The Third Eye

This year, my husband and I declared us miserable old fuddy duddies and refused to make any plans for New Year's eve.

Oh fine. For the sake of honesty and accuracy I'll amend that statement so that my husband doesn't have a coronary.

This year *I* declared my husband and myself miserable old fuddy duddies and refused to accept any of the plans my husband tried to make to ring in the new year.

For one stinking year, I just wanted to sit home in my pajamas, watch a marathon of Criminal Minds, and do absolutely nothing. I didn't have it in me to dress up, go out or host a get together. I wanted to start 2012 quietly. I just wasn't in the mood to play.

My husband and my teens, however, weren't completely on board with my lack of plans or enthusiasm. They were itching to go out and it wasn't long before both of my teens had arranged to go over to a friend's house for an impromptu slumber party to ring out the year.

My husband volunteered to drive them over to their friend's house because he is friendly with the dad. Fine. Whatever. Go abandon me for wilder pursuits. Go enjoy your night of merriment and frivolity because I am going to enjoy holding the remote control and changing the channel whenever I feel like it, I muttered back at them as they fled our house.

I was just happy to be home, with my Criminal Minds and my television remote.

An hour or so later, my husband came back from dropping the kids off and when he walked through the door and looked at me, he stopped short.

"Um, what have you been doing since I left Tanis?"

I looked at him blankly and waggled the remote. "Nothing. Watching television. Why"

"Um, have you noticed anything unusual about your face today? Looked in a mirror recently?"

"Well, I showered early and I looked fine then. But I think I'm getting an eye twitch. Why? Do I have spinach in my teeth?" I asked as I hopped up to look in the mirror hanging in our foyer.

And then I saw what was clearly freaking my husband out.

My right eye was swollen.

"Weird."

"Totally. But I guess that explains the twitchy feeling and why it kinda hurts to waggle my eyebrows," I murmured as I examined my face.

The next morning, my eye was so swollen it was almost sealed shut.

The morning after that, it looked like I was growing myself a third eye.

It's been awesome. Awesomely grotesque.

I mean I'm used to my face looking like this:



Except lately I refuse to wear my contacts and my hair is blazingly red so I probably look more like this:



Except of course when I'm playing with my computer. Then I tend to look like this:



I like to take weird pictures of myself and randomly send them to family and friends. It freaks them out every time.

But today, on day five, my face looks like this:



I mean, it's not quite normal but clearly there is no third eye growing like there was a few days ago, so I suppose that's progress.

So basically I wrote this post just to show you all that my eyelid is swollen, I'm still in my bathrobe and clearly I need a shower and some make up.

Awesome.

Carry on then.

Nuggets of Gold. Or something.

So I'm falling behind on everything. Work. Parenting. Housework.

Although, to be fair, I'm always falling behind on the housework, mostly because I hate doing it so much. I keep dreaming of one day having a maid which leads me to dreaming of having enough money to employ a maid which then leads to me dreaming that hey, if I've got enough money to hire a maid I must have enough money to do actual fun stuff. Like pay someone to shave my legs and hire a circus trainer with a pack of elephants who would then come put on a show on my front lawn.

Because who doesn't want a herd of dancing elephants to call their own?

All of which leads to more day dreaming and less actual house cleaning and well, I've gone full circle and it's all my imaginary maid's fault.

Which is why even if I had money to hire a maid I'd likely not do it.

Because I'd never get anything done.

And I'd probably end up with a metric shit tonne of elephant poop on my grass and what exactly does one need that much fertilizer for?

My point is, I have been busy.

Busy going to craft shows with my mother and my sister and sometimes my daughter because she likes to join in the adult fun and I'm teaching her how to silently mock what passes as craft show art all the while instilling manners and lessons about making eye contact and never laughing at anyone's beloved retail items to their faces even if they are the most hideous things you've ever seen for the low low price of 19.99, not including tax.



Every year my sister makes me try on this type of hat thingy and every year I want to buy it and every year my mother steals my wallet and tells me I must have more money than brains if I am seriously considering buying it. Which I was. And still am. Next year, I promise.

Craft shows are awesome fun I tell you.

Then there have been the requisite Christmas concerts and pageants that are mandatory for all people who decided it would be a good idea to raise small children for fun. And as my father is learning, after having done his time in the audience of umpteen children's Christmas concerts, you can never escape the concert hell. Because after your kids are grown then you have to go see their children perform. It's a vicious unending circle of bad carols, grumpy adults and stupid costumes.

Candy canes. The new devil horns.

Of course, Jumby wasn't the only one required to wear something stupid this holiday season. His big brother had to get in on the act too. And I'm sure Frac will be thrilled beyond reason to know I'm sharing his holiday pain with y'all.

 He is very bitter his sister did not have to wear a dorky costume for her part in the church pageant.

Of course the holiday season means every movement you make, including surreptitiously picking your nose when you think no one is looking, will be well documented by the plethora of iPhones, digital cameras and video cameras everyone seems to carry with them everywhere at this time of year.

Which means if you don't take the time or spend the money you will have to live forever with those photos of you with your finger up your nose while sporting horrible roots.

And that would be a damn travesty.

 The only good roots are the ones you can slice up and put in a stew.

My husband is of course, beyond thrilled to have one more added expense during this time of year. He doesn't seem to understand that my vanity? It's priceless.

 This is what I think about Scrooge and his budget.

Of course, as my husband likes to constantly tell me, a fool and his money will soon be parted. Or rather a fool and her husband's hard earned money would be more accurate in this case.

