Elisa’s Day

lets just see if i can bang out an update while the kids are playing outside and the baby is sleeping. that’s right……playing outside because it is beautiful and spring like out there. it’s going outside with no hat and mitts weather out there. it’s the sun actually feels warm weather out there. it’s a beautiful thing. i mean sure, the kids play outside in the winter too. but there is only so much fun to be had with the mobility of the michelin tire man. and it’s always a race against the clock, how long can you play before your numb fingers, toes and nose force you back inside? on a good day it might be 45 min, but more often then not it’s about 20 minutes. so it is a happy day when i can kick the kids outside sans hats and mitts and they’ll stay out there a good hour or so.

last week was a crazy one. i was on the go all week. which means my house is trashed in a serious way. i can generally keep on top of the mess (to a reasonable extent anyway) but if too many other plans start creeping into the picture, well, something has to give. so mess was left. laundry was not done. it all spirals out of control pretty quickly believe me. so today was spent cleaning. though sadly, not much laundry has been done yet, but i still have the afternoon.

and now i hear my baby crying, so off i go to get her, feed her etc. and will have to finish this later

okay, two hours later. baby is playing on the floor with the kids. roast is in the oven. ryan made our very first successful pie for dessert. we have both tried pie crust before and it always ended badly. but he did it !! yay. also the house is reasonably clean again and we even made bread. a productive day.

yesterday we spent the day in peterborough shopping. my grandma was nice enough to escort us to costco ( membership required ) and we even got to leave the kids with my cousins so we could shop in peace. i have had to start shopping at costco. it’s kind of annoying to drive to peterborough to do it, but the kids are getting bigger, they eat a lot and there is still one more to add to the collective appetite. imagine you buy on bunch of banana’s and then you doll them out three ( soon to be four ) at a time ( let alone if you want one ) well, one bunch doesn’t go too far. i need the giant bag of grapefruit. the giant bag of oranges. the huge box of granola. the 44 pounds of flour. the six pack of whole wheat spaghetti, because everyone here loves spaghetti and one box of noodles is barely enough. if we want leftovers i need to make a box and a half. you get the point. ryan says our basement is starting to look like a bomb shelter with all the overflow storage in addition to the home canned goods. what i really need now is a second fridge for the basement. ryan has a little bar fridge down there that is packed, but i’m going to start watching the classifieds for one. and i definitely can’t wait to get some new egg layers in the spring. ( or sooner ) we go through 2-3 dozen eggs a week. we’re also getting a freezer pack of local beef from a guy up the road to go in the deep freeze with our chickens this year.

not much else going on. another round of swimming lessons over with. and a few extra weeks in between this time, as the pool closes for some much needed renovations.

other then that, march break, no real plans, but we’ll head up to my dad’s for a few days just to get out of the house. i’m working on ryan’s sweater. it’s coming slowly, but coming along all the same. i finally got around to reading the Lost Symbol. it was fine. a more formulistic writer there may not be, but entertaining all the same. then my mom brought over Year of the Flood. i’m just trying to decide of i should read Oryx and Crake again first. i also have a few easy patterns and some fabric i picked up for next to nothing at our fabricland, soon to be closed. i’ll give sewing another try and see how it goes. i’d like to be able to make things for the girls.

and there you have it, the mundane minutiae of my life, but now my baby wants me and i need to switch the laundry.

it was a dark and stormy day, but with the older girls both off at school, ryan decided we needed to get out of the house for a little road trip. he found a farm that mills their own organic flour, and although it isn’t super close, it’s close enough, so after a few failed attempts to call and email them for info, we were told by another customer that just dropping by the farm is the best bet. so we decided to take our chances and headed out to peterborough, which is about 40 min. away and a much bigger town then we live in, for a bit of shopping.

