take the parents...

tim and i went to the movies tonight and say "dan in real life" with steve carrall.

no swearing, no inuendos, funny without being over the top. perfect movie for seeing with the parents...or the kids.

there were a lot of older parental-types sitting around us at the theatre tonight and man they laughed a lot. i think they were getting some undercurrent jokes about having teenagers that tim and i just can't grasp. and they must have needed a laugh because they just let go. tim and i laughed half the time at all of them laughing.

but it is sweet...date-night type movie. worth a watch. it was nice to see steve play a bit more of an understated character. i was getting tired of his other character. ha.

i'm a "phase" person...

my brother goes through crazed phases...like canucks or baseball or pogs...and it's all he thinks about and talks about during the phase. sure - these phases were a long time ago and i'm sure he doesnt appreciate me bringing them up again but each one was much stronger than any of my phases...

however....

i am still a phase person nonetheless. maybe you remember the rice pudding phase? kozy shack at least once a day. or the john mayer phase? listened to him non-stop. or shopping at winners phase? wait a sec...

anyways, i wanted to keep you up to date on the phases du jour.

pears, creamy dill ripple chips, and tom petty. i watched a 4 hour documentary this weekend and if you've talked to me since saturday, i'm sure i told you something about tom petty or the heartbreakers in our conversation. i'm trying to stop the chip phase but they're just SO good. ifyou like dill pickle chips, i highly recommend creamy dill. as for pears? i've just been buying them all month since ang's birthday and want one everyday.

yep. what will be next?

in lieu of halloween...

okay, so maybe you've seen these ones but they're still funny.

circa.1985

vivid memory of going to k-mart to pick out a mask with my dad and picking this one. his response? "don't you want a girl mask?" me - "no." and so i handed out candy at the door in this outfit. very scary. though good to see that at the time of this photo i wasn't gorging on candy but instead choosing celery.

circa.1989?

the macdonalds were all about making your own costume. poor matt. i think he was a baseball player for the rest of his trick-or-treating years. haha.

since november 1st was always conveniently "bible dress up day", i usually had a costume that doubled. i was queen esther that year. minus the mask.

circa. 1990?

matt's memory of this halloween? some kid asking him "are you wearing pantyhose on your head?" this was maybe my least creative costume ever. black spandex, black sweatshirt, paper ears on the headband. angela showed up in a wooly sheep costume and put us all to shame.

lack of learning?

i just saw a commercial tonight for monopoly that has no money. it's all put on charge cards. so when someone lands on your hotel? they put their charge card in your bank thing-y and it adds up how much they should give you.

oh man. and if you think you're not great at adding? we have some problems for future generations.

okay...i know it's just monopoly. but you know what i mean.

the never-ending pillow search...

has it maybe ended?

i hate pillows. i can never find one i like. i've been searching my whole life.

this week i bought an extra-firm nautica pillow on clearance at winners and have slept on it for the last two nights.

but what's this? a pillow i like? it's still a little early to tell. but there's perhaps an end in sight to this search.

i heart sleep.

painting the spare bedroom....finally

we've been planning to paint this room since the day we moved in. when we went and bought the paint for our kitchen this summer, we bought the paint for this room too. every weekend tim suggested painting and i shot it down. i'm not a big fan of painting. haha. but it was finally the day. and now it's done.

oops - forgot the before photo...but you can still see the pink and yellow.

during...i can only reach so high.

after! gray-blue-teal?

now that it's done and we moved the bed in (that's been sitting in our office since we got it from the charbonneaus!) tim says he doesn't like the colour. the mattress is blue which makes the walls look quite green. he thinks that the colour isn't relaxing. me? i'm afraid that when i buy bedding to match, i won't want to sleep in my own room anymore i love it so much! haha. hopefully it'll grow on him.

so who's coming out to stay with us first?

the blame game

so today in class, we talked about not "playing the blame game". when you tell someone "it's your fault that we're in trouble!" - that's a blame message. we want to give "why" messages. (did we do this kind of stuff in school? i definitely can't remember...maybe we didn't even have personal planning) the kids love making up skits which is a lot of what we do in personal planning. but what i learned today was the 3 steps to giving a "why" message.

i thought maybe you should know too...this really could have helped us in life. ha.

> name the behavious that's bothering you.
> say WHY it's bothering you.
> say what you want to happen instead.

so now that you know the steps, take the quiz: are the following messages blame or why?

