Alrighty then

I had a bit of a kerfuffle getting back on my blog. There was some issue about signing in with a google account. Effed me up for a few days there, but I'm back.

Goooolllly, I had the worst cold this weekend. It was the craziest thing. Woke up Friday morning sick as a dog, died a little more each day over Saturday and Sunday and woke up this morning, Monday, at about 89% healed. The Employment gods messing around with me again, I guess. I never take time off work when I'm sick but lately I've been saying, "Next time I'm sick I'm going to take a couple of free days off like everyone else does". But no. I get sick Friday and I'm better Monday. It's so not fair.

I did take a couple of days off last week, though, just because it's pretty slow right now and I have so many holiday days to use up. I went in to work on Tuesday morning at 8:30 and decided to come home an hour later. I went into my boss' office and announced that I was going home for 2 days. He said, "Oh no! Are you feeling sick?" (oh, how prophetic) and I said, "No, I feel just perfect. I'm just going to go home and clean up my storage room". And he said, "Oh. Okay.".

Tuesday and Wednesday I went mad, cleaning our computer room upstairs and the storage room downstairs (I have 2 adult daughters who have both moved in and out of this house twice, leaving copious amounts of crap behind with each move) and I collected about 8 bags of garbage which I promptly tossed in Mr X's truck box so he could haul them to the dump. There were bank statements and bills from about the last 5 years, old school notebooks, junky clothes, broken candles, things I honestly didn't want to recycle; I just wanted to rid my life of. (So sorry Al Gore; forgive me just this once.)

So, anyway, on Thursday night Mr X has to go play hockey and of course needs his truck. It's full of garbage and the dump is not open in the evenings. We have these vile garbage bins in the alley -- 1 bin for every 6 houses or some such poo -- and Mr X decides he's going to just toss everything in a bin. So I go along to assist. Ah, but not OUR bin. He chooses someone else's bin, for whatever reason.

Picture us driving stealthily up the alley in the dark. It's Thursday evening. We stop, open the bin (oh! it's empty!) and begin the toss. Suddenly I see him in the window of a nearby house. Looking at us. The Garbage Nazi. He has both hands at the top of his window; curtains pulled back, all aggressive and manly. He Sees All. I'm afraid. I want to leave. Mr X keeps throwing things in the bin. I get back in the truck. The light comes on in back of the house. He's coming out. He comes out of his yard, up to the truck. Mr X says hello and keeps tossing bags. The bin is full. The Nazi looks at our licence plate and goes back in his house. He's not as brave as he appears. Still, I was getting panicky. Mr X wasn't fazed in the least, but I had visions of bylaw officers and hefty fines running through my head for hours afterward.

As it turns out, nothing happened; at least not yet, but really, I suppose, other than the obscene amount of trash, we didn't do anything wrong. We aren't actually assigned a bin and this particular bin was on our street, but still. I am Canadian, Mennonite, female, a Virgo and a younger (but not youngest) child. I'm born guilty.

And when you think about it, really. Who sits and watches their neighbourhood garbage bin from their window and takes the licence number of someone who dumps therein? Someone who needs a hobby, that's who. I think he'll be the next neighbour I curse. The last one died. But that's another story, for another day.

Sunday ramblings

This has been a loverly weekend! Just hanging out around home with Mr X, but it was tonnes o' fun.

Friday night Nyk dropped Chaeli off for awhile while she went shopping, so that was fun. Yesterday Mr X went to a snowmobile rally an hour or so away for a few hours and I cleaned a bit and watched Little Miss Sunshine. I loved it so much I made Mr X watch it with me last night. It amazes me that some people don't love that movie. I adored it.

This morning we had a heated discussion about blood diamonds or something profound like that, did the Myers-Briggs tests online (Mr X pulled out ISFJ and I was ENFJ, though I don't think that's what I usually am) then went out for brunch.

This afternoon Mitchie and I watched Miami Ink (I still want my tattoo) while Mr X worked on a jigsaw puzzle, I found some shoes on ebay that I must have, and I had a fabulous talk with my sister on the phone.

Nyk came over this evening to discuss wedding invitations and she and Mr X laughed at me because the Steve Irwin show made me want to cry. I see a tragedy; they see a guy who played with fire and ended up fried. Wah. When she left, we went downstairs to work out. Now we're winding down and I'm trying to decide how high I'm willing to go on the Pradas on ebay. And I'm on my second bag of Goodies this weekend. Work out, eat a bag of Goodies. Work out, eat a bag of Goodies. Maybe I should just start smoking again. Hah. Don't think so.

Chaeli Rides Again

She's a Rhinestone Cowgirl! (Click on the pic for a closer look.)

Mr X captured Chaeli with my c'boy hat on yesterday. I think it's a good look for her. The hat says, "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses", a souvenir of our trip to see Willie Nelson last year. She spotted it on the shelf in our bedroom and wanted to wear it. yeeha. So cute. She is just way too much fun. We had her while Nyk worked yesterday and, as always, it was so hard to let her go at the end of the day.

