For a while now I’ve been working on an article called, “Things I Swore I’d Never Do Before I Had Kids, That I Now Do On A Regular Basis.” It’s amazing how judgmental you can be of parents before you have kids. It was so easy to sniff and say, “Oh, I’d never let my kids watch so much TV” — that was before I tried to get dinner prepared with two starving, screaming kids holding on to each leg, and all I wanted was to be able to boil some spaghetti in peace for 15 minutes. Or, “I’d never let my kids eat junk food” — that was before they managed to go 30 hours without eating anything, so we were thrilled to have them finally agree to put some Kraft Dinner and Smarties in their mouth. Now it’s all about doing whatever the hell it takes just to stay alive.

Oh, I can hear you childless people out there giving me the “Tsk, tsk,” but just you wait until you’ve been stuck at home for five days straight with a sick kid, and you’ve watched The Heffalump Movie so many times you can chant it in your sleep, and you’re so desperate to get out of the house that you risk the grocery store, where fun-loving swingin’ singles give you dirty looks as your child screams in the cookie aisle and you frantically grab for the Teddy Grams to shut him up. You’ll see!

One of the smaller things I swore I’d never do is peel grapes. You can’t give grapes with skin to a toddler, because if a piece of the skin comes off, it’s a choking hazard. I figured, there’s lots of fruit in the world, there is no way I am getting in there with a knife and removing grape skins, what am I, a peon in classical Greece? But when your kid continuously refuses all fruits and vegetables, and you’ve tried everything else in the produce aisle, those grapes start to look pretty good. Anything to be able to tell your doctor at the kid’s next checkup that he eats something other than french fries and Froot Loops.

So now, I not only peel the grapes, I just spent a half hour removing the pits from seedless red grapes. Because “seedless” grapes are not really seed-free, they just have really small, soft seeds that a normal person would not notice, but which a toddler feels are huge, threatening boulders in the middle of their so-called food.

And I guess that’s love. 🙂

The Amazing Race is on tonight. There’s an older couple on this season, Fran and Barry. Usually when there is a couple-of-a-certain-age, they’re super nice and grandparenty and endear themselves to the viewership, but Fran and Barry really bug. They’ve survived longer than they should have through flukes and random luck, and even though they’ve made really stupid mistakes (like walking right by the big red-and-yellow clue box, multiple times, on more than one occasion), and every time, they are big with the “woe is us, we are so so eliminated,” and then when they are miraculously saved, they are all, “oh, we are totally a force to be reckoned with.” Whatever!

Every time they show Fran and Barry doing a task, it looks as though they are never ever ever going to finish it, and they are all depressed and sad and bewildered, and then they cut to commercial. And just before the commercial cut, they show one of them, usually Barry, making the Amazing Race Stupid Old People Face, a gap-mouthed face of total confusion. I used to think The Face was pretty funny, but that was before Sir Monkeypants imitated it one morning. Then it moved from amusing to TOTALLY HILARIOUS. I seriously couldn’t stop laughing. I possibly have never laughed harder. And now, he can pull out The Face at will and it gets me every time. I had to stop asking him to make The Face because I have stuff to do, and I can’t be spending 15 minutes of every hour totally incapacitated with laughter.

The other night I was playing with the camera’s continuous shot feature, and I was taking continuous shots of and he slowly turned to me and made The Face. I can’t even look at this series of shots without dying.

Here’s the final frame of the series.

A few months ago a new fast-food place opened in our mall, called The Soup Man, a franchise started by the Soup Nazi of Seinfeld fame. I’ve been wanting to try it for a while but usually we are in too much of a rush, but today while lunching at the mall I finally got a chance. The only good vegetarian option was Tomato Basil, and I’m pleased to report that it was friggin’ fabulous. For a simple tomato soup, it was surprisingly hearty, full of yummy chunks of rich tomato and onions, and surprisingly spicy, with real basil leaves included. It came with bread, a banana, and a yummy Swiss milk chocolate for dessert. It was pretty expensive for a food court — $7.50 total for the vegetarian soups — but definitely a full meal. I’m stuffed now and very satisfied with the whole experience, so I’d say the price was worth it, although the woman in front of me in line complained about the price (no soup for you!). It’s definitely one of the less busy stops in our food court so I hope it hangs around, and that I get to eat there again soon — can’t wait to try the lentil soup or the minnestrone!

