Wordless Wednesday

You don't eat perogies you may as well walk away!

Let me count the ways I really can NOT stand the daughter's boyfriend. I mean, I *really* can NOT stand the guy. He's ten years older than her, but has the mentality of a dorky retreaded 14 year old teen. No, wait, that's insulting to all the 14 year old dorky boys out there. At least the 14 year old dorky retreaded boys I know ALL LOVE perogies!

Rebel's BF on the other hand, won't even try and take a taste of a perogy. Seriously, a perogy. A bland potato cheese filled perogy. He's eaten ravioli, he'll eat mashed potatoes, ( without gravy) but he REFUSES to try a perogy. And THIS Ukrainian Canadian mother is NOT impressed. Not at all! How inoffensive is a perogy?!

Yeah, I have friends who don't like them, Nova Scotians mostly, who find perogies bland - I don't get it, but that's okay. They've tried them. My nephew eats them fried with soy sauce, and the XSU taught the girls to eat them with ketchup. sigh.... But this guy... this developmentally delayed 31 year old my daughter insists she loves, won't eat one single perogy in any way shape or form.

Related to the perogy is the eggroll.. a Chinese perogy! We were out for Chinese food for Rebel's birthday and he took one bite out of an egg roll and proceeded to spit it out! He wouldn't eat and swallow the bite he took out of an innocuous ersatz Chinese eggroll. I might add he also spit out three other bites of food he took and didn't like.

I am compelled to ask, if he won't even take a taste of a perogy, what the hell else is wrong with him?

Sunday Snippets

Taxes are due on the 30th. Must get on that today. I am not sure what that's going to look like this year. I just hope I don't owe, though I did pull out some cash from my investments to pay the last of the renos. It had to be done.


Rebel's 22nd and 2nd birthdays were this week. Thanks be to God she is healthy. All is well with her physically. Now - if she could just move on without that loser BF of hers. That's out of my control. We went out for dinner. After dinner Rebel asked me for cash because she wanted to go out for a drink. I asked why her BF couldn't pay. He belligerently says to me, "I've spent a fortune on her already!" I really had to stop myself from taking him by the throat and doing damage. WhatEV! I looked at him and told him he was clearly missing my point - and being obtuse wasn't an attractive quality in a daughter's BF. Rebel of course, wasn't happy with me,k BF didn't understand a word I said. That was good enough for me.


My dad didn't remember her birthday. He doesn't have a real dementia per se, he's just not aware. He doesn't pay attention. I realized that while I was at home. sigh. He was the one who ALWAYS used to be the first to call on birthdays.


I am pretty much guaranteed a new job if I want it. It's mine to lose once I get through the formal interview process. No one else applied! LOL. It's a change management job reporting to both the union and management. Very interesting. Very high profile. I am ready for a change. I just wish it was more money. It's not - as yet. But after a year it might be. I'll know by mid May.\

RJ will be home in ten days. Her photos from France and Paris in particular are amazing. I will share one and hope any random yahoo who might pop by this site doesn't decide to steal it. It's worth selling I think. I have to show it off here.

Wordless Wednesday

Sunday Snippets

Rebel seems to think my car is for sharing. She was not happy when I suggested otherwise. I think I was just un-invited to one of her two birthday dinners. The girl does give good attitude. I just wish she could re-direct it to her idiot BF, who had the gall to ask me to move my car so he could park his precious Mustang in my driveway. I said no. That was fun.

Marking is nearly done. I haven't decided if I will teach again next year. It's a lot of work, for not really enough money, but it is fun.

XSU was sick this week, and didn't get to the bank to drop some cash on Reb Junior in France. If he had told me I could have topped up earlier than I did. She's in Paris this week. Then it will be three weeks and she's home pending volcanic ash clouds over Europe.

I seem to have developed an insatiable craving for sushi. Particularly salmon pizza sushi.
I've had it three times this week. That's right - every day since I've come home. Thank goodness all three times it was different people at the restaurant and so my fix is not quite noticeable to any but me - so far.

