I have been busy!!

Getting really crappy at this blogging thing, mostly because suddenly this site puts pictures I enter wherever the heck it feels like, making my pages very confusing and annoying to publish.  I have learned to make bread, quite well I think.  (I have also gained 10 pounds, which I believe is completely unrelated.) Aren't they beautiful??  I made a cheddar loaf and a cinnamon raisin loaf, I have done a bunch of plain white and whole wheat, I have a sourdough starter going that is either perfect or will kill us all, and I love my KitchenAid mixer.  It's all kinds of awesome. 

And... I made my first duck! I did it a l'orange, which was amazing because I finally made sugar my bitch.  Caramelizing sugar has long been a fear of mine, but I have conquered it with very few explosions and even made pralines!  The duck was good enough I suppose, but it was hard to gauge due to the fact that the only other duck a l'orange I have ever had was in a tiny rustic dining hall high up in the French Alps which I am quite sure I will never be able to come close to. 

I'll finish this food oriented post with this morning's breakfast:  Greek yogourt, mango, blueberry and raspberry with a drizzle of honey.  The kids thought it was a holiday or something!!  Now I'm off to get groceries, go skating, and check out the brand new lego store that opens today that my son found out about at school and will not stop talking about!!  Yay!!

The Christmas Tree

Well, my tree is up, and it's beautiful.  Gone are the days of our early marriage where the laughable theme was "Santa threw up" and the tree was bombarded with cast off broken ornaments from family and friends.  I look now and see my beautiful swarovski ornaments glistening in the lights, one for every year we've been married, the wax gingerbread men from my childhood that smell like gingerbread, marked with tiny teeth marks of both my brother and I and all of my children, all having decided at one point to see if they tasted as good as they smelled.  There's real gingerbread ornaments from 3 years ago when I made a horrid batch so we, as a family, decorated them and hung them on the tree.  (Yes, you can go so wrong with baking that it never goes bad.)  There's hideous angels from Chris' Nonna (rest her soul) that scream Italian Catholic, there's an awful wicker angel from my grandmother.  The baby's first Christmas ornaments from my 3 children,  3 brass ornaments from when I was a child and my mother had a "brass party" and made stuffed mushroom caps that I was not allowed to eat until the company arrived.  The felt mice I made with the children for all our friends last year that I remembered how to make from helping my friend Janine's mom make them for Christmas Chaos many, many years ago.  The hand beaded, lopsided, jiffy markered beauties from my children's preschool days, the glass ball filled with glitter and marked "Tabitha" for my first marital pet.  Candy Canes older than me, and new ones the children can eat, the Snowbells I sold in grade 3 door to door, and the beautiful newer ones that my mom buys me a few of every year.  As I sit staring at the beauty of so many years come together, I was struck with the realization of how many of these come from our combined families past, and how these are no longer my memories.  They belong to my children, who will one day hang some of these same ornaments, lifting the littlest one to reach the very top to put the star on, singing along to A Very Twisted Christmas, or more likely by then, crunking along to a very Bieber Christmas or something.  I still use the stocking my Grandmother made me, black with my name in felt on it.  Perhaps this is the year to make my own children's stockings anew, something they can use for a lifetime.  Religious or not, Christmas is such a magical time in our home because it brings so many elements- family, history, memories- together in a swirling, sparkling display.  It's such a blissed out, peaceful feeling of living for so much more than yourself, of building memories for these little people that you would kill for, and lovely reminiscings to share on an old porch with my husband when we're very, very old.  A sappy post, I know, but it had to be done.  It's all about the love.  And the chocolate.

Fun Things do to with your Homestay Student

See how many marshmallows she can fit into her mouth at once!  We miss you Manami!

Also, teach her the words "hangover", "advil", and "bastard.  All in one night!  (Fat Bastard wine was behind that one.)  The end, i just really wanted to use this pic.

Conversation with my Husband

Me: So, the guy came to install the house alarm today... he was a beautiful black man... wait, can I say "black man"? African-Canadian? 
Hubby: I think black is okay, they don't seem to mind.
Me: So there's black people and white people, can I call East Indians "brown"? or Chinese "yellow" then?
Hubby: they're just "Indians", and no, you can't.
Me: So there's black and white and then everyone else you name by culture? This is so confusing.

I have been basically banned by my friends from using the term "lesbian", but "gay" seems to be fine thus far.  Apparently I label people too much, but how do you describe then?  This alarm guy was beautiful because he was black.  He had that football build, the dark dark skin with the white teeth and the deep voice and it just takes too long to say it this way.  I've had friends even attempt to use zee instead of he or she, but you know what?  If someone mugs me and I'm giving a police report, I am going to say it was a Chinese Man.  Or whatever.  I like the idea of putting whatever you want in the gender category of passports (Go Australia!) but there are times when racial and sexual descriptors are necessary.  If you invite me to a birthday party for your "partner" whom I have never met, I want to know if I should bring wine with a schmaltzy label like "Bitch" or scotch.  Actually, most my friends are lawyers so scotch always works.  But there are situations where old fashioned, racist sexist language works for me.  I'm old school, alright?  I still tell the kids I'll tape something for them (They humour me), I still "dial" a telephone (no longer a dial or a tele), I made a reference to "Pigs in Space" from the Muppet Show today to be met by the blank stare of my (slightly younger) friend.  Here's an idea folks, look behind the words to the meaning the person using them intended.  I love people, most people.  (Exceptions: Prowlers, Jehovah's Witnesses on my doorstep, crazy people on the bus that try to touch my son's red hair.)  And I think Black People (African-Canadian? How far removed from Africa do you have to be till that no longer applies?) are a beautiful race, male and female.  They're just built better.

