Dudes. DUUUUUUUUUUDES. I am SO tired. It’s like someone stuffed my head with cotton and it’s leaking out my eyeballs and making them all linty and squinty and stuff. And cranky? HOOO BOY, I am SO cranky, there is not even a WORD to describe the volume of crank we are currently experiencing.

I tell you solemnly, if this is the precursor to me getting sick AGAIN, I am gonna cut a bitch. FER REALZ.

Anyway. This is one of the many reasons why randomness has been achieved today.

• My daughter’s fear of the dark is progressing nicely. She LOVES Mr. Twilight Turtle, and he seems to make things okay. EXCEPT. Except we’re beginning to think that we’re moving beyond fear of the dark and into a full-on THING. An “ooh, if I whine and moan I can get someone to come into my room” thing. An “every hour as soon as Mr. Turtle shuts off” thing. An “it’s not even dark enough in my room to be called fear of the dark” thing. So, we’re not sure what’s going on. It’s not so much a fear thing anymore, so much as a need for attention. We’d be all “LIE DOWN AND GO TO SLEEP” and let her work it out, except for the fact that SOMETHING is bugging her enough that she is actually waking up, fairly frequently, enough to be standing up and fussing when we get into her room. And, consequently, we’re waking up as well, so we’re both tired as a bastard and no fun to be around. (She, on the other hand, still wakes in the morning as fresh as a daisy. Go figure.) So, we ordered some more night light things this week, and we’ll just have to keep on trying things until she either settles or forgets she’s afraid of whatever she is afraid of.
• Today was Little Gym day, and I am still debating as to whether or not we’re going to enroll Stinkerbelle again next semester. She enjoys it, there’s no doubt. But the only way I will enroll her again is if we can choose to NOT be in her current teacher’s class again. A few week’s back, there was a change of teachers in the class, and Sara was replaced by Colleen. Sara was engaged and fun and genuinely liked the kids. Colleen, while being the assistant manager, is not great with engaging the kids, and as for liking them, she says all the things and does all the things, but the smile she has plastered on her face doesn’t go all the way up to her eyes, if you know what I mean. But the thing that makes me want to change is that she doesn’t seem to like Stinkerbelle. In a class full of boys running wild, and barging into lines, and pushing and piling on, Stinkerbelle is the only one she ever reprimands. Now, my kid is laid back. She gets butted in front of, and pushed over, and all that, and she doesn’t really care. She laughs. She thinks it’s all part of the game. But the one activity she DOES assert herself in is at the end of class, when the kids get ink stamps on their hands and feet and whatever as they are filing out. Stinkerbelle LOVES ink stamps. And so she RUNS to the group and pushes her way forward and sticks her hand out, only to have Colleen ALWAYS tell ONLY her to wait her turn. And, being the dutiful little soul she is, Stinkerbelle will sit down, and wait patiently. And then Colleen will go through EVERY KID IN THE CLASS and leave Stinkerbelle sitting there, waiting, until last. Stinkerbelle will put her (white) palm forward, where she knows she can see the stamps regardless of colour, and Colleen will make a comment and flip Stinkerbelle’s hand over and do it on the back. So, if we decide to sign her up for another semester, it will NOT be in Colleen’s class, and I will be sure to let her manager know why. I know not everybody is going to like my kid, but when I am paying that much for classes, they’d better pretend a whole hell of a lot better than they are.
• I had to stop in at the grocery store today because, well, we’re running low on some food things. OBVIOUSLY. Anyway, I had to stop in after the gym, and getting my driver’s license renewed. Stinkerbelle was tired and hungry and I was hot and cranky, so it was going to be a quick in/out thing. This was not to That Baby’s liking, as she howled like a banshee at the prospect of sitting in the cart but hey, life’s rough. So off I whizzed through the store, grabbing what I needed and thought I’d stop at the produce counter and get one of their prepared salads for lunch. Nothing appealed, so I went to the fruit. Fruit is expensive now that summer is over, so I grabbed the cheapest thing, which was a combination of strawberries and kiwi fruit. And we finished our shopping and went home. I was looking forward to fruit at lunchtime, so I dove in. And I am here to tell you that, apparently, the girls behind the produce counter have never eaten a kiwi fruit before in their LIVES. They were nowhere even IN THE VICINITY of ripe. These things were so hard they were CRUNCHY. It was horrid. So, not only did I spend money I should not have done on a treat, just for me, but then I had to throw half of it out uneaten.

