I'm a big ball of random

Coming up to Easter time, there are a lot of chocoalte bunnies around. Every time I see one THIS SONG rolls through my head. I thought of finding the video on YouTube to share with you (cause I'm generous like that!) and found that there was quite the controversy with this song. They made it, took out a line ("I don't love my mom or my dad, just the bunny") and then apparently still got flack, so made a "New and improved" version. And then YouTube commenters are all up in arms: "What, you change evil a bit and then it's ok? It's still idolatry!" Wha?

Anyhoo.

The mostly original version:


The New and Improved version (and can I say... I LOVE JEAN CLAUDE!)



Well, I'm off to eat the bunny....

(um, no really. My mom gave me a dark lindt bunny on Tuesday. I'm having his ears for breakfast.Hence why I was thinking of this song...)

Baby Tristan! *Updated with a link to more pics!*

My very bestest friend in the whole wide world's three beautiful boys! Mattias (3 years, 2 months), Keiran (16.5 months), and Tristan (four days as of today!). Mmmm, I love these kiddies SO MUCH! Don't you just want to smoosh their little cheekies? (click either pic to embiggen) More pics are here.

Nuttin' much *updated!*

Ah, procrastination is a wonderful thing. What? Leave me alone, it's Friday afternoon, the kidlets are gone, I just went for a run and finished my lunch! And I have to let my brain settle before I start report cards (which are due today and I've barely started. Eek.)!

So it's official. February was a suckity month for blogging on my end. I blame LG, the company that made my shoddy monitor. I'm in a bit of a pickle now, cause on Wednesday morning I called them to find out where the heck my monitor was (no, not the one they shipped to Winnipeg, the one that sent me after that. Attempt number... what, 4? at getting a working monitor?). Turns out there was no record of that one, either, so they set up yet ANOTHER exchange. I got the email that it had shipped yesterday while I was at work. Hooray! Aaaand then when I got home I had a computer monitor waiting for me where I pick up my mail. Um. Turns out the one that went to Winnipeg made it to my house after all. Hehehe.... whoops! Sooooo... now I have another one coming, too. GAK! (I'll see which is the better one - I might be getting a new model instead of a repaired one - and just keep the better one! Ha!)

Watch, I'll plug in this new one and find out it was never the monitor after all, but a dying video card. Yipes.

But really... enough about that. That's boring.

GUESS WHAT???

um....

OK, it's not that exciting, but I'm excited about it, so YAY ME! I decided a few months ago to train for the Vancouver Sun Run, which is a 10 km (6.2 miles) race that happens in April. I've never run 10k in my life and, er, I had become somewhat of a slug over the last six months. In ability and... shape. Ew. But I'm loving the training now and can't wait till my run days! Hehe, I'm such a nerd. I'm already looking past the 10k and wondering if maybe .... MAAAAYBEEEE I might - MIGHT - potentially train for a half marathon in the fall. ACK!!!! That is probably T-H-E craziest thing I have ever said IN! MY! LIFE! But I wanna do it, mostly because I've always thought I never could.

I kinda have this thing about doing things I never thought I could. I love proving myself wrong and challenging myself to new heights, blahbitty blahbitty blah. For example...

Climbing black tusk? Done.
Grouse Grind? Done.
Learning to dance? Done. (and doing!)
Boot camp? Done.
10k race? In progress.
Half marathon? AAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Anyway. That's the plan. I'm looking forward to it!

In other news, Thursday afternoon held one of the cutest things I've seen in a very long time at school - the grade one and two dance show! My class and the other grade one class and grade two class have been doing dance together every Thursday afternoon for about 6 weeks. Last week I taught them all a few dance moves like step slides and that crazy thing where you put your hands on your knees, open and close your knees, and cross and uncross your arms. This week we did a review of all the moves they'd learned and let them get into groups and make up their own dance. It was pretty much a gong show, but in the cute kind of way. Six and seven year olds - especially the boys! - aren't so great at organizing themselves, but they were having fun dancing to the music.

After about 10 minutes, we all had everyone sit down on the gym floor and each group got to perform their dance up on the stage. I played them one minute of the Macarena and they danced their little hearts out! The girls were all in little circles holding hands or in a little line copying each other and they boys were doing the crazy uncoordinated spins on their backs. One group had so much kicking and flailing that I honestly thought somebody was gonna get a kick in the face. There were no casualties, and the other teachers and I were just cracking up at how into it they all were. I'm a dumb dumb and didn't bring a camera, so we're going to do it again next week and video tape it so they can see themselves on TV! And cause it was so darn cute we want to see it again! Cause it's all about making them dance for our own entertainment! tee hee!

Oh gosh. It's nearly three o'clock! I guess I really should get something done in my classroom, hey? Dang report cards! I DON'T WANNA!

*UPDATE*

It's now 5:51 and I still haven't started reports. But wowiee, my class is the cleanest it's been in a loooong time! And really, it needed to be done. I haven't been able to see my desk or teacher table in weeks! Now I've actually got SPACE to work!

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

[PS. Please don't point out how pathetic it is that I'm at school at ten to six on a Friday night, and probably will be here till about 8. I know. It's baaaad. I blame report cards. And the messy eleves. And politicians (cause hey, EVERYTHING's their fault!).

Huh? What's that sound? You screaming at me to get to work? ok, OK OK!!!

RIGHT NOW!

Right this very minute as I type my very bestest freind in the whole wide world is having her baby #3!!! If he's half as cute as hit two big brothers, this world's gonna be in some big trouble! :) Welcome to the world, Tristan!

Uhg

I was gonna write a more meaningful post today, but my monitor is (still) broken (again) and keeps blinding me in the face. It's making com - (arg! blinded!) - puter using extrememly frustrating, which is part of the reason I've not been out to visit y'all lately. My old one kept going black. I'd turn it off then on again, and it would work for precicely one second before it went black. Then I got a replacement (yay for warranties, I think) and the r - (arg! blinded!) - eplacement one goes totally white after thirty seconds or so. Longer if it's been off for a while, shorter if it's been on) Off, then on, then I've got 30 more seconds to do what I have to do. Thirty times the usage, but the flash of light, then dark, then light in my eyes twice a minute gives m - (arg! blinded!) - e headaches. Good thing I've got more computer work than EVER I have to get done soon - report cards, big power point presentation, handout booklet for a big unit for my class and two others... ugh! (arg! blinded!)

I DID actually call them and have them send my a third monitor, but they managed to ship it to somewhere - (arg! blinded!) - in Manitoba instead of to me. Good times. Apparently there's a NEW, not refurbished, different model on it's way and should be here supposedly sometime next week. Till then I'm stuck with this baby. (arg! blinded!)

Whine whine whine. And yes, I'd like some cheese with it. Mmmm. Cheese. I've kinda inadvertently stopped eating it - partly for health, partly cause I just need to go shopping. I miss it.

What? OK, craziest post ever. (arg! blinded!)

The good news? It's been clear and sunny for four days in a row, and I love it! I went out to Lighthouse Park with a friend on Sunday and wandered around - it was glorio - (arg! blinded!) - s.

ok, that's it. I've gotta get off this thing before I get another full day long headache. Have a happy day!

(choosing labels when, you guessed it - arg! blinded!)

On a primary teacher's desk

- yellow squishy ball with a happy face
- hastily scrawled day plan for Monday
- broken popscicle stick with a student's name on it
- bag of mixed nuts to curb that pang of hunger late after school
- gold glitter glue
- a stack of notes from students over the past week
- 7 bits of confiscated lego
- pink plastic jem/"wishing stone"
- 4 plastic baskets
- growing stack of paper in the "I'll deal with it later" pile
- bumble bee pen
- message from a student's doctor to call him
- sheet of half used heart stickers
- jar of pencils
- stack of Scholastic order forms
- baby gift for a teacher about to go on mat leave
- bag of Valentine cards for a support worker who's been away
- stack of reading strategy cards to photocopy
- digestive cookies for a student who regularly comes to school without breakfast
- random strip of red cellophane
- magic wand
- three pennies
- a whistle
- my tired head wishing I could have a nap!

