Rogers, You're Such a Jackass

Today Eric called Rogers to try to deal with a problem I had:

Rogers: Rogers Customer Service, how may I help you?

Eric: Hi, my son threw my wife's iPhone 3GS on the floor and the screen cracked. Is there anything you can do for me?

Rogers: Let me check...I'm sorry sir, but your wife isn't eligible for a hardware upgrade. I can't help you, but you can purchase a new iPhone 4 for $749.

Eric: No thank you, goodbye.

He then hung up and immediately called back.

Rogers: Rogers Customer Service, how may I help you?

Eric: Can you please put me through to the Cancellation Department?

Rogers: Yes, please hold.

(music music)

Rogers: Rogers Cancellation Department, how may I help you?

Eric: Hi, I would like to cancel my wife's wireless phone plan.

Rogers: What is the reason?

Eric: My son threw my wife's iPhone 3GS on the floor and the screen cracked.

Rogers: All right sir...well, we would like to keep your wife as a customer. You can purchase a new iPhone 4 for a discounted price of $269 to replace the one that's broken.

Eric: Okay.

Spontaneous Haiku:

You hold the power

It doesn't need to make sense

Ha ha ha Rogers

Thanksgiving Parenting Fail: Dylan Doesn't Share

For the last five years, we've been building a tradition of having a Thanksgiving dinner with our friends at our place. It used to be a ridiculously cramped gathering in our little condo. There was always more food than conceivably necessary, and nowhere to sit. People would be forced to sit cross-legged on the floor balancing plates piled dangerously high with food and gravy. We would make the organic turkey, and our friends would bring everything else. One year, there were so many people that we ran out of Thanksgiving-type foods for people to bring so one guy brought butter chicken and naan. But I digress.

This year was a smaller group due to people being on honeymoons and vacations, but Dylan's friend Cameron came with her parents Jordan and Lindsey, and her baby brother Preston. Cameron was born two months before Dylan, so she's one of the closest in age friends he has.

The trouble started early. We were trying to psyche Dylan up for the party early in the day so we told him about how all his favourite grown-ups were going to be coming, and also his friend Cameron! We enthused about how Cameron is so nice and fun, and that he and Cameron were going to have a great time together. He looked at us suspiciously. He knew there was going to be a catch. We told him that when Cameron came, they could play and Dylan would share his toys. Dylan is not good at sharing.

Dylan: "No. No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Then he ran around like he was having a seizure and had a meltdown screaming fit.

Our friends arrived, people sat around chatting and waiting for dinner. Finally, Cameron got bored and asked if there were any fun toys. Cameron's mom said reasonably and innocuously, "Why don't you ask Dylan where his toys are?"

Dylan: "No. No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!"

Then he ran around like he was having a seizure and had a meltdown screaming fit. It lasted a really long time. It was highly embarrassing.

I'm a pretty firm believer that there's no such thing as bad children, just bad parents. So it would appear that we suck.

Sorry, friends.

iHate You

I sign up for those group savings sites. So far, I get emails daily from Groupon, WagJag, FabFind, and LivingSocial. I've purchased two deals, one was a voucher for a burger meal at some gourmet burger place downtown that uses non-conventional beef, and one was a $50 voucher for Gap but you paid $25 for it.

Maybe you're already aware of this, but today FabFind posted a HUGE deal: they were offering a limited number of Apple iPads for $10. That's a 98% savings! I got pretty excited when I saw it in my mailbox this morning, and I called Eric at work to tell him to keep an eye on it. I wasn't the only one who got excited because predictably, their server crashed all to hell with all the people scrambling to get on it. Eric and I certainly did our best to maintain the chaos by keeping open four tabs each and refreshing them constantly.

We didn't get an iPad, and I'm not too surprised or disappointed about it. I was running after two kids all day, and Eric was leaving work to come home just as the FabFind site was fixed and ready to go live. This isn't a rant about my sense of self-righteous entitlement to a $10 iPad.

FabFind sold all but one iPad, and that last one they gave away for free in a Facebook contest. You had to go on their Facebook page and write why you felt you deserved the free iPad and the person who got the most votes would win. Here's what I would have written, if I had been able to sit down at the computer for long enough:

"Because I was so excited about this, iPeed."

I thought it was quite clever, and it still makes me giggle. I also voted for Eric's Aunt Sandra who wrote:

"Because an iPad is way more fun than a maxipad."

The leader for a long time was this guy:

"Because I'm having a very hard time uploading apps to my invisible iPad."

I like these responses. They're fun and light and appropriate. Besides, it really comes down to who has the most loser friends sitting around doing nothing but checking Facebook and responding favourably to your begging them to vote for you in this contest.

Some responses were stupid. These were the ones where people complained that they deserved the iPad because they had spent all day refreshing their screens when they should have been working. Which hello, that's what everyone was doing. That's not original or deserving. That's annoying. Some people were boring and talked about how it would help them in school or work, or how they wanted it to give to someone for a gift. Some were really sanctimoniously irritating, and talked about selling it and donating the money to charity. Bleh.

But the worst, THE WORST were the people with sob stories.

"I deserve the iPad because my son was recently diagnosed with juvenile diabetes."

What?! I'm going to guess you're fat. The last thing you or your son needs is an iPad. What you both probably need is some good nutritional counselling and a gym membership.

"I think I deserve an iPad because of the epic run of bad luck that I've had lately. Illness, unemployment, potential homelessness. Yeah. :/"

Are you sure you're having bad luck, or maybe you just suck at life? Either way, it doesn't entitle you to an iPad. And if you're potentially going to be homeless, what are you going to do with the damn thing anyway? Are you going to write "Spare some change, God Bless" on it and be the hippest panhandler in town? By the way, this is the person who's currently in the lead, and it looks like she might win. So keep an eye out for a homeless girl with an iPad. She's probably too ill to fight you if you try to take it from her.

"I'm having major surgery next month and won't see my 3 kids for a few days : ( I want an easy way to stay in touch with them. Please vote."

Why...aren't your kids coming to visit you?

"I deserve an iPad because my 38 year old husband died during a nap about a year ago. I fell asleep with his breath on my neck and his arm around me, and when I woke up he was gone."

This was by far the worst one. It actually wasn't even on the vote list, because this woman couldn't get it to post. I think that was because the instructions said to limit your answer to 140 characters, and hers was so long she posted it in a two-part wall post on FabFind's Facebook Wall page. It went on and on about how her family scammed her out of $300,000 and she couldn't collect her husband's something something because she was collecting unemployment and the government was screwing her and she was suffering from PTSD and now she's living with said family who don't love her...it was really uncomfortable and awkward. And here's my rant: this is inappropriate and gross. Why are people using their horrible life tragedies to try to win an iPad? If all of this is true, then this woman probably deserves my sympathy, but she just gets my appalled disgust. I wonder how her late husband would feel about this? He dies a sad early death, and she tries to leverage his passing to get a free iPad. On Facebook.

