Jacob's Thoughts on My Career

Yesterday Jacob and I had a nice mother/son chat about my career.  This came about because Jacob wants us to stay in Grand Bend and I was explaining to him that a major problem with this area is lack of job prospects for me.  He suggested that I started up my own 'little' business, when I asked him what it would involve he informed me that there is a demand for house cleaners around here.  Do you think 2 degrees in Archaeology would be useful for that?  I told him that I didn't think that would be for me because I get bored cleaning my own house so any more might be too much.  He gave this some thought before deciding that I could be a school janitor, that way I could turn off the fire alarm after fire drill and I couldn't possibly be bored then!

Enough of that, it's too depressing.  Today I went for a walk on the frozen planet Hoth and remembered my camera.  This is where we swam all summer.

If you look really hard you can just make out the lake in the distance, and probably the odd polar bear.

Shame, it was probably the perfect day for one.

New Hairdo

I always feel like I've brought the circus to town when we go to the hairdressers, it is a small salon and seems even smaller when filled with Jacob and Rose trying to outdo each other in the noise and smart departments.  It was fairly calm today, Susan was prepared and gave them both a rather fetching pen to keep them occupied, the flamingos on the top light up when you write, very cool.  I wonder if Jacob will take his to school.

So here is the newly shorn boy.

And here are the pens.  Don't ask about the dressing gowns, they were pretending to be robots called Zog and Electron.  I would ask what sort of robots wear dressing gowns but I think it may be the sort who aspire to be brightly coloured emos.

A Week in One Sitting

Fancy that, I took a week off so now I shall give a brief summary of anything of interest that has happened.  Not much really and somehow it seems even more uneventful from a distance, anyway here we go.

Jacob and Rose got their report cards from school.  Rose got UD (usually demonstrates) and CD (consistently demonstrates) in all her 'subjects' examples of which are 'follows one- and two-step directions in different contexts' (shame she doesn't for me) and 'uses specialized vocabulary for a variety of purposes', I wonder if this included shooter-lasers, toilet monsters and 'the force' as it does at home.  Jacob got As and A+s in everything except PhysEd for which he got a B- and I think that was for joining in!  So well done children.

I finished 16 blocks of a quilt top and thought I'd broken the ancient sewing machine, I think it maybe overheated a bit as it seems fine now.  Here's the unfinished top without sashing, it looks a bit like a very rustic Mondrian but its supposed to represent Southern Ontario, specifically around Petrolia and Forest, as seen on the satellite view from google maps.

On Friday Gary came back from his trip to Seattle and on Sunday it was Tom's birthday so Gary minded two super excited, Grandpa deprived children while we went out for lunch.  We had an excellent lunch in a local pub where they were selling Boddingtons, Old Speckled Hen and Hobgolin beers by the bottle and used the word 'butty' to refer to a sandwich on the menu, if they'd had mushy peas I might have risked it with those great British credentials.

No interesting photos except this one of Rose wearing my clothes.

Jacob is getting his hair cut tomorrow for the first time since October so tune in for a before and after.

Winter

Well it's snowing again, that's getting pretty dull now isn't it.  So far I've enjoyed winter over here, I don't think it's been a particularly bad one but neither has it been a non-winter like last year. Since Boxing Day we've not really been without a sprinkling of snow but the house is warm and now we all have the right outside wear its just fine.

I think the big difference between here and the UK is that they are excellent at keeping the roads open, at least in this area anyway, and businesses are also very good at ensuring that their car parks and pavements are safe.  It makes life much easier if your car isn't snowed in, up a side road when the county council runs out of grit, especially when you've only got 5 nappies left.

Yesterday was Family Day which is a bank holiday here.  I googled it to see if it has some interesting historic origins but it seems to have been invented by the Governor of Alberta in 1990 because there was no other statutory holiday in February, whatever I suppose.

In Grand Bend it was also the annual winter carnival this weekend.  We accidentally saw the parade while sitting at traffic lights in the car, it was quite strange and seemed to consist mostly of firemen, people in lion costumes and pick up trucks with step ladders in the back.  Rose's 'only wish' was to go on a very cold horse and carriage ride in a blizzard which made me glad that cars have been invented, especially ones with heated seats.  Rose thought it was brilliant and was the only person who responded when the driver asked if there were any questions, she wanted to know where the horses went to bed and was amazed by the idea that they sleep outside in summer.

Goldie and June

A Walk on the Beach

We went for a walk on the front in Grand Bend today.  The views were fab so I'm going to inundate you with photos, at least you won't have to listen to me wittering on.  This is the beach from the viewing platform, all those little people were having a game of football, brrr.

This is looking the other way, that white stuff is where the lake should be.

Here's the pier.

It was enclosed by pack ice.

Despite their best efforts the children did not fall in.

