Platitude Paradise

Note to self: When 'lux-ing' up the girls beds to entice them to go to bed on their own without one or both of us lying down with them for an hour every night, please bear in mind there are two sides to the same equation. If the bed is so comfy, they can't wait to get in it ... chances are, prying the little monkeys out in the morning will be that much more of a treat. We are terrible at putting our kids to bed. What I mean by this is that we are spineless ... or we have been. We'll do whatever ritual will make them "just-go-to-sleep-already". Now, if this means we have to spend nearly two hours every single night of our existence on prepping them for sleep ... well so be it. Bed time in this house starts at roughly 8pm every night with "bath time". Now, in recent months, we have had to stop bathing our girls together (as they either soak the bathroom, flood the basement, wind up screaming, bleeding or both OR they do entirely weird shit while...

I got an email yesterday that has kinda turned me on my axis a little. First, a little background: Back in my somewhat wilder days (and by wilder, I mean my version of college days), I used to hang out with a couple quite a lot. In fact, I came as close to being a member of said couple as you really can. We'll call them Jon & Tawny (or J & T). I was particularly tight with her. She was like my long lost, female soul mate. We spent so much time together, I might as well have moved right in to their apartment. They used to live on one of the worst streets in Halifax, right across the street from a funeral parlor.  She and I would lay on our bellies, on their bed and look out the window at all the various "goings on" on that street. We saw some pretty freaky stuff, too. We'd be munching on chips and sour cream dip and usually fried right outta our minds ... helped with the hang over. Then, Jon would come home from work (which incidentally, was across the str...

Okay, not really ... I still love Christmas. It's my family that shat in my porridge this holiday season. So, for the few of you that did not know, I had surgery in November to remove 85% of my stomach. No cancer or anything scary like that ... I opted for this - willingly. If you want more details, click here - otherwise, I'm just gonna move on ... I'm sure it won't shock you to learn that after having 85% of your stomach removed, thus leaving a stitch line down one whole side, you have to be very cautious about eating for quite some time afterward. The first 4 weeks was liquid only ... then for the next 4 weeks, I moved on to mushy foods like eggs and well cooked, easy to digest veggies, fish and ground chicken. I'm almost finished this stage, (one week from yesterday) and then I will be able to (carefully) ingest most types of food - taking special caution with hard to digest items like red meats and raw veggies. Yes, it is a little hard ... but I have l...

The trees are trimmed, the groceries are bought, the house is clean(ish), the pressies are wrapped ... the eggs've been nogged and the sweets are baked - I guess now all I need is for my errant family members to get themselves home and Christmas can begin. To all of you, my bleeps ... and everyone who loves you - hope you have a magical Christmas - full of everything yummy and wonderful! Take care! D - Out

I have a bad-assed cat. Had you heard? Yeah ... he is a B.A.D.A.S.S. He ignores, without prejudice, each of the following names he's been called: Woody, Woodster, Woodstock, Woodrow, Stinky-Stinkerson, Black Head, Guts and Pig-Cat. (Along with the ever popular, you tubby little shit !) A few things I have learned about this animal are: His shit stinks worse than any other animal I have ever had the pleasure of being near whilst it shat ... seriously, it smells like he ate the arsehole out of a skunk. He has absolutely no manners whatsoever and parades around on the sacred ground of counter tops and tables without shame. You can't so much as pour a bowl of cereal for the children without a black cloud descending upon it from what seems like every direction. If it is liquid ... he will drink it. Even if that means he has to stick his paw into the container and lap it up a pawful at a time. His absolute favorite beverages? Anything milky, my meal replacement shakes, Hu...

For those of you who do not know already, I had abdominal surgery last Tuesday. It was laproscopic, which means it is much less invasive than a fully open procedure. This would fall under the category of good news, in light of how miserable I have been since having this heinous procedure carried out on my body. I have discovered the 7 dwarfs of this recovery: Gassy Painful Nauseated Hungry Itchy Bitchy & Bored I figure I must be on the mend given my level of boredom today. I am lounging around in my fluffy jammies ... looking at all of the things I could be doing with this time I have off to recoup ... except that I am not even allowed to strip my own frackin' bed. This makes me owly ... oh, okay ... BITCHY ... and HATEFUL ... because I am resenting the fact that my share of the work is simply not getting done. I know it is a heavier load than anyone really wants to admit, but my part of this equation is somewhat sizable. It's not really fair for me to feel this way .....

Last Saturday evening, my girls and I were seated in the family/living room watching a Halloween type cartoon jobby on one of the kids' channels. I believe it was the Flintstones' special. (I was reading and feigning interest in what the kids had to say about various parts of the show.) Getting on in the program, Shorty was beginning to get restive. She was sitting on the arm of my chair and Stretch had pulled the hassock/humpty/foot-stool over next to us and was sprawled across it. Apparently (and rather suddenly) Shorty found her proximity to us an affront, and proceeded to turn her little self sideways and start kicking Stretch and pushing her off her perch. This, of course, caused the very natural reaction on Stretch's behalf of whining her freakin' head off ... which caused me to raise my voice to Shorty ... which caused Shorty to begin kicking harder ... causing Stretch to wail ... and onward ... until I reached over beside me, grabbed Shorty's pants (...