Gal Smiley is going through this cute but odd phase where she has this exact same conversation about 20 times a day:

Gal: It is? [pointing to an object]
Me: Chair. Chaaaaair.
Gal: OH! Hi chair! I Gal Smiley. Gaaaaaal Smiiiiiley.
[waits a moment for response]
Gal: Whatareyoudoing, chair? Whatareyoudoing?
Me: It’s just sitting there. It’s a chair.
Gal: OH! HA HA HA HA! Bye chair!

[moments later]
Gal: It is?
Me: Table. Taaaaaayble.
Gal: OH! Hi table! I Gal Smiley. Gaaaaaal Smiiiiiley. Whatareyoudoing, table? Whatareyoudoing?

And so on. It’s so cute I almost expect the inanimate objects in our house to start answering!

For a while now I’ve been thinking about what I throw away every day. I was even thinking about starting a new blog, “What I Threw Away Today,” where I’d keep track of my progress at reducing our household waste. But then I heard about a book for bloggers with topic suggestions, entitled, “No One Cares What You Had For Lunch,” so I figured if no one cared what I put in my body, no one probably cared what I put in our trash bin either.

I’m still mentally keeping the list though, and generally being more aware. If a package had a combination of plastic and paper, I used to just throw it away, but now I take the time to tear it apart and recycle the paper part. I put a recycling bin in our office for sensitive paper that could be recycled, and someday I plan to shred it — when they invent silent shredders — and add it to our black box. I’ve also been more careful about taking plastic containers of rotting yogurt and sour cream, an all-too-common occurance in our fridge, and cleaning them out so they can be recycled instead of thrown away.

It was garbage day today and I was pretty pleased that even with diapers (which still amount to about 25% of our weekly trash), all of our garbage fit into our bin. It’s a big one — probably about 1 1/2 bags worth — but it’s still progress. Now I find that the majority of our non-diaper garbage falls into two categories: food waste, and plastic. If our city recycled plastic bags, we’d probably be able to eliminate another 10% or so of our garbage. If we got a composter, I think I could cut down on our waste by a further 20% or so. I’ve thought about that, but I have no idea what I would do with the finished compost, as we don’t have any flower beds or anything like that and I am so, so not flora-oriented. The only thing I could think of was to dump it in the empty lot next door which would only result in even bigger, even stronger weeds with mutant powers, and that didn’t seem like a good idea.

Even though I’m still trying to improve, lately I’ve been thinking about life before recycling and how sad it was. When I was little we used to throw away newspapers — a thought so strange and foreign now, it’s on par with taking your baby in a car with no car seat. I think about all the magazines, phone books, pop cans, jam jars, and tetra packs in landfills and it’s just crazy to think of the tons and tons of that stuff — all recyclable — that is just lying in landfills somewhere.

In fact, I predict that years from now when we are very low on resources, some intrepid company will come up with the idea of excavating landfills to extract the reusable products that are buried there. I may begin work on this idea right now. Huh.

Every three months, I sort through all our digital photos and prepare them for publishing on our family website. The job is enormous and takes me several days. First, of 200 or so pictures and digital videos, I decide which ones are worth keeping, and which can be deleted. Then each is given an index number and a meaningful name. A program Sir Monkeypants wrote for me automatically resizes the photos for the website, but each video must be opened manually in Microsoft Video Maker and saved using a lower resolution, otherwise my poor mother with her dial-up connection would have to wait through three days of downloading just to see a 30-second video of Gal Smiley scraping the icing off her birthday cake. Then, I manually code HTML pages that group the photos/videos into meaningful sets, providing a caption for each. Whew!

I just finished the set from July, August, and September. Every time I finish a new set, and I spend countless hours looking at the finished product. We’ll especially watch the little videos over and over — we can use our XBox to watch them on our big TV, even.

Just now, as I was rewatching videos of our kids for like, the 100th time, I figured I better come and make a post. A post of advice for my future self. My advice is this:

When your kids bring home boyfriends or girlfriends, or get married, or heaven forbid, have a child themselves, you will be well tempted to pull out the zillions of photos and videos you have worked so hard on. But remember: Only you can stomach to watch endless videos of your own children for hours at a time. Eventually the poor boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife’s mind will wander. Their eyes will glaze over. And when you say, “Oooh, you just HAVE to see this one of The Captain running in circles around a mop and broom!!” and they say, “Um, I just have to run to the bathroom for a moment and POKE MY EYES OUT,” that will be your cue to TURN THE VIDEOS OFF. Just put the remote down and back away slowly. It will be for the good of all involved.

