In like a lion...?

Well, finally the end of February today. I took the garbage out just now and it feels like 100 below. I will be soooo happy when this winter is over. It's been a long, hard one and it's not nearly over yet.

It's way past my bedtime but I didn't start my workout until 9pm so it'll be a late one tonight. Mr X obliged me by coming downstairs to "be with me" when I was working out, but instead of working out he watched me for awhile then fell asleep on the sofa. He's still there and I'm upstairs watching Jon Stewart by myself.

Well, we celebrated Chaeli-bean's 2nd birthday in style. I didn't get any great pics of the party, but she had fun and got lots of goodies. We bought her an outfit and a water table for the summer. It looks pretty cool -- it's designed for sand and water (different sections) and it has a cover and an umbrella. She loves water so Mr X thought she'd love one of these.

Nyk had a big week (besides the birthday). She is now The Assistant Manager at Timmie's. She gets to wear a black shirt and a little scarf. Hah. A scarf. That is SO not Nyk. hee. She's been working so hard to get this and they promoted her a bit earlier than she expected. I'm so happy for her. She got a healthy raise and promises of another raise in 3 months. Not only that, but Mr X did her income tax and she gets a couple thousand dollars back. I'm sooooo happy for her. She works her ass off, so it's really nice to see her get a couple of breaks.

My only excitement lately is that I made a couple of lasagnas for Chaeli's party and they were actually yummy! I love lasagna but for some reason I've been unable to create an edible one for a few years. I think I'm back on track. Yeay. I'm going to try again soon to see if my slump is actually over or if I just got lucky for once. This weekend, however, will be turkey weekend. It's on sale and I'm in the mood for turkey sandwiches. Yum.

Oh, and I cut the tip of my baby finger off a couple of days ago. That was quite exciting. It bled like a son-of-a-b. I was cutting a bagel at lunch with a giant knife (the same knife that caused a 5-stitch gouge in my thumb a couple of years ago) and I sliced my pinkie. Oops. Right from the tip of my finger through the nail on one side. Nice. I went back to work with 3 bandaids and a kleenex wrapped around and it was still bleeding through the kleenex. But the nice thing is that I heal like Claire on Heroes and it's looking not too bad already. Bizarro.

Work has been insane lately. I had lots of closings for today and tomorrow, but I think they're under control. I'm madly working on April 1st closings now so I'm not too overwhelmed at once. Real estate around here is so crazy lately. I should threaten to quit and see if they offer me a huge raise. Hah. As if. ;p

Happy Family Day Long Weekend!

Woohoo, gotta love political bribery. Our esteemed Premier has been bestowing gifts on us lately, presumably signalling an upcoming election. One of the perks is that we now have a February holiday just like our enviable neighbour to the West (my beloved home province, Alberta) and this is the weekend. And next month they are offering attractive rebates on our car insurance. Whee! Vote for Lorne! (I voted for him last time -- I should get extra presents, but no. All I get for that is a disgusted grunt and the cold shoulder from my father-in-law and a hard time from Mr X. I have my reasons and will not apologize, for all you NDP haters out there.)

Today was a balmy -9C so Mr X and I bundled up Chaeli and the dogs and headed out for an hour of sun and fun. We hooked the sled up to Puddy's harness and he pulled Chaeli to the park while Charlotte danced around trying to trip me again. (Charlotte has tripped me several times while out walking but I'm usually wearing shorts to maximize the damage. My knees have scars so I can tell the story with pictures. Mr X cautions me to wear a helmet and knee pads at all times.) It was so fun! Chaeli zoomed down the slide with me and Puddy went down with Mr X. The joy! I had to tie Charlotte to the slide at one point because some kids arrived with their hateful little snappy dog and I think she almost had a stroke. Poor Charlotte. She's a rescue dog and she has terrible issues with being tied up. She was just frantic, poor little thing. So, we had to cut our outing short and headed home. I carried Chaeli home on my shoulders as a compromise for having to leave the park and she kept looking back and sing-songing, "Puddy's coming!" and looking beside us and saying "Good dog!" to Charlotte because that's what I was saying. Being outside is so much fun!

Today we bought a skidoo helmet for moi, and Mr X and I are planning to go on a skidoo day tomorrow. We're going to take a thermos of coffee (because I can't be far from coffee for more than 1 hour) and a little picnic and we'll hit a trail and ride until we feel like turning back. I can hardly wait. I hope it's a nice day, but judging by the amount of clothes we're planning to wear it probably doesn't much matter.

On Monday, our Big Day Off, we're hoping to go to Saskatoon to birthday-shop for Chaeli. She'll be 2 on the 24th and we must buy her the perfect gift(s). Don't know what yet, but the only option we have here is Walmart and I've already bought everything there.

So, fun weekend ahead. I'll be back with stories if I don't fall off the skidoo in front of a Greyhound bus. Stranger things have happened.

P.S. The Pradas arrived. They are spectacular. I wish you all had the same shoes. I love them.
P.P.S. If you haven't seen the movie A Scanner Darkly, do it. Trust me. Mr X and I just saw it and were blown away. Go now, get it.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings...

