A Picture Post

Just some assorted pictures from the last month - I know it's been a little low on visuals lately: Making the gingerbread house
The Boy's winter concert (he's the one in the back. I think.)

The Girl's winter concert. She's second from the left (red sweater) because I didn't get the "no uniforms today" email in time.

Playing video games with her cousin. Note the matching Christmas housecoats.

Opening up the oddest doll ever. Its eyes change colour when you push in the "soft spot" on its head.

Hanging out with their cousin in new Christmas jammies.

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TGIF!

I love Fridays. Yes, I am aware that I didn't actually work a full five-day work week to deserve this one. It was, in fact, only 20% of a legitimate work week.

But that doesn't negate the fact that it was still a tough day. Having been off since last Friday yet knowing it was the day before the weekend, I felt like it was Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday-Friday all rolled into one. Add a deadline I knew I had to meet by the end of today and I am plum tuckered out.

Oh, and I revealed myself at work to be the true uber-geek that I am. Asked to provide a few personal details about myself to include in a company-wide introduction email, I, of course, said I enjoyed reading Canadian and 19th century British lit, cooking and walking around the lake. Seriously.

Probably the nerdiest aspect of it all is that it took me a full five minutes to come up with that list. Those three things are officially the coolest things about me. Sigh. It has indeed been a long day.

Which is probably why "TGIF" for me means eating eggs and toast for supper, idly helping my kids make bead necklaces, and later frittering away hours online while catching a bit of Transformers out of the corner of my eye. And yes, it is all as exciting and super-cool as it sounds.

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Another Christmas Come and Gone...

(Did I really leave you all, my faithful readers, with a post about the bus - of all things - to look at throughout the entire week of Christmas? My apologies. It's been a busy week, but now I'm back and shall hopefully be much more frequent in my posting.)

Six days after leaving for Canada, we find ourselves back where we started. A few things have changed - we have the potential for being a bit more fit at our house using our new Wii and I'm sipping fantastic coffee from my new coffeemaker (undoubtedly a mistake, given that it is almost 11:30 at night and I have to work tomorrow, but I couldn't resist trying it out). There are a bunch of new toys for our kids to play with and it will take a day or so to get through all the mail.

We are also mindful that living here means that Christmas looks different for us than it has in the past. Our time with family and friends is shorter and more intense; we missed every one of our extended family gatherings as well as the church Christmas program. But the time we had was fulfilling and restful - thanks to all who made it such a great week for us.

Our major indication that "we're not in Kansas anymore" (or Winnipeg, as the case may be) was when we ended up in the local hospital emergency room. The Boy brought some cold germs with him to Canada that for anyone else would have simply meant a few sniffles and perhaps a low-grade fever. However, with his asthma, it turned into a full-blown attack and the medication we had brought was not sufficient, so we headed to the hospital to get him some help.

We've done that particular ER run more times than we would like, but we've never once thought of the cost; our thoughts were always and only with our son. This time, though, there was a cover charge. Upon entering, I rushed the struggling-to-breathe-crying boy to the doctor while The Husband stayed behind to register us and eventually run to the bank machine so he could pay the non-resident entrance fee.

Now we have excellent insurance and our being in Canada made really no difference in terms of out-of-pocket expenses. But the experience drove home to me how much I believe in universal healthcare. Does the healthcare system in Canada have its issues? Most definitely. Could it benefit from some level of privatization? Quite likely - I'd like to see more exploration of the idea.

But should a parent have to think twice about agreeing when the doctor says, "I'd like to take a chest x-ray just to rule out pneumonia?" No. Should mental computations calculating the growing expense of the medications offered take place when those medications are providing necessary relief? No. Should someone dread the thought of having a loved one admitted simply because of a low bank account? No.

Ah, but I digress. The Boy recovered as quickly as his cold left his system and fortunately we did not have to make a repeat visit. Our drive home was uneventful and we arrived to find that our neighbour had very kindly snow-blown our entire driveway as well as all our walkways.

Now off to bed with me - I have one day of work before the weekend and I suspect it will feel like ten Mondays combined tomorrow.

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An Open Letter to My Fellow Travellers on the Route 6 E 7:33 Bus

Dear Transit Riders:

I get it.

You got there first.

Yes, it is undoubtedly true that the Rules and Regulations of Bus Travel clearly indicate that seats are available on a "first come, first served" basis. In fact, one could go on to say that in the matter of posterior resting places, possession of one's backside-shaped scrap of real estate is indeed nine-tenths of the law.

But I would also like to note that the other one-tenth of that law includes the giving up of said seat (despite its being lawfully gained) for those smaller, older, more infirm and generally worse off than you.

