friends - a beginning

So I'm sitting here, listening to Antenne Bayern Schlagersahne, checking Facebook posts, playing some Bejeweled Blitz, reading my friend's blog, thinking about what needs doing around the house, and generally wasting good sleep time.

I've been thinking about friends and friendship lately .. I've reconnected with some old friends, I've made some new ones, I've lost some. I've even had Jann Arden refuse to be my friend on Facebook. Go figure. I'm not sure why she wouldn't want me as a friend .. she's got over 4800, what's one more? Jann, why won't you be my friend? We have 4 friends in common!! I'm a nice person, I like your music, I think you're funny, I love that you sent Anne Murray a mannequin's leg. I don't get it.

Anyway, back to my real friends .. many of whom I only "see" through Facebook. It's a nice little networking site. I guess I have a lot of friends but only a few really good ones. That's probably all anyone can ask for.

I've got to get to bed .. I'll get back to pondering friendship at a later date. But seriously, Jann, why won't you be my friend?

2 yrs

I can't believe it's been 2 yrs since I posted anything on here ... not that I haven't had things to ponder, just that there doesn't seem to be time to sit and write it out. How sad is that? I don't think I can handle staying up any later than I already do ... and yet that seems to be the only time there is for getting anything done.

I will try my best to get back to this more regularly .. that's a promise I'm making to myself so it doesn't really matter whether you believe me or not. :)

My son (he's 5 now) has recently been pestering me (and then waiting fairly patiently) for me to make him a new cd with his favourite songs and tv themes on it. I can do that. I can find all the tunes he wants ... and then when I ask him about it he mentally discards quite a few, so it is a longer process than one would think. I should just put a bunch of songs on a cd whether they are the 'right' ones or not .. but I don't like to think that I made a cd that he fast forwards through just to get to the tunes he likes. I want him to feel like shouting "that's my favourite" as soon as he hears the opening strains of every single song on the cd. Too much to ask? I think not.

I'll be back soon.

10.November 2007

we've been trying to keep up with our 3 yr old .. I'm talking mentally ... and it's getting harder everyday. I'm not kidding. There are only so many answers to "and then what?" that I am able to give ... I think it's worse than "why?" as a parent-breaking question. But don't get me wrong, we have a lot of fun times and get to experience a lot of comedy and death-defying feats of acrobatics as well as ground breaking discoveries, both scientific and toy-related. I can't believe how fast the time is running ... he's almost 4. It's been 6 years since my dad died, almost 14 since my brother. 24 years since I graduated from grade 13 and 38 years since I started Kindergarten!! That's not possible, is it?

As you know, I'm not that good at keeping up with the day to day aspect of blogging and am still hoping for the miracle connection between my thoughts happening in my head and them appearing on the computer screen .. surely someone on "America's Next Big Inventor" or whatever that show is called could come up with that ... ? ... couldn't they? Please? I've decided that it might be easier to keep a running commentary (as time permits) in my word-pro program and then take it from there and pick out the best stuff to 'publish.' I'm not sure that will actually help me out at all, since I still have to find the time to sit and type it out, but it beats trying to get it all right while my dial-up connection cuts out with every incoming call.

I still do ponder on things .. like what exactly am I supposed to get from the Casino Rama ads where everyone is walking around with their hands up? If I go to Rama my shoulder joints will lock up? Doesn't that mean that I won't be able to play cards or dice or slot machines? Is this supposed to draw me in to the casino? I don't get it.

We recently had an election in Ontario .. and one of the opposition ads was trying to point out that we still have a shortage of family physicians in Ontario .. but I think they missed the boat .. a couple is standing in front of us and the man is telling me that since he still doesn't have a family doctor, he had to wait 8 hours in the emergency room. If it wasn't an emergency, he shouldn't have gone to the ER!!!!, and it obviously wasn't an emergency, otherwise it wouldn't matter if he had a family doctor or not. If he hadn't wasted the ER docotrs' time then the wait in the ER for those people who really have emergencies wouldn't be as long .. does he think that if he had a family doctor he would just be able to call him/her up and say "hey I'm not feeling well can you see me right now?" Because if he did have a family doctor he probably would have waited longer than 8 hours to see her or him, seeing as how he would have had to book an appointment and all. Perhaps he could have tried a walk-in clinic? Kind of like most people who don't have a regular family physician?

The trouble with writing it out like this is that I will eventually have to break it up into smaller pieces I think, to post. I'll lose all contact with the time continuum (is that spelled correctly?) and my ponderings might become stale. Then again, they might trigger memories, wonderful or otherwise, in anyone who reads them! .. and make people reach back into their memories when they're chatting around the copier. Of course, in today's "instant gratification" society that might be too hard for most people. Oh well, as long as I can get this stuff out of my head it's all good.

