A morning in the life of uptight boy

I've titled this a morning in the life of, but the reality is, it took only about 15 minutes for him to run the gamut of things to freak out about. These are the things I deal with every morning with him. Sometimes I haven't got the time really, which makes for some bad conflicts and really just slows us down more. Here we go. Me. short on sleep, accidentally fell back asleep after alarm, two teens also overslept due the absence of screaming toddlers acting as alarm clock. Giant pile of dishes cause I had a long council meeting last night and didn't do them when I got home, lunches not made,one child laying on the floor in a blanket claiming to be freezing to death. etc... In the middle of me washing dishes as fast as I can because the lunch containers need to be done, youngest one , my super uptight about everything boy starts to cry- "i'm pooing! " me- you mean peeing? Him, -Yes, it's getting on me! I drop the dish i'm washing and race him upstairs to the potty. It's too late, he has peed in his 'Mater pull up. As I'm pulling the pull up off, i bump his sock, making it slide a smidgen off his foot. Him -HEY! You wrecked my sock! me, "ok, I'm just going to get you new socks and some clothes for today" Taking advantage of his prone position on the toilet, i yank his shirt off and toss his dirty clothes in the hamper. Him, very indignant- I don't want No Shirt! You took my shirt! Me (pulling on his socks) just a sec Him upset- my sock is ruined! (the seam was a millimetre off his toe line. seriously. sadly,-or luckily- I understand how horrid that is.)Me, smoothing it out, nope look it's perfect now. Him, I have no shirt! Me-yes, i'm getting you another one., (which i did lickety split before he could discover the joy of nudity). I opt for his favourite t. Unfortunately I put it on backward. Him, on the verge of hysterical tears now. "it's on wrong, you did it wrong! it's the wrong way, that's not cool dog! " (it has a weiner dog on it, cool dog on front, hot dog on back. sad i know). I get it turned before he can continue in that vein, and slip his pants on before he can notice I got a bit of water on them and get upset about that. Then I go to hurry on with getting everyone else ready, before he can stress about anything else. Does anyone else have a child who is that particular about their clothing and stuff?

November.

Well somehow we are into November and only a few weeks away from Christmas.Yes that high pitched scream of terror really is coming from me. I haven't got any gifts yet. Seriously, this time of year I'm usually done, but having no money is really cutting into my ability to buy gifts for anyone. Lately we have all been blessed with illness. Couple that with the awesome fun prep I'll be doing for a colonoscopy and endoscopy on Monday, and woohoo what a party! Why on earth is the other thing called an endoscopy anyway? That one isn't going in the back door at all. It's one that goes through the upper half right? I think? I could swear that they were talking about swallowing that one. I'm not sure I'll be swallowing anything the way I'm feeling.

Divination by Apples

Way back in the stone ages- (in the 70's and early 80's when I was a kid), there were many tried and true divination methods used for determining your future spouse. Since most of us were saddled with apples in our lunches most of the time, apple prediction became a popular pasttime. The idea was to hold your apple, then turn the stem, with each turn saying one alphabet letter. Then when the stem popped out, that was the first letter of your future partner's first name. No matter what I did, I always managed to get either the Letter E, or the letter C as the first one, and always the letter B . Which bugged me as a child because the only person I knew with the initials EB was my grandfather. Certainly not the boy I had a crush on from SK to Gr6! At any rate, I wrote the whole apple thing off as a fraud. Until grade 10, when I fell in highschool love with a boy who had the initials CB. Ahhh, a match made in heaven! And it lasted right up until the end of the school year. le sigh. Then for over two years I dated a bad letter combo, MH. What on earth I was thinking, I really can't say. I escaped that abuse finally and promptly met a CB- hooray! Sweet guy, tutored me in Math, which I wanted to upgrade. And then he had the nerve to move. Not just to another town, but he moved to Ireland for University. That was back in the days before the computer and the internet. Keeping in touch meant horrid cross atlantic phone calls. We parted as great friends- Then another bad choice ...or a few...then an LB. Pretty close right? L could be mistaken for C if your handwriting was shite and you squinted. That relationship only lasted until third year University, the power of the predicting apples was so strong! Shortly after that one ended, I met a guy, he was a friend of an acquaintance i had met once, my ex-boyfriend's twin brother's ex-girlfriend's ex room mate's friend to be exact- not my type really- His name turned out to be Ed. Last name started with a B. It also turned out his first name on his birth certificate started with a C. So, covering all the bases there, EB, CB. I would like to say, we lived happily ever after-but the apples of my childhood couldn't guarantee that I suppose. We did get married after we knew each other almost 6 weeks. We are still together almost 17 years, and 4 kids later, so hey who knows. maybe those apples knew what they were doing when their little stems twisted off in the E or C spot each time! And no, I didn't plan my life around the apple, it just amuses me that things worked out this way.

