....and now less so

Have I mentioned that I love you all and you look pretty? Thank-you for saying the stuff that I knew I should be telling myself but all sounds more logical and believable coming from someone else.

Family day was good. We took the kids for a walk on the Jack Pine Trail to try to feed some chickadees. We saw squirrels, woodpeckers and yes, chickadees, but they were all overfed and ungrateful chickadees who wouldn't condescend to eat from our hands this time. We'll have to go back and steal all their feeder seeds and then see who is too good to eat off of whose mittens. Hmph. It was a nice walk anyway, sunny and cold and pretty. The frozen sap in the trees was creaking and groaning and the trees were swaying -- Angus said it sounded kind of like it did on the ship when the ocean got rough. Except this time I didn't throw up, because I finally figured out by process of elimination that it was one of my inhalers making me hurl. Funny how a few days of crippling nausea and vomiting can make simply coughing until you become incontinent seem like a vacation by comparison.

After the walk we went to the movies. To change it up, since I do a lot of things with Eve and Matt does a lot of things with Angus, we decided that Matt would take Eve to Gnomeo and Juliet and I would take Angus to I Am Number Four -- they were playing five minutes apart and only ten minutes' difference in length. We got there pretty early, and Angus and I did actually have a conversation of sorts while we were sitting in the theatre -- not about anything earth-shattering, but he spoke in sentences of more than two words, and I call that a victory. Somebody had told me they read a review that said I Am Number Four made Twilight (the movie) look like Gone With the Wind, so I was apprehensive, but it was surprisingly....bearable. And Angus enjoyed it -- even the part where he lost his tooth in a Starburst fruit chew.

It was a good day. Eve was musing on one of the girls in her class whose an only child with divorced parents -- Eve was worried about how they would decide who got her on Family Day. I felt happy and grateful to be in a family where this wasn't an issue.

Feverish random thoughts

It would be somewhat inaccurate to say that today doesn't suck. Angus went back to school, still hacking up a lung periodically, but declaring that he feels fine. Eve has been an unhappy, warm-ish, snotty little heap on the couch all day (except when I asked her if she wanted me to put in Planet 51 or Fantastic Mr. Fox for her, and she stuck her head up and declared "Avatar!") and my throat feels like someone has flaming-arrowed a proclamation of doom to it. On the upside, I did manage to narrowly avoid spraying a bunch of Fantastik with Bleach into my load of darks, after I grabbed it thinking it was Spray Shout.

You know those laundry labels that say 'remove promptly from dryer?' Don't they just make you laugh with quiet indulgent affection? Oh yes, you dear little sweater/skirt/delicate lacy slip, I leave everything else crumpled and forlorn in the dryer all night or all day or all the whenever-the-hell-I-feel-like-it because I tend to throw laundry in right before I go to bed and then not think of it again until everyone's out of underwear and the pile of dirty clothes in the hall starts to heave itself around in search of water and soap, but YOU I will remember to fetch freshly heated and wrinkle-free the minute, nay, the very SECOND that indescribably annoying buzzer blats. Trust me.

You know what I hate? People who 'work tirelessly' at things. Especially because they're mostly noble, philanthropic, admirable things, which is a metric f*ckton of annoying, isn't it? Nobody really 'works tirelessly' at serving people sullenly at a drive-thru, or developing an untoward fondness for prescription painkillers, or letting their laundry sit in the dryer for three days until it looks like this only less cute. No, they're working tirelessly at curing porphyria, or repairing homes for senile talk-show hosts, or draping the naked in fresh and unwrinkled clothing (yeah, I know, it's getting old). I only ever work tirefully. Just thinking of working at things makes me tired. Just thinking of those people working tirelessly makes me unspeakably tired.

Angus just gave Eve a hug and she turned her head so she wouldn't cough directly into his face. Isn't that sweet?

So the Tylenol kicked in a couple of hours ago and Eve is now singing and trying to break her record for continuous ball bounces without fumbling. My Tylenol has not yet kicked in, and I sort of hate Eve right now. My mother said I should still keep her home tomorrow. My mother has clearly forgotten that kids can be sporting all the symptoms of cholera one second and dancing on your head and juggling kiwi fruit the next.

