lifepassedby.com | Starting again

Rained out

kasper — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:05:38 +0000

Just got back from a miserable day in Barrie. It was a grey rainy day before we started out and it never really got much better. We went up to belatedly celebrate hubby’s birthday which was June 5th with his family and his sister’s friends. One of the friends brought her 3 daughters along and with our niece who is generally moody they were all miserable by the time we arrived. They had gone up early to make sure we got a shelter, and had been there like 3 hours before we got there. On the way up we stopped to get burgers for everyone as instructed by hubby’s mom. When we arrived she said that she only told him to bring our own food, but he swore that twice she said that we should bring the burgers. That pissed us both off because we wouldn’t have stopped and spent money we didn’t need to otherwise.

We did use the Baby Buzz patch on baby D and between the super smelly patch and hubby and I swatting away the pesky skeeters, I don’t think the baby got any bites at all. Wish I were as lucky. About 10 minutes after I arrived I got a bit bite on my forehead. That I am aware of, I got 3 on my hands (including one right beside the nail on my pinky finger), 1 on my forehead, 3 on my ankle and tons on the backs of my thighs. Talk about itchy!!!

Eventually after we ate the rain stopped so we went on a little walk around the park to view the animals. We saw an albino raccoon, a bear, wolves, foxes and various raptors. It was so sad though, the poor wolves were just running around in circles and obviously had been for some time since the ground under them was all sunken in. I was told that all these animals had been rescue animals, but I wonder if any of them would’ve chosen death over this captivity. Poor animals.

I was hoping to be home by eight since it’s my first day back at work tomorrow, but as usual I couldn’t pry him away from everyone and it was after 21:30 by the time we got home. I’m surprised I’m even writing this - I should be in bed! So I’m off to hopefully get a good night sleep before tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: baby D, family, hubby, mosquitoes, weather

Another rainy day

kasper — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:17:01 +0000

I absolutely LOVE thunderstorms and goodness knows I’ve gotten my fair share lately! Unfortunately it does make for miserable looking days though. The sun is just starting to peek out from behind the clouds now. I’ve got a few errands that I need to get done, so once my Dad gets back from the Flea Market I’ll probably head out. I want to go get baby D those mosquito patches and then I have to go to the bank and cash a cheque I got for web design, then finally I’ll end up and my home away from home - WalMart and get baby D some more food.

My Dad just finished painting his bedroom, so now instead of the cave-like brown that was originally there it’s a mutt coloured (he used the dregs of about 3 different paint colours) off white. It looks so much better now. Because he’s in the basement he needs it to be as light as possible and now it finally is. His painting just gets me thinking about all the things I still want to do around here (money permitting of course). Besides painting baby D’s room and our master bedroom, I’d really like to change up some of the light fixtures. I really like that the previous owner had all the same fixtures in each bedroom so that there looks like there’s continuity across the rooms. As much as I really want to stay away from changing these ceiling lighting fixtures, I think I may have to put in ceiling fans. The house is very open and it’s hard to get air to circulate properly. I’ll have to see what happens, but I have to find 1 model to use across all 3 rooms for sure. Then there’s the bathroom light fixtures. The original ones I’ve got are those hideous fake gold horizontal vanity strips across the top of the mirror. Once again they are all the same across the 3 bathrooms, but I’d really like to get something from even the 1990s! If and when I actually get around to changing these up I’ll be sure to post a pic.

Technorati Tags: baby D, errands, products, weather

Mosquitoes, back away from the kid

kasper — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:24:03 +0000

The grad ceremony went off without a hitch. Except maybe that it was blazing hot! Every year we seem to have the hottest evening on record and I was pleasantly surprised to see the forecast called for a comfortable temperature. However, this year we had the most grads ever since the school started. Ninety-two students out of about 680 graduated. You can imagine that once you’ve packed all the grads and their parents and whoever else they wanted to have in attendance that the place was a little warm. It was so weird seeing all my kids again. It was great to see that they appreciated me being there, in fact one girl came running up to me when I arrived and threw her arms around me saying that she was going to cry she was so happy I was there.

