Wherein I extend on an already rambling Facebook status

So, I've been running the art blog for about a week now, and it's created this weird paradox of motivation wherein the blogging motivates me to paint more, while the painting has motivated me to blog more.. Not only on the new blog, but on this blog as well.

I've been reviewing a lot of my old work, and revising some of it, taking the time to really put care into details and not rush to finish a picture all in one night.  There are a lot of pieces I feel like I could have done better had I taken more time.  Others are just kind of horrendous to me now, and I'm not sure whether I want to try and fix them or hide them away forever, never to be seen again.

I'm finding myself with the urge to REVISE ALL THE THINGS and go back and touch up old paintings.  That's not cheating is it? I mean, if writers can go back and edit old manuscripts, I can go back and use what I've learned (mostly slow the eff down) to fix and improve what I've already created.. That's not a bad thing.. Right?

The current work in progress is one I did some time ago.  I reached a point where although I knew it wasn't "done," I had hit a point where I really liked what I had done so far, and was nervous to go any farther lest I manage to fuck up what had been, at the time, a very challenging piece for me.

I've pulled it back out and after much hemming and hawing about whether I really wanted to mess with it, I've gone back in.

It is so worth it.  I am really, excruciatingly excited.

Quick Update: I'm Guest-Blogging

I have a guest post up at Feministe on the whole Jian Ghomeshi... thing.

Go read it.

This my half-assed 2013 wrap up

Thanks to Aunt Becky, I've got a handy-dandy survey-style template with which to outline some of the highlights and lowlights of my year, which is good, since a full run down of this year would probably be a novel.

1. What did you do in 2013 that you’d never done before? 
I did an 8 kilometre hike through the Bruce Trail with full-pack (16km if you count the return trip) and children in tow.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I actually made any, except to make it through another year if it kills me.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? 
One of my bestest pals and his lovely partner had an adorable baby girl.

4. Did anyone close to you die? 
Another of my very close friends lost her mother to cancer, which was quite the loss. Nancy had always been beyond kind to me and she is missed quite a bit.

5. What would you like to have in 2014 that you lacked in 2013? 
Flood coverage. A fully functioning sump pump. A well insulated roof and properly sealed duct work. Oh, hell. A complete freaking home makeover.

6. What countries did you visit? 
I stayed within Canadian borders this year.

7. What date from 2013 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
September 30th. 2013. The day I got my cancer diagnosis. Worst day ever.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? 
Maintaining my sanity, and keeping my plants alive. Some are even thriving.

9. What was your biggest failure? 
Trying to make fucking gravy tonight. I swear, once upon a time I successfully made gravy, but I've completely lost that skill somewhere.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? 
To quote one Ms. Steph Gas "hahahahahahahaha. yes."

11. What was the best thing you bought? 
My TV, after the old one caught fire. Also, my hiking boots. Going for a hike after months of wearing cheap-ass Zellers running shoes was an absolute revelation.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration? 
All the people, including but not limited to the Well-Travelled One, the kiddies, the parentals, and numerous friends who have been insanely supportive through all the bullshit that went on this last quarter. I may need to mention the Well-Travelled One twice, just for the sheer fact that he hasn't run screaming. You'd almost think he liked me or something.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed? 
Almost every person I've had to deal with on a professional level lately, with a very special fuck-you-very-much to insurance companies and Service Canada.

14. Where did most of your money go? 
Plumbers and restoration companies. Also, Mountain Equipment Co-op got a good chunk of change out of me.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? 
I got pretty teary-excited upon finding out my cancer was stage one, and wouldn't require chemotherapy. However I still think I may have been more excited getting pointed out by Hugh Dillon at the Headstones concert in July.

16. What song will always remind you of 2013? 
I don't think I have a specific song for this year. I know I listened to a lot of the Mountain Goats and Murder By Death. Although I could say that "Titanium" has been my theme this year (along with tMG's "This Year")

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder? Maybe not sadder, but way more stressed out.
ii. thinner or fatter? Sameish? Down about 7 or more pounds worth of colon
iii. richer or poorer? poorer. Oh, poorer. Definitely poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? 
I wish I'd done more of the home improvements that I meant to do in the summer when I still had the strength, ability and finances to do them.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? 
Putting stuff off.

20. How will you be did you spending Christmas?
I spent a good portion of Christmas morning on the phone and the Facebook trying to locate someone who could come and jump my car, seeing as the battery had picked an inopportune time to die. After getting it started, I ended up forgoing plans with family since my sisters house was host to some sort of plague that me and my broken digestive system felt that we should avoid like.. well... the plague. So I spent a lot of the day being bummed out. Then we had pizza.

21. There was no #21. I don’t know why there was no 21.

22. Did you fall in love in 2013? 
Only more so.

23. How many one-night stands? 
Um, well... I got two new night stands. Does that count?

24. What was your favourite TV program? 
Got obsessed with Revolution and fell in love with New Girl.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Kind of hating the woman at Service Canada who gave me attitude and then proceeded to lose my Record of Employment

26. What was the best book you read?
1985 by Jian Ghomeshi. I'm a sucker for pop culture, nostalgia and randomly placed top five lists.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery? 
I've been loving the hell out of Murder By Death.. Whom I guess I actually discovered at CMW in 2012, but they've been getting really heavy rotation this year.

28. What did you want and get? 
I don't really want for much, or covet anything, really so nothing is jumping out at me. I wanted a camera. I got one for Christmas from work.

29.  Wait.. is there no 29 either?

30. What was your favourite film of this year? 
I've only seen a small handful of movies from this year and most of them were pretty underwhelming. I've spent more time filling in the list of movies I should have watched ages ago. I think the one I had the most feelings over was Leon the Professional.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? 
I turned 33, and drove to Tobermory to camp with the kids and the Well Travelled One.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
An almost complete do-over.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2013? 
I don't have much of a fashion concept. I got a lot more practical and tried to work on getting some good quality basics that will last for some time, while supplementing with the occasional fun thrift store find.

