FUD: Fear/Uncertainty/Doubt

Screw this month. November 28, 2006

As you can tell, I’ve given up on NaNoBloPoMo, Fo’. Also, my ‘f’ key seems to have something stuck under it. Please add any fs you think are required. I’ve been far too busy to post! I have been swimming! And my garden is immaculate! And… Oh, dear, there’s a Sex Pistols documentary on with horrible topless Nancy. Ugh. The Courtney Love of punk.

Ask Moxie is a year old! I can’t be bothered linking the URL, it’s on the sidebar there, but it’s a very useful advice column for parents with questions like, “How can I tell my step-parents to stop stalking my children?” or “How do I stop my child eating the cat’s poop?” Anyway, useful. And to celebrate, Moxie has posted some delightful worst-mother stories, prompting me to come up with at least one.

When Ethan was…oh, probably 18 months old, I decided to treat him to a trip on the bus to the mall. We did have lots of shopping to do, and I’d hung the various bags on the handles of the umbrella stroller (note: umbrella strollers are very tippy without a decent weight in the seat). Ethan was fed up with shopping and had hopped out of the stroller to look at some wooden toys at a stall. As the stroller started to tip, I grabbed one handle, but Ethan tried to run away so I stretched out the other hand and pulled on the sleeve of his jacket. He pulled away, and his jacket just slid right off and he toppled, in slow motion, onto his face on the tiled floor. He had a nosebleed and I was so embarrassed that I bought him a toy to stop him from crying.

Moral: bribery always works.

Also, Mike was chasing Ethan around the house one day not too long ago and Ethan turned the corner and ran smack into a doorknob, right at eye height, so he had a marvellous black eye. It was fun telling everyone he’d walked into a door.

Moral: blame everything on your spouse.

Snippets of conversation. November 25, 2006

After I emerged from a lengthy gameplaying session on the PC:

Mike: How’d your game go? Did you win?

Me: I lost, ran out of money. Just like real life!

While watching The Day After Tomorrow:

Mike: If we’re ever hit by global disaster and Ethan is stranded in another city, it’s your turn to go get him.

Me: My turn? You haven’t even had your turn yet!

Mike: But I made dinner.

Yesterday morning in bed, after Ethan came in for a morning snuggle:

Me: Hey Ethan, what kind of dog can you eat?

Ethan: A HOT dog! Hahahaha!

Me: Hey Ethan, what’s brown and sticky?

Ethan: Dad!

Me: [hysterical laughter all day]

A snippet. November 23, 2006

Ethan: Babies don’t live in volcanoes; they wouldn’t have a mum!

Me: Wha?

Ethan [patiently]: Babies don’t live in volcanoes; they wouldn’t have a mum!

Me: Um. That’s true. Uh, who told you babies live in volcanoes?

Ethan: No one. Can I have a snack? I’m always hungry.

I’m in! November 21, 2006

Next year I am officially going to be a mature student. I’m going to sit right up the front of the class and ask lots of seemingly pointless questions, raise my hand to answer every single question the lecturer asks, and always arrive at class twenty minutes early with my apple all shined up.

I got my acceptance letter today, five days after the assessment, yay! I’m in!

That’s all I have to say, really. I’m hot and sunburnt and I just sat through what felt like the longest, most eyerollingest chattiest kindy committee meeting in all of history. And now I’m booked up through Christmas with silly kindy things.

12 Reasons to Eat Pie November 20, 2006

I’m watching C4, the local music channel, and they do a thing called 12 Reasons, like “12 Reasons to humpbe Robbie Williams”. Here’s my 12 Reasons. Feel free to add to them in comments.

1. Do you like pie? I like pie.

2. Pies can conceal all kinds of good things, like cinnamon-apple and strippers.

3. Pies can be sweet or savoury. Some pies can be both at once, like bacon and egg and coconut cream. Yum!

4. Pies are good to accompany ice cream. Mince pies, not so much.

5. Pies fill that last little gap in your stomach when you really really need to fill it. The little potato-top ones are great for that.

