While Trying to Cook Together

"Am I annoying you? You look annoyed."

"You're just kind of frustrating me right now."

"Frustrating people are the sandpaper that smoothes down your rough edges."

"You're pretty sandpapery."

"Well you're pretty rough around the edges."

Dot Love

There's a little map on the right side of my blog that tracks how many people look at this page and where they are. I'm pretty sure that about 80% of the visits counted on this site are just me being overly-involved with my own blog and checking it when I should be doing more sensible things like sleeping, doing homework, or attending to my personal hygiene.

What I really love about this map are the dots in different parts of the world. For example, today there was a new and exciting Mongolian dot. A Johnny and Marina dot? I hope so! And then there are dots that confuse me. Like two of the China dots and the Northern Manitoba dot. I look affectionately at these dots and wonder: Were you here on purpose? Do we know each other? Not that it really matters. I love all my dots the same... Except for the Calgary one because it's the biggest.

I Just Might Never Swim Again

I've always felt uneasy in water, especially water with critters in it. It bothers me to be bobbing at the surface, my white flesh glimmering in the sunlight, while who knows what is swimming below me.

I'm just a small sac of tasty meat bits floating at the top of an underwater universe.

When I'm in deep water I get freaked out when I start to think about the layers of sharp-toothed creatures doing their thing down there. I'm especially bothered by the fact that they can look up at me but I can't see down to them. But after seeing this video on the news tonight, I'm pretty sure I don't want to.

Burnin' Up the Track

This morning, my friend Sanni and I ran for 30 minutes without stopping. Hooray for me! I've made a lot of progress since September when my friend Julie informed me that not everyone tastes blood when they run (or in my case, walk quickly while flailing their arms to give the illusion of speed). I'm pretty impressed with myself, considering I was the kid who faked an ulcer in Grade 6 to get out of running the 400m race.

And Now for Some Girl Music

I'm loving Regina Spektor these days and put up two videos because I was having trouble choosing one (there are other great ones on youtube). She does some strange things with her voice that take some getting used to but I think she's brilliant.

This Morning Kyle Reminded me of When Amisha and I had Perms and Never Brushed our Hair

"I look pretty crazy right now."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at my hair. It looks like a bird lives in it!"

"You mean like how it used to look when you went to school?"

"Yup"

"Ha ha"

Najah!

This past weekend we went out for lunch with our friends Mike, Jodi, and their almost-three-year-old Olivia. Over lunch, Mike told us about a new family ritual that they started last week. One evening, they were watching TV and this horrible/awesome pepto-bismol commercial came on. Mike started singing the song and Olivia totally loved it. Later that night, when Mike and Jodi were putting Olivia to bed, they went through their usual routine of reading her a book, praying with her, and singing her a song. However, Olivia was dissatsified with the usual tunes and made a request: "Sing najah!" So, as any good Dad would, Mike complied and provided Olivia with a tuneful rendition of the pepto-bismol song. This launched a very deep father-daugher conversation filled with important questions. "Daddy, what's heartburn? What's indigestion?"

Now every evening around 9:30 I have this fantastic visual of the three of them sitting on Olivia's bed, holding hands, and gently singing about digestive problems.

A Good Trick Gone Wrong

This week we have custody of Chaz, the dog we share with Kyle's parents. A while ago he came up with a new way to let us know when he needs to go outside during the night. Chaz will come up to the side of our bed, scratch the mattress with one paw, and Kyle will get up to let him out. This system worked pretty well with him waking us up at night if he was sick or early in the morning when he had to pee. However, over the past week something has gone terribly awry and Chaz is bringing out the "bed scratch" at seemingly random times.

12:30 am - Doesn't have the courage to make the 50 cm jump onto our bed. Needs a pep talk

3:47 am - Wants food

4: 55 am - Bored and probably just wanting to screw with us

5:32 am - Weird noise outside

7:10 am - General malaise?

7:30 am - Actually needs to go outside to pee

8:00 am - Kyle is at work. I'm sleeping in. The dog is once again looking for encouragement for the long leap onto the mattress.

Okay I'm exaggerating and it's not nearly that many times at night. Even so, what the heck? Chaz, we had a good thing going with the bed scratch system but now it's getting out of hand. Good thing today is the day we send you back to Bob and Dorothy!