I finally finished all of my Christmas shopping this week. Better late than never. The only thing left uncrossed on my list is the gift for my adorable in-laws who have everything and more. So I lovingly informed my husband that if he wanted his parents to have a Christmas gift from us, he could figure out what to buy them.

Heads up Mom and Dad in-law, since your son is buying your gift you can expect either a can of tuna or a set of steak knives. Since that's what he's bought for me Christmases past.

Beggars can't be choosers, yo.

Of course, purchasing all the gifts is only half of the battle.

One still has to wrap them.

This small mountain of gifts, including the sheepskin rug for Jumbster (it's okay, he can't read so I'm pretty sure I'm not spoiling his Christmas by writing this) is currently sitting on my living room floor waiting to be wrapped.

 Nixon is scared. And trying to control his urge not to mark his territory on the mountain.

One small problem? How exactly does one wrap a sheep skin rug when one does not have a box big enough to contain it?

First world problems, I have them.

By the time I'm done wrapping all this, I'm going to need one of these:

Single malt whiskey. Where have you been all my life? 

 Of course, my daughter has musical theatre rehearsal tonight, my son has a basketball game in a different town and my youngest will need me sober enough to push him up our snow covered driveway when he gets off the bus so I'm only going to be dreaming of my whiskey induced happiness instead of actually making it a reality.

In the mean time, the kids and I made y'all a video for Neil Kramer's Blogger Christmahanukwanzaakah Online Holiday Concert!

We sound horrible, but we perform with heart. Or so I like to tell myself.

If you are all in the mood for a little merry holiday spirit, you should wander on over and check out the entire concert. There are some gems of gold over there. Mine, not included.



Now please excuse me. Those presents aren't going to wrap themselves, no matter how hard I wish they would.

Ice Kills

I like to think I'm a patriotic Canadian what with my unabashed love of the beaver, my fondness for our long winter months and my ability to rock any and all sweaters, even those garishly ugly Cosby type sweater vests and the insanely ugly Christmas sweaters with the blinking Rudolph noses smack in the middle of your chest.

But lately, I'm starting to rethink my love of all things winter related as I get progressively older and my bones start to become as frail as a baby bird's.

I'm starting to think winter is trying to kill me.

And I'm not just talking about the winter roads and my poor driving skills although it's a well documented fact I drive as well as a blind person hopped up on crack as soon as the snow starts to fly. There is a reason my husband saves all year long so that he can put heavy duty steel studded winter tires on my vehicle. It's because he's had to haul my arse and our car out of a snow bank one too many times and apparently he doesn't consider this a fun winter time activity we can all partake in.

It's the ice. It's everywhere. For some reason it just won't stay on the roads like it's supposed to so grouchy underpaid government contractors can drive up and down sanding and salting the ribbons of pavement through out this beautiful province.

I swear I hear the ice patches taunting me as I walk across them. It's like they're just waiting to howl with delight as I howl in pain when I land on my arse.

I'm pretty sure the iceberg that sank the Titanic got the last laugh. I'm just saying.

I've been extremely cautious with our winter conditions for a few years ago, ever since I decided in a moment of clear brilliance to wear a pair of slippers outside as I packed my precious little doggie in my arms so he could go potty. You see my dog is a princess and doesn't want to go outside to do his bidness if the temperature drops. His paws are sensitive.

I realized, as my feet slipped out from under neath me on some hidden ice and my dog struggled in my arms and I was hurtling my way to the very hard ground that perhaps I had made the wrong choice in footwear. Two surgeries later and a relentless back ache and it's been confirmed. Even my princess dog looks at me like I am a dumbass.

But recently, my sister-in-law slipped on some ice herself. And instead of busting her back like I did, she shattered her elbow. The difference between her and I? She was at least wearing proper shoes.

2 pins and some chicken wire later and Aunt Dandy will one day have a working bionic arm. I however, may never recover.

I'm so paranoid about going outside now I've started looking at having industrial sized rolls of bubble wrap sent to my house so I can wrap myself and my kids in it every time we need to wander beyond the warmth of our house.

My husband likes to remind me that wearing proper shoes would probably be sufficient to keep me safe. However, now that his sister is all hobbled like a busted up arthritic geriatric person with more metal inside her arm than the bionic woman herself, I can rightfully point out that his theory has been proven false.

Bubble wrap would indeed be safer.

So imagine my excitement when I found a giant parcel with my name on it waiting for me at home. I was convinced that my husband had listened to my concerns, heard my arguments and provided his family with a life time supply of bubble wrap to see us through the Canadian winters.

I gleefully tore up on my package to find the ugliest, biggest pair of winter boots a person could ever hope to not own. And sadly they weren't packaged in bubble wrap.

Maybe they wouldn't be so bad if they were yellow. And not as tall as my youngest son.

My husband? Well he insists, that much like bad tasting medicine, these are the boots I need to swallow, I mean wear.

I'll forsake fashion for warmth any time, but these? These may be my limit. Don't tell my kids though, because I'm totally making them wear the pair their father sent for them. Hypocrisy for the win.

It's going to be fine though. Because I am a clever girl, even if I do like to wear my slippers outside in the snow and ice.

I found me some ice cleats. That I can slip on over my slippers.

It's like I blinked and turned into a fuddy duddy without even knowing it.

Because somehow, wearing steal studded slippers out in public is totally more cool than wearing industrial sized winter boots.

I'll save the boots for when he's home though. So he can enjoy watching me tromp about in them and see just how sexy they are.

In the meantime, winter may be winning the war, but I at least totally won this little battle.

As long as I remember to wear my studded slippers when I go out in public.

Shhh. Don't judge me.