Words we rarely say

My sisters and I are close. We don't hide anything, we don't spare each other's feelings when we need to get something off our chest. But it seems as though we rarely take the time to utter the positive words brewing in our brains.

I am immensely proud of my youngest sister.

If you recall, I posted this letter to my youngest sister about 18 months ago.

Now, she is a fully (mostly) self-sufficient adult*. She loves her work and is fantastic at her job. On top of that, she seems to be finally understanding the meaning of budget and financial planning. I never thought I would say those words about her!

She is a part of the social committee at said work (I think she heads up the committee) and organizes charity fund raisers and so on. She has a wonderful man in her life, who supports her in everything she does and who grounds her in reality and humour. And she supports him, even when things seem not so great (he was recently laid off - a sign of the times, in this case). Now I cannot wait for them to get married so that I can stop calling him my favourite brother-in-common-law.

I am also deeply proud of my other sister.

She took a bold leap, quit her job (which paid well, but she loathed) and decided to take the plunge and go back to school to get an animal biology degree. This involved uprooting her and her husband, moving 500 km away, taking upgrading courses just to get into university, and working part time to support her nasty schooling habit. All the while, she has aced every course she tackled. I think she got 97% on her Chemistry 101 final. That or 100%. I cannot keep her ridiculously high grades straight. She is definitely heading towards a scholarship. All the while, she still manages to keep the glimmer of hope alive that she will, someday, provide my children with cousins. I will keep all my baby gear just for you, my sweets.

I love you, Talia & Stef. I am so proud of both of you.

Now make babies, k?

* I say mostly because she still calls me every friggin time she makes scotch meatloaves, even though I have given her the recipe numerous times, and it is posted on my blog.

No sympathy from this corner

My husband is out of town for a work-related conference.  I am thus left with the boys: a 2-year-old who doesn't know how to sleep and a 10 month old with a nasty-ass cough.

He called me yesterday, telling me how tired he was.

"Why?"

"Oh,  we were partying until 2:30 in the morning. Then we had to wake up at six."

"Was the party in your room?"

"No."

"Well, then you could have left and went to sleep.  No sympathy from me.  You want to know how my night was?"

"How bad was it?"

"Kees woke up at 11:30, Sacha woke up at 3:30, Kees woke up at 5:20, Sacha woke up at 6, then I slept in his bed until 8:00 when we all woke up."

Then he told me he had to go  because the taxi taking them all to the dinner theater was leaving.

Bite me.  I feel so bad for you.

One week and I haven't died yet

We are one week into Lent 2009.

For those of you who know absolutely NOTHING about Lent, it is a time when Christians are called to reflect on their lives and sacrifice/fast in the way Jesus did for 40 days in the desert, where he was tempted by Satan.  Lent is over at Easter.  Although if you add up the total number of days from Ash Wednesday to the beginning of the Triduum (the 3 days encompassing Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday), you don't get 40. You get 45.  Many people say that this allows you to cheat on Sundays (of which there are 5 in lent).  In fact, every Sunday is a mini-Easter, and a celebration of the resurrection, even during Lent.  So if you cheat on Sundays and indulge in your chocolate mini eggs (which I gave up one year and thoroughly regretted), you won't go to hell.

This year, however, I am not cheating at all.  No Sunday sneaking.

I gave up Facebook for Lent.

The moment I realized that I was a crackbook addict was when a good friend of mine changed his relationship status, thus making me think that he had split up with his girlfriend of 2 years and that he never told me about it. How could he do that??  I had just talked to him and he never mentioned anything!  This is insane!  So I sent him a quick note asking what was going on.  He told me that they are still together.  They just decided that people take FB way too seriously and that they would remove that sort of personal information from their pages.  I am obviously one of these people, as I actually thought that he would announce his breakup to the world on FB and neglect to tell me in person about such a serious change in his life.

I thought that deactivating my account would be difficult, but it has proved to be a relief.  No more inbox full of notifications, no more obsessively checking for photos or updates from my friends.  I have been back into regular old knitting and reading, and talking to people on the good old telephone, which suits me just fine. I am now contemplating whether or not I will even reactivate my account when Lent is over.

So for now, you won't find me on FB.  I won't be posting photos of the kids or of the fantastic time I had at my step-brother's wedding (first time we left the kids EVER).  I'll be enjoying my life in the real world.  And here in real life to talk to you about it.

Happy Birthday, I'm Sorry

It was my husband's birthday yesterday.  I may have let the ball drop a little.