different school he's actually heading there on Monday so Sunday works out (plus I like having it on the Christian Thanksgiving). I'm hoping it's a sign for change to come. I really want to drop travelling at Easter but that hinges on me convincing people to come to our house for Christmas which is about the only holiday I don't want to be complete isolists on. All of the travel really wears me out, I wouldn't mind rearranging my time off to take more in the summer instead. I'd like to have one easter where Alex still believes in the EB at our house to do an easter egg hunt there. When you're not in your own home you can't get uber creative on your hiding places. It wouldn't be proper at someone else's home to hide them in anything you'd have to open. However dropping a trip to one home means nailing down christmas plans 8-9 months in advance to be 'fair'. Here's hoping 30 is a sign of things to change :)

Hips Don't Lie

No, that they don't. My right hip has away of reminding me that I'm not as young as I used to be, nor will I get any younger. Sigh! Thankfully it's not all of the time, I can't wait to hear what my doctor has to say about it. :)

As for the rest of me I've faired better. Dealing with a a hyperactive biological clock that lives with a hypoactive one has been frustrating to say the least. We are also dealing with MAJOR teacher problems this year. Why couldn't we bring Alex's teacher from last year?? To summarize, when after 4 days your son's teacher is keeping a log on all of his behavior, callously throws out the term ADHD and then laughs it off because whenever he's sent to sit quietly he does just that, tells you that instead of talking to you or meeting with you that you have to wait and have a large meeting with the principal and vice principal and completely discredits the guidance support that the principal issued before the program even starts. Well, 10 years ago I probably would have had a gun blazing showdown day one, now? Well, I'll use the time to dig up teaching ethics violations, let her continue to go on down that path and she can have her large scale meeting, she'll be given enough rope to hang herself as the saying goes.

Needless to say it has impacted the stitching a bit. I have a little Frogging to do on Velcome and I need to replace some of my perles for the stocking I'm working on. With my FREX winnings I splurged and bought the accessory pack for Victoria Sampler's Poinsetta Tuffet ornament out of the preview issue. I was tickled pink when it arrived last night in the mail. I've been itching to do some hardanger again and it's perfect for that little fix. As for the gym, I'm slowly but surely building my classes back up so I can hopefully get back down to my wedding weight again.

Mi Vida Loca

Oye, I think I kind of got used to not having to run around too much this summer. I just looked at this falls schedule and oye...

Monday:
Me-Gym (afterwork)

Tuesday:
Me-Gym (afterwork)

Wednesday:
Me-Gym (afterwork)
Matt and Alex-Basketball

Thursday:
Me-Groceries (afterwork)
Alex and I-Beavers

Friday:
Me-Gym(afterwork)
Matt/I and Alex-Swimming

Saturday:
Free

Sunday:
Family-Church
Me-Gym
Me-alternative grocery day

It's a good thing I bought a 'Mom's Taxi' Tshirt!

This That and The Other

Since the last time I'd blogged we've been busy in a laid back kind of fashion :) Friday I had a flex day in the bank and decided to use it. It was fun sitting back and working on LK's Velcome while Alex played. After lunch we headed to the mall to pick up a birthday gift and totally lucked out. We found a Bratz mermaid and playset that was normally 29 on for 14, woo hoo! I puttered away a bit more and did some additional reorganizing of the craft supplies that seemed to creep into places they shouldn't have been ;) I rented Wild Hogs for us to watch that evening and Matt and I loved it. Sadly enough we could relate to the 'growing old' theme but I think we laughed away a couple of wrinkles!!

Saturday I needed to take Alex for a haircut. I'm really beginning to think I speak greek, or that all hairdressers think that little boys should be shorn. I like his hair longish but tidy ie:not around his ears. I stepped out for 3 minutes to get a birthday card and we were back to shorter hair. Mind you it was longer than a couple of the other times but still shorter than I'd like. We had a quick trip home to get dressed for the party and some sunscreen and it was off to the waterslides. What should have been a maybe 20 minute ride turned out to be over an hour. I was picking up the voucher's for the boys ride bracelets for the exhibition on the way back but when I got to the store (different one than I usually use to pick them up) they were only accepting cash. This meant a walk around the block to the bank and back, lovely! So an hour later I strolled into the house. We both went to pick up Alex as there just happened to be a driving range where the party was. The boys tee'd off for awhile while I stitched, pure bliss.
Sunday we went to the FREX. Alex made it on every single ride there :) As for my entries they did the following:
Mirabilia Cherub - 3rd framed cross stitch
Christian's Stocking (for Matt) - 2nd large christmas decoration
Jeanette Douglas 06 needleroll - 3rd small christmas decoration
LK's Santa, We've Got Cookies - 1st small wallhanging (it got reclassified from medium christmas decoration somehow, but I'm not complaining)

The judging was sketchy at best. The Grand Champion was nicely stitched but the framing sucked. Angel of Autumn is not meant to be in a gold oval with a gold frame, the piece was completely lost. Also there was an entry that I'm 99% certain was entered a previous year and an aida piece being ranked over perfectly stitched evenweave. There's also one lady who repeatedly puts in a collection of ornaments in the small christmas decoration category, it's not a collection category! I've spoken to women who judge at other events and they pretty much have the same guidelines, and the placements just didn't fit. I don't mind not placing first, that's not the issue, Cathey and I are pretty anal stitchers so it's a little shocking when we don't do the one two punch ;)

Monday we completely vegged. Being on my feet for 4-5 hours really wore me out!

Tuesday was back to school for Alex. He was pretty happy with his new class as of last night. We were happy that we'll know his homework for the week in advance again and that we've been given a list of his 'special day' schedule. It's nice to know which days he has gym to dress him in track pants and which days he has art so as to not send him in his reallly nice shirts. Apparently the district decided to change the bus numbers and not notify the parents so Alex got on his regular bus with his buddy, only to be heading to the country! Thankfully they straightened things out. Alex's status on the busses is in question though and that doesn't make me a happy camper. His zoned school was full last year on french immersion so he's in the school that happens to bus to his daycare, they had better not screw that arrangement up as it's due to their overcrowding that he's there. I'm not asking for them to take him to our house out of zone, morons.