Hey, I just found this in my drafts folder! I wrote it last week. But you can read it right now! Ah, technology.

Right now it’s minus 26 degrees Celcius outside, raw air temperature, and that my friends, is why I’m moving to Florida next week. Ha! I wish.

I am not a big fan of winter – I really feel the cold, and that gets worse each year, making me feel cold AND old. I am not an outdoorsy person by nature and add in snow, and ice, and wind, and cold, and yeah, my enjoyment of leaving the house is reduced to zero. Absolute zero. Ha! See what I did there?

To add to it all, I have a minor cold, picked up from the hooligans who shanghai-ed me into staying home on Monday, which means I have a slight fever and a sore throat. It’s enough to make you want to just curl up on the couch with a box of cookies, a bag of truffles, a cup of tea, a warm laptop, and a DVD of The Magnificent Seven, and of course, honey, I spent my morning working hard, don’t I always? You know it!

In honour of today’s Deep Freeze I thought I should list out all the things I actually do like about winter. Don’t worry, it’s a short list.

1. No bugs. That in itself is reason enough not to move to Florida.
2. The stuff you put in the compost bin freezes, so there’s no mouldy, liquid, smelly crap in the bottom of it each week to attract maggots.
3. I can pick up the kids from school in my jammies, because snowpants, a long coat, and boots make everyone else none the wiser, and of course, honey, I’m always dressed by school pickup time, aren’t I always? You know it!
4. I get to eat a lot of soup.

And…that’s all I got. Stay warm, Ottawans, stay warm.

I’m a stay-at-home-mom – actually, you know what, I’m going to just go hog wild here and refer to myself as a work-at-home-mom instead, because I do WORK, dammit – and that means I’m here all the time. Every day.

And THAT means that I’m much more likely than other moms, I presume, to allow my kids to have a sick day. I imagine working moms out there are laughing at the tiny, wee little potential health problems that have served as sick day excuses around here. “Oh, does baby-waby have a sniffle-wiffle? Then baby-waby is GOING TO SCHOOL ANYWAY, GROW A PAIR KID.”

Not around here, oh no! The smallest hint of a sore throat or fever of 37.4 is enough to warrant a day on the couch, while Mommy curls up beside you with her warm, warm laptop, occasionally interrupting the steady stream of movies and video games to encourage you to drink a little gingerale. Is baby-waby feeling any better-wetter?

I may sound a little bitter and jaded, but that’s only because both the Captain and Gal Smiley have been home all day. They both developed a cough overnight, which meant they didn’t sleep well, so they woke up with red eyes and slightly sore throats and the occasional polite heh-heh coming out of their mouths. The Captain, in particular, gets a little asthmatic when he gets a cold, so he immediately spikes a fever, which always makes him feel extra crappy.

So this morning we did the usual should-we-or-shouldn’t-we dance, where we try to determine exactly HOW sick they are, and if they are up for gym class or not, or if they are up for outdoor recess or not, or if they will infect anyone else, or what. In the end, we decided that the Captain’s cough and fever, combined with first period gym, meant he got to stay home; Gal Smiley suckered me into it when she lay her big sad head on the breakfast table and declared herself too tired to sit upright. Poor, sad, baby-wabies.

And of course, by mid-morning they were plenty able to a) scream and bounce around on the couch over some video game, b) fight over which movie they were going to get to watch, while asking me if they could each have a big bowl of chips while watching, like I may be a sucker but I’m not a TOTAL sucker, geez, and c) declare themselves too sick for lunch, but plenty healthy enough for cookies. All the while not showing any signs of fever, cough, or tiredness.

SUCKER.

Tomorrow, everyone is FREAKING GOING TO SCHOOL. And next time, you better be at death’s door, kiddos.

Back when my kids were babies – especially the Captain, as he was our first – we had a few grandparent/parent clashes. Nothing major, but you know the kind of thing I’m talking about – a grandparent has some advice, you chafe under that because you TOTALLY know what you’re doing, and there’s tension until you both figure out how the push-pull of caring for a kid you all adore will work out.

Back in those days I made a few internal resolutions through gritted teeth about how I will be as a grandparent. Things I would never, ever say! Things I would never, ever do! Boundaries I would respect! Selfless assistance I would give! Oh, I’d be the very model of a modern major grandmother, I would, yes siree.

Then yesterday, in the car, Gal Smiley was talking about her future kids. She is thinking these days of having one boy and one girl, and she will name them Delgado and Princessa, after two of the dogs in Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which my mother gave the kids for Christmas, which I have now seen approximately 50 times, and remind me to add “no dog DVDs!!” to my list of Rules of Awesome Grandmotherhood.

