I didn't even enjoy watching it.

This is Skip-bo for those not in the know. It is tons of fun for anyone. I know a five year old who can seriously kick some ass playing this game and I have yet to meet anyone of any age who has played it and not liked it.

It is a real good family game.

Speaking of Skip, I skipped the gym tonight. I was going to go for a walk, but got all caught up watching the Bachelorette. It's not the kind of show I like to watch, but somehow it got me, and it was a easy excuse not to go for a walk. Sorta. I know, I know, I can hear you all now.."What, the Bachelorette? Mel, you surprised me. I would have thought you would take a walk over that any time?"

Me too, but I guess I just didn't want to go for that walk that bad. I didn't even like watching it.

And the beat goes on, and on, and on...

I am drunk.

No really, as I am wrtung this I am drunk. I had s0me wine and thensome mre and then some coffee, like thaaat heleped. so what the hey, I had anoither glass of wne. Hee, ehh, I canbt even thype this. Haa haa,

Seriously, we had some good freinds ove r for sinner this evening and we ate some food I madwe and tehn i got drunk, I ghink we had some fune, but ehwn I brought out the skpbo they left. What the heck does thatn mena?

I thin therk is tills anotehr bottle of winte left............

The absolute worst

I had a great weekend but it ended with a really crappy sleep last night and then a crappy day today followed. I got cranky for no real reason. BUT, I stuck it out and made myself go to the gym tonight even though that was the absolute last thing I felt like doing.

I have now gone to the gym 2 out of 3 days. I am very happy with myself. Neesja, while I was waiting for Kaitlin and Nicole, I watched you pedal hard and you didn't even know it.

I have my PA first thing at work tomorrow, so that will either give me a great day or make me cranky again, if I'm not already.

I had two things I wanted to blog about just an hour ago and now I can't remember either one. What the hell is up with that? OH, OH, OH, I just remembered both!

One: Today, January 24th, is supposed to be the worst day of the year. Some person proved it mathematically. Something to do with Christmas being over, all the huge credit card bills coming due & having broken everyone of your New Years resolutions by now. I figured we might as well tack on the short days and long nights and cold crappy weather of the Canadian January while we're at it. A lawyer I know once told me that January & February are known in the legal world as the Divorce season. They do over 50% of the years divorces in these two months. It is also known as the worst time of year for suicides.

I don't suppose the fact that everywhere you go, bankers and investment people are pushing Rrsp's and telling you that you don't have enough money saved for retirement and you can't count on the Canada Pension Plan anymore and that just reminds you that its tax season now too.

And two: Now, if most people have broken their New Years resolutions by today, why is the gym so damn busy? I always expect it to be busier after New Years, but usually by now it has started to slack off a bit. Tonight was the busiest I have ever seen it. I go there and work myself up to a good workout mindset and then I have to sit and wait up to 10 minutes for a machine. Then when I get through my cardio I have to fight 16 to 22 year old young men who are all just goofing around and showing off for the 3 young pretty perky girls their age and ignoring all us fat 40 year old ladies who are there with a serious plan just to use a piece of the weight equipment.

The absolute worst is when they don't take the 2-75lb weights off the machines when they are done. I refuse to ask for their help, I would rather wait another 10 minutes for another one.

maybe?

Well, Friday night has come and gone. I came home from work, spent about 3/4 of an hour in the kitchen with Kaitlin making a nice dinner, stirfry pork tenderloin & veggies with fat noodles. I cleaned the kitchen as we went and then we had supper and watched Bridget Jones Diary, well... I did anyway. Kaitlin ditched me and the sappy chick love flick and commandeered MSN and neopets. Much more interesting for her. We then watched what not to wear and I plucked her eyebrows for the first time. Poor girl has really dark thick brows, it was time to start getting her used to it. I think I will take her to get them waxed once she gets used to the plucking. She does however have the most beautiful thick dark lashes to compensate.

I love that movie, as soon as it ended I wanted to watch it again. It's like hitting the end of a really good book. I want more! I haven't seen the sequel yet, it hasn't made its rounds to our little city theatre yet. I have read the books though and it should be just as good as the first.

I had a great evening and the only thing that was leftover to do today was the dishes. I got to sleep in a little this morning, picked up my girlfriend and went to the gym. Had a great workout, I pushed myself more than I ever had, every time I go it gets better. I am actually starting to look forward to going.

The sun is now shining and the temp outside is warming. Laundry is started and I feel good.

Wow, maybe I'm on to something.

Can you believe?

Its hard not to blog about work. It is so much a part of my day. I get up in the morning and everything including my first decision of the day (should I have a cup of coffee right away or wait until I get to work so I can drink more when I really need it) is all with the thought of getting myself to work and through the workday.

Then I work for what seems like hours and hours with sporadic coffee drinking, eating and bathroom visits (not all at once although I have caught myself drinking coffee while peeing).

Then I go home and unwind from work and everything I do is trying to catch up on all the stuff I would have done by now if I wasn't at work all day and on the rare evening that there isn't anything of the sort, I try to pre-organize myself for the next workday.

The only exception to this rule is Friday night when I just exist. I do nothing and no one better expect anything from me. My family knows this. They can do almost anything and eat almost anything for supper as long as it doesn't involve me. I don't even care if no one cleans up after themselves. I can get away with this only because tomorrow is Saturday. I have a whole day to catch up from Friday night. It usually takes the whole day too.

Then Sunday is spent doing all the things I should have done on Saturday and Sunday evening is another work evening.

No wonder I never seem to have any spare time to go for coffee with my friends, work on one of my MANY never ending projects, go for a walk with the dogs, or even to the gym.

