am still alive…barely

just wanted to let all of you know that i’m still around, and i haven’t let this blog thing go forever or anything. i’m just finding (WARNING: CLICHE TO FOLLOW) the start of school, and being a school mom, a lot more time-consuming and stressful than i ever imagined. for example: every day begins at 6:45 (or earlier), followed by a rush to get everyone out the door, then a whirlwind of errands, feed smallest person lunch, put down for nap, do laundry/dinner prep/cleaning/exercising/sewing, get littlest one up, rush to school, pick up stressed out first grader. bring semi-comatose school child home. attempt to entertain/ignore/coddle/coax/cajole said person into not imploding while making dinner and lunches for following day. welcome work-distracted spouse home. serve dinner to largely unappreciative small people. clean them, read to them, put them in bed. sew or work or enter tv coma for 2 hrs. fall into bed. repeat. repeat. repeat. dude. i barely have time to even type in a facebook status, and i’ve left twitter behind for now.
anyhoo, let’s turn the focus on to you now. Question O’ the Day: Tell me what you love about Fall. or hate about it. just give me a run down of your feelings about this time of year. will accept: well-focused precise paragraphs, one-liners, haiku, stream of consciousness, beat poetry, etc.

meet and exceed

expectations, that is. behold, the meagre profferings of first week of school images:

Exhibit A:
Taken today at the 2nd preschool class, since he sent me home yesterday morning before i could even whip out the camera

Exhibit B:
First Day of Grade ONe:

There, are you happy now?????

backlog

apparently, i’m remiss in the posting of photos. truthfully, i’ve got a bunch that have been slowly building up across various cameras. I WILL GET TO the posting of back to school images, only let me first post a few of the pics i’ve accrued over the last 2 weeks.

My First Garden

It has produced copious amounts of chives, dill, pumpkins, but principally and gloriously, tomatoes!

which i’ve learned how to denude

and make into my own paste (now frozen in cubes)

these cheeky beauties have likewise enhanced some sauce and soup and salad.

End of Summer Outings
We again braved the PNE (or Pacific National Exhibition) for that overcrowded-cotton-candy-OD-overpriced-hypefest feeling.

We also went on a little adventure to the Stave Lake Dam in Mission, where we toured the ancient powerhouse, and pressed many buttons on many displays.

All the exploring tired us out:

Belated Birthday Celebrations

The kids help me make a cake for myself, since i MUST HAVE BIRTHDAY CAKE. it’s a bit of a compulsion. please note the “patchwork” effect of icing that they so cunningly achieved:

There, now we’re almost up to date. As for the back to school stuff, like I say, I’m working on it. truthfully, am having trouble converting a video from my phone to a usable format. In any case, a Back-To-School Question o’ the Day: What was/is your favourite ritual of the back to school scenario? clothes? supplies? packed lunches?

here, there, everywhere.

cliches be damned. it DOES feel like the summer has just slipped past, and we’re not ready for it to be over. as usual, the time gets away from me and the blog, it suffers. here’s a summary of the past few weeks, though, in a few terse and clipped phrases.
had an anniversary. our 10th, actually, and we’re pretty pleased about it.
had a birthday. less pleased, but in conjunction with the anniversary, received this:

the holy grail of sewing, the coverlock machine. tune in for the next 6 months, as i learn to thread and operate this sewing behemoth.

spent a week (courtesy of the lovely earl and barb) at SunPeaks, sans enfants (indebted to Milley grandparents forever, since edmund was returned to us toilet-trained (!) and chickenpoxy).
spent some time



relaxing inside, and:


enjoying the outdoors.

aw, aren’t we cute?
Question o’ the summer: Can you describe your summer in 30 words or less? or, is there one image that sums it all up?

mmm…pie.

actually, i have ambivalent feelings about pie. seriously. that’s not just for comic effect. i have only recently attempted to make them, and i haven’t always been successful. and, in a “Cake or Pie?” kind of scenario, it’s always going to be cake, as far as i’m concerned. But last night I thought I should go with the season, bringing blueberry pie to greet my cousin-in-law for the first time. Instead, I wound up proffering…”blueberry soup”. um, who forgot the flour????

but i am not a quitter. tonight, Try No.2 of the Great Pie War of 2009.
behold the majesty of…

PIE!!!

