I’m working from home today, just because I know it won’t be a busy day close to the end of the month. Yesterday, I didn’t eat my sandwich at work because the cafeteria had some good looking food, and I decided to have that instead of my lunch, so I took it home to have for lunch today.

My snookey usually comes home for lunch since he only works 5 minutes away from home. He came home today and said, “what do you want for lunch?” and I said, “I’ve got that sandwich from yesterday”. He said, “why don’t we split the sandwich” and so I said, “ok, you’re not very hungry?” And he said he wasn’t. I was being polite, I had intended to eat my sandwich.

What I found strange about it was, what if I was hungry? What if I wanted to eat the whole sandwich? It seemed like a strange request to me that he was asking for half my lunch. Maybe he just didn’t feel like making anything and so he was being kind by letting me have half of my own sandwich instead of him eating it all, I dunno. I guess I found it a bit rude that, because he wasn’t that hungry, I wasn’t either.

Anyway, I had half my sandwich but now I’m feeling hungry and my stomach’s growling. I guess I’ll have a spoon of peanut butter (you know, my usual dinner). I’ve got a meeting tonight so I won’t be having dinner either. I guess I’d better glom down some peanut butter now.

You know that we’ve been working on the hallway. It’s all finished except for putting back a couple of doorknobs which my snookey is ‘supposed’ to finish today.

On Friday I took a vacation day to try to get some of this work completed. So we were hammering up the chair rails, and I think we’d hammered about ten nails in when our doorbell rang.

Coming up the stairs was the landlady. My snookey got to the door first and the landlady was angry. I think because she thinks she can steamroll my snookey, she demanded to know what we were doing. I found this a little annoying – maybe if she’d asked what all the noise was about (and hammering ten nails isn’t ‘all’ the noise), I might have told her. And it looked like my snookey was about to ‘answer to her’. Instead I told her that it was none of her business what we were doing in our own apartment.

She didn’t like that answer and started talking about all the noise and banging. I told her that we had hammered about 10 nails, and that it was before 11:00 at night (it was around 2:00 in the afternoon), and we weren’t breaking any noise ordinances if we made some noise in the middle of the day.

She didn’t like that answer either and she started going on and on about what we were doing. I said that we were paying over $1000 a month in rent and that it was ‘our’ apartment, she had no business coming over and demanding to know what we were doing in our own home.

She told me that if I wanted to play it that way, she would get her lawyer to draw up the papers and we would be out in 60 days. I told her I had a lawyer too and she could go ahead and get her lawyer involved.

She tried pulling out all the stops. She said that I am running a commercial business in my home and she would take that to court. I told her that there was nothing illegal about a home-based business. And since she had also been a client, I told her that I’d bring that up in court as well. She said I had removed the closet door (in the studio) and made a mess of it. I said that I had paid for custom closet doors for that room and when we left they would stay.

She talked about how we’d done things to the apartment that we weren’t allowed to do (I don’t know what cuz all we’d ever done so far was painted), and I said my snookey had made repairs and upgrades to the apartment, so she shouldn’t be complaining about anything we’d done. She mentioned that she’d just had someone come in to repair a crack in the wall, and I said, yes, once in 13 years you had someone else come in to fix something – every other year my snookey’s been repairing, she should have been having someone come in for 13 years, not one.

As she started walking away in her rage, she turned and said, “why are we arguing? I don’t like to argue. I thought we were on a friendly basis… remember when you wanted a new rug and I paid for half the new rug?” And I said, “yes, and I paid for half that rug which enhances your apartment when we leave and makes us happy while we’re here”.

She ended up telling us that she’d like us to stop the noise and I told her that we only had two more nails to hammer and then we’d be done.

My overall thoughts are this: Go ahead and try to get us evicted for hammering something one day. I’m sure that’ll hold up in court. If I lived in a high rise somewhere, the landlord would not be showing up at my door thinking he had the right to find out what I’m doing in the apartment I pay for. When I think back, there were times she mentioned something about our computer room light being on and how I must be working late at night – her nosy way of telling us that she knows our lights are on all night. But we pay for the effing hydro, so if we want to leave everything in the house on, we will. It’s our dime.

I just couldn’t get over the gall of her showing up here and thinking that we had to answer to her.

We’re still working on finishing up the hallway, and we’re really not half finished. I’ve painted walls, I’ve painted trim, I’ve painted doors. And a couple of those things in certain areas need another coat – but I’m not doing that right now – I’m a little painted out.

At the moment we’re just trying to get all the doorknobs on. My snookey is just working at getting the deadbolt screws on the back door. At least if that’s on, I’ll feel a little more secure about that. Right now we’re trying to figure out which knob is for what door.

Since my son has been staying with us, we haven’t had the alarm on. I guess we don’t want to share the code with him because then we’d only have to change it again and it’s a pain in the ass trying to come up with a code that we’ll both remember, keeping in mind how many other codes and passwords I have to keep in my head.

Oh, speaking of codes, my facebook page was hacked the other night. I got a message that I changed my password at 3:01 a.m. in Canada. At 3:01 a.m. in Canada I was in my air conditioned bedroom, sleeping in Canada, so it wasn’t me. I had to go through a few hoops to change everything over on that.

Anyway, back to the hallway. Tonight we were supposed to put up the chair rail. We started with one wall and my snookey was levelling it. But when we went back to the marks we’d made, that thing might as well have been vertical, that’s how ‘not straight’ it was. These things also need staining, but he’s talking about taking them down to the garage to do it. Well, Mister, there’s no air conditioning in the garage and it’s damned muggy here. Needless to say I ended up saying that I wasn’t in the mood to do that stuff tonight – so he can just work on doorknobs as far as I’m concerned.

After the chair rails we’re going to have to wallpaper the half-wall to hide the flaws in the drywall, but, of course, that’ll take at least a few days (until we actually get around to doing the chair rails). This little job has turned into something that’s probably going to take us a month to do. It would help if my snookey didn’t have to go off every Saturday, cuz I don’t feel much like working every night after work.

That’s my update. I’ve got to go out into the hallway cuz my snookey just asked, “did this deadbolt ever work?” Yes it did. We always used it to lock that door.

I think I told you that I had let my daughter back into my house after kicking her out for stealing and that only led to her stealing some more from me and getting kicked out again.

Well recently I had a jewellery show. And there was a woman I’d done business with before who wanted to bring some of her stuff to sell at the show as well. My daughter showed up that day and wanted to spend the night. I let her. Wouldn’t you know that after that, before I had taken the woman’s stuff back to her, I noticed that a white purse was missing. And this was a white purse that my daughter had been looking at and talking about how much she liked it. Hmmm, who has to pay for that missing white purse?

Now, after seeing how hot it’s going to be this coming week, I decided to go get some light clothes ready for work. I figured I’d wear a skirt, after all, I just picked up a couple of new skirts when shopping a few weeks ago. Well, whaddayaknow? One of my new skirts is missing. A skirt I HAVEN’T EVEN WORN YET is gone, and I paid an arm and a leg for these clothes because of the store I bought them from.

I can’t fucking believe that every time I let that girl into this house, something else is missing. She’s not even my size for Christ’s sake. And when I ask her about it, she always denies it. “Oh no, it wasn’t me. Not this time. I know I’ve taken things before, but I didn’t take anything this time”.

That girl is not coming into this house again. How many fucking chances did I give her? And every time I turn around, she steals something else from me. I’ve had it. Anything else and the police are being called and she’ll have a fucking criminal record because she chose to steal from her mother.

Yes, I’m just noticing that I haven’t really written anything about anything except movies for the past few weeks. And I can’t say I was doing overly well before that with the number of posts.

I don’t know what up with that other than the fact that I keep doing other stuff when I get home from work. And I seem to spend a lot of time on Facebook playing the stupid games. Yes, they’re stupid and, yet, I keep playing them.

Not a helluva lot has been happening with me except boredom at my job. That should end soon because I offered to help out in a different department half my time. I don’t know how that will work for their billing – maybe they’ll split up who’s paying my salary, as long as I still have a salary.

Other than that I’ve been making quite a bit of jewellery. Of course I haven’t had time to put any of it up on the website. Instead of taking pictures and uploading and describing, I’ve been making the stuff. I’ve taken tomorrow as a vacation day, so when I finish WvTF I’m planning to do tomorrow, maybe I’ll sit down and go through a pile of pictures to put up. Can’t expect people to be wanting to buy when they don’t know what there is to buy now can I?

So tonight is TV night for me with Community, Parks & Recreation, The Office, and 30 Rock. I think they’re all season finales which is good – good in that they won’t be reruns.

I’ve got to get ready for that… go get a beer and position myself in my ‘spot’. I’m looking forward to TV. Topped off with Jeopardy of course.

I can’t remember if I told you that my daughter had been staying with me again. She was living at her dad’s place, he got abusive, and I told her to come over here. I’m sure you remember when I wrote last year about all the stuff she stole from me… thousands of dollars worth of my possessions, money from my jewellery shows, and I’m sure other things that aren’t covered under ‘my possessions’.

Anyway, I kicked her out after that and I really didn’t trust her to be in my home again, but things sounded very bad over at her dad’s place so I decided to trust her and let her into my home.

She was staying here for about two months until this weekend when I once again told her that she’d have to leave. She stole more stuff from me. And I’m not talking about my tanktops that I end up seeing her wearing, and I’m not talking about food. I don’t even think that she stole any money from me.

But what she did take was my wireless mouse for my laptop. It was pink (to match my laptop) and I’ll have to go through some effort to replace it – not to mention money.

She also stole my Telus internet stick. That thing cost me $36/month and I had to sign a one-year contract in order not to pay for the stick. Well my contract’s not over and my stick is gone. So I have to continue paying off that contract even though I don’t have the stick, and they told me if I wanted a new one it would cost me $200. So guess who won’t be having an internet stick any more?

The reality is that I can live without the stick – I hardly ever used it. I don’t like the thought that I’ll still be paying for something I don’t have, but it’s not life and death to me not to have it.

What the bad thing is to me is that I’m hurt. Hurt by her again. I trusted her and she let me down. I think she had it pretty good here. She had a nice place to live, food on the table, no abuse, some extras thrown in, and pretty much all the freedom she wanted. And she decided to throw that all away so that she could take my stuff. And I don’t understand why. As soon as I saw the internet stick missing, I called to cancel it. So no one could use it which means it was also not saleable. So why take it?

I don’t know if there’s some deep seated psychological meaning to all this, or if there’s some hatred going on for me that she decides she’ll hurt me by hurting my purse. I don’t know what it is. But it hurt me, disappointed me, and although we have a good relationship other than that, it makes me feel unloved.

Happy Bunny Day, everyone!

I’m doing absolutely nothing except updating my site. In case you haven’t noticed much change (and there isn’t much), I’ve switched over to the Thesis theme – not because I needed a new theme, but just because I get the emails, and read the hype, and, after all, I paid for it quite a while ago, so I figured I’d try it out again.

I’m not too good with the hooks and the things involved with editing this one, so I’ve tried to keep it relatively simple so I don’t spend hours and hours searching their site or forums looking for answers to everything I’ve got questions on.

Anyway, now I’m using widgets, which I’ve never used because I like control, but they seem to be working ok at the moment.

So enough about that. I’m happy to have the holiday just to laze around and wait for my son to show up and cook dinner. I have no idea what he’s making – we usually have a ham (because my daughter likes it, I’m not too fond of it) for Easter, but he is surprising us, I guess. I’m kind of hoping it’s not ham because we’re also invited to my family’s place on Sunday and I know they’ll be having ham.

Maybe I’ll clean up a bit before my son arrives – wouldn’t want him to think the place is messy (oh, like I care). Not much else to do on a stat holiday except stuff around the house or playing games in facebook. I could play my new Wolfenstein game, I haven’t done that much. I hate it when you have to keep the CD in to play a game. WTF is wrong with them?

Alright I’m rambling now – must be a sign that I should go do something. My stomach’s growling like crazy, I’ve been up since 6:00 this morning… I think it might be time for food.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new fan light because my snookey said the one in the computer room wasn’t working any more. And believe me, since we can’t put an air conditioner in there, the very least we can do is have a fan in there cuz it’s wickedly hot in the summer.

He has since been trying to install the new one but at the same time he broke the table I used to make jewellery on (a great cherrywood table from a dining room set my cousin gave me) by standing on it trying to install the fan. I told him I didn’t think it would hold over 200 pounds, but he thought it would, for a while he thought that until it crashed out from underneath him.

Because of that, he then had to replace my table but we certainly couldn’t find one of the same quality (not singly, only if we wanted to buy a $3000 dining room set) or the same size. So instead, he bought me a new desk… one of those u-shaped ones which would serve the same purpose – and my desk was in rough shape after 13 years.

So we started putting all the pieces of the desk together, but then when I asked him to turn over a piece, he grabbed it the wrong way and cracked off a piece – a piece with these custom screw things in it that broke and are not easy to get out. He also cracked off a piece of the veneer (was I feeling angry?) but luckily it was the part for inside the drawer.

Then I had to call the furniture manufacturer and get them to send us some of those replacement specialty screws (yes, we searched at Home Depot and Canadian Tire to no avail). We had a hard time getting those things out to put some other ones in, but of course we were then short two. We finally got those yesterday.

So the bottom line is that the fan light is still not finished and it’s hard to do because there is a u-shaped desk in the way. The desk is not finished, but only the hutch part that sits on top – the rest is done (and in the way). If the fan light had been done first, it would have been great… two of us could have been working on that at the same time. It’s not easy to put up blades on an angle with only daylight.

This hutch is going to be a pain in the ass because this furniture is very, very heavy and we’re going to have to lift it onto two of those specialty screws (which work like dowels), and the rest of the desk is kinda in the way.

I don’t know how long it’s going to take to finish everything. Needless to say that my snookey is very tired from staying up til 2:00 last night and going to pick up his son at 8:00 this morning.

In other news my daughter has been staying with us for a few days now since there was some abuse going on by her father – drunken asshole. I was actually on the phone with her when she asked if she could come over. I could hear him in the background threatening to ‘punch her fucking face in’ – this because she hadn’t cleaned her room.

So we’ve got a full house over here (and no extra bedroom since I converted the third one into my jewellery studio). The living room is not looking too neat with clothes strewn around it. And how come my daughter wasn’t born stronger… strong enough to lift a big hutch onto a desk?

I’m texting from my Cell phone so there may be a bunch of typos

We’re sitting here in the middle of a power outage

so I can’t do a fucking thing but wait for the power to come back on

we’ve got a little battery radio – waiting for updates

what a pain in the ass – I think I’m dependent on technology

might as well go to bed (at 9:15 at night for christ’s sake

Last night I was in a mood. I’ve been bothered by the carpeting in our living/dining room because we’ve steam-cleaned it so many times that it started getting all loose and wrinkly, so I asked my snookey to phone the landlord and tell them we wanted something done about it.

He phoned, they had the ‘carpet expert’ who had installed it come in and say that they could stretch it and pull it tight again. However, that was not good enough for me when I was out there looking at it and thinking that it looked moldy around the edges – which may well be since we’ve steam-cleaned it so many times in 12 years of living here… maybe the edges never got dry.

Anyway, I called the landlord last night and had a little hissy fit. She, of course, was going on about how cheap our rent is (implying I guess that for rent this cheap, we don’t get new carpeting), and I, of course, going on about the improvements we’ve made, how well we’ve kept up the place and done repairs and been good tenants.

She finally seemed to be the calmer of us both and said something to the effect of us being the tenants if we were to get new carpeting we should at least be paying half. To which I said, “sure”.

So tonight the owners, my snookey and I hiked off to the carpet place to choose a carpet. And – big AND – the carpet is going to be installed tomorrow. I guess that carpet place is not too busy, but I don’t care about that – it’ll be done tomorrow! It’ll be done in time for the two dinners we’re having this weekend – one Saturday, one Sunday, and for the show I’m having in-house next weekend. And the carpet will only cost me $735 for my half (fuck, carpet is expensive).

So I’m a happy camper. Maybe sometimes a hissy fit is a good thing in helping get what you want. My snookey and I had talked about buying new carpet before but I said that I wanted the landlord to at least pay half. That’s exactly what we’re getting – only it’s now ‘her idea’.

The carpet is a nice beige and taupe texture that the guy says is very stain resistant (except not that good with coffee). So I’ll try to spill only my beer on it – not coffee.

I can hardly wait to get home from work tomorrow night. Oh, that’s right, I’ve got a meeting tomorrow night. That’s a good thing too, I guess. Maybe by the time I get home, my snookey will have all the furniture put back. The scariest thing will be him trying to rehook up the TV, Blu-Ray, PVR and Receiver. We may not be watching any TV tomorrow night.

These days – when I’m not playing my Mafia Wars addiction on Facebook – I’m finding all sorts of things to clean or replace in my home.

Today we replaced those little separator things that separate the carpet in one room from another. I happened to notice that one room had a gold one while there were two silver ones on the others, and one room had none, so I needed to have them all there, and all silver.

I’ve spent so much time washing walls, washing furniture – yes furniture. Oh, let me tell you. I had a chair that I’ve had the carpet cleaners clean for me before, but the other day I noticed it had zippers on it. So I figured, ‘hey, I can take those off and wash them in the washing machine’. So I did.

That worked out fine, they were washable, and I didn’t put them into the dryer because I didn’t want them to shrink.

But guess what? I had four cushions on that chair, so four coverings, they all came out clean, but the zipper broke on two of them.

So while I have clean coverings, I can’t use two of them because the zippers broke. Of course that meant that I had to take them to the dry cleaner to replace the zippers. It’s only $24 to replace those zippers. So my big home clean up is now costing an additional $48 to replace zippers.

Maybe a home is better when it’s not so clean. What do you think?

You know me and how I can never sleep in… although I thought I might have slept a little longer since we went to bed around 2:00 last night.

Perhaps I would have slept a bit longer if The Brick hadn’t called me at 7:45 this morning to tell me that my delivery was going to arrive between 12:00 and 3:00.

“Oh, thank you. I’m glad to know that. Is there some reason you had to call me before 8:00 to tell me?” is what I said. What he said was, “that’s the time I’m supposed to make all my calls”.

Perhaps if I was one of the people whose furniture was arriving first, like at 9:00, I wouldn’t mind that call so much. But seeing as I’m the ‘between 12:00 and 3:00′ person, I think I would have preferred a little more sleep.

I’m off to Tim’s at 6:00 to meet up with my new dad. I don’t know why he wanted to see me since he said he’d call me once a year on my birthday. It’s not my birthday – he took me out for dinner then.

So I wonder if he’s got news for me. Is he dying of cancer? Did his wife die and so he’s free to have a relationship with his long-lost daughter? Or is it just the fact that he knew he was going to be in Toronto today. Weird. I guess I’ll find out why, soon.