Can you believe that I, an almost 40 year old woman, just figured this out now as I am typing?
Wow, I need to blog more. I wonder what will happen this Friday night?

January

Cold
Dark
Long
Quiet
Big soft piles of blankets and pillows
Snuggles
Movies
Warm food
Hot drinks
Fires & Candles
Snuggles
Dirty windows don't matter
Crunching snow
Bright stars
Cold
Dark
Long
Quiet
Snuggles

Today

Kaitlin is my third child. She has, in the past few months, reached the stage of in between. She is in no way any longer a child but doesn't yet fit into the adult world. As with Craig and Stephanie at the same time in their lives, every now and then I will catch a glimpse of the women, or in Craig's case, the man, she will become. It's a quick fleeting moment in time that always throws me off. I am never expecting it. It will be a sudden smile over their shoulder or a few steps on their walk to the school bus stop. Sometimes its in the way they laugh at something silly one of the dogs or I have just done or just the way they will put down their fork. Always it shows itself and then disappears before my mind processes what I just saw.

It floors me every time.

But with Kaitlin, I have a little bit of a practiced eye. I am starting to catch more of these moments. And today, our photographer caught one on film, or in technology's language he caught one on a digital chip.

Kaitlin and I spent about a 1/2 hour in the studio to get her school photo package done. George is an award winning professional photographer who has taken my children's annual photos since Kaitlin was 3 yrs old. He does an absolutely fantastic job of it, but today, he out did himself.

The very first shot he took to test the lighting was the winner of the bunch. He took about 15 shots total, in various poses, but after looking at them all, he didn't really have to. This one is the kind of photo that could be in a wall of photos and would call me from across the room and I would have to stand and just look back at it for a while.

It is going to be very hard to wait the two weeks for the package to be printed and to give them out.

Its done!

Its done! Its done! It's done! Maggies dress is done! Good thing as she is leaving tomorrow.

My time?

Here it is January 10th already and I still have one VERY IMPORTANT Christmas project to complete. It is baby Maggies Christmas gift. Thank goodness she is still an infant and doesn't know how stupid this is.

I took the day off today to have more than 5 minutes of me time in a row. I planned to sleep until I woke up and then read and watch silly daytime programming until I fell asleep again.

BUT, I have approx 10 loads of laundry (I haven't even sorted it yet), baking (I have 10 black bananas and 3 loaves of bread dough to do something with), cooking ( I have leftover turducken carcass's on the boil as I write), shopping (not even enough to give the poor dog a bone in my panty, PANTRY, I mean PANTRY, cause I am boiling the last bones again, think pantry for my supper damn it!) and now add the little dress I need to sew together to my list. I also want to spend some time visiting Maggie and her mom. They have been in town since Dec 19th and I have only seen them at Christmas family get-togethers. I am hoping to squeeze in a coffee visit this afternoon. None of this got done on the weekend because I was out of town.

AND I feel like crap today. My throat hurts, my sinus's are stuffed and my ears are plugged.

I am going to go start the laundry, make a pot of lemon tea, and sew that little blue and pink fleece dress together, make some phone calls, have some lunch, go for a quickie coffee visit, get some groceries, pick up Kaitlin from school, come home and bake cinnamon rolls, buns and banana bread, cook up some noodles for the soup stock and take a long hot bath and go to bed by 8pm and watch some silly evening programming until I fall asleep.

Or maybe I will just go have a nap with the dogs. Hhhmmmm....today is supposed to be MY TIME.

Idiots.

What is it with the average Joe citizen that he/she is willing to trade the right thing for convenience???

Everyday I see an example of this. We live in a world of "convenience". "Convenience" is everywhere you look. The food we buy has no nutrition anymore, but damn its "convenient" to buy, "convenient" to prepare, "convenient" to eat and even "convenient" to discard of. It is shoved in your face everywhere. I dare you to look around you right now and see how many "things of convenience" are in the same room as you.

Don't get me wrong, there is something to be said for convenience. It can save you a lot of time, (and we all need more time to pack in more convenient things). BUT!, when it is the right thing to do, the right thing to say, or even the right thing to eat, and it isn't convenient, people will refuse to do it, say it or eat it. How may times have you heard the words

"It's just not convenient"

A really good example of this is in a previous job, and I will not say which of the many, a telephone conversation with a client roughly went like this;

Client: I did not receive my statement this month, how much do I have to pay and when is it due?
Me: Your payment of $$$ is due by mm/dd/yy.
Client: But, I did not receive my bill, therefore I do not have to pay it.
Me: But I have just told you how much is due and when it is due, you do not need your statement to pay this.
Client: As I did not receive it, I do not have to pay it.
Me: But the contract you signed did not specify that you did not have to make your payment unless you received a statement. You agreed that you would make your payments no later than the due date or a penalty will be applied.
Client: WHAT! A PENALTY! I'M NOT PAYING ANY FUCKING PENALTY WHEN "YOU" DIDN'T EVEN SEND ME A STATEMENT. WHERE THE FUCK DID I SIGN THAT, SHOW IT TO ME!


I did kinda clean up the language. My point is, it wasn't convenient for the client to make his/her payment as he/she did not have a statement which would conveniently show him/her how much and when and where to pay it. He/she may have had to pick up a pen and write this down somewhere, and I'll even wager, no one conveniently left a piece of paper or pen next the the phone for him/her. He/she was already mad at me because I did not conveniently call to see if he/she received his/her statement and he/she had to LOOK for my phone number. Lucky for me it was conveniently in a phone book.

It happens all the time. People do not want to go out of their way for anything, even if they know its the right thing to do.