Sunday we are headed off to Barrie to Spring Water Park. We will be meeting hubby’s family there and having a picnic as a belated birthday celebration. I’ve never liked mosquitoes but am even more afraid of them now that I have a little guy. I know I can’t protect him from all things forever, but would like for him not to get bitten. I don’t want to be smothering him in bug spray that he might ingest that’s for sure. So I went hunting for something different. My local kids consignment store is carrying Baby Buzz patches that look like a great idea for baby D. They are a sticky patch that once squeezed activates a smell to ward off the pesky critters while supposedly not touching the skin. The big question … do these patches actually work? I think I will go and pick some up and report back with my findings next week.

Technorati Tags: mosquitoes, products, work

Useful site

kasper — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:41:12 +0000

I found this really cool site that is super handy. It’s wize.com. I find myself constantly looking up products and reviewing which is the best one for me. I swear I don’t remember life before the Internet! How on earth did I make a decision to purchase anything? But seriously say for instance you were looking for coffee grinders. You would find yourself at a page divided into categories by use. From there you would end up at a page which lists all the products. Down the left hand side are options such as price and brand to filter your results. Most of the coffee grinders have reviews which I always find useful in making my own decision, plus you can select multiple items and do a side by side comparison. On top of that you can search out the lowest price for coffee grinders and purchase them right from that page. If, like me, you like to do some investigation before making a purchase, then this is the site for you!

My Dad just emailed me (yes from downstairs) to say that his printer is giving up the ghost and that he will be looking for a new one. Now I know that I can do some easy research to find just the right one. I personally haven’t had a printer in quite some time. Though I find them very useful I found that the print quality was crappy after not too long. I don’t print very often, I guess that’s the problem. It would go in spurts. I’d leave the printer for a month or two then have a whole bunch of stuff to do and end up being disappointed with the results. I used to make my own cards and thought it was so much better than simply buying them, but when you end up with gaps in your printing it looks less than professional. Hopefully I can help my Dad find the perfect printer.

Technorati Tags: Dad, printer, products, useful

Gearing up

kasper — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:29:07 +0000

Yes, I’m gearing up for the end of the year (school year) madness. Even though I’m not back at work yet, I still have a bunch of stuff to do. Like tomorrow night is my school’s grad. Even though I haven’t been there for over a year, I promised the students that I would be back to announce the grads as they walk across the stage. This has always been my thing, and I really enjoy doing it. Besides they always seem to have a problem finding someone who can say some of the names. For instance Sathananthalingam is just the last name of one of our students. Her first name is still 12 characters long. I don’t seem to have much difficulty in saying these names so I’m always called upon when there’s a long name like that to pronounce. Then on Thursday is our end of the year staff breakfast. Even though I went last year, I think I’m going to beg off this year. I don’t really want to sit through all the goodbyes of staff I don’t really care about or know. Besides I anticipate it being difficult keeping a little guy who is *almost* walking still for like 4 hours. It’ll probably be more trouble than it’s worth and frankly I don’t care that much.

My mum was down for a couple of days and we had a really nice visit. This was the first time she stayed for more than one night. We decided the last time she was here that it didn’t make much sense to just stay for one night because it was all so rushed. We really didn’t do much. We managed to get out for a long walk and admire other people’s front gardens. It gave me all sorts of ideas for mine. And we had my brother and his wife over for dinner Saturday night. They left around 21:00 and my mum, dad, hubby and I stayed up till 23:00 talking about baby D and his birth. Even though it wasn’t that long ago (14 months) there were a couple things I had actually forgotten. I love reminiscing! Yesterday we went to church together and then came home and finally hung up some pictures I’ve been meaning to get on my walls. I will still have to get some more pictures as I have a humongous wall in my family room that could use some lovin’.