And right there, on the tip of my tongue, without even thinking, was this: “Ooooh…really? Don’t you think some other names would be nicer?”

And WHAM BAM, I have become every other grandmother, EVER.

Luckily I realized right at the last millisecond what was about to happen, and managed to swap out my gentle and helpful suggestion with a more awesome, “That sounds great, honey.”

Awesome Grandma says: Welcome, Delgado and Princessa. Internal Grandma says: SHIVER.

Guess the Awesome Grandma plan needs a little more work.

So. This happened. Not five minutes from my house, a suburban mother killed her two kids (aged the same as the Captain and the Little Miss), then herself. A stay-at-home mom who walked her kids to school and was head of the Neighbourhood Watch. Her kids would have gone to the same high school as my kids.

I didn’t write anything after Newton. It felt odd to act like nothing had happened, but I just did not have the first clue as to what to say. I couldn’t even process it, couldn’t fit something like that into the world that I know. Of course, we have to talk about it, we have to figure out how we can avoid something like that happening again, but on the other hand, I need to pretend it didn’t happen, need to lock it away in a small corner of my brain so that I could bring myself to send my kids to school again, and believe that they were going to be okay.

I didn’t even talk to my kids about it. I worried that they might hear something and have questions, but in the end I trusted that if they had concerns, they’d come to me. In the meantime, sitting down with them seemed to give the whole matter more weight than I wanted to give it, make it more real for everyone when I wanted it to just be a scary story someone told me once. I didn’t want to download my own fears onto them, to have them share the feeling that the everyday world had become a dangerous place. They shouldn’t have to feel that way. None of us should.

And now this. I sent them to school this morning again with nary a word. Will someone else say something at school? Will they come home with a secret fear that the next time I yell at them, I’m close to snapping?

That woman was like me in so many ways, yet she seems so far away, too. I’m grateful, so grateful, that I’ve never had to struggle with depression. I have fantastic support from friends, neighbours, sisters, and my husband, all of whom are willing to listen when I’ve had a crap day, willing to take the kids for a while so I can get a break. I have bad days and cranky days and screamy days, but I always have found the strength to set my sights on the next day, with a new resolve to make it a better one.

I am so, so lucky.

I really believe there’s nothing anyone could have done here. Something like this is so far outside the world as I know it, that it would never enter my head as a possibility. Even those close to this woman could never have thought for a second that this could happen. It’s the unthinkable. It’s impossible.

So I will tuck it away in that little locked corner of my brain.

But I will ask for help if I need it.

I will offer help to other moms in need.

I will take a deep breath and take a moment for myself in times of emotional stress.

I will find the strength to carry on.

I’m not a big one for New Year’s resolutions, in that I don’t ever make them just for the sake of making them. On the flip side, however, when I do make one, I tend to stick with it.

This year I am making the (ho-hum, yawn) stereotypical resolution to lose some weight. A few years back, when I stopped nursing the Little Miss, I was overweight and I worked really hard to lose 30+ pounds. Now I find the scale creeping up again – it’s nothing serious, but I’ve put back on enough that all the cute pants I bought to celebrate the weight loss are too tight, and the emergency one-size up pants I bought just to “tide me over” are now ALSO too tight, and that is…not good. So it’s back to watching what I eat and (GAG ME) exercising on occasion. Hopefully this horrible state of affairs doesn’t go on much longer, because people, I have PIE TO MAKE.

This might be the first year ever that I am actually making two resolutions, and the second is to find some focus in my life. I think this one has about an 80% chance of failure. Or maybe 85%. That’s because although I KNOW I need to stop trying to every single thing that catches my fancy, I still seem to think that I will magically produce five extra (energetic, alert) hours each day to get it all done. I want to design! and write! and bake! and teach! and parent full-time! and help friends! and exercise! and volunteer! and write a novel!

TOOOOOOOTALLY all going to happen, don’t you think?

Mostly I need to prioritize, so I’m not jumping from one thing to the next all the time, and to figure out which of these things really, really makes me happy and then try to pick just one. Or two. Maybe three, tops.

I get a whole year, right?

Remember back in December, when Sir Monkeypants had an awesome, dance-worthy gift for me, and Little Miss Sunshine almost passed out from the effort of keeping the secret?

She made it! I’m pretty proud of her.