I’m just killing time now til it’s time to leave. I’m playing some Bejeweled Twist. Just got a crappy score of 254,000. The good thing though, is that I got rid of all the old scores, so I still get my name up with that one.

Yesterday I had to uninstall and reinstall my Paint Shop Pro X2 Ultimate. All of a sudden it just wouldn’t open. I’d try to open it and it would just freeze. So the answer to that was a reinstall. It’s working now but some of my plugins aren’t. It’s always something.

Once I’ve finished meeting with my new dad tonight, I’m officially on holiday. Tomorrow’s Canada Day and I’ve taken off the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. So there’s six whole days off. It is to laugh.

I intend to sleep in. Like that ever happens. Look at these big black bags under my eyes. Does that look like a woman who gets a lot of sleep? No, it does not.

Hopefully I’ll get some of that in, even if I have to stay up til 3:00 a.m. in order to do it. Of course that will include copious amounts of beer – I stocked up tonight. Wouldn’t want to find myself with no beer when the beer stores are closed.

So that’s my exciting life at the moment. New dad… what’s new? I’ll update you if it’s anything exciting – and probably even if it isn’t.

As I pulled in to the driveway, there were a bunch of strange men staring me in the face along with my snookey, our downstairs neighbour and the owner of the building. They were all learning how to operate our new garage door.

I thought it was a light grey. Apparently it’s white.

It looks nice. It’s one of those automatic garage doors as opposed to the kind you have to pull up yourself. Apparently the owner was having trouble being able to get the garage door opened now that she’s so old, so she’s had new garage doors put on. Hers gets installed tomorrow (they live right beside us).

She was all ecstatic doncha know because my snookey had to clean up the garage in order for the installers to be able to get in and install. She’s been bugging him for 12 years to clean that garage, and, finally, it actually looks like there’s some space in there.

As a matter of fact I could sleep in there if I ever got mad at my snookey wookey (or send him down there, much more likely).

And the nice thing? This door locks. We’ve had a garage door that didn’t lock, all the time we’ve been living here. And let me say that we’ve got a helluva lot of crap stuff in there. I’m happy there have been no incidents due to no locks. Well other than the fact that my son managed to take two air conditioners out of there that he said he thought ‘were his’.

Maybe our insurance prices will go down. Probably not.

My aunt is renovating her basement (about time, they’ve got this gorgeous house and the basement looks like crap). So she called me on Saturday to come over and look through some old records and pictures, in case I wanted to take them.

The records? Well I just threw out half my stash of records when I gave my son my stereo. I kept the ones I figured I’d convert to CD, so I didn’t think I’d want any of the records.

However, there were all these little 45s there that were kid records and they had my name written on them – they were mine from when I was a kid!

So I took a box of little 45s, I intended to make a CD with all this old stuff, just so I could listen to what I listened to as a kid and see if any of it came back to me.

Well the records wouldn’t play. I put it on 45 with my record converter and they were playing too slowly. I don’t know if that’s because the records were 50 years old and all gunged up or if my record converter is screwed up and won’t play 45 proper speed.

Anyway, so much for that idea. I’m just throwing those things out, never mind what I listened to as a kid.

She also had this old tea/coffee set there. It was all tarnished. They didn’t want it, so I said, “give it to me, I’ll buy some untarnish stuff and sell the thing on eBay”. So I bought the stuff.

Now the set is all untarnished and looking pretty good, but I called some antique dealer only to find out that they don’t buy this stuff. After reading what was on the bottom of the teapot to him, he said it was electroplated (silver plated), not an antique, and he could buy that stuff for $40 if he wanted to, but he didn’t want to.

All that hard work and we’ve got a bright and shiny electroplated tea/coffee set with a tray, sugar bowl and creamer. WTF am I going to do with that? I suppose I could give it to Value Village but it looks damned nice.

I could probably display it on the hutch or something, but if I did that, soon it would be all tarnished again and I’d have to redo it. Let me tell ya something – that untarnish stuff smells like ass. Ok, maybe not ass – but smells really bad. I wouldn’t want anyone to come over real soon and smell how it smells here.

I guess I’ve got lots of time to decide whether to keep it or not. I’m not going anywhere (that I know of).

Tomorrow morning I’ll be working from home again. Only because I have a meeting at 1:00, and it’s not that far from my home, so I figured it made more sense for me to go there from home than from out in the boonies where I work.

Update on my cement face… no big swelling, no big bruising. It’s almost as if I didn’t knock the sense right out of me. I wonder how much more of that kind of abuse I could handle? I could be getting into the ring.

That just reminds me, the other night we rented The Midnight Meat Train. The bad guy worked in a butcher shop and kept killing people by smashing their heads in with a big steel mallet.

I didn’t bother writing any review on that movie, mainly because we turned it off after not too long. How much smashing people’s heads to a pulp can you watch? I suppose I could have watched more if the movie line hadn’t been so lame. The photographer who was following the bad guy started exhibiting darker tendencies of his own. That was just too much for me. Boring and lame, along with grizzly bloody scenes (that part I can handle).

Anyway, I’ve got to go find out if there’s anything at all on TV on Tuesdays now that American Idol is finished. How can they leave us with nothing at all to watch and paying out the nose for it?

I can’t handle too many more Gordon Ramsay Kitchen Nightmare reruns. I think I’ve already got all the words memorized as it is. And I can only watch so many taped Judge Judy shows in a row.

Boredom. I suppose I could make some jewellery or update the website. I’m not in the mood for work though.

Ok, check out the TV now.

As you know, I let my son stay here with us for just over a month. He wasn’t paying anything to stay except for his buying an occasional bit of food to supplement ours with.

And on the day he was leaving, as he packed up as much stuff as he could fit into his friend’s truck, I was expecting big profuse thank you’s to both of us for letting him stay. Especially when I think of living rent free!

At no point in my life did someone ever offer to let me stay at their place (even for a week) for free. There may have been an overnight here and there, but that’s quite different than living at someone’s place.

And am I supposed to be doing this? Is that what a ‘good’ mother would do? “Sure, son, I know you’ve been thrown out of your apartment, come and stay here. I’d love to have you. I don’t see enough of you, so now I want to support you.”

Now it was no skin of our teeth(?) to have him stay here, really. I mean it’s not like he was around a lot. And when he was around, he didn’t spend too much time with us – wouldn’t want to inflict my company upon him.

But what I really thought, deep down, was… how come he doesn’t clean up the place? He’s living free, as a sort of thanks couldn’t he clean the place up? And he did clean up a couple of things a couple of times, but for the most part I was picking up his dishes and putting them in the dishwasher. One of us would wash the dishes he left in the sink, or clean out the bathroom sink because shaving cream or toothpaste, or something, was slopped all over it.

I’m not the big clean freak, as my place attests to, so that would have made it even better to have someone cleaning it up for me.

Am I expecting too much from another adult? Christ knows I’ve thanked people more profusely when they had me spend the night.

Anyway, I was just thinking. And in my days working at home this week, I’ve taken little breaks to go and clean out the microwave… wash off and re-arrange the kitchen counter… a bunch of things ‘cleaning related’… and there are a whole bunch more.

I did nothing my entire day. So much nothing, I’m sick of doing nothing.

Alright, I made some jewellery. I played some Bejewelled Twist, ok, I played a lot of Bejewelled Twist. This time I tried out the other categories, not just the ‘classic’ game. I still prefer the classic game. I finally got my name up there in the highest spot. Now I guess I don’t have to play it again.

We didn’t get a movie for tonight. Mostly because we didn’t get off our lazy asses to get dressed or shower or do anything.

I got a little (shall we say) hammered last night. I just kept slamming back beers as if I were a squirrel and they were nuts. Then the phone woke me up at 8:00 after going to bed at 3:00. It was, of course, a call for my son.

After staying up for a little while and realizing that I still felt drunk, I decided to go back to couch, where I got to sleep until 11:00. Biggest sleep in in a while, but it doesn’t really count as sleeping in since we got to bed so late.

I did try to update the jewellery website a bit, but then I wasn’t really in the mood for real work. So I pretty much ignored that after half an hour or so.

I guess tonight we’ll have to look for something on TV, although I can’t remember there being anything on TV on a Saturday. I think that’s where our habit of renting a movie every Saturday came from.

Anyway, just thought I’d update. I’m sure you did lots more exciting stuff than I did. My bum is sore from so much sitting.

My daughter and I went to scope out some group homes for her yesterday. While they both seemed quite nice (housed in a really old, big house), the second one had quite the selling point – the woman who worked there. There was something about the second home that just made you feel comfortable and safe (all three of us who went) and I pictured it as a place I wouldn’t mind living if I was a teen getting kicked out of my home.

I wish I’d had it so good when I was a teen. I left home at a really early age because I couldn’t stand my mother. Life was not so easy after that little decision. Even schooling was something I did at a much later age because I had to support myself.

Anyway, enough about me. My daughter has been accepted at the second group home and they’ve told her she can move in next Wednesday or Thursday. That appeals to me because it means I can stop locking my doors soon and going to get the key in order to go into the computer room or the bedroom.

I’ll admit it’s going to seem strange here without her, but I think this is for the best. Maybe she’ll be able to learn what it’s like to live within the rules of society and to behave properly… especially respecting others and not stealing.

Enough of that. I’ve got to go have some eggs for dinner cuz they’re fast and I’m hungry. Then it’ll be time for The Office soon – new episode tonight *woohoo!*

Tonight my ex came over because he has a van and I was giving some dining room chairs to my son. No, not the table that goes with the chairs because I use that table in the computer room to do my jewellery.

However, he already has a table, so he scored some chairs. There was a woman at work who, when she found out that I had this extra set of dining room chairs, mentioned to me that she also needed dining room chairs because right now she was using lawn chairs.

If I was really nice I could have offered her the chairs. It’s not like I was selling them for money. But I figured I’d done enough for that woman, and she pisses me off anyway with her clothes that are always dirty, stained, wrinkled. If I could have said to her, “you can have the chairs if you’d wash your clothes that I don’t think have been washed in years”, then she would have had a deal. But as it stands now, my son got chairs.

I can’t tell you how big my dining room seems now that I don’t have 6 extra chairs in there. I’m liking it. I can actually move around the dining room table.

Slowly but surely, I’m getting rid of stuff. Purging is good for the soul.

What was I doing tonight you ask. Well I was doing what most other 52-year-olds do on a Friday night. I was playing Rock Band 2 with my daughter and my son.

My son showed up to pick up a few things and have some dinner (we all had nice fattening wings cuz I had a shitload of them from M&Ms – they’ve got a sale on right now).

My daughter was here with her friend who’s sleeping over. So what else do a bunch of 15-year-olds, 28-year-olds, and 52-year-olds do when they get together? Yes, they pick up the plastic guitar, the plastic drum set, and the mother picks up the mic (because she’s useless at trying to play the game on the drums or guitar).

First I sang Spirit in the Sky. Not exactly my key. Then they picked White Wedding, let me tell you that’s one deep song with notes I can’t hit. Then we had One Way or Another by Blondie. Perfect! I could actually hit those notes no problem.

The little problem was that I couldn’t quite read the words as they were whizzing by so I did a whole bunch of wa wa wa wa instead of words, but since I was able to hit the notes I remember, I still scored 98%, what more could I ask for?

Now I’m letting them have some time to themselves without “the mom” hogging the mic and trying to choose songs they don’t want to play.

In half an hour I’ll probably sneak up on them again.

What do you do on a Friday night? If you can play the plastic guitar you’re welcome to join us

Does anyone honestly think that a tablespoon of butter left in the dish would serve anyone in any way? Sundays we have our big breakfasts with sausage and eggs and toast. This amount of butter might butter one person’s toast. I’ve got an idea… why not put out more butter? Yes, let’s put out more. There are a couple of pounds sitting in the fridge right now.

And when I told you that I bought my daughter the Rock Band game, I didn’t happen to mention that it comes with all this equipment.

I guess this is what my living room is going to look like from now on. It’s a sexy, polished look. It screams of musicians living in the household, doesn’t it? Yes, musicians who play plastic guitars.

Now I’ve got to come up with some way of storing this crap. As if the other game stuff wasn’t enough underneath the wall unit where the wine is kept, now I’ve got a guitar and drums and mic to hide somewhere.

Thank God we’re not on Home Heist or something. I don’t know what kind of t-shirt they’d give us for the way my home looks.

I haven’t seen any sign of my daughter since yesterday morning. From what I knew, she was dressing up as Amy Winehouse and going to go downtown with her friend for Halloween.

I’m assuming she did that. I can’t be sure though since I haven’t heard a word from her. I texted her last night to ask her what time she’d be home and never heard a word. I went to bed thinking that she was probably just partying with her friends and she’d be in late.

When I didn’t see her this morning, I figured she’d slept over at her friend’s place and was probably still sleeping. So I gave it til about noon and started texting. I texted her a bunch of times today and never heard a word.

So I have to wonder did she lose or break her phone – or perhaps it needs charging? Did something happen to her and she’s been unable to call? Is she at a friend’s place and just being completely selfish and not even thinking about letting people know she’s safe and sound?

Whatever’s going on, I finally called the cops. I think I called them around 4:00 this afternoon and they said they’d send someone over. It’s now almost 8:00 and I just called them again to ask when someone was coming over.

I was told that things are really busy and they’ll get here as soon as they can. I asked whether that would be before bed time, since I’ve had the police phone me at 12:30 in the morning and the woman said it probably would be, depending on the emergencies, but, if not, to give them a call and let them know when I was going to bed or if my daughter showed up.

I don’t think it’s great that a 15-year-old girl is out all night and perhaps another night without anyone knowing where she is. Who knows WTF is going on.

UPDATE: I called the police at 10:45 to tell them I was going to bed soon. They said they’d cancel the report and I could call again tomorrow if she still hadn’t shown up. At 11:30 she arrived home safely – with attitude. How’s that for mothers worrying about where their daughter’s are?

Tonight I kicked my daughter out. She lived here not even a year, and I’ve had enough.

What started things tonight? She had her friend over when I got home. Even though she was grounded, I told her she could have her friend over. My ex had dropped off his money for car insurance and left it outside in the boot. Didn’t he call and tell her that my money was in the boot, and so she proceeded to steal $20 of that money.

Once again she stole from me, even though the second last time she stole from me I told her that if she did it again I’d kick her out. After the last time she stole I told her I’d call the police.

Those jewellery shows I’ve had? She stole all the money I made. So I wasn’t even able to recoup the cost of the beads and supplies because she stole it all – except for the last one where she left $50 of the money, I suppose so I wouldn’t notice at first that the money was gone.

Today when I asked her about the $20 she once again lied and said “I don’t have it”, which probably wasn’t a lie by then because she’d spent it and didn’t have it any more. She said, in effect, ‘what’s the big deal, I’ll pay you back when I get money’.

So tonight I called the police; I was going to charge her with theft. They hadn’t arrived yet when my daughter told me that she was going out to walk her friend to the bus stop. I told her that since she was grounded, she wasn’t going anywhere. She continued to tell me that she was going. And I know that once she set foot out the door, she wouldn’t be just at the bus stop, she’d be gone off with her friend somewhere.

I didn’t kick her out for stealing, as I said I’d do. No, it was when she started talking about hating me that I decided that since she hated me so much, she’d better go find a place to live with someone she loved, instead of heaping all her ‘love’ on me in the form of stealing and lying and conniving, so I told her she could get out.

As she went to pack up some things, I went to get her key. I got called every name in the book, and the otherwise so sweet, little girl sounding girl, proceeded to swear as if she was a sailor. At one point I almost smacked her in the face, and when I say ‘almost’ it’s only because she swerved out of the way and then started to fight with me where I grabbed her arms and held her down on the bed. At one point she told me that mothers who loved their kids did not call the cops on them. I suppose mothers who love their kids just sit by idly as all their bill money gets stolen by their loving children… a roof over their heads, food to eat, computers, cell phones, family time, and hugs and kisses are not enough to prove loving.

She and her friend have gone. I feel relieved that I no longer have to lock up my things and hide my wallet (or clothes).

I told her as she was leaving that if she ever decided to be a normal human being, she could talk to me. That said while she was giving me the finger.

My daughter’s grounded to Friday, which means she’s not allowed to use the computer. What does that mean? I guess that means that when her mother goes to bed, she should sneak into the computer room and get on her mother’s computer.

And what should you always do when using your mother’s newly reformatted, newly virus free computer? Why you should start downloading programs, that’s what.

When I got up this morning didn’t I find three programs installed on my computer – one of which looking very much like the stinking virus I just had taken off. Needless to say, I was a little perturbed.

So right now I’m in the middle of an antispyware scan of the whole stinking system. Yes, boys and girls, that’s 1 terrabyte of scanning. Also needless to say is that it’s been going already for 2 hours and 29 minutes and we’re not done.

I guess when I go into the living room I’m going to have to do a full system antivirus scan too. I have now put my password back on my computer since Yow doesn’t like to put my password back on, hence a 15-year-old being able to jump on my computer when she can’t get on to her own.

Oh, and I can’t find my little camera. It suddenly just disappeared off the charger. It was on the charger the last time I saw it. That’s where I left it. Wherever could it have walked to?

My son is not the best with his money. Ok, that’s an understatement. He’s so not the best that he’s always got collection agencies phoning him or writing him. Where is it that they phone, you may ask? Would it be his phone number? Oh, no, it would not. It would be my phone number, because, for some strange reason, my phone number is probably a helluva lot easier to give out than his.

Tonight I had another message from a collection agency. One that has called me before. One that I have called back before and said he does not live here and I have no contact with him, to which they said then, “well, when you’re talking to him, tell him to call us”. What am I, his fucking receptionist?

Funny thing, I called back again tonight to say STOP CALLING ME, and didn’t the woman say the same fucking thing, “well, when you’re talking to him, tell him to call us”. Scuze me? What part of ‘I’m not in contact with him’ did you not understand?

And as I was talking to her, didn’t she keep cutting me off in the middle of sentences, so much so that I finally broke down and had a real freakfest on that woman’s ears. I was screeching and screaming and telling her not to interrupt me in the middle of my sentence. I was yelling at her to stop calling me, if she wanted my son she should call my son.

She ended up hanging up on me after she had some ‘final last words’ and I ended up calling back and asking for the manager. When I spoke to him he invoked the same screamfest in me that I’d had earlier. I told him that I wanted them to stop calling me, that my son was a grown man and this had nothing to do with me. And when I started yelling at him, he tried to take some superior ground and ask, “why are you yelling, am I yelling? I’m not yelling, why are you yelling?”, to which I responded, “I don’t give a fuck what you’re doing, stop calling me”.

When I told him I was not in contact with my son he said some smarmy thing like, “right, what mother is not in contact with her son?” – as if I was sitting here the liar and he had some right to call me on it.

