S'alllright....


I have 1/2 day of worky to put in before I get to race home and jump in the van and head to the Sis's house for Christmas. If only the weather would cooperate. Currently it is snowing, and blowing and generally sucking for any sort of winter driving. "Compact snow and slippery sections" is the catch phrase of the day.
I did find something today though, something I thought I wasn't going to find this year....


Today I was reminded of what is important, I get time off to be with my family... X and Cub. I get to see and enjoy my parents and Sis and Bro-in-law. We get to recreate family dynamics, eat and drink too much- but we get to be together. I will get to crawl into a nice warm bed with the love of my life and wait ....uhum...sleep ..ok not really, ( get her minds away from there....My parents will be in the next room- and Cub will be IN our room)  I turn into a bloody 6 year old...there is NO sleeping Christmas eve unless it is an alcohol induced coma. You DO know that Santa comes right??


Over the course of the few blurry days, we will eat too much, sleep little, drink waaaay too much, oh hell for good measure we may as well throw in a heated argument.. But best of all I get to be thankful. Thankful for what I have. 
This will probably be my last post until after Christmas, So I wanted to say...


Merry Christmas! I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday, surrounded by the ones you love and the ones you choose to be with. May you dance too much, find your belly too full, suffer from a hangover, get kissed under the misltoe, and get to see that sparkle in a child's eye on Christmas morning..( there are no age restrictions here) I leave you with two thoughts...

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned. Maya Angelou

And...3 MORE SLEEPS........

*kisses*

There are not a lot of things that I would say are my favorite things at Christmas, in fact Halloween is much more my thang. But I do really enjoy having a Christmas tree.

When my sister and I were kids, our parents would take us out and we would go Christmas tree hunting. Chainsaw, Axe and hot-chocolate. We would spend the day tromping around some plot of  land that the provincial government wanted cleared ( hence gave out free tree tickets in the local paper) in sub arctic conditions looking for the perfect Christmas tree.
My Mom would eye up the biggest mo'fo there was and my Dad would cut it down while us girls stood off some  safe sort of distance. Then my Dad would cut the very top of the tree off, we would drag that bad boy out of the bush and tie it down to the ol' station wagon. Mom and Dad would be tieing down the tree( well where is the rope? I thought you packed the rope? Get the bungee cords..) while my sis and I sat in the car sipping our hot chocolate. We would then bring the tree home and attempt to set that puppy up to decorate.
Fucking tree stands. enough said!
 We would then gather as a family to decorate the tree...sorry, my Dad would put on the lights and we girls would decorate the tree.....aaaaahhhh good times......
Then we moved to BC, and after a couple of years my Rent's went artifical, they decided that cutting down pine beetle infested trees, or better yet the one with the dead rodent as a tree topper..maybe wasn't the best plan. s'alright...we adjusted...
Then I got married and got to have my own tree!! *gush* Last year X bought me a beautiful 7 foot artificial tree that could pass as the real thing if you over look the metal branches and the lack of pine tree smell... but I love it!!
 Last year, X, Cub and I circled that puppy as a family and adorned it with all of our decorations. We listened to Christmas music, drank a bit, sang a bit....made X put more than one decoration on the tree...it was lovely!

So this year, we dig out the Christmas tree...Cub is so excited he can hardly stand it.. we lug up the boxes of decorations, get the lights on, Cub puts a few decorations on and then .....

Did I mention we got a kitten in March? Did I mention that she's Tiny. Did I mention that apparently she thinks my Christmas tree is her own personal gateway to the ceiling???

No.... oh....

For the remainder of the evening we watched as our Tiny little bitch climbed up (squirt with water bottle) and down (bad, bad kitty- cub)  Thwak- off goes the one decoration Cub put on.... Thud - there goes the other one.
I thought this would pass- give her a few days to adjust, this is her first Christmas.

The Christmas tree has been up for a week now. The boxes of decorations have been relocated to the basement, and I find myself replacing lightbulbs on a daily basis so at least we have all of the colours - it really is amazing just how sharp kitten teeth can be.

 I have spent more time un-bending branches and re-fluffing the tree than I care to count. She has even taken to sleeping in it, bitch curls all up and lays there taunting me.

Cub now understands exactly why we won't be putting decorations on - and he's ok with it. X is fucking tickled pink that he doesn't have to decorate the tree, let alone take that shit down, I mean, he is saddened by our lack of family tradition and rum..
And you you little Tiny bitch...  I will have my revenge upon you soon enough.... One day when you least expect it, I will scoop your puny butt up and haul you off to the Vet, where you will be drugged and spayed. Then I will bring you home and you will over eat and get FAT...too fat to climb MY CHRISTMAS TREE!!
bwahhhaaaaaa......
In the meantime, we are calling this year the year of the 'living ornament'...cause that's how we roll.

