And that's why my nipples were hard...

Protecting the masses from my nipples.

  
NOT because I was all het up.   But because it was 12 freaking degrees in our house.   We got home from a weekend visiting my parents and walked into a house where I'm pretty sure I could see my breath.  And, as a direct consequence, my breasts.  Well, at least my nipples.  On account of the fact that my nipples were frozen into temperature sensitive bullets letting the world at large know that I was freezing.  And this, through a t-shirt bra this is supposed to hide one's nipples...  I was THAT cold.

Our boiler's automatic pilot light conked out.  So that meant that until Monday morning, we were wearing longjohns, pjs, bathrobes, extra socks with slippers and afghans.  (The blankets, not the dogs... although a big-ass hairy dog (or two) would have been great to have had on my lap.)  We lit a fire in our incredibly inefficient fireplace, cooked pizzas with the oven door open, filled the bathtub with near-boiling water and had space heaters pumping heat in our bedrooms.  I held a hot chocolate between my hands and, after consuming it, put my mittens back on.

Always the problem solvers, David and I decided to use some extra one-on-one friction last night... you know... to stay EXTRA warm.  There was no point in wasting those hard nipples, right?

I'm just a girl who can't say no...

This is NOT me eating something bad for me..

To chocolate.  And salty foods.  And apparently Rusty Nails...  My healthful ingesting self-control seems to be at an all-time low.  What the hell is wrong with me?

And what am I eating now?  Chocolate covered pretzels.  They were a gift.  How was the gifter to know they are my kryptonite?  Salty-wheaty-chocolatey-sugar-coma-inducing kryptonite.  I can feel my throat coating with phlegm and my stomach bloating already.  It's alright.  8 pretzels = only 140 calories.  Of course I've had probably 35 pretzels - not a problem - I just won't eat dinner. And I won't wash them down with that Rusty Nail that I was craving - or at least not a double Rusty Nail.  See?  I still have self-control!

Frenzied Feline Ferocity

Every morning outside our door, the cats lie in wait.  Pawing first.  Then head-butting.  Then heaving their shoulders into it.  Chirping, meowing, then yowling follows.  Lola's the yowler.  She yowls when Minuit growls then bites her.  Minuit is NOT a morning cat. Steve, our dopey orange male, runs up and down the upstairs hallway any time it seems that someone is close to rising from between the sheets.

We learned not to leave the door open.  Because if we leave the door open?  Then we basically live Simon's Cat  ... x 3 cats - one of whom, when she walks on your abdominal aorta, can actually make you pass out.  FYI - Simon Tofield's cat animation is pretty close to perfect - quite a feat with simple line drawings.

I HATE this part of being a Mom...

Detail from: http://www.etsy.com/listing/94665109/sick-girl-vfisit-by-mother-nun-1890s

I hate, hate, HATE - this part of being a Mom.  Rissa has a stomach bug.  She's so pale.  Almost as tall as me, yet as I'm smoothing her back while she woofs her cookies into the porcelain, I feel so freaking helpless.  She's a delicate woofer - no over-the-top gagging, just a complete emptying of her stomach contents.  She's fairly upbeat for having projectile vomited. 

"I broke my 7 year streak Mummy," she laments.  The last time she woofed her cookies was when we moved to this house.  She equates it with having eaten Cheezies while in the care of  her David's Moms - which isn't necessarily a bad thing - she hasn't touched Cheezies since then.  I sort of wish I'd had the same experience with ice cream when I was younger.

"Mummy, is this the flu?"

"No sweetie, it's not.  People call it the stomach flu, but it has nothing to do with the flu."

"Then why do they call it the flu?"

"Because someone made the mistake of calling it the flu a long time ago and now people no longer know the difference."

"You mean like when they say orangutan-g and nuc-u-lar?"  (My biggest pet peeve.  If you want to see my head explode talk about nucular orangutangs and you'll see it happen.)

The liquid children's diarrhea medicine (not to be mistake for children's liquid diarrhea medicine - which gives you an altogether more disgusting image...) we had on hand made her vomit and she can't swallow pills yet.  In between her half dozen trips to the bathroom last night, I was self-screening the noises in my own body.  Is this gas?  Is this the onset of bowel evacuation?

And today the hard part is going to be to try to keep her resting.

"You should be back in bed sweetie."

"But why?"

"Because you fell asleep at 1:30 a.m."

"I'm too hot to be in bed.  I'm going to stand out on the porch to cool down."

"No.  You're not.  Go down to the kitchen without slippers on, you be cold soon enough."

My debating whether or not I can leave her here for my 4 hours of work has now been answered - she's not going to rest.  She's going to stand naked on the porch and then develop pneumonia.  She needs a guard.  And maybe some snuggling.  And some bad tv watching.

