Happy Halloween, and Prepping for November

Happy Halloween! TK took a half day, we carved pumpkins, now we're playing some wii fit. It's a good day, even if it didn't happen to be one of my favorite holidays! He's trying to beat my ski jump records, little knowing I'm the ski jump MASTER. What's your best wii fit game? My mom is a wicked good hula hooper. She played on our wii and set a top score that is untouchable by us.

So, let's get on to November. I took the plunge and signed up for NaBloPoMo. I know some of you are also participating. I'm signed up as WhatACard...feel free to "friend" me. If you can figure it out, as in the few minutes I spent, I couldn't really find any of you. Or figure out how to add you as a friend. I'm technologically impaired today, I guess.

I hate to say it, but I'm not super committed to NaBloPoMo. I mean, I'm planning on it, but it'll be the first thing dropped from my schedule if things get nutty.

I'm worried about NaNoWriMo. I'm worried about the sophmore jinx. I'm worried we'll all get sick. I'm worried that my idea for a novel has less form than I had last year going into it. But hey, no plot, no problem, right?? I'm testing that this year a bit more than I did last year!

For those of you not familiar, NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50k word novel in 30 days. That means you have to write, on average, 1667 words a day. However, due to a Thanksgiving trip, I really need to hit more like 2000 words a day. At least.

I'm going to try to be posting my current word count on my blog, but if I forget, or if you just want to visit, here I am at NaNo. I'll be posting (completely unedited, never re-read) excerpts of the novel-in-progress over there, too.

Oh boy, here comes November!

Emergency decorating advice needed!

I'm putting stuff back up on our new entertainment center. We have a nice crystal bowl we got as a wedding gift, from a guest who must have mistakenly assumed we had far nicer taste than we actually do.

So here's my question: Is it okay to continue storing our wii-motes in the bowl? What do you think? Super classy?

Canadians, Food, and The Best Way to Be Kind

We just returned from a trip to Buffalo to visit my family, which as always was lots of fun. We go every summer for the Taste of Buffalo, a huge food festival. You may guess from my blog entries that I have a bit of a love affair with food, and most of my family is like this as well. So a food festival is a perfect reason to make a trip to Buffalo. I had something called chocolate sin. It was rich chocolate cake drowned in chocolate fudge, with a few strawberries. It was the most delicious food on earth. I also had about 1 zillion calories of other food, most of it incredible. It was wonderful!

One thing I love about the greater Buffalo area is the Canadians. We brought our wii with us on vacation, but of course forgot our wiimotes. So at 9:30 pm one night, I was off to Target in Niagara Falls, USA. I think I was the only person who didn't have Ontario license plates! I don't know what's up with the late night American shopping needs of all those Canadians, but the Target was completely hopping.

The guy checking out ahead of me ran out of American money and tried to give the cashier a coin. I couldn't see it well, but I think it was a toonie. With an annoyed tone in her voice, the cashier asked, "Don't you have any *paper* money?" He rooted around in his wallet and pockets, and pulled out some other coins to hand over to the cashier. With such disgust, she said, "What ARE these?"

I'm of two minds about this. First and foremost, you're a cashier working near the US/Canadian border. You're going to get Canadian money. Suck it up, or get a different job. However, having worked as a cashier near the US/Canadian border, I know what a pain in the tushy it is to get all the weird Canadian money. It takes forever to close out your drawer at the end of your shift, and it messes up your reconcilation (especially for me who had to do currency conversions in my head). Mostly, though, I was just annoyed that I once again picked the wrong lane and spent approximately ten thousand years to buy a wiimote.

As I walked out to my car, a bright yellow Hummer raced through the parking lot. It had Ontario plates. It made me glad to realize that us Americans don't have the market cornered on bad taste.

While at my parent's house, I perused my mom's People magazine. In it was a blurb* about some book called Quantum Wellness. I highly doubt I'd like it as apparently Oprah likes it. She's a pretty good judge of what I'll hate. If Oprah recommends it, I can almost guarantee I'll loathe it. But one quote really caught me: "It's making tiny changes that affect your health and the global well-being in a big way." I very much agree with this, and try to make the small changes in my own life that will add up to big changes. However, the author immediately ruined it by giving this example: "Like cutting out animal products: you're decreasing your chance of getting cancer, but you're also helping animals by not eating them."

Wow, there's so much wrong with that statement. First, I would argue that becoming vegan is not a "tiny change" in your own life. Also, it shows a complete lack of understanding of the affects to the environment and animals if everyone immediately became vegan. But, what really got me was the idea that you help animals by not eating them.

I was thinking of trying to do something to help the homeless. Oh, I've got an idea! I can not eat them. They'll love that.

Well, I'm back now, so expect some more blog entries. Leave me a comment about any crazy Canadian stories you have, or food festival memories, or just to say hi. Yes, I'm whoring for comments. What can you do?
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*or was it a review? I don't regularly read People, and it seems like everything in the entire magazine is just a blurb. I don't recall it being quite so devoid of content in the past, but perhaps that's because I normally read it while distracted in doctor waiting rooms.

My awesome bad luck

I was having a rough afternoon yesterday. I've been sick, and while I'm recovering, I feel pretty low on energy. The boys were in a grumpy mood, and probably would have napped except a thunderstorm rolled through right as they were falling asleep. So I had two grumpy, overtired, scared boys while I was feeling pretty crappy myself.

I brought the boys downstairs, and N-man played quietly while I held B-man, trying to console him from the scare of the thunder. Of course B-man fell asleep in my arms. So I was trapped on the couch. Luckily, the computer was close by so I started browsing. I decided to look for a wii fit. Of course, it was nowhere to be found. Until I happened across one local store that as of closing the night before, had a "limited stock" available. Well, I figured that was a long shot if I ever heard of one as it was already afternoon. So I kind of put it out of my head.