These are a few of my least favorite things:

-Heavy socks with dress pumps. Don't do that.
-Black nylons/pantyhose. Is there ever a right time for black nylons? Hint 'o black, nightshade, even sheer black, do it up. But not black black. Especially not with non-black shoes. Don't do that, either.
- I dislike that 6 jujubes have 100 calories. No fat, granted, but why 100 calories? I can easily eat 30 jujubes at one time. I don't even want to do the math on that one. Something yummy needs to be guilt-free. It should be jujubes. Who can I write about this?
- Drivers who don't stop for pedestrians. It's -30, -72 with the wind chill. You are in a car; she is standing on the corner (outside, notice) waiting to cross. I am waiting, stopped on the road, in my car for her to cross, as is one other driver opposite me. Why do all the other approaching vehicles not see what we are anticipating by our waiting? Just stop already and let the poor woman cross. If you can't see pedestrians waiting at corners, don't drive. You're pissing me off.


But on a good note, I have Prada shoes on the way. I ordered them from ebay last week. I'm so very excited. I had placed my MAXIMUM bid (too much) and lost by a mere $3. I was disappointed because they are so pretty, but a bit relieved because I have too many shoes and these are a bit unnecessary/extravagant. Imagine my surprise when I got an email a week later telling me the original high bidder was unable to pay because she is overseas and couldn't find a way to get money to the US. So they were mine if I wanted them. Yes, I wanted them. I can hardly wait. Lucky for me, Mr X had to buy a new coat for work that was about double what my shoes cost so the guilt was short-lived. They are a bargain in comparision. Hah. We do what we have to do to justify.
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I'm still alive!

Yikes, it's been ages since I wrote in here. I think I'm finally over the life-sucking illness that was dragging me down for the past couple of weeks. Tonight is the first time I've worked out in over 2 weeks, and it felt pretty good so I think I'm pretty much better. I haven't missed any work, but luckily for me it's been slow and I just putter away, attempting to look busy as I'm tucked away in my lovely office.

My mom has been calling, leaving messages like, "I'm wondering if something has happened to you or if you've gone away because I haven't talked to you for so long", but the truth is I just haven't had the energy to call her back. It wouldn't be so bad if I could just hear her and let her ramble on, but it's an hour of straining, straining, trying to hear what she's saying so I can make semi-intelligent sounds in response. I think she moves the phone away from her mouth because when I say I can't hear her it improves for a few minutes, then we're back to a whisper again. It's agonizing. I am such an evil daughter. meh.

We had surprise company this weekend; Mr X's sister and her husband. It was good to see them, but it felt like the weekend just zipped by without much being accomplished. We had Chaeli both days for awhile too, and that always keeps us from doing much of anything else. Oh well, long weekend coming up. Perhaps we can actually get something done on a long weekend.

Puddy's birthday is coming up on the 15th. Our old brown dog. Well, he's only 5 but he acts like he's 15. He limps and he has white hair on his chinny-chin-chin. Every year on Puddy's birthday we go through a drive-through and get him a Birthday Burger. No cheese. And I always tell the drive-through person that it's his birthday. They usually say, "Happy Birthday" but sometimes they appear unimpressed and don't say anything at all. Usually that's at Burger King. Go figure. This year Mr X will actually be able to come along. Charlotte doesn't get to come because if she eats in the car she hurls. That kind of ruins the party, for me anyway.

Mr X and I are watching Jon Stewart is burning down Anna Nicole Smith tonight. It's completely irreverent but very funny. It's called Death of a Person. It feels almost wrong laughing at someone's demise, but they are just too much. Oops? It's hard to know how to honour a life of phoneyness and opportunism, I suppose.

Welcome, February!

Tonight is Mr X's hockey night so I have a few minutes before bed to do some posting here. I heard on the radio yesterday that bloggers falsely feel they are changing the world, so here I am again, wasting my time on non-world-saving babble. I feel so hollow and misguided.

Tomorrow is Friday already -- where did this week go? We don't yet have any plans for the weekend. Chaeli will be with her padre so we won't have her on Saturday. Maybe we'll do something around the house. I'm still feeling like crapola but I expect I'll live, so no whining about that. We're still looking for acreages closer to Mr X's new job, but slim pickins so far. Perhaps we'll buy a Timmie's and go for a drive to see if anything looks promising.

I'm reading a new Anne Rice book called Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt. It's quite interesting and oddly disturbing. The narrative is through Jesus' eyes, age 7, as the family travels from Egypt to Nazareth. It was a tad violent last night, but violent from a 7-year-old perspective, so not gruesome or anything, but I had the weirdest dreams. I don't even know what I was dreaming about, but when I got up to let the dogs out at about 2am I was totally freaked out by fleeting images of Roman soldiers slashing and pillaging . Usually when the dogs go out I just go to the sofa for 10 minutes or so then let them back in and go back to bed, but last night I needed to feel Mr X nearby so I went right back to bed and snugged in. So weird. I still don't know what had me so creeped out, but I hope it doesn't come back tonight. I hate bad dreams. wah.

It's just crazy how much I'm loving Mr X being home every night. I honestly was terrified that we'd drive each other batty, but I can hardly wait to see him when I'm driving home from work every day. I totally remember why I agreed to marry him in the first place; I certainly wasn't in the mood to get married, but I just could not imagine not being around him all the time.

Just for that, I think I'll surprise him and make his sandwiches for him tonight since he won't get home until after midnight. awww. I'm so nice.