On Christmas morning, I was very happily surprised to receive these:

And you’re thinking, pie plates? Don’t you already have pie plates? Answer: Yes, yes I do. Probably more than…everyone else on earth.

But although these may seem to be ordinary, mild-mannered, standard 9 inch Pyrex pie plates, they are actually (dramatic flourish please)…

EIGHT INCH PYREX PIE PLATES.

(9 inch big momma on the right, 8 inch beauties on the left).

Pyrex hasn’t made the 8 inch pie plate (the “208,” as it’s known in the biz) for more than 30 years. I didn’t even know they existed myself until I saw one at my mom’s about two years ago. She’d gotten it from my grandmother’s house when she passed away (and if you have one at home, I’m pretty sure you got yours from a similar place, right?).

Ever since then I’ve been on a quest, because I eat a lot of pie, and the smaller pie plates are a) cute and b) better sized for pies I am making for just me and Sir Monkeypants. But they are hard to come by. They turn up on eBay every now and again, but usually chipped or worn, and the shipping is insane. For a while I was very committed to checking vintage stores in the area but I never saw any and eventually gave up.

But now I have TWO. In perfect, perfect condition. BEAUTIES, I tell you.

Let the pie making begin.

The other day the Captain asked me to open a bottle of juice for him, and I got all up with my Godfather voice, saying, “I do you this favour, and someday, and that day may never come, I may ask you for a favour in return…” You know the drill.

When I was a kid, my actual godfather (shout out, Uncle George!) used to talk to me every single time he saw me in the classic Godfather growl. He’d say, “Kid, I am your godfather. Someday, and that day may never come, if you need a favour, you come to me…” And so on. Being like, 8 years old, I had no idea what the heck he was talking about, but that didn’t stop me from doing my own Marlon Brando impersonation around the house.

So I considered myself something of a Godfather specialist, and after I pulled it on the Captain, it led to a conversation about the movie (in the most stripped, cleansed version, we’re not trying to terrify the kid, geez). And I explained about the favour quote, and the voice, and who the godfather is (without actually using the words “mob” or “mafia,” try that at home kids!).

My point here is that I went to YouTube to find the clip in question with this quote, and I found it easily, and it turns out THE WORD “FAVOUR” IS NOT EVEN USED.

NOT AT ALL.

My mind is BLOWN. Did you all know this is a famous misquote? What he actually says is, “Someday, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter’s wedding day.”

A SERVICE? A SERVICE?

Mind boggling. My Marlon Brando may never be the same.

We were away over the holidays in Southern Ontario, visiting the grandparents. While we were away, we got a massive dumping of snow up here – two big storms that dropped I don’t know, at least 30 centimeters in our driveway.

Aside: The van was JAM PACKED with stuff, so I was trying to keep the footwear down to just one choice, and when we were leaving I was waffling between the Frankenboots, which are the key to my survival of Ottawa winters, or my cute little ankle boots that I usually only wear on snow-free days in November and April. Sir Monkeypants said, “We’re going to Toronto, it’s not like here. You do realize that my sister and her husband do not even OWN boots, they just wear shoes all winter long, don’t you?”

Plus, my mother was super keen to take the kids sledding while we were visiting, but it continued to be completely green and sunny and warm in Cambridge, so although she kept saying, “We’re supposed to get snow tomorrow!” cheerfully for like, the 10 days straight leading up to Christmas, it seemed pretty certain that there would be no snow there, ever.

So of course I went with the ankle boots, and of course there was a freakish, enormous dumping of snow in both Cambridge and Toronto, and my feet froze and all my socks were wet and let’s not even TALK about the attempt at sledding in substandard boots, which brought new meaning to the word BITCHFACE.

Anyway! It snowed a lot over the holidays, is what I’m saying.

So we’re driving back home, after a lovely lunch with my littlest sister and her wee tiny new baby, and it’s getting dark, and late. The kids are tired and cranky, Sir Monkeypants’ back is aching from hour after hour of sitting in the driver’s seat, and we start to fret about what state the driveway will be in when we get home. At the least, it’s sure to have a foot of snow in it, with a nice icy wall of snowplow droppings along the bottom.

We figured we’d never be able to get the van in, but we couldn’t leave it out on the street with all the stuff in it and the possibility of more snowplow action, so we tried really hard to psyche ourselves up for the massive shoveling job that awaited us at home. I was resigned to the idea of climbing over snowbanks and wading through knee-deep snow in my friggin’ ANKLE BOOTS, with one sleepy kid in each arm.

And then, pulling into our street…around the bend…there’s our house…THE HEAVENS OPENED UP AND THE ANGELS SANG.