Last night I had a dream that and I were at some sort of summer camp. The campers went on a field trip, but instead of travelling on one big bus, there was a whole fleet of buses so that the campers could be divided according to their religion. Sir Monkeypants and I were the only two who boarded the bus labelled, “Heathens.” Then we went on the trip (to a damp wine cellar somewhere) and headed home. On the way home, it got really dark and there was a terrible snowstorm. Our bus driver took sick and since we were the only two on board, I had to take over the driving, while Sir Monkeypants tried to navigate.

I was really scared and I complained to Sir Monkeypants about how we had to pilot this huge bus through the storm all by ourselves, and he said, “Damn those Catholics and their full busload!”

A while ago I was telling FameThrowa about how certain things that I do remind me of certain people. Like, every time I wash the dishes, I think of my Uncle George, because when I was a pre-teen he gave me a long lecture once about how you should always rinse with really hot water, because then the water will evaporate quickly and you can skip the drying step. And making muffins always makes me think of my Aunt Karen, because one time when I was in university I stayed over at her house, and in the morning she made fresh sunshine muffins for me, and filled the cups extra-full to make extra-giant muffins with spectacular muffin-tops.

Springtime reminds me of my mother, especially when it is exactly 9 degrees Celcius outside. Once when I was around 10, I remember I was going somewhere with my mom in the car — these were the days before air bags so I got to ride in the front passenger seat, as it was just the two of us. The DJ on the radio announced that it was 9 degrees, and my mom commented kind of off-hand that she would never get used to the metric system, and that to her, 9 degrees meant cold and snowy, and here we were in light jackets, and it was a beautiful sunny day. And I had no idea what the heck she was talking about really, but the moment just seemed really conspiratorial, like she’d shared some deep secret with me, and the day was so lovely and warm, and it was so nice that it was just the two of us on some special errand, that I’ve always remembered it.

This morning when I checked the weather it was 9 degrees, so…here’s thinking of you, Mom.

I joined a gym a few weeks ago…

(Thank you, thank you. Really, you’re too kind. Now, I must ask that you hold all further applause until the end of the post.)

It’s been going well so far. I especially like the fact that there are eight TVs planted right in front of the treadmills/bikes, with a little thing on each machine you can plug into your earphones so you can hear the audio. If only they showed Veronica Mars live, I’d for sure be there every Wednesday at 9pm.

With my membership came six sessions with a personal trainer. I have Steve. He’s been pretty good although it’s striking to me how different our lives are. I’m a married woman, an engineer, with two little kids; he’s a young single dude who is putting off university for a while so he can pursue competitive body building. Yesterday I asked him how old he actually is, and found out he is NINETEEN.

It’s really freaky to me that I can now have business-type interactions with people — people who don’t work at McDonald’s — who are young enough that I could actually BE THEIR MOTHER. Crimey. I’m offically in the older generation! To Steve, I’m HIS PARENTS’ AGE!

This gym thing better shave off a few years, as well as pounds, is all I can say.

My kids love the TV show Hi-5, and I have a totally unhealthy obsession with the show. I love to watch it as much as they do, and I know all kinds of facts about the five performers — what their names are, what their backgrounds are, other credits, likes and dislikes…I’m practically a Teen Beat Hi-5 Special Edition. Lately I find myself thinking that their album just may be the greatest album of all time, as I have listened to it about 5000 times and yet I can still listen to it one more time without my head exploding. Beat that, U2.

The original series, from about three years ago, featured 45 episodes based around 9 different themes. One of my favourite parts of these episodes was the costumes. The three girls in particular had the greatest clothes — cute, colourful outfits paired with adorable shoes and intricate hairstyles. They were hardly the kind of thing that you’d wear to the mall but the perfect blend of fabulous colours with splashes of unique patterns made the costumes totally drool-worthy. I even considered writing to the show’s costume designer to complement her, and ask her to take on the role of my personal shopper, if she could be convinced to move to Canada.

A few months ago the show made a new set of 25 episodes based around 5 new themes. Clearly, they have a new costume designer, one who has taken the “fun and funky” theme and put it in a blender with everything that was crappy about the 80s and thrown up the most horrifying clothes that I’ve ever seen on TV.

Here are some samples from the original series and the second season. Forgive the horrible quality of these photos, I took them of my TV — I just had to share the disaster with the world.

