How To: Keep Pins and Needles Together

Keep a small magnet in your sewing basket. Pins and needles are all corralled!

Soccer Mom in da House!

If they gave them out to spectators, I would have the world's largest collection of red cards. Why? Because there's only one thing worse than a Soccer Mom - a Soccer Dad.

Did you know the term Soccer Mom is actually in Wikipedia? Soccer Dad is probably somewhere in Dickipedia, because I just spent the entire morning listening to this douchebag yelling at his five-year-old daughter EVERY FOUR SECONDS,

"GET IN THERE! DON'T LEAVE! GET THE BALL! TAKE IT! WHERE ARE YOU GOING!? NO! NOT THERE! COME ON! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR! DO IT!"

Oh my God shut UP! Shut UP! Shut UP!

She's five! One kid on that team was doing somersaults miles away from the action. This is not the World Cup. It's little kids running around on turf.

If he was Materazzi...I was so nearly Zidane.

BAM!

The Tooters

The Big Girl came wandering out of her bedroom one evening while I was watching The Tudors. She asked me what the show was called. I told her. She looked at it for a few minutes, then asked me in all seriousness, "Do they all fart a lot?".

I can now only think of Henry VIII, history's most notorious p-hound, as royally flatulent. And it's a perfect segue into today...when I went back to the doctor. Again.

Have to check in on my little intestines to make sure they're behaving themselves. Unfortunately the only way to do this is to take my blood AND NOT GIVE IT BACK. Check the amylase enzymes and the bilirubin levels. LIVE! IN CONCERT! Amy Lase and Billy Rubin!!! PHWOAR!!!!!! Opening act is the Abdominal Ultrasound....WHAT A SHOW! (Kind of grey and fuzzy, but the soundtrack is trance-tastic!)

But that's not the point. The point is that my regular doctor is on vacation and I had to see a visiting doctor who, tragically, was born without a personality. Dr. Kevorkian there asked me why I had pancreatitis. Well, dude - if I knew that, I wouldn't be sitting here asking for a referral to a nutritionist. "You don't need a nutrionist, you must simply eat food that makes you feel good,".

Taking doctor's orders to heart, a few hours later, I ate an ice cream cone. That made me feel REALLY good.

Hmmm. Nope, doc. Looks like I still got a problem here. Ice cream = I MUST GET TO A BATHROOM NOW. Bad bad bad.

Get me to a nutritionist. I need a professional person to tell me what I can and cannot eat. Not my husband. He has zero qualifications in that department. Except he'll say he doesn't need credentials since he has 'experience' with my endless yippin' about my gut.

Am I lactose intolerant? Can't be because I like cows, and I've always thought they were rather cute, so I'm fully tolerant of lactose. Even homogenized milk - I'm okay with milk being homo - I'm supportive, you know? I am anything but intolerant!

The Name Game: Should Women Change Their Names When They Get Married?

One of my readers is gettin' hitched. Yeah, you girl! (How much do I love that someone I've never met who lives in Australia reads my blog!) So I have to write about something that's most definitely going on in her world.

Namely....ha...the name-change issue. I don't know what your particular bent is on this, but here in The Great White North - it's a divisive topic. One of the great things about life in this century is that Anything Goes. It's almost considered "quaint" that I took my husband's name.

Getting married involved decisions of ground-breaking importance: like, do I wear a stacked heel or a stiletto? And yes, I'll admit that that decision took longer than the one to take my man's name.

Don't get me wrong: I'm still a domineering, ultra-feminist battle axe. Just ask Husband. In fact, almost everyone was astonished to discover that I had decided to take his name. (Just because I'm doing something traditional doesn't mean I'm turning back the work of the Sisters of the Seventies. I appreciate what they did so much that I'm exercising a right they fought for: To Choose. And we need to keep that in mind when we make judgment calls about women who choose differently that we would. It's their choice. But women judging women for their choices in everything from breast-feeding to name-taking is a whole other issue, and one that...sigh...I'll shelve for now. But I warn you: it will involve Kumbaya and group hugs.)

Here's why I chose what I chose: to show that I had switched my allegiance from my father to my husband. I got my father's name when I was born. I had absolutely no choice in the matter. But I did have a choice about who I married. And taking his name was a way to show him that. Yeah, I know - the very act of marrying someone is a major clue that you're committed, but still this was a symbolic thing I wanted to do. No, that I had to do. It sealed the deal as much as the priest's blessing and our vows.

Husband was blown away. And he didn't say, "I'm so pleased that you took my name because it shows a unity," he said, "I'm so pleased that you took my name because, holy crap it's a total pain in the ass to change your name! You must really love me!"