Today  I went to my cub's Christmas Tea at School... Tea..as in in the middle of the fucking day..as in at 11:30 am until 12:30 pm. While this accommodates most of the stay at home types that seem to frequent cub's elementary school, this does not work so well for me. In fact, I work a meager 30 minute commute from said cub's school..to spare y'all the logistics... I took the damn day off! This way I got to take my cub to school, and got to go to the...motherfuckingmakeyoucrycausetheyaresingingsomethingsappy..  Christmas tea and play nice with the Barbie Ihaveallthetimeintheworldtogotothegymandtan moms. Thankfully X was there too, really it was just too good to not share that, and hell I don't really think its fair to have to suffer alone.

Then tomorrow is my baby Cub's 6th birthday. *sigh* little shit is resiting staying a baby and is already growing up. Last night when I got him out of the shower, he actually said " Mom I bonked your boob!" next will be internet filters and  cyber parenting with long discussions about pornography and feminism (from  mom) and short ones from dad (here's how to bypass the internet filters your mom set up) 6 going on 16.

Saturday and Sunday I will face another challenge, I will make perogies. For those of you who don't know what perogies are, they are small pie shaped dough filled with (depending on your recipe) cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, onions, mashed potatoes and sweat.
I tend to only make them once a year, for a reason people!! These little fuckers are time consuming yet tasty as hell and unless the elves start showing up, I may skip making them next year...So I kid on the last part..
I make them for a reason.
When I was a kidlet up until my adulthood  I LOVED my Grandma's perogies.  I could eat ( and I shit you not) almost a whole pail ( an icecream pail of them) when I was younger. I will skip over the 'food poisoning  year" because my Grandmother didn't believe shit could go bad in the freezer and move on...

She made these tasty little fuckers every visit,every holiday, hell anytime we came to visit because we loved them. When she would come to visit I would beg her...plead...and beg some more to make them and every time she would show me how to make the dough just so, and the mixture...no measuring here folks, all by taste and every time I would help her roll, and cut, and stuff.
And then one year.... she didn't make them anymore... cause well she went and did what grandchildren hate...she went and died.....1 month before my wedding to X, ( the day of my bridal shower) and a week before my cousin's wedding.
Some families would crumble and retreat, not my family, and for this I am extremely proud. We did a funeral on Friday for the family matriarch, a wedding on Saturday, and read the will on Sunday...and yes we did copious amounts of drinking.

*Sentimental moment*... for the record this woman meant the world to me, and not for the run of the mill Grandmother reasons... my Grandmother was stuck at the age of 25,  even though she was in her 80's when she died. She had a wicked, and I do mean wicked sense of humour! Some of the best dirty jokes I know came from her. My Grandmother's nickname was "chinner".... because of her gift of gab. This chin is famous in our family and I find myself quite fortunate and most proud that I have her chin! And so does my son. She never got to meet him, but I know she knows about him because she visits me.

Ok I know what y'all are thinking, she's lost it, gone, kablooey, call the psyc van...but really my grandmother visits me in my dreams... and for the record it freaks me the fuck out!

 So back to perogies, I am the only grandchild, by birth -some of my male cousins' wive's make 'em- (but that doesn't count) that has carried on the tradition of making perogies. Partly I do it to honour her, partly I do it to carry on the tradition for my Dad, but mostly I do it for me, even though they don't taste the same ( and never will) it keeps part of  her here.

There is one problem with this little plan, they literally take two freaking ass days to make! I spend one day making and cooking the guts, and then the next day I spend rolling out dough, cutting, pinching boiling, oiling, freezing these monsters until I can barely move one motherfucking last muscle and then what do I do with the 300 or so of them I make?? Yup I give them away. Oh yeah did I mention that I only know how to make a batch big enough to feed an army!!
So if you get a frozen package delivered to your door this Christmas, please know that somewhere out there, my Grandmother is laughing her fucking ass off at me and doing a Karma dance in my dreams!

