RANT
I don’t get people like this. We served the previous owners of our house with our costs for the pool repair. They responded with a letter to our lawyer that they had already explained to us on numerous occasions the situation with the pool (Jonas and I must have been blacked out on these numerous occasions as they NEVER addressed the pool issues with us, in fact, they stopped returning our calls as soon as we raised issues with the pool). They also expressed in their letter that they were upset because we were disturbing them during their holidays. Are you f&*?&* kidding me? Disturbing their holidays? How about that chunk of summer we lost because we couldn’t use our damn pool? Did you think about that you idiots? When I think about the trash Jonas emptied from our house left behind by them and the mail I packaged up and delivered to them because they were too damn lazy to do an address forward and the dog feces they left in the backyard I just want to kickbox some human decency into them. As Joe Pesci would say in Goodfellows...”What the fuck kind of people are they?” Indeed.

Yohohoho and a bottle of rum....

Edie officially has a lazy eye. When people see Edie, the first thing they exclaim is what beatiful eyes she has, and now we have to cover one of them up for two hours a day for month to see if it will correct itself. I'm sure an 18 month old is going to have nooooo problem sitting still while we put a patch over her eye, and I'm sure our little 18 month old will refrain from picking at it and trying to pull it off, and I'm sure our rational, tolerant 18 month old will not mind at all when Jonas and I rip that band aid off her eye every day after the two hours are up. Yup, it's gonna be fun folks.
Grace is quite excited that she is going to have a "baby pirate sister"; Grace has even tried out the patch herself to make Edie feel better about wearing it. I think if it was Grace who was being treated for lazy eye, she'd rather enjoy it!
It could really be so much worse, a lazy eye is small potatoes, really.

I am so deliciously happy now that I am working downtown again. I don't feel exhausted anymore, I don't dread going to work, I walk every lunch hour, I can make it to my kickboxing class and still be home by 5:00 (kudos to Jo for doing the day-care run). And oh yeah, the work is pretty interesting to. Life is good.

Last night when I was putting Grace to bed she developed this elaborate game called "Cloud Jump and Fall". The premise? Well, it took a lot of hand gestures on her part because she was too excited to explain, the gist of it is that you puff up her duvet, pick her up as high up in the air as you can and then drop her on to the "cloud". Another thing to add to the bed time ritual, sigh. Bedtime used to be bath, bottle/book, bed. Now, bedtime has evolved into:
-bath
-pyjamas
-couch, t.v. show
-snack
-milk
-pee
-brush teeth
-2 books
-lights off
-tummy, side and back tickles
-stories from when i was a little girl, or when jo was a little boy
-guessing games
-lights on to make sure she is holding lamb-ey properly
-cuddles
-lights on to identify shadows, lights off


Edie gets plopped into her crib quite unceremoniously at 8:00, tired or not, luckily she just talks herself to sleep, even with all this commotion next door to her room. Miraculously, the house is quiet by 8:30 (or even later when Jonas falls asleep with Grace :)

Okay, other people's dreams are boring, I know. But this one is kind of interesting, and if anyone can psycho-analyze it, I'd appreciate it.
So Jonas and I are in line at Dairy Queen (good dream already, right?) and Jo gets a call on his cell-phone. It's Donald Trump, who is crying, (I know this because Jo keeps saying, "It's alright Donald, stop crying, I can't understand what you're saying"). So when the call is over, Jo tells me that Trump is so upset because he really loves me and wanted to marry me, not his current wife Melania. My response to all this? "Yeah, the same thing happened after Elvis married Lisa Marie".
Wow, dreamy Karen has WICKED self-esteem!

They make me smile.

Is it wrong to let my kid get this dirty????
I've got to admit, I think I have been abusing the pool a little bit. I have sort of come to the (lazy) conclusion that chlorine is as effective as soap, therefore a day spent in the pool is equivalent to at least 10 baths. I'm not sure how long Grace had gone without a bath at the time of this photo, but when I added Edie to mixture, the water was almost black. The day before this picture, I was thinking to myself how dark Grace's hair was getting.....after the bath her hair lightened up significantly. Oops, my bad. I promise to take the hygiene of the girls a little more seriously (damn, it was so easy....too easy).

I took the plunge the other day and brought Grace and friend Holly to the Ex, they had a blast, and it was pretty fun watching them. You know made me mad though? I took the girls on their first bus ride, and they were so excited. I told the driver when we got on, with a wink and a smile, that it was their first bus ride. I swear, the man GRUNTED at me. Come on, throw the girls a bone, make it a little special for them bus driver! He made me, and the two little girls in my charge feel about a foot tall. The bus driver on the way home on the other hand was a hoot, and made the bus ride more exciting for the girls than any ride at the ex. Takes all kinds, don't it?

The Ex makes me sad, summer is almost over. It also makes me a little excited for cozy sweater and jeans.

If the Pope can rock red shoes like this,I may just have to find a place for religion in my life.

Things that made me like life yesterday:

-I found a dollar store where things are actually a dollar, not "a buck or two...."
-I found a dress to wear to my brother-in-law's wedding this fall on sale ...
-Everyone happily ate tofu burgers for dinner last night (well, Grace protested a little bit....)
-got to drive Jo's car to work (with the sun-roof down) instead of the mini-van, making me feel a little giddy....
-Edie repeated Momma over and over (usually she's a da-da girl.....)
-found some sugar-free ice-cream cones that actually taste great....
-Jo did an impromptu freezer/refrigerator purge and re-organization (mr. freezies are no longer intimate with the fish fillets!)
-Edie pooped before I put her to bed....
-Grace is back to normal and went to bed without a hitch....(but did leave me with this question to think about all night: how do you go to heaven if you are stuck in the ground?)
-and finally, this hilarious video clip (I hate to laugh at other people, but sometimes they just ask for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB84A3zcmVo

The Storm Before the Calm, or, Is it Okay to Not Like Your Own Daughter???


Let me explain. Grace was sooooo bad on Wednesday and Thursday, not just little bit bad, but down right mean. So mean that I felt really bad for the little girl she had over for a play-date. I caught her sticking her tongue out at her, refusing to give her friend the comfy chair when they were playing on the computer and breaking the sacred rule of no swimming in the deep-end without a flotation device. She was downright defiant and mean and I was happy to see her go to bed those nights. I can't say I was a warm and fuzzy Mom those days and it took everything in me not to yell "I don't like you either!" when she yelled it at me first.
Well, mother-guilt kicked in on Friday when Grace turned terribly quiet and vulnerable and had a temperature that eventually rose to 104 degrees. She still insisted on going for her daily swim ("I need to practice everyday if I want to be good Mommy!" and insisted on going to karate, insisted on going to the cottage, insisted on going on a boat-ride and jumping in the lake, all with a fever. Maybe Jo and I are bad parents for letting her do all these things with such a high temperature, but such is the personality of Grace, and you gotta love her spirit. I'm sure she will be an Olympic athlete with this attitude. Me, I automatically curl up on the couch with a blanket and feel sorry myself when I'm sick. Not Grace.

So, some of you know that I work in La Belle Province. Get this, while everyone is enjoying a long weekend this weekend, I have to go to work because QuebecÃc doesn't have the August 4 weekend. Instead, I had to take off St. Jean Baptiste day back in June/July. Quebecers who work in Ontario are given the choice as to which holiday they wish to take, but Ontarioans (sp?) who work in Quebec are not given the choice. Love the freedom to choose on that one.

YouTube video of the day (you WILL laugh if you are a celebrity whore like me:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=UW8ccXmWMzE