After that I called the police. I called to ask, ‘how can I prevent some collection agency from continuing to call me and harass me about my son who doesn’t even live here’. What the officer said was, ‘if they call again, tell them you’re calling the police’. Well, big woo. I said, “that’s going to stop them?” and he said, “well, if it doesn’t, call us back”. Wow, I’m sure I’ll scare off these people.

What I’ll tell them is that I’ve already called the police from their last phone call, and as of this call I’m calling back the police to charge them with harassment.

Fucking collection agencies. As far as I’m concerned, they’re the scum of the earth. They’ll bother anybody thinking that it will make the debtor pay them off. They’re wrong. And they’re assholes.

After my post yesterday, and all the thought I’ve given to this ‘real dad’ issue, I was sitting around last night, talking with my snookey, and came to the realization that I don’t believe the new real dad is my real dad.

I believe the old dad is the real dad. Especially after my aunt told me that he did not have blue eyes (like my cousin told me all the Blow family did) but that his eyes were brown.

I have been gazing upon the new dad’s picture, searching for any resemblance at all, and I just don’t see it. However, when I look at the old dad’s picture, I think it’s me… just the same thought I had when I first saw the picture at 22 years old.

And this is an impossible idea that the old dad is the real dad because, at the time, my mother was dating the new dad. All I can think about that is, did the old dad show up at some point and have some kind of ‘we’re still married, let’s do it, it’s ok’ kind of sex with my mother who was then dating the new guy?

One reason I think of her having a fling with her husband is that I’ve been married twice. And both times ended up having sex with the husband I was no longer with. I can remember the first husband coming to visit his son when he was just a baby. He’d go in and talk to the baby for a few minutes, and then come out and try to get some. And a few times he did until I came to some realization that I shouldn’t be having sex with a guy I’d already dumped, just for the sake of having some sex.

The same thing happened with the second husband… both of us getting together for some reason or another and just ending up in the sack. I fell into the same trap again and put a stop to that, thinking that he might think that it meant we were going to get back together.

So, anyway, those are just two reasons why I wonder whether my mother did the same thing. Since I’m not quite believing that the new dad really is my dad, I can’t come up with any other explanation as to how he wouldn’t be. And since I can’t really afford the $500 paternity test and will be sending it back, and since the first dad is dead and the first mother is dead, there’s less chance of accuracy with the paternity test. I suppose it would tell me that the new dad ‘could’ be my father.

I find it funny that I’ve been waiting all this time to find out the truth, and when I supposedly have the truth now, I don’t believe it. I’m going to contact some family down east and push for pictures of the first dad – hopefully colour pictures where I can see his eyes.

Do you know who your father is? I do. I met up with my aunt today and got confirmation that the ‘real dad’ who showed up at the funeral, is my real dad. However, when she called him a sperm donor, I was thinking that I was going to hear some whole line of shit because I’m not aware of that happening too much back in the fifties.

What she meant by that was a different story than what my real dad had told me. He told me that my mother had taken off, he didn’t know she was pregnant, and he couldn’t find her after that. What my family tells me is that he knew damned well that she was pregnant and proceeded to marry another woman. Apparently his big push to get married was to do with the fact that he was getting an inheritance… IF he was married.

So now I know the truth for sure, it’s not just some stranger’s word. Apparently my aunt never said anything about it because my mother told her not to. She didn’t want it known and my aunt didn’t feel that it was her place to tell me. I wonder if she would have told me if the real dad hadn’t shown up.

What does all this mean to me? Pretty much nothing, although I’m still pissed off that I couldn’t have known the truth about my own lineage. It also means that I’m half Ukranian. I know nothing about the Ukraine. Perhaps I’ll do a little research one day through history to find out, perhaps I won’t. I guess I still consider myself Canadian with an irish heritage (I haven’t quite come to terms with the deadbeat dad’s background yet).

So, my children, I guess you’re one-quarter Ukranian. Learn them, and then teach me the swear words, will ya?

It felt really strange coming home, let me tell ya. While I was missing all my usual stuff, my time in PEI felt as if I’d been there about a month, and it almost seemed weird to be here.

The latest update on my situation is that my aunt said she was going to talk to me about stuff, and ‘my dad’ called me last night. Don’t know why since he said he was going to phone me in about a month, but each time he’s said that, he’s called a week later.

He and I are finally going to meet. He suggested that last night. We’re going to the Coffee Time over at Martin Ross Road. I’ve never been there, and I certainly don’t understand why he wouldn’t pick Tim’s over Coffee Time, but I’m the polite one, so I’ll meet him there. That’ll happen Tuesday at 6:30, so everyone come on down and we’ll have a little party full of people that I’ve never met.

He had first suggested Monday but I knew my snookey wouldn’t be home, so I suggested Tuesday only to find out that he wanted me to come alone. Kinda scary but I guess if I was in his situation, I might want me to come alone too, to talk.

I can hardly wait. I could hardly keep myself from calling him up myself (since I googled him and found his phone and address). But I waited, calmly.

I asked him to bring pictures. He said he had a picture of my mother he could bring and I said forget about that, I already know what my mother looked like, bring a picture of yourself when you were younger so I can see if there’s any resemblance. Although now I’m hoping he also brings the picture of my mother, just as a kind of proof of knowing her.

Anyway, I’m already late for American Idol – which I remembered 10 minutes ago to go out and start and put on pause. So I’m off to watch it. We’ll talk soon.

Last night my cousin and his wife (whom we’d seen at the funeral and reception afterwards) phoned us up and were going to take us out. Instead we said, c’mon over to the hotel, we’re just playing some cards and drinking some beer (well, I was, anyway).

They came over, we taught them euchre, drank beer and had a great old time. It was when they were leaving when I told them the story of ‘my dad’ at the funeral.

That’s when my cousin’s wife told me that, if Joe Blow were my father, she would have been my first cousin. However, she also told me that my father’s brother had always said that I was not Joe Blow’s daughter. Hmmm. Where did that come from?

She told me that she would take me today to meet my real father’s? brother and I could talk to him. That was funny because my family had always told me that if there was any Joe Blow family left down here, they’d probably all be dead, and yet here was his woman telling me that, hey, sure, there’s lots of the Blow family down here you could speak to.

So, today we’re supposed to go visiting some of my mother’s family. But I told my aunt and uncle that I also wanted to go out and meet with my cousin and his wife because she had something to show me.

I didn’t want to tell my aunt the whole story just in case she got mad I was telling people about this strange new father at my mother’s funeral. In case, somehow, she felt I was besmirching my mother’s good name.

So, hopefully, I will get a chance to go and meet with someone who, up until a month ago, I would have believed was my uncle and now I’m to find out it isn’t. I’m wondering if he’ll have pictures of my real? dad so that I will be able to see whether we look alike after all. Everybody down here is telling me that I look just like my mother. I don’t think I do, but maybe I’m wrong.

Updates later once I get back to Toronto. My flight tonight leaves about 6:00-ish and my snookey is picking us up at the airport. Then I plan to sit on my very own spot on the couch and have beer and cigarettes.

I fly out this afternoon at 3:15, and jet my way down to the Island. Tomorrow we have the interrment, and then I guess I spend the rest of my weekend visiting with my mother’s (my) family.

The hardest thing, I think, is that I don’t think they’ll have a computer in the hotel room. They may or may not have a hook up, and I almost went and bought that laptop that was on sale last weekend, but I talked myself out of it (good girl). WTF would I do with another laptop except have it sit in the closet while I use my regular computer.

Three nights and four days with no computer. That is going to be rough. Not only that but no jewellery making supplies either. The two things I spend all my time doing are going to be nowhere in sight. I suppose the good thing will be that maybe I’ll get a whole bunch of pictures.

So, hope that I have a safe trip with no plane crashes. And unless there’s some miracle of a desktop down there, I’ll talk to you in four days.

My snookey and I were going to spend our morning picking up the rest of the supplies (wood) we need to build those jewellery displays. That is until I got the call from my accountant, asking me if I was coming at 9:00. I think the call was around 8:50.

I said, “oh, ya, I forgot, I’ll be there soon”. And I got there around 9:20 since I had to stop at Tim’s to get some sustenance and there was a huge, honking line-up in the drive-thru.

I got there, I yakked a bit and we did my taxes. Very easy to do this year since all I had to do was pass him a T4. We were done before 10:00.

So, being the nice guy that I am, on my way home I stopped at Tim’s again. I bought breakfast sandwiches for me, my daughter and my snookey, and two coffees each for the two of us coffee drinkers.

I got home and only my daughter was there. And she was on her way out to meet up with friends. She ate her sammich and ran. There was no sign of my snookey, he’d gone off to do something else. Kinda pissed me off because I figured we still had a couple of hours to go get the wood, but then I thought maybe he’d gone to get it. Nope. He’s still not home, he’s out with his son. So now I have to do that tomorrow.

Since he was gone the whole day, for dinner I decided to eat his breakfast sandwich. I didn’t figure he’d want it hanging around til tomorrow morning, so I had a BELT from Tim’s. I don’t even like the BELTs, I’m more fond of the sandwich on the biscuit since I don’t like bagels all that much. But I did my duty, I ate it all up.

I didn’t tell you that next week I’ll be flying down to PEI. My mother was born there doncha know. She chose to be interred there.

I don’t know how work is going to feel about me missing yet more time, but I’ll be leaving work at 12:30 Thursday (returning Monday) and flying down to PEI with my daughter – no snookeys allowed. The reason it’s my daughter and me is because my cousin is paying for the flight and the hotel. Since she also offered to pay for my daughter I figured I’d leave well enough alone.

I’ll see family again whom I haven’t seen in 20 years; the last time I flew down east. And before that was about 20 years when I first met all this extended family. It’ll be interesting to see how people have aged, there are a few cousins down there who are my age.

I may take some pictures if the weather holds up. Let’s hope we don’t die in a plane crash or something since my daughter will be on there too.

Oh, and BTW, I deposited the bank draft. Paid off my Visa (again) and may use the rest to sign up for that jewellery course I wanted to take but couldn’t afford. I’m waiting for the next step now where he gets ahold of me again.

I’m sitting here all by myself, listening to music and checking emails, facebook, blogroll. Stuff I never have enough time to catch up on, on a regular basis.

My daughter has gone straight from school over to her friend’s place. I don’t know if she’s planning to stay the night or not, I guess I’ll hear about that later.

My snookey has gone to help his son get home since he’s got to drop off his car for some car work ← [the technical term].

I just finished making another necklace which was something a little different than I normally do, and nothing like the other stuff I’ve spent days at, so it was nice to have a change to something a bit easier.

I worked from home today. Last night, all of a sudden, my nose was stuffy, my head was strange and I thought that a cold had hit me. I figured I wouldn’t go in to work because I remembered that at the hospital they had some warning about there being a flu epidemic on my mother’s floor (of course). So I thought I’d be nice and spare the rest of the office the bug.

It is a pain in the ass working from home, let me tell ya. I have to access everything remotely, even the programs. God forbid I should use my own programs so we’d have a bit of speed. Anyway, I started at 7:30, finished at 4:30 and had no break or lunch hour. Seems to me they’d get more out of their staff if they were working at home all the time.

Now I just want to relax, even though I don’t think I’ve got the cold. I was a little stuffy this morning but then things seemed to normalize *sniff*. Maybe I’m ok after all. It must be the work. Work makes you better.

I’ve applied for another job at work. It’s more money and more like things I’m used to doing rather than my robot job of now. I hope they don’t have somebody lined up for it already, you know, where they have a competition just to make it ‘look fair’. We’ll find out. As you already know, even if it’s not a fix, I suck at interviews.

Time for beer. Holy crap, it’s after 8:00 already! It’s really time for a beer. Friday night, here I come.

I’ll say it now in case I forget later. I’ve been awfully lazy about writing this week but, as usual, I’m really busy doing stuff and, at the same time, I’ve been going to the hospital every day to visit my mother. She actually seems to be with it now, she can sit up in her bed – you know, those moving beds that sit you up, and she can have a conversation. I guess they’ve cut back on the morphine, but she doesn’t look like she’s in any pain when she’s just sitting there.

I took yesterday as a vacation day and I’m taking Monday too so I’ll have a nice week off that’s already half over. Ok, maybe not half over, I’m just a glass half-empty kinda gal.

Yesterday we went to the One of a Kind Craft Show down at Exhibition Place. We have some supplier for different kinds of tickets that give you a discount so I only paid $9.50 per ticket instead of $12 so my snookey and I went trudging off downtown.

It was a huge display of vendors. All the vendors were selling stuff (even lots of jewellery) for very expensive prices. I was amazed to see necklaces for $140. Simple necklaces that I could make for under $50. Of course I didn’t buy any of this really, really expensive jewellery, but it did give me ideas.

What interested me most there was the way people had their things displayed. That gave me a lot of ideas on what to do with our little 10×10 space in June since half these people only had a 5×10 space at the ex. Very creative uses of space.

Anyway, now I’m going to look up some stuff on the net because I have some other ideas for making displays and then I’m off to visit mama at the hospital again. Then I’ve got to rent a movie for tonight (and I’ll need one tomorrow night too). I plan to redo the necklace I made on my course last week. Hopefully I get time for that with my week’s vacation.

I got a phone call from my aunt this morning. She said, “your mother is in the hospital”. I said, “I just saw her yesterday, she was fine”. I was assuming another stroke or something. My aunt said that my mother had fallen, broken her hip and her wrist and was in the hospital.

When I left work, I went over to the hospital. My mother was all morphined out and didn’t know I was there.

I did manage, however, to take a picture of her ‘after the fall’. I’m surprised she’s still alive with the impact whatever it was had on her head. This is spooky stuff.

Anyway, I had to take a vacation day tomorrow because they’re going to do the surgery on her hip, so I’ll just be hanging around a hospital all day with the morphined woman.

Her wrist is in a splint. She’s stuck on a catheter so at those moments when she wakes for a minute, she feels like she’s got to pee.

Since her walking is pretty much some slow shuffling before the accident, I assume now that she’ll always be in a wheelchair. I guess we’ll see about that.

BTW, tomorrow’s the anniversary of Richard Jeni’s suicide. Around mid-March doesn’t seem to be a good time for people.

My daughter was going out this morning. She told me she’d be back around evening – ish. Around 5:00 or 6:00 – ish.

So now we’re getting close to 9:00 – ish. She’s still not home. And she hasn’t taken her cell phone with her because she says she only has about a minute left and doesn’t want to change the rates.

She’s right about that. After I had put a $50 card on her phone to lower the rates to .25¢ a minute, she used it all up with no carry-over to the next month and it was then at $0 so the rates went back up to .50¢ a minute. Stupid ass. Then, Telus, being the giving people that they are, changed her rate to a permanent rate of .40¢ a minute *woohoo*.

I’m not buying another $50 card to put on her phone. Thus, I cannot get ahold of her to find out WrTF she is and why she’s not home already when she said she’d be home in the evening – ish.

She was supposed to clean her room today before she left. What she did with her room was to pick up most of the stuff off the floor and throw it over in a corner where there may or not still be a laundry basket – I don’t know since I can’t see what’s underneath all the clothes in a big pile over there.

I went into her room the other day, just because I do that, and there was this horrible, rancid smell. I thought there must be food rotting in there, or perhaps a dead body in the closet.

I finally found the culprit. It was a glass that formerly held milk (I think). But the glass now seemed to hold cheese… a very pungent, aromatic, dead for 16 years, cheese. We got rid of that hunk of mulk down the toilet and I think her room finally just smells like a room – not someone’s hidden dead uncle.

What she doesn’t know today is that I bought her a new camera. The other one I gave her is broken, and then the other one I gave her and sent for fixing could not be fixed, so I got her yet another one (is this number 6?).

She doesn’t know that I got this for her and when she finally shows up and finds out, she doesn’t know that she’s not getting it til her room is spotless. I’m just sick of the filth. Is this an incentive? I hope so.

And I intend for it to be a disincentive too. I’m gonna take the camera if her room is filthy yet again. I don’t know how many times I have to say don’t even start it, leave it clean. She has such a little hissy fit when it’s time for cleaning, I can’t understand why she doesn’t just leave it clean then.

Ok, that’s enough. I have a movie to watch. I think it’s called 30 Days of Night and I think it’s a stupid vampire movie. There was nothing else, we went late.

In my house, you can always find:

1. An empty milk jug in the fridge
2. A big wet towel on a bedroom floor
3. An empty water jug
4. A bag of chips that has four chips left in it but the bag is folded over with lots of air inside to look like the bag is full
5. Empty yogurt containers hidden behind the wall unit
6. An empty ice cube tray in the freezer
7. A bowl of jello with one teaspoon of jello left in it
8. Crumbs and spills all over the cutting board
9. An empty milk bag that used to have milk bags inside it
10. Spoons underneath someone’s bed
11. A school uniform sitting in a heap, perhaps hidden behind a door
12. A laundry basket with all the laundry sitting on the floor in front of it

Don’t just ‘drop in’. Give us enough time to clean up first.

I didn’t tell you something else you can find in my house on all the computers… the Windows Live Messenger. Ya, ya, you have this too and you say, “so what”. But I also have these little extra scripts in mine.

One of the little scripts I have on it is the /xspeakit script which will give you the voice to use when sending messages. You just type in /xspeakit and whatever you want to say, and it gives you a voice message.

Here for your listening enjoyment is a message from my live messenger.

Download audio file (MSNxspeakit.mp3)

See what fun it is to live at my house?

On Saturday I went to EB Games to buy the Wii but they were sold out. They told me they sell out within about two hours. So much for that.

Instead, my daughter said I should buy this Playstation 2… there was this Dance Dance Revolution game that she just loved and I should get that.

So, what the hell, I bought the Playstation 2; the silver one. And I bought Dance Dance Revolution. And I bought an FPS game, I think it’s called Kill Zone – I figured my snookey and I could play that one. And I bought an extra controller so two people could play.

My daughter was thrilled and, quite frankly, hasn’t really stopped playing the game since she got it. I tried the Kill Zone game for a minute before she got on with hers. That was pretty hard to get used to – all those buttons and joysticks and everything.

I’m used to playing games on the computer – simple stuff, use the arrow keys and the spacebar. This is gonna take some coordination to be able to play this game.

And the controller vibrates! It scared the shit right outta me when I got shot. You get shot, the controller vibrates (and I think it flashes a light). I didn’t know what was going on in my hand but seeing that it was at the same time that I got killed made it spookier. That was highly amusing to some 14-year-old whose name I won’t mention.

So tonight we’re gonna try it. I had to go buy a memory card cuz otherwise you can’t save anything and you have to put in all your information time after time, so I’m all prepared to challenge my honey in a shoot-em-up game.

While I was at EB Games I picked up 3 other games: a driving one, a Tiger Woods one, and some Krank thing that I figured would be good for when my grandson visited only to find out that my daughter loves that game too.

