Bed time.

This is what I found when I went up to bed the other night.

At first I thought that maybe it was a terrible tragedy and he was dead.

Then I saw his belly rise and fall.

He was not mid-play or mid-scratch.  He was not rolling around to get the stinky dog smell off of him and on to my pillow.  (He can do that without even trying.)

He was just asleep.

Seriously.

Music.

If you ask Sheldon, he'll tell you that music is everything to him.

It's what he turns to when he needs to chill, when he needs to celebrate, when he needs to study, when he needs to sleep, when he needs to walk, when he needs to be alone, when he needs to drive in a car with his friends, when he needs to watch TV.  (Yes, that last one is true.  I've found him watching a movie on our small DVD player while plugged into two sets of ear buds - the one in his left playing the movie and the one in his right playing music.)

No surprise then, that his first paying job has been at the arena every Friday night working the music for our Junior C hockey team.  And if there is anything I can tell you about small towns it's that they love their hockey.  So the music?  It's a pretty important job.

At home, during the non-hockey hours of the week, he can sometimes be heard belting out 70's and 80's tunes.

How many of your 14-year olds are singing Cold As Ice? The Boys are Back in Town? Eye of the Tiger? And when's the last time you heard 'Smokin' in the Boy's Room'?  A little Twisted Sister, a little Loverboy, a little Boston.

Quite the walk down memory lane, this job is gave us.  I'm sorry that the season is over so soon.

Spare change?

It's tough.  Wanting something so badly but then realizing that you just can't have it.

With a twenty and a five in her wallet and a $37 blouse on her back, Juliana thought that she might have enough change in her purse to make up the $12 difference.

So she dumped her money out and counted it.

On the change room floor.

I wonder if that's why it's called a 'change room'?


 

12 on 12.

February  :  Sunday

01.  My favourite breakfast these days.
02.  List of chores to be done this weekend.  Also the source of much argument and frustration for a couple of hours.
03.  A morning muddle cuddle.
04.  The warm spot on the couch - just after I finished my late morning snooze.
05.  Juliana helped clear the snow off my car before we left to run errands this afternoon.
06.  First stop:  Bulk Barn and the bin with the lollipops.
07.  Our Valentine assembly line.
08.  Lucky friends - this is a sneak peek at Juliana's finished product.
09.  Me again.  Back on the couch.  Reading.  It's just that kind of day.
10.  I had the night off.  Sheldon made dinner all on his own - chicken tetrazzini. And it was delicious!!
11.  Books that belonged to my mom and dad when they were young.  Tonight I finally made room for them on our bookshelf.
12.  An evening skate with the kids.

Packing up.

There is a reason why, when her daughters have a big job to get done, we call her.

My mother is a machine.

She can clean out and pack up a basement or un-pack and organize a new kitchen like nobody's business.

We left her place after Christmas, having spent time with the whole family and she was starting to talk about getting her house ready to put up for sale.  I told her then that I'd come and spend a weekend helping her out.  We picked last weekend and I was ready to roll up my sleeves and get busy.

Except that when I arrived, she had already painted the walls in her livingroom, dining room and hallway, she had cleaned almost everything out of her ginormous unfinished basement and then painted the entire floor, had someone come and replace her bedroom carpet (only after insisting on moving the furniture out herself), and packed up bins ready to be hauled off to a storage locker.

Um, Mom, why am I here again?

Turns out that I could help her deliver a van load of old stuff to it's various new homes.  And we cleared out some stuff, got rid of some furniture, moved a few things around, went out for dinner, and enjoyed a little (or more) wine.

We spent one night going through a box of old stuff that belonged to my dad and found all sorts of treasures:

- Newspapers from July 21, 1969 - "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.", Expo 67 and January 1, 2000.  As well as articles about the Royal Wedding (Charles and Diana), Diana's death, local snowstorms and floods, and Mr. Dress Up's obituary.

- A gigantic Bible:

- Various hair clippings (found in that Bible) that had to be at least 100 years old. (Kind of touching to see the care that was taken to preserve them and, yet, mostly kind of creepy).

- A Sunday School invitation (also found in the Bible) which, oddly enough, might have started our current texting shortcuts:

- A newspaper clipping about my mother's legal issues:

But the most fun of all was the carving set which came with a note in my grandmother's hand writing:

Why, oh why, have we kept such a cursed knife for all these years?

Oh, and I found my Brownie hat:

I left my mom's early Monday morning.  The house looked great, she had a couple of things that still needed to be picked up, and she figured she'd have the real estate agent come by on Thursday.  

Not sure what changed during my two-hour drive home but by the time I talked to her on Monday afternoon, she'd already called her agent, signed the papers, and there was a sign on her lawn.  

I'm telling you.  She's a machine.

I'm not sure how I'm her daughter because I need a nap just thinking about what she's accomplished.  

Fingers and toes crossed now for a painless sale.

She deserves it.

Page-A-Thon.

Once a year, at school, the library hosts a Page-A-Thon.  It's an opportunity for the students to choose a couple of books, set a goal of how many pages they'd like to read as a student and as a class, then they all head to the library for a day of lounging and reading.  They have scheduled stretch breaks and, unless you are caught talking, you get to hang out all morning reading.

The problem with Page-A-Thon day, however, is that you have to drive to school.

Why?

In her efforts to be organized, this is Juliana's white board on the eve of this reading extravaganza:

That's a lot of stuff to bring to school.  Like a green garbage bag worth of stuff.  All in the name of comfort.

Oh, and did I mention that they also get to wear their pyjamas?  All day long.  At school.

I'm wondering if they'd notice me sneaking in the back door of the library next year.  Sounds like my kind of morning....