From The List, my ‘Code’… 

Tags: Code, words to live by

1. British humour
2. Latte foam
3. Sitcom reruns
4. Champagne
5. Flowers.  Their looks, their colours, their smells.
6. Becel margarine.  I know, it’s not food it’s plastic bugs won’t touch it, etc etc… but I love it.
7. Frasier Crane
8. All things French
9. Wife & motherhood
10. Summer dresses
11. Coffee houses
12. Hats
13. Suits.  Hubba, hubba
14. Frank Sinatra
15. The Office.  British and American.
16. The feel of sunshine on my skin
17. The smells of Christmas
18. Quotes
19. Bubble baths
20. Love stories
21. Books – bookshelves, bookstores, booksales…
22. Being a bridesmaid (my former motto was ‘Always a bridesmaid, never a bride!’)
23. Dinner parties
24. Baking
25. Kisses, cuddles, snuggles & spooning
26. Colognes & perfumes
27. Travelling
28. Pretty stationary
29.  Nearly all accents… anything un-north-american, ha
30. A fabulous set of heels

Tags: 30 things I love

1. Pantyhose
2. Bad grammar
3. Sneezing
4. When two straight girls morph into slutty lesbians on the dance floor
5. The mall
6. Bacon
7. Cleaning
8. When people answer rhetorical questions
9. Mariah Carey
10. Trendy tattoos
11. Excessive exclamation. ( OMG!!!!!! Did you see that???!!!!!!!)
12. A woman being called a ‘broad’ or a ‘gal’
13. Nearly all new music
14. Renovating
15. Trying on jeans, bathing suits, and bras
16. Insensitivity
17. Sarcasm
18. My handwriting
19. Frugality
20. My inability to stop being so hard on myself
21. When people make snap judgments
22. The sissypants image I give/have.  (it’s all fine and well that I ama sissypants, but no need for everyone to know that right off the bat)
23.  Gardening, though I keep trying to love it
24. When it’s 100 degrees outside so everywhere cranks the AC inside and then you keep having to go outside to warm up
25. Learning new things
26. Dieting
27. Having to use six remotes just to watch a movie
28. Guilt, and its power to eat me alive on a regular basis
29. Skanky little receptionists/hostesses/assistants who think they hold some kind of super power
30. When I go to all the trouble of making Hubbs’ lunch and he forgets it in the fridge, resulting in a big snark-fest from yours truly, which I also hate.

Tags: 30 things I hate

Amazingly, it’s only after all the cutting and ironing and pining and cutting again that the real sewing, and work, begins.  You feel like you should be pretty much done by then but really you haven’t even started. 

So – I’ll be succinct so as not to bore you to tears like I probably did last time.  

In short, the learning curve here is great.  There is much to figure out, and I tell you if I hadn’t had my mother at my beck and call I don’t know that I would have been able to do it.  (well, I DO know, that I sure as hell wouldn’t have.  So.  Props to momsy.) 

First, there’s more pining, of course, and all that right-side-to-wrong-side business can get confusing.

These ties were a real bitch, let me tell you.

Then there’s figuring out how to do a gather stitch, (no picnic AT ALL) and then surging off the ugly ends..

'surging' is an acronym for 'cutting and thus destroying', by the way... yes I would know. Ha. So be careful.

It also turns out the sewing machines are all from 1910 and built only to sew straight lines.  So when you need to do a rounded corner… get out the seam-ripper, my friends, because you’ll need it.

After about three dozen finger-pricks and way too much time, my 1950′s housewife apron was finally finished.  My mother was oozing pride, of course, as she should be considering the whole project was more a test of her patience than my sewing ability, and I actually felt a little proud of myself too.  I couldn’t imagine actually using it in the kitchen, though… it was just so much bloody work that the thought of staining it was gasp-inducing.  So, what better do than bring it, a pair of heels, and my favorite ‘aphrodisiac cookbook’ ,to the bedroom? 

Smack that!

Am I the best wife ever or what. 

Tags: apron, cutting, pining, sewing, surging

From the list, that is, my ol’ 30 before 30 which is drawing frighteningly close.

So it turns out, mes amies, that sewing is a bit of a bitch.  If you want to do it well, that is - like anything else, it can be done half-assed, but I personally subscribe to the notion that anything worth doing is worth doing well.  (plus I had my mother teach me and she is a super-star-sewing-machine and would probably rather die than produce a junky piece of sewing.  So – I was predisposed, you might say.)