the first stop was value village, a great place all around, but the BEST place for kids books. how wrong can you go with a huge selection of books for 1$ each, and as if that wasn’t good enough, it’s buy 4 get one free. nice. then a quick stop by aunt erin’s new place of employment, a used dvd/video game store, where we traded a couple bags of crappy movies bought in what could only be described as moments of clearly bad judgement and sitting in our basement wasting space, for some lovely cash. then off to the evil store that starts with “W ” for new rain boots for little girls, they practically had to swim to school today and there was some complaining of pinching toes in last years rain boots ( and new socks for the littlest girl, who will never need a pair of rain boots in her life as i’m pretty sure i have a pair in every size now and you just can’t wear those things out ) i’ve told ryan i really need a shelving unit in the basement just dedicated all the kids shoes and boots i have, so i could put them out by size so that i know what i have for who in what size for each season. it’s becoming a daunting collection all tossed into rubbermaid tubs to be dug through whenever the seasons turn.

then off to find the farm. which we did, and bought ourselves a big ass bag of organic flour ( 50 pounds i think ) all in all a successful trip.

and now a short half an hour until the new survivor, which i am excited about, as always.

at the library or the doctors, unfortunately.

the lindsay library leaves a lot to be desired. i have spent most of my time on the kids side, but the adult side is pretty sad. of the series that hillary recommended, they had only 4 of the 7 books, and none of them at the lindsay location, apparently they move books between all the libraries in the district and this all counts as the library’s”catalogue” . and i found nothing else you guys recommended either! for real. oh well, amazon is selling the whole series for 40$ so i mentioned to my mom that it would be a swell birthday present. until then maybe i’ll just work on my knitting and re-read the the Time Traveller’s Wife, and raid my mom’s book collection, even if most of it is still packed. but hey, the kids scored some much anticipated magic school bus books, and some robert munsch, so the library is still good for the under 12 crowd at least.

and, even though i was going to wait until tomorrow to start harassing my doctor about the sex of the baby, i caved and called today. and got the voice mail letting me know her office is closed for holidays until the 17th. yeah. that’s right. for real. soooo, to re-cap, first, the ultrasound tech won’t tell us, then the radiologist is on holidays so the results won’t get sent over right away, and then apparently my doctor goes on vacation so even if the results are there, there is no one to read them. well damn it. maybe baby four is supposed to be a surprise. to bad i’m not big on surprises. of course if i have to wait until the 17th, i might as well just wait until the 24th when my next actual appointment is ( that’s what i say, but much more likely i’ll start phoning her first thing in the a.m. on the 17th )

well it just wouldn’t be february in canada without the few days of faux melt off. you can almost taste the spring. the sun is shining, and for the first time in months you can feel the heat off it. and there are birds singing. and everything is melting away at an alarming rate. but alas, it is canada, and it’s only february, so unless you’re new around here you know that it’s all an illusion of spring,  just to make then next 6 weeks of winter in your future seem all that more hellish.

this is never a good time of year for me anyway, under the very best of circumstances, and, well,  raging hormones, a poorly heated house and cluster flies, even in the depths of winter, let alone the ever multiplying numbers the false spring has brought……well, those are so far from “the very best of circumstances” i can barely wrap my head around it. my point being, that i expect to be a more pleasant person again, once spring comes around, i just have to survive until that point.

and the february tease isn’t helping any. i mean i am basking slightly. how could you not. for the first time in months, it’s possible to go outside without being physically uncomfortable. because lets face it, no matter how well clothed you are, there is still some part of you exposed to the minus 30, and even if it’s only your face, it just doesn’t feel good. but i know it’s all going to fade back into minus 30 soon enough and that is so sad. plus i also know that there will be more snow. likely into april. depressing.

if canada had a warm place to call it’s own, i would live there ( and i said warm not slightly less cold and extra rainy, so please don’t suggest moving to the west coast )

next update will be about babies, i promise. but for now i’d really like some book recommendations ( hi lara ) because reading Twilight made me realize that i can and will find time to read, if the book is enjoyable enough, which i think the last few i read before that weren’t, so i just didn’t instead. ( not that they were bad books really, just not captivating enough to make me find the time when the time is so hard to find )

i just finished Water for Elephants too, from my mom.