Terribly sorry about the outburst but I had to explain.
You see Xtreme has gone and broke his blog. According to blogspot, his issue is  "known" and they have been diligently trying to fix said problem for oh just short of two months now.
He's not updating in the blogroll..  He is posting away, like a freaking mad man, and yet.....we can't see him.
He's not taking this whole invisible thing well for a ragey sombeach...
Either way.. he is up and running and really not that much fun to be around right now..at least in person...hell he's currently amusing as hell one line...but don't tell him I told you that cause I will never live it down

With Christmas being only 19 days away and having not really done much in the way of shopping for presents, I figured it was perhaps a good time to actually ask my cub what he wanted, at the very least I would know what Santa wasn't going to be bringing this year.

I decided that it was high time he wrote a letter to Santa. Alright I confess, I would be writing it,while he dictated his list o'goodies. This is not to say that my cub cannot print, he can, let's face it people I just don't have that kind of time to spend on a letter to Santa.
I get out the paper and pen and figure at the very least I will write it down for him and then he could recopy the words.

"Mom, why are we writing the letter?"
"So Santa knows what you would like."
"Don't you have his email, can't we email him instead?"
"Sweetmotherofmary- you are not serious."
" Mom, Santa has to have an email we have to email it or he won't get it in time."
"Ok we will email it to him, now what do you want the email to say?"

Of course he started with the I have been a good boy this year, followed by his request for world peace and finished with requesting a large lottery win for Mom and Dad. What a sweetheart! He's a dream child...or am I dreaming??
Yup definitely dreaming...
In his defense he has yet to turn 6 and perhaps next years letter will contain at least one of those requests. Instead we managed to make a list of little boy wishes;
Lego, Lego, Lego,
A Scooter,
A DS...ooh a DS....
A slap chop,
Cars,
Colouring books,

"Wait just a minute....back up a few....did you say Slap Chop?"

"Oh yes Mom, ya know, if I had one of those I could chop up my own vegetables! Did you know that it also does strawberries, and if we get one now we can get two, then you could have one too."
"You really want a Slap Chop? For real?"
"Yes, and Lego!"

I am still at a loss for words- Whose kid asks for a Slap Chop for Christmas? Well besides mine! GAK..

"Hey X your cub insists we email Santa his letter- and by the way get this, he wants a SLAP CHOP!"
" He he...Wait til you see my nuts, did he say that, did he say that?"

I know what you're thinking ladies, hands off they are both mine.....*sigh*

So, I have been bestowed an award by Danica. (psst..damn you for mentioning that the picture is absent ...took me forever to figure out how to do that..for the record..you owe me coffee)

For which I am.....thankful ...uhum..:)

You'd think that coming up with seven things that you don't know about me would be easy all things considered... and I'm not one for rule following, so here goes..

One: I have one head...that has naturally curly hair...that I hate! Hate isn't strong enough..I loathe...So much so that I straighten it every damn day, unless I'm feeling lazy- then bring on the curl! For the record, I envy every single woman with straight hair- you can pull off the cutest looks ever..pppllllpppphhhh..

Twice: The number of times that I have been married. I had a "starter marriage" as my family so fondly refers to it...long and short..didn't love him and didn't have the balls to leave him at the alter, even though on the way to the church (ugh) my Dad actually gave me the choice.

Seven: the number of days I love to swear- seriously, I love to fucking swear. My favorite word, is not one loved by a lot of women, but I love it, I love to use it, and by using it, it holds no power against me. Please look away if that word offends you .......Cunt........ Ok you can look back now.... As and aside, I do not swear in front of my cub, but the occasional.. shit will fall from my lips in his presence. While I love to swear, there are more times in my life when I don't swear than when I do... aaahhh the power of language.

Three: I am three years older than my husband. He loves that I am "the older" woman, I love it because I just latch on to his age and roll with it. I much prefer his age to mine. Really age is a state of mind.

Five: Days a week I do the work me, which by title is "Associate Financial Planner" which loosely translated is paper wench to the Mad man who signs my paycheque..

Three: The number of beds in my house....I am obsessive about my bed sheets..they have to match, our bed, cub's bed, spare bed...ok, they don't have to match each other- that would be silly..( now wait a minute, i I could colour coordinate the whole......crap...sorry...)..but all pillowcases, duvet covers and sheets have to be the same damn pattern/colour/set...or I am buggered, buggered in so far as I cannot sleep...ok cub's and the spare room don't bother me like my own bed does. One of X's favorite torments ( I swear) is to randomly change his pillowcase, to something that doesn't go with what is on the bed... I can see his smirk from here..

Six: The number of Furry and Fur-less creatures that inhabit our home. We have a dog- American Eskimo -Kaz, Two cats.. Newt aka, asshole,aka, tubby,aka one of the biggest cats you have ever seen, Tiny, aka Tonks, aka you fucking little bitch, Xtreme, aka hubby, aka rusty romantic, Cub, aka, Little man, aka Little too long, aka, Monster Baby....have I mentioned he was almost 11 pounds... and me.. Amethyst Anne..

