Yummy Mommy

Par-tay!

Well, it was my husband's birthday on the 19th, and as my parents are away (in Thailand, the Phillipines, Burma, China and Taiwain, the bums) we are using their large house with large paved parking area with huge yard light to host a "road hockey" birthday party tonight. Could we be any more Canadian? At least the snow is gone this time. For our New Year's Eve road hockey party, we had to (well, husband had to) scrape the snow and ice off the driveway, a task which took about three days. The downside of no snow is there's no where to stick your Molson Canadians to keep them cold!

To be honest,  I don't drink Molson myself, but I do love this commercial!

Murphy's law?

I am really curious about the exact nature of the cosmic law that dictates that the utterance of a phrase that resembles "This is going well" must be immediately followed by some sort of  disaster. Is it Murphy's Law? The Universe putting us in our place? Zeus/Shiva/God or whoever letting us know where we really stand? It has happened to us numerous times; we will be right on time for our morning blast off, for example, and one of us stupidly will say "Hey, we're really on time this morning", and... boom... the next thing you know, we are 45 minutes late going "What the hell happened?" We have ALMOST learned not to say stuff like this, but once in awhile, we still let something silly slip. Case in point: I got Chloe this bead set for Christmas; the box claimed that it had 15 000 beads (I didn't bother to count them). Not the usual gift for a 2 1/2 year, but she is very focussed, and has spent hours in the past playing with beads without making a giant mess. My husband, however, just HAD to say, yesterday, "She has really been good about not making a mess with those beads." Sure enough, about 10 minutes later, there were beads spread all over the entire house, as if a tiny bead shrapnel-bomb had gone off in our living room. This is 17 days after Christmas, 17 days where she totally kept those beads under control. My vacuum and I curse you, gods-that-make-bad-things-happen-
when-someone-points-out-that-good-things-are-happening.

Gettin' some...

... snow, that is. I actually managed to fanagle my life so that I could spend a couple of hours on our local ski hill snowboarding today. It was beautiful up there, a nice change from the incredibly crappy weather we have been experiencing lately. Check it out!

Lovely!

I need a makeover!

Okay- I have to admit it- I've reached that stage in my life where I can no longer, by any means, call myself a "girl". I am a woman. Almost, dare I say it, a... MIDDLE AGED woman. Whew. That actually hurt less than I thought it would. The problem is, I am still attracted to teenager clothes- you know, hoodies, cute little tank tops, Daisy Dukes (just kidding about the Daisy Dukes). I'm just one of those people who never knows how to dress appropriately. I'm the one wearing the dress at the casual BBQ while everyone else is wearing shorts, or jeans when everyone else is dressed up. If I had endless financial resources I think I could do a better job of dressing myself, but...that's not the case. Sigh. I need a makeover. Why doesn't one of my friends submit my name to one of those makeover shows??? Not Extreme Makeover or whatever it's called, I'm not willing to go under the knife. I just need someone to show me how to dress appropriately for my age and for different situations. Oh yeah, and pay for my new wardrobe. That would be awesome! I don't need to look like a supermodel (good thing too!) I just want to look pulled together. Is that so much to ask?

Check the facts, ma'am!

Ok people, here's some good advice for free...if you are thinking (or stressing) about making a huge life altering decision, such as, oh, I don't know, moving to the middle of nowhere to get a job and pay off your student loans, check the facts first!  I finally got around to calling the student loan people to find out about the loan-forgiveness program, and, what do you know? Teaching does not qualify for the program anywhere in BC. Well, shucks. We have been thinking about this for about 6 months now, coulda saved myself alot of thinking if I'da just checked into it right off the bat. Let that be a lesson to me! So we will be probably be staying put and paying off the student loans the old-fashioned way- one penny at a time!

Decisions, decisions...

One of the reasons I haven't had much to write about so far this fall is that I did not get another teaching contract this year (yet, I add hopefully) It is very discouraging to have spent 5 1/2 years of my life, and accumulated a giant student loan, and be unable to get a job. I am on the T.O.C list (a teacher-on-call, or substitute teacher, or supply teacher, depending on where you are from) but apparently not many teachers call in sick in September (fair enough, as it is the first month of the school year, and you want to save those sick days for when you are feeling REALLY burnt out, like in May!) So I have been playing house mom, doing housework, driving the kids around etc. I do love it, but it is not helping our financial situation at all, especially since because daycare is so hard to find around here, and I didn't know when I'd be working in the fall, I had to book Chloe in to daycare full time, and we have to pay for her spot whether I'm working and need to put her in there or not. Also, being on call bites, as you can't really have a life.

Because of this situation, we are seriously reconsidering relocating to Northern BC for a few years- there are lots of jobs that pay better than down here, and there is also a Northern Living tax break, and for some careers, they will forgive student loans, up to 1/3 a year for three years, if you take a job in a remote community. So, we could be in a much better financial situation if we relocate - there is no way on Earth we will have those loans paid off in three years if we stay here! So what's the problem? Well, we love it here, our kids love it here, we are right next door to my parents on a beautiful piece of property, this is where we want to grow old...*sigh*. It's SO hard to know what to do! Does anyone out there have any words of wisdom on relocating for a job??? Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Sweet summertime...

