Happy Mother's Day

To a mother who is celebrating her first Mother's Day, and another who has done this already 32 times...


The insanity cannot be quantified. I mean, uhh, Happy Mother's Day!


Mark would like the internet to know that he thinks my mom is "great in a pinch" and "always does the right thing when under pressure". We were having a conversation this morning and he honestly spontaneously said these things. I've heard him say before that my mom is great in a pinch - she doesn't panic, she's logical, she gets things done, and is just a strong person. For clarity, he also wants the world to know that he thinks she's great other times, too - not just in a pinch.

Chocolate Mark

My sister asked me to email a few pictures of Mark and I to her so that she could show them to Sophia, her little three-year-old daughter that she just adopted.

I don't have many pictures of the two of us because one of us is almost always behind the camera, so I emailed four or five pictures from our big road trip we took around North America a couple of years ago. They looked at them together, and this is how - in my sister's own words - the conversation went.

"Kim (my sister): This is your aunt Julie and Uncle Mark.
Sophia (Kim's daughter): Aunt Julie and Uncle Mark?
Kim: Yup. She sent a few pictures of them for you to look at. Here is the next picture.


Sophia: What are they eating?
Kim: I think its cake. Does it look like cake?
Sophia: Yeah, its cake.
Kim: And here they are in front of chocolate world.


Sophia: They are Aunt Julie and Chocolate Mark.
Kim: Here they are in Las Vegas.


Sophia: Aunt Julie and Chocolate Mark. I want to see the pictures again!"

Apparently they looked at all the pictures like ten times, and Sophia called him Chocolate Mark quite frequently. Mark is very pleased with his new moniker.

Sophia is cool.

Un-Named

I'm getting a big craving to start doing something with our big treed property. It's there, and it's nothing but trees and gigantic mossy boulders.




It also needs a name. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to throw them at us.

There's so much potential there - we can make our new home there anything at all at this point. It's fun to imagine different things to do.


Soon. Soon.

Out of the Woodwork

I arrived home from running errands and Mark told me that someone had called asking about little dogs. He said he didn't recognize the number, and when he picked up, the first thing this total stranger said was not "hello" or anything civil, but "DO YOU HAVE ANY LITTLE DOGS?"

Huh.

She apparently rambled on just a little bit, like crazy people often do, and Mark told her that his wife would call her back. I arrived home a short time later and got the message. Ugh.

I didn't formulate a plan as to whether I would actually phone back or not. We're not all about adopting to crazy people, and I just don't like the phone. Fortunately, I didn't have to think about my next move, because the crazy lady skipped a turn by not waiting for a return call, but calling me back again shortly after I got home.

"ARE YOU THE LADY THAT HAS LITTLE DOGS?"

"Sometimes," I told her, "but not right now."

She told me she wanted to adopt a little puppy so I told her to go look online at our group's website because I didn't have any small dogs for adoption in my house at the moment.

She countered by telling me she didn't have a computer. Somehow, I knew this would be the answer before she said it. I told her to go to the library or phone a friend with a computer. Sorry lady, I'm NOT your personal shopper.

You guys might think this was mean, but I never publish my phone number in association with animal rescue, so I don't feel an obligation to help total strangers that somehow get it and don't bother mentioning how they found me. Especially strangers that live a half hour away from me. This person is not my neighbour, or a friend. I don't have a small dog in care. She doesn't have a particular dog in mind. I cannot personally help you, crazy lady.

So she asks for the website. I say "it's A... S... D..."

"--ASP?"

"No, D, as in "dog". A, S, D, rescue.com."

"A, S, P, D, rescue?"

"No A, S, D, rescue.com."

"A, S, P, rescue.com?"

"... yes."

I know. I could have maybe got through to her. I tried though, and I didn't. I got off the phone with her as quickly as I could, and then went upstairs to Mark's office to gossip about her with him. I was washing dishes a little while later, and the phone rang. I had a bad feeling. Looking at the caller i.d., I saw that it was the crazy lady calling. Again.

I continued washing dishes. Leave me alone, crazy lady.