Pam and I usually walk on Wednesday mornings. If I was a working tirelessly sort of person, I would drag my diseased, phlegmy, migrainey ass out of bed in the morning. But we've covered that already. We've started walking on this really nice trail, where we run into a lot of people walking dogs, many off-leash, which isn't technically allowed, but they've all been remarkably well behaved. Can't say the same for that woman who blatantly let her dog take an unscooped poop in blatant view of our approaching selves. So we fixed our implacable gazes on her, bore down on her like a couple of avenging angels and VERY sternly WISHED HER A GOOD MORNING in a slightly less friendly tone than we customarily employ. Why? Well, obviously because Pam and I are a couple of GUTLESS PUSSIES!

I'm finding myself a little creepy at the moment, so I'm going to pop a few more pills and put my plague-ridden self to bed. Working tirelessly in the pursuit of mediocrity. That's how I roll.

So Wholesome It'll Make You Hurl

It was a beautiful day today. And we had no plans. This, naturally, sent me into a complete panic. Our general pattern for week-ends all year has been Matt and Angus out at hockey Saturday and Sunday, then showing up tired and napping or watching a James Bond movie, while I do course work or read or clean and Eve colours or plays with the girl from next door.

For some reason, my impulse with a day like this is always to try to get together with someone else. The kids like to have other kids to play with, and whenever there's more than two adults I have this hope that margaritas will magically appear. But who the hell is going to be around at short notice on a beautiful Saturday? I made two or three calls (nobody home at the first place, nobody I liked at the second house (kidding, it was the husband), sick at the third house). I faced the fact that we were going to have to do something as a family -- alone.

I informed the kids that we were going for a walk at the Chapman Conservation Area. They weren't overly impressed. I said if they did this for me, nicely, then we'd go to the park afterwards and Angus could play baseball and Eve could swing. And we could ride there in our new van. And I would refrain from calling them ungrateful wretched ingrates for the rest of the day.

Angus loves being outside as soon as the weather turns nice -- preferably with some kind of ball involved. Eve can go either way. In truth, she loves fruit, vegetables, and playing outside. But she's a little shit-disturber, so for my Mom she delights in saying "I love salt!" and for my Dad she trots out "I HATE the smell of fresh air". We sweetened the deal today by giving her Angus's old sunglasses, which she declared made her look crazy cool.

Eve being crazy cool:

As soon as we got there, it was nothing but good omens:

We were walking on a boardwalk set directly on the grass and Eve wanted to know why there was a 'bridge but no water'. Matt said it was because it probably got swampy, and they wanted to protect the vegetation. Eve said (happily), 'oh, so this is a nature place?'. I said yes. Then she grabbed my arm and said:

'BUT I'M AFRAID OF NATURE PLACES!'

She did, however, like the bulrushes.

Eve with her cotton candy bulrush (it was broken already):

Angus: 'Eve, come look at the swan'. Matt: 'It's not a swan, it's a duck. The ones with the green heads are called mallards'. Ten minutes later -- Angus: 'Look, there's another swan'. Matt: 'It's NOT a SWAN'. Angus: 'I know. I'm just saying that to annoy you'.

Then the walk came to a rather abrupt end, unless we were planning on going for a swim (Eve: "I am!")

On the way back we saw a bird. If we were good parents determined to give our kids a thorough natural education, we would have looked at our bird book when we got home and figured out what kind of bird it was. But we're us, so we forgot and now if I go looking for the bird book I'm just going to wake everyone up. Here's a picture of a bird in a tree:

Oops:

Oops again:

You don't even want to know how many tries this took:

On the way back to the van we saw a guy swinging a kayak up onto his head. Eve said "Is that a kayak?". I said "That's Mr. Canoehead". Eve said "that's a canoe?". I said "no, it's a kayak, but there's no Mr. Kayakhead". Matt said, with a considerable degree of scorn and impatience, that it was called portaging. Eve said "is that French for carrying on head?"

I was almost at the van, and I yelled back at the kids "thanks for coming on the walk you typically ungrateful wretched little ingrates". Angus laughed, and Eve said "What about ME?". I said "I was talking to both of you wretched little ingrates", and she said "oh, good. I didn't hear that."

We went to the park and swung and played baseball (I got nailed in the boob by a wild pitch. Ouch.)  Then we went home and did yard work, then we barbecued chicken and watched Fantastic Mr. Fox (brilliance, sheer brilliance). Then we played an uproarious game of Yahtzee (no Yahtzees tonight, but a freakish number of full houses). It was fun. My family doesn't suck. About tomorrow, though -- anyone wanna do something?