But on the upside, I made my 1000th post on the weekend. So, it’s not all bad.

It’s still only Tuesday, but already my week feels longer than it should be, and I am wishing for the weekend. This does not bode well for the Wednesday and the Thursday I have yet to get through.

I need more sleep.

So my randomness is somewhat tired-induced. But mostly it’s just random because that is what I am.

• We seem to have a handle on Stinkerbelle’s fear of the dark issues. One part of the solution involves leaving her bedroom door open and the bathroom light on. Another huge part of the solution involves Twilight Turtle, the most awesome toy in existence, shining constellations of stars and a moon on her bedroom ceiling and walls. I say this toy is awesome because it says it will help with fear of the dark, and it really works. Truth in advertising. And the third part of the solution involves standing in whatever part of the house we are in at that time and, intermittently for an hour and a half after putting That Baby to bed, hollering “STINKERBELLE! LIE DOWN, STOP TALKING, AND GO TO SLEEP!” at That Baby as she faffs and talks and farts around in her bed for what seems like an eternity. Some parenting tactics never go out of style.
• I am debating signing That Baby up for another session at the Little Gym come February, when the second session of the year starts. Mostly because it costs so much. But another thing is that I would have to try to find another class for her, since I am less enchanted than I was at the beginning with the class she is currently in. The teacher has left and been replaced by one who is just not as good or engaging as the original teacher. But also, Stinkerbelle’s class consists predominantly of boys. And so I find it’s more rambunctious, and involves more pushing and kicking and whatnot than a group that had more girls in it would. So that is kind of a drag. Plus, there’s a boy — a neighbour kid, actually — who is one of those “ME FIRST! ME FIRST!”, push-other-kids-out-of-the-way, barging-full-bore-into-every-situation, obnoxious kids whose mom is not the best at reining him in. So he kind of annoys me and has coloured my opinion of the class.
• It was 13 degrees this morning when we got up. Over the course of the day, the temperature is going to plummet to 1 degree, with a chance of flurries. November weather in southern Ontario is a bit schizophrenic in this regard. One moment hot, then suddenly snowing. But it’s damp, ALWAYS damp, which means the heat is on and one can never stay warm regardless of what is happening outside.
• WE FOUND A BABYSITTER. Well, a POTENTIAL babysitter, which is almost as good. One of BDH’s coworkers is a minor sports coach here in town and her teenaged athletes said they’d babysit. So we gave them our contact information, and one ACTUALLY CALLED US. I was THRILLED. She’s busy, as teenaged athletes tend to be, but she does have Saturdays free which means OMG MAYBE FREEDOM for BDH and I. This is HUGE. Two and an half years without a night out together. We’re DUE, man. We could see a MOVIE. It boggles the mind. Now, if only I could find someone who does occasional babysitting during the workday so I could go to a doctor or a dentist or maybe get some new glasses. DARE TO DREAM, LADY.

So, we got our first tiny bit of flurries for the year today. So I went to check the weather on Environment Canada, specifically the radar. And this is what I see:

OMG GUYS GUYS OMG WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A GIANT MULTICOLOURED HURRICANE OMG GUYS WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.

So, that happened.

Tuesday is random enough, without being tired and frustrated to make it even more random.