34. What kept you sane?
Dark, inappropriate humour.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? 
I, like most of the Internet, have a huge love for Jenny Lawson.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
I've been following the fast food and retail strikes with a lot of interest. They deserve more, especially since we are talking about more than just high-schoolers needing extra cash.. These are people trying to raise families and survive.

37. Who did you miss? 
A lot of people. I haven't been terribly social this year.

38. Who was the best new person you met? 
I don't feel like I've met too many new people this year.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2013:
Always buy the flood insurance. ALWAYS BUY THE FLOOD INSURANCE.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year (because this Meme is apparently written for tweens): 
"Someone say a Hail Mary for this house. Bless the corners and burn the devil out."

My intentions were good.

I had a plan, when I recieved my diagnosis, that I was going to blog my journey, create an account of everything I was going through.  It's kind of fallen by the wayside, clearly.

Maybe it started with stress cold I came down with a week before the surgery.  All my energy that remained was focused on getting better so that I wouldn't have to reschedule the surgery, because frankly, waiting a month was long enough.

I brought the iPad to the hospital with me, with every intent of documenting the days following, only to discover that the Wi-Fi signal up there on the 14th floor where I recovered was pretty pathetic.  Great hospital otherwise, but man... That was some frustrating.

Since being home I've been in a mind fog from the morphine I'm still having to take to manage the pain of having not only a huge ass incision cut through most of my abdominal muscles, but my internal organs shuffled around as well.  Also, I've not. Been. Doing. Anything.  There was a lot of stuff before the hospital (like, hey! My sewer main backed into my house) and in the hospital but I have the attention span of a fruit fly.

Today I have promised to make a concerted effort to get outside, for the sake of my own sanity, which puts me in the position of having to go out of my comfort zone and ask people to assist me in getting out of my house, since clearly being Morphine McBrainFog means no driving for me.

Hopefully over the couple weeks I will have more energy, motivation and mental stamina to fill in the blanks on everything else that's been happening as of late.

25 things you probably didn't know that you didn't know about me.

Like a freshly painted brick wall in an old downtown corridor, it appears I have been tagged, by one Crystal at Ideally Speaking. I've been at a bit of a loss for writing material so here goes.

1. Where were you born?
In a hospital in Kitchener, ON, presumably on some kind of bed.

2. Were you named after someone?
I usually tell people I was named after my mom's older brother, who is an Andy. In actual fact, I think I was named after my day's secretary at the time, which is something that causes people to side-eye me (not to mention my dad!) pretty hard because that's kind of weird, right?

3. If you have children, how many do you have?
I have two daughters who are that age where they do things like read and go online so I think the less identifying details, the better.

4. How many pets do you have?
I have a cat. His name is Simon. He's kind of a dick.

5. What was your worst injury?
A few years back I was a friends house during some particularly bad freezing rain. I opted to walk home instead of waiting another hour for a ride, since I had to work in the morning. On the way home I slipped on a curb and smacked the back of my head. I walked the rest of the way home, crying and apparently bleeding quite profusely. I ended up with a slight concussion and five stitches in the back of my head.

6. Do you have a special talent?
I think I mention it in my About Me: "Jill of all trades, master of none." I have a lot of things I feel I'm kind of good at.. Writing, drawing, guitar, singing but it'd be kind of awesome to have that kind of prodigal talent that comes with little effort. I have to work pretty hard.

7. What's your favorite thing to bake?
I used to bake a lot of banana bread, usually because I'd have a lot of brown bananas in the freezer. Kids got sick of them. I don't really bake much to speak of.

8. What is your favorite fast food?
I used to like McDonalds because "Hey, at least it's cheap!" Except it's not anymore. It's gotten damn expensive. I like Harvey's, I guess. We had a Union Burger up until recently. I was sad to see it go.

9. Would you bungee jump?
I've watched enough bungee jumping videos that all I can wonder is how people aren't snapping their necks? So probably not. I'd be more likely to sky dive, or maybe zip line.

10. What is the first thing you notice about people?
Oh.. Hell. I don't know. Context matters, I suppose. People on the street? People in my social circles? Physical attributes? Demeanour?

11. When was the last time you cried?
Today, probably? A few small tears of frustration at some task giving me pain? Maybe not. but odds are sometime within the last three days. I'm a crier. My full spectrum of emotion is generally expressed with tears: anger, frustration, sadness, sometimes even joy. It's quite ridiculous. It can be awkward, since our culture is incredibly averse to shows of emotion, not to mention it tends to make me seem a lot more emotionally fragile than I actually am. I mean, I get upset, I cry but then I deal with shit and life goes on. I wish I had better control over it, because there are times where I know people definitely have thought I was being manipulative when I really have a hard time not crying, meh. It is what it is.

12. Any current worries?
Money, trying to be a good mom. Some minor health issues that I am trying to keep from becoming major health issues.

13. Name three drinks that you drink regularly.
Coffee, milk and beer. Option one and three I am attempting to cut down on, due to aforementioned health issues.

14. What is your favorite book?
Hugh Maclennan's The Watch That Ends The Night. I have read it at least fifteen times. It's a beautiful story.

15. Would you like to be a pirate?
I'd rather be a rock star, thanks.

16. What are you favorite smells?
Vanilla, citrus scents and dry dirt roads mid-summer. The last one brings me back to summers at my Nanny's trailer at Musky Bay.

17. Why do you blog?
To vent, mostly. I complain a lot, I guess. My complaining has gotten bigger on a social scale, so that this has turned into a part-time social justice blog.. But sometimes I just want to share the funny shit my kids say and do as well. Or rave about bands I like. Maybe practice some creative writing. It's a place to get out of my own head.