All in all, I quite enjoyed today's FabFind diversion. And people are stupid.

For Roslyn

Wow, my last post was last December!

My friend Roslyn very nicely hounded me on Facebook today to blog something. My typing fingers were itching, so I thought why not? I'm going to blog something.

Quick update: We had another baby boy in June. We named him Lee, it's easy for Chinese people to pronounce. I expelled him from my person naturally at home, and it was an amazing transcendent experience. And my vagina suffered no tearing! Which is excellent seeing as I tore about an inch and a half while expelling Dylan. Lee looks nearly identical to Dylan except he's fatter and rounder and more smiley.

We've mostly gotten used to living way way far from the city in our slice of suburban hell, and we've managed not to rip down the house yet.

Dylan started preschool in September and I'm not sure he likes it. At the very least, he's very dramatic about being dropped off and picked up, though the teachers assure me that he has a fine time in between. He better start liking it soon, it's not okay to not like school in this house. We're Asian like that.

Eric and I are the same, we celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary this summer. Time flies when you're having babies! The difference is we're totally skinny again, Eric especially. I still have wobbly thighs, and my stomach is a sad sagging wrinkly mass of despair. But I'm about 4lbs away from my wedding weight. It rocks, yo. I thought I was going to be a fat tubbelard forever.

And that's the update! I'm going to write an actual post about an actual thing immediately following this. Stay tuned.

Santa Visit 2009 - Take One

This morning I took Dylan to get his hair cut in preparation for his Santa pictures. He had two new outfits and it's getting close to Christmas so it seemed like a good time to get this checked off our list.

Last year I took Dylan to three different malls and got three different sets of Santa pictures. We did Markville Mall first, where the Santa was nice and jolly but also morbidly obese. Then we did Bayview Village where Santa was thinner and handsomer, but kind of crusty. Both of these visits resulted in lovely pictures. Then I pushed my luck and took Dylan to Yorkdale where the Santa looked REALLY perfect. But it was not a good day and Dylan wouldn't stop crying, so it turned out to be one of *those*pictures. I thought it rounded out my collection nicely.

After spending like a hundred dollars on those visits this year, I realized it was fairly ridiculous to go to three different mall Santas. So this year we're only going to do two. I live, I learn, I grow.

Today we did the Markville Mall Santa with my mom. My brother and father came along too. It did not go well.

I spent about ten minutes trying to psyche Dylan up for it. I kept telling him repeatedly that he was going to meet Santa Claus and we would wave to him and say "hi", and then he was going to sit on Santa's lap and smile, and we would take a nice picture of him with Santa and then it would be all finished. He seemed pretty cool with it, and started to get kind of interested.

They opened and we were first in line. We went up and Dylan waved to Santa. Then he said "hi". Then I went to put him in Santa's lap. Dylan screamed bloody murder and started bucking back and forth. He screamed "NOOOOOOOOO!!!" and tried to claw his way to his gramma.

And then he punched Santa in the face.

Santa's head whipped back in recoil, and then Santa was pissed.

Carol: "Oh my god, Santa I'm sorry! Are you okay??"

Santa: (tightlipped and glaring) "Yes. I'm fine."

Carol: "Um. Okay, Santa."

Dylan continued to cry like he was being tortured, and then they snapped the picture.

Next we'll try our luck at Bayview Village with Eric's mom.

Mommy Puddle

This post is going to be really cheesy, and not in the delicious artisanal cheese way, and not in the disgusting dick-cheese way. It's a sappy gag-worthy self-indulgence.

Last night the most wonderful and adorable thing that has ever happened to me...um, happened to me. We've been telling Dylan that there's a baby in Mommy's tummy, and he sort of gets it. Like, I'll ask him where the baby is, and he'll point to my tummy if he feels like playing along. Also, he's learning to talk now, and he loves babies so whenever he sees one, he'll point and say "Babay". That's how he pronounces it, it's "bah" like"bah humbug", and "bay" like "Michael Bay". And the emphasis goes on the second syllable, so if you're saying "Oil of Olay", just replace that with "babay" like "Oil of Babay", and that's how Dylan pronounces "baby".

Dylan likes to romp around naked on our bed after his bath. This special time means a lot to him, and if you try to get his diaper and pyjamas on without allowing him his nudie romp, he gets extremely upset. So he was doing his romp last night and I was intermittently tackling him and smacking his bum to watch it jiggle, and Eric was asking me why I was doing that, and we were all just having a great time.

Then he thoughtfully looked at my tummy, gave it an affectionate pat and said "Babay", all by himself. I decided to push my luck and asked him if he wanted to kiss the baby, and so he leaned over and gave my tummy a sweet little kiss!! I melted into a blissful Mommy puddle. But it wasn't over. As he continued to romp, he would come over to my tummy and say hi to the "babay", and then give it kisses. He kissed my tummy like ten times

It was the best thing ever. You can go barf now.

Big Life Stuff Update

Huh. Three and a half months since the last post. Is anyone even out there? I'll bet not. I'll just write this for myself. This blog can become like a personal journal for me alone, and I can read my own stories, chuckling at my own folly and cleverness. What a good time I will have!

Much has happened in the last three and a half months. Time marched forward and life progressed and we will none of us ever be the same again. Right now Eric is upstairs trying to get Dylan down to sleep. And you read correctly, I did say "upstairs" because...

We Bought a House and Moved Into It

Our beloved condo had become the bane of our collective existence. I would walk from the kitchen to the TV area and trip on a toy, followed by a bra, followed by a forgotten reusable bag of organic vegetables, followed by Dylan who was crouched over picking dried food off the floor and trying to eat it.

After a fruitless 6 months of house hunting, we finally came across a house we both loved. Up until that point, we hadn't even found a house ONE of us loved. The closest we had come was one house that Eric sort of liked out of desperation that we would never find anything else. Allow me to assure you, that house was terrible.

We had mistakenly been searching for an older house with "character". We were looking in old Markham Village, which is a lovely neighbourhood with older homes on large 60' lots. We had friends who had bought a similarly aged home in North York and then did extensive renovations to make it into a stunningly lovely and charming family home. Armed with these delusions of grandeur, we set out to do the same thing.

After the aforementioned 6 months of this, we went to hang out at the home of Grant and Roslyn, our friends in Stouffville. They have a nice, modern, newly built home in a brand new subdivision. The ceilings were high and the layout was open. And Eric started having doubts about our grand plan. Then our friend Chris bought a townhome in Angus Glen. It was also nice, modern, with high ceilings and an open layout. In addition, Chris has renovated his house in the spirit of his late grandfather's amazing cottage which now belongs to a bunch of Asian people (that last part is unrelated to anything).

Eric lives his life in hopes of becoming a combination of a number of people. These people include (among others) Luke, Batman, and Chris. When Eric first got a glimpse of Chris' new home, that was the beginning of the end of our charming older-house search. We emailed our realtor and expanded our search criteria.

