Magic Moments

There are many things I love about the season of Christmas. The food, the company and all the sparkly decorations strewn about. I can over look the massive consumerism and commercialization of a holy event and even the hordes of cranky shoppers, because I see the magic of this time of year.

What I hate about Christmas is the fact my children expect me to have a personality transplant and morph into Ms. Molly Homemaker. A woman who suddenly wears an apron and pulls freshly baked edible goodies out of the oven while wearing a smile.

Apparently it isn't quite as festive if you are cursing about not watching the time while the smoke detector is screaming and a haze of acrid smoke wafts through the air.

But I love my kids, and I wanted them to have some sort of home-making type of memory with me. (This way when they are deciding to whether to place me in the fancy, licensed seniors home or the shady, back alley discount one, I can play the home making mother card.) So I bought a gingerbread house package. It may not be actually baking, but I'm in the kitchen and food products are involved. Good enough.

It started off well enough. We were all having fun, listening to some carols and munching on the candy. Then disaster struck.







The facking roof fell in. All by itself. I swear, I wasn't touching it. I wasn't even looking at it. I was too busy shoving licorice up my nose and pretending to be a walrus. Yet in it went. And it couldn't just collapse. No, it had to break. Into three pieces.

Why the manufacturers don't send replacement parts in those damn kits, is a freaking mystery.







Just when I was ready to cry and call it quits, my darling husband stepped in and put on his hard hat.

A hero was born that moment. At least in my eyes. There was still a chance I could pull this off and have one Martha Stewart-y type memory to wave in front of my children when they're older.







A little bit of sugary goodness, some cleverness from a cute man, a lot of cheerleading from Fric and Frac and me in the back ground still stuffing candy into my nose while keeping a safe distance from the highly breakable cookie house, and viola! Problem solved.













Turned out pretty nice, if I say so myself.







It was a Christmas miracle.

From my family to yours, Merry Christmas everyone!

Stuck in Hamster Hell

It was a tough day yesterday. We suffered yet another death in our family.

Fric's hamster Rosie, bit the biscuit. Or rather, her cage-mate (whom I shall now and forever affectionately refer to as Chomp) bit Rosie. Right through her spine, severing it. Along with taking a pound of hamster flesh, right out of Rosie's hide.

Apparently, while we all slumbered peacefully, dreaming of sugar plums and candy canes, Chomp and Rosie were engaged in a hamster smack down. A fight to the death. A duel where only one over-fed furball could survive.

I woke up to find my daughter standing at my bedside, in tears, holding a bleeding and still breathing hamster in front of my nose, urging me to heal her and make things right. Short of grabbing a broom and beating the poor thing to death, there really wasn't much I could do.

While examining the bleeding rodent I thought of a multitude of other things I would have preferred to do that morning. Have some coffee. Get a brazilian. Build a snowfort while completely nude. Yet here I was, pretending to know what the hell I was doing as the sad hamster lay in my hand and struggled to live.

Why couldn't this happen tomorrow night, I thought to myself, when their damn father would be home to deal with it? Just my friggin luck I muttered under my breath. "What was that mom?" Fric inquired innocently.

"I was just saying how poor Rosie doesn't seem to have any luck," I covered.

After sending the kids to school and promising to play Nurse Jane to the little rat, I closed the box and put it on the table. The damn poor thing was taking her sweet time kicking the proverbial bucket. At least Frac's mouse Dave, had the decency to died quickly, thereby causing me less stress. Not Rosie. She was a fighter. She stayed with me all afternoon. She haunted me. She robbed me of the joy of blogging life while I wrung my hands and worried she was in pain.

Plus, I was a little skeeved out by the fact there was a shredded and mutilated animal in pain and slowly dying while occupying space on my kitchen table. The place where I put food. Ew.

Just as I was working up the courage to grab the broom and help her on her merry little way, she finally gasped her last breath and made her exit. I swear I could hear the death rattle across the room. Damn hamster. She always was a drama queen.

But now what? The kids would be home soon, and I had promised to take care of the situation for them. I did not want to sit through yet another rodent funeral. It's not like I could bury the little critter anyways, with the frozen ground. And I was not sticking her in my freezer to wait for the day the ground thaws.

I eyed my woodstove, blazing away in the corner of my family room. I could cremate her, but I was fairly sure the hubs would object to the use of the wood stove in that manner. I didn't want to risk flushing her and having her plug up my pipes with her fat little carcass. Yet it seemed so disrespectful to just toss her in the trash like she was a just another dead rodent. She was my kid's beloved pet after all.

The pressure mounted as I eyed the box holding Rosie's remains. As I fretted over what to do with the rat, I envisioned her starting to rot and maggots crawling out of her body. Lovely.

Suddenly, movement flashed out of the corner of my eye.

There was a cat sitting on my back deck, sniffing my barbeque. It looked hungry.