18. What song do you want played at your funeral?
Unlike crystal, I must be morbid because I have the beginnings of a full playlist picked out for my funeral. So far my funeral procession will consist of Trooper's "We're Here for a Good Time", "Angels and Seagulls" by Kimya Dawson, "Do You Realize" by the Flaming Lips, Richard Laviolette's "Funeral Song" and maybe if there is time "The Aeroplane Over The Sea." The basic theme is being okay with mortality. I don't want people to be too sad.

19. What is your least favorite thing about yourself?
Well, the crying thing. That sucks, honestly. I'm insecure as all hell as well. I have, what has been referred to online as a bit of a Jerkbrain that likes to, every so often, say things to make me feel bad about myself, usually in reference to how much more awesome everyone else in the world is than me. I like to drown it out with music, lots of music.

20. What is your favorite hobby?
Music soothes even the savage Jerkbrain. My guitar has been my saviour.

21. What do you look for in a friend?
Honesty, with the ability to know the difference between concern and judgement. Willing to be there throughout the good and the bad. An appreciation for the absurd.

22. Name something you've done that you never thought you'd do?
Never really thought I'd take up kick boxing as a hobby, but I quite enjoy it. I don't think I'm disciplined enough to actually fight competitively, but as a workout it's kept me in decent shape.

23. What are your favorite things to do?
I feel like I've answered this. I love playing music, especially in public. This past year I've done a lot of hiking with The Well-Travelled One, and can't wait until the weather gets nice enough to do more. Also love driving around, getting lost.

24. Any pet peeves?
My kids incessantly take their socks off when they go to their dad's after school and then 20 minutes is wasted looking for them when I go to pick them up. Drives me batty. Also, fucking "Share if you agree" Facebook bullshit. Seriously, knock that shit off. Use your share button with discretion, folks.

25. What's the last thing that made you laugh?
Oh jeez. I don't even know. Could have been anything. If there's one thing I do more than cry, it's laugh. The world is a funny, funny place.

With Respect to Messers Barker, Hoppus and Delonge, I Guess this really is growing up.

Anyone born after 1995 is probably not going to get that title, but oh well. Such is Life.

So, I bought a house. *applause*

Yup. Bought a house, and I take possession at the end of next month. I'm just now getting excited about it, mostly because I'm lost in a haze of "Holy mother of Gord, what the hell have I gotten myself into?" and "Sweet merciful Jebus, what all do I have to do?"

I don't do large purchases well, and this is the largest purchase I've ever made. The day my Real Estate agent texted me to let me know the offer had been accepted, I called my mom and cried, because truth be told, I was scared shitless.

(okay, I still am. Writing about this, even, I could pee a little. That might be the coffee, though.)

So, now I have a month of cleaning, organizing, purging and packing ahead of me. But in the end? My own property, my own home, my own BATHTUB (omg, three years with only a shower, you cannot begin to imagine...) my kids each with their own space, not piled one on top of the other. Amazing. It's been a long time coming and yeah, I have to give myself some credit for doing all this on a single income.

Go me!

Today is the Warrior Dash and I am at home doing laundry and organizing the shed (and blogging, apparently) because the illness I was fighting earlier this week ended up being a rather nasty chest infection that still has not entirely gone away. Huge disappointment, you bet. But considering I can't run across my living room without getting winded right now, a giant obstacle race was probably not in my best interest.

I'm still guest blogging over at Feministe this week. There's a pretty good debate going on regarding scent free workplaces right now, and an earlier post about delaying sexual activity in kids got picked up by The Lady Garden, so although it was not without criticism, that's still pretty cool in my books.

oh, and I got tweeted by the Good Lovelies when I wrote to them to ask permission to reprint their lyrics for this post.

700km, an Off-Roading PT Cruiser and the Faint Sound of Banjos, part 3 (the not-so-dramatic conclusion)

Part One

Part Two

So it looks like this, the third part in my "What I Did A Few Weeks Ago" trilogy will likely be the shortest of the series, as my memory is getting increasingly fuzzy. But, hey, I don't want to leave anyone hanging. In other news, holy crap! TWO posts in one week. How about that??

So Sunday we woke up by the faint light of the sun rising over the blueberry stand across the highway, groggy and stiff from trying to stay comfortable in the back of the Cruiser. Not an easy feat, as he's not one to be scrunched up to sleep and although i generally tend to curl up in the fetal position to sleep, I was trying to remain somewhat conscious of not kicking or hitting the poor man in my sleep. Which I am told, I have a tendency to do.  Sleeping me is quite violent.

This is possibly the shittiest sunrise picture ever taken.  I took this one.

Watching the condensation slowly evaporate, we had a pre-breakfast breakfast of coffee from the Tim Hortons in whose parking lot we spent the night and glorious sweet chelsea buns from the bakery in Bancroft we had visited the previous day. Finishing up, I got tired of watching condensation evaporate (because yes, that IS as boring as it sounds) and rather unsuccessfully tried to dry it up with my t-shirt.

Pre-Breakfast Breakfast.  Tim Hortons, I want some royalties for this.

After getting on the road, our first stop for the Morning was at Cordova Falls, which is just outside of the little mining town of Cordova Mines. Cordova Falls, to date, has probably been the least Impressive of our waterfall hunting excursions, but that may be a result of it being both a dammed (as opposed to damned) waterfall and it being later in the season. I will say I was impressed seeing the pennstock for the dam. Impressed that it had not burst, as this old wooden contraption looked about 60years old and was sprouting leaks all over, some of which had been lovingly and not-at-all-half-assedly patched up with various bits of wood, some of which were jammed right into the leaky spots.

That's Reassuring.

Once we had fully explored the Upper and Middle Falls, we decided to skip the Lower Falls and head to town to see if we could actually locate THE Cordova mine. The town of Cordova Mines, Ontario is a fairly small one, almost a ghost town now. We knew the mine had to be about 4km from the dam we had just visited, as that was what the sign at the dam had told us.

If you can't trust a historical plaque, who can you trust?