1. Someone in your group didn't do a part of an important project. You say, "I knew this would happen! That's why I didn't want you in our group. You never do your work. You're so lazy!"

2. A classmate told the teacher something was your fault when it wasn't. You say, "What you told the teacher wasn't true. I don't want to be blamed for something I didn't do. I'd like you to tell Mr. Jones the truth."

3. You were walking down the hall and someone ran into you, makin gyou drop your books. You say, "You jerk! Look what you did! My books are all over the floor."

the thing is...i did touch on the fact that just because you give a why message, it doesn't mean that that person is necessarily going to do what you ask. but i didn't really say what the alternative was...i don't know. what is it? tell a teacher? that can't be the only solution. because i'm tired of solving problems.

the library loophole

well...if you know me well - you'll know that i usually have mega-fines on my public library card. this summer, i did not frequent the library as my fines were up to $75. i wanted to go to the library but didn't want to pay my fines. unfourtunately, i had also racked up some fines on tim's library card. i once took out a teen book called "bad girls in love" on his card, lost it and never returned it. who knew how big the fine would be on that card?

finally - something had to be done. tim and i went in, i paid my fine down to $24 (has to be under $25 so that you can take out books) and started happily taking out books. however, tim wanted to be able to use his own card again but didn't want to have to face the librarian about why he'd had "bad girls in love" out for over 2 years. since i took it out, i'd found it again and it was sitting on our bookshelf at home. so tim made me go ask about his card. i told the librarian the deal and explained that i'd found the book - what would the fines be? she told me that only the cost of the book is still on his card ($9) - no late fees. AND if we returned the book, the cost of the book would be DELETED!

WHAT?

do you realize what this means? if you have a book overdue, you just keep it until they erase the fine and charge you for it then return it. for free!

okay okay - obviously i'm not going to be doing this BUT...it IS a library loophole that they really should look out for.

how much?

today i stopped at the dollar store for a few things. i bought one of those extra small bags of chips. i get to the till and the woman says, "you know, these are 3 for a dollar." and i say, "how much is one?"...she says, "25 cents."

...

to be a grown-up

the older i get, the more i think i should be feeling like a grown-up...however, i still seem to find myself in situations that seem strange because on the inside, i just feel like a litle kid. am i the only one who feels this way?

(just to put the following stories into context, keep in mind that i went to the store three times on the previous night for a variety of things that i would need for meals for the next couple days.)

something a grown up does that i do not: checks for all ingredients before beginning a recipe. today i dumped a box of cake mix into a bowl (okay - not exactly a recipe but you know what i mean) then before adding the wet ingredients, i thought ahead (!) and checked to be sure i had cupcake papers before starting. i did. so i poured in the oil and water and realized...i didn't have eggs. so i had to go to the store.

something a grown up does and i tried: make a list. i made a list of everything that i needed at the store so that i wouldn't have to go out again. i am hosting thanksgiving dinner at my house so i thought about what i'd need for that. i even thought forward to tuesday because i'm hosting another dinner that night. i made a long list. so far so good.

something a grown up can do that i cannot: estimate how much of something there is in a package. for example - i am planning to make a reciepe for tuesday that calls for 1 3/4 cups of sour cream. so at the store i look at the sourcream containers. you know them. tiny, medium, and yogurt container size. hmm...the medium didn't seem quite big enough so i got the large. at home? i'm sure the medium had more than 2 cups in it. why do i overestimate? who was at my place on fondue night and saw how many chocolates i'd bought to melt? case and point.

something a grown up does and i didn't: check to make sure you have everything on your list before leaving the store. it sounds easy. in fact, i'd thought that i had. but i forgot three items. oh well - at least they were tuesday items. they can wait.

back to the cupcakes with my eggs...stir stir stir. then i go to put out the cupcake papers in the muffin tin...i hadn't thought to actually count the cupcake papers when i checked them at the beginning of this story...and there were only 12.

back to the store.

it's painful to read - i know. doesn't this girl ever cook or prepare meals? (umm...) my aunts who read this are thinking, "are you related to judy?" haha. but as i am writing this out, i'm thinking...maybe it's not a "grown-up" thing. maybe i equate grown-ups to having things put together...but actually i may never be that way. i'm just this way. oh the psychoanalysis. but let me tell you - grown-up or little kid...i'm sick of going to the store for one more thing. but i still don't have everything i need. :)