Make of it what you will

Happy Valentine's Day!

Crazy cool!

So I just ordered myself a brand new waterproof digital camera - FOR FREE! Go Airmiles! I'm so excited! FOR FREE!!! And, just as I was about to go to bed, I got an email from a staff member at the international Town and Country magazine who wants to use some of my Paris photos in a travel feature they're doing!

What?!?! SO COOL! I'm still skeptical, but I think it's for real! (ok, so I know that's an oxymoron, but whatever!) Wowie! Neatarama!

Bitter beans and washing machines

I have never been a coffee drinker. I've always thought it was foul stuff, and did my best to avoid all forms of it: in ice cream, in desserts, in candies, and in the ever-popular liquid form.

This fact explains why I recoiled in disgust when, last August in the San Fransisco airport, I ordered a chocolate caramel frappucino but without the coffee, and they forgot the "without the coffee" bit. One sip and BLECH! "Uhm, excuse me, I ordered this without coffee," I politely told the barrista, who fixed me a new one right away.

But as that one mouthful of frappucino sank into my tastebuds, I realized, "Hey, actually, that's not half bad..." I was halfway through my complaint to the barrista when it occurred to me, so I felt like a bit of a dweeb. The drink I ended up getting, in fact, was kind of gross, and way too sweet.

So I decided to give it another shot when I got home and tried out Starbucks' caramel mocha frappucino with only half the regular amount of coffee and an extra pump of chocolate. (Don't yell at me about the sugar/fat content, I know, I know!) And you know what? It was not bad! So for the rest oft he summer, that became my drink of choice. I even got daring on a warm September day and nixed the extra pump of chocolate.

And that was the end of me and coffee for a while. "I'll enjoy a treat every now and then, but I'll never be a full on coffee drinker," I told myself. Especially not one of those people whose drink orders take three minutes to rattle off and use up every square and then some on the side of their cup.

But then Christmas came along, and what with all of Starbucks' specialty drinks, I decided to give it another go. Grande peppermint mocha, with only one shot of espresso and an extra pump of chocoalte and extra pump of peppermint. Zah-ZING, was that ever a sugar high! I could barely taste the coffee. Perfect!

For Christmas, I got two twenty dollar Starbucks cards, so I treated myself to my cup of sugary goodness way more than I usually would have (hey! can't say no to free!), and eventually weaned myself off the extra pumps. But no way no how was I about to go all double shot. Blah!

At one point, I tried a regular cup of coffee at a workshop I was at, but smuggled in a pack of hot chocolate mix and stirred that into the cup. One sip told me it was not for me. Too bitter! TOOO BITTERRR!

But then, one day, with my clearly non-coffee drinker bumbling ordering skills - I ordered my peppermint mocha and forgot to specify the one shot. It was bitter, but you know... not entirely bad.

This continued for a few weeks as I slowly got accustomed to the ever-increasing taste of coffe in my otherwise lovely drink.

And then today, standing at the counter for the first visit to a Starbucks on my way to work (do we sense an addiction develloping here, folks?), I heard myslef: "Hi, I'd like a grandenonfatnowhipextrahotpeppermintmochawithextrafoam please."

And even though when they told me that they were out of peppermint syrup, I panicked and asked for an extra pump of chocolate instead ("... um, actually, make that two!"), I realized that I have officially become a coffee drinker.

Or have ALMOST become a coffee drinker. I'm pretty sure real coffee drinkers don't slosh their drinks all over themselves EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. they get in or out of the car.

I guess there's always room for some progress. Let's just hope there's also room in the wash!

Sigh.

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

How I celebrated

Buah ha haaaa! OK, not really. Melissa made this picture for me (by yoinking a pic from my Flickr and applying her mad skillz to it!) and it totally cracks me up! As if the original picture wasn't crazy enough!

I can't tell you just yet how I celebrated - it involves another blog post I don't have time to write right now. But here's a hint: that series is called Rebirth for a reason!

The shaft

As in, I totally got it! :P

"All three of my babies were born on special days," my mom likes to say. My brother was born on Thanksgiving. My sister was born on Epiphany. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? But me? I got GROUNDHOG DAY.

The Day of the Rodent.

Oh well, me and Punxatawney Phil will really be livin' it up today! Woohoo! *giggle!*

Rebirth, part four: Closed

[ If you're new around here, check out installments one, two and three of Rebirth to make a little more sense of this entry! ]

It was January 15, 2006. I was on a huge high from buying my new (to me) and issue-free car after my Beastmobile got munched. I called my mom to tell her about my car, and she mentioned a teeny weenie little announcement in their church bulletin: "Due to geological concerns, Camp Kawkawa will be closing down at the end of January." And with that, my high came crashing down. That was it. No more information, no warning, nothing. Closed.

I found out a week later at the farewell that the camp had had a geological survey done in hopes that the 20 year building ban on the site would finally be lifted and that they could finally expand and build, having acquired the evidence that the site was indeed safe from landslide risks and other geological activity. It turned out that the survey found just the opposite, and that there was absolutely nothing the camp could do. It's not like they ran out of money and just needed a big fundraising drive. No, the mountain might fall down. Who's gonna send their kids? Any takers?

Hands were absolutely tied, and everyone - in complete shock - made the decision to close the camp.

Armed with a mighty stash of kleenex, I attended the farewell. I took part in some of the activities, but then went off on my own and walked the site. From waterfront to dining hall to field to campfire to cabins to chalets to archery and riflery, to heibertisme, and finally to campfire. Every square inch of that place held vivid memories for me. Some fun, some painful, some deeply profound. I stopped in each place, for each memory, and cried. But I also prayed, committing those memories, those people, that place to God. It was all His, anyway.


Finally pulling myself together, I went back to the dining hall for the last function that would ever be held there. I remember it as a place that was filled with life - sunlight streaming in, the lake glistening down below, the ear-splitting din of a hundred kids eating and laughing and (more often than not) banging cups and plates and utensils, counsellors doing all manner of wacky things to get their hands on a much-appreciated piece of mail. The dining hall was alive in my memory, but on this day, a frosty, gloomy, January day, that life was dimmed. It was good to see people I hadn't seen in years, but, like at a dear friend's funeral, you wished you weren't seeing them under those circumstances. We hugged, we cried, we prayed. We shared memories and photos, and reassured each other that Kawkawa wasn't really the place, but the people, and that it would never truly be gone. And we only half believed it.

And then we sang. Amidst the sorrow, we worshipped. We didn't understand why God was allowing this to happen. Why God would let such a place used for His glory, such a powerful ministry, come to such a sudden and sad end. But still we knew that God is good, and that He had a plan. If He would let Kawkawa close, surely He had something better in mind, though none of us could imagine what. But we continued to sing.

One song hit me hard. Did I really believe what I was singing?

Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name
And blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be your name

Every blessing You pour out I'll
Turn back to praise
And when the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's "all as it should be"
Blessed be You name
And blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out I'll
Turn back to praise
And when the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name
Really? Could I really sing "Blessed be your name?" Really? And then came the words, like a punch in the gut:

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say,
Lord blessed be Your name
Through my tears I pleaded. "Lord, you gave us this camp. WHY now do you take it away? We've just renovated the chapel, we've just done all this work on the grounds. We have to turn a hundred kids away every summer. Why? WHY now do you yank this way from us? Help me. Help my heart choose to bless your name now. Cause I don't understand. I know you have a plan, somehow, but I just don't get it."