There's a commercial running now for a new cable station .. Superchannel .. their website is superchannel.ca . I have to tell you how offended I am by this ad .. shows a home-invasion, with the masked intruder chasing the hapless homeowner all around his house .. until they get into the kitchen and the guy is able to grab the remote and turn on the countertop tv to the Superchannel. Intruder is mesmerised, victim calmly walks away. Since when is a violent crime good ad copy?

There's also a new ad for Mexico .. guy in his office, receives a fairly unintelligible call from an old friend (he may be speaking Spanish but it seems more like a mish-mash .. ) anyway, he looks longingly at photo of last vacation, puts friend on hold, buzzes his secretary and says, "book me 2 tickets to Mexico," then goes back to his call. Now don't get me wrong, I love Mexico as much as the next Canadian that hasn't had violent crime perpetrated against them or a family member while vacationing there, but are we all able to jet off to the sunny south at the drop of a hat? For that matter, to where in Mexico is this guy going to fly? I guess it's just ad copy so it doesn't matter, right?

gotta run .. still more stuff floating around in my head but I can't take anymore right now ... I've scribbled things on the edges of newspapers, then of course the newspaper gets tossed into the bluebox and I can't remember what I was talking about .. sad, huh?

27. September 2007

This is getting really bad ... I had at least 5 things to put down on screen .. and now that I'm sat here I can't think of a single one of them ... post-baby-brain? I don't know. Maybe they'll come to me.



I went grocery shopping yesterday and stopped at the "Nesquik" counter .. looking and looking hoping I would find the 1/3 less sugar option in liquid form .. did .. then promptly did a double take; nearly twice the price of the full sugar version! What's up with that? Why bother giving parents (or anyone else for that matter) a healthier version of your product and pricing it out of reach? So, being who I am, I called Nestlé and asked them what they were thinking. Brad said he couldn't really comment on the prices since they only offer a suggested retail price and the actual pricing is up to the individual store .. so I asked what their suggestion was .. and it was even worse than what Loblaws had it listed at!! (Actually Real Canadian Super Store, but it's still Loblaws to me.) He said "well, I'll pass your comments on to marketing" and I just laughed and told him that marketing depts are the bane of my existence so thanks very much but that won't be very helpful. What I didn't point out to him was that the powdered versions are priced exactly the same .. so what's the problem with the liquids? It costs more to use less liquid invert sugar?


(I never did manage to remember what the other things were ...)

29. August 2007

Just a quick note ... Anna from "the moving company" called me today .. boy am I glad! I hadn't heard from her in a few weeks and I was getting worried. Since Boris stopped calling I need to hear from Anna or I don't know what I'll do if we ever have to move.

Is there any way to educate Canadians on how to use a traffic circle? .. We now have 2 in Ajax, quite cute, very small, only 1 lane each .. not very difficult to navigate .. and yet .... I have been cut off once already, and I've only been in them twice. There's a big yield sign at every entrance .. a hint that maybe you would yield to traffic that's already in the circle. People are coming to a complete stop, waiting for way too long, not signalling their intent once they're in and then ... cutting me off!!! .. I remember driving in Germany at age 17 or so .. no real previous traffic circle experience, other than as a passenger on prior vacations .. and being able to navigate the 4 or 5 lanes of traffic in their roundabouts without any problems. People! it's not that hard.

We had a "work" summer party last week .. (our company doesn't really exist anymore, that's why it's in quotes) .. it was fun, a little surreal but really neat to be able to poke people in person and not just on facebook! Some of them weren't too keen on that but what the hey!

Summer is almost over .. school starts up soon but not for us since Sebastian has to wait another year before entering the jungle that is JK .. fall programmes are being booked, though. Now I just have to decide on which day to put him in swimming and which day in skating. So glad that we now have that tax credit! That'll save us about $13 come April.

Got to run (again) .. dinner to make or at least to order, laundry to fold and wash and dry.

V-out

02. August 2007

it's another scorcher .. one of those days where you just want to find a shady tree, park your car under it and let it idle for a couple of hours .. have a nap with the A/C blasting, the radio on, the seat reclined .. ah, summer.

