Inadequate Materials

I have a half-naked three year-old climbing on me as I attempt to type this with one finger, and it seems fitting, since this August has been almost unmanageable. The Captain brought his army gear home recently, and it is all over the front hallway. I literally have to trip over metal boxes and boots to get out the front door. Worse still has been the behaviour of Firstborn. Oh. My. God. * Firstborn is my calm, quiet and thoughtful child. Usually, Rosemary's Baby is the one raiding the refrigerator, looking for adventure, and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. He's a little like the tasmanian devil, now that I think about it. Firstborn is the one I can usually count on to think before he acts, and to do as he's told. But this past couple of weeks, it's been Firstborn who has led me around on a non-stop wild goose chase of naughtiness. On Friday, I took the boys to Booming Metropolis for a quick trip to the health food store and lunch at a friend's house. W...

Firstborn is not returning to school until September 11th this year. For me, this constitutes cruel and unusal punishment! However, I know some of your kids are going back this week, and some have already been back for a week or two at least (you lucky jerks!). So, in the interests of getting this school year off to a good start, I'd like to share with you a few gems I learned as an elementary school teacher. Here, for your perusal, is my list of things not to say to your kid's teachers: "His teacher last year was terrible. I hope you'll be a little better." This one will put a teacher immediately on edge. Firstly, she is bound by a code of professional conduct not to gossip about other teachers, so she can't discuss it with you. Secondly, it makes her wonder what you're going to say about her to next year's teacher. Not cool, and definitely not a way to get off on the right foot with someone who will be spending upwards of six hours a day with your c...

Crazy week, and it's only half over! Things here have been a little busy, and a little emotional . Roll on, September! So yesterday, I made it through my first trip to Wal Mart on the new spending diet. And I made exactly ZERO impulse purchases! It didn't hurt that the list of things I actually needed totalled well over two-hundred bucks. Between the jumbo bag of dog food, the two big boxes of diapers, school shoes and grocery items, there was no room in my cart for anything frivolous. Thank heavens for the distance between our house and Booming Metropolis. Knowing I won't be back there for at least two weeks forces me to make a huge list before heading out the door. The problem with a place like Wal Mart is that when I do need to go there for baby wipes and toilet plungers, I have no choice but to pass racks of cute new purses, shoes, clearance-priced clothes from last season, and makeup I will never wear. And not being allowed to buy it doesn't make me want it any l...

As you may or may not recall, I've been taking a self-portrait a day all month in hopes of learning how to use the manual settings on my camera. I've been having a lot of fun with it, and until yesterday was starting to feel that I had a really good, perhaps even expert , understanding of my camera. Here's what changed my mind. On day one (August 1st) I switched the camera to manual and proceeded to take my first self-portrait. The shutter took an inordinately long time to kick in. I figured this must be some strange feature of the camera when set to manual, and thought nothing more of it. For the next 19 days (August 2nd through August 20th), I took photographs of myself in various poses, waiting patiently each time for the shutter to take its sweet time going off. On day 21 (August 21st) I was fiddling around looking at the information on the display screen. It was only then that it dawned on me. I'd had the 12-second self-timer on the entire time... Please note that...

For those of you new to the craziness I call my life, I publicly proclaimed about a week ago that I was going to make no more non-essential purchases for the rest of 2009. Now, I'm not a spend-a-holic, but because I love, love, love a bargain, the idea of refraining from making three or more impulse-purchases online while buying school clothes for my kids, or not picking up my 489th clearanced t-shirt during a pilgrimage to the grocery store disturbs me just a bit. I'm still not sure I can do it, but things are going alright so far. Mainly because I haven't left the house yet. So, yesterday I was feeling just the slightest itch to buy something new (or used. I'm not picky.). I successfully stayed away from the Sears outlet site and instead found two novel ways to curb my desire for something new and shiny. The first thing I did was to organize my dresser drawers. Until yesterday, I wouldn't have thought for a second that this would substitute for anything remotely f...

Holy Hoopla, Batman!! I'm practically famous! A big thank you to Tamara at Mad Boastings of a Cheapskate Mom for featuring little ol' me today. If you haven't checked out her blog, you really must. Funny and frugal are a deadly combination! And I've loved reading all of your wonderful comments. I fully expected a few scoldings for my horrific negligence yesterday, but it would seem that there are a lot of very understanding folks out there! There's nothing better when you feel like World's Worst Mom than hearing that other people have screwed up too! I have every intention of checking out all your blogs, for I am always on the prowl for new blogs to love. But bear with me on this one. If I spend more than two minutes in one sitting on the computer, I have to worry that Rosemary's Baby has taken the riding mower for a cruise down the highway...