It's cold as a bugger outside today. Mr X and I went out for brunch at the casino (the best Sunday brunch in town), threw a few quarters in the slot machines which we promptly lost forever, and came home for the rest of the day. It's supposed to be warmer tomorrow, but they always say that. Oh well, we had a gorgeous summer -- I'll accept whatever this winter wants to throw at us in exchange for a nice summer.

It is so fun having Mr X home all the time. We've been exercising together lots (I always did, but it's nice to have company) and we even usually watch the same TV shows. Sometimes he just can't bear another minute of, say, Dr. Phil, and he goes downstairs, but usually we find something we both like to watch. It's also really fun talking to someone who replies with something more intelligent than woof or meow. I was honestly kind of nervous how we'd manage when he quit his away job, but it's really been great. We drive each other crazy a little bit sometimes, but that's okay. We always manage to like each other at the end of the day.

Right now I'm watching Passionate Eye; it's about spelling bees tonight. These kids are crazy. I do not know how they can spell without writing things down. I can hardly spell my name without writing it down (however, I'm an excellent speller when I do write it down; even words other than my name) -- I could take some lessons from these little gaffers.

I have nothing to say tonight. All I really wanted to do was post the picture of Chaeli, haha. I'll try to come up with something more intelligent later this week.

The Storm of the Century

Happy Birthday to my slightly older sister today!

Well, we're in blizzard hell here in Nowhere, Saskatch, today. It would all be very exciting if I was actually allowed to stay home and watch it from the window. However, I have no excuse to not go outside other than an intense dislike for 90 km/hr wind gusts, so I actually did go to work today. The storm has been dubbed The Blizzard of 2007 which is really not so impressive considering 2007 is but 10 days old; not too much to compare it with so far.

Mr X was unable to go to work because every single highway in the vicinity was closed last night and all day today and he has to drive 45 minutes to work, so he was in charge of Snow Clearing and Chauffering. He is the master of both, as it turns out.

I had the most unpleasant conversation at work this morning. I'm still pissed off. Somehow we started discussing the contribution of First Nations people to our society. It went from ugly to pukeworthy in about 3 sentences. I shouldn't be surprised -- it's certainly not the first time such things have come up in my office. But this time someone actually said, "Just think what's going to happen in a few years. They are mulitiplying far faster than we are and soon there will be more of them than there are of us. What if they start running for office and voting for each other -- they'll be running the country! Then where will we be?!" That's a paraphrase because my head was exploding and I probably don't remember it exactly. I asked her if she'd ever heard of apartheid. I said lots of other things, too. Can you even imagine living with that kind of prejudice around you every single day? Good grief. It makes me sick. The thing is, I really like the woman who was saying those things. She's generally an open-minded, decent woman. That almost makes it worse. Gah. So depressing.

Al Gore is Hot

So, tonight is appetizer night. Then we'll exercise. How silly. We should be having celery sticks then exercising. Actually, I'm having some low-fat egg rolls so that shouldn't be too scary. However, Mr X made some haystacks (unbaked chocolate oatmeal cookies) so I most definitely will have to wear those off on the elliptical.

Did I mention that we moved the bowflex, the elliptical and the exercise bike downstairs so we can have a table in our dining room like regular people? It actually works out rather nicely. We have a tv with all the channels down there so it's not too bad. Puddy is afraid of the basement; we're not really sure why, but he just lays at the top of the stairs and looks sad until we come up again and he just freaks out if he accidentally finds himself downstairs. Maybe our ghost is freaking him out.

It's fun having Mr X join me on the exercise train this year, especially since Mitchie abandoned me a few months ago. She still seems to be losing weight though and looks like a toothpick by now. Don't know how she's pulling that off. I think it's the beer and ciggie diet. Not recommended for 40-somethings, though.

Mr X had a bit of excitement this week. I think it was Tuesday noon he phoned me and said he'd just been in an accident at work. He's driving a semi these days, so accidents are scary. He was turning left off the highway and someone decided to pass him. The guy was driving a small car, but miraculously just hit the tire at the back of the cab. Mr X said if the guy had hit him a split second later he would have gone under the trailer and the top of the car would have been ripped off. It's the first time Mr X has ever been in an accident so it was a bit freaky. I'm so thankful everyone is okay. It sure reminds you how life can change in just a split second.

We had a bit of a 'do with Chaeli this week, too. Her erstwhile father decided he was going to come pick her up for the weekend. He hasn't seen her since August. Good grief. Fortunately his plan was to take her to his sister's house for a family Christmas. His sister is a decent person and has a son Chaeli's age, so it actually went quite well. We were so worried about how Chaeli would react to him picking her up -- would she even know who he was?-- but it was okay. She seemed happy enough to see him and he returned her on time and in one piece, so I guess that's as much as we could hope for. Actually, we were hoping he would just go away forever, but it seems that's not going to happen. Oh well, the more people Chaeli has loving her, the better, right? Maybe he'll actually start paying Nyk, too. Time will tell. It's just SO good to have her back home. We all missed her so much!


Mr X and I watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth this afternoon, something I think everyone should do. It was really quite inspiring. We were talking earlier today how easy it is in small town Saskatch to ignore the whole reduce/recycle phenom, but how it's still important to do what we can in our own little circle. Our recycling program in this town is very lame, but we'll try!