Best Buy has a trade in your old tv for a new. They don't make it easy though. I have to get one monster tv, one small tv and a computer monitor into the store all at the same time AND buy my new tv that day. I need a friend with a truck to help me get the stuff over there. AND I need to get the research done and pick a tv. The consumer reports on tvs - plasma, LED, HD etc etc is all too much for my middle aged addled non techie brain. I might just go in and blind fold myself and say I pick YOU! as long as you're under $1300.00 because I will also need the blu ray player, the brackets for the wall mount and the sound system too.

I learned why I can't start an annulment until after the divorce. The church wants to ensure all the "legal" stuff is done. They don't want to hand out annulments only to find out that legally people are still married. So the deal is - get the legal stuff out of the way then we can talk, because in the secular world legal is what counts on paper. Makes sense. Though I am not in a big rush deal to get the divorce thing done. I have decided to let the XSU handle that one. Let him pay for it and hand me over the paperwork to sign.

While at home the girls went out for dinner and we're thinking of handing out west to BC to visit yet another one of our girls. We spent our 40th birthdays together and had such a great time on Salt Spring Island we want to do it again. We may get together this summer or perhaps in early Fall.

Our high school is having a big 50 aniversary party next year and we're talking about that too. Time to get in shape for that. I was very surprised while visiting my brother and sister in law to learn that my SIL has had "work" done. Nothing big... but those needles that fill the lines in your face and a little botox for the frown lines. While I HATE needles she nearly had me convinced to head right over. But I have to deal with my tooth first. Bone graft for the implant on one, and then perhaps I can think about plumping up the cheeks. Being a cougar is gonna take some work and even more money!

13 on Thursday: Reflections on being at home mostly.

Reflections: Family Home
I haven't been home since Rebel was sick. Catching up with the girls was the best. These are the people who've been my friends since childhood. It was great to be here.

1. Driving down a highway where flood waters have barely receded is a little eerie.

2. Mecca is SUPER Target .... or possibly Kohl's but it is always in another country.

3. American beer is still akin to drinking water even if you drink with friends.

4. Fancy seniors residences are still "homes" and what a glimpse of the future they can be. OY!

5 Family is family. Thank goodness I have a brother who is there and handling things. Same with the sister in law. I am very lucky.

6 Driving in a your home town after being away a few years is frustrating. Everything has changed and yet.... it hasn't.

7. I look like my mom. So much so that when I was at the family church on Sunday with dad, more than one of her friends told me it was "spooky" how much I looked like her. Missing her every day. It's been 8 years.

8. I still have no sense of direction and need a GPS.

9. Cell phone providers and roaming charges need to get real.

10. Thank goodness for texting. Doesn't help when the text says - *you didn't leave enough groceries and I can't find dad!* sigh.....

11. Getting away is always good.

12. Seeing old friends is even better. These are the girls who know my history and my life. And we watch our children growing up now. They are becoming adults and getting married. WOW. No talk of grandchildren ...... yet.

13. Home is always where the heart is - here or there.

Wordless Wednesday

Story Time

I have been having a wonderful time at home and at "the home." I am now at my best friend's house for the rest of my time at home. Much better . Much much better than staring at my future at "the home."


Dad is doing well there and that's a good thing. His grey cells are kinda shrinking and he doesn't have a great attention span but not to any great degree. It's hard having a real conversation with him because he doesn't read papers, or follow the news. He just doesn't pay attention or seem to follow what's going on. He's not very linear in his thinking. My mother clearly ran the show and dad let her. Even now he seems to need someone telling him what to do. He's a pretty basic kind of man.


Now some of the other characters I met at the home were something. First there was Ann. She was the 22nd of 24 children. seriously. She's the only one left of the bunch. She left Newfoundland because her boyfriend was a Baptist and she was Catholic. It was the Montagues and Capuletsin her little village. Both sides didn't want their kid involved with someone of the "wrong" faith, so the two of them left and got married and never went back.


Robert is Japanese by heritage - born in Canada. His family was interred during the second world war. They were forced to leave Vancouver and lived in some interment camp in Alberta for the duration of the war. They had to start over after the end of the war without any money since the government took all their goods and property.