One trail that we found almost took us all the way there, we discovered upon checking the maps at home. It started out near a small community hall, the type with a park and picnic benches and tables under shady trees, the type of place one could envision town picnics being held generations before. We braved the path as far as Petey would take us, at one point traversing a ground level river crossing. But beyond this we found a heavy gate with a variety of "No Tresspassing" signs. Later we would find out that what we were looking for was just on the other side.

Those aren't puddles.. that's the river creeping across the path.

...Just in case you didn't believe me.

Giving up on finding the mine, we headed to Peterborough for Actual-Breakfast and to see the Peterborough lift locks.  I can't remember all the ins and outs of how these locks actually work.. it has something to do with water displacement is all I recall.  I'm going to let the wonder that is Wikipedia fill all the dirty details in for you and just say that they were impressive and cool to watch.. we got there just as the first boat of the day was crossing.

See? Impressive.

Breakfast was had at one of GFWIHNCUWAGBA's (okay, acronyms clearly aren't an option here) favoured establishments.  Good potatoes, good eggs.. toast was a little too dark, bacon too crispy.  Good coffee and I got to find out just what in the hell 'Beaver Balls' were.

Turns out, they're basically like Beaver Tails (which I think may be known to people in other countries as Elephant Ears) but in ball form.  The More You Know.  At least they aren't some bizarre Fear-Factor inspired delicacy.  Although I still say that eating bull testicles would have been child's play had Joe Rogan just battered and deep-fried them.

However, I digress.

This was my first ever visit to Peterborough (with the possible exception of visiting my grandfather in hospital shortly before his passing, but that may have been Bancroft hospital) so he took me on a bit of a tour around the downtown and through some of the riverfront parks.  Having been up since about 6am we had made fantastic time to get to Peterborough, look around and still have time to visit my Nanny on the way home.  We got hit with the rain about 40 minutes before Nanny's house, after a weekend of otherwise lovely weather.  So that was lucky.

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In other news, I'm making a concerted effort to post more.  I've missed it.  I kind of put myself on hiatus writing at Different Paths, Same Destinations when I ran out of fucks to give in regards to my weight-loss efforts. I get the feeling I'm not the only one on a break.  Hopefully the other girls will come back and start posting again.  But we all have lives, and busy ones at that.

My posts here will probably focusing on my day-to-day stuff for the next little bit as I will be saving some of my social-issues ranty type stuff for a two-week guest blogging stint at Feministe (*geekyfangirlsquee*).

Say it with me, Sally Field.  "THEY LIKE ME!"

I'm ridiculously honored to have been asked to submit.  Like, stupidly so.  Like being asked to the cool girls house for a sleepover.  Except I get to write a lot.  So look for my posts over there during the last two weeks of July.

Birthdays and Blog Awards

My oldest turns 11 tomorrow.  She also leaves for an over-nighter with her school tomorrow, so it's a little odd that on her actual, honest-to-Gord birthday I'm only going to see her for an hour or so, most of which will likely be spent kicking both her and her sister's butts into gear, as the little one also has a school trip tomorrow.  Not a day one wants to be late for the bell.

A few months ago T approached me about a show on YTV called The Next Star which, to the best of my knowledge is in the Idolesque vein of reality shows, except for the 15-and-under crowd.  That's pretty much all I know about it, except that I think the gay kid from Degrassi hosts it.  Toronto auditions happened to be the same weekend that we'd be doing her birthday stuff.  She begged me to take her to audition so I told her that in lieu of a birthday party this year, she could pick a friend and I would take them and Reegs down to the city for the day so she could try out, and then we'd go out for dinner.  That would be her birthday celebration.

I ran into a roadblock when I couldn't get photo ID for T, which was required.  Unless you get a passport, there's not a lot of photo ID options for an 11-year-old around here.  Ontario Health Cards only have a picture above a certain age, because kids change so damn fast that by the next doctor's appointment they probably look nothing like the picture on the card.

So we just pretend they all look like pretty flowers instead.  (Instead of their picture, you get a picture of a white trillium instead.  I Google-image-searched the hell out of variations of 'Kids OHIP card' and 'Children's Ontario Health Card' but all I could find were adult versions so if you're outside of Ontario, you're just going to have to take my word for it, as I'm not about to post my OWN kid's OHIP card on here.  Don't be silly.)

Also, no elementary schools around here have actual Student Cards.  That's just for high school kids.

So I told her this but assured her that we were going to go and that I would try to argue my way out of the photo ID thing.  I considered lying and telling the registration people that I had ordered a passport but that it had yet to arrive in the mail.

It was all kind of moot because I didn't foresee that we would actually miss the registration deadline, seeing as I had searched their site for a registration deadline and didn't see one so I had figured they were on all day.  We had left later than anticipated (the goal was to leave the house by 8, we got out around 9:30) and by the time we got to Yorkdale mall and caught the subway down to Front Street, it was almost noon, and the people at the Convention Center told us that registration closed at 9:30 that morning.  T was a little upset so we found a quiet area so she could have a moment, and so I could figure out for a contingency plan, which came in the form of a bus tour around the city.

Truth be told, the family rate for the bus tour was kind of pricey and at first I had said no, but got to thinking about it and went back and haggled with the guy, explaining that A) the Family rate included two adults and I was only one and that I had travelled with these kids only to have my daughter gravely disappointed ON HER BIRTHDAY NO LESS (not ENTIRELY untrue.. it was her birthday celebration day) and got about 20-25% off the price of the Family pass.  The bus tour included a boat tour of the Toronto Harbour, so once we got to the Harbourfront, we wandered around looking for drinks as my kids were ill-dressed for a day in the sun that was supposed to be spent waiting around the air-conditioned Metro Convention Center.  I got ripped off by a pop machine that stiffed me roughly four bucks from a $10 bill.  Once we had killed enough time we got on the boat for our tour, which turned out to be a relaxing half-hour journey around the Toronto Islands.