• Our daughter, we have decided, has developed a new — and let’s be honest, here … quite frankly annoying — fear of the dark in recent days. So, after spending a sleep-deprived night with Shrieky Baby on Sunday night into Monday morning, I faced the day yesterday fortified with a billion cups of coffee and a resolve not to get pissed at my kid for something she can’t help. It’s a normal developmental stage, so we just have to roll with it. So I cheerfully stumbled through the day, mostly exhausted, being as pleasant a mom as humanly possible to my daughter. Okay, I lost my shit a little at naptime, but that was before I did some reading and got the brainwave to leave Stinkerbelle’s door open during naptime, which worked a treat. And I was as patient as I could be with the inevitable bedtime antics that came with 8 pm last night. Given that BDH was off to soccer and I was on my own, it was a lot of trooping up and down stairs and turning lights on and off and covering and re-covering That Baby. And so I tell you truly, it was a good thing she had already gone to sleep by the time I got into one of my tasks on computer, because…

• Technology made me its bitch last night. Many of you know I started on a Project 365 photography project this year. Well, I didn’t keep the page updated, OBVIOUSLY, SHUDDAP I KNOW I SUCK, so that part of the project was a big fail. But I have been fairly faithfully taking photos, and storing them all on our hard drive. So, I spent all day Sunday and Monday organizing a lot of photos from the past few weeks since I had a bit of a backlog to sort and rename. We have some adoption-related stuff coming up and I needed to use a bunch of them. So, I got them all organized, and then I went online with Black’s to put them in the format we want them printed, and then you just upload and order and pay and tra-la-la. Right? Yes. Except for the fact that I spent HOURS getting the pictures JUST SO with Black’s online web app thingy, and clicked “continue” to have the order go through, only to have EVERYTHING EFFING DISAPPEAR. Oh, the FILTHY LANGUAGE emanating from this house last night. Like I said, thank doG Stinkerbelle was asleep by that time, because she’d have picked up some fascinating new words.

• Thanks to my daughter’s ongoing battle with darkness, and my own personal battle with the darkness that is online photo apps from certain photography store chains, my 30 Day Exercise Challenge went bust yesterday. I was doing well, exercising every day for 30 minutes, mostly riding the bike in the basement at 6 am before the house wakes up (while surfing the web. I admit it.) But 6 am yesterday morning saw me doing battle with Stinkerbelle’s fear of the dark, so I was unable to ride in the morning, and yesterday naptime was taken up first with prepping dinner then with Stupid Damn Black’s. And then last night was a write off, full of cuss words, so no riding there, either. And I doubt that either running up and down the stairs continually to soothe That Baby’s crying OR the pacing and cussing I was doing in a hotheaded rage after Black’s trashed my hours of work will qualify as exercise, although I tell you calories were definitely expended.

If it’s Tuesday, it must be Random. Good thing too, because I am highly medicated. Coherent sentences? I hasn’t gots any. And also I am punctuating just to show there is punctuation happening. And also it might bytimes get SHOUTY. Sorry.

• We are now in possession of my brand spankin’ new 2010 Toyota Matrix. She is a nice little car. We should get along fine. I have been sick since this whole adventure began and so have not given her the attention she needs, so she will have to forgive me during the coming days and weeks as I blindly poke buttons and switch things on and off that maybe should not be tinkered with in a quest to find a radio station or my high beams.

• We bought a Toyota. We are a Toyota family. I lived in Japan, so it’s a no-brainer. It’s like electronics: Sony or Panasonic or GTFO. I’m weird like that. Did you know, when I lived in Japan, they had cars with different names than we have here? We have Corolla, and Matrix, and whatnot. At that time, they had the Tomato, and the Lettuce, and the Escargot (a type of delivery van).  Apparently they felt that lettuce and tomatoes are very safe, trustworthy vegetables. Who knew? And the Cedric — all taxis were Toyota Cedrics. I loved that. And taxi drivers all wore white gloves so it just seemed right.