6. Every time you eat a pie, an angel gets its wings.

7. You can’t spell pie without pi. Think about it.

8. If you look at Mike and say, “What are 12 reasons to eat pie?” he makes this really cool face.

9. Pie is irrational.

10. Weebl and Bob like pie.

11. I bet Trogdor also likes pie.

12. Pie will always be there for you. Always. Until you eat it. And then for about twelve hours after. Maybe even longer if you don’t flush.

Our busy weekend November 19, 2006

I’m about to go to bed, but I feel obligated to post something before the day is out, or tomorrow I will be consumed by a vague feeling that may or may not be guilt.

This weekend, as I think I mentioned, has been hectic. We had visitors all through Thursdy and Friday and lots of spring-cleaning-type chores yesterday and today. One of those chores was cleaning the office.

Our office (for lack of a better word) is literally the size of a toilet. It used to be a bathroom and held a shower and a sink, but the previous owners converted the laundry into a proper bathroom and thought hey, what shall we do with this closet-sized space? Shall we make a closet? Hell no! We’ll call it an office and it will add $20,000 to the sale price!

Because it’s so tiny, it doesn’t actually get used much. The DSL modem and wireless router are in there, as are our two Windows machines (one of which is broken), but we live in the kitchen and use the laptop for everything. When people come to visit, I rush around and pick up papers that tend to pile up around the kitchen and throw them into the office. Likewise the kids’ arts and crafts stuff, my craft stuff, Mike’s zillions of CD-RWs, and anything we don’t want the kids to see — like, for example, a Superman costume with pop-up biceps.

Once in a while, like this weekend, I have a craving to hide in our little hole and play some relaxing video games, old school stuff like 1503AD or Warcraft II. To do that, I need to be able to see the computer. So I tidied the office. It didn’t take long, since everything in there actually has a home that I can’t usually be bothered to reach for. We have some odds and ends that need a place to live, like speaker stands and a CD rack, but mostly it scrubs up real nice.

Ahhhh.

Oops. November 18, 2006

I really do suck at posting daily. It’s a long weekend here, so we’ve been ridiculously busy with visitors up the wazoo. Don’t ask for whom the wazoo tolls, it tolls for me.

Here’s a photo from last weekend’s Press that made Mike laugh:

Rawr! November 15, 2006

Rawr!

Originally uploaded by tracicle.

Too cute not to post. Amy this afternoon on Dad’s knee at the table.

(This counts as my entry for the day, I swear.)

In which I call on you, the Viewer, for help. November 14, 2006

I’m almost halfway through the month. Posting daily is a harder trick than I thought — I can never actually come up with something amusing enough when I have the laptop in front of me, while a million things pass me by when I’m miles from a keyboard. Ethan says so many funny things that I think afterwards, “I must blog that!” (because yes, in my world blog is a word now). And then I forget. Or Amy will throw me that look of faux-horror that she does so well, and my camera is in the car, or the batteries are in the charger.

She does fake shock really, really well, by the way. Today she managed to get the phone off the table and hit the volume button, making it ring. She came running to me, phone clasped in front of her chest in both hands, with an expression that clearly said, “WHAT. THE. HECK? MOTHER! Answer the PHONE! The fate of the world DEPENDS on you!” When I took it from her and pretended to speak to someone, she relaxed and slumped on the floor, obviously relieved that she had delivered the call of the century.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I am calling on YOU, the people who read this, to comment. Say hello! It’s not like there are many people, so you all probably know each other anyway. Have a chat! Make me feel good!

Wedding feet! November 13, 2006

Wedding feet!

Originally uploaded by tracicle.

For lack of a better topic, here’s a photo of my lower half last weekend. People don’t see my legs very often thanks to jeans and boots,

So here are my legs after two coats of fake tan and some serious bathroom time, plus half a bottle of nail varnish and my official pair of wedding-guest-shoes. That’s the only time I wear them. I may have actually bought them when I was a bridesmaid at my mother’s wedding in 1995.