The Toronto Skyline from my side of the boat.

After returning to shore, the two older girls wanted to go on a paddle boat ride.  Reegs and I went and checked out a free museum nearby, The Power Plant, while they waiting in line but sadly the museum didn't offer much.  Call me a Philistine if you will, but sometimes I think 'Contemporary Art' is a fancy-shmancy term for "Weird, and kind of sparse."  It took about 15 minutes to go through the whole thing.  We took longer in the bathroom. At least I didn't pay to get in, so that's something.

After the paddle boats we headed back to the subway as it was getting too late to hop back on the bus (kind of rendering the bus thing not worth the money... although the kid we saw that kept declaring with tiny fist pumped "I. LOVE. THE BIG RED BUS!" over and over again to his parent's chagrin kind of made it worth it).  This was all three girls first time riding the subway and was an interesting and slightly nerve-wracking experience.  I guess having walls zoom by a mere inch from your window combined with the sound of steel on steel can be scary for any first timer.

We had dinner at the Rainforest Cafe, which seemed like a good idea for a kids birthday.. kind of somewhere in between fast-food kid-mecca and grown-up sit-down dinner.  We ordered one ginormous dessert and between the four of us we still couldn't get through the gobs of brownies and ice cream and whipped cream.

Driving home from the city in the summer on a Sunday is definitely a great thing about living in Cottage Country.. you're almost always guaranteed to be facing the heaviest traffic on your way home, breezing along the Northbound lanes of the 400 while the city folks sit in bumper to bumper traffic on the Southbound.

All in all it was a great day and the thing that was especially nice was that all three girls were very well behaved and appreciative.  T and I have been butting heads quite a bit lately as she has entered into a typically self-centered pre-adolescent stage.. it's like pre-teens kind of regress to that toddler-stage where they don't actually realize that other people are people and may have needs and wants that don't revolve around and instantly gratify their own.  But even with the disappointment upon our arrival to the City, there was no whining, no fighting with her sister, no complaining and no pushing for more, more, more.  It was refreshing and I made sure to let her know that.. I enjoy doing things for them, but I like it even more when I know they appreciate it.

So tomorrow my baby girl turns 11.  Time doesn't ever go backwards, does it?  Not even for a minute.

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So in other news, I've now been awarded three times for the Liebster Award so I'm thinking I better get off my ass and thank the folks who've passed it on to me:

So thanks bunches to:

Crystal at Ideally Speaking, a socially active mom and closet comic geek which is how we initially got talking at work way back in the day.

Vanessa at Five Things About Nothing Important whose blog I really need to check out more 

Heidi Millerick at Eight Days A Week, who I've also been lax in checking out.

I may get around to passing this on, but I think for now, I'll just say that if it's in my blog roll over there ---> then it's probably worth taking a peek at.  I know others worth reading but I just don't link as they keep a lower profile.

Yeah, it's a total cop-out, I know.

Five Years in the Saddle and Other Things of Varying Import...

Ah yes, so here I am again.  Two weeks since my last post and doing what I said I wouldn't do... the obligatory “I'm such a bad blogger” post, apologizing for not posting.

Meh.

I'm not really sorry.  Well, kind of.  Maybe a smidge.

But life happens, you know?  I've had lots to do and not a whole hell of a lot to say.  Or maybe lots to say, but not much time put it all in words.  And since those things distracting me from the computer are ultimately good things, I don't feel much like apologizing.  I will only ask that you bear with me and express my gratitude to those humble few of you who choose to stick around.

I've done some housekeeping here, to freshen things up a bit.  New layout and such.  It's a bit dark, I know.  I tried to avoid the light text/dark background thing but my aesthetic tastes got the best of me.  I'm a bit dark, myself.  At any rate, it's nothing compared to my newly-created Tumblr account, which I am still trying to decide on a layout for and as such is a complete and utter mess.  I'm still not sure what I'm doing there.  If you click on that link, shield your eyes.  It's pretty garish at the moment.  What can I say? I loves me some animal prints.

Today marked a grand total of five years at my current place of employment, who shall go unmentioned here for the sake of preventing embarassment should their name come into connection with my various ramblings, off-color humour, strong opinions and penchant for saying shit and fuck a lot.

But yeah, five years.  Not bad for what was supposed to be a temp job.

Fresh out of university I was faced with the ungodly task of actually trying to find a job.  Having recently attained a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology (because fuck employability) attaining paid work seemed a daunting task indeed.  As I was contemplating what to do,  my sister gave me a call to let her know her workplace was looking for a temp to come in for a week and do some data entry work.

I said sure.

A day or two before I was due to start, I called her in a panic.  I had not done paid work in over four years, and previous to those three years of university and one year of maternity leave before that, I had been more or less steadily employed as a convenience store.  Office work seemed way over my head.

Quickly bringing me back down to Earth she reminded me that I was being hired without an interview or a resume.

“Really, Andie?  How hard do you think it's going to be?”

So my initial fears turned out be pretty unfounded.  By the end of the week it had been mentioned that I would be needing work for the summer and after being impressed by my ability to listen to and follow instructions I was asked to stay on.  Summer turned into fall and I stayed on part-time my initial plans to go back to school and upgrade my degree from a general to an honors degree fell through.  When my sister decided to leave the following winter, I figured I was pretty much in it for the long haul and moved into her cubicle.  The work was challenging and even stressful at times but I knew I liked (and still do like) all the people I worked with.  To this day, I can honestly say that I do not dislike a single one of my co-workers.  Given stories I've heard from others regarding workplace drama, that's a pretty rare thing.  I've collected a fair share of customer service stories and this last Christmas I came to a shocking realization that I'm no longer ‘the new girl’ (although learning as I went I got a lot of mileage out of that title) but actually kind of a veteran around the place.  Which kind of blows my mind.  That's what happens when you just kind of show up and never go away, which is the abridged version of this story.