• This is the third time I have had a cold in a short period of time, maybe a couple of months. I am getting pretty sick of it. I know with kids, this is what you sign on for, what with them licking everything and putting their hands and stuff in their mouths all the time and all that. But still, it gets a little old. I should have shares in Advil Cold and Sinus. I’d make a fortune off my sales alone.

• I’m trying to work my way through some to do list items, things I have been putting off. Queen of Procrastinators, at your service. One of the goals I have set for myself this fall is to declutter for five minutes a day. Just do SOMETHING to get clutter out of the house. Because procrastinators invariably end up with piles of this and boxes of that and bags of oh-I’ll-get-to-that-someday that just seem to accumulate around the house. So this five minutes a day thing seemed to be a great way to start. Short time commitment, but you can, bit by bit, declutter your home. It works really well… IF you don’t procrastinate on the PLAN as a WHOLE.. If you do… well, you’re fucked, aren’t you. So I really have to get tough and consciously make myself do five minutes at something. Baby clothes, craft stuff, paper that needs filing… it’s all here. Just pick something and go with it.

• I am not a well-connected person. And by that I mean, I have lived in this town for 17 years (SEVENTEEN! YEARS! HOLY HELL!) and I still know hardly anyone or do hardly anything or am involved in anything at all. So. Possibly this means I am an antisocial bastard. Whatever. THE POINT BEING… If I knew people, there are things I would do. For example, it would not take me two and a half years to find a babysitter for my kid. Or I would know enough people to have an ongoing knit night. Or have peeps to do playgroup with. You know. You get the point. Anyway, it came into stark relief this week in a meeting with one of Stinkerbelle’s team of peeps to assist with her speech/eating stuff. This woman, Monica, knows EVERYBODY. Or at least knows ABOUT everybody. And EVERYTHING. All I have to do is vaguely describe someone or a service or whatever and she was all “Oh that’s So and So and she does X and…” Or “You can go to X place and buy Y and then talk to Z about using their facilities…”  I was impressed, not to mention a smidge jealous. And it would have been more than a little intimidating if Monica were not so very cool and laid back about this stuff.

• I dreamed last night that yours truly and all my online peeps were doing a Christmas cookie exchange. And we all met in this church hall or something. No, I did not turn to ash the moment I crossed the church threshold, IT WAS A DREAM, PEOPLE, SHEESH. It was very beige and antiseptic. Not the cookies, or the people, obviously, but the hall. JEEZ STOP NITPICKING IT’S JUST A DREAM FOR PETE’S SAKE. And Rana was there and she was wearing a red sweater. I know it was her because well, IT JUST WAS. And she was loading everyone up with cookies and tea. And there was somebody wearing a cake costume. And everything I ate tasted like lemon. And then I woke up. The end. ALRIGHT I NEVER SAID IT WAS A VERY EXCITING DREAM.

Some inevitabilities in my life recently:

• My old, tired car was not able to be saved without investing some serious cash in a new manifold, a new radiator, new brake things, and a bunch of new thingamajigs for which I am unable to account because I have no idea what the fuck they are. News flash: when a car tech tells you that some part of your car is “rotten”, it’s a pretty safe bet it’s no longer safe.
• Driving an unsafe car with our most precious of cargo, That Baby, is not an option. So, we have had to buy a new car, since I am driving to and from work once a week, along with baby-related errands and such. This means that the job that I was doing to bring in a little cash to help us with our debt is now exclusively about paying for a new car. Which, of course, I had to buy to do my job.
• The stress of the last few days has worn me down, which means that I am now sick, with a cold.

I am happy to have a new car, no doubt. My car was almost 14 years old, so I had good innings with it. But it was deteriorating and had its eccentricities, a number of squeaks and chirrups which earned it the nickname Birdie, as well as a serious lack of air conditioning and no discernable means of auditory entertainment but a radio with a dead display and a tape player. It was time, and so now I have a reliable, safe, stress-free vehicle for the foreseeable future.

But it didn’t happen at the best of times, what with ongoing debt and Christmas and all. I would have liked a couple more years out of old Birdie to at least beat down our debt for a while longer. And even if it could have waited until after the holidays, we would not have to worry so much about budget for Christmas.