So S, what's it gonna be? Your name or his? Or both? Or should I just piss off and mind my own business?

Putting the Fun in Dysfunctional!

Husband exercises with the religious devotion of people who pray five times a day, making sure they face Mecca as they do it. Me...not so much.

I've been counting "walking the dog" as my sole form of exercise. But lately, I've been meeting up with other dog-owners in the park and drinking tea while the dogs exercise. I'm no expert but I'm pretty sure that watching a workout doesn't count.

So I'm going to do something about this.

No, I'm still not going to join a gym - I mean, let's be realistic here.
I'm not even going to do an aerobics video.
I'm probably not going to lift weights - I have a toddler after all who frequently needs to be lifted and carted, screaming to her room for Time Out.

I've decided on something simpler. I'm going to do housework.

It's gotta be done anyway, right? And there's got to be SOME benefit to having the world's heaviest vacuum cleaner!

I'll let you know how this perspective shift works. I'm about to put the fun in dysfunctional!

The Smell of Sausages and Fear

My dog is racist.

We don't know how it happened, but Dog keeps sneaking out at night to burn crosses and distribute hate propaganda.

It's more embarrassing than his unremitting flatulence.

There's this Sikh man who lives a few houses down the street. Suffice it to say, he does not love dogs. But you see, MY dog goes absolutely insane whenever he sees this poor man walking by our house, which he does with predictable frequency. Consequently, whenever he sees anyone wearing a turban, he becomes wholly unglued.

The other day, we were out for our little walk and he saw an African-Canadian across the street. Well. Dog completely derailed.

"Dude! Chill OUT! Have you ever looked in a mirror?! You ARE black you stupid dog! No, don't look at me all indignant like. That is a brother. Do you hear me?"

I can only imagine what the guy was thinking.

Here's what I've figured out: there are some people who are simply afraid of dogs. Even medium-sized floppy-eared goofballs like mine. If Dog picks up on anything, it's the smell of sausages and fear. (That really would make a great name for a band...). So he knows these two ladies are terrified all of a sudden. So he's all, "What?! Where's it at!? Oh my God! You're freaking out! Now I'm freaking out! Let's get to safety! You figure it out and I'll bark incessantly, okay?!"

And so it goes.

Mutual Exclusivity

Yesterday I woke up and set the intention to end the day with a tidy house and happy children.

An hour later, I wondered if the two were mutually exclusive. Can you have both? No wait - happy normal children? I don't tidy regularly. I binge tidy. I'm like a bulimic domestic. And there's always some huge mess in the kids room because they insist on actually playing with their toys.

I like things quiet. I like things in their place. I am officially Not Someone You Want as a Roommate. Not anymore, that is. I used to be fun. Sort of. I am not well-suited to the unbelievable chaos that comes from a full household - complete with dog.

Husband had departed for a business trip at 5:30am and took all his laptop cables and wires and his astonishing collection of Small Pieces of Paper. And by the end of the day, I did have a tidy house. Happy children? Well, one out of two, ain't bad.

But then it occurred to me: if I lived alone my house would be immaculate. And I'd be very lonely. In the end, I did achieve my intention, but I also got some much-needed perspective.

Technical Difficulties

I need to know how to alter the blog title on my page settings.

It's squiffy.

See how the title is too high? How do I get it to go down a little. Is there a way to do this without writing HTML? Nothing personal, I just hate HTML.

A Womb with a View

As I said, I'm all better now.

Once I found out there was something in there that shouldn't be, I was pretty much obsessed with Getting It Out. And now that it is, I'm so happy I've done the Dance of Joy many times. What's more, I'm recovered enough to be able to do a Dance of Joy without falling over. Well, due to anything other than natural clumsiness.

Modern medicine has my loyal adulation. How much better can it be that it SAVES LIVES? I'll tell you: the only thing better than a life-saving operation is the incredible drugs you get to take.

Mine were good enough that I've no idea how I got from the hospital to home but I know I was naked at some point. (Sounds a bit like Frosh Week at university, no?) Two unidentifiable bruises lead me to believe that I was involved in some unconscious gurney-racing down the corridors. Or something. Perhaps I fell off the table. Or started coming 'round and they had to crack me over the head so I wouldn't wake up. Don't know. Don't care - because all my lovely friends who sent me positive vibrations worked brilliantly. I was honestly up and about two days later and I feel FANTASTIC!

Yes, Sharon - I've taken it to such extremes that I've even de-cluttered my uterus.

Happiness

I'm fully recovered!

I'm happily eating a peach while the sun sets.

I have a sort of tan.

My children kayaked near a pod of orcas today off the coast of Vancouver Island.

Life is grand.

Does this mean I'm only interesting when I'm complaining? Will have to work on that.