This time next Monday I will be at work. I am trying desperately not to think about it for fear that I will lose my mind. It’s only for 2 weeks; 9 days in fact so I’m sure I can do that. The worst will be when baby D goes into daycare and it’s a full time arrangement. If hubby was staying home with baby D the whole time as we had planned I probably wouldn’t be as nervous, but my Dad will be watching him for 3 days. I’m sure it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but he’s old-school German and tends to have his own way of doing things and criticizing mine. I guess I’m just afraid that he’ll be letting baby D scream himself to sleep or feeding him large chunks of stuff that he might choke on or possibly being too rough on him. I’ll just have to keep thinking happy thoughts that everything will go fine or I’m going to make myself sick thinking about it.

Technorati Tags: baby D, daycare, family, hubby, mum, work

Neighbours

kasper — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:40:50 +0000

A big thank you to my next door neighbour for the mosquito frappe she’s working on in her pool…

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Technorati Tags: mosquitoes, neighbours, pool

Evil Computer

kasper — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 00:21:03 +0000

Well, I certainly never expected to be away quite so long. My computer has been so sluggish that I sometimes even regret turning the darn thing on. It’s been keeping me from blogging because it’s just so painful to type a sentence and wait for the text to appear long after I’ve finished. Today it seems to be on it’s best behaviour so I thought it was time to get right back to it.

Hubby has had a number of tests all of which have come back negative. His doctor noticed a bit of a spot on his lungs in an x-ray he had done and gave him antibiotics to clear up what could’ve been a lung infection or a case of walking pneumonia. Between the antibiotics and time he’s feeling much better.

I’ve been feeling pretty low lately. Even though I managed to lose 5 pounds my waistline has somehow exploded. The new pants that I just bought are really snug and I can’t figure out why. Summer is such a crappy time for my self esteem because I’d like to strip down to a bathing suit without feeling embarrassed, but I just can’t do it. My parenting group just had our very last group yesterday, and plan to meet at Lynn’s house next Friday to socialize and go for a swim. I would LOVE to get baby D in the pool again because he loves the water, but I just feel too fat to even think about getting into a bathing suit! I hate feeling this way. I just wish I could accept my body for what it is and not feel so self conscious about it!

One thing that I’ve done in the last little while to make me feel slightly better about myself is to get into makeup. I generally don’t wear anything but lipgloss unless it’s a special occasion - and those are very few and far between. I did some searching on the Internet for some ideas and came across this site. Talk about comprehensive! I’m such a dummy when it comes to makeup and for some reason I’m sort of afraid of it I guess. Like I never know what shade of foundation to get. I’m so clueless. But this site gives you so much information! So I learned how to select a foundation based on skin type, and colour, when to get rid of foundation (guess the foundation I bought 8 years ago will have to go in the garbage), as well as coverage types. I like that under each of the coverage types (ie. tinted moisturizers) there is a list of specific products that fit in that category. Then at the bottom of the page are a linked list of makeup brands (ie. Cover Girl) that you can go to to see individual products and buy them right there. It’s definitely a site worth a look-see for all kinds of great information and application tips.

Baby D is 14 months old today and though he looks like he’ll be walking any day now I’m not sure what to say about his verbal skills. I’m trying really hard not to compare him with any other babies and to remember that all babies do their thing in their own time, but shouldn’t he be doing more than just babbling ‘dada’? I’ve been trying to baby sign language with him and so far the only sign he sort of does is ‘more’ but it’s really just clapping and not the actual sign. He really doesn’t communicate with us in any way. He’s such a happy, easy baby, but should he be farther along in development?