Last night we treated the kids to McDonald’s for dinner, because we just couldn’t summon up the energy to cook. I remember when we used to judge people who exposed their toddlers to McDonald’s. Ah, the golden days of child-free haughtiness.

Anyway, eating McDonald’s hamburgers reminds me of TheRarGuy, because I always open mine up and throw away the pickle before I bite into it. TheRarGuy loves their pickles so much that he considers this rejection to be tantamount to a criminal act. One time, when he was a kid, his mom found some way to get a whole jar full of real McDonald’s pickles. He speaks of that time as the golden age of his childhood.

Back in university, he would gladly take the pickles off my hands for the price of a lecture on the horrors of wasted tastiness. These days they just have to go in the garbage. I hope this post hasn’t given him any nightmares.

I got an interesting note from the city in the mail the other day, talking about what Ottawa is good at recycling, and what they could be doing better. We’re good at newspapers and corregated cardboard, but not so good at aluminum foil and tetra packs.

One of the worst things on the list was “fine household paper,” meaning things like computer printouts, bills, receipts, or bank statements. I think it’s great that these things can be recycled, but I’m having trouble actually putting them in the bin. I keep envisioning my bank statements blowing all over the neighbourhood — not exactly what you want the world to see.

I guess we could shred everything first…would that be safe enough? We actually used to shred everything like that before we even put it in the garbage can, we were so paranoid, but lately I’ve gotten lazy and just toss it in whole. Shredding might make it less readable for the recycling bin, but I think the little bits are more likely to fly around the street than whole pieces of paper. I hate to think of all that paper lying in a landfill somewhere, but at the same time, I hate to think of someone finding a receipt and using the credit card number on it to make some eBay orders.

What do you think? Is this stuff safe for your recycle bin? Shredded or unshredded?

I just finished playing Train Party with Captain Jelly Belly. It’s a game that his five-year-old cousin invented, based on the video game Mario Party. The Captain “learned” it on our last family visit.

Here are the rules:

1. Choose two trains to be your team. Tender engines are NOT ALLOWED! (But they can watch if they like.) Form your team with one train in front and one behind and line up at the starting line.
2. Get a die and roll it. Then move your engine team an arbitrary amount representing your roll. Movement is made in a generally forward direction but branching off to the right or left is allowed at your discretion.
3. Occasionally, after moving, announce that you have a “fireball” or a “spikey.” Both of these are good things.
4. When you get tired, declare the end of the game and the person who is “ahead” wins.

We played to a tie…we were even in distance and he had one fireball while I had one spikey. Next time, grudge match!

Lately I’ve been giving some thought to what, if anything, I’d like to do when it comes time to go back to work. I’ll probably go back in a couple of years, so now is a good time to think about changing careers. There are a few things that do interest me, but mostly, I’d like to give writing a try. Back when I had Sidekick, my online magazine, I sold a couple of pieces and that was pretty exciting. I’d love to be able to do that full time.

So last night I went with my friend Jen to a meeting of the Kanata Writer’s Group, an organisation of about 15 writers who meet every other week to read their stuff out loud and get feedback. They’ve also grouped together a bunch of their work into a self-published book that they’ll be launching in a couple of weeks. I figured it was time to actually start writing some stuff, if I want to develop my mad writing skillz and all that, and the group might help inspire and encourage me.

Really, though, I found it quite scary and discouraging. For one, these are all people who are trying to write poetry and/or fiction, and I’ve never really been interested in that — I think I’d like to write magazine articles, essays, reviews, that sort of thing. So I already felt a little inferior and less artistic. For two, they’ve all been plugging away at it for years with no progress, and while some of the stuff that was read was not good, some of the other stuff I really liked, and it saddens me that there’s just no getting past the slush pile for the vast majority of writers out there.

The meeting has me thinking that I should maybe try some fiction, but I have no idea where to start. I have no end of ideas for characters and settings, but I have trouble getting them to do stuff…the whole “plot” thing is beyond me. Can you actually learn that kind of thing from a class or a mentor? Or is creating fiction a natural talent that can’t be developed?

Even if I stick with non-fiction writing, is there even a chance I’ll ever get anything published? As I said to Sir Monkeypants last night, I love to sing around the house with the kids, but I have no illusions that I’m going to be the next Mariah Carey…so what makes me think that just because I enjoy blogging about character actors, I’m going to be the next Malcolm Gladwell? Sometimes I read a book that is so lovely and brilliant and beautiful that I think, what’s the point, I’ll never be that good. Then I think, the achievement of a dream is not easy, doofus, get your butt in gear and just write something already. Jesus!