Two weeks later, we had successfully purchased our first home. And the timing is just right because...

We Have Once Again Merged Loins And Been Fruitful

We're pregnant! We are extremely excited.

Let me tell you, it is not easy to be trying to conceive and to NOT blog about it. Especially if you are me and your blog regularly contains too much information. But no matter, I will share it with you now.

Getting the sexytimes in this time around was way harder than the first time. When we were trying for Dylan, I kind of guessed at the general timeframe ovulation was expected, and then we humped like animals at least twice a day for a week. Tada! Fertilized egg. We were very lucky. This time, we tried to do the same thing, but it's impossible to do the sexytimes twice a day. Firstly, of course Eric works. I do not work, but I look after a rambunctious toddler all day, and that's really effective at drying up any sexy juices I might have had. Secondly, even if it were a weekend and Eric was home, it's not practical or good parenting to say "Okay one-year-old, go amuse yourself for about 15 minutes, Mommy needs to get nailed by Daddy."

Our babymaking sexytimes were basically confined to bedtime. At that point in the day we were, without fail, both exhausted and not in the mood. Dylan will always be the child we made out of love. The Dylan-making sexytimes were fun and awesome. This child I am currently gestating will always be the child we made under duress. Good times were rarely had by any in the making of this child. To give you an idea of the lack of romance, instead of calling them "sexytimes", we actually started calling them "squirtytimes".

Anyway, it took four months of squirtytimes, but a squirt finally made it to the finish line, claimed the prize, and brought it home. It's going to be fun when the baby is old enough to read this blog entry.

I will end with a contemplative haiku:

New house: where I live

Fetus lives in its new house

A.K.A my flesh

Ah shit.

This is currently published in Status form on my Facebook, but it deserves a blog post too.

Dylan has been guzzling some truly awful vegan protein shakes in the morning. It's called Vega, and it's basically ground up vegetables, and it's disgusting. Eric drinks it, so Dylan wanted to have what Daddy was having. As a result, he now loves the stuff and consumes nearly an adult size serving every day. It makes his poo green and runny.

I think you can see where this is going.

We got home this afternoon from a weekend up at Horseshoe Valley for my Grampa's 85th birthday. It's a step down from the Caribbean cruise we all took for his 80th, but he's become much less able to travel in the past five years, so Horseshoe Valley was a good alternative. We were totally exhausted when we got home, and were planning to chill out and relax for the remainder of our Sunday.

Dylan started exhibiting cranky sleepy signals, so we ran his bath and started his bedtime routine. I was watching him in the bath when Eric came in to take over, and as I looked up to say something to him I heard a fart noise. I looked back at Dylan, saying "Baby, did you just fart?" Eric said "No, he pooped!" and we sprang into action.

Trailing behind Dylan in the tub were five small pieces of poo. Eric panicked and pulled him out of the tub. "He's still pooing! There's poo hanging from his bumhole!!" I shouted. Eric plunked Dylan on his feet on the floor, dripping wet in the cold air. The poo continued to come out, so Eric put his hand underneath to try to catch it. The poo overflowed and started to drizzle onto the floor. Eric gave up trying to catch the poo, and so it ran down Dylan's legs. It smelled terrible. As it started to pool on his little chubby feet, Dylan started to cry.

I leapt over both of them and ran to Dylan's room to get some wipes. I came back and Dylan was crying and holding out his arms, trying to climb onto Eric for comfort. Eric got poo on his shorts. We kept saying "It's okay, Dylan, it's okay!!" as we frantically tried to clean off his thighs and feet and bum. Eric finally whisked Dylan off to the stand-up shower in our ensuite, and left me in the room with poo all over the floor, poo-wipes everywhere, and a bathtub full of toys and five small pieces of poo.

It has not been a chill or relaxing Sunday evening.

Update of Randoms

What I Had For Lunch Today
I heated a small non-stick Green Pan. Then I took a can of sardines and - when the pan was hot - I dumped the contents of the entire can into it. I arranged the little fishies so that they rimmed the edge of the pan, with a couple crossing the middle of the ring. Then I cracked two eggs into the oily holes. I grabbed a big handful of organic baby spinach and tossed it on top of the eggs. Then I put the lid on the pan and waited for the whites to set. When the whites were cooked and the yolks still runny, I slid the sardine egg pie onto a plate and sprinkled sea salt on top. Then I broke the yolks and let them run all over the top of the pie, and then I ate it. Now I feel kind of sick because it was a lot of rich protein. I plan to now eat half a jar of olives.

I Now Love Olives
I've never liked olives. They taste weird, salty but somehow also sour and offensive. For some reason, a love of olives has snuck up on me and now it's like I can't live without them. Specifically, I love kalamata olives, preferably the organic kind I get at Planet Organic Market. They're less salty, I've had some kalamatas that are ridiculously salty and very difficult to eat. But last week I bought a jar of these organic olives to try, and they were so delicious I ate the whole jar in one day. The next day I went back and bought five more jars of olives, and now I'm down to my last jar. I also bought a jar of black olives to see if I would like those, and they're okay but not as good as the kalamata olives. I loves the Greeks and their olives.

Pellegrino Contains Crack
As an experiment, I quit drinking pop. It wasn't easy because Coke Zero used to be like my favourite thing ever. But now that I've finally realized how gross and awful aspartame is, and I can't go back to sugar pop because it tastes too sweet and makes my teeth feel fuzzy, I figured the only thing to do was quit drinking pop altogether.

Anytime I wanted a Coke Zero, I would instead pour myself a big cold glass of Pellegrino. I've liked sparkling water ever since we went on our honeymoon to Europe almost four years ago. I usually refrain from drinking it in quantity because it's expensive. We did a sparkling water taste-test years ago when we bought all the different kinds of sparkling water from the grocery store and tried them all. We loved Pellegrino, and we really didn't appreciate Perrier so much. Why does it explode like a goddamn grenade in your mouth?

After a couple months of not drinking pop, I was cleaning the kitchen and saw a lonely can of Coke Zero in the fridge. Cathy had been slowly finishing off my pop supply for me when she and Luke came over for our weekly TV night. I decided I had been so good with not drinking pop for so long that I deserved a treat. I cracked open that can of Coke Zero and took a long swig.

It was so gross. I'm sorry to all you people who still love pop, but it really tastes like strange dirty water that is vaguely sweet and has fizz. I HATED it. Wow, I thought to myself. This is so amazing. I don't have to be a slave to any food or beverage. If I can conquer Coke Zero, I can conquer anything!

Last week I ran out of Pellegrino and the world ended. I've been BESIDE myself, craving Pellegrino. I've been extremely irritable and desperate. I've picked fights with Eric for no reason, just because I was upset about not having Pellegrino. Last night I was such a bitch that after Eric had already bathed Dylan, he insisted that we go to the grocery store to get some. So we did. And now I'm better.

