The end of an era

It's like saying good-bye to an old dear friend. I grew up with Michael and Liz, cried buckets over the death of Farley - a real hero (and I'm crying again just remembering him climbing to shore after saving April from the water) and celebrated milestones with the whole Patterson family.

For Better or For Worse, it is over.

4 more hours!

Till my family is HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I knew that being apart for 9 days was going to be hard and lonely and long. I didn't think it would be THIS hard or THIS lonely or THIS long.

I can't wait to hug and hold them both!!!

What really sucks is that they are landing at 2:00 AM, won't be home till nearly 3:00 and I have to work in the morning. GRRRRR!

At least it's a 3-day weekend!!!

Scrapbooking

So with Hilary and Liam away, I have commandeered the dinning room table! All of my scrapbooking CRAP (as Hilary lovingly calls it) is spread out, the chairs have been moved and I am IN THE ZONE!

I have only gotten 14 pages done, a far cry from my goal of 45! And I only have 2 evenings left. Now if I didn't have to go to work every day................

I guess I will have to schlepp all of my stuff back to it's storage space and try to get caught up another time.

You can check out the pages I've done in the Flickr set off to the left. I don't have a scanner so they are digital pictures of the pages so I'm sorry that some of them are fuzzy.

But here is my favourite of the week: Liam and his Great-Grandma (my Grandma)

Cooking is SOOO not my thing!

I have now been on my own for 6 days, as Hilary and Liam are in BC visiting her folks. 4-5 times a day for the 2 weeks before she left Hilary would remind me of what was in the freezer, suggest meal plans, make sure I knew how to cook something.

And I poo-pooed her. After all, I'm 38 years old. I moved out of my parents place 19 years ago. Surely I could manage a full 9 days of making my own meals.

Turns out..... not so much!

• Wednesday: Grabbed a Sub from the mall
• Thursday: Picked up spinach dip and mini-pitas from the grocery store on the way home from work.
• Friday: I have no recollection of what I ate last Friday..... I think I had an avocado and the rest of the spinach dip
• Saturday: I did cook myself a steak and boiled some baby potatoes!
• Sunday: Went out for dinner with Hilary's cousin and his fiancee
• Monday: I cooked again! I BBQd a burger, shucked myself some corn and steamed some beans. a real meal!

So now I have Tuesday-Thursday to manage. I seem to recall Hilary mentioning something about lasagna in the freezer....

note to self: Look in freezer.

Liam's newest trick

I thought it was the parents who were supposed to climb the walls?

Best Friends

I have some of the BEST FRIENDS in the whole world. Folks that you can call up in the middle of the night and they will be there. People who help you move on long weekends. Friends who come stay with you after you have surgery and empty your drains. That kind of best friends.

Today I was blessed with help from 2 of these best friends once again. Hilary and Liam are away in BC on vacation, so I decided this would be the perfect time to move some furniture around. Specifically move Liam's bed downstairs to the spare room and move the bunk bed from the spare room to his room. Seems simple enough.

I knew that I could not move the beds by myself, so I called up my friends Sandy and Jason. Sandy just announced that she is 12 weeks pregnant (YEAH!) and wasn't feeling up for furniture moving, but Jason volunteered. Within an hour and a half of his arriving both beds were in their new locations, safely and securely put back together. (I made Jason climb up on the bunk bed and bounce about to ensure it wouldn't collapse.)

In order for the bunk bed to fit in Liam's room I had to take down his ceiling fan and put back the original light.

Ceiling fans + Bunk Beds = decapitated child *

I put up the ceiling fan, so I didn't think I would have any problems getting it down. The light itself is a simple 2 wire job - one black, one white. Basic electrical stuff says connect the blacks to blacks and the whites to white and Presto Mundo you have light!

Which I did and I did have light. Small problem though, I couldn't turn the light off. It was somehow not connecting to the light switch. Hmmmmmm.

I tried various combos like white-black and black-white but had the same problem because the box in the ceiling had an extra black wire and a white wire that someone had added black tape to. And since I'm alone, it was starting to be a lot of work to climb up the step stool, rewire everything, go downstairs, flip the breaker on, go back up, curse the damn light, go back downstairs, flip the breaker off and repeat.

So I called my great friend Brandon. Brandon is a carpenter so I figured he had to have some experience with this stuff. He is my go to guy for all things broken in my house. heck, he even came over and built our deck for us 2 years ago.

We talked it through, he drew a diagram of what I was seeing and said "Okay try this". And guess what? It worked! We have light AND the power to turn the light off without having to use the fuse box every time.

Brandon Rocks!!

It's great to know that we have such amazing friends and I can only hope that we can return the favours.

* This myth was actually busted by Mythbusters

On Top of Spaghetti

We have a tendency of bursting into song at home for no apparent reason. Sometimes a certain word will trigger it (Stop always gets a Diana Ross impersonation) other times the mood just strikes us and off we go. So it wasn't unusual during Liam's bedtime routine the other night that I started belting out a slow, dirge like version of "On Top of Spaghetti".

I have a problem though. I can never remember the lyrics to songs, so I make up my own. Drives Hilary bonkers!

On top of spaghetti,
All covered with cheese,
I lost my poor meatball,
When somebody sneezed.

It rolled off the table,
And on to the floor,
And then my poor meatball,
Rolled out of the door.

It rolled through the garden,
and onto the road
and then my poor meatball,
was eaten by a toad.
*last verse is my personal version*

I would like to say that in hindsight I could have forseen what was coming, but it was so bizarre that there was no way to have predicted it.

Liam burst into hysterical tears.

I realize that I am not a great singer, or probably even a good singer. I have lousy rhythm and can't hold a tune.... but I've never made anyone CRY!

I quickly scooped him up and cuddled on the couch, trying to figure out what was wrong.. had his appendix burts, was he in pain, were fairies poking him with sharp sticks? Between gulping, body wracking sobs I got the answer:

"That poor Meatball !!!!!!!!!!"


I won't be signing that again any time soon!