The Move

Its been a busy couple of weeks. This is my hectic time at work and I've been working late and stressed over that. And at the same time, my parents have been dealing with THE BIG MOVE. I went and helped out this past weekend and lets just say, my parents deserve huge props.

See, my Grandparents have sold their home. The family home, the only home my grandmother has ever known. And it has been hard on everyone. They are understandably upset, but the time has come for them to move to a smaller and more manageable place. But with this decision, comes the clearing out of 50 to 75 years worth of stuff. My grandmother has lived there since she was 3 or 4, and then her and my grandfather were married and raised their kids there, my mother the third of five.

My parents moved closer to them a couple of years ago, and since then its been them who my grandparents call for everything. My mom cleans their place, my dad fixes leaks and cracks and electrical things. My mom takes them to doctors appointments, which over the last year has been VERY frequent. And now, with the move, its my parents who have had to arrange everything.

Now I love my grandparents (despite my bitching about old people), but they are not an easygoing pair. They fight. And they fight often. My grandfather grumbles about something, my grandmother raises her voice, my grandfather yells back and so on and so forth. So with all this upheaval in their life right now, that fighting is magnified by a hundred. And my grandfather is not being pleasant to deal with. He has accused my uncles and my dad of stealing his things, things as small as a screw driver, which is not, you may think, made of gold. He wants noone to have anything of his. My grandmother gave my uncle a fan, but my grandpa took it back. Even though the place they are moving to has A/C. He refuses to allow them to throw out junk, and I mean 50 year old rusty pieces of junk, saying he paid for them so he's damn well keeping them. Its a struggle. And neither of them seem to realize that they are moving to a 2 bedroom apartment. They are holding on so tight to their things, wanting to pack chipped dishes and broken lamps. My mom and I packed 50 empty jars the other day. EMPTY JARS! And for what? My grandmother has not pickled anything for years, or made jam, and she will most definitely not being doing so in future, but they will not let it go.

And while we all sympathize with their feelings, it does not an easy move make. I was kind of sad seeing the house. I remember going their every summer when I was a kid. Me and my sister would play in my grandparents bedroom for hours with these little ceramic birds. And we played checkers in the living room and ran around in the backyard, finding neat things in the old garage. So it is sad and overwhelming. I just hope once they are all moved in to their cute 2 bedroom apartment, they are able to feel at home, but until then, a couple of days from now, I fear there will be many more tears, arguments and hurt feelings.

To my mom and dad, I say good luck, stay strong! And BYE to Chestnut Street.

Oh NO!

Well now I've done gone and become my mother. I just muttered "You know what you should do" to a co-worker. My mom's most favorite saying! We always laugh about it. Next I'll be shopping at Northern Reflections.

Mind you, who wouldn't want something as fancy as this?


This reminds me of one Christmas, I think I was about 16. My family went to my Aunt and Uncle's and young cousin's for the holidays. I was going through the typical teenage "I'm going to wear black and be all anti-establishment" phase. Plus I decided that week I was going to wear a touque, like, ALL THE TIME. Even inside. It was this black thing with an orange stripe. Whatever. Anyway, we head off to their place for Christmas. My uncle teased me as usual, but that's him, and he's funny as hell. CRUDE, but funny. So Christmas morning we are awoken at friggin 530 am by my cousin! Gasp. My family are not like that, even Christmas morning we're sleeping until 8 or so. But I digress, he was only about 7. Actually my sister and I had the worst sleep ever anyway, sharing a waterbed that the heater had somehow come unplugged so that we woke up with frozen kidneys and felt awful.

My cousin starts tearing into the gifts without a nod to who gave it, or show & tell about the gift. Which again, is so not my family. We're very one present at a time, then show, talk, give hugs, refill our Baileys and coffee again, move on to the next one. Actually I say one each but that doesn't include my mom, the gift giver-outer. Who every year gets so excited distributing gifts that she never opens hers and then we all have to sit and watch her at the end. And we get annoyed at her cause we suspect she just wants all eyes on her! (I jest because I love) Ahhh traditions.

So I come to this gift, which is from my aunt and uncle. (I don't know if they read this, but I think enough time has passed so...)It was a bright turquoise sweatshirt with hot pink trim. It was hideous! I wouldn't wear anything like that, and let me remind you that I was wearing black and sporting a touque. Of course, what do you do? You smile and say "it looks cozy" and hope next year she realizes that teenagers do not like the same thing as, um, 5 year olds. But actually she doesn't, in fact she looks to the elderly for inspiration and the next year you get a yellow sweater with flowers on it, which you lie and say is too big.