I embarked on this mission thinking I would swing down to the fabric store, select a nice summer dress pattern and material, come home, set up my machine and in a short time produce a darling little number I could wear out for dinner that very evening.  (if I actually went out anymore, that is… which I don’t, but I like to entertain these lovely little pictures of myself, particularly when I’m elbow deep in poop.)

I told this plan to mother and she laughed and laughed.  Couldn’t stop, actually.  I didn’t see what was so damn funny about it, and scowled while she composed herself.  “Sweety,” she began in that gentle condescending tone only a mother can perfect, “you can’t just ‘make a dress’, lickity split.  You have to start small, learn your way up… like how about an apron?  That would be a nice first project.”

An apron?  What did she think I was, some 1950′s housewife?  I scoffed, guffawed, made all sorts of snorty noises, but finally conceded that she was probably right.  (how I hate when that happens.  Gugh!)

I brightened a little when I saw all the fun & colourful fabrics they had to choose from.  (mom informed me a good cotton would probably be best, and in the interest of time I decided not to question it)  I chose a bright green and a matching polkadot pattern for the accents.  Then we had to wait in line behind a bunch of old bitties to get it cut, where mom showed me how to read the back of the pattern to determine how much fabric you needed.  It was a little more complicated than I’d expected and I’ve probably already forgotten how to do it.  Then we had to go get the ‘notions’, threads and buttons and velcro and whatnot, before finally paying.  Good grief it took forever.

Finally home, I dug out the sewing machine I got for Christmas three years ago that’s still in the box it came in and has been sitting in a closet ever since, and spent an eon trying to figure out how to set it up, thread it and wind the bobbin.  Gawd.

Then I realize that before you even start you have to wash and iron all the fabric first, then cut out, iron, and pin all the pattern pieces, (after first spending umpteen years figuring out which ones you need, because of course they have to put four different patterns in the same packet) then cut it all out (on the bias?  on the fold?  on the straight edge?  Better figure out how to read those little pattern pieces, girls, and ps they’re written in some foreign cave-woman language that makes no sense at all)…. and now, finally, we’re ready to sew.  After two days and twelve hundred ‘Mom!  What the hell does this mean?!’ phone calls, of course. 

With a what now?

Tags: sewing

The old Marilyn Monroe movie, circa 1959.  I just watched it to cross ‘see a classic’ off my 30 before 30 list.  (less than two weeks left.  Oh God.)

It was actually pretty cute, I must say, and the comedy was often still relevant and funny.  It was long – over two hours – and hard to get into, especially with the black & white picture and almost hilariously dated special effects. 

The movie opens with two strapping, albeit ragtag, young musicians playing in a bar, and I could barely follow the dialogue for all the whirring my brain was doing trying to identify the one actor.  I was sure I couldn’t possibly know him, it’s such an old movie, but sure if I don’t finally recognize a very young, very full-haired Jack Lemmon.  I was astonished he could be that old – my own mother was barely a toddler during the making of this movie – so I looked it up and he already 34 by then.  (Though he looked no more than 20.)  Gak. 

Anyway. After accidentally witnessing a mobster ‘hit’, Jack and his fellow bandmate are on the run, which is where things get funny but not intentionally so; their escape involves dashing through the streets with the baddies on their tail, all hanging out the car windows in a shoot-em-up-style chase.  It’s meant to be serious/scary, but I’ve obviously been spoiled by modern technology, HD and CSI effects, because I found it hilarious.  All the mobster scenes in the movie are a classic example of how the more things change the more they stay the same; despite the antiquated effects, all those typical stereotypes remain unchanged: the suits, the cigars, the ridiculous nicknames, the atrocious accents… (“eeeyy, it’s his boithday”)

Escaping death by the hair on their necks, our musicians (the other of which is Tony Curtis) then stumble upon a golden opportunity to flee the city and its mobsters, disguised as women in an all-girl musician band down in Florida. 

Then Lovebug woke up screaming ravenous and I didn’t get time to pause it, so the next 20 minutes passed without me, but upon my return they’d made the venture down to the Orange State and the lovely Marilyn had made her appearance.

Ah, Marilyn… I didn’t realize I had any preconceived notions about her, but apparently I did; I’d expected her (or at least her characters) to be of the vampy, promiscuous type, but here she was the picture of innocence.  Sweet, simple and unstoppably adorable, her character (aptly called ‘Sugar’) flounces in and out of scenes with breathless anticipation, batting her lovely false eyelashes with somehow innocuous yet subtle suggestivity up and down her male counterparts.  Her wardrobe consistently maximizes her ample hour-glass figure, and scenes involving her bending over are not scarce.  She is every bit as beautiful as she’s said to have been, and I found even myself enchanted by her. 