CLOSE UP OF PIE!

CLOSER UP OF PIE!

enough with photos of the triumphant victuals. instead, let me pose a Question O’ the Day: What is your kitchen nemesis? What thing would you love to make, that always turns out…meh?

Housecleaning

An apt title for today, as I am both avoiding the task in my actual abode, but managing to do some organizing and resizing of photos here on the computer. I give a random assortment of photos from the summer so far.


Waterpark fun

Cooling down in the creek at mes parents’

a rare, if slightly blurry, photo of my camera-shy sister


rollin’ rural style

my handsome husband, in an inadvertent send-up of the James Dean photo

me as flowerchild

the trees at the top of my parents’ hill (which i am apparently obsessed with)

Question o’ the day: What is your most memorable summer 09 moment (so far)?

i would be blogging but…

i wasted time on facebook and twitter during naptime; my pc is dead, and i haven’t figured out how to upload photos to this little netbook yet. a post is coming, i promise.
question o’ the day: What was your last most frustrating techno failure? messages on your phone when you never heard it ring? burnt toast? grounds in your coffee?

when mummy cleans the bathroom…

it’s time to suck on an ink pad!


Question o’ the day: what’s the grossest thing you ate as a small child? or, have you ever had your stomach pumped (alcohol poisoning doesn’t count)?

30-day trial

WARNING: THIS IS ONE OF THOSE ANGSTY, REFLECTIVE POSTS, SO IF YOU’RE NOT ENAMOURED OF THIS PART OF MY BLOG PERSONA, READ NO FURTHER.

that said, i have been thinking about facebook and twitter recently. actually, i’ve been thinking about facebook since i left, almost 2 (!) yrs. ago. i am considering a return to the Dark Side, but have, as yet, not made up my mind.

On the pros side, facebook allows me to connect with friends and fam whom i never get to see. i can find out what they’re up to, and send my good wishes, without a ton of effort on either side. on the down side, i have a somewhat addictive personality, which is why i gave it up in the first place. having a computer around basically 24/7 makes it difficult to resist checking in on all my ‘friends’ often. too often.

as for twitter, i do like the idea of micro-blogging, since twitter makes it easier for people to read my musings, and to reply. sometimes regular blogging feels a bit like shouting into a room where the lights have just been switched off. i can hear other people breathing and muttering, but few people call out so i can identify them. i’m just like that, too; i read other people’s blogs, but don’t comment all that often. in this way, it seems like twitter could be a win-win. BUT, will twitter kill my ability to write anything above 140 characters? will i stop blogging? will i become a twitter junkie, a sort of self-obsessed proclaimer of all things banal, addicted to the rush of people paying attention to my every verbalized thought? this last objection is the reason i’ve been holding out on the whole twitter phenomenon. i’m not accusing anyone of this, by the way, just subjecting myself to a bit of critical self-examination.

lastly, and perhaps most importantly, staying out of the facebook/twitter loop is making me feel, well, (and laugh out loud if you wish) OLD. maybe it’s that my birthday is just around the corner, or that summer always fills me with this bittersweet longing to be 21 forever, with all my possible destinies still ahead of me. i do realize, however, how essentialized and unrealistic that version of my youth is, and most of the time i’m able to shake off the nostalgia. but as i think through all these issues about connection, relationship, being ‘wired’, the omnipresence of the interwebs, i can’t help feeling like i’m shaking an upraised and impotent fist at an unfeeling sky. is there any point in decrying our absolute societal obsession with the internet? with broadcasting our personal lives? with being able to access EVERYTHING from EVERYWHERE at ANY TIME? i wonder.

and, as if to illustrate the wonderful and crazy world i’ve just been describing, the shoes i ordered online at 7 pm monday night were just delivered, and i’m now posting a picture of them.

quick, now…

name your favourite dessert.

(i just got to share some of mine at bacchus. the lovely ladies and i split some: white choc. creme brulee, triamisu, freshly churned espresso ice cream and a choc/hazelnut croquant–definitely a new fav. aren’t i a lucky girl?)