What a busy family we are.

I guess I could honestly say that this year I had the shittiest birthday and Christmas ever. Shitty as in, “couldn’t you at the very least have bought me a card?”.

My kids, whom I’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on for their birthdays and Christmases, couldn’t even buy me a card, let alone a present, for either occasion.

When I asked my daughter about a birthday present, she said she had no money. And it’s true that she lost her allowance that week to help pay off some of the videos on demand that she had ordered without my knowledge, but what about the rest of the year when I give her allowance every week.

I asked her why she didn’t even make me a card and she came up with the excuse that I wouldn’t like it.

My son didn’t even remember to call me until the next day. He apologized and said that he had thought that day was the 19th. There was no card, no gift, no nothing.

And for Christmas, both showed up empty-handed. The gift I did get for my birthday (from my mother and aunt) was money, and I used that money to buy the Christmas dinner. So my one of three gifts turned out to be for someone else. There’s real Christmas spirit for ya.

I understand that my son has not been working a lot lately. But on those days that he did work, could he not have taken $5 of his money because his mother’s birthday was coming up? Perhaps buy a card at least? Even inviting me over for dinner would have been an option for someone with no money.

I feel like I’ve been making excuses for these kids (kids… one is 14 and one is 27) for years now over their thoughtlessness and selfishness. I’m not going to do it any more.

Christ knows, that even when it’s my birthday, I’m hearing from my daughter about what gifts she wants for her birthday – in May.

You know what my kids are getting for their birthdays this year? The same thing that they’re going to get for Christmas, which is double what they gave me. Two times nothing equals nothing. And if they don’t know why, I’ll be happy to let them in on it.

I will wish a happy birthday to each of them, twice, because they did wish me a happy birthday.

I guess I’m mad about this because I’m hurt; hurt that I mean absolutely nothing to these kids. Oh yes, give me everything and anything, mom, I’ll take, take, take. But don’t expect me to spend any thoughts or money for you.

The gifts I did get were from my snookey, he’s always caring and thoughtful and thinking of others. He got me just what I wanted, which was a jewellery course in March. I’m signed up and ready to go to that.

Then he also surprised me later on with this digital gauge. This thing measures bead sizes. I had looked at one myself, but I couldn’t afford to spend that kinda money on myself, just to measure beads.

I was quite surprised and thrilled that he’d gotten this for me, all because he saw me looking at it one day a few months ago. He always amazes me.

And for Christmas he got me the gift of beads online, I told him about some beads I wanted to get, so he’s buying those for me.

There is something nice in my life. There is someone who cares about me. I have to be happy with just that because I’ve given up on everyone else.

Here’s that Christmas picture I always use (and is my favourite). It’s the way Santa feels about me.

I hope you all have a great Christmas. We’ll talk soon. I’m gonna be tied up making dinner. All homemade this year.

Last night I had arranged to give away my old car to my son. Merry Christmas. After all these months with the car sitting there doing nothing (except when I got my car fixed and had to drive that one), of course it wouldn’t start. Not to mention there were acres of snow packed onto it that had to be shovelled off.

My snookey gave the car a boost and it finally started. Seemed to be running well. Then my son drove it over to our garage so he could load in the summer radial tires and didn’t the effing thing conk out.

We couldn’t get it boosted again. We stood there for I don’t know how long, boosting, boosting, boosting. My toes felt like they were gonna fall off and I had winter boots on. My son had to take the bus home all the way out to WvTF that neighbourhood is where he lives – McCowan Road, out in God’s country or something.

So today my snookey took the battery over to Canadian Tire in the hopes of getting it charged. They told him the battery was fried. I was talking to him last night about letting it go if that was the case, but today I only thought of getting the car to my son and how we couldn’t do that without a battery, so I told him to go ahead and buy one. That’s $102 out of my pocket.

Needless to say, my son stopped by for dinner and picked up the car. It started like butter (how does butter start?) and he took off in his new to him wheels.

Now the insurance is only good til 9:00 tonight. And the reason I wanted him to take the car before tomorrow is because I’m not renewing the plates on it, so they expire as of tomorrow. So as soon as he gets his act together, he’ll have to buy some plates, get some insurance, and get the brakes fixed on the car. Since it passed e-testing last year, I’m assuming nothing’s wrong in that area.

Now we’ve got four less tires clogging up the garage. I’m just waiting for my son to get a truck to move out the dining room suite and the washer dryer I’m giving him. That would give us some more room in our home (and then I could set up my jewellery making table in that area of the computer room where we’re storing the new dining room furniture. God, we’ve got too much stuff.

I had to leave work about 1:45 today cuz I was just so fucking done in from being up most of the night.

Last night my daughter ran away from home. It was all because of the “don’t use my good camera”, “clean up this pig sty of a room”, “what are these half nude pictures of yourself” argument.

So she told me I couldn’t speak to her that way (you know… the way of giving her shit for doing something she shouldn’t have been doing) and she left. I told her I’d call the police, and I did.

They finally showed up around 10:30 at night to take the report. At 1:00 a.m. my snookey and I went to bed. At 1:50 the police phoned. And this was some miserable, snotty, snippy, asshole cop who was giving me attitude. I asked why he was calling at 2:00 in the morning and he was giving me attitude. I ended up hanging up on him.

Then we got awakened again when at 2:30 my daughter’s friend called to tell us where she was. At close to 3:00 a.m. my daughter showed up – we heard someone in the hallway.

We got up yet again, phoned the police and they said they’d have to come over to ensure that she was ok, so that was at some point after 3:30. At this time my daughter says that she can live by the rules. That better be the case.

We’ve now started locking our bedroom door. Why I should have to do this in my own home, I don’t know. However, I don’t want any more of my stuff taken. Like she doesn’t have everything already.

After my one or two hours sleep, I was feeling a little done in at work today. I told them I’d have to go home – and I told them why. Little domestic crap like this can cause you to lose a job. All because of fucking teenagers.

I came home. I had a nap for about half an hour to an hour, then my honey woke me up. I was so disoriented, I didn’t realize it was the middle of the afternoon. I could easily have slept all the way through until tomorow, I think.

Then I got up and played some Half Life 2 – Episode Two. I just downloaded that the other day. I had been asking for months at EB Games and they’d kept saying the game was put off. Now it was out and I didn’t know anything about it.

So I’ve been enjoying myself playing a game again, after a long time not playing anything. However, I’m stuck at a broken bridge that I’m supposed to somehow drive across. So I quit playing. It’s almost bed time again anyway.

My daughter wasn’t home from school when I got home. I have no idea where she is, there’s no message and apparently her cell phone is off.

I went into her room, I don’t know why but I had a look and it’s a fucking pig sty again. Apparently every morning she must search through her laundry basket for clothes. I find it a strange place to store your clothes.

As I was in there, what did I see on her computer desk? My camera. Not my old camera which I’ve pretty much given to her to use. Not my cheap camera, the little Kodak that I usually take with me everywhere (just in case).

No, it was my good camera. The Lumix. The one that I will only take out for special occasions, in a padded camera bag. The one that I am very careful with. It was sitting on her desk.

I took my camera. I looked for my lens hood – no sign of it. I looked for my lens cap – no sign of it. That fucking twat took my good camera and now I’m missing things.

I plugged in the camera to see what pictures were on it. Well, there were pictures from her dad’s place – that’s where she went this weekend to spend the night with her friend who’s moving away from Toronto.

Not only that but there were pictures of her here in underwear. Red underwear. A red bra and red crotchless underwear. Guess who owns those? Well, that would be me.

And who are the pictures for? Who is the 14-year-old sending pictures of herself to? Pictures of herself in red, sexy underwear?

And where are my underwear? They’re not in my drawers. They’re not in her drawers.

What else did I find in her room? And keep in mind that this was after I made her clean up her room the other day. I guess I was supposed to inspect every nook and cranny after that, but I was stupid enough not to.

I found a lighter on her dresser. I found some no name cigarettes in her nightstand. What are you going to tell me about that? No name cigarettes are what her father smokes.

Then, after going through her closet and finding bags with rotting food – the lunches my snookey makes for her every day, I looked behind her bed and found a pile of lunches rotting away there. I have no idea what she’s eating for lunch but it’s obviously not the food my honey was nice enough to prepare for her.

I guess that explains where all my stolen money was going.

I can’t handle this. I have no idea WTF is wrong with this girl. I’ve turned her computer access off for the week because she’s grounded from the computer and the phone. Perhaps even the TV, I haven’t decided. Perhaps if she had no access to anything she might actually sit her fucking ass down and do some homework. Nah, I doubt it.

I liked the old days when you could smack your kids silly for doing shit like this and they’d get the idea that they weren’t supposed to do that stuff.

My grandson came over for a visit today. He and my son will be staying overnight (I don’t know where, on the pull-out couch, I guess).

I got a call yesterday from my son’s ex-wife who said that she was coming to Toronto and did I want to babysit so she could go off with her friends see my grandson since it had been a while.

I, of course, said “sure” and we arranged for her to drop him off this morning. My son was coming this evening, just in time for dinner. How convenient.

So my grandson has been playing games on the computer all day. I think that kid is more obsessed with the computer than I am. Or maybe not. It could be a tie. My poor daughter has been stuck without her computer most of the day while he kidnapped it.

It’s good to see him, it must be at least a year since I’ve seen him, but I have to say that I was a bit nervous at the thought of him being here. I’ve forgotten what you’re supposed to do with a 7-year-old, after all my daughter’s 14 now, that’s twice as old. Who remembers that long ago?

In a few minutes I’m closing down computer time and we’re all going to go out and have a family night watching the Transformers. I couldn’t see any other movies there that might be family friendly.

That’s my excitement on a Saturday. The usual only with more people.

The other night we picked up this new decorative piece for our dining room table. The white kinda offsets the other colours in the room, but, unfortunately, it takes up my eating area, so I have to move to another spot to eat.

The good thing about this new decoration is that it does nifty stuff too…. like sew. Nothing better than a multitasking decoration. I think I’ll keep it.

We took over my mother’s sewing machine a few years ago but it had stopped working – thread kept breaking when you tried to use it. And I never knew how to use it. My snookey learned how and had managed to sew a few hems here and there.

Well I had a pair of pants that I wanted to wear but they were so long, and I didn’t have really, really, really, really high heels to be able to wear them without them dragging on the ground, so I asked him to run over to Costco and buy a new sewing machine since we’d seen them there for $100.

When he got to Costco he found that the only sewing machines they had were going for $300. Forget that. So he made the rounds and found a sewing machine that had been on sale but they’d forgotten to take down the sale sign, so he got this one for $100 less than Costco’s price.

After we got this all set up he hemmed my pants for me. But then, I had other pants that were too long too. So last night, as I was trying to learn how to thread a bobbin with a pant-matching colour, I decided to try sewing the hem myself.

You know what? I did it! I hemmed my own pants. And it was easy. There was no puckering, no gathering, and the hem was pretty darned straight if I do say so myself. I was quite proud of myself.

Now I’m looking for more pants to hem. And I have them. As a matter of fact I almost took out another pair tonight, but then as I was deciding what to wear I changed my mind to a different brown pair that need no hemming whatsoever.

As I was sewing, words from my grade 9 home ec class came back to me… words like Presser Foot, stitch length, invisible hemming.

And, you know what? Fuck the dry cleaners where I end up paying $15 every time I take something in to have a hem fixed or taken up. Half the time I buy something on sale and the stupid dry cleaners costs me more than the actual clothes.

Maybe I’ll have yet another hobby. Who knows? Like photography, websites, and jewellery making are not enough. Let’s start making my own clothes! Or perhaps a pillow cover. Maybe I should start with a scarf… something that doesn’t have to be perfect.

Next week the new season of Earl and The Office start *woohoo*. Last night I just watched the finales of both those shows.

Tonight I went to the legal guy and got the paperwork to hand over to the ex insofar as custody goes. I don’t know if he’ll sign the papers or not, after all, there’s a spot in there about child support and I don’t think he’ll be too amenable to that idea, but we’ll find out. If he doesn’t sign he’ll be going to court. I’ll be more than happy to bring up what’s been going on over the years.

Now my daughter’s out with her friend and my honey and I are going to…. you know. Ha, ha. I will, you won’t.

After that I’m gonna veg with copious amounts of ice cold beer and wait for my daughter and her friend to show up (and sleep over).

Sleep ins for everyone!

There we go, boys and girls, my cord finally arrived today and I’m all set up with my dual monitors.

Actually, the cord arrived yesterday, I had a notice from FedEx, they said they’d arrive the next day before 5:00. Well I’m not home before 5:00, I’m at work *duh*. So I signed the little piece of paper to say that they could leave it at my door – and they did.

So I had something to look forward to when I came home.

Meanwhile, at work yesterday something fucked up with my two monitors and I had to unhook one and set up just the other for a while. Then IT came to fix it. Yes, I know, I work in IT, but I’m not the ‘fix your problems’ section of IT.

That guy couldn’t get my monitors working so what he ended up doing was restoring my system to last Friday’s restore point and all of a sudden everything worked fine. Who knows what up with that, but now my two monitors at work and at home are working.

I’m thrilled. Although I do think I’m ready for a reformat very soon, things are slow (like me…. yes, you were thinking it, don’t deny it, I can tell when you’re lying).

Everything’s going well with my daughter, BTW. She’s enjoying her new school (after 3 whole days). She’s got a lot of friends there since she switched schools so often in her young life. So there are kids she knows from every school she attended now at the one high school. I wish I’d had that as a kid. I had no friends *sniff* and still don’t *sob, woe is me*.

I hope things continue to be enjoyable for her. She’s in her room doing her homework right now. I’m very proud of her responsibility level.

Oh, isn’t that a scary thought – “50-YEAR-OLD HAS BABY, READ ALL ABOUT IT HERE”.

No, I have not had a baby – well, yes I did have a baby, 14 years ago and 26 years ago, but the new mother thing is that my daughter has come to live with me again.

I think I mentioned previously that my ex was talking to her about moving out of province and I wasn’t having any of that, so I was looking at ways on how to go to court, vary the custody order, yada yada. I had planned on going tomorrow to see the guy who would start the paperwork for me… get it all legal.

However, today while I was out doing the dishes, after my daughter and ex had dropped by to pick up my daughter’s newly hemmed uniform pants and socks, I got a message from my daughter on my MSN, asking if she had to live there.

Unfortunately, at the time, I was not on my computer, I was in the kitchen doing dishes. At that same time I also got a phone call from my ex, asking me if I would take my daughter, to which I responded, “I will be, and it will be as soon as I get this paperwork done”.

He was all worried about having to pay a lawyer that he can’t afford. I told him no lawyer was needed, he’d just have to show up in court. We had quite the long discussion in which he asked, “when were you going to tell me about this?” and I said, “there’s no telling needed, you’d get the paperwork and go to court”. He also said, “what if I didn’t agree?” and I said, “there’s no agreement needed, you’ve proven what a bad parent you are by being drunk every night, and when you’re not drunk you’re out somewhere, you never have groceries in the house for her to eat, you have all sorts of people living at your house, you’ve been anything but a ‘parent’, too busy being a single guy and thinking of yourself”.

I didn’t quite expect to talk to my daughter a bit later and have the move turn into today with no notice to the ex, but I’m fine with it and so when she got home from her friend’s place, I went over to pick up her uniform for school and a few other things that she still had packed from her vacation to Newfoundland.

When we walked into her house, the couple that my ex has had camping out in the living room for the past week had just finished smoking some dope, the whole living room reeked of it. I said, “it smells like dope in here; you shouldn’t be smoking that in this house with a child living here”. They didn’t say much.

We got her stuff and I asked if they’d be there still when the ex got home and they said yes, so I asked them to pass on the message that my daughter had come with me.

I called the ex later to make sure he knew where she was and he told me he felt “betrayed” and he didn’t “like the way that this went down”. I said, “didn’t you call me a while ago and ask me to take her?” Oh yes, but he didn’t mean that very moment. I told him that she had also called me and asked me to come here so the decision was made. He said, “I thought you were having this paperwork done up” and I said that, yes, I was still going to have that done.

So tomorrow, boys and girls, on my extra vacation day, I will be off to see the guy who will do up the variance in custody order for $100. I did get the papers off the net myself, but they’re stinking government papers so they’re not too clear in what they’re asking for there – I’d better pay someone to do them so they’re done right.

In between doing that I will be driving my daughter to her new high school *woohoo, grade 9!* and picking her up. I was going to have her take the buses she’ll normally have to take just so she’d know the route and the timing, however, being a holiday over here there was absolutely no place to get tickets by the time we thought of it – at 5:00.

So that’s my life today. I’m a new mother again – new as in full-time over every other weekend. My daughter and I get along well (usually) and I think she’s mature enough now to understand that there are household rules and things to be done. Life is not all a bowl of cherries, but we’ll sneak a few in there every now and then, in between the work.

My daughter was supposed to be here this weekend, but instead she’s staying over at her friend’s place – the ex-neighbour who has now moved to Barrie.

I got a call to let me know after she’s already gone.

I find that quite nervy. I think that I should at least be consulted if someone else is going to change my plans. A call beforehand might be good – “is it ok to switch weekends, or can she go off to Walter’s house this weekend instead of coming over?” Usually I’m quite agreeable to whatever someone else wants to do. It just irks me that this is a done deal and I had no say in my own plans getting changed.

What also irks me is that this is my weekend with my daughter – why is she not able to go off and stay with the friend on the weekend that she’s not supposed to be here? The truth is she could have gone next weekend to her friend’s house, it didn’t have to be this weekend.

So I’m just sitting here feeling a little pissed off. I had thought that we’d go see the Simpson’s movie this weekend. I figured my daughter would enjoy it. So much for that idea.

I hate people.

All those times I missed writing and you were saying to yourselves, “WrTF is she, that lazy bugger!”. Yes you were, don’t deny it, I know. Well, I’m just ignoring that. Shown below are some pictures of what I was doing all those times I wasn’t writing. Ok, maybe not all those times, but some of those times.

These are the ones I’ve made since I last showed you ones I’d made. If you’re interested in seeing any of these in better detail, you can check them on my Flickr site here.

As I look at them, I see that I’ve made a lot of ‘blue’ necklaces. That’s funny since I don’t wear a lot of blue. I’m gonna have to get more creative.

And never again will you say, “WrTF is she, that lazy bugger”. You will now say, “oh great, she’s probably off making more lame jewellery to bombard us with”. I’ll ignore that too.

I was sitting here and, for some unknown reason, decided I had to make another necklace. So I did. And then I didn’t really like it, so I took it all apart and tried something else. Now I don’t know if I really like that one either but I’m not finished with it so I’ll take a fresh look at it tomorrow.