That said, I am puzzled as to why, when my family and I boarded the crowded bus, you elected not only to keep your seats, but also to maintain ownership of the spaces you had procured for your inanimate packages. This despite being faced with the obvious presence of two small children who, I might add, had recently walked a fair distance wearing very cumbersome footwear.

Now it is possible that things were not what they seemed. That Crate and Barrel box sitting next to you on the bench may have been carrying a heart, packed in ice, wending its way towards the transplant patient lying on the operating table, a heart which required the most tender of care. It is also possible that the pink backpack with a seat to itself had nestled within it some mewling, orphaned kittens and that any movement would have frightened them terribly and led to their pitiable demise.

However, the fact that you did move your packages, albeit reluctantly and only after I stared you down with my most effective "Seriously?!" glare, does seem to suggest otherwise.

Having located two seats for my babies, I contented myself to stand. Your ungracious actions had brought out the Grinch in me and I could feel my heart shrink to several sizes too small. (Perhaps it would have been a good thing if the Crate and Barrel box had been carrying another heart.)

Then a passenger got off and a seat opened up across the aisle from my daughter, which I gratefully took. And a kind voice beside me proceeded to say, "I'd be happy to switch places so you can sit with your daughter."

With that, the Grinch gave way to Bob Crachit and I joyfully traded seats and had a lovely chat with my daughter about the holiday light parade we had just enjoyed.

But then, to my utmost astonishment, you, kind and gracious sir, took out your cell phone and dialed a number:

"Hi Nick, it's Kris calling."

A coincidental Santa-calling-Santa-type moment? I think not. You, sir, saved Christmas. (Well, at least my evening.)

In that same spirit of giving, I will not be curmudgeonly and hostile towards you seat-hoggers. Indeed, I hope you got home safely and that the heart and kittens all found good homes. To demonstrate further my sincerity, I close with those oft-repeated words of Tiny Tim, which I tonight dedicate to all of the riders who found themselves sharing that microcosm of society found only on a city bus:

"God Bless Us, Everyone."

With the merriest of Christmases to you,

PM

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Since When Is Christmas Only 6 Days Away?

For real?! Where has the time gone? I'm usually a bit late when it comes to preparing for Christmas (a holdover from my university days where everything waited until after that last final exam) but this year has been the worst yet. Part of the reason is that we've had few of the usual early Christmas season festivities - Christmas banquets, home group parties, extended family gatherings - to jumpstart the process.

Plus there's the whole "massive changes to the family routine" issue of late. We're slowly starting to settle in to the new schedule. The Boy only kind of hates school, and The Husband is simply stellar and usually has supper on the table by the time I get in the door. Mornings are still tough, but I'm pretty good at having everything ready to go the night before.

(Of course, that only works if I remember the kids' breakfast waiting in the fridge. Sigh. Yesterday took a detour when it was discovered only blocks from school that the day's PopTart/Fruit Bar/Chocolate Milk package was still at home. Fortunately there was a Caribou Coffee nearby. Unfortunately, breakfast for two children cost an astronomical nine dollars.)

Work is going super-duper-terrifically well. On the work environment front, it's a great office. Lots of perks (frozen yogurt day tomorrow!) and extremely nice coworkers. On the job responsibility front, it's pretty much perfect. Style manuals, templates, information-presentation guidelines - everything I do is governed by at least one standard if not two or more. The attention paid to consistency makes me want to weep for joy.

(I've often thought I should have been born about 125 years sooner than I was. The Victorian society, with its "a place for everyone and everyone in his/her place" mentality, would have suited me much better than this loosey-goosey social mobility we've got nowadays. Mind you, Victorian social immobility wasn't so hot when you were a charwoman. Or any kind of woman, for that matter.)

And we are cautiously optimistic that we may have found our new church. We "kid-tested" a local Mennonite church this past Sunday and it passed with flying colours. There are three little girls The Girl's age and one other boy who is exactly three days older than The Boy. Not a huge number, but they were all fast friends before the morning was over. We were fairly bowled over by the welcome we received. It's a very small church (about 65 or so) and a bit more traditional in their worship and older in their age demographic than we are used to. But we think it's a place where we could be quite comfortable, so we shall see what the new year brings.

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Clickety-clack, My Keyboard's Back!

Oh it is so nice to be posting using an actual keyboard instead of individually selecting each letter with a stylus. My palm pilot kept me sane these past weeks in that it allowed me to check email (without which function I feel a bit like Tom Hanks in Castaway), but the outgoing messages were few and far between given that I clocked in at a feeble 15 words/minute.