So , that's a bit about me, and I am going to hold onto this award for now- with the right to bestow it upon others at a later date.

* disclaimer...all X's have been forewarned about the following post, so there will be no legal ramifications for the stated below....signed and dated....."

So, X and I have been together 12 years, and what I have noticed over the years is that "our" special day, sometimes goes by without either of us actually noticing.
This is not our fault, in fact, over the years this has caused many a dispute in our house about when we "actually" got together and worse yet how many years we have been together. You see, we got married two days after we started dating (4 years later) because we tried to pick the "day" we actually got together, but, hell the year we got married it didn't fall on a Saturday so by default we picked the closest day.
For us, we don't usually celebrate our anniversary with much fan fare, we don't give Hallmark anymore money, and we definitely do not do gifts, we do....dinner...out.. which for us can be a huge thing. So this year, we decided, as usual, no gifts, no cards, and no dinner out...( for those of us that 'cook' the dinner.. this day usually means something to me...) meh!
Now, because our anniversary fell on a week day, we decided to delay dinner out, let's face it, getting all romantic on a Tuesday night....sheesh...
So, Tuesday rolls around, and X and I start our normal day... He rushes out the door to work, and I am left to rouse the cub - get him to school on time, and get my ass to work...somewhat on time (have I mentioned how flexible they are on this...)
I finally get to work, ( oh yeah I was frigging late..THAT is another post) and I log into my work email.....
send receive 15 emails.....
*Fuck...*
Email number 10 comes in...
X to me....
"I'm at home. Email me here"
*WTF* You just went to work.....why are you home???
Several emails jostle back and forth and well....he's not feeling well....
*bing* email notification....
Rat...my sister...checking in... (we are weird and we know it, we are 5 years apart, best friends even though it took us many years to get there - worst yet, our husbands, knew each other and are best friends .. ~sigh~ yet another post)
" Happy anniversary -and assorted stuff censored here... What are you doing for your anniversary?"
Email pings are flying, ping- pong- ping- pong......He's at home I say.....
" Maybe he's at home, doing something special for your anniversary..."
" I'm Sorry have you met my husband, I will bet you 10 bucks he's at home working ..special...ha?? "( bit of a running joke here cause her husband sends her flowers all the time and secretly I am jealous...but I digress)

Girl Brain....
*.... you think, maybe, he's at home.. working on something special...that would be weird....*

work interferes.. emails are flying...
"what cha doing X?? "
" not much.."
* girl brain kicks into overdrive.... omg... today he took the day off... to do something special... 12 years....it's going to be romantic and awesome- if he cooks I will keel over*
8 work hours later.. and a 45 minute commute later...
Call from cell phone....... me to X
"can I call you back I'm on the other line...click"
* Seriously...ok..so you ARE planning something...hot damn....."
I open the door... put my stuff away...no bells, no whistles...well except for the cats... they greet me with exuberance...
* where's my cub? Where's my guy????"*
Both are on the computer..one playing Lego and one working.... I look around the house... no special table set...no dinner started, no candles......hummmm
X sees me.... "Happy anniversary ...." big kiss, big hug...
I go and change into domestic me.....from work me... and X comes into the bedroom......
" I washed the sheets! I didn't know what to cook....And there is beer in the fridge"
* ggrrrrrwwwwlllllll.....you washed the sheets! nearly faints*

So it's good to learn things about yourself... while I did have a fabulous anniversary in our own domestic bliss...
Our romantic life may be a bit..... rusty....

Perhaps the word itself is confusing because it is in French, so let me break it down. ( accents have been omitted )
R- Respondez
S- S'il
V- Vous
P- Plait
English translation: Please respond.
Perhaps you have seen another favorite, "the favour of a reply"
Common courtesy dictates that you reply to the sender when you see either of these two messages on the bottom of an invitation.
Apparently, this is not the case where I live.

I am a Mom, and a fiercely protective one of my one and only cub. Said cub has a birthday coming up at which point he will be turning 6. My cub has timing issues, his birthday is almost exactly two weeks before Christmas. This is not a good time to have a birthday, let alone have a party.
Last year for his first real, just invite my friends party we had it, on his birthday, and well 3 kids showed up, out of 8 invited. We only had RSVP's from 4 of the 8. This pissed me off for a number of reasons and I ached for my cub, but I was angered by the lack of response.

