Because New Year's Eve should be full of fun and silly things, I give you...

(Before hitting play, put down what ever festive beverage you may be consuming. Your screen/keyboard will thank me.)

The Taco Bell Canon.

And have a wonderful New Year's Eve!

(Hey, I didn't promise Giller Prize-worthy writing, just a post a day...)

So I'm not one for New Year's resolutions, but I decided today that I need to give myself a kick in the rear to get some writing done. So, I am challenging myself to blog every day. Please bear with me. I may subject my loyal readers (all 5 of you...) to rants and raves, some creative or not so creative writing as I tune up a few things I wrote in my class last year, along with the usual day-to-day musings of a mom to a nearly 2 1/2 year old.


Because one should write about what they know, I'll start with Miss Lily's Christmas.

She had a wonderful Christmas, and received some amazing presents. Her Uncle Craig found some really cool books about monsters and Polka Bats, her great Aunties contributed to her education fund and gifted her with some really pretty dresses. She received a Fisher Price Circus set that has been a great hit, althought it did take some convincing that it didn't need batteries. It takes batteries, but like her FP Castle set, we opted not to put them in. That was for our sanity sake, and she's got a decent enough imagination that she doesn't need the toy to make sound effects for her. Bryan and I bought her a wooden stove set, complete with a wooden pot and pan.

How creative is my kid? Pretty creative. When we put her to bed on Christmas Day evening, she had the stove set up on her bed. I asked her what she was doing. She said "I'm frying pirates." And she was. She lifted the lid to the wooden frying pan, and inside were the FP Little People pirates that Santa had left for her that morning. Argh!

More to come...

Have a safe New Year's Eve - see you in 2009!

Merry Christmas!




Wishing everyone a safe and joyful Christmas Season.



Bryan, Carrie and Lily

Where to start?

It's been an interesting couple of weeks. A while back we all caught a tummy bug at the pool. Lily and Bryan were both sick with it, and I just felt dragged out and yucky. Then Lily and I caught a sneezy cold. We both got over that, and then I caught the tummy bug from H-E-Double-hockey-sticks. I was sick on Tuesday (didn't go in to work), fine on Wednesday after a good nights sleep - until I was driving home from some errands. I spent Wednesday night sick again, and was fine on Thursday while the furnace was installed. Friday I was fine, until just before the furnace guys were done and was sick again. This involved my mom making an emergency run to get supplies - ginger ale, gravol, Imodium, pedialyte - you name it. Bryan made me some jello and some pudding and I lived on soup and toast all week. I HATE being sick to my stomach. Not that anyone likes it, but I really really dislike it. I called in sick for that Saturday as well. On Monday Bryan is sent home from work as they didn't have a crew to send him out with. That was the day our fridge stopped working. Ack! I called a repair crew in for Tuesday (see previous post) and that ended up being an easy fix.

And then...

Bryan comes home and tells me that he has been laid off from work. Until January. At Christmas time.

That was all I could say through the tears. "But it's Christmas!"

We have been very lucky. He has missed the December layoffs the past two years. His company has always been honest and fair with him. They treat their staff really well, he gets regular raises in keeping with the industry, and has great hours that allow me to work evenings and weekends so I can stay home with Lily during the day.

I'm sure that Bryan can get into more detail if he wants, but the gist of it is that he can call back the second week of January for some hours. They usually shut down for 2 weeks at Christmas, so in reality we are only out about 2 weeks of pay, and he can get unemployment benefits for the time he isn't working. Just not sure when we will see the money for that. In the meantime I have picked up additional daytime shifts at work. It's not ideal, as I really don't want to be there full time, but at least I have the option to work and help in a couple of departments that are desperate for staff right now.

Last week was a tense one, but we're going to be OK.

I did have a bit of fun with my dad, installing hardwood in Lily's room over the weekend. I spent Friday night repainting Lily's room, and on Saturday we finished up about 2/3 of the room in hardwood. Somehow we miscalculated how much wood we would need and I had to scramble to find some more. We used the same maple flooring that Mom and Dad put in at the lake. Dad had almost 2 boxes left from his project, and I picked up 2 more at the store. I should have bought 3! With most of the flooring done, we were able to set up Lily's new big girl bed as a surprise. We brought her home from daycare on Monday to her new bedroom. She spent most of the weekend with my mom, having 2 sleepover nights at Lala and Buppa's house. She was officially the cleanest toddler on the block, having at least 3 baths in 3 days.

When I came over on Sunday to pick Lily up so we could go to the kid's Christmas party at work, my mom told me that Wayne, one of our close family friends had had a heart attack the night before. Wayne and Sherry live two doors down from my parent's old home in Millwoods. As kids, we hung out at Sherry's after school on nights my mom was working, Sherry would take all of us to Queen E pool in the summers, Wayne would tease my dad mercilessly (still does), and I babysat all their kids when I was in junior high. They have been fantastic neighbors and friends to our family for the past 32 years - they ARE family. To hear that Wayne was in the hospital after a heart attack was shocking. Yes, he smokes and enjoys his beer. But like your parents, family friends are not supposed to age, get sick or change in any way. And really, Wayne has not changed at all. Well, maybe he has mellowed a bit, but he was and still is a pretty mellow guy. When I asked my parents for details as to what happened, my dad said he thought Wayne was out playing guitar with his buddies, felt short of breath and unwell and ended up at the hospital. (Whether this was actually playing guitar, or Guitar Hero I'm not sure. You never know with Wayne.)

Today I had an update from my folks. Wayne is now at home, and expected to recover. He had a major blockage in 1 artery that was able to be repaired without surgery. Some medication and lifestyle changes should help with the rest. Thank goodness. Oh, and he wasn't playing guitar. Dad had to correct the previous version of events. He was playing road hockey with a bunch of other fools the same age! 16 or not-yet-60, boys will be boys. Hopefully Wayne's youthful outlook will keep him healthy and around for many more years. I need someone to help tease my dad.

So folks, we need some really positive thoughts and prayers sent out to our family - close and extended.

Just for my dad...

I'm pretty sure this is what he would like for Christmas.

OK, no more toasty thoughts. I need cold ones. **UPDATED**

Thank you everyone for the warm thoughts. The new furnace is great. The overload of warmth has resulted in my fridge pooping out. It's only 4 years old, and should be fine but it isn't. The fan isn't running, so the coolness is more like lukewarm. Right now we have ice packs in the fridge part in an attempt to keep things cold while we wait on a repair man. If I have to, the milk will be sitting outside tomorrow!

Hopefully we will have this fixed by tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime, think icy and be cool.

***

The repair company called this morning at 8am, to let me know they had someone on the way this morning. I was fully expecting to wait ALL day for this. At 9 am the repair man called me. He was at the house within 10 minutes of his call, diagnosed the problem, replaced the part and put the fridge back together by 9:45. It cost me $200 - well worth it considering a new fridge would set us back $1800 or so. I still had the day to look forward to, and I didn't have to store the milk on the back porch! Oh, the problem? The freezer fan wasn't working. The repair man said that when these burn out they usually make noise or smell funny. Ours was the exception - it just stopped. But now it's happy and fixed, and now I can go grocery shopping. One advantage of my late night Tuesday shopping is that we didn't have a lot of things in there to spoil.

Yay for on time repair men!