well, like i said in the comment forum below, the last movie i saw in the theaters was Cars, before that, probably the last movie in the new star wars trilogy. i don’t get out to the movies too often. it’s probably good that the theater here in town sucks, because if we had a decent theater in town i probably would be tempted to go more often, i do really like movies. as it was, twilight wasn’t still playing here, only 3 screens means pretty quick turnover, so we headed off to peterborough, where they do have a nice theater and sat in comfy, stadium style seats, to enjoy our mediocre movies.

it actually wasn’t so bad ( it wasn’t so great either ) it was probably about exactly as disappointing as i expected it to be, but oddly, for completely different reasons. somehow, they managed to really mess around with the events and time lines really a lot, but still give you the feeling they stayed true to the book, which is odd. maybe because they stuck to a lot of the original dialogue ( which can come off pretty cheesey btw, for some reason less cheesey to read then to hear out loud ) just put it in different places, no doubt to move the story along quicker. i thought the actors did a decent job of conveying the internal dialogue we all knew was there ( did anyone go see it who hadn’t read the book? ) which isn’t easy considering how much internal dialogue there is. i found the lead actor odd, sometimes quite attractive, sometimes just odd looking……..huh.

but the most dissappointing part was actually the effects, use of and lack there of. i guess it’s a hard thing to put on screen. and i’m guessing twilight, not working with a huge, blockbuster style budget or resources. but it seems like the effects that were there, could have probably been skipped all together, really, speeding up the film to make it look like he walked around the car really fast, did we have to see that?  there must have been a better way to convey that, and the tree climbing…..yeah…..wow, so bad……. and most dissappointing was the vampires themselves, sometimes very pale, sometimes more average, sometimes looking like people wearing way to much pancake ( hey, i hung out in  a lot of goth bars in the day, there is nothing worse then someone  in too much pancake ) and i know there is post production ways to make people look…….more………like they should have looked, they should have looked like the elves in lord of the rings, no pancake, no stubble……just ethereal. but hey, i’m sure lord of the rings, whole different budget and resources.

but, even though i’ve written about them in boring detail, they were pretty minor annoyances in a pretty entertaining movie, what the hell, i’ll watch it again, when it comes out on video, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

enough with the brutal cold snap already. i really really hate being cold. a lot. i have yet to own a house ( and we move a lot ) with a decent, even heating system. but at least usually, it’s a freezing upstairs to a hot downstairs, or ( like our last place ) a cold downstairs to a sweltering upstairs. but at least SOME part of the freaking house was warm. this place has some serious heating issues. and that leaves no place warm once we drop below -5. it sucks an unbelievable amount. and we’re torn on the solution. it’s an old wood/oil combo furnace in the basement right now, and ryan would like a new one. but for the same approximate money, we could also get a high efficiency oil furnace AND a main floor wood stove, i hate having to make these big decisions with very little first hand info. all i know is by next winter there will be something better then what we have now, or i’ll be forced to head south.

and just to annoy even further, i don’t believe i’ve yet mentioned, our oven died about a month ago. yeah….so we spent about a week researching what we would get. our options are limited, since it’s a built in wall oven, and there is no real place to put a regular upright stove anyway. the problem with wall ovens…not so popular in the average middle class kitchen, more of a high end, want to spend $3000 just on your stove kind of thing. but we finally picked a decent one we could afford. and they said, oh yeah, maybe before christmas, but we DEFINITLY have it to you before the new year. yet here i sit, 10 days into the new year, and still no god damn stove. i really hate it when stores say they can do something they can’t. apparently, only after my constant calling and threat to cancel my order was it discovered that it wouldn’t in fact be here “any day now” but it was not in the warehouse at all like it was supposed to be. and it wouldn’t be coming at all. and shouldn’t you have figured that out, say, a few days after i ordered it, and not after 3 weeks of no stove and constant hounding from me? the new promise, that i put no stock in btw, is that i will be getting a slightly more expensive make, same features, for the same price, this week coming up. i, of course, will believe it when i see it. and i even got on this tangent because, when it’s really freaking cold, i usually bake, because it warms the kitchen up and makes the house smell nice. and i can’t even do that. but today i did finally break down and make cookies and brownies in my mom’s oven. i’m low on lunch stuff for the kids, so i did rice krispie squares yesterday, cookies today, and tiny muffins tomorrow. then i throw them in the freezer and pop them into lunches as needed. ( the brownies were for me….with chocolate butter cream icing….mmmm ) i also froze small tupperwares of peaches for lunches, this summer as an experiment and they worked great, but i am low already, i’ll definitely have to do twice as many next year.