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord blessed be your name...
I drove the two hour drive home alone. I couldn't get that refrain from my head. That, and the words "Closed." "Over." "Empty." "Gone." What would happen to the buildings? Would they just be left to waste away? I pictured the forest taking over, moss growing on the roofs, the walls rotting away. "You give and take away, you give and take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name." Could they sell the land? Who could buy it? It's not like they could build houses there, with the geological risks. What would camp become? "Closed." "Over." "Empty." "Gone." I thought of my conversation with Paulette, a beloved year-round staff person there. We both simply could not picture that once noisy, boisterous waterfront quiet. Still. "You give and take away." I thought about how I had always dreamed I would send my own children there one day. "Closed." "Over." "Empty." "Gone." I arrived home absolutely emotionally wrecked. While it was good to have a chance to say a proper 'goodbye,' it was among the saddest days of my life.

I cried every day after that for at least two weeks, and then sporadically for a few months after that. It honestly felt like a death. It's the hardest thing to describe, but that place, those people... the impact that camp had on my life... I couldn't believe it was over.

Time, as it does, eventually took the intensity of emotion away, but Kawkawa was still on my mind a lot. I began a website where people could write in with their memories, tell stories of their time there, acknowledge people who had made an impact on their lives, and write about the ways their life was impacted by their time at camp. It was my way of keeping camp alive, of doing something to deal with what felt like the loss of an incredibly significant part of my childhood and my spiritual development. Slowly, over the period of about a year, I came to grips with the fact that Camp Kawkawa - my haven, my "God place," my was gone for good.

I remember telling God that day that he had sure better have a bigger plan. Cause this plan sucked...

Hillary: A whole new brand of crazy

That it. I've officially snapped. Lost it. Flipped my lid. Cracked. Gone cookoo.

I went to Superstore tonight and blew my entire month's budget on groceries (it's so CHEAP here! OOH, I need that! Wow, I can stock up on this!). I have had two days of parent teacher conferences on top of being out nearly every (or is it every?) night over the last 8 or 9 days. I've been getting waaaay to little sleep. And tonight I went crazy.

I love yogurt. L-O-V-E. It's one of God's gifts to mankind, and I have been known to eat an entire container in one sitting. And it was cheap at Superstore. So I bought a lot. Six tubs, to be exact. And two tubs of cottage cheese. Have I mentioned that I live by myself? Seriously, if ever I become lactose intolerant I will cry forever.

I got home, and I was really tired and my feet hurt and I was cold (it's been freezing here the last few days, and I was in a skirt, so yeah, chilly), so I whipped off my boots and socks and put on my cozy PJ pants and pink fuzzy slippers. But I kept my coat on, cause well, it was warm.

Then I called my friend Jason. He's really quite nice, despite what that picture might tell you. We were chatting, I was putting away my groceries, and talking about how I MIGHT have overdone it in the dairy department - which, coincidentally, I'm pretty sure doesn't have it's very own herd of cows in the back, so why did it smell like a farm? No, really. It reeked of cow a$$. Grody.

Anyhoo, I was proclaiming my love for yogurt when I knocked one of the containers off the counter and it landed SPLAT on the floor. Hardly any spilled (hooray!) but the container split away from the rim. So clearly it had to be eaten down so no yogurt would ooze out while it was in the fridge. So in between sentences I gulped down about 3/4 of the container. Hey, I was hungry! OK, not really, I have an addiction. I need help. I was making fun of myself and my affinity for fruit flavoured milky goodness to Jason when I decided that I really should remove myself from the source of dairy temptation.

Of course, woofing down mass quantities of yogurt in record speed is not so good for the stomach, and all of a sudden I felt really really full. Which struck me as rather funny. So I laughed. "Oooh, I'm so full! I ate too much yogurt! My poor tummy!"

Well, apparently this registered in my over-tired burned out brain as HIH-LAAAAWIOUS and I totally cracked up. A lot.

And then I started laughing because I was laughing. And then I started laughing harder. And then harder. And then harder.

"Oh...
No...
I..........
Think....................
I've............
Officially.............
Cra.....a.....a.......cked!"

I wheezed to Jason through my hysterics. And then my wheezing was funny, so I laughed some more. Then my ribs started to hurt cause I was laughing so hard, so I laughed some more (trying to ignore the nervous laughter from the other end of the phone...which also made me laugh some more.)

There was no stopping me. For at LEAST five minutes I was rolling around on my bed laughing at my laughter, tears STREAMING down my face (apparently my new mascara is not waterproof, as evidenced from the tracks of brown-black down my cheeks), wheezing a few sentences into the phone.

I finally regained enough composure to actually walk somewhere and do something other than laugh my guts out and I clicked through a link on a blog post to this. Which made me nearly blow Jason's ear out as the laughing fit started all over again. (Why did I think a good thing to do while trying to escape a lughing fit while on the phone would be to check a blog? Who knows. It's not like I was thinking clearly!)

I finally calmed down and went to take a look at myself. Eyes red and puffy from laugh-crying so hard, mascara streaks down my face, small bit of yogurt on my upper lip (apparently I missed?). Puffy winter coat, baby blue flannel PJ pants covered in sheep, and pink fuzzy slippers. Hiccuping insanely from the marathon laughing fit.

Nooooo, THAT'S not the picture of a lunatic at ALL.

Heh. heh. *eye twitches* Heh.

Dancy Dance

I guess times are tough for Elijah Wood after the Lord Of The Rings trilogy ended...

Sah-WEET!

Oh how I love a productive Saturday!

A big goal over the Christmas holidays was "Operation Get Rid Of Lots Of Stuff." Like, furniture, and recycling, and rubbermaid storage bins in my room, and old computer junk, and stuff like that. So I got all in a tizzy and hauled all the stuff that was previously being stored in my room and other nooks and crannies out into a big ol' giant pile in my living room, to be driven off with glee to the various places it all needed to go.

And then my car died, effectively halting my ability to haul stuff around.

So there it all sat in my living room. For nearly three weeks. That is, until last night when I had a complete and total dance geek party party of awesomeness in which I invited a bunch of dance friends over and we mocked watched the DVDs from Sea To Sky, the dance convention we all went to back in October. (I say mocked because they are the most poorly made DVDs I have ever seen. No scene selection, only snippets of the dances, bad sound, weird angles that don't allow you to see, I dunno, the DANCERS. Gah. Don't even get me started. Ok, so I started already. Whatever! They're better than nothing, I guess, and were still a good excuse for a shindig.) Click on the picture to see the insanity in my living room. See that white triangle in the bottom left corner? That's a wee bit of the spare single bed that was propped up against my couch and didn't quite make it in the photo. GAH!

Nothin' like having people over to motivate you to get cleaned up. Unfortunately, having only gotten my car back Thursday night, I didn't have time to take any of the pile of junk in my living room anywhere, so it all got dumped back in my bedroom. Sigh.

BUT! Today! Oh sweet day of productivity! I got rid of SO MUCH STUFF and got SO much done, and even did some building and some electrical work. Ok, so my electrical work consisted of plugging in my computer monitor, but hey, it sounded good for a minute there, didn't it?

Today I...