First, from the first season, here’s Karla wearing one of my favourite outfits — a pink t-shirt under a patchy-blue tank top, with cool jeans and sneakers. You can’t tell from the photo, but she also has pink and blue ribbons woven into the front of her hair:

First season Karla again (centre), in a white T, blue tank, blue check pants, and a little red apron (these aprons were a costuming theme in the first season); Jen (to the left) wears a red and white check shirt with denim apron and cut-off jeans:

First season Kimmee in what I previously would have considered a not-so-great outfit — a slightly busy pink-blue-white blouse with a blue skirt and sandals:

And here’s a great first season shot of the whole group — I especially like Karla’s yellow and magenta colour combination, and Jen’s top of pinks and whites:

Now for the new season outfits. Warning, some may be offended by the fashion crimes within.
We’ll start with Jen in a pretty typical outfit from this season — polka-dot head scarf, pink shirt (with glitter decorations on the front you can’t see), yellow mega-belt (the mega-belt is this season’s little apron), too-short plaid skirt, knee socks, and the ubiquitous shiny ballet slippers:

Kimmee has really taken the brunt of it this season. Here’s one that I really hate — white sundress with blue shrug, over rolled-up too-tight jeans (again, ubiquitous this season), white hair flowers, and glaring white sneakers:

Karla is not a fat girl but you wouldn’t know it from this outfit, which pairs a purple tank top with a yellow too-long shirt, polka-dot skirt with — yes — leg warmers:

And Karla again — sorry for the extreme crappiness of this shot — in a pink-blue-white striped t-shirt under a pink tank with flamingoes on it, giant belt, flowing hot-pink skirt over pale pink pants, and ballet slippers:

And lastly, Kimmee in a most unfortunate colour combination of orange, blue, and red, with white sneakers and silver mega-belt:

Unfortunately the new season’s shows are really bad, and we only had a couple of them on our PVR, so I couldn’t really show you the truly awful ones (and here, knows I’m talking about that one where they made Kimmee wear that striped hat with matching leg warmers). But I think you get the idea.

Join with me as I recoil in horror!

For Christmas this year, we got Captain Jelly Belly a train table, which is kind of like a big coffee table with a rim around it, meant to set up a Thomas The Tank Engine wooden track in various configurations. The table was officially from “Santa.”

I think we made too big a deal of the whole Santa thing, because yesterday out of the blue, the Captain said to me, “I don’t want Santa to come back. I don’t want him to take my train table.”

Awwww!

Since I was in high school, I’ve been keeping track of what I like to call, “A+ days,” days when everything is so awesome, it’s worth remembering. I think that people are too likely to remember bad stuff, and forget about good stuff, so I note it when I have a really outstanding day.

Yesterday got an A+. In the morning we took the kids to the Experimental Farm, where we saw newborn baby lambs, pigs, and horses. The kids had a great time playing in the museum part (where they have interactive displays and toy food, and where they bake real raisin bread, yum).

After we all went out for a family brunch at Denny’s, and the kids were super-well behaved and ate great. With full tummies we headed home for a nice nap, and and I watched some stupid TV and puttered around a bit. When the kids got up we took them to the park and it was a little chillier than we thought, but both of them just loved being outside and had a great time on the swings.

Then we came home and had a good dinner, and horsed around with the kids for a bit with much squealing and giggling, and then it was bedtime. And then and I flaked for a while and chatted for a while and went to bed early. All good!

Our internet connection has been flaky for a couple of months now, and in the past week it’s really gone downhill to the point where we only have good connectivity for a couple of hours a day. The rest of the time it comes up and down at will (but mostly down). Sir Monkeypants is doing a great job pinpointing the problem but we are both finding the on-again off-again nature of the problem to be really frustrating.

I was thinking this morning about how much more stressed I am about being without the internet than I would be without other major things like the TV, or a car, or even power. I’ve come to take the internet for granted in my everyday life and when it’s gone, I really notice the loss. We can’t play music as we use our computer as our MP3 server; I can’t check LiveJournal (which I do like, 10 times a day, so post stuff, dudes); I can’t check my email or Yahoo Messenger with Sir Monkeypants at work; I can’t catch up on my daily entertainment news while the kids are napping. Turning on the TV to check the weather seems so archaic now, and I can’t remember how to use the phone book.

Last night we watched Wedding Crashers on DVD, and this morning the internet was down, and not being able to go to the IMDB to see the names of the cast and what else they’ve been in recently almost killed me. At this moment it’s been more than 24 hours since I checked my mail and I think my head might explode if I think about all the potentially unanswered messages sitting there for me for one more minute. Gack!

I guess it’s because I’m a stay-at-home mom — the internet is my contact with the outside world. I don’t like talking on the phone and if the weather is bad, it’s too hard to leave the house with the kids, so the computer is my way of escaping. These last few days, however, have made it feel more like an addiction — if I can’t have my internet, I’m as jumpy as a gal who quit smoking and drinking coffee on the same day. I don’t know how my mom survived all those years with only a radio for company!