Right now I’m just preparing myself to go watch Hell’s Kitchen. At work last week people were talking about TV shows they were watching and I had said that I watched Hell’s Kitchen. Well didn’t they go on and on about how rude the guy is, how they’d never watch that, he’s too rude, yada yada.

These are people who watch drivel that I wouldn’t even stop on while channel surfing. I live for shows like Hell’s Kitchen. I love rude! WrTF else can you see somebody on the job, yelling at someone that she’s a stupid twat? Nowhere, that’s where. I love it. It’s great. For me, anyway.

I’m off to laugh at people getting shit.

On Saturday for some strange reason I got it into my head that my current jewellery board was much too small. I had necklace upon necklace all crowding together, and if I tried to take one down I’d have to take down 4 in order not to have everything drop to the floor.

I decided that I needed a much bigger jewellery board to hold all my necklaces and have room for growth for any of the new necklaces I continue to make.

This is my new jewellery board. I had to change places for it. I had to take pictures off the wall (I always hated those pictures anyway).

I put the pegs up in a way that I can put different lengths of necklaces in different spots. It all works really well and I had room at the sides to put up a couple of single pegs I had for the really, really long necklaces that won’t fit anywhere else.

I’m thrilled with it. Every time I decide what I’m going to wear, I go over there to pick some jewellery and I feel as if I’m in a jewellery store. That’s a great feeling cuz I love going to jewellery stores and looking at everything, deciding what I want to buy.

So that’s my big excitement for this weekend. Oh and my mother ended up in the hospital with congenital heart failure and a kidney infection. We went to visit her yesterday but she didnt’ even know she was in a hospital. She kept talking about leaving cuz this ‘place where she was’ was a mess. Today she was supposed to have gotten a room but I didn’t go visit. Perhaps I’ll go tomorrow night when my snookey is home.

I used to have a waterbed, years ago, husbands ago. I enjoyed the sleep (not the sex, it took quite the contortionistic flare to have good sex on a bed that’s rolling around underneath). The only reason I finally got rid of the waterbed was because it was a pain in the ass whenever we’d move, filling up the mattress, draining the mattress. And there’s no way in hell you can ever move a waterbed over if you decide you want your room rearranged.

So we have a waterbed frame still and a queen-sized regular mattress inside (I need a new one). The waterbed frame is really great for support and that’s why I won’t buy a new bedroom set… because the furniture I have seems to match the waterbed frame.

Anyway, after so many years of my honey sitting around the edges of that bed frame, he cracked all the (vinyl) caps. You need those caps to prevent you from knocking your shin into a piece of wood every time you hop into bed. You can imagine the moods you’ll get ‘out of’ once you whack your shin into a bed frame.

So we had to pick up the new caps at the warehouse just to save us a trip back out to Mississauga where we ordered them. We were expecting a call on Friday. It didn’t come. So I finally got a hold of someone today who contacted the warehouse who said they were ready and waiting. We had until 6:30 when they closed so we had to motor right away.

I took the highway in rush hour. Do you know what a stupid idea that was? That was a very stupid idea. Oh, you do know. We just made it in time. At least we made it. I would have been pissed if we’d driven all the way out to Scarberia for nothing.

We haven’t put them on yet. That won’t be happening tonight since we had to come home and watch American Idol – I think most of them sounded pathetic tonight. Now we’re just waiting for Denny Crane to come on.

In the meantime, Primus has fucked up our phone lines and we only have one line that will ring. They were going to put in a ticket when I talked to them today. Already I’ve got a freaking support ticket. I said to the guy, “maybe I’ve made a mistake by switching to Primus if we’ve got trouble already and I haven’t even used the service yet”. Oh no, it’s going to be fixed soon, it would be worked on within 24 hours. La de fucking da, why wasn’t it all working when it was supposed to be working? Support ticket. Pfffft. Oh and my high speed DSL also arrived today. Haven’t even looked at it yet. There’s bound to be another problem just waiting to happen.

Ope, time for Denny.

I have a sleep-over tonight. My daughter’s here and her friend is here, so we’ve just got one big pajama party – without pajamas. No we’re not naked, we’ve got the nightgowns on, oh what a sexy bunch, well, except for me.

Ta ta, I must go and hit some kids with pillows now.

I really have no time tonight. I had to go pick up more groceries (picked up groceries last night but we forgot stuff) and mainly I had to stop for gas. My tank was on empty as I pulled into my driveway with that little gas pump icon on my dash. I knew I had to do it tonight cuz it might be cheaper than in the morning but the stinking gas was still 91.5. I got $35 worth because I didn’t want to fill it up in case gas prices went down later this week, but I didn’t want to put just $10 in case gas prices went up later this week. What a quandary.

American Idol is on in 3 minutes and then Denny Crane at 10:00 so I guess I’m gone for the evening without doing a damn thing.

I bought my honey that Skin Zinc stuff for his birthday, it arrived yesterday. Of all things it had to have a big fucking logo on the outside of the box. Thanks for that, how am I supposed to surprise someone or hide it away as a gift when it says right on the box what it is.

Since he had seen what it was, I gave him his birthday present yesterday. He’s supposed to start using it today (for those who don’t know, it’s to alleviate psoriasis). We’ll see if it’s any good, cuz if it’s not we’ll be sending that stuff back at over $100 a pop.

Gone to watch TV now (and get a beer before it starts).

There were these marks on the ceiling. “What are those marks on the ceiling, anyway?” I wondered to myself. Not only to myself, I actually asked my honey, “what are those marks on the ceiling, anyway?”

We both came to the conclusion that they were probably some kind of marks from smoking – you know, like tar and nicotine floating up there above where we always sat and smoked. We were wrong.

I took our swiffer thingie (it’s not a Swiffer, it’s a Mr. Clean Magic-Klean or something like that, but it’s like a swiffer kinda, so you get the picture). I put on one of those cloths that you buy for it, already moistened with some kind of cleaning soap within it, and I started to clean that area on the ceiling where the marks were.

Well, guess what? Those marks did not come off. You know what did come off? A great big patch of yellowy, nicotine-stained, ooky gunge. Underneath? White paint.

So I now have a 4×4 foot area of my ceiling that is white… the rest yellow. Wasn’t that a fanfuckingtastic idea. I had to buy 24 more of those cloths that fit on the Mr. Clean thing because there’s nothing else you can use that will stay on it – I tried a cloth, it just falls right off.

I wasn’t feeling energetic enough to do the whole damned ceiling in living and dining room yesterday, that’s for sure. So what I did instead was to wash the walls over in the front hallway. I see the colour we originally painted it now. Doesn’t look too bad.

I figure that every other day or thereabouts, I’ll get out the cleaning materials and wash one wall (and perhaps part of the ceiling). That way I won’t get all tuckered out like it’s a huge job (and it is, that stinking ceiling’s gotta be about 50 square feet), I’ll just do a little at a time – for a year or 10.

I also got my computer back. So far so good, although all I’ve put on here is my Avant browser, the Microsoft Office Suite, PSP 9 (not 10 and 11 yet) and my picture printing program for the new printer. No problems so far.

If only I didn’t need to put on all those other ‘must-have’ programs. You should see how quickly my computer runs when there’s hardly anything on it.

My honey and I don’t disagree on too much; we’re very like-minded. And you know that we hardly ever argue – I think we may have had two arguments total in the over 10 years that we’ve been together.

However, with that said, there is one thing that we don’t seem to see eye-to-eye on. What is this burning issue, you ask?

Salad. We can’t seem to agree on what “bite-sized” pieces are. Since he almost always makes the salad that we almost always have in the fridge, I am subject to his version of bite-sized pieces of lettuce.

To me, bite-sized pieces mean that you can fit the lettuce comfortably into your mouth. You don’t have to try folding it over 3 times, you don’t have to rip your lettuce hunks up from your salad bowl, or get a knife to cut up your salad, you just stab it with your fork and you can fit it in your mouth.

To my honey, bite-sized pieces mean that the lettuce is not one big head. There are perhaps three or four pieces of lettuce in your bowl – let’s quarter that lettuce and call it salad.

Aside from this little disagreement in thought, yesterday, as I was eating my salad, not only did I have to rip up some of the pieces, but as I was ripping, I had to take an elastic band out of my salad. As much as we all know that elastic bands have lots of protein, they are not one of my favourite foods.

Perhaps if I go on the South Beach Diet again, I’ll try to suck back some of those elastics. Until then, I’ll just keep hacking away at my salad. I know, I know, you’re saying, “well then, why don’t you make the salad?” The answer to that is that I’m too lazy. I only make it when I have to cuz I hate chopping up all the stuff. So I’m happier to sit and whine about the pieces being too big.

Always one to try to keep in shape (you know, the pear shape) I just thought I’d share with you that I can’t post right now because I’m busy getting Christmas dinner ready while at the same time doing Kegel exercises.

Kegel exercises were originally developed as a method of controlling incontinence in women following childbirth. These Kegel exercises are now recommended for women with urinary stress incontinence.

The success of Kegel exercises depends on proper technique and adherence to a regular resistance Kegel exercises program. Some people have difficulty identifying and isolating the muscles of the pelvic floor.

The principle behind Kegel exercises is to strengthen the muscles of the pelvic floor, (PC Muscle) thereby improving the urethra and/or rectal sphincter function.

Care must be taken to learn to contract the correct muscles. Typically, most people contract the abdominal or thigh muscles, while not even working the pelvic floor muscles.

Several techniques exist to help the incontinent person identify the correct muscles. One approach is to sit on the toilet and start to urinate. Try to stop the flow of urine midstream by contracting your pelvic floor muscles. Repeat this action several times until you become familiar with the feel of contracting the correct group of muscles. Do not contract your abdominal, thigh, or buttox muscles while performing the exercise.

I found that at http://www.kegel-exercises.com/ and had to share, after all Christmas is a time for giving.

Kegel exercises are not just good to delay incontinence, doncha know. I believe in having strong muscles. Hope you’re having a great Christmas.

I forgot that I got back a school pic the other day. This is it.

The only funny thing though, is that she now has her hair cut short (like in the little pic on the bottom), so it doesn’t really look like her any more. Ok, well, I guess the face still does, but the hair doesn’t.

See, she’s starting to grow up. My little girl is almost my size now (in height and in shoe size). It’ll probably take her a couple of years to get up the two dress-sizes bigger that I am.

I was just sharing. See how famous she is… plastered all over the internet. There’d better not be anything nuder ever to be found.

Lots of times I’ll just have salad for dinner (mostly because I’m too lazy to cook up something). I just wondered if you’d ever had salad with sprinkly cheese. That’s the way I’ll have it – and not only does it add great flavour to the salad, but it also adds protein.

The sprinkly cheese we buy is 4-Cheese Italiano by Kraft, which consists of Provolone, Mozzarella, Parmesan and Emmental. It’s great. It’s probably not the salad I like at all, I just want to get at the cheese. Top it off with some Creamy Poppy Seed dressing and you’re laughing. It’s fabulous, dahlings, simply fabulous.

I told you I had that job interview on Friday. What I didn’t mention was the fact that Fridays there are “casual” Fridays, and so I was dressed up like Mr. Rogers in my corduroy pants and t-shirt and cardigan.

I got into work around 8:00 and there was a voicemail from the HR person at 8:00 the night before telling me that my interview was at 2:00. How’s that for a nice surprise when you’re all dressed casual and yet I already had an outfit picked out for the day of the interview.

I think she did it on purpose. WyTF would the interview have had to have been that day? And with no notice? Bitch.

Today we went to visit my mother at the home. She asked who I was and I told her she had to guess. She said she didn’t really know me so how could she guess my name. I told her she’d known me for 50 years so she thought that she, herself, was 50.

Later on she was telling me that she had no children. That her mother made her give up the baby because she didn’t think that she’d be a suitable mother. Hmmm. That makes me wonder about what’s going on in her head. Was there some other baby that she had to give up? Was she having babies before she was married? As far as I know, I’m the only child.

Anyway, we’ll never know the truth of anything because she doesn’t know the truth of anything. We left at lunch time after we’d taken her into the dining room. She had finally come up with my name so something clicks in sometimes.

Then we came home and cooked our own lunch of chicken bacon, eggs and biscuits. We tried those new Pillsbury biscuits and they do taste something like Tim’s biscuits, which means that they were good. All those years of hating biscuits and not knowing that biscuits are actually good tasting little things if they’re cooked properly (and not like little hockey pucks).

We bought new LED Christmas lights yesterday (for the cost saving) and we’re going to put them up. These ones are little blue things, unlike our old ones which are those strings of lights hanging down that are supposed to look like icicles (I think). We put up our big blow-up snowman on the balcony and we’re going to have to put these blue lights around the window because the fit is quite different and they’re too long to string across the balcony (Costco, 3 boxes of them for $15).

So far we’ve found the mini Christmas tree which is all I’m using again this year since I’ve already given everyone their presents, so there are none to put under a tree. Apparently my ex bought a new big tree and he just called me to ask if I had any “spare” decorations for the tree. Ya, spare. I keep another set of Christmas tree decorations around my house, just in case.

So I’ve gotta go get some work done. Half the work will be finding everything in the garage.

Wow, can’t believe it’s been two days since I last wrote. See what happens when you’ve got a 13-year-old staying with you? The time just whizzes right by and you don’t even get a chance to blog. How do all those mothers do it? Show offs.

Last night I had a parent-teacher interview. We made it exactly on time since I waited for my honey to get home first with the Tim’s. The interview was at 5:40 and we were the ‘parents who make everybody else’s interview late’. We kept listening and the time just zipped by.

I have to say that her teacher seemed like a hostile sort. I was feeling a bit hostile towards her myself at first. Then I decided to give her a break and stop just staring at her while she talked and interact a bit. The ex was there trying to assert his ‘guardianship’, ‘parental control’, and quite frankly I didn’t give a shit about whether or not he had “discussed these issues many times” with the teacher. As far as I’m concerned, I should be aware of these issues as the other parent, so they could all just wait til I was brought up to speed.

Bottom line is that she thinks my daughter is intelligent (and she is, how could she not be when she’s a child of mine?) but she doesn’t put any effort into her work. This is true, although she may be becoming more mature and responsible. I watched her working on a couple of projects at my house and was proud of her focus, maybe it could happen more often and done with better time management (rather than the day before the project’s due).

Right now I’m waiting for my snookey wookey to get home with some chicken wings (I’ve been pretty good all week) and some Tim’s. Tonight I guess the whole damned family will sit around watching Trading Spouses – WTF, it’s not like there’s anything else on.

Tomorrow morning I’ll be up early for piano lessons but, with no money here, I don’t plan to be doing any shopping while I stroll around the mall for that hour.

Today I had the job interview with the other department where I’m working. I have no idea how that went, whether it was good or bad. I hope it was good cuz there’d be 9 months more work. Resume don’t fail me now. I won’t hear about it til at the earliest next week. Wish me luck. Pray for me, Argentina (and any of the other praying countries).

My stomach’s all growly. C’mon my snookey. My little sugar lips.

I can’t remember the last time we did laundry. We should do it more often. We left here around 10:30 in the morning and got home just before 2:00. It cost $25 for today’s loads.

I tried something different today. I tried fabric softener. Normally I just use the dryer sheets, but sometimes lately the clothes have been fairly wrinkly and so I got the bright idea to try fabric softener. It’s fairly easy at the laundromat because you put all your liquids in at the same time.

Let me tell ya, it didn’t make one whit’s difference. Some of the clothes were still wrinkly and that was after using fabric softener AND dryer sheets. They just had this nice smell about them. I guess I’ll see how long that nice smell lasts once I get around to wearing those clean clothes.

And since I bought more new underwear yesterday, I finally decided that I was going to throw out all those white underwear. Yes, boys and girls, you will not find me wearing white anymore. That brings the underwear count down to 53. And I’m thinking that one of these days I’m actually going to throw out other underwear that I don’t like – mostly that I don’t like the fit of (but I have to try them on to know which ones those are – I don’t remember by site).

After laundry I jumped into the shower and got ready for the piano concert my daughter was having at the new high school she’ll be going to next year (which happens to be a high school that I went to for grade 9). I shudder to think what it’s going to cost now for the uniforms.

The recital was boring as dirt. My daughter played one song in a group. Well, no, it was supposed to be in a group… only one of the other kids showed up. Then there was that customary mistake during the song – the mistake where all of a sudden the kids decided that they’re supposed to stop right in the middle of playing, pause, regroup, and then go on with the song. That was my daughter. The other kid didn’t seem to need the regrouping.

After that we headed off to Burger King (which I can’t stand and haven’t eaten at in probably 10 or 15 years) but it was across the street from the concert which was right up the street from her dad’s place. Her dad couldn’t make it to the concert today. Apparently ever since last night he’d had a really bad stomach ache and thought he had appendicitis (fucking hypochondriac).

He called me cuz, ‘didn’t I have some medical book?’. I told him I’d look up the appendicitis symptoms on the net. It didn’t sound like the same symptoms but who knows. The next we heard from him was after the concert, after we’d dropped off my daughter, when he was calling to let us know that he was now heading over to a different hospital to have tests and a CAT scan. Funny, I thought CAT scans were on the head. I didn’t know they used them to test for appendicitis (fucking hypochondriac).

So my daughter’s at home by herself. A little worrying cuz you never know how long it will take at a hospital. Let’s hope she’s not there all by herself all night. Ok, that just made me feel weird, a 13-year-old girl in her house all alone. I just called her and she’s feeling weird so my honey’s going to go over and pick her up and bring her here. Uh oh, that means she’ll actually have to finish her project *mwahahaha* I’m so evil.

Ok, I better go. Perhaps that movie is starting. Stinking Burger King. My stomach feels like crap. Oh, perhaps I have appendicitis.

I had a pretty good day today, off at the one-monther ← (isn’t that a catchy little term, one-monther?)

I got some ‘perhaps’ good news. The woman I’m working with told me that she will be off work for a month in January (surgical stuff) and that she has put forward the thought of having me look after things for her. She’s even gone so far as to suggest that they keep me for the month in between cuz why the hell not?

So who knows where that will go, if anywhere, but it’s nice to see that they’re trying.

I’m thinking that I should exercise. Maybe go put on my exercise DVD and get off my fat ass. I know I’ve gained some weight in the time I’ve been working at the one-monther ← (there’s that catchy phrase again). I know I’ve gained weight because my clothes are tight. I’m scared to get on the scale and confirm it.

It could have something to do with eating my breakfast, and then when everyone in the building goes down for a coffee around 9:30, having another breakfast because everyone around me is eating and making me hungry. I suppose it could have something to do with the copious amounts of beer that I drink, but I’ve been doing that for years (and years) so why should it catch up with me now. Perhaps because I’m sitting on my lazy ass all day and night and not getting any exercise at all (occasional sex doesn’t count for much calorie burning). Hey! I could do that now! That would be more fun than the exercise DVD. Unfortunately, the actual exercise part of that does not last as long as the DVD, so that may not be the answer.