But things happen for a reason. Better I know now that things were falling apart now, than to find out the hard way on some snow-whipped sideroad up north on some winter morning. And at least it came at a time when there were some incentives going on at the dealership to unload their old models in advance of the 2011s. And they gave me $500 as a trade in on my old clunker, so that’s something.

So tomorrow, if paperwork obliges, I’ll say bye bye to old, tired Birdie, and I’ll be in possession of my new car. Which, hopefully, I don’t have to worry about futzing with again until, say, 2020.

I have decided after a long day that I am going to lock the door, and hide from the world for a little while. It’s true.

Because the world is full of OMFG NUTSO PSYCHO DRIVERS. And those that are not driving like nutsos and psychos? Have LICE.

Thursday is my driving day. I have to commute for an hour each way, and most mornings it is pretty enjoyable. I drive through town which is NO FUN NO for about 20 minutes or so, depending on rush hour traffic, but after that it’s a drive north through the country.

Once you get out of town and the people who try to pass you from the right-hand turn lane AT A STOPLIGHT, it’s actually quite nice. I put the radio on. I sing with That Baby. I can calm down and it’s not a bad drive. But the drive home? A different story.

There are more people on the road after 2 pm than there are at 9 am, and they’re all fucking NUTS. Old men who drive 30 km/h through town, and accelerate to WHOA CRAZY TALK 70 km/h on the 80 km/h highway, but when you go to pass them, get all PEDAL TO THE FLOOR so you can’t pass them because DOG FORBID they have to drive BEHIND someone.

There’s also a ridiculous number of school buses on the road, who all wait until you are a metre and a half from them in the opposite direction before turning on their flashers, and then honking like hell because you can’t just slam on the breaks and stop.

Or the people who think that two lanes in the city mean OH MY DOG IT’S A RACE SOMEONE MIGHT GET IN FRONT OF ME IN MY LANE. These are usually women drivers in SUVs. I hate women in SUVs.

And then there are the Mennonites driving their horses and buggies ALL OVER THE FUCKING PLACE. Let me tell you, without signals? It’s hard to tell if a horse and wagon is making a wide right turn or LURCHING OUT INTO THE HIGHWAY OMG IS THAT HORSE BOLTING AAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGH.

Oh, wait, no… wide right turn. AGAIN. Phew.

So, this gets a lot more stressful when my daughter falls asleep in the back seat on the drive home from work, and so I have to drive around for half an hour or an hour longer so she can get a decent nap in. And a giant black cloud comes and parks itself over the region and sends torrents of rain down on your little car. And hail. Don’t forget the hail.

But that’s okay. We’re home safe and sound now. I can lock the door and hide from the world.

And spend the evening fretting because That Baby’s sitter mentioned, just before we were leaving, that SOME OF THE KIDS SHE BABYSITS HAVE LICE.

::flail! flail! flail!::

::faints::

So, there’s a fun night ahead of us. Coming down from stressed-out commuting. And freaking out with psychosomatic head itchiness.

Good times.

I may drink. I have not decided.

Welcome to Tuesday. And I am buzzing with excitement right now. Seriously. I am jazzed. I have, like, ENERGY and stuff.

Okay, I wouldn’t go THAT far. But it’s been a good day. It’s a beautiful, crisp, clear fall day, and it has made all the difference in my outlook.

• OMG STOP THE PRESSES MY KID ATE REAL FOOD. Yes, today, with her Occupational Therapist sitting there, That Baby made a liar out of me, and ate REAL FOOD. Chunks of squash, pieces of carrot, chunks of banana… WITH HER HANDS. And a FORK. I was shocked, and then I was giddy. Seriously GIDDY with excitement. You have no idea what this means — we have been waiting EIGHTEEN MONTHS for her to pick up a piece of veg or fruit or meat or whatever, and put it in her mouth, and chew it up. EIGHTEEN FRICKING MONTHS. I know, it was because she had an audience who laughed and encouraged her and, most importantly, WAS NOT US. She was showing off for Monica the wonder OT. But I don’t care. I am GIDDY. My kid ate FOOD. It was just… HUGE. And I know she probably won’t do it tonight at dinner, but I don’t care. She DID IT. She CAN do it.