- slept in. Very important, and newsworthy because IT NEVER HAPPENS.
- piled all my crap-to-be-gotten-rid-of on the kitchen floor and outside the door to my suite.
- talked to Rachelle, my very-bestest-friend-in-the-whole-wide-world (yes, she always needs to be referred to as that. It's the law.) and soon-to-be-mommy-of-THREE-boys, for about an hour during said piling of crap-to-be-gotten-rid-of. Enough hyphens for you? No? I-didn't-think-so.
- unsuccessfully tried to stave off cramps-of-death with gigantesque dose of Happy Pills.
- dropped off dead bulky computer monitor and dead DVD player at the electronics recycling depot. That in itself was great cause they have been sitting in my room for at LEAST a year and a half.
- went to Purolator to pick up my new monitor and send off the smells-like-burning, good-thing-it's-still-under-warranty monitor back to maker-of-stupid-monitor company.
- went to Future Shop to return the loaner monitor and happily got a chunk of change put pack onto my oh-so-overused credit card.
- balked at my body, because just as I thought I was going to keel over and die from previously aforementioned cramps-of-death, the clouds parted, the sun shone down (no, really!) and my body flipped the ok-you-were-writhing-in-agony-but-now-you're-completely-fine switch and all was right with the world.
- celebrated with a grande non-fat no-whip peppermint mocha from Starbucks.
- drove to the other end of the city to get my car Air-Cared so I could renew my insurance, which expired six days ago. Yes, I had temporary insurance. The car passed. Woohoo! (Darn well better have for all the work that was just done on it!)
- went to renew insurance.
- came back to dead car. AURGH!!! Apparently 10 minutes of forgetting to turn my lights off was enough to drain the battery.
- flagged numerous random people down in the Superstore parking lot asking if they had jumper cables. More than one person went to open their window and then changed their mind, forcing me to scream though the glass. Cause apparently I looked like some crazywoman who was going to dive through a cracked open window into their car and EAT THEM ALIVE.
- finally found Kindly Dude to jump my car, blocked someone from the recently-vacated parking spot beside me so Kindly Dude could park there and resuscitate my car, and thanked him profusely. Mental note. Put jumper cables that are hanging in storage room BACK into car. Right-o.
- drove to Ikea to buy a dresser (goodbye chunk of change from the monitor) - part three of my holy-cow-I-can't-believe-I-haven't-blogged-about-this new bedroom set-in-the-making. Suffice it to say for now that I am in love. With furniture. I need help.
- came home and nearly broke my back hauling massive box of wood out of my car and into my room.
- assembled said dresser-of-awesomeness.
- plugged in my replacement monitor. (See?! Electrical work! And last Saturday I strung 75 feet of coaxial cable all through my house so I could have TV in my room! IN MY ROOM! For the very first time in my life. Gloriousness, I tell you, gloriousness!)
- wrote a long detailed blog post about a mundane day of errands.
- am going to have a glass of wine (or two or five) while I unearth my bed from all the junk I had to pile on top of it in order to build the dresser.
- have decided by default to go to neither the dance nor the Recycle-Your-Not-So-Great-Christmas-Present party, opting instead for PJ pants and new furniture.

Rah rah for Saturday night!

Also? Yes, I realize what a girly-girl post this is. And I love it! tee hee hee!

RSVP

Whenever I plan events/parties/dinners or whatever, I like to use Evite for the invitations. It sends a message to people's inboxes and then they click through for all the details and to RSVP. It's handy, I've used it for a while, and I enjoy it. One of the features is that guests RSVP's are posted on a message board/wall thing-a-ma-bob and they can choose "yes," no," or "maybe" and leave a message for you should they so choose.

My birthday is coming up, so I sent out the evite earlier this week, and a number of people have replied. It seems it's a popular weekend, so there are a number of people who can't make it. Ok, fine. What gets me are the reasons. No word of a lie, here are the resaons they can't make it:

* Awesome initiative. I'd help out but I will be in South America. Have fun!
* I am so sorry but I am in Ontario for the first two weeks of Feb!
* Hillary, I'd love to come, but will be in Africa. Hope you have a fantastic day!
* Hi, unfortunately I'll be in Mexico, dancing on a cruise boat. Want to do it there? :) Have fun!
* Sorry, we'll be at Big White [a ski resort about a 4 hour drive from here] skiing.

Ok, forget my birthday, lemmie go with one of THEM! Sheesharoonies!

Tormented

Aurgh. It's 4:49am, and I can't sleep. I've just had a terrible crazy dream that I get my car back today (this is true - yay!) and all of a sudden it's doing all kinds of awful car things - smoking and steaming and buzzing and clanging and all the lights on the dashboard come on at once. They're not wild fantastical things that a could never really do, it's just getting it back from the mechanic and everything goes wrong... again. You know you've been having car issues when you're woken up by bad car dreams. Bah.

I have to be out the door in precicely two hours. But I'm wide awake (and had been long before I started writing here!) I need sleeeeeep (she types while yawning). Oh today is not gonna be a good day. Hillary McSleeps-a-lot. I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing that I'll be in a workshop all day. Not having to be "on" all day means I won't snap at the kids from being over tired... but it also means I won't have the kids to keep me awake. Which could result in embarassment. Oh joy. OK, back to sleep. Or to tossing.

Oh sweet sleep why do you elude me when I need you most?

Would you rather... *updated*

As I walked into my classroom this morning, Lenny* - one of my grade two students - and his friend Tyra were playing a game of "Would you rather..." As I fumbled for my keys, this is what I heard.

L: Would you rather... get married and after you are in the bed, pee your pants... or.... eat five rattlesnakes and throw up?

Well now, what would YOU choose?
Oh man. These kids crack me up!

* Update: ok, you HAVE to read the comments. They're hilarious! *

Therapy!

I start therapy today! Woohoo! (We always knew she was crazy!)

No, no, not THAT kind of therapy. VOICE therapy! Ever since teaching music, I've had issues with my voice. I lose it constantly, and even after a day of teaching, it is often hoarse.

I went to the Voice Clinic in December and had a consultation with a speech-language pathologist and will have another appointment in February with an ear-nose-throat specialist, both who have been doing a study on occupational voice use. The SLP told me that women (check!) who use their voices for their jobs (check!), particularly in large rooms (check!) with high celieings (check!), lots of concrete and windows (check! check!), and relatively noisy environments (check!) are much more susceptible to having voice trouble. This is also compounded when the person is talkative (triple check!), outgoing (check!) and has a busy, active life (check!) that might have them out at restaurants, dances, or in the outdoors freuently (check! check! check!).

Soooo basically, my lifestyle and occupation means that my voice doesn't have a chance. Good times.

And also, she thinks I probably have slightly higher than normal acid reflux when I sleep, compounding my voice and throat issues (which, she tells me, is probably why I cough all. the. time. or need to clear my throat so much even when I'm not sick! Hallelujah! An explanation!). She gave me a list of foods to avoid (um, chocolate, nuts, spicy foods... yeah right!) and told me to elevate the head of my bed 4 to 6 inches so I'm sleeping on an incline. Guess silk sheets are out oft he question, hey? I'd slip right out the end of my bed!

The good news is that the SLP is writing up a report that recommends I have an FM system in my classroom (hooray!). I get to have a little Brittny Spears mic on when I teach and it gets amplified through the entire classroom. Everyone I've ever talked to who has had one of these things says it saves their voice incredibly AND really imporves the behaviour of the students. I figure it's cause there are four speakers mounted around the classroom, and it jsut makes it seem like I'm EVERYWHERE! Muah ha ha!!!

But also, the SLP runs a seven-week, fourteen hour group therapy session for occupational voice users. I'll get to learn all about how my voice works and how to take proper care of it. It's covered by medical, so I'm there! Hip hip hooray, finally an end to my voice woes!

But giving up chocolate? It ain't gonna happen. Ha!
_______________
* ok, I know therapy is a GOOD thing and has done a world of good for many, many people. Please don't be offended by my 'crazy' joke, I'm just trying to poke fun at myself!