Technorati Tags: baby D, baby sign language, child development, hubby, makeup, Parenting Group

Doctor Google

kasper — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:20:24 +0000

It has been an absolutely bizarr-o week. Hubby has been home due to illness and has totally thrown off my schedule! I don’t know what it is, but when he’s home we both just get so lazy. He drives for a living, so when he’s being plagued by chest pains and dizzyness it’s not really a good idea to have him behind the wheel. I’m quite ticked off at his doctor at the moment. He went in to see her on Monday and had tests done - blood tests and an ECG, and was told that the results would be in by the end of the week and that we’d hear back when they were in. As of yesterday there was no word so being his “secretary” I called to find out what the deal was. I left a message in the morning to have the doctor call us back and found out that she was working until 16:00. By 15:35 without a call I called back to see what was going on. Left another message and was told that the doctor usually returned calls after business hours. Wanna guess? Yup. No call back again. So once again I call back and leave a message on the machine stating that I’d called and left 2 messages, that neither were returned and that we still didn’t know the outcome of the tests and he still wasn’t feeling any better. So this morning I got a call back from the receptionist to tell me that they don’t give results over the phone, that if no call is made then we are to assume that everything is okay, and that the doctor wasn’t in today. Okay, if tests were done for a yearly physical exam then don’t call me back when everything is fine (even though my doctor does), but when someone comes in complaining of chest pains, dizzyness and lethargy a call back should be made. Besides the doctor told hubby that if the tests came back negative then he would be back in ASAP for more tests as there was clearly something going on. WTF?! So instead of the doctor doing her job I now have hubby becoming Dr. Google and he has decided that he has Aortic Dissection, the same thing that John Ritter died of but was misdiagnosed. The worst part now is that his boss has called him back in to work because they’re so short staffed right now. I hope everything goes okay tomorrow. I keep telling him to take it slow and easy and to pull over and relax whenever necessary, but he’s a man and rarely listens to anything I have to say.

Technorati Tags: doctor, hubby, illness

Mum’s visit

kasper — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:33:54 +0000

My Mum was down for the last 2 days, so that’s why you haven’t seen me around. She always brings stuff for us whenever she comes, and this was no exception. She brought an adorable pair of white overalls with boats on them and a turquoise plastic deck chair (mini-sized) for baby D. She brought me a pot of assorted plants and her old plugin garden lights. We had a great time shopping for plants for my window boxes and pots. I am all gungho to rip out the prickly hedges in the front of the house and plant Spirea instead. It’s going to be a huge job since there are 4 hedges to be removed. Hopefully I can manage to get everything in my mind done before my Dad gets home. I’m going to keep this entry really short because I’m off to plant my window boxes.

Technorati Tags: baby D, Dad, garden, mum, plants

A day of errands

kasper — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:46:30 +0000

So I did some tidying up and vacuuming already, I’m now just waiting for baby D to wake up from his nap. There is a lot I want to get done today… I’ll start off by picking up the GrowPure bottle I’ve been seeing advertised everywhere. I am sick to death of hearing about all the health risks attached to bottles these days and figured I’m better off getting something I know is safe. Unfortunately for me the bottle is going to cost me $17.99 +tax here. That’s a lot of money to spend on a bottle as far as I’m concerned, but I guess I justify it by the fact that it’s like 3 bottles in 1.

My next stop will be Wal-Mart where I’ll be looking at the plant situation to see what they have and if the price is right. When my Mum comes down tomorrow, I want to have a game plan of where we’re going to be getting my plants. The other thing that has been driving me nuts is the number of dandelions in my lawn! Before my Dad went to Germany, we were out weeding but you’d never know it to look at the lawn now. So instead of the old yank method, I’m going to see about getting a proper weeder.

Finally, the joy that is grocery shopping is my final stop. I need to get regular stuff for our consumption as well as stuff for dinner tomorrow night. I was hoping we’d just do hamburgers on the barbeque which is simple, but apparently we don’t have enough propane. I’ll have to see in my travels what it’s going to cost me for another tank. Let hubby get ours refilled himself. I always find certain trips difficult with baby D, but it has to get done so I manage. I just won’t be lugging a propane tank around anywhere with him. Or pick up the earth that I need from the landscaping place. Those are sans-baby jobs.

Technorati Tags: baby D, errands, garden, groceries, GrowPure, hubby