• I was so giddy and excited after today’s session with the OT, I got on the phone and called her manager. I wanted to let her manager know, as well as the manager of our dietitian Jessica, how good an experience it was to work with them, and what a positive difference they have made for us. People have no problem complaining to managers about staff or service or whatever, but no one ever calls and says, “You know what? You have really good people working for you, and I just wanted you to know.” But BDH and I believe in not just complaining, but letting people know when they’ve done a good job. So that’s what I wanted to do. Monica and Jessica have made a difference in our lives, and I wanted their bosses to know how much I appreciate it.

• I have started a 30-day exercise challenge for myself, starting yesterday, the first of the month. I’m doing a month of 30 minutes of exercise per day. In the past, BDH and I did 100-day challenges, pushing each other to exercise for 100 days straight, and it worked really well. But, this year, with injuries and illnesses and busy schedules and the like, we really haven’t done anything like that. And I need to. So yesterday morning, 6 am, I got up and got on the recumbent bike and pedalled while I surfed the interwebs. Aside from the whole getting up early thing, WHICH OMG SUCKS SO HARD, it has been tolerable. I used to exercise in the afternoon, but now that Stinkerbelle is busy almost every morning, two showers a day would not have worked for me. So, the big challenge now for me will be to keep it going by myself — BDH has always been there to push me into doing each day, knowing he was, too. Now that I’m doing it alone, we’ll see how hard it becomes.

• I smell like scorched popcorn. You remember that smell, when you used to have to make popcorn on the stove, popping kernels in a pot of oil (and constantly swish swish swishing it so it wouldn’t burn), and then all of a sudden there would be that UUUUUHHHRGH smell when you know it was just a bit TOO long? That is how I smell. Hair, t-shirt, everything. This morning, I was rushing to get dinner on and in the crock pot before we left for the Little Gym. I’m making gumbo, and this requires a roux, which, if you are unfamiliar with the term, is flour cooked in hot oil until it gets dark brown. Which will, in the long run, thicken up my gumbo and give it lovely flavour, but in the short term, tends to smoke like OMFG while you are making it. So I whipped up (HAH! “Whipped up”, my ass. It takes 15 minutes!) the roux before we went to the gym. And then, as we were running around, I was all “WHAT! IS! THAT! SMELL!!!” Until I realized, “Oh yeah. Is me.” So not only will we be eating Cajun food, but I am a bit Cajun myself today.

• My child has become a parrot. She is repeating repeating repeating EVERYTHING these days, in her enthusiasm to speak. It’s SO much fun. Not the clearest speech, and sometimes way off, but she tries, and it is adorable. So, AS YOU WELL KNOW, I have been known to be somewhat of a Potty Mouth. I tend to use cuss words in my speech like some people use adjectives. So I know, I JUST KNOW, that one of these days my kid is going to repeat what I say. I KNOW THIS. But I forget, and blurt, and then BDH is all OMG WOULD YOU JUST ZIP IT WHAT ARE YOU SAYING DON’T YOU KNOW SHE IS SITTING RIGHT THERE. So I am really TRYING to curb it, and find myself cussing at other drivers or whatever and then quickly trying to cover up with stuff like “BADGER! FARTING BADGER! THAT MAN IS A FARTING BADGER AND A VERY! BAD! DRIVER!!!11!!!eleventyone!!11!!” Which, I know, is totally NOT going to work, and one day my child will pipe up from the back seat and say “Mom, YOU know and I know that what you said was…” And then? I will be very embarrassed. And probably stifling some giggles. I can’t lie.