Someone had cleared out our driveway for us! HUGEST. FAVOUR. EVER.

I still can’t believe how awesome that was. I almost cried from relief, and I think I saw Sir Monkeypants wiping a tear away too. We even passed others on our street that were still trying to dig out, and it looked awful, heavy and chunky and icy, and I felt guilty enough about having ours cleared for us that I could have gone help them out, except that we were so exhausted I was barely able to do more than crawl inside, throw the kids in bed, then sink into a coma on the couch 10 minutes later.

Turns out it was our backyard neighbours who cleared it – King and Queen Charming, and their daughter Princess Charming, who is in Gal Smiley’s class. They walked around the corner with their snowblower, and then when the other neighbours around saw them, everyone who was outside at the time came over to help break up the snowplow bits at the bottom, and to help shovel the walkway. THEY SHOVELED THE WALKWAY.

December was kind of a hard month, in terms of faith in humanity and wondering what the HELL was up with the world. But this one thing, this enormous kindness, has turned things around for me, given me real tender feelings towards the human race and the Earth in general and man, I just want to hug everyone and hand out free pie.

It’s going to be a great year.

My book from Blurb arrived!

It’s lovely. The paper is gorgeous and the printing is gorgeous and it’s exactly the way I laid it all out.

However, I have learned a very valuable lesson about book publishing, and that is that you should PROOFREAD. Twice. No, three times. Make that four.

I spent a lot of time checking and re-checking the layout, but I didn’t spend hardly any time reading the text. DUMB. There are at least, I would guesstimate, 30 typos in the book. GAH. Some of them are minor mispellings, but in two cases, a blog post title is missing; in several cases, Sir Monkeypants’ name is missing from the middle of sentence because when I ported my old posts over from LiveJournal, the custom code I used to use to link to his username didn’t show up in WordPress. In other cases I missed some font formatting.

On the plus side, I do find it a lot easier to edit the book on paper than on the computer. After it arrived and I started finding typos, I went back to fix up my Blurb file and found several problems, but I can find even more, and faster, just by flipping through the paper copy.

So you can think of it as a very expensive rough draft, I guess.

I’m not going to rush out to reprint because it’s not a trifling expense, but I think I will reprint it someday. After I’ve proofread it at least 10 more times. GAH.

The books are still awesome, though. I love seeing them, and the best part is how much the kids are loving them – Gal Smiley in particular loves reading the old stories about herself and her siblings.

Kind of wish I’d used fewer swear words now, though. DOH.

The Little Miss is a verbal child, to say the least. By that I mean, if she is thinking something, it comes out her mouth. She must talk things through in order to process them. Brain and voice are connected in a continuous loop, indivisible.

So, I’m sure you can guess, keeping Christmas gift secrets is a bit of a challenge for her.

Sir Monkeypants has got me something for Christmas that he’s excited about. He’s been dancing around here for a week or two, proclaiming his major score. The item in question arrived in the mail a few days ago and he made the mistake, in his excitement, of showing the kids.

Now the poor Little Miss is in a terrible spot.

We spend hours alone together every day. I pick her up from school, and then it’s just the two of us for four hours until we get the big kids. Since it’s December, we’ve been avoiding the outside world; we come home and do crafts or baking or read books together. It’s a lot of time for her to try to have to short circuit that brain-to-mouth link she’s got going on.

The first day or two, she was all, “We have a present for you but I’m not allowed to talk about it so don’t ask me about it, okay?” This, at least once or twice an hour.

Then it was, “There is a box in Daddy’s bottom drawer and it’s a present for you so you should NOT go look at it, okay?” at least twice a day, poor little thing.

Then, out of the blue while colouring, “You know how you like pie? And sometimes you don’t have enough pie servers? And you need more? Is that true?” So I smiled and gave her a hug and told her it was indeed true.

And now we’re at, “Can I just TELL YOU what it is, and you won’t tell Daddy I told you?” And when I said no, she said, “How about just one part of it?” and then I said no, and she suggested, “Maybe I could give you some hints, like I could say pie and then you could guess it and I would nod yes?” and still I said no, and tried to distract her with a book.

But she’s clearly suffering. It is very, very hard for her to be thinking about something and not saying it out loud.

Yesterday I got out the things I had bought for the kids to give to their father and I was going to have them wrap them. But then I thought of the torture it would be for the Little Miss – still 11 whole days to go! – so I have decided to wait.

Possibly until the morning of the 25th.

Poor little bear.