Bright Neon
Our chiropractor recommended that we take a bunch of vitamins. One of them is making our pee insanely bright neon yellow. I've never seen anything like it.

Pervert In Training
We taught Dylan to touch himself when we say the word "penis". It's pretty awesome, but also probably not the best thing in the world.

Ooh la la, oui oui!

Eric and I love Paris. It's our favourite city in the world, which I know makes us wildly unoriginal but we don't care. We love the food, all the buildings, the food, and all the food. We are especially obsessed with Laduree.

Laduree is a patisserie/restaurant, and they make lusciously decadent pastries and croissants. Chief among these is the MACARON. I can't tell you how much we love these almond biscuits sandwiching assorted fillings of jams and flavoured buttercreams. My favourite flavour is rose, and Eric's is pistachio. They are slightly crispy - but not unyielding - on the outside, soft and moist and chewy on the inside. The fillings are not too sweet, but bursting with spurty orgasmic flavour. Don't tell people, but one time we had sex using macarons as tasty lickables. Too much information? Yeah. What did you expect.

A typical day for us in Paris goes as follows:

- Wake up
- Go to Laduree to buy a large assortment of croissants and macarons
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go to a museum
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go somewhere awesome for lunch
- Sit on random bench and eat croissants and macarons
- Go to Laduree to restock on croissants and macarons
- Climb the Eiffel Tower
- Return to hotel to dress for dinner while snacking on croissants and macarons
- Go somewhere delicious and highly acclaimed for dinner
- Watch the Eiffel Tower light up at Trocadero
- Go back to hotel and take turns having showers. The person not showering eats macarons in bed.
- Do the sexy sex (I prefer doing it doggy-style in Paris because any macaron crumbs that are still on the bed from snacking, I can lick up while Eric takes care of business)
- Sleep

Eric's mom and sister just got back from a trip to Paris. I had prepared a list of things they should eat there, and the top of that list was of course Laduree. But I'll skip to the end, because it's the best part:

They brought Laduree macarons back for us!!

They are only good for 2 or 3 days, so they were very anxious to see us right away. I shrieked with uncontainable glee and almost crapped my pants when they pulled the familiar pale green box out of their goody bag.

Eric and I just sat across from each other at the dining table after putting Dylan to bed and taking showers. We ate each and every single one. We wept. And now, since I've cut out sugar to lose weight and my body isn't used to having sugar in it anymore, my heart is racing and I feel very dizzy. But I don't care.

I love you, Paris.

I love you, macarons.

How long has it been since a poo post?

I can't remember how long it's been. Anyway, here is one coming right up!

You may already know this if you have me on Facebook and read my status from a few days ago. So if you are one of those people, sorry for making you think you had a new fecal update to read, but I'm sure there will be a new one forthcoming in the near future. There always is.

Eric has an enormous butthole. It's possibly the largest butthole in the entire world. I know this because we like to show each other our noteworthy poos, and Eric's poos are always EXTREMELY large. They look like bear poo, or zebra poo. When Eric was a child, he once made a poo so big it wouldn't go down the toilet. He had to furtively go outside and get a stick and break it up to make it flush away. I can't say for certain, but I'll bet a gay guy wouldn't feel much with Eric. Hot dog down a hallway. Eric won't let me test the theory though, because I've asked several times in our 8 years together and he refuses to allow me to experiment with inserting things into his cavernous tunnel. But I'll bet that with some lube I could easily get a can of Sprite in there.

A few days ago, Dylan shit in the shower. He has shit in the tub three times as mentioned in a previous post, but this time I was having a shower with him and he did in on the floor. There I was, shampooing my hair while he stood in front of me playing with a conditioner bottle and chatting to himself. I put some soap on my body puff and leaned over to lather him up, and I smelled it. A stinky warm poo scent.

I peeked over his head, and there below his little buttocks were two pieces of poo. Two ENORMOUS pieces of poo. At least, they were enormous for a little one-year-old toddler. They were at least the size of MY poos! I think I make some pretty standard poo. And this little kid of mine who is like, a fifth of my size, makes the same size poo. It boggles the mind. Does this mean that when he's my size, his poo will be FIVE TIMES as big as this?

Like father like son, I guess. We better get us some industrial toilets.

Ode to Garlic

I love roasting garlic. It's one of my new very favourite things to do. I buy six to eight heads of garlic, peel off as many outer layers of papery skin as possible, chop off the tops to expose the meaty pungent garlic, and bathe the entire head in olive oil. I then wrap each head lovingly in foil and roast it in the oven for 30-40 minutes.

The heads come out sweet and buttery and lovely. And then we eat them in a sensual orgy of oily delight.

It's excellent because now that we're new-age hippies, I'm all opposed to antibiotic drugs for sickness, and garlic is "nature's antibiotic". Roasting the garlic this way takes away the garlic-breath threat because slow-roasting it cooks away the compounds that make garlic a breathy nightmare. We eat it at least twice a week.

And I always roast extra so I have one or two heads leftever. I pop all the cloves out of the skins and mash them up with lots of extra virgin olive oil. I use this garlic puree for so many things!

For example:
- garnish on my salad for lunch the next day
- smeared on salmon filets with salt and pepper and then baked in the oven
- mixed in with canned salmon, eggs, green onion, parsley, and lemon juice and fried into garlic salmon fish cakes
- mixing with basil and parmigiano reggiano and tossing with whole grain pasta for Dylan
- using as a marinade for shrimp
- stuffing chicken breasts

I'm sure there are other uses. I just haven't found them all yet. Oh garlic. You are so fine and wonderful.

I will end with an ode in haiku form:
Don't ever leave me
Sweet and oily, so supple
Sliding down my throat

I don't think I'm doing it right

I don't get it with playgrounds. Now that the weather is warmer, I take Dylan to the park a lot to tire him out and to get him fresh air. I remember when I was a kid, parks used to be super fun and time would speed up while we were there. Now that I'm a mom, time SLOWS at the park.

We get there, and we go to the slides. I contort my body and twist out my neck trying to get both Dylan and myself to the tops of these playgrounds and we go down the big slides together. Dylan loves slides so he has a great time. We go back up maybe five times, playing with all the steering wheels and spinning attachments on the way up. We swoosh down with him giggling and loving it.

Then I take him to the swings and push him in the swing for a good long while, at least until he starts to look bored. I check my watch.

11 minutes have passed.

I'm convinced that the park I frequent sits on some kind of ripple in the space time continuum.

Updates! Updates! So Many Updates!!

Dylan is asleep. Let's do this.

I swear I have been meaning to blog over the last little while, and to prove it, I actually have three entries started in my list of posts. I just never got around to finishing them and putting them up. So!! To give you more to read, and to lessen the amount I need to write, I will copy and paste those entries into this post as a means of catching you up. Why work harder than I need to?