In other news, my asshole cat, Simon, had his visit with the vet and has been officially rendered sterile and female cats in the area rejoiced.  Bob Barker would be proud of me.  Simon, not so much.  That's a post for another day.

G'night.

Please don't let me become one of those bloggers..

You know the ones.. The ones that do quick one-off posts to apologize for not posting? I hate that, and yet here I am... Doing a quick post so I can not feel so bad for not posting anything of substance here beyond the cute shit my nephew says.

I do have my introductory post up at Different Paths, Same Destination as well as another post coming up in a couple days. So it's not like I haven't written anything. Just not here, although I have started a few posts that I may finish enough others will have probably beaten the subjects to death.

So many ideas, so little time. Work and hanging out with the kids takes up a lot, plus an extra amount of company, while definitely enjoyable, has left little time to do much more than think of things to write, things to make, things to paint. My love of sleep doesn't help.

Maybe February will move at a slower pace. Wouldn't that be nice?

A Final MFP Monday. Well, probably.

I haven't done an MFP Monday post in a while so I thought I'd let y'all know that since the beginning of the new year things have been going well.  I'm down about 8.5 lbs as of today and I've been sticking pretty well to my daily totals and getting a lot of walking and dancing and kick-boxing in.  I went to a friend's place this weekend and we had a great time.  I indulged a bit, but on the whole stayed fairly on track.  Even though I was dead-ass tired and so was she, Tess came over last night to play Just Dance for our Sunday night workout.  That's some dedication right there.

However, this will probably be my last update here as far as the weight-loss efforts go.  Those who want to know how I'm faring can come check out a new group blog I'm writing with a number of awesome ladies called Different Paths, Same Destination.  We just launched today and B has her introductory post up now, so I advise you to go check it out.  I'm really excited to see how this goes.  We'll basically be posting our progress, thoughts, trials, tribulations as we work towards our individual goals.

So it's likely that all my weight-loss stuff will be going on over there, and this will blog will continue to be its usual mishmash of fangirlishness, airing of grievances, social commentary, day-to-day life and random weird shit my kids say.

Things I Love Today: #changethetweets (also.. 500th Post! or not)

So I guess today CBCRadio2 has been hosting a contest for tickets to see Kathleen Edwards. The idea is to tweet the song that has changed your life with the hashtag #changethetweets (which is apparently a take-off of Edwards' album 'Change The Sheets').

Myself, I had a hard time really coming up with a 'life-changer' but in light of my recent Mountain Goats obsession I decided to tweet 'This Year', with its refrain of "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me", as my go-to song when I am sad, frustrated and in need of some strength.

Some of the tweets people have been posting are quite moving.  Here are a few of my favorites:

The contest is picking up a little steam, so my chances of having unexpected plans to go to Toronto this weekend are probably slim, but I've enjoyed reading the Tweets.

What are some songs that have had an impact on your life?

P.S. according to Blogger, this is my 500th post.  Except that it's not, because I copied a bunch of posts from my old MySpace blog over here so the actual number is either a lot less (if you want to count posts since I joined Blogger) or a lot more (if you want to count all the posts I've written in the time I've been blogging.. which dates back to sometime in 2005 over three different platforms).

So, uh.. happy unbirthday to me?

Well, I guess it's that time again, isn't it?

2011, amirite??

I really don't have whole lot to say about the past year, to be honest. I spent most of it just kind of laying low and enjoying life. There were a few high points, such as my trip to the Dominican with two girlfriends back in January and my trip to quebec with my girls in September. I got to go to a few concerts, including Finger Eleven, A Primitive Evolution and a few more from The Schomberg Fair - two in one week from those guys.

Although, I did date a bit, and had fun while I was at it, I spent 2011 pretty much single. I've spent a lot of time sorting out my issues in the aftermath of most-recent-ex, whom I had made one final attempt at friendship with before deciding it was best for everyone involved if we just cut off all contact. Not easy, but I'm working on it.

My car got written off but it was a situation that ended up working out well for me as it allowed me to get out of my car loan.

Compared to last year, spent most of this year on the periphery of other people's excitement - some good, some bad. For myself, in retrospect, the year was kind of mundane and uneventful.

Maybe that's a good thing.

2012 looks like it could potentially be quite the roller coaster. That is, if we aren't all blinked out of existence by mid-December. However, I'm sure that much like Harold Camping's prophecies of doom this Mayan calendar issue will likely turn out to be just a lot of hooey.

Please feel free to make fun of me for using the word 'hooey'.

As I was saying, the coming year already holds a lot of promise for excitement and/or crippling anxiety... Wheee!

This year's to-do list includes:

• Buy a house. Yup, that's a big 'un
• learn my ukulele
• compete in the Warrior Dash
• find a way to make some money with all this writing
• keep working on staying in shape
• My kickboxing instructor has thrown around the idea of holding some demos, in which case I want in on that. Yeah, I've been doing this for over a year now, and still love it

So I guess that's my year end wrap-up. Time to start getting myself dolled up for this evening's festivities. Cheers, y'all.

The Internet is Effing INSANE part 2

Sometimes, as a blogger, we have no way of knowing what post is going to explode on us.  To my surprise, my most popular post to date in terms of views is a post where my friend Dan and I speculate on Yosemite Sam's junk.  Now, I know that 588 views do not quite equate to an internet explosion, but it just goes to show, you never know what's going to be wildly popular, or unpopular.

Two days ago, feminist blogger, lawyer and activist Jill Filipovic wrote a one-off post at Feministe about a note that was left in her bag by a TSA agent after they found an item of a... *koff* personal nature in her luggage.  Jill's initial reaction to it was lighthearted, while still acknowledging that hey, this is not cool.

Total violation of privacy, wildly inappropriate and clearly not ok, but I also just died laughing in my hotel room.