Excuse me while I dust the cobwebs off of poor old Yummy Mommy here! I've just been so busy and...yeah, excuses excuses. I think that, rather than feeling guilty about neglecting my blog, I am going to take an official hiatus, probably until September. I may post occasionally if I get really inspired, but mostly we will be so busy that it probably won't happen. In September I will do a "What I Did This Summer" style post like they make you do at the beginning of the school year. Here is a list of things I will be reporting on:

• Next weekend, the 20th and 21st, we are headed to Cortes Island for the annual arts festival. Hubby is playing in a couple of bands and we have a babysitter lined up for Saturday night- yeehaw!
• Then the weekend after I head to Calgary ALONE (meaning, without kids) as a friend who lives there is about to have her first baby- exciting! Hopefully I will get to Banff too to see some friends from when I used to live there, back in the pre-kid days. *sigh*
• August 11, hubby and I are headed back to Cortes Island ALONE for our anniversary, which is actually on the 12th. My wonderful mother has agreed to take the kids for an overnight as a friend of hubby's is having a party over there!
• August 18 and 19 I hope to attend this music festival in beautiful Cumberland, BC.
• August 20th and 21st Brodie and I, along with my brother, his girlfriend and some friends, are headed to Tofino, honestly one of the most beautiful places on earth, for our first surfing lessons.
• August 27th, 28th and 29th- heading to Nuchatlitz Island for some West Coast fun!
• Hopefully in amongst all this I will be able to keep attending most of my pilates classes (which I LOVE) on Monday and Wednesday evenings.
• Soccer practice starts up again in August, so I am hoping to make it to some of those.
• Don't  really have plans  for the long weekend, but I'm sure something will come up! 

Hope your summer is as full of fun!

There's no place like home!

Ah, home! Nothing like going away for the weekend to make you appreciate it, as we did this weekend to visit some friends who live on a small Island near here. It was fun, for sure, especially for the kiddies, as they have three around the same ages as ours, plus kittens, chicks, piglets, and turkeys as well as a giant friendly dog. The island is also beautiful, with a lovely lake to swim in, a nice restaurant to eat in, and a lively soccer game every Saturday that I participated in. Unfortunately the "lively soccer game" took place in at midday in the blazing sun in a field completely surrounded by trees so not a breath of breeze can cool off the over-heating participants. Plus everyone who plays is a total soccer FANATIC so the game went on for 2 hours (I admit I quit after and hour and a half) This made me too tired to stay long at the BBQ we had been invited to that night on the most beautiful piece of oceanfront property I have ever seen, so I retreated to our friend's place with a few of the kiddies as an excuse and fell asleep before they did. Even with all the sleep, I am super tired and so looking forward to sleeping in our own bed tonight! That Dorothy really knew what she was talking about!

Losing someone makes you think. I know that's a cliché, but there often is a reason things are clichés; and that is that they are true. I think that when you lose someone special, it should be a catalyst for thought and reflection on life- it gives meaning to the life and passing of that person. A big part of the reason this reflection occurs is that the death of someone close brings you face to face with your own mortality, especially if that person was not particularly old, or if the passing was a unexpected. Again, it is a true cliché that you never know when your time will be up. So a useful thing to do when someone dies is to look at your own life, and commit to losing those behaviors you repeat despite the fact that they are self-destructive or unhealthy or just plain silly. It's the least we can do to honour those we have lost. Here is my list, in honour of Bob:

• I would like to let go of attachment to material things
• I would like to learn to RELAX and go with the flow
• I would like to be more forgiving of others
• I would like to do more volunteer work
• I would like to learn to not take things personally
• I would like to find inner peace
• I would like to let go of concern about what others think of me
• I would like to articulate my appreciation of my loved ones, everyday, all the time
• I would like to be infinitely patient
• I would like to reach out to those who need someone to reach out to them
• I would like to leave the world a better place than when I came in to it
• I would like to stop feeling competitive with others

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Thanks for reading!

Insomnia Sux

Lately, I have been suffering from a little (I hope!) bought of insomnia, in which I wake up at about 4 AM (in fact, its amazing how close to 4 AM it almost always is- usually within 15 minutes either way) and can't shut my brain off and go back to sleep. This will last anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, in which case I will get about 1/2 hour of sleep before the GD alarm goes off! Annoying! On those days, I am, of course completely brain dead at work, plus my eyes are usually all red, both of which are also signs of a chronic pot smoker! So, I slam the coffee and the eye drops, and have the urge to tell everyone about my lack of sleep, because "chronic pot smoker" is not a label that gets you far as a high-school teacher. (Although I recall that, when I was in school, we were pretty well aware that some of our teachers "partook" (is that a word?) on a regular basis. But I digress!

I thought it would be interesting, and maybe cathartic in a way that will RELEASE these thoughts and so banish the insomnia, if I made a top ten list of thoughts that keep me awake at 4 AM. So here they are, in no particular order:

1.   Money. Well, that one's probably in order, because of course it is
      everyone's top, worry,right?
2.   On the same subject, my and my husbands GIANT student loans.
3.   Any parenting infraction I may have committed that day.
4.   Mistakes I made on the soccer pitch, if it was a game day.
5.   My job. Specifically, did I remember to book so and so to
      write the provincial (see previous post), or I forgot to call so
      and so's parent back, and so on. Funnily enough, I remember 
      doing this when I was a waitress too, I would wake up in the
      middle of the night and remember that table 4 had asked me for
      a tea, and I never brought it to them. Oh, the guilt!
6.   Another popular job theme is "Will I have a job next year?" The
      answer right now seems to be "No."
7.   Trying to think up clever things to blog about!
8.   Any arguments I may have had with hubby that day.
9.   Guilt about any housework chores I may have avoided that day.
10. Random things such as: "It's time to get the oil changed in the
     car." and "Sammy and Titi (the cat and dog) are due for their
     shots.", "Where the heck did my sunglasses go." You know,
     stuff like that.

So...what keeps you up at night?