Ok, I’m gonna go put on the exercise DVD. I’m committed (or should be).

I got a new plant today. I had bought this little planter at a good deal, so I had to buy something to put into it. And it seems that this type of plant can live in my household… we’ve got another one and it hasn’t died, so this is the type of plant for us.

Today we just cleaned up a bit, people are coming for my son’s birthday dinner. My aunt was supposed to come since her whole family is out of town, but she showed up earlier (just as we were out shopping for a plant) and said she couldn’t make it. Apparently she’s got to do some running around for her daughter (who, as I said, is out of town) and just can’t make dinner. That’s a damned shame. I was looking forward to a new face around the dinner table.

So it’ll be me, my honey, my daughter, my son, and my ex. I’m not even starting the food til my son gets here since he’s coming back from visiting his son in London, so I don’t know how long that will take (it’s at least a two-hour trip).

I’m making that great chicken and rice that my honey and I had the other night. Chicken with Rosemary and Thai sauce (barbecue sauce for those who don’t like hot food), parmesan rice, pumpkin soup, broccoli, salad and cinnamon/caramel coffee cake. We won’t need to eat for a week. Maybe I’ll skip the broccoli… we’ve got salad – that’s vegetables.

Last night we watched Click. We didn’t rent it, it was one of the selections that came from Columbia House so I decided to keep it. It was cute in a way and, of course, meaningful in that ‘don’t waste your life away, forgetting about what’s really important’ kinda way. I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again, but WTF, I own it now.

After dinner I’ll get my clothes ready for work and relax. I guess I’ll go through the Saturday Star (the one with all the jobs) and see if I find anything for myself. So far I haven’t heard back from the old job – remember they wanted to have me work on some stuff that they got funding for? I was coughing up two weeks of free work (as my notice period) but one week has already gone by. If they don’t contact me to do things next week, anything after that they’ll have to pay for. I’m hoping I don’t hear from them.

So I’m off now – the ex is supposed to arrive around 4:30 – and it’s 4:30. We’ll talk later.

Why, it’s me… it really is! I have some time to myself.

Last night I finished my friend’s website (I think, I haven’t checked my email yet). The reason I had some time to work on it was because we didn’t end up going down to pick up my old car at the impound.

The reason we didn’t pick it up was because we remembered, as we were just about to head downtown, that we didn’t have the car keys – my son had them.

I tell ya, it is fucking lucky I realized that before I went dragging way down to Eastern and Pape Avenues, because I might have become so enraged that my head would explode. Yes, my son, why don’t you cost me $450 to pick up my own car and then a tank of gas on top of that.

Needless to say, I contacted my son and he was supposed to meet up with me today to drop off the keys. Has that happened? Oh no, why should that happen today? It only costs $32 per day to have the car in impound, go ahead and cost me more money daily… money I should not have to cough up and supposedly get back from you one of these decades.

I don’t know WyTF I haven’t heard from him. Perhaps because it’s inconvenient to get the keys to me now that he doesn’t have my car to drive.

So whenever I happen to get some keys, I’ll be going to pick up that car.

I scored today at work in our virtual auction. Each year they have an auction during their United Way campaign, and I got a new digital camera for my daughter’s Christmas present. I gave it to her now so she can use it, but I’ll tell you, she better not be letting her “friend” borrow this one like the last one I gave her and she never got back. I’m getting pretty fucking sick of doing or giving things to my kids, only to be kicked in the teeth.

Oh, late breaking news, my son just called. He said, “I’m at Steeles and Kennedy, do you want to meet me somewhere?”, to which I said, “no”. WTF should I have to meet him anywhere, WTF am I supposed to go out of my way, even more gas money on my part. He said, “well, I don’t have time to take the TTC all the way over to your place”. Hmmm, this guy has cost me two weeks’ of pay bailing him out on the cell phone and with this impound thing and I’m supposed to accommodate his schedule.

Enough for now, our pizza is ready. I gotta go.

I read the instructions, I took part E when I was supposed to take part E and part B when I was supposed to take part B.

When I had the thing all assembled it turned out to be about 2 inches too short. Well, there was an extra piece there but I thought it would make it too long. So I added the extra piece and then it was about 6 inches too long.

So I switched one of the pieces with a shorter one and, voila, it was the right size for my shower. Too bad I can’t do anything about the hideous pink tiles and tub.

Turns out the shelves are even bigger than my old one (they looked smaller to me on the box). The only bad thing is that there are no solid bottoms so you have to be careful how you place things. But that’s also a good thing because that means that water will drip right through it, so no dirt will build up in it (I hope).

For some reason, the makers of this product think that where you’re supposed to put a cap on the end, they should leave the end really sharp and make it so that the cap doesn’t easily slip on; that way, when you’re trying to get the cap onto the end, you’ll have to try and manoeuvre and shove and cajole the stupid thing so much that your fingers go grating across that sharp edge. You know that nobody really appreciates the effort of putting something together unless they get hurt.

Quite frankly, I didn’t even notice that I’d cut myself til I kept seeing blood spots all over everything and then I had to search out the cut. A cut does not hurt until your coffee drips onto it, then it yells out, ‘hey stupid, coffee doesn’t go there’.

So I didn’t get the new showerhead put on yet to try. I only assemble the things that don’t need many tools. My honey is the tool guy to do the other jobs. Let’s see if he can get a matching cut so that he feels the effort was worth it.

Bought these today. I know, they’re not crotchless, but sometimes you just need some underwear avec crotch. They’re microfiber and they’re like half boxer-half regular and I don’t know WTF is wrong with me that I’m always buying new underwear when I can hardly fit what I’ve got in my drawer already.

I’ll have to throw some out. I’ll have to throw out some of those white underwear that always come with 3-packs. I hate white underwear, they’re so… white. Who wears white underwear anyway? And why? Why would you wear white underwear? I don’t understand why there’s such an abundance of white underwear.

Now, I’m not overly fond of the pink underwear either, even though I just bought a 3-pack of pink underwear, but I liked the style of them and I liked the soft microfiberiness of them, so….

I guess I can’t really afford to be taking my daughter to piano lessons. Every time I drop her off I go and shop for an hour. Today I spent about $200 of money I don’t have on not only underwear but a new shower caddy.

Today, when I jumped out of the shower, all of a sudden I heard a big crash behind me. It was the shower caddy that holds all the shampoo, and razors, and soap, and etc. My daughter came rushing into the bathroom cuz she thought that maybe I’d fallen (and I can’t get up). Instead it was this stupid thing falling. Seems like it’s rusted at the bottom, I guess from all the water in the shower hitting it.

So I had to go buy a new one. This will be the third I’ve had to buy – I’m hoping this one will not rust out, but who am I kidding? Of course it will. Why make products that will last… you don’t make any money that way.

So this one is metal (ooooh) and the shelves are smaller than on the other one, since the other ones were square, but there’re four shelves instead of 3, so maybe it’ll work out ok.

While I was there, I also picked up a new Waterpic shower head since we can’t get a decent shower in our place ever since we bought the last new shower head. That stupid thing was $40. But this time, if it’s not a good spray, I’m taking the stupid thing back. Unfortunately last time we lost the receipt so we could’t take the shitty one back.

See? You wonder how I go through so much money? It’s easy. You just need to pick up a few things – it’s not like they’re luxury items or something.

So after lunch my daughter has a birthday party to go to. At first she said it was a sleepover and I was thinking that I’d scored a free night for (you know) my honey. But now it’s not a sleepover, so I’ll have to go get her after they party and go see The Grudge 3 – how Halloween-y.

I’ll probably rent that Clickr movie tonight if they’re not all out of copies again. Too bad MI3 doesn’t come out til Monday.

And that’s my day boys and girls. Boring but true. If anything interesting arises, I’ll be sure to keep you informed.

I gotta say that the one-month job is boring me to tears. I liked it a lot more last year when I was out of work and then took the job for a month than this year just going there on vacation.

Everything I’m working on is so time consuming I feel as if I’ve accomplished nothing.

And I got an email last night from my real boss saying that she wanted to talk either after 11:00 or this morning around 9:15 or between 10 and 11:00.

I told her I’d be in bed at 11:00 so she could try me this morning but of course we never connected – which is a good thing, I don’t quite feel right working on one job and using up the time to talk to someone about the other job.

I have no idea what she wanted but she called for a minute to say she was on her way out of town and that she’d email me instead since she was in a cab, headed for the airport.

So I have to figure out some way to amuse myself tonight. My honey is going off with his son to look at new (to him) cars since the head gasket is blown on his car.

I told him he could take my Lumina which I’m taking back from my son at the end of the month but he didn’t want it.

I ended up getting a ticket in the mail the other day which was the final straw with my son owing me money upon money and never paying it off, just adding onto it. Then he told me he’d have to get my car out of impound – he guessed he’d parked somewhere he wasn’t supposed to and now my car had been impounded. Well, guess who’ll be seeing yet another ticket? Fucking asshole.

I’m a little sick of it all at the moment, even Painkiller Gold, every stinking thing is boring me or pissing me off. Thank God I’m working this vacation – even with that I don’t know if I can afford to pay off my son’s bills. Fuck. I’d better stop talking about it, it’s only pissing me off more.

Yes, boys and girls, it’s my daughter and it looks like she’s found her calling… she almost looks angelic. Yes, almost.

Ok, so today we went out looking for Hallowe’en costumes. This is the one she got. She’s lucky she got any. Every year I say to her, “you can wear last year’s costume – you don’t have to have a new costume every year”, and every year she says, “n-hnn-ooo-oooo-ooo, I wore that last y-heee-rrrr”. At least this year she had a better excuse than just whining, it was that they didn’t have any of the Hallowe’en stuff now that they’d moved to the new place, so I broke down and bought her another costume.

If only our office Hallowe’en event was on a different day than Hallowe’en – I’d borrow the costume myself – I am pretty nun-like as you all know.

So other than piano and shopping, I’ve got nothing else planned for tonight except to figure out what to have for dinner (I’m starving, I had some soup today and that was it) and watch that movie with Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston (sp?), whatever it’s called – I can’t remember.

I wouldn’t mind ordering a pizza but I know that that’s pretty much a staple for my daughter over at her dad’s place, so it probably won’t be that. I really am starving – so much so that maybe I’ll go look for a cookie to hold me over til we can decide on some food. Ok, ok, I suppose some salad could hold me over *pffft*.

That’s it – gotta go rummage cupboards.

We lost the consolation round yesterday. The good thing about that is that we only had to play one game instead of three. The bad thing was that we played just as pathetically as we did on Thursday night.

Ehh, I’ll go to the baseball party anyway and watch everybody else get a trophy. So what. Once again I don’t know whether I’ll play again next year, but let’s at least hope that we or they get it together enough by then.

Everybody seemed to like the cinnamon crumb cake that I made and so I brought home an empty cake dish from the game.

While we were down there, we also went looking around at the Queen West Art Crawl. WTF not… we were there.

There were some interesting pieces of “art” – it wasn’t all just paintings and photography, there were also crafts and books. We just walked around looking at everything since, you know damned well, we had no money to buy.

There was one spot that had buttons (and more) but my daughter of course had to get a button. She’d earned $10 from the game by watching one couple’s daughter, so she bought a button. She’s the only one who bought anything at the crawl.

I’m just thrilled she didn’t want to buy the button that said “fuck you”. I don’t know how much I’d like to have a 13-year-old running around with a fuck you button – she got something fairly innocuous (I don’t even know what it’s supposed to be on the button).

After all that we went home. Well, up to Canadian Tire to pick up my old car which is now (almost) my son’s car as soon as he gives me $200 for it and changes the insurance and ownership on it.

On Friday night my son was coming to dinner and we got a call saying that the car had stopped in the middle of the intersection at Leslie and Finch. He, of course, had no car-fix things left on the plan he has with his cellular, and I called CAA to get help on my membership only to find out it had expired.

My honey had to renew our membership, and he and my ex (who also stayed for dinner) went off to pick up my son while they towed my old car to Canadian Tire.

Apparently there was a fuse blown in the old car and so that was only about $10 (out of my son’s pocket). It also cost $60 to do the check up on it but my ex paid for that for my son, which was mighty white of him, especially considering that I didn’t have the money to help him out.

So it was an interesting and busy couple of days. My daughter has a birthday party to go to at 3:00 today so I’ll be dropping her off early and then the rest of the evening is to myself.

I guess I’ll do some ironing – I’ve got lots of fall clothes to get ready to wear, although today is almost summery again.

Last night was our last game of the season. If we had won, on Saturday we’d be playing in the play-offs at noon. However, we lost, so we play the consolation round on Saturday morning at 10:30. And apparently there’s some event going on at the same time as our game, so there’ll be absolutely no parking around on Saturday at Trinity-Bellwoods park so we’ll have to TTC it *fuck*.

If you want to come and cheer us on, and you live in Toronto, show up at Trinity Bellwoods Park at 10:30 (yes, I just said that above). Bellwoods Street runs off Dundas and Queen a couple of blocks up from Bathurst but before Dufferin. We’ll be the team with the red shirts and black pants, or red and white and black shirts for those with the uniform that says “Mayhem”. I lent my uniform to a girl last year since I wasn’t playing but I never got it back so I just wear a red shirt.

Last night’s game was probably the most pathetic we’ve ever played. Our third-base man left within half an hour for a doctor’s appointment, and he’s one of our best players. My son couldn’t play cuz he couldn’t get off work at his new job, although today he’s got the day off.

Even the best players we had left kept making stupid mistakes like not catching the ball, or dropping it and then circling around to find it and then being too slow to throw it anywhere, or else throwing the ball and throwing it 6 feet above somebody’s head.

The pathetic people were at their most pathetic and the good people were also pathetic for some reason. So let’s hope we can rally on our Saturday play-off – we’ll still get a trophy if we win the consolation.

Right now I just finished doing it finally. Yes, you know what. Finally. Yes, it was days ago I talked about it but we’ve been busy.

Tonight my daughter will be coming for the weekend (and coming to the play-offs) and my son is coming for dinner. We’ve put a bunch of stewing beef (made some sauce) into the slow cooker and we’ll cook up some noodles and have a nice stroganoff for dinner. That’ll stick to the ribs. I’m going to go out and make a cinnamon crumble cake for dessert. It’s packaged, just add water and egg, but I had a sample of it at Costco (hence the reason I bought it) and it was delicious.

Oh the family dinner. How nice. We don’t do stuff like this often.

So I better get going and make that cake, I have no idea how long it takes to cook. And if I don’t do it now, I’ll probably forget to do it. Ta ta, dahlings.

Yes, there’s something about Sundays that makes me want to jump out of bed at 6:45. I don’t want to miss a moment of that special day. Actually, the only reason I get up early on a Sunday is because I know I’ll have trouble falling asleep at night to get ready for work. So if I woke up at 4:00, I’d be staying up.

My honey just woke up too – early for him, he tries to sleep til noon on a Sunday and I usually let him. I figure it’s good for him to catch up on sleep since he seems so tired during the week. He has plans to work on his car today, I’m wondering if I should do laundry; it’s pretty full.

I’m also thinking that maybe I should clean house. This place is a mess and I really can’t remember the last time we vacuumed or dusted. I have cleaned the bathroom within the month but it’s due again for cleaning. Yes, I’m not the big cleaning type. The place doesn’t usually look like a pigsty or anything, but it’s not one of those ‘eat off the floor’ places. Oh yes, I did wash the kitchen floor a week or two ago. See? I’m pretty clean.

Yes, I will do laundry. Time to put away all the summer stuff and get ready for the fall. Which reminds me, I picked up a jacket I’d taken to the dry cleaners to have the sleeves shortened, and when I got it back, they’d sewn one of the sleeves together. How’s that for professionalism. Too bad I didn’t try it on there like I had planned to do, cuz then I had to trek back and say – is this usual? Then he told me he’d fix it ‘no charge’. Wasn’t that nice of him? No charge. Well, you’re fucking right you’ll fix it no charge. I think when I brought the jacket in, I was able to put my arms into two sleeves. Idiot.

I’m gonna go finish my tea now, sort the laundry and prepare to do this work alone. That’s a good thing, though, cuz maybe I’ll get through some more of the book that has taken me 2 months to read.

I want this. It’s under $200 (which probably means that the quality is really shitty) but I want to own it and see for myself.

It’s so tiny and cute that I’ve had to prevent myself from buying it – well, prevent as in my credit cards are maxed, but still, I’ve got the page open all the time in my browser tabs.

I want so much stuff and I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m a kid or something. Perhaps it’s to do with my lack of funds making me want things more. Nah, that’s not it. If I had the funds I’d just go buy it.

There’s something seriously wrong with me, isn’t there? You don’t have to be polite, I can see it in your eyes.

But I did just shave my legs, so that part of me is ok. And now I’m going to go iron some of the shitload of laundry we did yesterday. Yes, some of it. I couldn’t possibly iron everything there that needs ironing; plus I’m just not in the mood for it. Ok, well I’ll at least iron one thing – I’ve already plugged in the iron and it’s just waiting for me.

This is a very long post, so don’t even start reading unless you have a couple of months’ worth of time.

I’ve talked about deceit and theft before, especially when it pertained to my own kids. Well, yesterday took the cake.

My aunt was taking my daughter out shopping for her belated birthday present. When she came back with a pile of new clothes and some birthday cards, I asked her to try on the clothes for me, and when I saw the cards, asked her if she got any money in the cards. I just wondered if they had also done that for her since they’re overly generous, but she said that there was no money.

A little while later, while she was being skulky in my bedroom, I saw her putting something in her pants, so I looked in the top of her pants and found $25. I asked her where she got it and she said it was a birthday present from my aunt. When I asked why she had lied about that she told me that she thought I’d take it, “like daddy does”. I said that I’m ‘not daddy’ and I don’t take people’s money.

All this didn’t sit well with me. Yesterday or the day before I had taken some money out of the bank machine and when I was putting change back into my wallet I saw that I had no money. I asked my honey where I had spent the money, because I couldn’t remember going through all the money I had taken out of the machine. He couldn’t think of it, and I couldn’t think of it either.

So today after this sneaky ‘money in the pants’ thing, I checked my wallet since I had just taken out $40 from the bank machine because I had no money to get my honey and myself a coffee. I only had $15 in my wallet.

I said to my daughter, “give me my money” and she gave me a $20. I told her to go out and sit in the living room. I asked her where she got the other $5 and she told me my aunt had given it to her for her birthday. I said, “she doesn’t give $5 in a card (because when they give money, they give lots of money) and my daughter told me that, because they’d bought her all the clothes, they just let her keep some $5 change.