Then kaboom.  I guess a few other sites including Jezebel got a hold of the story and the whole thing has kind of gone kablooey.  Kind of?  Actually, to be more accurate, it seems that the whole damned internet has gone apeshit over this story. You'd almost think that Jill had dared to insult the Bloggess or something.

Can I just say, first, that it is totally possible to find something incredibly inappropriate and incredibly hilarious at the same time.  I would have giggled too.  But I laugh at dead baby jokes and make smart ass remarks about heroin addiction.  Doesn't mean either of these things aren't horrifying.  Sometimes you gotta laugh, to keep from crying.

So far this story has hit Fox News, Gawker, Forbes and a number of other media outlets.  The original post itself has 20 trackbacks at this time.  A lot of the articles focus on the issue of privacy which has been an ongoing concern with the TSA and for some, this is just another example.  There's a weird faction of articles that want to focus on the 'hot-chick-practices-self-love' angle, which is kind of creepy as fuck if you ask me.

Us ladies, we like to get off sometimes.  T'ain't no big thing.  Why you gotta make it a big thing?

The most eye-crossingly bizarre commenters and articles are the ones that are claiming that Jill must have done this all for attention and hits to her blog.  One commenter on the original thread ripped into Jill (comment 79: trigger warning) and made some not-so-veiled threats, which I loved the hell out of Jill's response (comment 80):

But thanks for the weird rape threat? You seem totally cool and normal.

While I understand and practice the whole caveat emptor where stories on the interwebs are concerned, it really shocks me the vitriol that is being spit at Jill over this whole thing.  She has been accused of purposely planting said item in her luggage with the knowledge that it would be searched; of writing the note herself to make the TSA look bad and I ask.. why are people so convinced it's not true?  It's not like the TSA hasn't come under fire for way worse things.

And if it isn't true and she made it up?  Who the fuck cares?  On one hand, some of us may have gotten a much needed giggle for the day.  On the other hand, it has reopened discussion about civil liberties and privacy and how much of our freedom we should be willing to give up in the name of security.  It has opened up discussion in regards to what kind of respect should be shown by people who are given clearance to rifle through our most personal belongings.

Oh, and the people I really love - and by "Love" I mean "would like to hit with a brick" - are the people who are all 'Well if she was so embarrassed, why did she post about it?'  You can point out that something is a huge invasion of privacy without being embarrassed.  The fact that it was posted tells me she couldn't have been too embarrassed.  If anything would be embarassing it's probably the way this whole affair has blown out of proportion.

I personally hope that this doesn't end up affecting Jill on a personal and professional level, as someone who blogs under her real name and has covered a number of serious topics.  It'd be a shame that a severe over-reaction to what seemed to be a quick post made in jest ended up undermining a promising career or turning her away from blogging.

Week one, it's where we've begun...

So, I guess I have to create a new label for weight-loss updates, since neither Weight Watchers or Wednesday is accurate now?  MFP Mondays? I suppose that works.

Did my first weigh-in this morning and I'm down 3 (possibly 4) pounds.  It's hard to tell with the analog scale I have, so I'm going to err on the side of caution and say it was only 3.  I'm going to try and get my hands on a digital scale so readings will be more accurate.

I've been blogging at the My Fitness Pal site, rather than flood this blog with diet-and-excercise related posts, but I'll link to my posts there when I do my updates.  I'm not sure if you can comment there without being a member, so maybe I'll say eff it and cross-post here as well.  I just don't want to bore people with menus and complaints about lack of progress and such.  That's not all I'm posting, however.  I also plan to blog about fat acceptance and conversely, fat-hate and shaming in society.

Here are the posts from this week:

Book Review: All of Me: A Voluptuous Tale

"Honesty is the Best Policy" and other myths

The Weekend Trap

Everybody is Stuffed On Turkey But Me.  I Had a Sandwich.

So I need opinions... should I cross post here and not worry about this becoming a 'diet blog' or just do like this and post links so as not to clutter up the people's feeds?

The Internet is Effing INSANE.

So, first of all, if you're not reading The Bloggess, you are missing out on some top-notch funny.  Seriously, you three, you need to get on it.

But not only is she funny, she's apparently crazy-powerful as well.

This week, a gentleman *koff* by the name of Jose of Brandlink Communications found this out the hard way.

Here's the full backstory, but I'll sum it up real quick-like for ya:

 - The divine Ms. Lawson receives poorly-researched PR pitch for something having to do with Kim Kardashian and pantyhose.
 - Jenny responds how she usually does to unsolicited PR pitches... with a short letter and a picture of Wil Wheaton Collating Paper
 - Jenny receives short, snippy but on-the-whole still fairly professional email response from Erica at Brandlink Communications.
 - VP Jose replies by calling Jenny "a fucking bitch" but has mistakenly hit Reply All.

In the immortal words of Eddie Izzard: "*sigh*  Stupid man..."

 - Jenny calls Jose on his remark, explaining this her usual response to unsolicited pitches, and most people either find it funny, or at the very least, take the hint.

 - Jose basically tells Jenny she should be flattered that said PR firm should even find her relevant enough to send pitches to.

Let me just add here, that @thebloggess currently has 170K+ Twitter followers to @brandlinkcomm's 900-someodd.  The woman created a Facebook page for a giant metal chicken that has over 26K likes.  This is not what I would call irrelevant.  Irreverent, maybe, but definitely not irrelevant.

Again:

- With a single tweet and a blog post, said Bloggess unleashes an unholy, sulphur-raining maelstrom of internet smackdown on Brandlink Communications.

It was awe-inspiring.

I'm convinced that "Please Stand By For Demonstration of Relevance" is officially the most bad-assed line since "Yippie Kay-ay, Motherfuckers."

I can't read that line without imagining Jenny standing on top of a mountain, arms raised, with lightning flashing and thunder crashing while angry hordes of bloggers and tweeters come swarming from over the surrounding hills, right up into BrandLink's "grill" - so to speak.