Sam asked me to say grace when we sat his table for breakfast. He had story after story about his gazillion accidents in whatever job he had. The guy never stopped talking.


Then there was Jacob. He owned a hotel here in town which he sold to a lawyer who ran it into the ground. We met at the home's computer stations. He was logging in and trying to find his grand daughter's website. 'Vat's det koogle thing he vants me to find on dees comp-you-ter?"


Jacob was a Lithuanian Jew who worked with the partisans during the war. His entire village built caves under ground to hide from the Nazis. He told me how the partisans orders were to shoot to kill, or let the German soldiers run away. A bunch of soldiers came across Jacob in the forest with a couple of his buddies. He drew his gun to shoot them and the German begged him not to. He had a wife and five kids. So Jacob didn't shoot him because the soldier wasn't SS or Gestapo, he was reg force and conscripted. He just wanted to get out alive. He gave Jacob his address and told him if he ever landed in Munich after the war his wife would make him dinner to thank him for not killing him and leaving his children fatherless.


So didn't Jacob find himself traveling through Munich on his way to Canada after the war. He found soldier boy who did indeed remember him. The guy cried when he saw him because he remembered him well. The guy's wife cried and fed him and let him stay over night rather than go to a hotel.


What stories eh?

Grand Forks, I heart you!

I've been home two days now and spent all of today out of town. It couldn't be helped. My version of mecca has always revolved around a small town in North Dakota - Grand Forks. And sometimes Fargo. Seriously. They have a Target Store, Kohl's and TJ Max. And let's not even get started on the grocery stores and the prices for a lot of stuff that I couldn't possibly bring back with me all the way to the nation's capital. Having grown up spending many a long weekend going back and forth to Grand Forks, it seemed the right time to return today.

I was so excited. RJ's godmother and I made the trek in her car. The Red River has already crested but my goodness there was a lot of water filling fields and the flood way is looking pretty full. A few roads were closed but not the main highway.

But I digress. Target! And not *just* a Target store - it was a SUPER Target. When you actually don't have to shop for groceries, I find walking the aisles to be a very zen like activity. The place was fairly quiet for a muzak filled store, and we cruised through with our bright red Target carts marvelling over all the unique items in the aisles and despairing of the prices and me thinking how am I ever going to get a cart load of groceries all the way home. Oh wait... I'll go check out the luggage and just buy a suit case that will be good enough to haul back all this stuff!

And at this Target every item was classified by department on the receipt - grocery items, clothing, electronics, or home so when we arrived back at the Canadian border and declared our goods, it was very easy for the border guards and custom agents to apply the right taxes. Now how is that for service?!

What I could have bought but didn't.

And then there was Kohl's... I SAVED $158.65 today! That's right! Just think how much MORE I could have spent if I had known what I was saving?! I must have had 30 things in the dressing room with me - dresses, t-shirts, skirts; never mind trying things on that I was going to get for Rebel but not sure if things would fit. My newest cheap cell phone doesn't have a camera so I couldn't send pictures for approval. I am winging these purchases, but how could I resist since I was SAVING so much?!

And it even gets better because North Dakota will refund the state tax on my purchases so I will SAVE even more.

Grand Forks - a love story. So much retail love to give, and so little time.

Next blog - a little less retail and a little more family!

13 Things to do before 6: 30 AM flight time and it's now midnight!

1 um get packed

2 find the PJs to pack

3 forgot to get dog food. - mission out to the 24 hour grocery store

4 leave detailed instructions for the new food bin for garbage day for Rebel

5 hide the booze. oh not necessary Rebel junior out of country and Rebel doesn't touch the stuff... much.

6 remember to take school work - finish marking

7 don't forget the laptop charger

8 don't forget phone charger

9 don't forget the cell phone

10 hair straightener very important

11 gift certificate for liquor store in home town - which can't be used where I live.

12 taxi or Rebel - taxi or Rebel. What are the odds she won't really want to get up at 4:45 to drive me to the airport?