I was very mad at the stealing. If you’ll remember, she’s stolen food (sneak-eating a box of something or a container of ice cream or whatever she’s sneaking and then hiding any evidence of it into the furniture constitutes stealing to me). She’s stolen my jewellery and my clothes. Now she’s stolen money out of my purse (and perhaps at other times, I don’t know).

Just two weeks ago when she was here and wrapping my clothes up in her clothes, and hiding them in the hall closet to get them at a time when I wasn’t around, I had a big discussion with her about the stealing, and asked her to ‘have a look at herself’ and write down what was going on and why she was doing these things and how she was going to resolve them. She wrote this:

I take things because daddy won’t buy me nice clothing, he’ll buy cheap crap that’s from Goodwill, or any thrift shop in the area and he won’t care if someone would look like a homeless person if they wore it. Everyone I know has brand-name clothing, shoes, accesories, etc, but I can’t afford that stuff, and I hate looking like the poorest kid in my school because of it.

I try to stop, but if I see something I like, I feel I need to have it.

I don’t like taking things, but I hate it if I don’t have anything nice to wear. I hate the fact that sometimes we shop at Value Village, because it is a thrift store and it makes me feel like I’m poor.

About every kid in my school has Phat Farm/Pharm shoes or some other brand-name stuff, but what can I say? “Oh I bought this shirt at a thrift store?”

I also have maybe 6 shirts (including the ones that don’t fit) at daddy’s house, and about 3 pairs of pants, and I hate wearing the same thing EVERY DAY.

I promise I won’t steal anymore, and I won’t be sneaky with food either and I’ll ask if I want something.

We had another discussion after that, and I trusted her another time. I figured I’d give her the benefit of the doubt and try to believe in what she said this time (until I saw her being sneaky yet again this weekend).

And not only did she take the money, but before that she snuck down half a container of ice cream, ate almost all the breakfast bars, ate chocolate bars (Costco box) in the fridge, on top of all the regular meals we fed her. She hid all the wrappers under and in furniture, and hid the dirty ice cream bowl in her knapsack to take home with her.

I have no idea when she’s sneaking all this food because I was up at 7:00 today and 7:30 yesterday. It’s not as if I’m in bed half the day and she’s got nothing to eat.

I was at a loss. After I told her to sit in the living room, my trust and belief in my own child totally evaded me, and I was angry at myself too, for believing in her. I called my ex and told him that I would be bringing her home then. I called my aunt and asked her if she’d given my daughter any money for her birthday and was told, “no”, at which point I explained what had happened. My aunt told me that my daughter had $5 on her when they went out, so I knew this wasn’t today’s theft and asked again for the rest of my money.

I told her to get her things together. I went into her room to look for things she needed to take home and, while there, I saw the necklace she had been wearing when she came, which she said someone had given her. I told her to take the necklace so she could return it to whomever she had stolen it from.

She then decided to have a conniption fit, saying that someone had given that to her and she was going to leave, she didn’t care about her stuff. I told her that I was going to drive her home and she said that she was going to walk. After the screaming and yelling and name calling, she then took off down the hall stairs.

Well, boys and girls, I’d just about lost it by then. I came out of the bedroom after her and I smashed that fucking hallway door open, prepared to grab a 13-year-old and drag her back up the stairs so that she could get driven home instead of off by herself, making her way.

When I opened that door it smashed into the big plant we have outside, knocking the plant and dirt to the landing below. She stopped at the landing (perhaps she thought the plant would fall on her) and I told her to get back upstairs and get her things together.

I told her to find her glasses (the new FCUK ones that I just paid $150 for) and she said she didn’t care if she found them. Oh, after I just spent $150, she didn’t care. She found them, got her new clothes together with her backpack (minus one ice cream dish that I had removed) and went down to the car.

She had been yelling and screaming at me about how she hadn’t stolen the necklace. To which I responded with the, “you’re going to have a tantrum now about the necklace? You stole money from me and you’re trying to make things seem as if you’re hard done by because I don’t know whether the necklace was stolen?” stuff.

I dropped her off at my ex’s place and looked through her room to make sure that none of my stuff was there. She looked and found the box that the necklace came in and my ex told me that the necklace was a gift. Well who gives a fuck? I just didn’t know whether the necklace was yet another theft, but the issue certainly had nothing to do with the necklace.

I talked to the ex upon leaving and told him that I didn’t want to see my daughter again (interruption: “I don’t want to see you again either!”) until she could behave like a normal human being and stop the fucking stealing.

So, I’m sorry for the length, but that was my day – other than all the ubercleaning my honey and I did while she was out (hence finding hidden wrappers/containers throughout the furniture).

I’ve about had it with children who lie and sneak and steal from me. Oh, it must be me. My children seem to have a sense of entitlement. It doesn’t seem to matter to them that they’re taking things from me that aren’t theirs, since apparently other parents do more for their kids than I do for mine.

It doesn’t seem to matter how much I’ve given whenever it was possible to give. Instead of a thank you and appreciation for the fact that I don’t have much to give, I must be a bastard for not giving whatever ‘somebody has given somebody else’.

I’m sick of it all and I wonder WTF I ever had kids. What did I expect? Normalcy? Leave it to Beaver? No, I think I just expected to love my kids, give them what I could give, and get back some love in return. This is not my definition of love.

This week’s tenant is Palm Tree Princess. Like me, she can’t stand doing housework, but also like me, spent her day today doing it. I think my place is cleaner *nyaa nyaa* since I also washed the kitchen floor twice and waxed it twice too. How’s that for farging clean?

Psst, don’t tell anybody that it’s been probably over a month since I washed that kitchen floor and it probably needed those two washings and waxings just to make it look like white tiles again.

I had a little visit today. It wasn’t planned, it just happened.

It was my grandson. I got a call from my son’s ex, saying that they were in Toronto and they thought that we might like to see him.

I haven’t seen him for at least a year, so it was very nice to see him again. What a sweet boy he is. He’s now 6 years old and in grade 1.

He does have one habit, though. While he always says please and thank you, he has a way of putting things that makes you feel a bit like his servant.

For example, when we got home from taking his remote car out for a drive in the school parking lot, he said to me, “I’d like a drink, please”. I felt like, “ok, so go get a drink”. And not having six-year-old kids around any more, it didn’t automatically kick in that I was supposed to jump up and get him something. But I guess some motherly instinct kicked in where, when he snapped his fingers, I jumped up and got him some milk. It’s funny how things change (and don’t change) over time.

It was good to see him. I hope that my son will soon be able to go pick him up to bring him for weekend visits when my daughter’s here. He kept mentioning her and the fun they had on the last visit.

However, my daughter, the busy party animal had a party to go to today, or else I would have gone and picked her up so she could see him too. My girl, you missed out. Let’s hope that he’s here again sooner than the last time… no years in between.

I was hungry and I couldn’t decide what to eat. I just knew that I wanted something but couldn’t find anything that I felt I had a craving for… until I looked in the freezer and saw the waffle box.

Luckily for me there were two waffles left. I decided to have them for dinner.

And luckily for me they were those new cajun-style waffles because those are just yummy.

Don’t these look like blackened waffles? Yes they do. Yes they are.

Ok, there’s something wrong with the toaster if you set it past 4. The 4 will give you a lightly toasted something. The 5 will give you cajun food.

You know what? I ate them anyway.

Well today was the end of my 3-month probationary period at the new job. Wow, it’s been 3 months already… feels like years.

All went well, it was like a little mini review and the Director seemed pleased. I, of course, wanted more money – you know, like the money they said they were paying in their ad. I hadn’t realized I’d have to start at this lower pay for 3 months at the time I took the job. But the increase will be good – almost enough to live on, but not quite.

My son is supposed to be moving out at the end of the month. His one-month stay with us will be drawing to a close. You know, that one month where he came in December and leaves at the end of April. We’ve got to get the place rented to someone, but what’s the likelihood of that since I can’t even show the room because it’s a fucking pigsty that I asked him to clean up so we could show it, but somehow that just doesn’t happen.

I suppose the only benefit will be my increased salary that will help carry us through without someone renting the room for a month. Christ knows it’ll probably take that long to clean it up in there. God forbid he should ever help clean up the rest of the house (with our cleaning products, of course).

So I’m gonna play some games now – or “a” game at least and then go watch voting on American Idol. I’m predicting that the bottom three tonight will be Paris, Elliott and Ace. We’ll see.

I’m told that my site will be fixed on Monday, the 2nd level tech support at Netfirms apparently don’t work on weekends. I guess they save a lot of money by not providing tech support on weekends. I wonder how many customers pay for supposed good service only to find out that it may be 5 days before fuck-ups get fixed – smart thinking there boys and girls.

Anyway, my daughter decided to try a new hairstyle last night – that’s one sexy look, isn’t it?

I haven’t had long hair too often in my life (and by long I only mean about shoulder length). And I could never do a farging thing with my hair, and didn’t know what to do with it either, so I never really did anything with it except let it lay there, much like my daughter usually does – until now. What a special look.

It kinda makes me want to go download a Spice Girl song.

And this is how her hair looked once she took it down.

Yes, boys and girls, that’s her real hair, unbrushed after having it up in a ponytail?? Her hair is so damned thick people have asked her if she was wearing a wig. I remember the old days when I had such really thick hair. And although I keep my hair so short now, it’s still really thick, I have to have it thinned out every time it’s cut, but I don’t think it’s ever been quite as thick as hers.

Oh, my son came out of his room just in time to have a peek at those fabulous hairstyles.

Here’s a rare occasion where we got a pic of him.

It’s so domestic here. The whole family just hanging and chilling and doing weird pics and things with hair.

My 12-year-old daughter was up to no good this morning. I knew that because when I got up she told me not to go into the kitchen. Hmmm.

When I had to go to the washroom she came running after me… “don’t go into the kitchen, there’s a surprise”. Don’t worry about that my girl, I have some running of my own to do and it doesn’t involve a kitchen.

So as I sat here writing about my new tenant, she came in with a plate full of cookies and offered me one. How sweet is that? Literally.

I tried one. They’re good. If she’s nice to me I may let her take them home tonight since they don’t exactly fit with my WW regime.

But it makes me think… how come everybody isn’t making me cookies? I’m worth it.

Yes, I am extraordinarily proud of getting the job and dragging my sorry ass out of bed at 6:30 this morning. I never get up that early any more. Whoa, yes I do, I do now… every work day. So I am rejoicing in my new role and it was a fairly quick day as well. It was already 5:01 when I saw someone else leaving and realized that it was time for me to leave as well.

I just got my stuff ready to wear tomorrow and now I’m gonna fix myself some dinner. I think I’ll just have a sammich and a salad cuz there’s nothing new there to eat, not within the right points, anyway.

I have been good so far this week, following my points and not even at the top of the range. Let’s hope that’ll mean that my weight’s gone down at the weigh-in on Saturday. It better mean that… stupid fucks, I’m starving.

I guess American Idol is on again tonight so I’ll be watching that. I just love these people with attitude. Well, no, I guess I don’t love them; I hate them. I can’t believe their nerve in freaking when they’re told that they can’t sing.

There was one guy on there who said that he had perfect pitch. The freaking guy couldn’t carry a tune with a wheelbarrow ← (isn’t that clever? I just made that up right now, spur of the moment). But then he got mad when they didn’t pick him.

I seem to like shows that anger me. I kvell in them. Of course that’s one of the words on my Word of the Day calendar. See how much I’m learning?

For some reason, the other day my Avant Browser died on me and I can’t use it any more.

It didn’t crash or anything but what it did do was start opening every tab I’d ever opened in the tab windows.

You know the way Firefox lets you open tabs on the bottom (or on the top)? – well you could do that with Avant and you could set it to have your recently opened tabs open the next time you started the browser.

That was great for me because website I would have forgotten about in the meanwhile, would be right there in my face as soon as I went back on the computer. That could have been 5 tabs open or even 10 depending on what I was surfing.

However, for some reason it started reopening tabs. So if I had 5 tabs open the time before, this time I’d have the 5 and then the same 5. And sometimes it would be 50 tabs that I had opened at some time on some day. I don’t know WTF happened with it all of a sudden.

So now I’m forced to use Firefox. And I keep accidentally closing it. Which, of course, means that I’m starting brand new again with only my home page showing every time I open it.

And I have that big prejudice against Firefox anyway. I guess since I always hated Netscape, I don’t like the idea that I’m using Netscape now.

Alright, enough whining. Yesterday we went over to help my ex with his move to his new place. I didn’t offer to help move him, my son was helping with that.

I did offer to go over and arrange his furniture and put up pictures, move stuff to the appropriate rooms where things belonged… that kinda stuff.

What I did end up doing mostly was cleaning. God that guy lives like a pig (and that living includes my daughter who is the biggest perpetrator of throwing garbage all around the place). But everything he’d brought over needed cleaning and that’s what I did. We couldn’t even put up half the pictures because of the cement walls – we need to drill, plug and place for that and the toolbox was nowhere to be found.

The bad thing was that it was pouring rain yesterday and he didn’t bother renting a moving truck, instead he was using one of the pick-up trucks from his work. So he couldn’t take a lot of things over because there was no cover for the truck and things’d get soaking wet. Luckily he had moved some of the bigger items the night before.

By the time I got home (at 8:00 p.m.) I was stiffer than a big stiff thing. I guess sitting at home for 9 months has not exactly used whatever muscles I was using yesterday.

Thankfully, today I don’t feel too sore. I can get up and sit down without having something to brace myself on to push myself up.

So now I’ll just go relax and hope I’m all recuperated for Wednesday.

This morning was my daughter’s audition for the “music school”. I had sent her some mp3s (karaoke versions) of the songs she was allowed to sing, with accompaniment, and left it to her to look up the lyrics on the net and practice the songs all week.

Well last night I told her she had to audition for me, my honey and my son, and she was doing the whole “I’m a nervous nelly, oh I have to cough, oh my nose is itchy, I can’t sing without music, bla bla bla bla bla” stuff.

On top of that, she didn’t know all the words to the songs, she was using a paper, and when we’d try to give her suggestions like… “it’s not A MA ZING grace, it’s AMAZING, one word”, she’d get all huffy and snotty like we were criticizing her and not trying to help.

Needless to say I ended up having a little freak fest of my own. I think it must be years since I screeched at anybody that loudly. Yes, the neighbours certainly know what’s going on in my house.

I suppose I expected her to be fully prepared for this audition and was a little *how do you say…* pissed when she wasn’t. After all, she’s the one who wanted to get into this music school and I guess I expected her to take some responsibility for it.

Anyway, aside from that we went off to the audition this morning. Parents were not allowed in, I suppose that’s in case they’re like the hockey moms and distracting the kids while they’re auditioning.

Everything went well (according to my daughter) and we should hear back in about 2 weeks on whether or not she was accepted. I hope she was since she has a really nice voice. I think she has quite a bit of potential in pursuing some kind of singing thing, although I’m not too sure on how much a market there is for that.

If nothing else, I suppose she could try out for Canadian Idol in 4-5 years (if the show is still on the air then).

Amazing Grace (5MG).

Ya know, it is extremely hard to change a roll of toilet paper. How do I know? Because no one else in my house is able to do it except me.

They have difficulty, although they’re probably too shy to look for help, and so they just leave the used up empty roll right there on the holder. I know it’s a passive way of seeking my help because they know that I am the master of putting a new roll of toilet paper on the holder.

I am needed!

I know that it’s also pretty hard to put dirty dishes into the dishwasher. Those who have trouble with it usually just leave their dishes sitting in the sink. They know that one of these days I will go into the kitchen and see those dirty dishes piled up in the sink.

I will then (a) wash them, or (b) perform the strenuous task of lifting them out of the sink and walking all the way over to the dishwasher and stacking them in there.

I am needed!

And while I’m thinking of it, I’ve been set straight on a couple of outmoded thoughts that I had. I had the, apparently wrong, thinking that coats belong in the “coat closet”. Wuhoho, was I wrong. Apparently coats belong either on the dining room chairs, or in a big heap in the bedroom (alongside the soaking wet, moldy smelling, heaps of bath towels).

And where I always thought the mat at the front door was to prevent dirt from getting in, I have now learned that the doormat is apparently for cleaning all the mud off your boots.

I was quite surprised to see my front doormat covered in muddy footprints. Stupid me. Imagine my surprise when I heard, “well, it is a doormat… that’s what it’s there for”. I didn’t know it was there to clean the boots and make my entranceway look filthy.

Tell me, what’s an old woman to do?

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I just want to teach the young dogs some old tricks.

The older I get, the more I learn how much I don’t know.

I had a fairly busy weekend, and will have a fairly boring week. I got an email about the new job and I’ll be starting on February 1st, so I get another week and a bit of vacation. I should be making the most of it and doing anything I want to do before it’s back to the old grind. Unfortunately, there’s no money yet to do what I like to do best (need I say what that is?).

We took my daughter’s computer in for reformat and reinstall and got that back on Sunday. Needless to say, even today I’m still installing stuff. Now it’s down to the anti-spyware and anti-virus stuff, so I’m almost done with that and everything’s working well so far.

I bought a new firewall for myself today – it’s called Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall, and from what I’ve read about it, it’s one of the better firewalls, preventing more stuff than Zone Alarm, which is what I was using before this (cuz it’s free). But the Kerio one is on special right now for only $14.95 U.S. til March, I think, so I bought it.

On Saturday night we rented Two for the Money with Al Pacino and Matthew McConaughey. It was “ehh”… my new voting system… ehh. I’ll rate it a waste of $5 but then there wasn’t much else to rent this week. I could have watched Blind Date tapings and been more entertained.

Today I’m not alone. Apparently my son called in sick, and my honey had to go be a witness on some car accident he saw. He also tells me that he might take off tomorrow too because there’s a job he wants to apply for. That must be some humdinger of a job when you’ve got to miss a day’s pay in order to apply for it. I could be getting laid with all this “unalone time” but, no-o-o-o, my son has to be home sick at the same time. I’m so empathetic and compassionate aren’t I?

So now I guess I should do some surfing. I haven’t built up any points in Blog Explosion lately. Maybe I should go check out the battles. The only problem with getting your points that way is that you don’t score any mystery points. Those of you who don’t know about it, should go sign up. It’s actually quite fun.

Anyway, enough for now. Maybe I should also clean house (please do). Maybe I should also get clothes ready for my first week of work.

Maybe there’s lots of things I should be doing. And maybe I will and maybe I won’t. I’m in a fickle state of mind.

What’s the good news? I got called for a second interview for the job I went to last Monday *woohoo*.

That’s all I’m gonna say about that because I don’t want to jinx it.

The rest of my day was as boring as dirt. I was gonna do laundry but I didn’t feel like it. I’ll probably do it tomorrow, along with sewing a loose button on a new pair of pants that I’ll wear on Wednesday. Of course, there’s ironing to go along with that. Ok, I’m getting depressed now, what a way to keep myself occupied.