I don't think I have to remind Ms. Lawson of Uncle Ben's old adage of great power and great responsibility.  Jenny has also used her blog as a platform to help others by promoting philanthropic causes and in one case, simply publishing one Christchurch, NZ woman's utterly hilarious plea for help.

Wow, those are five words that don't seem like they should go together.

Anyway, if my blogging efforts resulted in me becoming even 1/457 as 'relevant' as this one, I'd consider myself one very excited blogger.

Good News, Everyone.

My computer is officially fixed.

Be prepared to get esophaegal-lining-rupturing SICK of hearing from me.

*resists urge to sign opening lines from Eminem's 'Without Me'*

The Electronics are Revolting!

Will be taking a *hopefully* small blogging hiatus.  My computer at home has gone kablooey and the work computer, which I am at during work hours, is generally meant to be used for work.  In the meantime my cell phone has begun doing this weird thing where it blinks on a intermittent basis, and although the phone is in full working order otherwise, it's driving me frickin' batty.  Time for an upgrade.

The lack of online time sucks, because I have a lot I'd like to touch on, like the Rebecca Watson/Richard Dawkins/Creepy Elevator Guy fiasco and how everyone has gone apeshit over some woman who had the audacity to mention in a videoblog that getting propositioned in an elevator at four in the morning felt a little creepy and that if guys want to avoid being perceived as creepy, maybe they shouldn't do creepy things.

THE NERVE.  /sarcasm.

Also have some writing bubbling up in the old head. It happens, especially when I read something breathtakingly beautiful such as this. It'll be relegated to paper, for the time being.

Off camping with the kidlets for the next few days anyway, so I'd be MIA.  Some time off will be nice.

"Houss-keepink? Hoooouuuussssskeepink?"

Just doing some light house keeping.  Updated the blogroll and took off some folks who are no longer blogging or actively blogging.

D'Artagnan, if you're reading this... WTF man?  Not even a good bye?

I've also added some folks to the roster who I think are worth a read, so take a gander and see if anyone catches your fancy.  Moved the Popular Posts over to the sidebar so I could include more posts.  If anyone knows how to do 'Random Posts' or 'Related Posts' and wants to let me in on the secret that'd be great.

To date, my most popular search term is "Tom Cavanagh" which has led a whole fifteen people to this little piece of the internet.  Is it wrong that a little part of me hopes that Tom Cavanagh spends his spare time Googling himself and will one day stumble across this blog and fall madly in love with me?

It'd be great.  We could get a cottage on Georgian Bay where we'd sit and be reminded of light beer.

And this could be me.  I thought photo-shopping my head onto Julie Bowen's body could be construed as "Creepy" - Source

The Tragically Hip are playing in Bobcaygeon  this weekend (and if you're a Hip Fan you will know how epic this really is) and I'm in physical pain from the knowledge that I won't be going.  I'd almost consider offering perverse sexual favours to the person who could offer me me a ticket, but then again if I was willing to go that far, I might have held off on cutting the most-recent-ex out of my life for a couple weeks or so.

Maybe Tom Cavanagh has an extra ticket?

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch this video on loop and drink heavily and cry.


Extra points for Hugh Dillon's cameo.

Author's Note:  Just wanted to point out how creepy, out of its proper context, this still from the video is.  It's like the girl is off screen is going "Noooooo!" at the approaching Gord Downie in all his law-enforcement intimidation (for context: she's opening the screen door for him)

Oh Blogger, you silly, silly platform, you.

Of course, I'm a glutton for punishment.

Wait, I'll get to that. Some backstory first.

I started blogging back in 2005, on the old MSN spaces platform.  I don't remember too many of the bloggers I read on there, with the exception of my dear friend Justin.  I have no idea if Justin still blogs, but I highly recommend to anyone with a taste for the macabre, to go and check out his photomanipulation art.. the guy is a master.  

When MSN Spaces switched to Windows Live Spaces and all of a sudden you had to be friends with people to read their blogs, or view pictures I said 'eff that shite', archived my blog by way of copy and pasting the whole mess into a word file, deleted my 'space' and moved to a new platform that still required you to friend people, but still allowed (at first) for you to read blogs and look at pictures without actually being friends with people.

That platform was MySpace. 

Actually, there's a funny story about how I ended up on MySpace and the huge but hilarious misunderstanding that ensued.

There I blogged for about three more years, and got heavily involved in some groups and forums where I befriended some amazing people.  But time went on, and the MS universe became a little more unbearable each day, a combination of boredom, the mass e-xodus to Facebook and an increasing number of 'Sorry! An Unexpected Error has Occurred'.

So late 2009 I moved my shit over here to Blogger.

Tonight I decided that I was going to try and import my entire MySpace blog into this on here, but it turns out that the import function is pretty, well, craptacular.  Being the masochist with entirely too much time on her hands that I am, I have embarked on copy and pasting and re-dating each post.  I've now worked my way back to the beginning of 2008, which is where I'll be leaving off this evening.

I'm a glutton for punishment.

In the name of full disclosure I will admit there are some posts that will not be making their way here for protection of the innocent and not so innocent.  One thing I do miss about the MySuck blogs is the ability to set different posts on different privacy levels (ie.. Open, Friends Only, Preferred Readers, Private).  It's not as detailed as Facebook's notes which pretty much let you pick and choose exactly who you do and don't want to see, but it was better than the All-or-Nothing thing that Blogger has going on here.

Looking back, I was a lot more candid on there, and I think the settings have to do with it.  I usually pride myself on being a pretty open book, but there's a few posts that I'm still not comfortable with having available upon a single keystroke.

At any rate, for shits and giggles, feel free to check out the archive sections to see some of the posts I've brought over.

If I find myself feel REALLY ambitious, then I may one day decide to try and work my old Spaces posts (which are still lurking somewhere in the deep dark reaches of my external hard drive) all up in here.