Southern Ontario family perishes from hypothermia...

Yesterday morning it was 16 degrees in our house.  I met Rissa in the kitchen - she was bundled into her ginormous bathrobe, over which she had thrown on my down-filled winter coat.  She was breathing on her hands to warm them.  My first thought: Dear God, the boiler has given up the ghost, we're all going to freeze to death and we are THIS close to spring!  The news will report, "Despite entering the 'Out like a lamb' part of March, this Southern Ontario family sadly perished from hypothermia. Memorial Services will be held this weekend."

The floors were cold, the walls were cold - I'm pretty sure that I could see my breath in the downstairs bathroom.  I reached out for the radiator, dreading what I might find to be true.  Boilers are expensive.  They are very, very expensive.  We have money put aside, but it was put aside for the new roof that we didn't manage to fix last year  Maybe if we started buying lottery tickets?  My palm touched the radiator.  The radiator was warm, deliciously hot, in fact.  It was the house that was freezing.  What was going on?

Last week was March Break - we did a lot of sleeping in.  David and Rissa had the week off and I didn't have to go into the office until 10:00, which is why we didn't notice that we'd forgotten to spring ahead the thermostat clock until yesterday morning when we all rose at the crack of dawn.  The radiators  thought it was 5:35 a.m. instead of 6:35 a.m.

"It's okay sweetie!  We were just morons!" See that? Bright side totally found!

That erection is not for me.

Warning: Adult Sexual Content

Sunday morning, I gently wake.  Snuggling into David in bed.  He moves his arm so that I can rest my head on his chest.  I make yummy noises.  This is perfection.  I run my hand over his chest and then downward.

"Well 'Hello Sailor!'" Nothing like being given a full salute from below decks first thing in the morning.  I tilt my head to give him a closed-mouth kiss - on account of the fact that neither of us has brushed our teeth yet.  The day is beginning well.  Then I remember.  It's Sunday morning - we've slept in.  He's just woken up.

"That erection isn't really for me, is it?" I pout.  "You just need to pee, don't you?"

He reaches down and squeezes my derriere a couple of times.

"Now it's at least half for you."

I always have to have my own spin...

Thank you so much Bad Word Mama for nominating me for the Liebster Award!

Very kind of you indeed.  It is always nice to know that someone thinks well of you.  And that someone thinks well enough to encourage you to post a kick-ass graphic and share the love with other bloggers?  Pretty gratifying.  Nice too, to know, that Bad Word Mama is a gal, like me, who doesn't have a lot of extra time and she's into streamlining the process.  Instead of asking a blogger to answer 25 or 10 or even 5 questions about themselves, she's asked for one (1).

What is the biggest regret that I have?

The regrets that I have come from my wedding day.  Oh CRAP! That makes it sound like I'm not happy to be married to David.  Which would be a complete and utter lie.  I'm very happy to be married to David - it'll be 15 years this August - we're having a big-ass party celebrating our 15th wedding anniversary.  I love him lots! And more importantly, I LIKE him lots and still want to do the bouncy-bouncy with him. 

My regrets, and there are a couple from that day, are these:  when David and I got to the speeches, we thanked everyone for coming and offered up the mic to the Fathers of the Bride and Groom.  When they didn't leap immediately at the opportunity to speak - we basically said, "Nope?  No one wants to say anything?  Okay, then we're good to go... everybody start dancing!!"  I really wish that we'd urged both our fathers to talk.  I would have liked to hear what my Dad and David's Dad thought about it all.  They're both great story tellers, they probably would have made us cry.

The other regret from that day is that we had several relatives who had passed away and couldn't be there with us.  We had a table set up with pictures of our absent friends/relatives who were no longer with us, but I really wish that I'd mentioned them all by name and really talked about how much they meant to us.  And as by-product of that regret, I wish that Rissa had had a chance to meet all these people - that she'd known how great they were and had her own memories of them instead of the ones I share through story-telling.

And now... the  NOMINATIONS.

Folks should know this: I'm the person on Facebook who, when assailed by one of those "pass it on if you have a soul" posts happens, I completely change the wording, take the chain letterness out of it and encourage folks to share it, only if they want, with no potential karmic fallout.   I've posted about that in my Magical Meerkat post.

So here's what I'm going to do.  The 5 people I have nominated write well and make me laugh and I think other people should read them and laugh too.  If they, in turn, want to post the kick-ass award on their blog and nominate others, lovely, if not... no worries, it's all good.  If you want to share something about yourself - do so... If you want to answer the question that I answered, go for it...  Paying it forward is a great thing, I am a big supporter!  So check these folks out - they're worth it! 


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