Car Talk

But not of the ranting kind...

From Wikipedia...

If the gasket fails, a variety of problems can occur, from compression loss (leading to power reduction, or a rough engine [uh, yeah! chug-a-lug, baby! But hey, at least I saved some cash on going for a massage!]), to exhaust gases being forced into the cooling system, leading to the engine overheating [the needle up past the red "OK, I'm really really hot and might blow up at any minute" zone is a BAD thing, right?] and increased engine wear due to the motor oil being mixed with antifreeze. Coolant can leak into the cylinders, causing the exhaust to issue steam [great heaping billows of white noxious steam, yeah] and the catalytic converter to be damaged. If a very large amount of coolant does this, hydrolock can occur, causing extensive engine damage. Sometimes, all that may happen when a head gasket is blown is excessive steam erupting from the tailpipe [excessive is an understatement, baby!] and the engine may act and drive like normal... [though apparently with the damage to my head gasket, my mechanic is stupefied that the thing could even run.]

Driving with a blown head gasket (if possible) can cause additional extensive damage [Here's hoping the rest of the engine isn't shot, now! Heh... um? Pretty please?] due to overheating or loss of lubrication.

So. July. The water pump blew, causing the car to overheat. Water pump fixed.

November. There was a problem with the fan, which blew the new water pump, causing the car to overheat. Or something. Fan fixed. Water pump fixed.

First week of January. Computer that regulates the fan was screwy, causing the fan to work inconsistently, causing the water pump to break, causing the engine to overheat. Computer fixed. Fan fixed. Water pump fixed.

Second week of January. All this overheating caused the head head gasket to blow (actually it blew a while back), causing the water pump to blow, the timing belt to go wonky, and a host of other things. Head gasket fixed. Timing belt fixed. Host of other things fixed. Water pump fixed.

Found out that every head gasket ever made for this model of car/engine has blown. They have since redesigned it, but lucky me, I still get to pay for it. The parts are expensive, but the three days of labour my mechanic has put into it? All he's charging me is $100. This fix is costing me HALF what it would cost me normally because my mechanic is my hero! How he makes his money, I'll never know.

Actually, I do.

He'll probably charge some other poor shmuck an arm and a leg next time HE goes in. A poor shmuck like... maybe my dad.

Um, neener neener?

Pitching tents... or something like that

Oh this SO cracked me up today! Ho-lee hilarious, batman! Better some humour after my big sob story below. Watch it! Right now!



And supposedly this is what the guy sent around in an email afterwards:
"All I know to say is..'Thank God for His GRACE!!!' After talking with God about this whole thing, He let me know that when it happened... all of heaven fell to their side, they started beating the ground, with tears streaming down their face, and Lot was running around pinching himself, and all the heavenly hosts roared with laughter...just like you did!!!!"

Return of the Beastmobile? AUGRH!!!

Ladies and gents, life is on hold. Strict, strict budget for things like entertainment and eating out. No travel. Maybe getting rid of the cell phone. And you KNOW things are bad when there will be no dancing lessons, either. Commence crying now.

My car has fallen under the curse. The evil, evil curse of the Beastmoblie. Those of you who have been reading this blog for over two years have read the posts about my old car. There were scores of them. This post is the best introduction, and one of my finer song re-works. When the Beastmobile (aka a 1989 Olds Cutlas) finally bit it in November of 2005 (thanks to a dear sir who felt that he didn't really feel like stopping for a red light), it was joyfully replaced by a beauteous issue-free 1994 Civic with a piddly 94,114 km on it. 59,480 miles, for you Americans out there. :) And it's been glorious. Only the routine oil changes and a scheduled timing belt replacement at about 100,000 km.

Until now.

Last winter my trunk began leaking. So much so that when I braked, you could hear it sloshing around. Off I went to my parent's house so that we could drain it and run a space heater in it to dry it out while it sat dry and toasty in the carport (I only have street parking). It was a few months till I could get it into the body shop to have the leak fixed, but eventually I did, and voila! No more leak!

This summer, though, my car began to overheat, so I took it in. It needed a water pump. Ok, fine, that's expected. I got that fixed and a few other odds and ends and forked over around six hundred and fifty bucks. Oof. Oh well, such is the cost of owning a car.

Of course, having just replaced the water heater in July, one would not expect that the cooling system - including a problematic fan that wasn't an issue last time - would have to be done AGAIN in November. Such was the case, however, when I began to overheat on a long drive out to the valley (which reminds me, I really need to write a few posts...). My mechanic - God bless him - charged me no labour. Still it was five hundred and twenty bucks for parts.

As summer turned to fall and fall faded into winter, the weather got wetter. So did my trunk. Just a bit at first, but come the full-fledged rainy season, it was back to a sloshing pool of rain water in the back of my trunk. Goodie goodie gum drops. Now, having the folding seats that I do, there's a little flap of fabric that rests in the trunk. All the better to soak up the water and bring it into the seats, my dear. This I discovered as I picked friends up for Christmas dinner and they arrived at my parents house with wet a$$es. Classy. All the subsequent driving around I did over the holiday involved folded up towels in the back seat for people to sit on. Double classy.

Over the last week of the holiday, I noticed that my car would chug a little bit when it was idling, and sometimes there was quite a bit of really nasty smeling white exhaust. But only sometimes. Then, last Friday, it chugged so much it felt like I was sitting in a massage chair and as I dropped off my friend Becca, it filled the neighbourhood with noxious smelling white smoky exhaust. I only has about 30 blocks to home, so I tried to make it. The temperature guage was up higher than the red and I was billowing massive clouds of smoke as I went. When steam began to billow out from under the hood, however, I pulled 'er over post haste and walked the remaining fourteen blocks to my house. Of course, not before opening the hood to find that the small amount of water in the overflow resevoir was boiling. So let's recap, shall wee? I had water in my trunk and no water in my engine. You'd think they'd learn to share or something. Geez.

I waited till the next morning and drove it straight to the mechanic to be parked there over the weekend. No chance I was gonna drive around with it ready to blow at any second. Of course, the drive there was without incident. Anyway, there it sat, to be looked at on Monday. Two guy friends of mine both told me - independently of each other - that from what I was describing, it sounded like a blown head gasket. Now I don't know much, but I know that THAT is expensive. Like really a lot. Oh happy fun times of joyousness.

I called to check in with the mechanic after school on Monday (yesterday) and he told me that one of the things that had puzzled him last time was still acting up - the computer that controlled the fan that helped to cool the engine. So he changed that. I asked about the head gasket, and he told me that while all the symptoms pointed to exactly that, he could find no evidence of a blown gasket. No mixed fluid anywhere, nothing on the spark plugs, and he drove it all over the place all day long and never once did it chug or smoke for him. He did everything he could and couldn't make it do what it was doing for me. Typical. He got the other mechanic at the shop to look at it, too, and he couldn't find anything either. He told me that when gaskets blow, they blow, and it's not intermittent, so he was very confused. Head gaskets are a very common fix, but he had never seen this problem before in all his years of working on cars. Goooood. That makes me feel SO much better. Yerg. Ah, but of course! We forgot that we're talking about one of MY cars.

He told me that he really couldn't bring himself to fix something he wasn't convinced was broken, so we'd leave it at the computer and the other tweaks he'd done and see how it fared. He was cautiously optomistic that this was the final fix. So off I went tonight after work to pick it up. And to unload another five hundred and twenty bucks. What are we at now, about $1700 since July? No problemo, I'll just go pick it off the money tree in the back yard... Oh right. I DON'T HAVE ONE.