CRUISIN' March 31, 2009

I've been trying to write this post for weeks now. Dylan hasn't been sleeping well so that has taken away from my free time during his naps. Now that it's so late, you will be getting what's left in my head of what I can remember. Sorry.

We took Dylan on his first cruise in the middle of March. The trip also marked our first feature-length family vacation complete with Dylan's first time on an airplane.

We were nervous and excited for our first big family vacation so we stacked the deck by trying to convince all our friends to come.

Okay pause. If you didn't receive the email convincing you to come on this cruise, I amend my previous statement to say that we tried to convince only our friends who were most likely to come...to come. Of all those friends we contacted, only Luke and Cathy were cool enough to jump aboard. Everyone else was either renovating their basement, replacing computer equipment, being pregnant and too anxious to travel, saving up for a gay cruise instead, hanging out with their dog, busy with tax season, going on a cruise the MONTH BEFORE just because they're jerks, or just too lame. You know who you are.

So we went with Luke and Cathy, and it was totally awesome. Eric and I have never been known for light packing. We went to France and Spain for our honeymoon and packed over 80 kilos of luggage. We travelled to 5 different cities over 3 weeks and took several planes as well as one sweaty overnight train. We nearly died lugging that shit around.

Ever since then we have been actively working on reducing our travel baggage. It has not gone well. Having a baby didn't help matters, and to make a long story short, we packed three enormous suitcases, one large duffel, and three carry-on bags for this trip. We also travelled with a rented convertible carseat and a stroller. It was good times.

We were on Royal Caribbean's Independence of the Seas, which is their newest ship to date. It was enormous and ridiculous. It had everything you can think of that could be on a ship, and then some. Dylan was absolutely dumbfounded by what he saw! Little guy had never experienced such stimulation before! Watching him experience everything with his little one-year-old eyes was definitely the best part of the entire trip - but there were a few other memorable highlights.

Update: I then proceeded not to actually write any memorable highlights. I remember what most of them were though (see, cause they were memorable). My favourite one revolved around the fact that Cathy actually physically cannot stop talking. She is compelled by unknown forcese to fill almost every silence with a running commentary of anything that crosses her mind, like a constant vocal stream of consciousness. Like the Cylon Hybrid from Battlestar Galactica. It makes me very tired, but it's excellent for Dylan because she points out everything that is occuring in the world around us, which will either make him very aware and very smart with an early grasp of the English language, or intimidate him with the amount of talking he will assume the average human needs to do, and he will never speak due to the enormity of the challenge in front of him.

Secondly of course, I was going to write about all the food we ate. You can imagine how it all went down, and it was especially awesome because we had Dylan with us. I used him as an excuse to order TWO full three course meals every night. One was for me, and one was for Dylan. Like the night we both had escargots. He had two snails and I ate all the rest. Or if I couldn't decide between two entrees, I would just get them both. And then I would eat them both. And then get extra lobster tails. Three of them. I was really full that particular night.

And then I wanted to write about how much I love "Name That Tune", and it's pretty much a boring topic since it consisted mostly of how much I love "Name That Tune", and how I insisted that we attended every "Name That Tune" that took place on the ship...it's probably just as well that I didn't belabor that point cause it doesn't seem very interesting. But Name That Tune rocks, yo.

WHY WON'T YOU SLEEP? April 15, 2009

My baby sucks. I'm pretty sure it's all our fault (mine and Eric's, not yours), because we took him on a cruise in March and his sleep got all screwed up and has never gotten back to normal.

This is how bedtime USED to happen:
At 6:30, Dylan would get a bath. He loved his bath and splashed around happily. After his bath, he would get a foreskin pulldown, a fresh diaper, and jammies. Then we would read "Pirate", "Goodnight Gorilla", "Goodnight Moon", "Hug", and "I Love You Through and Through". Then I would hand him a pacifier, and he would drop his head down on my shoulder. I would snuggle him for maybe 8 seconds, and then place him down in the crib and zip him up in his Grobag, which is basically a sleeping bag for babies with shoulder straps. He would then turn his head to one side to play with the animals on his crib bumper, and I would leave him to it. He would put himself to sleep within ten minutes.

It would be 7:00pm. He would sleep until 7:00am. I would then congratulate myself on being a wonderful mother and proceed to have a quiet evening of watching tv, cleaning the kitchen, or entertaining friends. I would go to bed and get a good night's rest. Life was awesome.

This is how bedtime happens NOW:
At 6:30pm, he is wired. He refuses to take baths and instead loves showers. This means that one of us has to take his giant heavy little body and stand in the shower with him. We have to try to soap him up and get him cleaned up and rinsed off while holding him. He is a slippery little booger. Then we come out of the shower, freezing cold and wet. He gets a foreskin pulldown, a fresh diaper, and jammies.

We go to his room and try to read him books but he will have none of it. He stands up, walks to the bedroom door and bangs on it to be let out. So I dim the lights and give him a pacifier. He whips it at me angrily. I pick it up and put it down and go to sit with him in the glider chair. He freaks out and points at the pacifier. I give it to him and he slams it into his mouth and sucks angrily.

I rock him back and forth and he drops his head down on my shoulder. I try to put him down and he bucks his body and screams bloody murder. I sit back down and rock him. I sing to him. I sing to him and rock him until he's asleep. I stand up to put him down. He senses the change in altitude and screams bloody murder. I sit back down and rock him. I sing to him. I sing to him and rock him until he's asleep and snoring lightly. I stand up and place him down in the crib as gently as possible. If I'm lucky, he won't wake up.

I tiptoe out of the room. It is now 8:00pm. I am afraid to move around or watch tv or clean the kitchen in case the sounds wake him up. The kitchen grows mold.

At 10:00, he wakes up. He screams. He doesn't go back to sleep. I go to calm him down and he refuses to be calmed. He slides off my lap and run weeping to the bedroom door. He throws a huge tantrum. I take him outside his room and he smiles and runs around playing with his toys in the most adorable manner possible. He stays up playing happily and energetically until midnight. Eric then takes him to his room and rocks him to sleep. He falls asleep. Eric puts him down in his crib. He doesn't wake up. We go to bed. Eric and I start discussing the details of our death pact. It is 12:30am.

At 1:30am, he wakes up. He screams. He won't stop screaming. We get him and bring him into bed with us. He (no joke) sits up and quietly claps his hands while smiling. Then he snuggles in and goes to sleep. He sleeps like a performing acrobat. He takes up 80% of our king-size bed. I sleep way over on the edge of my side of the bed, Eric sleeps along the bottom edge of the bed. A large pillow ineffectually blocks Eric's side. If we do not do this, we get kicked repeatedly in various parts of our faces and anatomy. We all sleep like shit.

Dylan wakes up at 7:00am. He is a crabby and short-tempered child all goddamn day. Life sucks.

