Sunday, August 26, 2007

Doing the math....

When deciding what kind of surface we were going to put down for the tree house 'structure', Colin thought about things in an economical way. Thus we have peat gravel.

But if he had thought about it this way maybe we would have had the more expensive rubber surfacing:

- How much would you pay not to have to shop vac the lawn before mowing the grass (lest you be blinded by a peat gravel rock being fired out by the lawnmower)?

- How much would you pay not to dig peat gravel out of the washing machine?

- How much would you pay not to find peat gravel on the dinner table?

- How much would you pay to not have peat gravel scratches all over your hand scrapped hardwood?

- How much would you pay not to co-ordinate rock extractions from mini noses?

Its not the initial cost of something, but the collateral costs of your decisions which should be taken into consideration.

For the record we would have bought the more expensive surfacing.

Friday, August 24, 2007

A baby boy...

There are so many things that you are told once you have a baby.
But some advice which would be more practical to new parents of boys would be the following:

- you are going to spend a significant amount of time in the ER of your local hospital removing objects from noses, ears, stitches and gross rashes / bites from the outdoors.

- you are going to carry a medical kit with you in your car. With adult tylenol for you to administer as needed.

- the nurses Helpline will be programmed into your phone.

- there are going to be MANY decision points you are going to get to in regards to when to go to the hospital. Grape sized bruise and cut - meh...... maybe requires hospital. But hospital treatment may not warrant hanging out with 2 toddlers for hours to be told to go home & put some ice on it.

- Hot wheels cars do fit into a toddlers mouth - the entire car with mouth closed.

- you will learn to intercede less often - as most times when you do, the squirming child is more likely to engage in more dangerous rolls and turns resulting in an arguably worst injury.

- noses tend to always bleed profusely.

Having narrowly avoided a trip to the ER due to a rock up the nose, I thought that I should pass on this valuable advice.

Be strong you mom of sons!

Just 5 minutes....

It seems there is only a 5 minute window each day that I am with the kids, that I can actually go upstairs to change laundry or go to the bathroom.

And the trick is to realise that you are in the 5 minute zone before it has lapsed. You may be re loading the dishwasher, paying bills, etc. But if you miss that peaceful 5 minutes then it is gone till tomorrow. That is a long time to wait to go pee.

And today I grabbed my 5 minutes just in time - by the time I was setting everything straight in the bathroom, the screamed had started again ' He hit me' 'Rowan ate my muffie' 'Linden bit me!'

Ahhh.. .maybe I should lay off the water during these days...

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Jurassic Flora

Walking (again - that makes 3 times in the past week! I'll be Giselle thin by Christmas...) around the neighbourhood and I start to notice similar yet expensively finished houses. And then I am awe struck by one particular house. It is gorgeous and has turrets (which ironically fit into the mode of the hood...). And beside all of the Victorian finishes there is a 12 foot PLANT with a diameter of about 20 feet. It was massive! One of the fronds / rain catcher leaves was the size of my Micra. Scary. I had to do a double take to make sure I wasn't on some spontaneous reality TV game show.

This man plant scared me. And as I walked up the hill I noticed more of their kind lurking at turret peaks and edging up the side of clearly coloured Victorian mansions (surrey - who knew). And there were no cars or people around. Which immediately made me think of that horror movie form the 80s with the spiders. But the lawns looked too well manicured for the arachnoids to have taken over.

I will post a picture of these huge dinosaur proportioned plants. They are evil.... look like they dine on small children for breakfast. Perhaps I should sent a picture of them to Robert Munsch - then he could write a story about me! Or maybe the kids as having a 30 something mommy scared of plants is a bit wimpy.

On a similar note the petunias are behaving as though they have leporosy. How come spell check doesn't recognise biblical diseases? One touch an a stem of flowers falls off. And on one I saw a coating of baby worms. Ewwww. Time to bring out the blow torch.

Monday, August 13, 2007

Walking in the Hood

I have started to walk the dogs at night.

Mostly to get some exercise, a bit to rumminate & go over the work day before going to bed.
And a little bit because of all the buzz the dogs create.. People love the dogs!

Initially I thought that I had forgotten a vital piece of clothing - but soon got used to the gawking and the fawning over the celebupups. The remarks are a bit stunning - like being asked if they are twin beagles (?) or if they have ever been in a commercial. At which point I have to point out that there is a downside to owning a beagle (aside from the fact that everyone in the public seems to show them more affection than your children). They occassionally eat their own waste... but even this does not deter the most ardent admirers...

While walking tonight, amid the usual paparazzi fan fare, I started to really look at the houses I was passing. Most of them were 5,000 square feet +, most had tiered back yards, pools, three to four car garages, lots of nice cars (and a shocking number of Ford Windstars.... perhaps the nanny mobile?). I started to wonder about who actually required that much space to live in. And who would buy a new driver (from all of the Ns in the rear windows) a mustang or Acura SUV?

And then more questions started:
like what kinds of jobs do these people have? Are they looking for more employees?
who looks after their kids while they are working? The Ford minivan driver?
how many of these gorgeous homes are grow ops?
where do they find their gardeners? What kind of hose would you need to reach up the 12 foot embankment?

And most of all I wonder if one day I too could afford for someone to water my forsasken petunias...
Not likely on my BC Gov wage...