Bring on the hate mail.  I'm trying.

How to tell if you're a Stay at Home Mommy

There are some serious indicators i do not leave the house enough.  Here are some of them:
My evening nightcap is often a jagerbomb.
I start crafting Halloween costumes in May, but do not start Christmas crap until Dec. 23rd.   (Metrotown Mall on Dec. 23rd is a special level of hell, I assure you.  Much, much more so with kids in tow.  Hello, jagerbomb.)
My first meal almost every day is at 3:15 pm and it's usually crackers and cheese, or whatever the kidlets have for an afterschool snack.
Telemarketers are officially afraid to call me.  Haven't heard from one in months.
I have a huge to-do list everyday, and mostly don't do any of it.  I do have fresh lime-raspberry loaf right now though.  No, no pics.  I'm so lame.
I have like 8 gold trophies on Plants Vs. Zombies, because I'm so awesome.
I got to go for a mammogram yesterday and I was so, so excited about it!!  Yay Squishiness!!!  (FYI women, they feel like a million stinging wasps in your bra.  Not pleasant.  But the nurses were super nice.)
I'm really enjoying the books my children bring home from school.  For example, my son brought home a superhero alphabet book which included "W" woman, who is wet, wild, and willing.  Maybe not quite that inappropriate, but it raised eyebrows.  She was also "wonderful" to look at.  At least he's learning the alphabet?
I have started singing, because I am an extrovert and I need to hear voices, or I'll be hearing the bad kind of voices, and that benefits no one except JP Domino who can use me for a case study one day.  I suck at singing, am the polar opposite of every Disney "heroine".  Birds fly into windows on purpose when I sing.  I know this is on purpose because my windows are filthy and birds aren't that stupid.
I drink 2 cups of coffee every morning, then get jittery and panicky, then do yoga, then hurt myself and lay on the couch.
I'm too smart for the new fall lineup (2 Broke Girls? Painful. TerraNova? Write something new.) But I watch them anyway, because All My Children just finished it's million-year-run so Susan Lucci can peel off her flesh to expose a Hellraiser-type-Succubus in private.
When I get bored, I cook, way too much, then panic at the amount of food I have made and inevitably end up with a somewhat surprise dinner party of 11 and panic about that.

I have all the time in the world, but no time at all, it seems.  And that glorious napping thing I had planned on?  Not with this much coffee jostling for space in my veins.  Well, I have to run, the sewer guys are coming tomorrow and I'm going to bake them a cake.  (serious.)

Getting the hang of it...

My kids came home from school today and I asked Bells to fold the laundry, which she did.  She's a gosh-darn 5 year old laundry expert.  So much win.  I asked my 7 year old son to make cream of broccoli soup.  He got the pot out, threw in some butter, grabbed some shallots... I almost cried with joy.  He needed a little help with the shallots and garlic, but he hacked up the broccoli, added the chicken stock, and did the vast majority of everything to do with it.  It was wonderful, with the dubious addition of fresh dill.  He got a little carried away, but I'm cool with that.  They're just getting so self sufficient!!  On the flip side, hubby comes home the other night, in time for dinner even, to lovely homemade crepes stuffed with roasted tomatoes, asparagus and crab and topped with a dill cream sauce.  The children were so excited!  I was so excited!  He emptied his pockets before sitting down and found.... his bosses' car keys.  Sigh.  So, I pack up dinner, uneaten, and the fam, and we head to Surrey to drop of the keys and go out for dinner with daddy.  This makes me feel like a supercool, awesome, laid back and supportive wife and mother.  (Except for the merciless teasing I rightfully inflicted upon him.)  So now, I am tooting my own horn.  My horn is awesome.  The kids are both in full time school, hubby's in full time work, and I am doing Jillian Micheals workouts everyday, yard work (this is a very new thing for me), cleaning, cooking up a storm, and generally not relaxing very much at all.  I made myself take a bubble bath with candles and rain outside and a trashy magazine... the whole shebang.  I lasted 5 minutes.  I find relaxing very stressful. I find procrastinating very relaxing, however.  I just need to know I should be doing something.
 That's all for now, just a rambling stream of consciousness with no lessons, clarity or revelations.  Happy Autumn, everyone, now for my first kids soccer practice which the skies have generously opened up for in true Vancouver style.

To The Prowlers!!

I know you're out there.
I know, because the closer I get to sleep the sharper my hearing gets.
I lay in bed silently willing my husband to breathe more quietly so I can hear you steal our bikes.
It is nearly 1am, I have checked the bikes twice and each child's bedroom three times.  Now I've psyched myself out.  Somehow, I skipped turning into my mother and went straight for grandmotherhood.  Everyone's a hooligan.  I may come off as delusional, certainly paranoid, but I'll have you know the first night we moved here I woke hubby up in a panic and he confirmed that yes, the sound I was hearing was gunshots, but they were miles away.
It's not my fault... I cut my big city teeth in Stepford.  It's so weird being in a big house that's freestanding and kind of isolated.  (There's tall hedges, alright?)
But Dear Prowlers, let this be my warning to you:  If you come on my property at all, I will hear you.

And I will stand by the back door and (passive) aggressively flip the back porch light on and off.  As long as it takes, MoFo.  

Update:  I'm slightly less paranoid than previously thought... the prowlers broke into our car last night and took the stereo.  At least they left the carseats.  I need a dog, or a wolf. Or a woolly mammoth.  Kyla, I think you have a team player in your mammoth wrangling scheme.