Happy Gotcha Day

Something unexpected started to happen around the same time that my Grandmother got ill - really ill - and the family all met up in Cape Breton to be with her. It was something my sister had been looking into doing eventually, but the timeline she was told and the timeline that really happened were completely different.

A few short months after starting the SUPPOSEDLY long and arduous process of adopting a little baby, today my sister is the proud mother of a three year old daughter and a four month old son.

Today is the day. They are moving in, and I have two new relatives!

This is my new niece, Sophia*.


This is my new nephew, Bhutan*.


I can only imagine the insanity that is occurring at their house today. Congratulations, Kim and JJ!

* - Not their real names, duh.

Getting Back on Track

We went to my Grandmother's funeral last week. Mark was a Pall Bearer and was scared for some reason that he would fall down. He did not.


Mark was sick before we left on the long drive to Cape Breton, and by the time we were driving back, I was sick too. We both have a long-lived, miserable, energy-draining sort of mild flu. Congested sinuses, headaches, weakness, runny noses, hurty lungs, the usual wonderful assortment.

By the time I started to feel better, after being away and then being too sick to deal with very much, my house was unrecognizable. Visible piles of dirt, dog hair, and dust coated the floor. The kitchen was overflowing with dirty dishes. Papers, clothes, and other assorted debris covered every flat surface. To top it all off, my back had been hurting for about a week and I couldn't lift anything bigger than a cat. Laundry baskets were impossible, and the vacuum would have to wait. I swept, and my back twinged.

Slowly, things are righting themselves. My back is 95% better (even when I lift things), my flu is about 80% gone, and room by room, the house is returning to a somewhat un-embarrassing state.

Life is a series of chaotic events. I keep expecting it not to be, but that's what keeps happening. It's good to be feeling somewhat healthy again though, and when the clutter in my house is dealt with, I will feel even better. Time to go clean.

Another Goodbye

Well, my Grandmother died today.

My poor mother sounded so very sad on the phone. It's my job to tell my siblings, but OF COURSE neither one of them is online or answering a phone.

I think she couldn't breathe any more. She was only really in pain for a short time, thankfully.

I am sad for my mother, and worried about my Grandfather. I guess some sort of funeral will happen. I don't know when.


Death in the spring seems sadder. It's like, we all lived through a cold hard winter, and now that things are renewing themselves, it doesn't seem fair that life should come to an end before the flowers bloom. It's been so many months since flowers have bloomed outside - and just as they are starting to poke their heads through the thawing earth, my Grandmother has died.

She made it through the winter. She should have been here to see the flowers.

Invisible Donuts

So we've been staying in a hotel in Cape Breton for a number of days now, and our stay at this hotel has been, well, a bit weird. This is a fairly remote corner of the country with... ahh... a slightly different culture than we are used to. People here are friendly but boisterous and intrusive. It's kind of like they think everyone here is family, so people take liberties, even with strangers. It all seems very unmalicious though. Does any of this make any sense?

Anyway.

So we're at the hotel. On our first morning here, we straightened away a bit of our clutter and left for the day to visit my grandmother in the hospital. It was a long day and we didn't arrive back at the hotel again until after dark. We walked down the long, quiet hallway to our room and unlocked the door. Every light in our room was off, but there was noise within. We looked at each other and paused. Had they given our room away to someone else? What was going on?

We gingerly stepped into the room and discovered that our tv was on. It had most definitely not been on when we left. We laughed at the vision of the cleaning lady sitting on the edge of the bed amongst our luggage, watching her soaps. We turned off the tv and thought nothing more of it.

The next day we got up and repeated our routine, leaving in the morning and returning to the room after dark. Again, the tv was on in the otherwise completely dark room. We had a great laugh about that as we walked into the room.

My sister wandered over to our pile of snacks, paused for a moment, and then asked us how many donuts we'd been in possession of that morning. Out of a bag of a dozen, we were missing the three donuts we'd eaten that morning, plus one more.

The maid, while watching our tv in our hotel room, had helped herself to one of our donuts.

The maid ate our food.

I am dumbfounded. We cracked up laughing and my sister said she'd write a nasty letter to the hotel chain when she got home. I just keep thinking: seriously? The maid ate our donuts? Seriously?

Wow.