swimming was interesting. hannah spent her entire class clinging to me like a terrified monkey, saying  “no want to, no want to” and “i get out now”  while i spent the entire class very aware of just how many tattoos i have in a bathing suit, though all the other mom’s were all very friendly ( i was actually there with a friend and was surprised to see another friend there as well….but still, even for them, knowing i have a lot of tattoos and seeing them all at once, two totally different things LOL )

but sidney and olivia loved their classes today ! olivia fell shy at the exact moment she was supposed to go to the instructor, but i walked her over and the girl offered to hold her hand while they walked to the pool and that was it, she was in. she did all the things they were supposed to , even put her face in the water, which is a huge improvement on the terrified monkey clinging of this past summer. and sidney was definitely braver then last time already, and i bet she moves on to the next level after this round.

i finished the final book. sadly. i hope there are more, it was enjoyable. i’m kind of reading the draft for the other one online ( same story as the first book, different persons perspective ). apparently the author decided to not finish it after it was leaked, but made the draft available anyway. i’m half heartedly reading it, mostly because i hate reading things like that, on the computer, but it’s almost 300 pages, so i can’t bring myself to print it off either. so i read 20 or so pages here and there. and i’ll watch the movie when it comes out i guess, though i expect it isn’t as good as the book, few ( any? ) movies ever are.

one of my mom’s students lent her the final book. and she’s gone to work. it’s very tempting to go grab it. but i know if i do, i’ll spend the better part of the day reading and i really have so much to do.

i think the most annoying part is all this work ( that i admittedly have been putting off for months ) is mostly for a company we are no longer even operating. but hey, the government cares not for details like that, so i still need to file for the small part of the fiscal year we did operate. and i left the job at my dad’s about 90% finished, when i became entrenched in holiday stuff and realized i better get on this other book keeping. so i really have to finish that off for him too. and sooner then later.

ryan and i have been watching the lord of the rings. well, originally he started watching while i was reading eclipse, so i missed the first one. but i came in part way through the second one and am looking forward to finishing the third one off tonight. i’m actually more listening then watching. because i’m working on my knitting, which is going well, with sidney’s scarf now finished off and hannah’s off to a good start. and hannah’s i even cast on myself. then ryan has requested a black one, and my step dad a green one…..so a few more scarves in my future yet. i guess i’m off on my first yarn shopping venture soon.

so that’s it, of course, in the end i’ll probably still go get it and read just a few chapters as a break this afternoon. sitting at this tiny little desk for hours on end is no good for me right now at all. but hey, i’m all about compromise anyway, so a few chapters can’t hurt, plus no point in obsessively reading the entire thing as quickly as possible since it’s the last one.

oh yeah, and i have to locate a bathing suit today, because hannah has her fist swimming lesson tomorrow, i can’t forget that.  hannh, who is, by the way, getting so big, never ever stops talking ( asking for things mostly ) like right now….”come on mommy, waddle like a a penguin with me” she says so many cute things, i can’t even think of specific examples right now. two is such a cute age. and sidney….crazy…..she’s just like a real, big kid, right in front of my eyes. and olivia, stuck in the middle. generally annoyed with her lot in life right now. you hear a lot about “terrible twos” but i have so far found four to be an unpleasant age, for everyone concerned. not big and not small. i remember sidney going through the same. although olivia is at least excited to have her own swimming lesson this weekend, after watching sidney go on her own last time. hopefully the enthusiasm doesn’t wane when it’s actually time to get into the pool.