If yesterday's agenda was supposed to look something like this... 7:30 AM : Forget, for the first time in over a year, to lock door behind husband. 7:45 AM : Leave kids playing and watching TV and go about business of checking email and cleaning kitchen. 8:00 AM : Notice Rosemary's Baby isn't where I left him. Start looking. 8:01 AM : Simultaneously realize with horror that the door was left unlocked, and notice car pulling into driveway. 8:02AM : Retrieve Rosemary's baby from friendly, understanding neighbour who was passing and found him at the end of the driveway, looking to cross the highway. Rest of Day : Live in the disturbing and humiliating knowledge that I am the worst mother on the planet. ...then, mission accomplished! I'm starting today with a clean slate. Right after I lock all the doors...

...a blogger was born! Over breakfast this morning, the Captain asked Firstborn if he knew how old I was. Firstborn took one good long look at my face and said: "40?!" Sigh. Close enough...

I generally stay as far as I can from politics and religion here. I prefer not to alienate people, as those topics tend to do. So I hope I don't offend when I say that I am currently not a church-goer. I was raised by Anglican parents in England, and we attended church from time to time, but not regularly. My memories of the times we did go usually include a grumpy old man at the front warning of hell and damnation, and my siblings and me bored stiff and giggling hysterically in the back, every adult in our immediate vicinity very rightfully giving us the evil eye, my parents embarrassed and uncomfortably reminded of why we didn't do this every week. What I don't remember is feeling particularly spiritual. This is not to say that I couldn't feel spiritual in church, and I believe there are many dynamic ministers (or the equivalent, depending on the faith) out there today who want to keep their religion relevant to modern life. If I ever find a church that I think is a g...

As you may know, I like to give myself little projects. Being a stay-at-home mom, living in the middle of nowhere, and often having no husband around for company is not as mentally stimulating as one might think, so I take a photo a day for a whole month to learn how to use my camera, or I start a blog for my mom to read and still find myself at it almost a year later, or I bake or sew or knit, just to amuse myself. Over the last couple of days, two minor incidents have made me think I need to stretch myself just that much further. First was the bag sale. I'd never heard of a bag sale before moving out here, but every little local thrift store around these parts has one from time to time, and I've noticed people doing it during the last hour or so of their yard sale as well. You get a big grocery bag and anything you can fit in there can go in for a grand total of five bucks. For a thrifty treasure-hunter like me, putting a "Bag Sale" sign in front of the store is lik...

The garden is blooming! In another couple of weeks, the hundreds of pounds of tomatoes out there will be ready and I'll be pulling out my (grey) hair trying to get it all canned, frozen or eaten (the Captain has now been conveniently scheduled to go on an exercise for a couple of weeks right in the middle of harvesting season.). I'll also be battling a surge of potatoes, onions and peppers. And don't even get me started on the summer squash. This year, my goal is to not end up composting squash that got hastily thrown in the freezer to be dealt with another day. Unless I'm doing something very wrong, that stuff is never any good after having been frozen. This summer, we will be eating a lot of it fried, in soup and in muffins. And if anyone out there has any other ideas, let me know. I need them! Here are a couple of shots of what's come out of there so far: We planted raspberries and strawberries two years ago, and I cannot recommend these plants enough! I think...

Wow! The number of people following my little blog has doubled in the course of about a week. What fun! Thank you all for your awesome comments! My photo project is coming along pretty nicely. I had this morning completely to myself, since Firstborn is in a summer program, and Rosemary's Baby goes to daycare one morning a week for "social reasons". So, I took the opportunity to enjoy the warm weather and get a little exercise in the process. Naturally, I brought my camera along. Small towns offer all kinds of great backdrops, and lots of great subjects too. There are actually a couple of houses in town that I just love, and would love to photograph, and I know from my days as a journalism student that it is technically legal here to take a shot of a house from the sidewalk. But can you imagine looking out your window one morning to find some local crank immortalizing your home? Creepy! So I stuck mainly to self-portraits and public places, like churches and the park. What...

Glancing back over my last few posts, I realize I'm in one of my rant-y moods (Don't swear on Facebook! Keep your internet comments friendly!). I don't know what it is, but every so often, things that don't really matter much (usually Facebook-related) send me into a tizzy and I feel the need to blog about them, or write a public "note" on my Facebook page (WHY am I still there?!), and then three days later when the irrational rabies-like madness fades, I look back at this stuff and wonder if the Captain slipped decaf in my coffee mug that morning. I don't much like an etiquette cop, but especially not when that cop is me. So, let's get back to what this blog is really all about. The many reasons I suck! This list is longer than the grey hairs I keep finding on the top of my head, so there's a lot to choose from, but there's one that drives the Captain crazy about me. Something he's nagged me about for years: my inability to read instructio...