So yeah, if you are going to buy me a Christmas present, I say you can't go wrong with DIAMONDS!

T-out

What's a HooDoo?

For all who asked what a HooDoo was: A hoodoo is a pillar of sediment carved by wind and water erosion. Because the underlying rock is more susceptible to the forces of nature, it erodes more quickly than the cap stone.


See how Nerdy I can be?

Fashion Police: Lessons Learned on Flight 103

Hi y'all I went to Calgary for the Thanksgiving weekend to visit my sister and we had a blast! I saw me some dinosaur bones and everything. Here are some fashion faux pas I noticed on the plane.

Disclaimer: I am no fashionista. I may or may not follow trends, but I think I can recognize the good, the bad and the ugly. A teensy weensy bit catty too.

Lesson #1 Track Pants with a MESSAGE
Okay. Women with, how shall I say it? Um, Expansive posterior, should NOT wear track pants with sparkley "Princess" on the rear. You know what? Scratch that, women over the age of 12 should not wear track pants with "Princess" on the rear, or other such bold statements like "Diva" or " Cutie" or "Angel" for that matter. This woman was about 35. Not only did the P and the S get lost on the sides, but the N and the C were swallowed by crack of the arse. When you have a big bottom, why would you want to draw the eye there? Unless, yes that's it, unless she was an ACTUAL Princess!No other princess I know tell people they are princesses by having it printed in sparkly writing on their bottoms, but hey maybe she is a new princess and wasn't sure if people knew that yet. Good plan. Hmmm but wait a minute. Why would a princess be flying cheapy Canjet? Seriously, there is NO leg room. And you have to pay for water for crying out loud. I would have a thought a princess gig would pay better, huh.

Lesson #2 Trench Coat Pockets
This one is hard to explain. Young, pretty otherwise nicely dressed women should not sport trench coats that have GIANT pockets on the back. On the back people! Located where your bum is like huge pants pockets. First, why do you need pockets on the back of your coat? What would you put there? Like if you put some money or your keys back there, not only could someone steal it, but everytime you reached for something, you'd look like you were copping a feel on your own ass. Second, why so large? And with such large buttons. They were so hideous. And pointless. I guess her saving grace is that she didn't have a big booty too, or else, whoa.

Lesson # 3 Chinless Men
Making a change from clothing to um, grooming: Men with no chins should not shave facial hair into a beard shape in an attempt to give the illusion of a chin. Yeah, so I figure having no chin must suck. But I also figure anyone with EYES can see that you have no chin, so it might be better to just embrace your chinlessness, instead of trying to be all fooly fooly with your facial hair. He was standing in front of me in line to get on the plane and it was just so distracting. When he talked, the facial hair just bounced around where his chin should be.

So yeah, as I said above. CATTY. As my co-workers say, I'm "Tell Like it Is".

T-out

Addicted.

Work is making me fat(ter). I cannot stop eating junkfood. Its like a serious problem. I had a meeting at work this morning and there were refreshments. There were muffins, danishes, two-bite brownies, cookies and tim-bits, apple juice, orange juice and coffee. I had an apple juice, a cookie and a brownie. It was 8 am. I had already eaten breakfast.

Skip to lunch. I had a veggie soup, a nice healthy choice. And a Snickers. There is a snack stand next to the bathroom on the main floor that we have to use right now because the one on our floor is being renovated. So I of course I got a chocolate bar.

Skip to 3pm. It's someone's birthday. At my work, when it is your birthday you bring in the snacks. And believe me, you better bring something good. It can be vicious. Once someone brought in some Chinese bean cake and there was nearly a riot. But really, can you blame us? A bean cake? ICK. Mind you, it was cake, so I did try it. and it was not tasty. Anyway, back to today, I was so not hungry but it was some raspberry coconut bar concoction which looked yum, so I had some. Now I totally feel disgusting, and disgusted (with myself).

So why do people hate me? Couldn't they just start bringing in nothing but Banana Cakes or Banana Cream Pies? That is the only way I can resist. I keep posting notes around saying BRING IN BANANAS! But people don't listen, they bring in german chocoate cake, butter tarts, cheesecake, nanimo bars and other tasty goodies. Bastards.

T-(rolling herself out of her chair)OUT