well, it very quickly went, saturday/sunday New Moon, sunday/monday Eclipse and here we are. but the fourth book is sold out, everywhere around here, and the waiting list at the library is silly long……so i guess i just keep my eyes open for it and hope it turns up. until then i can get back to my regularly scheduled life. i waded through all the laundry i didn’t do over the holidays sunday night ( while my mom was still reading eclipse, leaving me with no vampire romance to fill my time -insert dramatic sigh- ) and yesterday i did refrain from reading all day to begin catching up on some way over due book keeping, which needs to be done in a desperate way. today i finally went grocery shopping, i had been putting it off after blowing our grocery budget in december with lots of holiday extras. but i have lunches to make again, so it had to be done. now i have to try and restore order to my kitchen ( oh how i hate putting away groceries, so much more then the actual shopping )  and then back to the book keeping.

busy weekend coming up, the swimming lessons start back up, only this session i have hannah in ( with me….hmmm bathing suits and public change rooms….who’s idea was this anyway ) on friday, the older girls in on saturday back to back and then it’s a birthday party for the kids sunday, a toboggan party if we get some snow between now and then. i guess we’ll see.

oh, and i did get started on sidney’s scarf next. very excited to be actually be making something, and since i have no real aptitude or love for sewing, knitting i am enjoying much better. i think i’ll look for an easy blanket or something next ( i’ll stick with square or rectangular objects for now…..though olivia has requested rainbow socks – yeah, of course she has - )

i read twilight. all 500ish pages of it. obviously it was a collection of circumstances that made that possible, the kids still enthralled with their new stuff and playing quietly, a long nap from miss hannah, a movie in the afternoon, dad making dinner and an evening of nothing but reading. i wasn’t sure i would like it, or that i wanted to like it, over hyped teenage vampire romance….for real? but then really, who am i kidding? i watched every single episode of buffy and angel last year, obsessively. i think it’s probably a given, buffy fan, twilight fan. so when my mom borrowed it from my cousin ( as a highschool english teacher she likes to know what her students are reading ) and offered it to me yesterday i figured why not. i really do love books, even though i rarely read them any more. in my pre-child life i read a lot of books, and often in a short amount of time. in fact, when ryan and i went to mexico in 2005 ( the only significant amount of time i have ever spent with no kids, well, since having kids ) i read at least 5 novels i can remember in that one week. that’s just how i am i guess. if i am really enjoying a book, it is very hard for me to put it down at all. and that is very hard to do with kids. so i thoroughly enjoyed it. i sat with my feet up, ate the last of the christmas treats ( including some awesome home made carmel corn from my aunt ) and just read it. all. is it a literary masterpiece? of course not, but did i expect it to be? nope, good old fashioned fun reading. now i wish i could get my hands on the others. though i doubt i’ll have opportunity to finish one in a day again, i still am looking forward to finishing the rest of the series. if i didn’t expect there was a waiting list i would probably head into the library today. i may still call them.

i did manage yesterday, before my mom brought the book by, to get all the christmas decorations put away…..mostly. i am always amazed at how empty the house seems after they come down, even though that is the way it is most of the time. and i am always very happy to put them away and do a big clean and find a spot for all the new stuff.

christmas was great, if not a little long, but that is standard. the kids got a lot of really cool stuff this year, hand made stuff, and books and puzzles and only a few, well chosen, high end toys ( for the most part, my dad is always good for some department store crap, but even that wasn’t so bad this year, mainly a lego set with dora and diego characters, which the kids have played with every single day since they got it on the 20th, so really, how much fault can i find in it? ) lots of family and great food….one minor mishap, with ryan’s mom falling ill right after we arrived, meaning we had to turn around and come right home…..ahhh the drive to ottawa, how i hate you. but she is recovering quickly and will probably head down our way some time this month. and i did get to use the first five hours in the car to finish off my very first knitting project. ryan gave me needles and three balls of wool for christmas, one scarf for each girl. my mom, an accomplished knitter much to my surprise, did cast on and off for me, and was handy to fix any little mishaps, but hey, i knit a scarf, which is pretty cool.

back to regular life on monday.