Jacob and Rose found a 'volcano', guess what happens next...

The magma chamber was very deep and Rose had to be rescued.

It was very, very cold but Rose could not understand why the splash pad was not working.  Jacob told her it would be too cold in her bathing suit so she said she'd wear her tankini instead.  The obvious answer.  When we got back to the car I got an overwhelming urge to eat proper, greasy, English fish and chips with too much salt out of folded newspaper.  I think it must have been triggered by the idea of swim suits on the beach in sub zero temperatures reminding me of Scarborough (the English one) at the height of the summer season.

Happy Valentines

So here is another native custom that is different over here, Valentines Day seems to be a sort of friendship day for children.  I had prior warning but I kind of ignored the lists of who's in who's class that we got from school last week, this was a mistake as it seems that the giving of valentines to all your classmates, be they girl or boy, is vital until you are about 10.

I discovered this truth on Wednesday morning so Rose and I hastily made a lovely card out of hearts cut from a floral calendar, she wrote her name 'Roze' (very rock and roll) on it and I photocopied it until we had the required number.  She brought home this big bag of stuff, there were presents and sweets and all sorts in it.

Jacob insisted that he didn't need to send cards and was the only child in his class who didn't, oh dear, I know to nag him about it properly next year.  Not giving didn't stop him receiving though.

This is all a far cry from the furtive, teenage 'secret, but really I want you to know' cards I recall from growing up, only the 2 prettiest, most popular girls in class ever got any and it was very important to not care when you didn't.  My only proper Valentine was from Jimmy Nail (It's ok Jimmy, I know it wasn't really from you) The romantic rhyme in it is so good that I still have it.

Perhaps now it has been recorded for posterity I can throw it in the bin.  As you can see I cleared out all my unnecessary stuff very efficiently before I exported all my worldly goods to Canada.

Little Clothes

Today I cracked, I could not bear all the plastic flesh shown off by Barbie's micro-mini any longer so I made her some warm winter clothes out of Rose's cast offs.

How come she has a chaise and I don't?

You may recognize the leggings, I think they looked better on Rose but it has to be said that Barbie looks less like Rod Stewart.  I was fairly gutted that Rose didn't remember them, she wore them so much they got a hole in the crotch, still, it's probably for the best as there may well have been floods of tears about cutting up her lost, favourite trousers.

While I was sewing all the tiny seems and cursing mildly under my breath I remembered Mum making Sindy clothes for us when we were young, she used to do it in the evening so when we got up in the morning Sindy would be posed somewhere in an entirely new outfit.  There was a knee length full skirt worn with knee boots that I particularly liked.  It was quite magical the way they just appeared, like the elves and the shoemaker or the tooth fairy but probably tired-er.

Big Clothes and Little Shoes

Since we moved to Canada I have not bought many new clothes.  I am not a shopaholic at the best of times but the combination of living quite remotely (by my standards if not Canadian ones) and not having got a handle on where to buy things has brought shopping for clothes pretty much to a complete stand still.  The problem is that there is no Next here (or M&S) where all my wardrobe staples came from or La Redoute/Boden where I could get loads of stuff in the post, try it on and send it all back.  As a result I am reduced to wearing the same 3 long sleeved tops in rotation with the same, rather boring but warm blue fleece on top.

On Sunday I decided that was enough and as the weather was warm and the roads were clear we headed down to Sarnia after curling.  Unfortunately/predictably, I came back with nothing, I really have to sort this shopping thing out.

The children did much better, Jacob spent his poster winnings (and a sub from us) on a new logic puzzle DS game.  Here he is in his slightly sock smelling room with his animals solving mysteries in the dark.

Rose got her first Barbie.  Urgh, I was hoping that I could avoid the whole Barbie thing, she's so girlie and pink and generally impossible (I mean Barbie but realise that describes Rose too) and I have to work really hard to participate in playing dolls.  However, I suppose we have to have someone the right size to live in the Doll house with all the robots and small labradors.  Besides, 'everybody else has one' and Rose is not someone who likes to be different.  So here they are, obviously a celebratory outfit was necessary.

And look at these aspirational shoes, it's no wonder the world is going to the dogs.

Oh No Not More Snow

I'm all written out this week what with sewing machines and spaghetti squashes so here are a few photos just to prove that the storm they forecast hit.  As you can sort of see, we had about 9" of snow.

It was almost up to the top of my snow boots and Rose could hardly walk through it, she played 'page' to Jacob's Wenceslas.

It was not good packing snow so we built a fort by piling snow up against the fence and some trees with shovels.  Rose got bored.

I hope no one was checked into the chalet as nobody came to dig them out.

I decided against a picnic lunch.