I have set myself a goal, to write something that is readable in front of the group within a month’s time. Already I feel overwhelmed and intimidated at the thought of actually seeing someone’s reaction to my work. I can’t even blog with Sir Monkeypants in the room, because I become too self-conscious and red-in-the-face to continue forming my usual semi-coherent sentences. Gack.

Not to mention I have a very tight TV schedule to maintain. A girl has committments!

Every year around this time, I get a list of the new season TV schedule for all five networks, and sort through it so I can determine what I’m going to watch, old and new, on each night of the week. Sir Monkeypants makes fun of me for this, because it is sad and pathetic, but I am a stay-at-home-mom now, so it’s either this, or even more talking about High School Musical and what the girls are wearing on Hi-5 these days. Consider yourself warned before you snicker behind your newspaper, smart guy.

Anyway, here’s my schedule.

Sundays: I had a bad breakup with Desperate Housewives last year, and my new love Grey’s Anatomy has been moved from this night, creating a black hole that will gladly fill up with Sunday Night Football. Luckily CBS has moved The Amazing Race to Sundays at 8pm (returns Sept. 17) so I will have a little something to fill the void.

Mondays: We’re already watching, and totally engrossed in, season 2 of Prison Break, on at 8pm. We’ll probably PVR How I Met Your Mother at 8:30pm (returns Sept. 18) as we watched it in reruns this summer and laughed on a pretty regular basis. At 9pm, I might check out Heroes (debuts Sept. 25), a new show about people who develop superpowers in an X-Men kind of way. At 10pm…I’ll probably be in bed. But my devoted PVR will be recording Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip (debuts Sept. 18), the new show by Aaron Sorkin. I adore Sorkin and I’d follow him anywhere, and the teasers for this show already have me panting with anticipation.

Tuesdays: VERONICA MARS, at 9pm, returning Oct. 3. Watch it or we may no longer be friends. I’ll also probably check out Friday Night Lights at 8pm (debuts Oct. 3), and I’m already PVRing House at 9.

Wednesdays: Despite recent backlash, I’m still totally committed to Lost at 9pm (returns Oct. 4).

Thursdays: I still love Survivor (returning to its 8pm time slot on Sept. 14). However, the press can’t stop talking about Ugly Betty, which will be airing in the same time slot, starting Sept. 28. I know I won’t be able to resist the lure of Jeff Probst but I might PVR Ugly Betty so I can stay up on the chitchat. At 9pm, it’s Grey’s Anatomy all the way (starting Sept. 21). Six Degrees — a new show about six NYC strangers whose lives intersect in interesting ways — looks interesting enough that I’ll try to catch the first few episodes, starting Sept. 21.

Fridays and Saturdays are PVR catchup days…and maybe I’ll endeavor to leave the house from time to time, too.

The Captain and I have had some interesting conversations lately about death. It’s one of those Big Questions Of Life that you’d think a parent would have given some thought to, and been prepared to answer in advance, but I’ve been caught off guard and I’m not sure how much to tell the little guy.

For a while now he’s been aware that Ba is Sir Monkeypants’ mom, and Dada is Sir Monkeypants’ dad, while Nanny is my mom. A few days ago, though, he finally put it all together and asked me where my dad is. My dad died almost 16 years ago, long before the Captain was born. I didn’t want to lie to him so I told him that my dad died a long time ago, and that that meant that he went to sleep and would never wake up again, and we would never see him again. I told him that when that happens sometimes we feel sad, but that the person who has left us is happy and okay.

Since then he’s asked for more details a few times…”When did your dad go to sleep? Why did he go to sleep? What was his name? Can we go see him?”…and I’m not always sure what to say. I don’t want to scare him but I guess this is something I can’t keep a secret forever. Today we were talking about Aladdin and how he is an orphan, meaning he has no parents, and the Captain asked me if his parents had died, so I said yes. That seemed to really freak him out so I assured him that me, Sir Monkeypants, Ba, Dada, Nanny, and the parents of all of his friends were 100% safe and going to stay around for a long, long time. I realize that isn’t entirely true but dealing with the one-day death of your own parents is way too much for a three-year-old to handle. Personally I feel it’s a lot for a thirty-five-year-old to handle.

I guess I’ll just continue to stumble through and keep him reassured while telling him as much of the truth as I can. I guess that’s what parents do every day.

I declare that Emily Yeung is the cutest non-Turtlehead child ever. Actually she reminds me a lot of Gal Smiley…so adorable!