Yes, we're terrible parents. We're not being firm enough with him. But we have tried everything we can think of; he's gotten earlier bedtimes, later bedtimes, more naps during the day, fewer naps during the day, more activity during the day to tire him out, fewer activities during the day to keep him calm, more food to make sure he's full before going to bed, less food so he doesn't have indigestion, less spicy food so it doesn't bother him. He's been left to cry for hours on end, and all it did was make him unbearably clingy and needy for the following two days. We've brought him to bed with us right off the bat but he's too excited about it and flips all around like a deranged seal, and then inevitably gets bored and starts screaming bloody murder.

Update: This situation has not exactly improved, but we have found ways to work around it. I figure he can't be 15 years old and still sleeping in our bed, so I'm just going to roll with it. He naps better during the day and he'll at least sleep the night through as long as he's with us. Stop judging me.


OMG May 5, 2009
My mom and brother came over for dinner tonight. I made a roast organic chicken with organic chickpea salad and an organic green salad (we've gone organic crazy). Dylan finished eating first and started getting very cranky so Eric went to put him in the bath. Dylan recently likes baths again, so this calmed him down and he happily started playing with his bath toys.

My mom finished eating her dinner during this time, so she went to relieve Eric of bath duty so he could come out and finish eating his food. We were chatting with my brother Derek and generally having a pleasant time when my mom suddenly called out from the bathroom:

Mom: "Ai ya, Luy! A Jai Jai heung goh chung-leung-gong doe aw jaw mm mm!"

Translation: "Oh no, Carol! Dylan just shit in the tub!"

My brother and I gasped and ran over. Eric, not having understood the Chinese, sat bewildered at the dining room table chewing his organic salad.

Sure enough, Dylan stood in the tub with a large cloud of loose poo settling in the water behind him. All around him were his bath toys, floating in the poo water.

Update: Yeeah...that was disgusting. Even worse, he's done it two more times since then. Once he did it while Cathy and Luke were babysitting, so BIG apologies to them. This segues nicely into the following section!

Recent Updates (not prior drafts!):

Dylan is Gross
Our son is a disgusting boy. We don't know how he developed this habit, but for a few weeks now, he'll fart or burp and then laugh his gd head off. I mean yes, farts are kind of funny, but he LOVES it. I'm trying unsuccessfully to put a stop to it, but Eric is encouraging it. He's hoping Dylan will grow up to be that kid in class who laughs anytime anyone farts. One time, he was throwing an epic temper tantrum over...something totally inconsequential probably, and in the midst of his tossing and screaming, he accidentally let rip a loud and prolonged fart. And his screaming cries immediately changed to hysterical laughter.

Another time, he was in the bath and made a big echoing fart. He laughed, and since Eric was giving him the bath he also laughed to encourage this behaviour. Dylan decided to be a comedian and started making an effort to fart. He managed to push out a couple more, to great effect since his father is a depraved idiot but then it backfired. Dylan pushed too hard and shit in the tub. Haha Eric!! I was on my way out the door and I was all "Good luck! Bye!" I'm a good wife.

We've Maximized Our Living and Fixed Eric's Armpits
Somewhere along the way over the past year we've become new-age hippies. I don't know how this happened. It hasn't changed our spending habits or our penchant for designer goods we can barely afford, but we're suddenly all organic food and rock salt deodorant and grass-fed beef and non-toxic cleaning products.

It's all because of my friend BJ. I actually have a friend named BJ Hardick, no joke. He's a chiropractor in London and runs a practice with his dad. BJ has always been one of the most crazed and energetic people I knew, so back in university this made for good times. Most times I saw him he was drunk and awesome.

Now he's gone and taken all that energy and channeled it into his practice and a movement called Maximized Living. Eric and I decided to go check out one of his seminars and it changed the way we live. WE HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!!

But for serious, I started making the food changes he recommended and lost 12 pounds without even trying. I feel great and my skin is so nice I stopped wearing foundation and blush. And I can't wear my fat jeans anymore because they look baggy and awful. And this weekend I bought a dress at BCBG in a size 4. I'm so excited!

And we switched to this crystal deodorant because aluminum is all evil and sketchy. Eric's armpits are the armpits of death so I really did not believe that this was going to work. He applies deodorant twice a day just to try to control the stank and you can still smell the nastiness through the cloying perfume of his Axe antiperspirant. But no joke, Eric used this crystal rock deodorant on the FIRST DAY, and his armpits were fresh as daisies! I was appalled and amazed. I can press my face right up against his (somewhat damp) armpit at the end of a workday when he gets off the subway, and it has NO body odour smell at all! It's a miracle. Seriously go out and get one, if it can take away Eric's stank, it can probably make yours smell like pure gold.

Eric Likes Balls. Dylan Does, Too.
Have I ever blogged about how Eric likes balls? It started with Team America World Police. There's a scene where Greg The Actor goes undercover into a terrorist nest in Cairo and is brought before the terrorist leader. He says some bullshit about how he wants to be a terrorist too, and the leader says "I like you. You have balls. I like balls."

Eric and I love this line. Later on, there is a car chase scene through the Egyptian desert, and Greg accidentally makes some suggestion about blowing themselves up and the terrorist leader shouts "I LOVE YOUR BALLS!"

Eric loved these lines so much, he would try to work them into conversations, kind of like how you can say 'That what she said" and people know you're quoting The Office. The problem was, he would never commit fully enough to the line to make it evident that he was making a reference to something else, and not just being really creepy.

So we would be in a car with some friends, and someone would say something about balls. Like our friend Cathy, who is a phys-ed teacher would say, "and then the kids would put away the balls". And then Eric would kind of quietly and confidently state "I like balls" and then happily chuckle softly to himself. There would be a strange and awkward pause, and then the conversation would resume.

I had to have several talks with Eric to make him understand that people were going to think he was some kind of testicle pervert. So now he'll totally just shout "I LOVE YOUR BALLS!" but sometimes with minimal provocation. We may have gone too far in the opposite direction and ended up exactly where we started.

Anyway, the point of this is that I bought a thousand balls and dumped them into Dylan's playpen so now he has a ball pit in which to play. It's pretty awesome, and he loves it. Dylan loves balls.

Whew! That's all for now. Dylan should be waking up soon, but I am DONE this post! Wheee!!

Two Scoops

I've offered Dylan raisins for snacking several times, and he has not been a big fan. On the mornings when he has no oatmeal because I was too lazy to make it the night before, he gets to eat Eric's Dorset cereal. Eric says he always spits out the raisins. Similarly, when I try to get him to eat raisins as an afternoon snack, he grossly spits out the wet, partially masticated globs onto the area rug where it becomes camouflaged for days.

Last week in an attempt to make him stop fussing, I again offered him raisins. They were the PC Organics Jumbo Thompson Raisins, and they were truly enormous. Unlike their sticky SunMaid counterparts, these abominations were the size of the top joint of my pinky finger.