While I was at the shop, I asked, "Well, just in case this isn't the final fix, how much would a blown head gasket actually cost me?" He told me that under normal circumstances it would be a couple of thousand dollars (CHOKE! COUGH! SPUTTER!), but that he'd have pity on me, and I shouln't worry, it would be painless. But the car is probably fixed now. So home I went with my probably fixed car.

Of course I watched the temperature guage and exhaust like a hawk all the way home. Temperature? Fine. Exhaust? Normal. Chugging? Non-existent. Woohoo!

That is, until about the last 8 or 10 blocks. Was that a cloud of white smoke I saw, or am I just paranoid? And I'm starting to feel that slight chug... or is my mind playing tricks on me? I pulled up to my parking spot and let it idle for a minute.

POUF!!!

And there is was. Billowing cloud, chug-a-lugging engine, crying Hillary.

Let's see how much my mechanic's pity is gonna cost me THIS time. Oh yeah, and that trunk leak is still not fixed, either. It's not like THAT can be left alone forever, either. Good thing I just got my Christmas mastercard bill and bought myself a bedroom suite, too. Anyone got some excess wealth they'd like to share?

Frickity frackity flappity FLIP!!!

Pardon me while I go cry now.

Conversations

H: [after making some strange face or sound or both] Oh Brad, why am I so weird?
B: I stopped asking that a long time ago.
H: Oh come on, you've met my dad, you're supposed to know the answer to this.
B: Oh right! It's genetic! ... I get my bad sense of humour from my dad.
H: What?!? You've got a fantastic sense of humour!
B: Yeah! I don't know where I got the good part from!

New Year's Prayers

Three years ago I went to a Christian retreat center for New Years Day and I came across these two prayers. I don't know who wrote them or where they came from, but they particularly struck me, so I wrote them down and come back to them every year. As I go and spend some time on them today, I thought I would share them.

~~~

Father, I surrender the past year and give it up to you. I give you my failures, my regrets, and my disappointments, for I have no more use for them. Make me now a new person, forgetting what lies behind and pressing on toward that which lies ahead of me. I give you all my hopes and dreams about the future. Purify them by your spirit so that my will shall truly reflect your will for me. As I stand on the threshold of a new year, encourage me by my successes, challenge me by the power of your word, and guide me by your spirit.

~~~

You keep us waiting. You, the God of all time,
want us to wait for the right time in which to discover
who we are, where we must go, and what we must do.

Thank you for the waiting time.

You keep us looking. You, the God of all space,
want us to look in the right and wrong places for signs of hope,
for people who are hopeless, for visions of a better world
which will appear among the disappointments of the world we know.

Thank you for the looking time.

You keep us loving. You, the God whose name is love,
want us to be like you - to love the loveless and the unlovely
and the unlovable; to love without jealousy or design or threat,
and most difficult of all, to love ourselves.

Thank you for the loving time.

And in all this you keep us,
through hard questions with no easy answers,
through failing where we hoped to succeed,
and making an impact where we thought we were useless,
through the patience and the dreams and the love of others
and through Christ and his spirit you keeps us.

Thank you for the keeping time
and for now, and for ever.
Amen.

(click for full size)

Tids and bits

Turns out I don't blog very much when I'm on holidays. Something about not having to procrastinate on all the stuff I *should* be doing! Hip hip hooray for holidays!

No big Christmas reflections or even posts this year. It kinda snuck up on me and then was gone - I know, I know, that's how it is every year, but even more so this year. Part of it has been that I haven't been to church very much in the last month or so. We added a Sunday night service a while back and because the majority of my friends go to that one, I shifted, too... except it's not working out so hot for me. Um, mostly cause I don't end up going. Anyhoo, all that said, I missed all the advent stuff, and it was all rush rush rush right up to the big family dinner on Christmas Eve, and then it's over. And I'm sad.

But! There have been some definite highlights to my time off. The first one was having two new friends - Hugo and Lucille - join my family for Christmas. It was SO great to have them there (and if you two are reading this, hello! Seriously, you guys made my evening! I'm so glad you were there!). Then of course there was some good family time on Christmas day. It was the first Christmas Day in recent memory, anyway, that we didn't have to pack up and go somewhere or have a whole crew over, and it was great to lounge around all day. I inflicted gingerbread house building on my parents (I still had leftovers from my party a few weeks ago) and it was a big bundle of hilarity.

I spent one day up in Whistler with Hugo and Lucille snowshoeing - and pretty much snow-battling to the death all day long. We then went into the swanky hat store and tried on many a chapeau... much to the owner's chagrin, I'm sure. Come on, who DOESN'T want three soggy rowdies with cameras knocking over hats and trying on your merchandise??? Pics from our day are here.

There was one day of serendipitous spontaneity - lunch, a trip to Ikea, dinner with the fam, catching The Golden Compass, going out for drinks... all arranged on the fly as the day progressed. I love days like that! You never know what the next hour will hold! :) Thank goodness for cell phones!

Now I'm cleaning the house (and blogging... see? Apparently I just found a reason to procrastinate!), prepping for a New Year's Brunch chez moi tomorrow, and then heading out to welcome 2008.

And there's still a week left of holidays! WOOHOO!

Since I didn't wish it before, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas. And to 2007, I say "So long, sucker!" Bring it on, 2008!

_____
PS. Hokey Dinah! Kristin Plater (of the AWESOME video below - seriously, if you haven't listened to it yet, you should... and then click through and listen to her other stuff, too... I'm looking for her album to buy and if I can't find a real live CD I'm buying it off iTunes. She's great!) left a comment thanking me for posting her video! She's super friendly and replies to comments on youtube and apparently to blogs, too! Melissa, she's playing in New York on the 18th. If you like her stuff, check out her site for details: http://www.kristinplater.com/ Haha, ok, enough plugs for now! And no, she's not paying me! :P

Why Not - SUCH a fun song

I found a YouTube gem... Kristin Plater! This song totally makes me smile. All about being yourself, donig the little things that make you happy. I love it! "If I'm gonna laugh, I'm gonna laugh out loud!"

Pictures from a Classroom Christmas

Pictures go along with this post. Click any picture to see a larger version. Click here to see the whole set (it's worth it!)

Um, wow!

I was at a Christmas dance last night (of course!) and having a great time, as always. It was nearing the end of the night and I was dancing with my friend Michael, being very apologetic because I always seem to be dancing with him near the end of the night when people are leaving. Our two previous dances that night had been punctuated with me yelling my goodbyes and Merry Christmases to people as they left - which was just kinda rude (I'm sorry, Michael!) and also resulted in me missing more than a few leads. We laughed about it - he's a sweetheart - and I promised him a dance where I would pay attention to, oh, I dunno, HIM for once! SO there I was concentrating, when another friend JR (hi JR - this post's for you! Ya better comment! ;)*updated: go you! Thanks!* ) came and waved a piece of paper at me.

(click to embiggen if you want to read it)

Huh? Whatever, it's the new Swing Dance Club brochure. Surely I could look at it later. I mean, it's lovely and all, and has lots of great info about West Coast Swing, and is distributed at dances of all kinds all over the lower mainland, but seriously? Now? Then - in between whips and passes - I took a closer look. HOLY SMOKES! What? Uh yeah, that's yours truly. ON THE FRONT COVER. Buah ha! Hilarious!

Through a child's eyes

When the kids walked in the door Monday morning, the first thing they saw were four great big brown hoof prints on the floor. "Look!" I told them. "Santa came! And Rudolph, too!"

The buzz began immediately.

Santa! Santa came!
Hey, he left a note!
Rudolph put our paper chains on the ceiling!
And our letters are gone!
Santa took them!