We checked the TV guide and there’s nothing on TV tonight other than the Golden Globe awards. So I guess we’ll check that out *yawn*.

I did get a nice little rebate today from the government. Apparently it’s a one-time energy rebate, so I ran off to the bank with that. Now I’m down to $200 overdrawn.

I gotta go play some Zuma or something. I haven’t played that in a while.

Ok, I’m not the brightest crayon in the box.

We’ve got one of those combo DVD/VCR players, and when we hooked it up, all we got hooked up was the DVD part since we didn’t have the cables to hook up the VCR part too.

So about a month ago I bought some cables at Costco since they were 12′ long and had 5 different cable thingies. Today we tried to hook that up to the stereo.

I bought a new receiver not that long ago, probably last year some time. It’s got connection outlets for everything. Do you think I could figure out where to connect which cable? You’re right. I could not.

On top of that, now that we have the PVR (personal video recorder), we can also hook that up to the VCR so that anything we tape on it could be transferred to the VCR.

I can’t figure out a damned thing with this. I finally got pissed off and said, fuck this, I’ll take back the cables. Problem is, I can’t find the stinking receipt from Costco, so there’s $40 down the toilet.

If we want to watch one of the movies we’ve got on VCR then we’ll have to watch it in my daughter’s room where the plain old VCR is hooked up.

I used to be the one who connected all the electronics in my house, I haven’t had a husband who was adept at that, and now, neither am I. When did this crap become rocket science? There’s way too many things to hook into other things.

We went to Costco anyway cuz my honey needed some razors for his Mach 3 (only $37 for 20). I feel guilty about the cost of those since I was the one who bought him that “special” razor with the 3 blades. We spent $93 at Costco cuz there were other things to be bought, one of which was this great cheese with caramelized onions. It doesn’t even fit on WW – I’d have to eat about an ounce to stay within my points, but we bought it. And we bought wings since it’s the weekend and I don’t usually follow it on weekends.

Anyway, this week I finally took down the Christmas stuff that was inside the house. Now we’ve got to go take down the outside lights and the giant snowman.

Sunday is a day of rest. Isn’t that supposed to be true? How come I’m not resting? I should be happy since my honey wanted to do the laundry and I said, “nah, I’ll do it tomorrow”, so I don’t have to bother with that. However, that also means that I’ll have to do it by myself now. Sometimes I’m an idiot. Sometimes? Shut up.

Not that I have much to say, but I’ve been having internet connection troubles, so I figured I’ll write something while I’m able to – Rogers tells me that they’re sending someone out to fix my troubles – on THURSDAY! They’ve already given me a two-day credit for my problem, and yet right now I’m connected.

My daughter’s been here since Friday, she’s just hanging out since she’s still on holiday.

We’ve had movies coming out the ears; every day we’ve watched a movie.

The other day we bought the American Pie 3-set, so one day American Pie, the next night American Pie II. I don’t think we’ll be watching American Wedding tonight since The Office is on.

I gotta tell you though, I am sick of watching movies.

Yesterday and today I spent a helluva lot of time playing Painkiller. I’ve gotten farther than I ever had before, and I’m finally up to Chapter 5 (which is the last chapter) and I expect to finish the game today or tomorrow. I’m gonna put up more Painkiller photos in the gallery, not because anyone’s interested, but I like to use the photos for my desktop and you can too *woohoo*.

And as I said in my resolutions, I signed up for WW again, but I’m not taking it really seriously this week until all the beer is gone. It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it. That’ll probably be tonight, and then look out, skinniness r us, ya right. Actually, if I didn’t drink any beer I’d probably drop about 20 pounds in a month.

Ok, keep your comments to yourself. I know what you’re thinking.

I’ve gotta go get dinner ready now. We’re having some crunchy chicken and salad. Perhaps we’ll have some fruit, just to be healthy. Akhhh, healthy. Healthy schmealthy, who gives a flying farg in the long run? I don’t know about you, but I expect to be dying one of these days.

Enough for now.

Is there anything better than having a mom who owns a phonecam?

Isn’t it nice that your mom is able to catch you at the most opportune moments, when you’re looking your best, and take a big, embarrasing picture to put up on the net?

I know my daughter will treasure this picture forever. She’ll say, “mom, where were you while I was in the bathroom? Where was your phonecam when I was tripping down the stairs?”

I love to reinforce the bond between my daughter and me by showing her that I’m always thinking about her.

Thinking about ya now, my girl.

My daughter and ex dropped by the other day because she’d finally gotten her report card and school pic.

Look at this picture. Doesn’t she look like a sweet girl? She’s so clever, got everybody fooled. Harharhar. Oh, I kill me. I know she’ll find that really amusing.

No, seriously, she does look like a sweet girl in this picture. And that’s what I call her too, my sweet girl, or my girl. Don’t ask me why, I’ve just been doing it since she was born.

When my son was young I used to call him honey. Apparently he has no memory of that though. Now I just call him my baby boy (which gets a rise out of his other 25-year-old friends). But I do that one cuz it’s fun to call a 6’6″ man who weighs 250-275, “baby boy”.

Anyway, I also got my daughter’s report card, which was no great shakes, perhaps a little better in the social aspect than in prior years, so maybe she’s decided it’s better to get along with people, and do what you’re supposed to do (especially with those in authority).

That’s it for today, just the report on my kids. I rented the Exorcism of Emily Rose for tonight, just for something to do. I’ve done nothing all day.

I’m assuming that I’m old enough to watch this movie, cuz Lord knows, the first time I saw The Exorcist (when I was a young teen), I couldn’t sleep for days and had the willies. I’ve seen it since and find it pretty laughable, so let’s hope this movie is laughable too. Otherwise, my next blog may be posted from underneath the covers.

I told you that my son wanted to borrow my car yesterday, but I didn’t tell you the theatrics that went along with it.

First off, I let him borrow the car when he first got home cuz he said that he had a job to go to last night and he needed to pick up some new shoes before that. It would be faster if he could borrow my car.

So I said fine, as long as you replace the gas.

He went off up the street where there’s a new bunch o’stores and a couple of shoes stores in there. He came home wearing his new boots, then went off to shower and get ready for his job.

Before he left I wanted his opinion on some cologne pullouts that came with the newspaper and asked him over to smell 3 of them to see which he thought was nicer (I’m thinking nicer for my honey, not for him).

He was cooperative, smelled them all and gave his opinion.

But then, he looked over at the clock. I can’t remember if he said something, like “OMG, is that the time?” or if he was just doing the amazed look of OMG, look at the time.

I ignored that. I knew what that look was for. That was for me to lend him the car again to get to his job. That was the premeditated scene for my sake, so that I would think that he hadn’t budgeted his time properly and now needed my car for him to get to work on time.

I guess since we ignored that look, he went off to do something else and then came back, stood at the door and started with what would have been the how can she resist lending me her car when I phrase it this way plea.

As he started with the, “I know you don’t…. ” little speech, I said, “well have fun tonight, see you later” stuff. That stopped him from his prepared lines and he went off to do something else.

I thought I had handled it all without having to lend my car yet again. But that didn’t stop him. He wandered around doing or getting some other stuff, only to come back to the same spot by the front door, and start with the same lines… “I know you don’t like it when I ask at the last minute, but [borrow] [could I] [do you mind if] [I'm running late]“, whatever the hell the exact words were.

So, of course, I let him borrow the car. Only I re-emphasized that I wanted the gas replaced to the same level it was at now, when we’d put $20 of gas in it the day before.

The reason I re-emphasized is because I let him use it the other day and I only had a quarter of a tank of gas. I told him to replace it, but he also owed me gas from another time he borrowed the car when he was broke.

When I went to the car there was only a quarter of a tank. Where was the gas he owed me from before?

So I feel a little screwed whenever I let my own damn family do something with my stuff, which is why I have qualms about lending my car, even though it will be sitting in the driveway all night.

I got to thinking after he left for work that perhaps he thinks I’m stupid. Perhaps he thinks I didn’t notice the look at the clock; the start of the “can I borrow” speech. Maybe he thinks this stuff goes right over my head, and he’ll never know that I see it all (and try to avoid it all).

For dinner tonight I had some salt & vinegar chips with chip dip. Yes, I, the one who’s got the big concern that my daughter eat meat, vegetables and fruit for every meal, stuffed down some chips and dips for my health-conscious meal.

I was too lazy to make anything, that’s the bottom line, and my stomach kept growling away, so I knew I had to have something, so, voila!

My honey had to go off tonight to a viewing. His sister’s father-in-law passed away, and so he needed to be there to show his respect, and because he also knew and liked the man.

I wish all the evil assholes would die first, instead of the people you like and love. I know, it doesn’t work that way, but if I had designed the world, it would.

So I did pretty much nothing all the live-long day except go out for a coffee, pick up some cookies for the cookie jar, and stop at the bank to put a cheque in for upcoming rent.

Yesterday, though, I picked up a new spice rack since we’ll be getting rid of our huge one. My ex said he didn’t want the big one cuz he had no place to put it. Now we’ll see if my son wants it (for when he moves out) and, if not, more Value Village stuff.

Since we were getting rid of one, I figured we’d better have something. I’ll buy a few more bottles of spices and that’ll be the end of it.

I did spend some time today phoning from school to school to school trying to get my daughter enrolled for next year in the Arts/Music school (the same one that my son went to). She had mentioned that she wanted to do this, but as I looked through the paperwork today, I saw that the deadline is Friday, for crying out loud.

So aside from getting that application completed, which I did, I also have to get a copy of her last report card, a reference from her teacher, and an arts reference from her music school. Then I’ll have to go up to the school, with a $25 audition fee cheque in hand (non-refundable), and drop off the stuff which I don’t think I’ll have in time.

They did say that I could put through the paperwork and indicate that the other stuff was coming, but I hope to have as much together as I can in order to start this. Perhaps some name dropping will help. “BTW, my son also went to your school a few years ago”. “Really? What was your son’s name?” “Schmoe, Schmoe the great violinist, you remember him?” “I’m sorry, admissions are full this year. Try again next year”.

Nah, it wouldn’t go like that. I’m just funning with ya. He was a good boy. Translation: I have absolutely no idea what impression he left at the school.

At least tonight Martha Apprentice is listed, so I’ll get to watch something on TV. I was playing Zuma earlier. I had 8 men to go into round 8 and then lost 5 of them on one stinking level. I’m not feeling overly game-friendly right now.

Who’s the marine? I know you’re asking that.

In case you didn’t guess it, that’s me. Yes it is. I have not joined the army, I just went for another haircut today.

And please tell me why, when I go see Lena for a haircut, I show her the same picture every time (the one on my driver’s license) and say, do it like that, and, yet, every time, the hair cut is different.

Today the armed forces look; last time not as short as I wanted it.

One thing I can tell you is that I’ve really got that distinguished, mature look around the sides. If I was a guy all the ladies would be after me for that look. But since I’m not a guy, I just look like an old, grey-haired bag who’s about to go on a peace-keeping mission (we don’t fight here in Canada).

Aside from the haircut, I had a busy day. It started off with me asking my honey why he was still wearing his summer jacket when we’re in the middle of big snow squalls here. He told me that he had to take his two down coats into the dry cleaner, and the other lighter winter coat needed to be washed.

I didn’t know if that was a hint for me or not. Hint, as in: take my coats to the dry cleaners and wash the other one, will ya? And hurry up about it already!

So I decided to take his coat over to the laundromat and wash it. I didn’t take the other two coats into the dry cleaners, only because I didn’t know if he wanted to spend the money this very moment since it’s quite expensive to have those down coats cleaned.

After the laundromat (and, of course, numerous stops at Tim’s), I went off to pick up my paycheque, go to the bank, buy some brewskis, stop at Eric’s just to chat, and go for a haircut, since I was around there.

I came home and started surfing, now I’m just waiting for my snookey to get home with some coffees.

Last night we watched back-to-back episodes of The Donald. It sucked because the first hour was a waste of a synopsis of the entire show. We’ve already seen all the shows, we don’t need to waste an hour of our time seeing what all the shows were about.

Tonight being Friday, there will be absolutely nothing on TV, and we shouldn’t be watching it anyway since we still haven’t put that bedroom back together. There’re all kinds of excuses for that, but I did clean the windows yesterday.

So now I think I may just play a little Zuma. WTF, I haven’t played it in a while. I can see just how pathetic I have become at the game.

Oh, and BTW, it looks like something’s a little screwed up with gravatar.com again – they’ll load sometimes and won’t at others.

Today was my last day at work. So it’s like Friday to me, boys and girls. I can do anything I want tonight cuz I don’t have to get up at 6:00 a.m. tomorrow *woohoo*.

The sad thing is that, ok, I’m out of work again. Now I’ve got to find something else. But, who cares? For now I’m just revelling in a 4-day weekend. I’ve called the agencies and said, “I’m here, you’re there, but I’d like to be somewhere else, so…. “. Ok, maybe I didn’t quite put it like that, but you’ve got the drift.

And for all of you who are wondering what happened with the painting of the bedroom, here we go.

Here’s my daughter’s bedroom as it was, painted bright pink (on two walls) and the white mark is where some numbnuts had glued a mirror to it.

We had to get the mirror off and fill the holes and use my great sander to smooth it all out. That really is a great sander. That spot where the mirror was is probably the best piece of wall in the room now.

The green around the ceiling is all the painter’s tape that I put up in preparation for painting. And, as promised, it did not rip paint off after we left it a few days.

So we did the priming, primer tinted the same colour as the paint, and those walls were covered completely with one coat. So I will heartily recommend the Behr primer and the Behr paint, cuz we only used one coat of each to cover up bright pink.

Here’s how the room looks now, with the new paint job. All ready for either male or female to rent. And that happens to be male for the moment with my son moving in there for a month or so.

Yes, yes, that’s the computer desk in the middle of the room. We’ve still got to put everything back in order, but my honey has to get the drill out for the shelving that goes above the computer desk, and, wouldn’t you know it, that pesky drill is in the garage. So perhaps we’ll get to do that tomorrow.

I’m very satisfied with how it all turned out, even though it’s a big pain in the ass.

But while I’m at it I’ve decided to get rid of any unneeded stuff, in all rooms, and pack it up to give to Value Village. Oh, they’re gonna love me. You’d think they’d give me a whole bunch of stuff for all the stuff I take over there, but, no. It just doesn’t work that way. I suppose I’m supposed to give for giving sake (selfish bastards).

So, lots more work to do, but it won’t be tonight since my snookey is with his son.

And the bad thing is that TV is still fucking us up. Last night Boston Legal wasn’t on, just The Office, which was good enough for me but my snookey was looking forward to Boston Legal.

Tonight Martha Apprentice isn’t on. I heard the ratings were really bad and that they weren’t going to continue after this season, but that doesn’t mean that we who watched it don’t want to see the end of it (selfish bastards).

So now that we have the new DVR, I’m taping Blind Date and Elimidate every night since it’s on past our bedtimes (when we get up at 6:00). I figure we’ll have something stupid to watch whenever they fuck up our regularly scheduled TV shows.

Oh, and special thanks to Minna for answering me in the WP forum (and here). I know, you probably got sick of my whining.

I am absolutely hating the new layout of the computer room.

See how my honey’s computer is on the opposite side of me? When we’re in here, it’s like we’re both off in little separate cubicles or something.

I don’t feel like we’re together. So we’re looking at how we can turn my desk around to the way it was, and perhaps take out the one middle piece, so it will be much like it was before.

So if it were like this diagram, it might feel a little more normal again, since this is more like what we’re used to.

As it is now, it’s kinda like we’re both alone. He could be in another room for all I know, unless I peer up over my monitor only to see the top of his head.

We’ll have to figure out how to stabilize his desk if we put it this way since it doesn’t have a separate end (because it attached to the other part of the desk).

Anyway, enough about that. In other home news I did not get my daughter’s old room primed today since I was busy vacuuming up all the dust from where we had to fill the wall.

Some idiot had glued a mirror onto her bedroom wall and that was fine for the way we had it, but to paint, you’d have to paint around it, so we took it off. It was stuck on with what looked like tar.

That left some holes in the wall and we picked up some drywall compound yesterday, filled it a couple of times and sanded and sanded. Funny that nobody thought to cover up all the stuff that was in the room *duh*.

Since 2 walls are pink, I was going to put the primer on today, but the blinds hadn’t been taken down and I couldn’t figure out how they were attached. It would have been a good day for my honey to be home, because we women were fairly limited in what we could do.

I guess we’ll start that tomorrow. I told my daughter she’d be helping. She should learn some basic painting techniques for when she’s on her own (probably in 10 or so years).

My son’s coming to birthday dinner tomorrow night so I won’t tell you what I’m cooking in case he comes to visit. He’ll have to be surprised.

That’s it for now. I’ve gotta gear myself up to do something more. Perhaps there’s more dust I can remove. Christ knows it permeated the whole house.

Now that my son will be moving in for a few months (and someone else renting after him), my daughter will be sleeping in the computer room, since she’s only here twice a month.

The people who bought the exercise machine came tonight to disassemble it and so the area was free for us to put in a bed.

This brand new sheet set was at my mother’s house, and, as it turns out, it was the exact same material as the valance we already had in the computer room. We’re gonna give the valance a clean, now that we see the difference in brightness to the sheet set. Well, c’mon, it’s been up there a long, long time with never a thought of cleaning it.

So I think now we’re going to have to move around the computer desks so that my honey and I are facing opposite each other, just to open up the space beside the bed. We want my daughter to be able to get in and out of it without crawling in from the foot of the bed.

That’s gonna be a big pain in the keester since we’ll have to disassemble those too. However, we are trying to make a room livable for 3 now, so we’ll do what we have to do.

My daughter wants to switch schools again. She says the kids at her current school are racist (she’s one of the very few Canadian kids in the school) and that they’re bullies.

So my ex called today and found out that she can switch to the Catholic school down the street from them and start on Monday as long as she’s got her baptism certificate.

Well, I’ve got that.

So it looks like we’ll be doing some uniform shopping this weekend after piano lessons, because her uniform at the current school has black and the new school has blue.

Of course this couldn’t have happened at the beginning of the year, before my ex spent all the money on the black stuff. But thankfully he’s got some money for the new clothes (since I don’t), and I’m more than happy to get the opportunity to shop, even if it’s not for me.

Let’s hope things go better in the new place.

And BTW, Einstein said this about me:

What will he say about you?

Squeeze me but I gotta play some FEAR and get ready for The Donald.

I was visiting jozjozjoz and saw that she’d gotten herself a virtual pet.

So I thought, “hey, I’m not allowed to have pets here, why don’t I just up and get me one of them thar pets too?”, so I did. No feeding required, and if you pet him, he purrs. I’m good with animals.

I’d probably prefer a dog or a budgie, but a purple tiger will do me for now.