We thought part of the problem was that the party was at our house and too close to Christmas. We moved on and decided that for this year we would save up and do something cool and have it earlier so that our cub could have a big birthday party like all of his friends.

This year we are doing a movie theatre party, with pizza, cake and a movie- paid for by us. This comes to some relief for me as I don't actually have to have a whack of rug rats infiltrating my home and some one else has to clean up the mess. *does a little dance*

We decided that we would let our cub invite as many kids as he wanted, which got us a list of 16.
16 invitations went out, with a RSVP date of yesterday, because we have to confirm numbers with the movie theatre today. Of the 16 invitations that went out ( a couple hand delivered by me) I have heard back from 6 ! Of those 6, 4 are coming. Which leaves me to wonder what the hell happened to the other 10?

Now don't get me wrong, I am actually quite relieved that only 4 will be coming and not 16, I can actually breathe right now. But this is an aside to my point.

10 people out there couldn't be bothered to reply. I don't care why you can't come, I don't care that you have some family-member-birthday-out-of-town-visiting-monkeys-just-got-released-from-jail- type shindig going on. All I care to hear is Yes my kid can come or No my kid cannot come. But common courtesy dictates that you let me know either way.

I know that my cub is going to have a great day, and in the end he won't care who did or didn't call. And I know that yet again this year we will go to more parties than we have kids coming to his.

Meanwhile I am working on the invitations for next year.

Next year, the invitations, will contain a timed RSVP monitor. If I don't hear from you, the invitation will transform into a large hand that will whack you on the back of your head whilst shouting "You fuck nut - RSVP means reply ! "

to perhaps explain a few things.
As you now know, I am married to Xtreme and to say, shit has gone sideways for us as of late. There are a few things that I would really like to say about him, and I have no intention of making this a huge love fest by any stretch of the imagination. What I will say its this...

I love him. And most importantly I am in love with him. After 12 years together, sometimes you have to sift through the crap to realise what is really important. Sometimes you have to pause to regroup, reconnect to move forward, together. The hard part for me is that we have always been very private about our relationship and how we feel towards each other, we have never shared certain parts of our most intimate relationship, (good or bad), well, publicly. That has always been for us. So now, we have had a most public fight which is not like us, and has been one of the most difficult things to do.

I am honoured and I mean this with the most sincerity, that he wants to share this part of his life with me. And now here is where y'all come in.

Throughout this whole fiasco, support and encouragement have come from places I would have never expected, and for that, I thank you.
I thank you for your support and friendship you have now extended to me, but most of all for the circling of the wagons around my husband. He really is a great guy, even if he doesn't think so.
I suppose I totally did make this a love fest... oops...

I have been in hiding... from many things, but mostly hurt.

It is something rather hard to deal with when one has been wounded. You can be walking along doing your thing, and something so very benign can trigger that punched in the gut feeling and the next thing you know, that demon of hurt enters your soul.

This particular demon and I were introduced a couple of days ago and it infiltrated my whole universe. It tainted more than my soul. It threw into question everything I hold sacred, it rocked my world and not in a good way...

Now that I have lived with this little shit of a demon in my soul for a couple of days, I realise that I need to forgive. This is not something I do well, but I know that unless I do, my life could be completely changed forever and I would concede to the demon.

In so many ways it is easier to keep emotionally punching the person who hurt you, so that your hurt dissipates and anger takes over or worse yet, that creepy calm feeling of emotional retreat. I want to yell, lash out, and cry oh god I want to cry, anything to make this demon in my soul leave.

How does one start the process of forgiveness so that the demon doesn't completely take over?

I suppose the short answer is a minute at a time, followed by an hour, a day- you just have to start....
I'm trying...
I am really trying...
But I am also changed...and am changing....I also need to forgive myself and come out of hiding.
Which is the real reason I started to blog again. This blog is an old friend and whether or not anyone ever reads it doesn't bother me, because its mine and it is helping to keep the demon out of my soul.

I have had this blog a long time. Not that you can tell though because I went and deleted all of my old posts, all 200 plus of them from what feels like a lifetime ago.
I figured it was time to start fresh with an old friend. Back when I started this blog, my job allowed me plenty of time for ruminating and rambling on about my life and general observations. In fact much of my day was spent blogging. I do not have that same luxurynow, even if my lunch hours can still be too long.
I have aged since I last blogged and I would like to think that I am wiser too - HA! My kid has grown from a toddler to a full on boy, and is the best thing in my life. We moved provinces, bought a house and have settled into domesticity. One of our dogs died and we got a new cat.
Funny how 4 years can be summed up so simply, and short.