The kids could hardly get their coats off quick enough to rush over the the chart board and read what Santa had to say. They looked around at the candy canes hanging, the paper chains a waaaay high up, and the big red fuzzy at Santa left for me to borrow (Miss Hillary, you're SOOO lucky! "Why's that?" Cause you get to borrow Santa's hat AND you get to see him again before Christmas to return it!!!). Some looked around in wonder, some were nearly shaking with excitement. And of course there were a few who punctured the glee with doubt.

It's not real!
The hoof prints are just paint.
Miss Hillary put those chains up.

"Nooo!" I told them. Eighteen excited kids all talking at once and asking questions was boggling my mind, but I just carried on, weaving a tale of Santa's visit and answering their questions as I went. "When I left on Friday, none of this was here! There is a little ladder in the school, but it's not nearly high enough to reach the ceiling! Those chains are WAY too high for me to have put them up. And I would get in trouble if I painted the floor! That wasn't me, either. Rudolph must have had very muddy hooves..." Then why didn't Santa leave footprints, too? [smart little kiddies!] "Well must have been riding his sleigh, so his feet didn't get muddy." It's just paint. Miss Hillary, you painted those. "Nooo! It's dried mud. They weren't there on Friday. Mr. G [an ESL teacher who had come in to drop something off], did you paint those hoof prints?" He didn't either, which was nearly enough to convince them. Miss Hillary, are you sure you're not lying? "I'm positive! I would neeever lie to you! Besides, what could have happened to our letters? And how else could those chains have gotten way up there? Anyway, didn't you say on Friday that you wished Santa would visit our classroom?

Yeah, but why does Santa always come when we can't see him? Why doesn't he ever come for us to see? Then we can KNOW that he's real!

"Ah, but it's not about seeing him. It's about believing. If you ever saw Santa, there would be no more magic."

By the end of our excited discussion on the carpet that morning, the biggest doubter was the biggest believer and every single child was convinced without a doubt that the big man in red had come to visit.

They happily told everyone they saw, too. Friends, teachers, passing parents. Two even ran to the office at recess to tell the office staff.

The day proceeded in sugary goodness as we made and decorated our gingerbread houses. I have never seen so much candy in one place in my life! They loved it, and were definitely in the Christmas spirit, humming Christmas songs and chattering about Santa as they worked.

After school I found a large envelope in my box: our letters to Santa had been read and replied to! I wrote on the outside in big swirly red writing "To Division 21, Love Santa,"dumped a whole bunch of silver glitter inside the envelope, and shook it all around. Up to the staffroom I went, where I dripped some water on the outside of the envelope and stuck it in the freezer to chill overnight.

Tuesday after recess was the big event - our letters from Santa had arrived! I waited an extra minute or two in the staffroom to make sure all the kids were lined up outside our door. As I approached, I whispered excitedly to them. "Boys and girls, look! Santa answered our letters! And it must be fresh from the North Pole! See? There's even ice on the envelope!!!" Gravity and the freezer had worked more magic than I could have hoped, as all the water had run down to the edge of the envelope and had made about a dozen little frozen droplets hanging off the side. Our envelope had icicles!!

Look! It's cold!
And frozen!
It came right from the North Pole!
How did Santa answer them so fast?
He's a fast guy!
Oooh! It's dripping!
Wow! I never got a letter from Santa before!

We all rushed to the carpet where I speedily handed out the letters. I pulled each one out with a flourish, sending silver glitter fluttering to the ground over the students' heads. Miss Hillary, what is that?

With a big grin and a twinkle in my eye, I answered them. "It's MAGIC!"

As the kids got their frozen letters, they all buddied up to read, passing them around and comparing them.

Santa is really busy making toys, so he got his elves to write to us!
Hey look! My elf's twin brother wrote to my friend!
These MUST be real because he answered all my questions!
Oooooh! The raindeers fly using magic flying powder!
Phew! Santa says I'm on the nice list!
Hahaha! My elf's name is "Stinky!"
Here, look at mine! Can I read yours?
[while clutching her letter to her heart:] I LOVE SANTA!!!

The kids spent about ten minutes passing their letters around and reading. (And you have to understand that for my class, to have them that engaged for that long is a nothing short of a miracle!)

I couldn't let the magic end there, though. I know that some of these kids don't really do anything for Christmas, and a few won't have many gifts this year because their families just don't have the money. Santa had to make one last visit...

When the children arrived on Friday, there was a new set of snowy footprints all throughout the classroom - from the door, over to the chart stand, over to the Christmas tree, and back out again. There was a new note, the tree was covered in snow, and there were nineteen gifts wrapped up and laying underneath the tree.

This time there were no doubters.

Santa came AGAIN!!!
And he left us presents!
What IS this stuff?
It's snow!
But it's not melting!
Miss Hillary, those are YOUR footprints!
Put your foot in them, let me see!
... Oh! They're bigger than your feet!
Miss E [my special ed worker], try your foot.
It's not hers, either! That proves it MUST be Santa!
This is the very first present Santa ever gave me!
Oh, this is the best day of my LIFE!

After reading the note and handing out the gifts, the kids tore into them to find the biggest candy canes they had ever seen. These must have come from the candy cane forest at the North Pole! I didn't need to do anything to create the magic this time - they did it on their own. Stories and theories swirled about how Santa could have gotten into our classroom without a chimney (maybe he came through the walls, maybe the janitor let him in, maybe he came through the mouse hole [er, the mouse hole?!?! It's now been filled.]). They talked about how fast Santa's sleigh must be and about how cold the North Pole is. And I sat back and watched, loving every minute.

It's been a while since I've been able to see Christmas in that magical child-like way. It has significance every year for me because of that very first gift that was given long long ago, of course. But there's another aspect of Christmas that I have not seen for a while, and that's the magic, the innocence, the wonder of it all. Impossibility made possible. Childlike faith in someone that can't be seen.

Or then again, maybe it's really been there all along. Maybe that's what Christmas is all about, even for us adults. Childlike faith in a gift too good good to be true, and yet! There He lies wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. God become man to dwell, to die, to deliver. Impossibility made possible. What a gift we've been given.

As a very wise elf said in her letter to one of my students, "Whoever believes in Christmas will always have magic."

How right she is!

Ridonculous!

You would not believe how annoying it is to use my computer right now. My monitor is fried. No problem, I've got my old one still in my room. Hook it up, and.... no workie. At all. My new, 14 month old LCD monitor is dead, too. Oh, sure,i t somes on when you turn the power on... for exactly one second. Then it goes blank. So lucky me, as I HAD to do something on the computer tonight, I got to turn my monitor off and on and off and on again just so I could see the screen for one second and position my mouse. Then it went blank. Turn it off, turn it on, click, then screen went blank. Off, then on, then position mouse. Off then on, then click. Off tehn on, then type when needs to be typed. I can't see what I'm typuing now, so no complaints about typos.

YAAAARG! Dumb machine. WHY do they make things and PLAN for then to break withing two years? Seriously. As IF I have the money to buy another monitor right now. Melissa, I'm gonna check into your suggestion. I may be able to get a warranty from teh shop I bought it at, it might still be under warranty. We'll see. You'd better believe I'm gonna kick up a fuss.

And yes, I'm blogging. I don't need to see what I type (well, kinda) and I wanna whine about this. Seriously the most annoying thing I've encountered for a very long time.

Grrr, technology. *grumble grumble grumble*

OK, time to tunr the monitor off and on a hundred times now to actually post this bad boy.

UG!

Smells like burning

Well I had about 16 different ideas for posts in my head as I came home tonight... another Rebirth instalment (or two or three), an update/recap of the Magical Monday of Grade One Christmas Wonderfulness (complete with photos), some general squeeing about Christmas, a rant, a peek into the psyche of Hillary (don't run away, there's a but coming!), and so on and so forth.