Her character parallels the modern day’s man-hunter: her entire mission in life is to find a rich husband,  something purveyed to be not only an acceptable but an admirable goal for a woman.  (yikes) Yet unlike today’s dim-witted damsels with marshmallows for brains, the lovely Sugar isn’t portrayed as dumb, helpless or desperate, but instead impossibly sweet and innocent.  It is indeed hard to tear your eyes from her beautiful face, but I must admit I was captivated not only by her beauty but by the very size of her.  I had heard she was a size 14, but I also know that sizes nowadays have been skewed to include such travesties as ’0′ and ‘XXS’, so I figured by adjustment a 14 then would parallel a 6 now. 

But after seeing this movie, mes amies, I assure you she was a 14 no matter what sizing chart you’re following.  Her figure was ‘soft’, ‘pleasantly plump’ as my mother would say… it almost resembled that of one that has just given birth, I dare say.  Full of curves.  What also interested me was the lack of cleavage… bras back then were meant to ‘lift and separate’, (rather than squish up and together for maximum cleave like today) and her girls almost bordered on East & West Pointers, to borrow a term from Hubbs.  And yet – despite being programmed for 30- ahem, 29 – years  to think thinner is better, I found her larger frame utterly beautiful.  

The movie’s plot carries on to find Marilyn falling in love with Tony Curtis, (when he’s not dressed as a woman, but instead as a rich-man-yacht-owner) a real rich-man-yacht-owner falling in love with Jack Lemmon (when he’s wearing his woman-guise) and all the cute-sy hiccups you would expect to accompany so many cases of mistaken identity. 

The comedy kept me laughing, I’m happy to report, and I must say that Jack Lemmon gave a fantastic performance.  Tony Curtis did too, but I don’t know him from anything else so it’s not as note-worthy for me.  They were hilarious as women in disguise, and I can see why the movie won an Oscar. 

All I can now is that, for my birthday, all I want is for that womanly physique to be considered the height of beauty again.  Sigh.

Tags: beauty, comedies, curves, femininity, Marilyn Monroe, movies, Some like it hot

Hello mes amies.  I’ve been away again.  Did you miss me?  wink.

Before you go thinking I was somewhere exciting or exotic or even remotely gab-worthy, let me stop you right there with my laughable location – Saskatchewan.  (and I went voluntarily – gak!) 

I have a cousin there, see, and every so often I get the always-regretted notion that I should be spending more time with family.  As both summer and mat leave are almost over, alas… I found Lovebug and myself on a plane bound for the prairies. 

My work has demanded much travel of me in the past and as such I’ve always considered myself a rather seasoned traveller, but it is SO much different with a child.  I’ve also always considered myself to be excellently ‘organized’ and ‘together’, the first two qualities to hightail it out of your life right from the delivery room, so here on the heels of two family visits comprising much travel and patience, I feel a little… disheveled.  (okay, I look a little disheveled, but I’ve decided it works as an emotion too.  So stuff it.)

Case and point:  my cousin was on some ridiculous paleo-something diet (heard of it?  Don’t bother – it’s total crap) that eliminates about 90% of food and 100% of flavour, so after politely choking back liver and vegetables I kept secretly inhaling her kids’ Wonder Bread.  A balanced diet if there ever was one.  When Hubbs picked me up from the airport I made him swing by – gasp – McDonalds (again!) and I had to hear all the way home, as I shoveled a double cheeseburger and fries into my face at the speed of light, that I was the worst wannabe vegetarian there ever was.  (nevermind that such is true… it was a momentary setback, is all… that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

I rolled out of bed the next morning, stepping through and over the scattered contents of Lovebug’s and my suitcases, with a tugging feeling at the back of my mind… was I forgetting something?  The feeling continued as I made breakfast for Lovebug, (cold fries and flat pop for me) and finally my foggy brain focused into frighteningly sharp clarity- I had a baby shower that morning.  In one hour.  On the other side of town.  And the best part?  We were supposed to bring some homemade frozen dinner for the couple, as they got pregnant with this baby only three months after the birth of their first and would be run off their feet with a newborn and a one-year-old, and wouldn’t it be nice for them to be able to pull dinner out of the freezer for the first few weeks, yada yada yada. 

Naturally, I had no such dinner prepared.  I wrenched open the freezer, hoping to regift something I already had (aren’t I awful?) but like the rest of the house, it was in total disarray with only random yokes like eggos, freezies and ice cream.  (clearly, the freezer is Husby’s domain.)