I used to travel up north every summer as a child to visit my Grandparents who lived in Sudbury, Ontario. My Dad grew up there, spending his summers swimming in lake Ramsey, or out at their cottage on Lake Penage- Don't picture anything too fancy, it hadn't changed much by 1998 when it was sold, from how it looked back when it was built in the 1930s or so. (i'll have to ask my dad about what year it was). Anyway, as time went on, the cottage became more accessible by road-I imagine when my dad was a kid it was probably a dirt track going in. When i was a kid you had to walk down from the main road, close to the length of a city block, down a steep hill. Trust me, we tried not to forget anything in the car- plus with bears around, who wanted to be alone running back up there to get it?! As you came down the hill you passed the outhouse, then finally the cottage, built into the side of the rocky northern landscape-. It was a white log cabin like structure with a porch on it,( red as far as I remember)Luckily there was a porch or else we kids would no doubt have fallen and rolled down the hill every time we stepped outside, because that walkway to the water and boathouse/steambath was plenty steep and rocky. Surrounded by pine trees, and the rocky northern landscape,it is burned into my memory, and I wish that my grandparents hadn't insisted on it being sold after my Grandmother's death. The Sudbury of my childhood had very few trees,though by my teen years increasing the height of the big nickle mine smokestack has caused a resurgence in the tree population, and it wasn't as bleak. But still, visits to my grandparent's house were not as fun for us as visiting them at the cottage. We would all tumble out of the sweltering station wagon, hauling pillows and suitcases and make our way down the hill where my grandparent's dog Korky would come racing out barking. My grandmother always seemed to dress the same at the cottage (camp actually. People out there called them camps. I guess because they were hunting camps when they started using them- my grandfather actually had a heart attack while the two of them were deer hunting out there on the icy lake- naturally in the days before phones out there, they weren't able to reach help in time) Anyway, invariably she would come out, a neat tidy woman wearing her slacks or sometimes camp shorts, white socks, white biway sneakers, a cardigan or blouse (depending on how hot it was), and sometimes her white camp hat-tilley style! Her hard little rounded belly when we hugged- and how she seemed to shrink as I got older, caught up and passed her in height finally. You entered into a super organized kitchen, which in turn opened into the other main room which had two walls that were almost all windows (weirdly enough, they didn't open! just tiny circles a the bottom, which had a flip piece of wood that covered them up when it got too chilly. I don't recall it ever being too hot though, except at night). My grandparent's bed was in the corner of the room, away from the windows, on the same side as the cabinets that held the dishes, cutlery, and other cottage necessities. There was a tiny black and white tv that didn't get any channels. A radio from before they invented FM, and the other side of the room held a large table, big enough to fit 8 of us, and afreezer, chock full of food- The one bedroom was through there, we slept in there in bunk beds, the four of us kids, two per bed. I'm guessing that the room was about 7 by 8 at the very most, likely not quite that large even. In later years there was a bedroom added, in an enclosed porch outside , but I only slept in it one or two visits that i recall, with my grandmother. I was terrified of bears coming in and barely slept between the fear and the constant drone of mosquitos. Whenever i was assigned the top bunk in the little room, i would lay awake for hours because the light from over the table shone right in through the window, right into my face-while my parents and grandparents played seemingly endless games of euchre and twenty one. That's something I totally miss about the cottage, cribbage, twenty one, euchre with my grandparents. we really only went there for 2 weeks or so each summer, after we got the haying done, but i have so many memories. One time a baby bear had gotten up a tree right by the cottage door, and there was the risk in case the mama bear was still in the area- Underneath cottage, built into the hill was a big storage area- fridge etc. I'm not sure that my grandparents could close it off, but i feel like the wood and lots of outdoor stuff was stored down there. I used to make my way across the giant rocks along the shore, to the steep rockface just to the right from the camp, between ours and pitkethleys' and pick blueberries from the scrubby little bushes up top. I liked perching up there looking out at the lake, across to the island there, pretending I was the only one around. My favourite thing though was the boathouse which also housed the steam bath. There were bunk beds down there for guests, and my parents usually slept down there- Sometimes i swear I still smell the cedar in the steambath woodstove, heating the rocks to a sizzle- getting to toss a cupful of water onto them was a treat- we'd lay on the benches in there, cool damp wash cloths on our faces , trying to stay cool and remain in there as long as the adults. Then, the door banging shut behind us, we'd race out, feet slapping on the paving stone path, racing across the cement pad to the diving board or water's edge and plunging into the clear chilly lake. In the woods just outside the steam bath , but near the "beach" was where my grandparents parked the little aluminum boat that belonged to my dad, and also where my grandfather (step grandpa really) was often found cleaning fish, in his green workman pants, plaid shirt and fedora hat. Sometimes early mornings he and I would go out fishing, zipping across the lake in the silence of the dawn. I don't think I ever really caught much other than rock bass, but my grandpa would bring back some fish, and we'd be have fresh fried fish for breakfast along with the mountain of toast, bacon and stuff my grandmother used to put out. As I got older, I used to love just sitting on the dock I don't think I realised I missed it this much- One sound that can transport me there is the sound of leaves on the wind. that Rushing sounds that northern trees make, starts far away and building as it reaches the shore, wooshing away over the water. If you haven't heard it, I'm afraid I'm not a good enough writer to convey it. It's a poignant sound to me, one I've come to associate with the end of the summer. When asked to come up with a happiest memory, that is what popped into my head. The sounds I would hear laying in my bunk at night- the rush of the trees, the wind racing though them towards the water, the lapping of the waves on the rocky shore, and the Johnathan G bumping against the sides of the boathouse. I still remember how it felt, to awaken, feeling as though i was on the water, the bunk seeming to rock with the waves- Lake Penage, i miss you so!