Buuuut, my new, fourteen and a half month old computer monitor (member this post? Good thing I have a blog, that's how I figured out when I bought the dang thing!) is extremely dim on the top half and smells like burning. I know this cause it's the same smell that my electric mixer made while I was mixing up 8 litres of cement icing for the gingerbread houses at 6 am on Monday morning. I knew the smoke wasn't a good sign. Anyone wanna give me a mixer for Christmas??? So anyhoo, I'm gonna shut'er off for now and rant and rave to the place I bought it (*cough* Future Shop *cough*) another time.

Good thing I have all those photos to edit. Good thing I have BEEN editing photos, upping the brightness and wondering why they seemed do dim on my monitor and so dull on the computer. I mean, that was happening with my OLD monitor.

Oh yeah. Smells like burning. Just got another whiff. Buh bye now.

I just might be getting a little carried away...

We wrote letters to Santa today at school. No asking for toys allowed - they were to ask questions and tell Santa about themselves. In Canada, if you write to Santa and send it to the post office, you get a letter back, so the kids are all excited to get a letter from the big man in red himself. (I mean, come on, the North Pole is in Canada! It only takes one stamp to get there!)

We've also been making paper chains all week... when they kid's work was finished, they could go to the art centre and keep working on their chains. One kid's chain is nearly 10 metres long!!! I promised them that I would put them up to decorate the classroom after school.

Little do they know that Santa will be paying our classroom a visit this weekend! Instead of the regular morning message from me, there will be a note - written entirely in red sparkly glitter glue - from Santa:

HO HO HO! Santa here! I came to visit your class on Saturday but there was nobody here! I left some treats for you, and my hat for Miss Hillary to borrow. She has to promise to give it back before Christmas, though! I'll need it! Miss Hillary put up your paper chains, but not very high. I got Rudolph to help me put them higher. I'll answer your letters as soon as I can! ~ Love Santa.

I've spent the last two hours with Christmas tunes blaring, teetering on top of the highest ladder in the school attaching paper chains to the just-over-three-meter- high ceiling. I have also painted four reindeer hoofprints on the floor right by the main classroom door (only four, though, cause Rudolph flew around the room most of the time!) and have dabbled them with a wet paper towel so you can't see the paintbrush strokes. There will be candy canes for each kid hanging from the art hangers that are draped over the rows of lights. The only major setback to my preparatory festivities this afternoon was stepping backwards onto the not-quite dry glitter glue message when I was trying to move the ladder. D'oh! I had to take a plastic spoon and scrap off a few words and start again. There are now red glittery footprints all over my carpet and the bottoms of my shoes sparkle! As long as I don't wear the same shoes on Monday, I'll be able to tell them that Santa left footprints, too!

I've got a grade six class (full of my students from last year!) lined up to write a personalized letter from Santa back to each student. I'll put the replies in the freezer for a while, scrape off some frost, and deliver them to the kids on Tuesday or Wednesday - direct from the North Pole!
That, and we're making gingerbread houses on Monday! It's going to be quite the day!!!

True story

My breakfast today consisted of a bowl of cheerios and a palm-sized slab of gingerbread with lots of icing and covered - covered! - in smarties.

And this, folks, is why Christmas and my butt are motal enemies.

*Editied to add, for my American readers: Smarites are like M&M's, but better! They're not the sugary candy... um... pellets? like in the States*

*Also edited to add: My lunch also involves a cheese ball. I'm going straight to the fat farm, aren't I? Sigh.*

Apparently I like to eat pie

For the last two weeks, my grade one girls have begun to write... and write and write and write and write and write. They love it! They spend their centers time writing, they write oodles in their writing books, they write at home and bring it in to show me. "I just love to write!" they tell me. It is absolutely adorable!

One girl in particular, Annie (not her real name), writes me notes. Every morning she comes in with an envelope of something she has written at home. "Don't open it now!" she tells me. I ask her when I should open it. "At home!" she says, but invariably, by the end of the day, she caves and asks me to open her note.

Here are SOME of the notes she's written. Keep in mind that 18 out of 19 of my kids are ESL, and that she's six. I've kept spelling and grammar intact. I wish I could show the actual writing and the pictures, hearts, stars, and happy faces that go along with these notes, too. You'll just have to use your imaginations!

To Miss Hillary From Annie
You like To. eat Apple Pie
Yoe ur Nice and Neet
we like To make pie
pie is Good for you
Love Miss Hillary

To Miss Hillary From Annie
your a Nice teachandNeat
playful teach
Good teach is Nice
Youllke To drink Milk
and eat Apple pie
lovely Miss Hillary
you lik To eat pancakes
AMELIA BEDELIA is Nice
she like T make pie
I make my story for you

To Miss Hillary From Annie
you like egg and dklling Milk
you is Nice and you Like Appie pie.
and Apple Book and egg cake
Good Story

I Like to make Apple pie
a Apple. Book is Good For You
and Nice and Neet Amelia Bedelia
look the cloud and the sky
Imake my own story
Good Story [] yes

ToMissHillary FromHillary
you like To eat pie I make a pjr [picture] a pie

To Miss Hillary From Annie
your Nice and Neat teach
you like To eat Apple
and driking Millk
pancakes Book and walter the Baker book
Nice book Im write
Ilike pet is guinea pig and Hamster
is fairy pet love Miss Hillary
GoodWrite and Good write story

ToMissHillary From Annie
MissHillary like to eat Apple pie is Good For you
you like To drinking Millk

ToMissHillary From Annie
We like to Make pie
isGood FOR You

ToMissHillary From Annie
I like to make Apple pie To eat is Good
your nice teach and a Neat teach to
lovely Miss Hillary


All these notes are good for the heart but very, very bad for the will power. I'm picking up a pie on my way home tonight.

Spice Up Your Life! *now with video!*

The Spice Girls opened their world tour in Vancouver tonight, on stage for the first time since 1998. It was spectacularly phenominal! Oh wow. WHAT a show! There are no words (and I'm sooo tired, and my ears are still ringing), so here are some pictures instead! I believe I've been dubbed Shutterbug Spice. Now the question is, what spice is Phil??? ;)

[All photos property of Hillary. Permission required to use/reproduce]












The Finale/Encore. This person must have been sitting right beside us. This was our view almost exactly! (if anything, watch the last two minutes! AWESOME!!!) Man, it's the next morning and I'm STILL buzzing!

WooHoo!

Really? Seriously? The DoughBoy? I love it! How many of you knew that every single summer I went to camp Gump and Chunk called me "Pillsbury" and then that that became my camp name when I worked there? HA!

A-Ziggah zig AH!

Despite having never really been a fan ten years ago when they were big, I'm nearing giddiness about heading to go see opening night of the reunion world tour of the SPICE GIRLS (!!!!!) on Sunday night! (I'm just ignoring the depressing fact that I'm old enough to be going to a 'nostalgia' show!) And yep, they chose Vancouver to open their tour. Because we're AWESOME! hehe!

I've been doing my homework on YouTube, thinking that oh my goodness, I don't know any of their songs. Ah, but I DO! And you would, too, even if you tried really really hard not to.

My friend Phil found himself with an extra ticket, so he invited me! It's gonna be a spectacular show, I'm sure - they'll be pulling out all the stops. That, paired with Phil being SO incredibly excited about it that it just cracks me right up, is gonna make it an AWESOME night! Now the only question is - what to wear???

Jean was the closest guess, for sure. Go Jean! And Melissa wins for the most hilarious thought process. "You're going to the North Pole... and dancing with the elves [do I sense a new reality TV show coming on?] ... OH MY GOSH YOU'RE SANTA!"

I was giving hints! Go back and check out the last two posts - now with highlighted hints! :P