On this day, Dylan finally decided he liked raisins. He gobbled them down like a little glutton! Then he pointed at the now-empty little raisin box while making his trademark frantic grunting noise. I obliged by getting him another little box of raisins. He hoovered those down as well.

In total, he ate 8 boxes of raisins. That is a lot of raisins. It was probably a really bad idea to let him eat that many raisins, but I was sickly fascinated to see how many boxes of raisins he would actually consume. The answer was 8 boxes.

The next day, he pooped four times. Each of those four times he pooped not piles of raisins, but GRAPES! He must have been swallowing raisins mostly whole, and they reconstituted in his digestive tract to their original grape form.

It was every bit as gross as it sounds, diapers full of soft plump grapes nestled in a loose matrix of poo, some grapes flattened and stuck against his little buttocks. It kinds of creeps me out just talking about it.

I will end with a spontaneous haiku:
I saw you piled there
A grotesque perversion of
The circle of life

I'm An Awesome Jerk

We finally got our greedy paws on a Wii Fit!

To be honest, I wasn't that excited about Wii Fit. I didn't understand the hype. Why would anyone want to ruin a delightful passtime like videogaming by throwing in gross exercise? Isn't it enough that I wiggle my thumb and click buttons simultaneously?

But I'm so chunky I'm practically a rectangle. Starting in the new year, I have been trying to get my body to stop looking so blockish. I have been going to the gym every other day, and I have kept my eye out for a Wii Fit. I heard those stories about those people who lost 20lbs playing Wii Fit. I wanted to be one of those people.

Yesterday I went to visit my parents, and my mom and I went to the mall. While walking past Toys R' Us, I saw a little girl struggle by, hauling a slim box with a handle. I saw that it was a Wii Fit. So I punched that little girl in the mouth and ran off with her Wii Fit. I could hear her crying and screaming, but I made it to my car and drove away.

After dropping the game off at my parents' house, I called my mom on her cell phone and went back to the mall to pick up her and Dylan.

Okay no, that didn't happen. But I did dart into Toy R' Us and ask if they had any Wii Fits in stock. And when I saw that they did, I bought one. Yes!!!

I have been playing Wii Fit in almost every spare moment since then (I took a break this morning to dig up my turnip and sell it in Animal Crossing - good times). I love the Balance Games! I am awesome at them. By "awesome" I mean "way better than Eric".

Tonight I finally went to try the Soccer Balance Game. You have to shift your weight from side to side in order to hit soccer balls with your head while avoiding cleats and beheaded panda mascots. I recalled that Eric had proclaimed this game to be "difficult" and "tricky". His high score was 99. I started playing and it was indeed tricky. I found the hardest part was hitting the balls that came at you right near the middle (that's what she said). But after a couple of tries I was getting scores that were over three times higher than Eric's!

He came out to see how I was doing and was impressed and awed by my soccer ball hitting prowess. He encouraged me and cheered me on. But this was not enough for me.

Carol: "Do you want to try?"

Eric: "No it's okay. I'm going to call Chris, I have to talk to him about some work stuff."

Carol: "Come on, come try! Here, I'll set it up for you..."

Eric: "No, really. Maybe later."

Carol: "Come now! I want you to try and then be really bad so I feel even MORE awesome!"

Eric: "...that's why you want me to try?"

Carol: "HERE YOU GO, IT'S ALL READY!!"

And so Eric tried. And he did much better than his original high score of 99. But even so, his "Personal Best" didn't rank in the top ten.

Carol: "Oh boy. Eric, GOOD FOR YOU. A new 'Personal Best'. Gosh, too bad it's still not even as good as my worst score. HAHA!!!! LOSER!!!!"

I am a beautiful person.


*********
UPDATE:
*********
After writing this blog post, I went and kept playing the soccer game on the beginner level, and after a few tries I got a PERFECT SCORE! I hit every single soccer ball and avoided every cleat and panda head!! This results in a score of 555. I SO TOTALLY ROCK!!

Dylan is a Hungry Hungry Hippo

Earlier this week I woke up all groggy to the sound of Dylan complaining his head off from his room. It sounded something like "I have been lying here for a long time woman, when are you coming to get me?" So I got out of bed and allowed him to keep bitching while I went pee, brushed my teeth, and went to the kitchen to heat up his breakfast of organic oatmeal with apples, cinnamon, and ground chia seeds.

Sidebar: Remember Chia Pets (Ch-ch-ch-chia!)? Turns out the seeds that served as their nutrient source are like the most nutrient-rich whole food on the entire planet. Aztecs used to survive on chia seeds when they went on...big hunting camping trips? I can't remember the actual quote. But you can get them at health food stores and we sprinkle it on as much of Dylan's food as we can get away with.

So while I was in the kitchen I noticed that two cereal bowls were rinsed and sitting by the sink. Weird, cause why did Eric use two cereal bowls? Then I thought there was considerably less oatmeal in the container than I had expected. Weird, cause I thought I had just made that batch two days ago? Then after everything was heated up I filled a sippy cup with water and took everything out to set up on the table. And sitting on the table was a sippy cup all filled and ready to go. Weird, cause did Eric put that there? In preparation for me?

I went to get Dylan and he was in a good mood. We snuggled and said good morning to his favourite stuffed animals. Then I brought him out to the dining room and suddenly it occured to me that maybe Eric had already gotten up and fed him once this morning. Two cereal bowls, less oatmeal than expected in the container, and a prepared sippy cup! I called Eric and sure enough I was so zonked out that I had no idea he had gotten up with Dylan much earlier, fed him, changed him, played with him, and put him back down for a nap. Huh.

Anyway, that heated bowl of oatmeal went back in the fridge - I wasn't going to feed it to Dylan again but Eric can eat garbage out of a toilet and still not get sick, so he could have it the following morning. When I told him this, he got very excited because he lives for Dylan's delicious organic leftover scraps.

So the next morning, father and son woke up together and each had a big bowl of oatmeal with apples, cinnamon, and ground chia seeds. Eric was horrified at how filling Dylan's breakfast is. Ground chia seeds have a lot of insoluble fibre so they fill you up fast and keep you feeling full. And we load in as much as the oatmeal can hold without turning into sawdust paste. Eric felt almost uncomfortably full after eating that bowl of oatmeal. Dylan felt fine and still wanted to share my granola cereal.

That same day, as another example, Dylan and I had lunch.

I ate:
- 2 extra large scrambled eggs
- 1 piece of dry flax toast

I felt bloated afterwards.

Dylan ate:
- 2 extra large scrambled eggs
- 1 piece of dry flax toast
- 1/4 avocado
- 1 banana

He then tried to bully me into making him more eggs. When I refused, he lay on his stomach and dragged himself around the ground for exercise.

Who are the medical professionals out there? What are the chances Dylan has some kind of...I don't know thyroid problem? What controls appetite?