13. Sony e-reader with the 10 books murder mystery exgtravaganza

Wordless Wednesday

Easter Sunday Post Mortem & Easter Monday rabble rousing

I am feeling very superior today. I am NUMBER ONE! on the Bejeweled Leader Board in my circle of Facebook friends. I am 3,000 points shy of 400,000! The next nearest friend is at 301,760. For a very short time I will RULE. Then Tuesday - we start all over again. Bragging rights til then.

We had a lovely day yesterday. Rebel and I were at a friend's for Easter brunch. For once, I had a designated driver and was able to imbibe in the sparkling chardonnay with impunity. Yes. I lushed it. On Easter Sunday. It was a lovely way to spend mid day.

It was an all girl brunch. Veronica also invited another friend and daughter. This daughter works as a social worker, something our Rebel is interested in and the daughter was most encouraging and helpful in talking about her work and education with Rebel. Fantastic. She talked most positively about her career choice and why she loved it. Rebel listened quite intently.

During the evening, the BF showed up. Apparently he drank too much somewhere and Rebel didn't want him driving. He stayed the night and was supposed to be up for work this morning. I heard the alarm go off but I didn't hear him leave. Roll eyes. And at 2 PM when I returned from running errands, he was STILL in the house. WTF?! Like a bad penny that lad keeps turning up. Rebel has school today and left and the BF trailed out as well. He knows better than to remain in my presence. I really am quite the Witch with a BEE around that man. It just seems to come naturally - Easter good will feelings notwithstanding. But he pulled a fast one. Again.

Even though BF told Rebel the shop was closed and he didn't have to work, I thought I'd check out that story. I called the shop - after dialing *67 to block my number - no surprise no. 1 - They were open. I asked to speak with the BF and was told he wasn't in. I asked if he had been expected in and no surprise no. 2 - of course he was expected to work! The lad is gonna get his ass kicked - by the boss and by the Rebel.

Now, how to relay the lie to the girl without getting myself hurt in the process given the ole shoot the messenger problem?

Simple - I called XSU - told him the story. Let her shoot him instead.

Holy Saturday

I wanted to put a picture up here with my baked Easter Bread - but I think it must have been on the big computer that crashed and burned. I could have taken a new picture but I wanted to post something quickly and get going. I have to head to the store still and finish up my Easter food basket for the blessing this afternoon. So this will be short.

Rebel is still spending time with her BF but it is a little more limited. Because she has moved away from a lot of the girls she used to know she finds herself with very few girlfriends and not a lot to do in the evenings. I know this will change but it will take time. A day at a time weaning herself from this guy.

I will get myself organized for Sunday. We'll be at friends. I think Rebel is going to the BF's family for dinner.

The weather is crazy hot - in the 80s very climate change-ish. But I'll take it. It's a good day.

Good Friday

Sarcastic Laptops

"Yeah, you get up at 6am on Saturday cause then I'll just be getting up at noon, then we can like, totally skype each other and make perogies together! omg! or not.." Nothing like a snotty response from a 16 year old on my Skype idea. Can you hear the sarcasm pouring out of her laptop? This is why sending her to France was a good idea.

Rebel is busy visiting her BF. She misses him. That's to be expected. For now she's going to his place on the weekend. I hope she weans herself off him - slowlee- slowlee but I am not going to say much. Rebel and I are spending Easter at a friend's place. This is good. XSU was never big on Easter. Not being of a spiritual bent of any kind he didn't understand my joy on the holiday or my keen sense of Easter being such a wonderful Sunday quiet kind of holiday. I think the last few years, he'd go off and start doing construction stuff, which I regularly kyboshed. It was so incredibly disrespectful and rude.
None of that this year. At least not at my house.

Rebel didn't even plan on spending time with him. Her remark was " Easter is a religious thing. Dad doesn't ever go to church so why would I bother celebrating a holiday with him that he doesn't celebrate. C'mon now mum!" OK.

I've been marking assignments for the last 5 days, and am now counting down to the finals next week. Yippee Nearly done. These students have produced some amazing products. I should have had them do half my work for me. Next year!