How could I have forgotten this?  How, pray tell, did the girl who used to have everything written on a calendar and in a datebook and outlook express, often months in advance, possibly let this happen? 

I was the girl who had her Christmas gifts bought and wrapped (beautifully, of course) and under the tree well before the big day.  I had wedding and birthday and shower gifts ready at the door the day before the event.  I had carefully selected quotes written out in (handmade) cards for my nearest and dearest.  I had the week’s meals planned out.  Sometimes even my clothes. 

Then I got pregnant and it all went right to shat.  Organization and Togetherness called up Composure and they all politely packed their bags and bid me adieu.  Even this post is disorganized – I started off talking about one thing, got sidetracked with another, and now I don’t even know where I’m going.  I have a gazillion phone calls and emails to return and don’t even know where to start, and Lovebug is absolutely miserable, poor child, so I can do nothing anyway but walk her around in my arms.

Back to the baby shower, I did make it, though there was no time to shower so I smelled like airplane and came screaming in twenty minutes late with a frozen pizza still in the Sobeys bag.  Lovebug was (is) cutting her top teeth, so of the 90 minutes we were there she cried for 85 of them.  It’s a real treat, having me around… bet I get invited to everyone else’s next event, yuk yuk.

Anyway, I will get to some of my ’30′ posts, I promise… and in the meantime, rather than trying to get the old me back, (let’s be real - that is one impossible mission) I think I’ll try to find a way to love, or at least like, the new me.  Airplane smell and all.

Tags: disorganization, family, flying, new self, togetherness, travel

So the jaunt into vegetarianism isn’t going so well.  Turns out I’m an idiot, firstly; I got so excited about making this black bean soup I love and can eat for days, until I realized I’d made it with the usual called-for chicken broth and not veg broth.  Oh. 

It also turns out that when one is famished while shopping at Costco and the sample ladies are out in full force, oh-powerful-commander Belly assumes full control of one’s body and happily shovels sausage/salmon/steak samples down one’s throat without so much as informing, let alone consulting with the much less powerful Brain. 

Also, I would recommend that anyone embarking on such a vegetarian mission also fore-go alcohol for the entire duration of the experiment, as shaking it up on the dance floor with your girlfriends until the wee hours of the morning is bound to result in a trip through the McDonalds drive through on the way home and again, poor powerless Brain doesn’t stand a chance when up against not only Belly but Booze.  (I tried to hide the evidence, but party-pooper Hubbs found it and spared me no mercy.  Jackass.)

Still, despite the occasional, um, setback, I’ve been really giving it my best go, but it seems the Vegetarian forces are not impressed with their new applicant and are throwing me back.  I mean, aren’t you supposed to feel so much better when you cut out meat?  Like ‘healthier’ and ‘cleaner’, and such, with more ‘energy’ and blah blah blah?

Because I gotta tell ya, I feel like shit run over twice.  I’m tired, (exhausted, really) lazy, lethargic, and incredibly clumsy.  (that last one may not be new, I admit, but it’s been alarmingly proliferated!)  Case and point:  While coming back from dropping the recycling off in the garage this morning, I was too slow in bringing my back foot inside and the bottom of the door nearly ripped my heel off.  Yes, that’s right, nearly ripped it off, no I’m not exaggerating, HUBBS.  If there’s blood (and there was tons) then I’m entitled to treat it as a hospital-grade serious wound.  Sniff.

And then – and this one is so outrageous you might not even believe it but I assure it happened – while in the shower and en route with the razor to my armpit, I somehow – drumroll please – grazed my nipple.  With the razor.  Oh, dear Moses.  How is something like that even possible?  I’ll tell you how – when you don’t have enough red-meat-protein coursing through your veins to keep you alert and functioning.  Boo.  (Breast-feeding Lovebug was a real joy after that, I might add.)

I’ll be employing the spell check function before I post this today as I suspect even my usually-top-notch (if I do say so myself) grammar skills have hit the bricks of late.  Sigh. 

Head out and have a steak for me then, mes amies…

Tags: clumsiness, food, vegetarianism

I’ve been slacking, mes amies, for which I am so sorry – believe me when I say I’ve probably missed you more than you’ve missed me.