And those minutes were a bit tough to come by this week. Phew! I'd forgotten how hard working for a living is! When it comes to yours truly, "working mom" has become synonymous with "working-outside-the-home-mom." I would never want to minimize the tremendous work that my SAHM friends do, but when I am playing house, I don't do much. In fact, I don't think I could account for even half of my time for the past four months in a legitimate fashion. So it's definitely been a huge adjustment getting up every morning before 6:30 am and actually having to be somewhere. Wearing clean clothes, no less.

For those interested in the logistics, The Husband and I are staggering our work hours in order to a) keep the kids home for as much of the day as possible and b) avoid paying for after-school care. The Husband takes the "it can't be morning already, can it?!" shift and heads out the door to be at work by 6:30 am while I get the "herding bleary-eyed babies into uniforms and getting them off to school" shift and try to get to work by about 8:30. Then The Husband picks them up when school is done at 3:30 and I get home around 6:00.

Work is going really, really well. I'm overwhelmed and feel like I'm barely treading water when it comes to knowing what I'm supposed to do, but that's the first week on any job. It's an exponential learning curve as I try to get a sense of both the products and the processes. But my coworkers have been welcoming and helpful, and I can see myself fitting in there quite well. Even if they do use the serial comma.

Yesterday was our kids' Christmas program. Excuse me. "Winterfest." In this age of political correctness, the only nods to Christmas were the two trees with lights on the stage. The theme for the evening was "Fairy Tales" so there were various reenactments of well-known tales. It was fantastic - you could barely hear a word, the onstage lights were positioned so that all the children were backlit so you could only see silhouettes and no one seemed to remember what to do during scene transitions. In short, a perfect children's program.

Our children shone in their parts as a horse (The Boy) and the grandfather in Peter and the Wolf (The Girl). In fact, The Boy surprised us all by learning the song and his part having only been at the school for two weeks now. They were, of course, the cutest children there and everyone else might as well have gone home after the Grade One play. But there was a potluck after - gotta love a small private school where everyone can meet for a meal after the program!

Now that we're a two-income family, it means that all household maintenance takes place on the weekend. Add a week's worth of dishes, clothes, grocery shopping plus Christmas shopping in preparation for our trip north next week, and it'll be a busy couple of days! But I'll try to post some pictures from the last month soon - now that we've got a real life computer, anything can happen!

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Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off to Work I Go

It's been a long day, but I've got just enough brain space to blog a quick update.

My first day on the new job was really good. I spent most of it reading about the company's products and getting a sense of what I'm going to be doing.

Best of all - an internal style manual that is - get this - 90 pages long. 90 pages of serial commas and em dashes...simply fantastic.

It was The Husband's birthday today, so we ordered pizza and now we're celebrating with a couple of episodes of Flight of the Conchords. More another day.

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Waving Flags and Revving Engines - Ah, The American Dream

Yesterday we experienced something that personified much of what we (rightly or wrongly) associate with the American Midwest. Big trucks. Fried food. Standing together singing "proud to be an American." Altars to consumerism. 80's hair and sweatshirts.

Mall of America? Nope. A Republican convention? Nuh-uh. Nascar? Close.

Monster Jam.

That's right, we paid money yesterday to spend the evening with thousands of others wearing earplugs and screaming cheers for monster trucks with names like "Grave Digger."

The kids had been begging for weeks whenever the commercials came on, so we thought we'd surprise them. Well, it was a bit of a bust. Surprisingly, The Boy started freaking out and begging to go home as soon as it started. We're not sure why; we think perhaps the noise and rumbling were too much despite his ear plugs. So we left at the first intermission.

No real harm done. We'd already passed our favourite part of the evening - getting into the parking garage only to be told "no credit cards. Cash or check only."

With ten cars behind us, we scrambled to find a chequebook. Then a pen Then a working pen. Then another pen after the cheque was returned because we had not filled in the recipient and "oh no, I can't fill it in - I could write it out to myself."

You know what? Go ahead. Pocket our eight dollars. Call it a tip for being oh so helpful.

In a more charitable vein, today I attended a church that has now passed the "try it for two Sundays" test. It's a small Mennonite church that has impressed us both mightily with its extremely welcoming people. So we'll try it with the kids next week.

The rest of today will be spent doing laundry, tidying, and otherwise getting ready for our first week where we've all got day jobs. I start bright and early at 9:00 am tomorrow - I'll try to post in the evening to let you all know how it goes.

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An Open Letter to My Winter Tires

Dearest Dunlops,

How can I forget the day you came into my life? It was Christmas Eve 2004. An accident involving a Grand Cherokee and a bus bench had left me wondering whether "all-season" simply referred to how much of the year my stock tires performed poorly. Late to the party (who knew that wintertime is too late to order winter tires?), I "had" to settle for you since all the Pirellis were sold out.