You can imagine how happy he makes my Chinese relatives.

Life Update

Dylan is sleeping and is due to wake up any minute. This is of course the best time to start an all-purpose update blog post. I'm practically inviting failure and there is a good chance you will never see this posted.

I Have No Husband
Well no, technically I still do. But ever since going back to work in the new year, Eric has been working some extreme hours. He goes to work at a normal time most mornings, but stays at the office until 2 or 3 in the morning. Then he stumbles home, catches a few hours of sleep, then gets up to feed Dylan so he at least still knows he has a father, then goes off to work again.

There is a medium-to-good chance that Eric is having an affair. It would not be surprising for Eric to be this bad at having an affair that he just claims he's working late until 2 or 3 every night, but is actually in the arms of his clandestine lover. I keep trying to catch him in a lie, but he is actually pretty consistent with his story. I don't blame him for staying consistent because he knows that if he is caught in an affair, his balls will be ripped off and liquified in a blender and then force-fed back to him. So you know. Let me know if you have any information. I'm too lazy to do anything about it.

Dylan is a Monster Tank
He is so big. My little wee baby is gone forever and in its place is a chunky block of muscle and chub. He still can't walk independently but he insists on holding onto our fingers and charging around everywhere. And he poops like an absolute machine!

And recently, he has made a hysterical game out of flipping over onto his stomach anytime you want to change his diaper. I know he thinks it's hilarious because he looks at me first and starts cackling like a wicked witch, then arches his back and rolls over onto his stomach. And then he looks at me again and continues to cackle. And when you try to flip him back over, he laughs and resists and kicks his feet like he's dancing.

It's all fine and good as long as it's a pee diaper. It's annoying because it takes forever to get the new diaper on him and the whole time I'm in fear of him spraying pee everywhere. But when it's a poo diaper, it's just disgusting. The potential is high for stinky poo to get everywhere. I've started to change him on the floor when it's a poo diaper and I push one of my legs across his torso to forcefully pin him down. As he gasps for air and moans in pain, I feel there must be a better way to do this. So you know. Let me know if you can think of anything. I'm too stupid now to innovate ideas.

I Love Shameful TV
Ever since Eric started working these late night, I have become increasingly dependent on trashy television. It all started on the season premiere of The Bachelor on a Monday night. Eric was working late and Dylan had gone down to sleep at his customary 7pm, and there was nothing for me to do after eating my dinner. So I turned on the TV and started flipping through channels. The Bachelor caught my eye as I was surfing. All the girls were filing out of a limo and introducing themselves to Jason Mesnick. I wanted to check out the group of desperate bimbos, so I started watching. I was all casual and saracastic about it, and I ended up watching the entire episode. I made fun of the trailer they tacked on at the end promising scandal and intrigue for the remainder of the season. I was not pathetic.

The following Monday, Eric was again working late, so I flipped on the TV and saw that The Bachelor was on. "Oh," methinks to myself. "Look at that. I may as well tune in to see what those wacky girls are up to."

By the third Monday, I was eagerly awaiting 8:00 and the two-hour extravaganza of awesomeness that is The Bachelor.

This week, I just sucked it up and dove into not only The Bachelor, but also all iterations of American Idol, and topped it off with an episode of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant" and then "Pregnant and Paralyzed" on TLC.

It's the beginning of 2009 and I am once again TV's bitch. So you know. Let me know if you are addicted to any other good trashy shows. I'm too strung out on these shows to look for new ones.

My Eyeball Was Injured
My left eye had been bothering me for a few months. If you hang out with me often, you will likely recall moments when I would put my hand up to my eye and complain of a stinging sensation, followed by a run to the washroom to take out my contact lens to clean it. I may have also asked Eric to blow in my eye.

I finally went to the eye doctor and he looked at my eyeball. Turns out something had gotten under my contact lens some time ago and scraped off a section of my cornea. I'm pretty sure it happened in Cuba. Possibly with sand. I had to stop wearing my contact lenses and wear glasses for a few days while it healed.

This story really isn't that interesting, I just really get annoyed with having to wear my glasses for such a long period of time. Glasses suck. So you know. Whatever.

And on that note, I will end with a spontaneous rhyming couplet:
If Eric cheats his balls I will destroy
And lack of sperm will not be due to soy

"IT WAS YOU!!"

Dylan has major gas today. I think he might be a little bit sick, because his head feels warmer than usual, his appetite is strangely small, and he's been gulping water at a shocking pace.

His farts smell like rotten eggs. Which, I know that's what farts are supposed to smell like. Everyone says that farts smell like eggs, eggs smell like farts...I used to make egg salad in Kingston while Gloria was in class and when she got back she'd know I had been making egg salad because it smelled like I had held a large choir practice in the apartment but instead of practising songs, everyone had farted and left. But Dylan's farts today really DID smell like rotten eggs, like I detected distinct notes of poached egg white. And he hadn't eaten any poached egg white at all, in fact, he had spat out all of his delicious kale, onion, and cherry tomato omelette which I ended up eating, including the ABC pieces he spat out.

Sidebar: I have never eaten so much ABC food as I have in the past 4 or 5 months since Dylan started solids. I'm like a dog. A really flabby, non-hairy dog with stretchmarks.

He farted all throughout the day, the same flavour each time. Late in the afternoon, I heaved him into my arms and went down to the parking garage to get something from the car. And he FARTED IN THE ELEVATOR. It was completely gross. I was so scared someone would be waiting for the elevator down in P2 and think that I had made that smell. Do I blame the baby? It seemed not only cruel, but also not very believable. If it were me, I would not believe that a small innocent baby would be able to make a smell so potent. I don't think I've smelled anything like that since my first trimester when my poo was backed up and came out extra fermented.

Luckily, there was no one down there, and we went to the car and got what we needed. Dylan thought that being taken down to the cold parking garage in his pyjamas was a hoot. He started giggling once we were in the parking area and was happily pointing at everything. Totally cute.

Of course, we were lucky to get the SAME ELEVATOR going back up. And when I walked inside, the fart was STILL THERE. So not only was Dylan's fart thick and potent, it had longevity. It smelled as though the atmosphere in the elevator were a vacuum and the fart had been perfectly preserved.

But here's the thing: I don't think Dylan knows he's the one making these farts. A little later, I was feeding him his dinner. We were sitting there at the dining room table, and he was feeding himself pieces of curry tofu and he let one rip. It burst out in a thick cloud of stench.

I turned to give him a strained look. And found that he was giving me a strained look. That's right, he was looking at me as though I had just farted. And then he lifted his little arm and pointed a finger at me. I started shaking my head vehemently, "NO baby, NO! It was you! IT WAS YOU!!!" And he started shaking his head, and continued to point!

So either my 10-month-old baby can't tell when he's farting or he knows how to fart and then blame it on his mother. I really hope he doesn't do this in public.