I’m just after returning from a family visit so I’m rather knackered.  Four generations of women, we were; Lovebug, me, my mother, and her mother. (what’s that, you ask?  Yes of course I brought booze!  How else do you think I’d get through such an estrogen-laden family-dramafest?)  Although, I’d forgotten one of my bags at home-not the one containing unnecessary crap like books and toys and snacks and gifts but naturally the one containing my clothes and toiletries.  So, after spending three days in the same sweat-laden summer dress and Wednesday’s makeup whilst fielding remarks and scoffs in the genre of ‘Well, that’s not how we did it when you were a baby’, I’m understandably spent.

I’ve so many posts I’ve been planning to write, too, from my adventures in sewing (insert several curse words and pin-pricked fingers here) to my embarkment on vegetarianism (failing miserably) to most recently taking Lovebug to swimming lessons.  (drumroll, please…)

Unfortunately, however, I’m going to be tied up in running random errands from said trip (I forgot my cell phone charger there.  Seriously.  I’d have sooner left a limb.  And because my phone is from 1910 there’s no hope of even finding a compatible charger I can borrow… I’ll have to take one of Hubbs’ oldies and get it activated to my account.  Which ironically is how I got my current phone.  Good thing he’s a to-the-minute-in-tech-toys type fella and has a nice selection of cast-offs for me to keep plucking from.  Also, and this bit nearly brought me to tears… my grandparents just got a new little puppy, one of those tiny little furball type yokes.. and I bet I wasn’t in the door ten minutes before taking my Invisalign tray out and damn if that little yapper didn’t steal it and, naturally, chomp it to death.  Complete devastation.  I rushed it to the bathroom and tried to jam it back in anyway, but no hope.  They’re a solid hundy to replace (gak!) so in my best orthodontic judgement I decided to skip ahead to the next tray.  I consulted a gf who also has them and she’s done the same thing so both of us can’t be wrong.  Er… ahem.) 

Anyway – from getting Lovebug’s passport picture to starting the paperwork processes of going back to work to finishing our basement to catching up on the nine billion emails and phone calls I’ve missed, I’m going to be a little MIA post-wise.  Sob.  Such is the chaos of summer, I suppose.

I won’t forget you… just don’t forget about me either.

Tags: family, family trips, Invisalign, summer

Dear Daughter,

For the first time in your whole little life, you are sick.   It started the other night during your bed & bath time routine; you’d been fussy all day, which your dad and I attributed to teething.  As I wrapped a fresh diaper round your bum and wrestled your limbs into a sleeper, I suddenly noticed you were hot, hot to the touch, and your fussiness was more than just teething… you were ’off’.  I stopped, mid-wrestle, as fear raced up my spine.  I looked at your father, who’s expression of concern mirrored my own, and jumped up to get the thermometer.  103, it read, and without another word we were up and off to the walk-in clinic.

What followed was a long, arduous week of misery, starting with spending much of that night in a waiting room, all three of us in various states of upset.  You were so tired by this point, I couldn’t decide between waiting or just leaving and letting you get some sleep.  I couldn’t decide if I was being over-cautious or a good parent; it was no win, and very upsetting indeed. 

The doctor that finally saw you couldn’t figure out what was wrong but was very alarmed at your still-high fever.  He gave me some requisition forms for tests for you to have and sent us on our way. 

It was a long week; I’d had to collect a urine sample from you (a real picnic indeed) and we were supposed to get blood work, which I’d assumed they’d take from your foot like they did when you were born, for the metabolic test.  After waiting (and waiting and waiting) we were admitted only to be told by the nurse that she didn’t feel comfortable trying to find a vein in your tiny arm.  (and a good thing too, because once I found out that was the plan I was already digging out my keys and looking to make a fast dance right out the door.) 

To the family doctor we went, to the store we went to get you more Tylenol, back to the walk-in clinic we went after your urine sample came back abnormal… in the end you broke out in an ugly, full body rash, and it was deemed you had an ugly case of Baby Measles, or Roseola, as it’s properly called.

All through this miserable week, you were so obviously feeling terrible and nothing would appease you.  You kept looking up at me, between sob-cries, as if to say ‘Why aren’t you doing something for me, help me!’ 

It was the worst feeling ever, seeing you so miserable and not being able to do anything.   As I lamented over the phone to my own mother about it, she murmered her understanding and said that it doesn’t ever get any easier. 

I thought of all the times in your life that this will be the case; something will happen to upset you, to hurt you, and there won’t be anything I can do to take the pain away.  I am not looking forward to these times, am in fact already dreading them.  I just want you to know, dear daughter, that I will always try my very best to do everything I can for you… that I will always be here, and that you can always come to me, no matter what, no matter when. 

I love you, Lovebug.