Then N-man peed out of his diaper, and I had to put B-man down. B-man woke up, and started having a crying fit. I'm busy cleaning up pee and changing all of N-man's wet clothes and B-man is working himself up to a full-blown tantrum. I know, you're all jealous of my super-glamorous life. Luckily, I think the vast majority of my readers are all moms so I know you all have had days like this. It's not just me, is it??

I get N-man all cleaned up, then work on calming B-man down. I finally turn on a short TV show (god, I love on-demand. They have a huge selection of free children's programs, including a few really short animated versions of story books. A perfect 5 minute calm-down activity!) It helped a little, but things were still on the verge of falling apart. Oh, and TK wasn't coming home until bedtime since he was at band practice. I was all on my own.

So, a change of venue was in order. But where to go at 5pm? Of course, on a quest to get a wii fit! I load the boys into the car. And get going. And get stuck in traffic. Because it's rush hour. And not only that, but the road I was taking was torn apart. Shouldn't they give me updates if they're going to start construction on a road I want to take? Geez! (And yes, I'm also now running into dinner time. Luckily, since my boys don't eat, this is never a big problem with them).

I get to the store, get the boys back to the electronics section, and...no wii fits. Of course. But I didn't go all that way to give up without even asking. I wait in line, and ask the people who work there. Nope, no wii fits. Another woman comes up to ask the same thing, and we all start chatting about how many people have been in to look for wii fits and how annoying it is that there are never enough wii things to go around. I was laughing, talking about how on the way over I was teaching the boys about a "long shot". Well, along comes a manager, listens for a minute, then asks, "Are you looking for a wii fit?" Yes, answered the other woman and I. "Well, I have a few I just got in."

Really?

So the manager went to get the boxes, opened them, and we bought our wii fit! It was that easy. And if I hadn't had the bad luck to have N-man's pee accident, B-man's tantrum, rush hour traffic, road construction, and just generally being in a bad mood and having to get out of the house, I would have been there too early and they wouldn't have had any wii fits.

It's amazing, sometimes all kinds of bad stuff can happen that come together for something good.

Random related thought: I'm completely uncoordinated and a lot of the wii fit games rely on balance. Of which I don't possess any. At one point, the game actually heckled me and asked if I tripped a lot while I walk. Sadly, the answer is yes. My play was further impaired by having the boys playing with me. I'd let one get on to the balance board with me and we'd play together.

When TK got home, the boys excitedly told him all about playing the games. N-man happily reported, "We played the falling off the building game!" Yeah, it was a tightrope walking game. Although mostly we did just immediately fall off the tightrope and down between the buildings. Kids are so easily entertained. I love that he was just as happy with the thought that the goal of the game was to fall off the tightrope as to stay on it!

Stupid very hungry caterpillar!

Our trees are infested with something called winter moths, or more precisely, the larvae that will turn into moths. These crafty little buggers turn the leaves of the trees into swiss cheese. Swiss cheese leaves are not very effective at, oh, little things like photosynthesis. Last year it was wicked bad...our trees had hardly any full leaves. We got the trees all sprayed. Okay, it didn't make the leaves come back, but the trees managed to limp through the rest of the season and most branches survived.

Yeah, now the new leaves are out, and TA DA, swiss cheese. Stupid stinkin' winter moths. Now we have to get them treated. Again. Apparently, we'll probably have to treat for years. It costs a gazillion dollars (yes, that was the official estimate), and it's not even effective in the long-term. I'm being outwitted by a caterpillar! A bug! Frick!

So, any good bug infestation stories to share? Misery loves company! I could tell about the time termites swarmed all around me in our basement and I didn't notice since I was hard at work on the computer writing a paper while I was in grad school, but that was more funny, especially since the termites didn't establish a colony in our house. I hope one day I'm amused by these winter moths, but as of right now, they mostly just make me want to declare war on nature.

Random unrelated thought: My parents are coming up this weekend, and we're all going to visit my grandparents for Mother's Day. It should be fun, I'm very much looking forward to it.

I did something I almost never do and told TK what I want for Mother's Day: Wii Fit. Of course, it's already sold out everywhere and it hasn't even been released yet :) Oh well...

Wheeee!

We got a wii yesterday. Okay, technically, we got a wii quite some time ago. I stood in line for an hour or so one morning a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving. It was right in the middle of NaNoWriMo, though, and I didn't want the distraction of it pulling at me, so we put it away until December 1, as a kind of reward for finishing my novel.

December 1 rolled around, and we got out the wii, set it up, and....nothing. It didn't work. After much talking on the phone to the Nintendo repair department, the gist was: it was broken. Thanks.

So, we sent it back, and just yesterday got our new one.

I wish I could say we got it for our kids, but at 2 and a half years old, I don't think they're old enough to act as cover for us.

So I guess we're part of the "old people" video game movement. Okay, maybe it's not that dire. We're part of the Nintendo generation. I played plenty of NES in my youth. We even own a Playstation (the first version, from way back when) that we pull out from time to time. While I was pregnant with my twins and on "couch rest" I even pulled out an old video game and played for hours.

But I still feel somehow apologetic for playing video games, like I should be doing something more important with my life. But I guess instead of saving the world, I'll be honing my wii tennis skills, or trying to build my brain at the Big Brain Academy (current grade: B--). At least for a little while.

Random unrelated thought:

It's snowing. Again. After years of living in Georgia, and hating the fake winters there, I swore once we moved back to a normal climate, I'd never complain about the snow. I do like the snow, but we have a lot to do today, and sitting inside while 8" falls wasn't exactly on my list.