Possible Snow, Sewing and More Excitement

Today we are waiting with baited breath for another Alberta Clipper to blow through.  This time though its special as it will be colliding with a wet low pressure system from Texas and apparently this means lots of snow, up to 25 cm overnight.  I bought a snow shovel!

I have been doing quite a bit of sewing this week with a sewing machine I borrowed from Gary.  I have to confess that I was a bit taken aback when I first set eyes on it and wondered if I would be able to get anything done.  Here is Jacob modelling it for me.

Is that an alien growing out of his head? no wonder he's so smart

It is a Singer 185j and was built (proudly in Canada) between 1958 and 1962 and I am enjoying using it immensely.  It is remarkably quiet and sews a very nice straight seam.  Working in the bowels of the basement in a windowless room, close to the furnace is a bit like doing a spot of sewing under Sauron's Tower in Middle Earth.  It's dim with no natural light and periodically the furnace goes on and makes weird roaring, clunking and groaning noises, I keep expecting newly birthed Orcs to come wandering past.  I wonder what part of my brain thinks immediately of Orcs and not Aragorn or Sean Bean and what that says about my state of mind.

Finally, here is Rose this afternoon when I told her I have organized dance classes for her starting this weekend and that her friend Lillian will be there too.

not quite as exciting as ice skates but pretty close

Interesting Vegetables

The 'Interesting' in the title of this blog is slightly misleading so if veg isn't your thing stop reading now.  Grocery shopping is different over here, pretty much all the same stuff is available but at different prices and in different and sometimes odd-seeming packaging.  I can even buy hugely expensive Marmite if I look hard enough.

In the fresh veg section there is a variety of stuff in colours that I've not seen in the UK, runner beans and courgettes regularly come in yellow and tomatoes come in yellow and orange.  In September there was a glut of neat stuff like Corn on the cob in brown and yellow, a vast variety of squashes and pumpkins and boxes of heritage tomatoes some of which were really weird in colour and shape.

Anyhow, last week I bought a spaghetti squash as a carb-free alternative for me on pasta night.  It looks like a honey dew melon on the outside and when you cut it open it seems just like a regular squash.

But turn it upside down on an oiled pan, bake it for 40 minutes, fluff it gently with a fork and some sort of magic happens and it turns into string.

How cool is that! It didn't taste of anything much but I put sauce on it anyway so whatever.  Even if it had been horrible I'd have cooked it again just for the 'Ta dah' moment.

Princess Ice Skates

I wasn't intending to blog today but out of the blue this morning Tom decided to go out and kit himself up for ice skating.  He also got a pair of adjustable Disney princess skates for Rose.  This might seem grossly unfair but Jacob had been offered a pair this week and said he didn't want to try it, obviously he has now changed his mind so we'll be getting some for him next weekend.

I don't think I've seen anyone as excited about anything before in my life, she was hopping about the kitchen shrieking uncontrollably, "are they for me?", "are they Rose's skates?", "can we go skating?", "did you buy an ice rink?", "when are we going?"  So off we all went to the pond near the club house and here she is.

I think it was a bit of a disappointment as she couldn't do it straight away and by the time we left she was never going to skate again.  Oh Dear.  I will look up how to teach your child to skate tips on google and we'll be off out again tomorrow.  Then next week Jacob and I will get skates and either the ice will melt or the injuries will begin!

Happy Groundhog Day

So today is Groundhog Day and despite its German/American origins Canadians have also got 3 weather predicting rodents.  In Nova Scotia there is Shubenacadie (pronounced ['ʃuːbə'nækədiː] hope that helps) Sam, out on the prairies there is Winnipeg Willow and our local groundhog is Wiarton Willie up on Georgian Bay.

Here are today's predictions...
Shubenacadie Sam saw his shadow so winter will continue for a further 6 weeks.
At the 3 day festival in his honour (there's not much to do up there in the winter) Wiarton Willie came out so Spring is on its way, although apparently his record is not good (37 percent correct) so who knows.
Winnipeg Willow went to a Mountain Equipment Corporation to make her prediction, I hope she got free snow boots and a tent for her promotional efforts, and also predicted an early spring.

Reading about Groundhog Day has been disappointing as I can find nothing to suggest that some sort of magic makes the day happen over and over again so I cannot use this as a tool for behaviour manipulation with the children, I would have to watch the film to figure it out and I'm not sure I could bear it.  I did discover that it is Candlemas Day which is the mid point between the shortest day and the Spring Equinox and traditionally considered to be the middle of winter, obviously this explains why you need to turn to 'wiley, furry prognosticators' (todays Globe and Mail) to find out how much more snow is on its way.

Which leads me to how grateful I am that today my vocabulary has been enriched by the word 'prognosticate' which is apparently what groundhogs do.  What a great word, I prognosticate that I shall be finding ways of slipping it into everyday use over the next little while until it drives Tom and the children absolutely bonkers.