Okay, so apparently it's not okay for the residential hydro customer/consumer to use electricity during the day. As a stay-at-home parent I am sick and tired of being told to only use my appliances after 8pm. Oh yeah, it's my fault that we almost blew ourselves off the power grid. If only I had slept all day and stayed up all night to do laundry. There aren't that many people who are home during daylight hours ... stop laying the blame for over-consumption on us!!!!!! Let's stop doing little fun/fluff news pieces on the retail shops that blast their A/C while leaving their doors open and actually penalize them for it! I already run my dishwasher overnight, I have my computer and its entourage on a powerbar that I shut off, I use my dehumidifier's water for my plants or laundry, I barely water my garden, let alone my lawn. Leave me alone! I find it really offensive that somewhere down the line, the fact that I stay home to raise my child will cost me more in hydro payments. And as for switching to compact fluorescent bulbs and counting all the money they'll save me (never mind the kilowatts) .. when they do those calculations do they take into account the fact that they cost over $8 a piece?

Has anyone else wondered about that episode on Dora the Explorer where they have to sneak across "el Rio Grande?" .. does that mean that Dora's in the US illegally?

I went shopping at Goodwill yesterday .. spent about $30, the cashier says to me "why didn't you come yesterday? Do you know how much you would have saved?" .. I'm guessing that she was probably intimating that they had had a 50% off day on Tuesday (which I obviously hadn't known about, or I would have been there) ... I'm thinking to myself .."why didn't you call me?" She could have called me. It's sad, but it really does kill me to think that I could have bought Sebastian those 10 or 12 items of clothing for $15 and I paid $30! I feel badly when I complain about high prices at Goodwill or the Sally Ann or Value Village .. but not really that badly and not for a long time. Especially about Value Village because I do find them priced ridiculously high for second-hand items, and they are really only in it for $$$.

Can I ask this .. why do we care, or why should we care, or why do the local "weather" people think we should care about the weather, more specifically the temperature at Pearson International Airport (YYZ) ????? They actually mention it as "we reached a high of 43 degrees today .. at the airport .. ," as if it were a normal part of the city and not its own little micro-climate. Do you think the miles and miles of paved landing strips and all those jet engines have anything to do with the consistently high temperatures there?? Huh? You mean the front of my house that doesn't have Rolls Royce turbines blasting hot jet fumes at it wasn't as hot as it was at Pearson? Who'd have thunk it?

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends against letting children under age 2 watch any television ... The Canadian Pediatric Society's latest position statement is under review and doesn't address kids younger than 2 .. my question regarding this is .. does anyone in the AAP have children under 2? Have they been up 27 hours in a row with a crying baby who miraculously calms down when the wonderbox with the moving pictures comes on? Have they all gotten rid of their TVs? My son watches tv. Sometimes I think he watches too much, sometimes I think he just likes to have it on because he knows it .. he plays with cars or trains or reads books and catalogues, but he likes to have the tv on while he's doing it. When you're a grownup they call it "multi-tasking" but when you're a child it's apparently bad for you. I have friends who are very vocal about the fact that they don't watch tv, but they have no problems with letting their 3 yr old watch dvds, videos or daddy playing PSP. I think I've missed the fine distinction. I can just as easily control what is watched at my house. They rent/buy the dvds of the shows that we watch on tv. Go figure. My son dances to his favourite theme songs, has learned how to memorize things, and has learned about opera, pirates and various laws of physics way before he would have if he didn't watch television. And how else can we guarantee a future audience for Coronation Street if we don't start them off young??

Gotta run. Must pick Spiderman up from daycamp soon (it's Hallowe'en day) and since there were about 4 Spidermen there I might have to take some time to make sure I get the right one.

25. July 2007

We had a wonderful time with our German visitors (family) but of course it was too short of a visit. Sebastian had a ball with his/my cousins and their kids, he can't wait to see them again!

I've had many many things to ponder over the past 2 months .. I think what I really need is something that just writes down the thoughts that I have during the day, it's too hard to remember it all and then get a chance to sit down and type it out .. honestly!

there was a bit on the local news a couple of months ago about big chunks of glass or cement or something that fell off a downtown Toronto skyscraper .. then the tag line for the evening news became .. "crumbling skyscrapers .. are they dangerous?" uhhh .. only if you're hit by the crumble, right? And I can't remember if I wrote that I was wondering what the deal was with mice growing ears ... ?? ... it was on 2 primetime shows in the same week .. one of the CSIs and Nip/Tuck .. co-inky-dink?

is it possible that the big highway signs that tell you how to be safer on the highways are actually taking your attention away from the road???? By the time I read 2- 3 lines of text I may have not noticed that cars were braking up ahead! How is that good for us?

I've figured out that the only way to get this done at least once a week is to get up at about 5:30 am and spend some time at the computer ... but I'm having trouble making that happen. I'll try to be better, I'll try to make it work. I promise .. myself. :)

V-out