Since that day, I have not always treated you kindly. I have let you suffer in the third circle of hell that is a Manitoba summer two years in a row simply because I have been out of the country for two "time to change over your tires" seasons and by the time I got back in late May, quite frankly, it was too close to winter to bother. And I let you be the scapegoat for that awful noise, rolling my eyes and declaring "it's my tires" whenever anyone commented.

But I have never maligned you when it comes to what you do so faithfully and so skillfully: stick to the snowy icy roads. You, my most precious treaded beauties, cling to the nastiest of highways with a tenacity my children only dream of.

Yesterday, of course, was no exception. You doggedly spun through really quite adverse road conditions to convey me to and from the border safely. You stuck to whatever visible surface peeked out of a snowy two-lane highway along Lake Superior, protecting me from certain submersion in said lake had we even grazed the shoulder. You cheerfully took ownership of the "staying on the road" responsibilities and freed me to enjoy selections from my 46 hours' worth of Penguin Classics audiobooks.

And then you waited so patiently while I successfully got my work visa and did not even murmur in protest that you only got to spend two minutes in Canada.

O circular miracles of rubberized perfection, I rejoice in your incredible aptitude for all things tire-ish. May our journeys together be long and similarly free of incident.

Yours always (or until the tread wears down),

PM

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First Day of School - Part Deux

(OK, so this is the third time I've tried writing this. Our computer is officially kaput and we're limping along with my palm pilot. It works, but about as well as scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. So this might be short,)

My baby started school yesterday. Yes, I know he was in daycare full-time last year and that this is only pre-k, but still. They have circle time and learn about the days of the week and have activity centres - it's school.

He is Mr. Handsome in his uniform and even though he only knows two words ("bun-joor" and "whee"), he is trying really hard. His sweet teacher rigged it so that he was yesterday's "petit étoile" (little star) which meant he was first in line all day and he got to bring show and tell today.

My mommy heart is sore and proud. He is such a sweet, sensitive boy who looooves to be with his mama. He was so tired when I picked him up yesterday; he melted into my arms and didn't want to let go.

But we're all pleased at how smooth his integeation is going and I'm turning my thoughts towards work next week.

The final hurdle is causing me a fair amount of anxiety. I'm planning to travel up to Grand Portage - the closest point of entry is 5 hours away, grrr - tomorow or Thursday to try to get my visa. An immigration lawyer is sending me a hee-ooj package today and theoretically there is no valid reason I would be denied. But border officials do not always follow theoretical models and my stomach turns at the thought of my entire career resting on someone else's interpretation of the rules. Some prayers for road safety and easy visa acquisition would be much appreciated.

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Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

Remember the local weather obsession? Well, yesterday the news reports reached a fever pitch, and the impending doom forecast was the talk of the town.

Apparently anywhere from 6 to 12 inches is on its way. In fact, the snow *just* started gently falling and the promise is that it will not let up until tomorrow sometime.

(I didn't believe the hype myself, until I read that NWA is allowing passengers to change their itinerary for free if they are scheduled to fly into/through our area over the next 24 hours. If an airline is waiving change fees, then a for-true blizzard must be a-coming. So I sent The Girl out to the backyard to rescue my colander; it was in use as some sort of rock receptacle and I didn't relish the thought of digging through a foot of snow the next time I wanted to make spaghetti.)

Today is pretty much the perfect day for a big snow dump. It's December 1, which means that it is officially Tree-Putting-Up weekend. Fortunately, we have a garden centre and a tree lot within walking distance, so our search for that perfect Charlie Brown tree shouldn't be too onerous. We weren't planning on going out during the day and the fridge is full. We do have evening plans, but our babysitter lives next door and we're only going so far as the local shopping/food district.

Oh, and I also wanted to acknowledge the lack of pictures over the last while. Our computer underwent some much-needed major surgery last week and did not emerge unscathed. It has lost its ability to load pictures, play movies & music, and generally perform in anything close to an effective manner.

So (shhh - don't tell it as I still need to check my email), it is headed for replacement. This computer certainly doesn't owe us anything; it was a refurbished laptop purchased hurriedly after the "WHO PUT WATER IN THE LAPTOP?!" incident two years ago and had the kindness to break for the first time last year just days before the warranty ran out, saving us its equivalent value in repairs. Perhaps it deserves a better fate than being handed over to our munchkins for abusive game-playing on pbskids, but that's how it goes in the world of disposable electronics.

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