I know what you're thinking. You'd be right. I took the remains of Rosie, waved her under the hungry kitty's cold nose and then tossed her into the bush. The kitty followed in hot pursuit.

How noble of Rosie, I thought. She would have wanted this, I told myself. She wouldn't have wanted to go to waste. She was continuing the circle of life.

If Frac asks though, I'll tell her I cremated her. My lovely and sensitive daughter may not feel as generous about her beloved pet's remains as I did.

Rest in peace dear Rosie. Here's hoping Chomp joins you soon and this hamster hell I'm stuck in will be over.

I'm Going Green

I think my children are out to get me. Or at the very least, they're trying to rob me of my youthful good looks and charming dispostion. They're determined to make me old and feeble before I hit the mid thirties.

Shocking, I know. They're preteens. But up till now, they've been relatively easy kids. As long as I keep them in steady supply of hot chocolate (the kind with marshmallows), allow access to a gaming system and toss some food pellets in their direction, they don't generally complain too loudly.

They're even kinda helpful around the house, what with the wood gathering, toilet cleaning and dish washing service they freely provide.

But as of late, my charming children have morphed into soul sucking, angry kids who act like spoiled brats engaged in a cage fighting battle. They're ready to rip one another's heads off (and mine too) if someone so much as looks sideways at them.

All of this and they whine. Worse than my three year old nieces. It is charming good times beneath this roof, I tell ya. And I have no relief from it, because my darling husband has tucked his tail and ran for the snow covered hills, under the ruse of pretending to be the sole income provider.

Er, I mean, in his absence my frustration is growing with the lack of parental backup and I really miss the firm, guiding hand a father provides for his children.

I couldn't figure out why, suddenly, these kids have morphed into carnivorous little demons when they used to be so friendly and loving. Surely hormones don't just kick in overnight.

(All you parents of teenagers out there pipe down in the peanut gallery. Let me keep my delusions for another year or two, please.)

After yet another day of bad attitudes and miserable behaviour, I was ready to toss them into a snowbank, sit on them and give them a good ole fashioned facewashing with a mitt full of snow. (After all, it always worked when my brother did it to me.) But I worried there might be some kind of law against rubbing their snotty outlooks off with a large snowball, so I did what any stressed out mother would do.

I called my husband and bitched whined. His response? Go open a bottle of wine. That will make everything better. While I like the way the man thinks, it wasn't quite the response I was looking for.

So I put on my detective hat and started asking questions. Is anything wrong at school? No. Did you have a fight with one of your friends? No. Are you missing your brother more than usual? No. Do you wish I would fuck off and die? A slight pause while they pondered this, but then a unified no. Phew.

Unable to solve the mystery, I sent them to bed and mulled over the problem with a glass of wine. (It gives me clarity. Wink, wink.) This state of affairs was quickly becoming a Me-Or-Them situation and there would be only one person left standing. I wasn't so confident that person would be me.

Getting up to let my obedient and mercifully well-behaved dog out, I noticed both of their bedroom lamps were on. Hmm. It was more than an hour since I put them to bed. Perhaps they fell asleep and forgot to shut them off. Tiptoeing to their bedroom doors (they're side by side) I spied the problem.

The little fuckers were reading. Bless their literary souls. Still, as a parent it was my duty to scare the bejeepers out of them order them to shut it down and close the book.

Then the same thing happened the next night and then the next. Turns out my kids aren't morphing into teenagers before my very eyes, they are just sleep deprived, imaginative little kids who are getting sucked into the pages of creatively written novels.

Every night I hollered at them to turn off their lights. Every night they'd turn them off and then wait until they were sure I was out of sight and then flip their lamps back on. And every morning they'd wake up crabby and grouchy and act like the sleep deprived demons they'd become.

I finally had it. I knew I had options. I could take away their books, but as a book lover and avid reader I couldn't bring myself to take that route. Or, I could spend my life yelling at them to shut the damn lamps off. I could take away their lamps. Or I could get creative.

I went with imaginative. What would MacGyver do, I wondered? Then it hit me. Last night I sent them off to bed with a kiss and a wink and pretended nothing was different. I listened for the audible click of their lamps and then I made friends with my breaker box.

It was as easy as flipping a switch. I cut their power. They were in complete darkness and had to go to sleep. I had half hoped they would have the nuts to come out and ask what happened to their lamps, but apparently they're smarter than that. When I was sure they were fast asleep (which happened rather quickly now that they had no light to entertain themselves with) I turned the breaker back on.

This morning, Fric and Frac both asked if I could buy new lightbulbs for their lamps because they seemed to have burned out. Yet when I checked, they magically worked. I know it won't take long before they figure it out, but I'm going to milk this for as long as possible. Because this morning they were charming and cheerful and rather delightful to be around. Hopefully, they'll remain that way as the day wears on.

I should feel bad. I know it. But I'll just tell myself I did it for the environment. Think of the energy I saved.

Mother Earth will thank me.