Travel time!

The long awaited moment of our summer had finally arrived- the car was packed, the kids were up and we were ready to hit the road- Destination: Port Clyde, Maine!
About 12 kms into the trip my dd2 asked "Are we there yet?" -and not for the last time either.
Only about 1200kms remaining!
By the time we reached our stop for the night, which was roughly halfway I was thinking about buying earplugs and maybe a plane ticket for myself.
We stayed two nights in my In Laws trailer/motorhome. The kids swam at the beach, my hubby went fishing with his dad and the kids and I hung out with their Memere (their grandma Sheila), which they always enjoy.
Then early Sunday morning we were back on the road. It was just after 8:30 when we cleared Montreal. We felt we were making pretty good time.
Winding through the mountains, we saw some beautiful scenery (as we blindly followed my gps down some bizarre side roads). It was gorgeous, but there was no where to stop to pee, or eat which is kind of a necessity when travelling with 4 kids.
We came to the border in Caanan Vt without barely any warning. It was a tiny little booth, with one car ahead of us and a fantastic view of the mountains which had fog curling around their tops-
The nice border officer let us use the toilet there (thank goodness!) We were out of Vermont within 2 or 3 minutes and into NH.
It was a while before we came upon the next thing resembling civilization- a store called LL Cote in NH. We ate at subway because we had no real option for anything else, and kept on moving.
It was about 5 when we were an hour away from the cottage, so we stopped at Target to buy some milk and food supplies. A short jaunt down the tiny little highway (can you even call that a highway?), a million cries of I have to pee ( now!!!), 89 kms later and we were there-
Totally worth it. Perched on a point out in the ocean, Port Clyde is a very picturesque area which reminds me very much of Northern ontario, but with ocean views, and lobsters and quaint towns instead of mines and lakes. We unpacked, and immediately hit the beach as the tide was out- sweet relief to be out of the car, believe me! This was our first view of the beach on our street-

SAHM -synonym for lonely, or maybe acronym for Sits At Home Moping

When i thought of stay at home mom's ,before I was one, I pictured cutesy groups of lululemon sportin' moms with their styling kids having coffee and hanging at the park, or the beach, their houses, whatever. Sipping icey drinks,laughing,like yaya sisterhood of the travelling pants ( a combo of the fun,faith, and loyalty of the two movies).
I imagined myself with friends to hang with, bounce momtastic ideas off, our kids would be like siblings in their familiarity and comfort level in one another's homes.
Alas, it is not so. Finding friends is like dating. You have to attract them, have similar values and time availabilites.Thankfully you don't have to worry they will want you to put out at the end of every playdate.
I have lost more than one friend through their return to their career,(or moving away, or divorcing and moving away.) followed by the insane busy lifestyle that goes along with that.
It is hard not to worry that it is me and I am just unfriendable. The thin fancy moms have zero trouble finding a clique that wants to hang out a few times a week, hosting playdates, taking walks,joining school council together, or just doing whatever.
I have tried all the traditional mom meeting methods. Parks, playgroups, classes,school. My dd's jk class was almost exclusively bussed last year. Try getting to know other parents then!
The plain truth is I am so brutally lonely and my kids are never the right age group to ones that attend the same classes as us. Or they are only available evenings/ weekends, when I am not. Everyone else also seems to have great houses, cleaned to perfection. It is so discouraging.
I vow to get out to more things and stop living like a hermit. If I can get anyone to talk to me that is.I am running, working out, and hopefully getting the witchlike mole removed from my face, and who knows, maybe I will find some compatible friends then?

Garden woes, this heat must go!

For the first time ever, we planted a little vegetable garden. We had the wettest spring I can remember. Took us until the end of May to actually be able to go outside long enough to dig the garden and plant it.

Things were growing along nicely when suddenly all the rain just disappeared. We woke up the other morning to a bit of dampness on the patio table so I imagine it rained, but I can't confirm it.

My zucchini are shrivelling and turning yellow. My pumpkins are wilty, carrots are not even growing anymore, and my potatoes, poor potatoes, they have the longest skinniest tops on them ever from the early extended rains when they struggled toward the sunlight. I don't even know if they will grow potatoes on them! My beans are finally creeping up the bean tower,but my peppers are stunted and suffering a bit now. My eggplants basically died under the jungle like cover that is my potatoes. My herbs aren't faring much better. The truly hearty lemon verbena and mint are gigantic, thanks to the rain earlier on, but the stuff we planted later is not growing. They look exactly as they did when my husband planted them after his birthday. Maybe not exactly the same, they were way healthier looking at the greenhouse!

Now, I'm all for summer and warm weather, but it's getting ridiculous! By the time it creeps to 48 on Thursday with the humidex, I won't need to cook, I'll just be able to go out and butter my sad shrivelling veggies on the vine and serve them for supper!