Domestic Bliss

One of my longtime goals is to consume more fruits and vegetables. A while ago, I found a great cauliflower soup recipe that makes me feel as though Kyle and I are actually eating real vegetables (not fake ones, like salsa and potatoes, that Kyle tries to defend as part of the vegetable family).

A while ago, I made a huge batch of cauliflower soup and searched high and low for containers in which to store it. Because Kyle and I have been cooking big batches of food and freezing them, we've run out of good containers to keep things in. Even the ghetto margarine and yogurt containers were used up. I finally ended up putting the soup in glass jars and tossing them into the freezer. Unfortunately, I overfilled one of the jars, causing it to break down the entire side of the jar as it froze. When I took it out to thaw for lunch one Sunday, I finaly noticed the huge crack in the jar. I wasn't too worried because there was only one crack and it looked like a pretty clean break. Kyle, however, wasn't so sure about the safety of eating from a broken jar and expressed some concern that there might be shards of glass in our lunch. After some discussion, we (really I) decided that it would be a shame to waste the soup and that we'd probably be fine because there were no big obvious chunks of glass. Kyle looked kind of pained and uneasy but went along with it.

Kyle took the first bite and, being Kyle, carefully felt his bite of soup with his tongue before swallowing. I was sitting in the living room ready to eat mine when he came out of the kitchen and ran toward me yelling unintelligibly with his tongue hanging out. I had no idea what he was saying but I could tell that it wasn't good. He kept yelling as he put his tongue right in my face and sure enough, there was a (small) bleeding cut. How sad!

We went into the bathroom and Kyle held his tongue out while I pulled a tiny shard of glass from his tongue with tweezers. I felt awful and wanted to cry but thankfully, Kyle wasn't mad. He just kept teasing me about how I was sneakily trying to kill him.

LESSON LEARNED: Don't eat from broken glass containers. Just because you can't see the pieces of glass doesn't mean they're not there.

OTHER LESSON LEARNED: Feeding someone broken glass isn't a very sneaky way to take them out. You'll totally get busted.

For Jamie Primeau

When we were in Disney World, we spent a lot of time waiting in line for rides. And while I was waiting in line, I noticed something that would make Jamie Primeau want to poke her eyes out. Enjoy!

A Christmas Present to my Eight-Year-Old Self

One thing that some people might not know about me is that I get insanely pumped about animals. I'm sure I've spent hours talking to Kyle about my "favourite animals" (lizards, elephants, ducks, hedgehogs, beavers...) and listing off the many qualities that make these creatures so fantastic. Kyle usually humours me and sometimes pretends to share my excitement. However, he also tends to tease me by saying horrible things. For example, according to Kyle, his favourite thing about ducklings is the noise they make when he stomps on them.

I trace my love of animals to the things I learned about in World Magazine, that treasure trove of wildlife posters and articles that rocked my pre-pubescent world. The issue I remember most clearly is one that introduced me to one of my ULTIMATE FAVOURITE animals...the manatee. I was captivated by these enormous marine mammals who spend their lives eating sea grass and floating around in hot springs off the coast of Florida. I tore the manatee poster out of the magazine and put it on my bedroom wall so that I could gaze up at it and behold the insane awesomeness of the manatee. And also so that I could shake my fist in rage at the morons who hurt and kill manatees by running over them with boats and cutting their poor little backs and tails with propellers.

When I found out that we were going to Florida with Kyle's family for Christmas, my one goal for the trip was to find myself a real, live manatee...and perhaps to catch one and ride around on its back through the Gulf of Mexico. The more I researched, the more I realized that my dream was probably a selfish one. So I settled for a kayak tour that would allow me to see manatees but not bother them.

Our kayak trip was the highlight of my time in Florida. We went out at 8am with a guide to hunt manatees in our kayaks. I was so excited when I saw the first one stick its nose above the water and let out a bunch of snotty steam! The first few we saw were in really deep water and I was worried that we would only see manatee nostrils. But later we paddled into the hot springs, which were super clear and quite shallow. At first, I was kind of nervous to see the manatees swimming around under me because they were bigger than my boat. They were so gentle and gorgeous! We were quite close to them and even spent a bunch of time paddling along with a mama manatee and her baby. Toward the end of the trip we kayaked up a small stream to where the hot springs well up from the ground. The water there was crystal clear and we could see tons of fish swimming around below our boats. It was amazingly beautiful! If I ever do make a list of things I want to do once in my lifetime, I'll already be able to check this one off.