hairbrained schemes

a pirate's life for me

I have been a contact and closet glasses wearer for the last 18 years.

Recently I decided to make the plunge and go for Lasik surgery to have my eyesight corrected.

I was given a pile of literature and a consent form to take home read over, which naturally, I shoved in a drawer and promptly forgot about.

Yesterday, I got a follow-up call from one of the very nice ladies that works at the clinic who wanted to schedule me in and make sure I had all the information that I needed.

Information like:

• you should cease and desist wearing all eye makeup from now until 2 weeks after the surgery
• you will need to bring sunglasses and a driver (how very J-Lo of me - too bad my driver is a cable guy driving a 1998 Astro Van with ladders on top - it kind of diminishes the glam of being "driven" - however he does have tinted windows, so that's pretty posh)
• you must wash your eyes for 3 days prior with a product called "Lid-Care" to take care of all the debris in your eyes (debris? in my eyes? alrighty then.)

And, this is where my mom, if she is reading, should cease and desist, maybe go pour herself a nice stiff drink and fight over the remote with dad.

• there is a section entitled "Vision Threatening Complications" and at the very end of said section, kind of thrown in there, almost nonchalantly it says:

                                ...loss of eye.

While being a pirate always kind of appealed to me (in a bodice ripping novel sort of way) I'm pretty sure I wouldn't rock an eye patch well. 

So I made a quick "hold the phone, sister" call back to the lovely lady at the clinic and asked for a little clarification and perhaps some statistics. 

Apparently, this has an extremely remote chance of happening, possible, but extremely unlikely.

So I decided to take that information and shove it in one of the drawers of my mind, and promptly forget about it.

Wish me luck.

can't get enough of your love

So I guess I've hit the big times.

I got this thinly veiled threat in my email the other day:

 

"where's my blog?? I'm about to take you off of my favorites!! and you don't want that!!! wacka wacka!!!"

It was from a guy called "loverboy" who happens to look just like this hot mess below and happens to have access to my email account (among other things):

Handsome, no?

Wacka wacka is defined in part by the Urban Dictionary as:

expression used to refer to a sexual act, especially when you want to be ambiguous.

The other day the boys were sitting at the kitchen table and Jacob said something and followed it up with an impressive one eyebrow raise (which, by the way, is on my bucket list and I am practicing it as I type) and a "wacka wacka" out of the side of his mouth. 

He kind of paused and then asked, "what does that mean anyway?"

Lucas pipes up, "I'm not sure what it means, but dad always says it right before he pinches mom's bum".

So, there's your blog Gorgeous George.

Kisses,

YLW

right here, right now

Uttered whilst in the midst of a deathmatch friendly little nightly game of gin rummy, as he slaps down the winning trio of threes and goes out with a definite flourish (oh, he is the King of Flourish) :

I. LOVE. MY. LIFE.

A little reminder to me to not let the stupid crap get me down. 

And that something as small as kicking your mom's arse in cards can bring such joy. 

At least he's a better sport than I used to be and doesn't jump up from the table to point, laugh and engage in the not entirely graceful but entirely "in-your-face" victory dance. 

I love you, mom.

the winner takes it all

With all the hoopla that spirals around the phenomenon also known as "THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL" I didn't make it back here yesterday as I had planned.

But here I am, and here are the numbers chosen by my glamorous assistants (beauty, of course, being totally in the eye of the beholder).

For the Mini Albums in an Evening, the lovely Miss. Lucinda selected the number:

 

(that's 24 for those of you who don't read blow out) - so by my calculations, the winner of this amazingly inspiring book is:

Kelli!

And the ever graceful, ethereal Miss Jacqueline drew the number:

(number 11) which goes to Candy M!

I happened to find another copy of the Sept/Oct issue in my craftroom, so I drew one more number

Number 18 which is Beth Warren!

Congratulations, ladies - please email me cloverton@shaw.ca with your mailing addresses. (<- I just removed an exclamation point from the end of that sentence, one of my September resolutions is to try and limit my gratuitous use of certain punctuation...)

Upon reviewing the above photos I have two questions:

1. when did my arms get so hairy/freckly and/or dry?
2. when am I going to stop using the excuse "I'm not a girly girl" and do my freakin' nails?

Those are both rhetorical questions. (!!!)

Addendum:  What are these funnel cakes of which so many of you speak? 

PS:  I made my new banner using a digital kit from the oh-so talented Libby Weifenbach, whose kits can be found here.

Give It Away

First things first, I just received an extra copy of:

 Simple Scrapbooks Mini Albums in an Evening

and the September/October issue of Simple Scrapbooks

And I'm itching to give them away.  If you are interested in them, check out the bottom of my post and I'll tell you how!

We just made our annual visit to the Armstrong IPE (yup, that place that every time for the past 8 years, about 15 minutes after we walk through the gates we swear we are never going back because the whining that goes on is so intense that we just about want to sell, nay, PAY that toothless carnie with the impressive mullet working the Sizzler to take our children). 

This year was different.

First of all, we preplanned. 

We got there around 2ish (just in time to miss the lumberjack show, which wasn't planned, but nobody seemed to care too much).

Then we split up. 

We met friends there and split the kids into two groups. 

Brady & Jacob who went with Gabe & Gorgeous George.

and the rest of them who went with the moms. 

Now, when you run the numbers on that it might seem that the moms got a little shafted on that one,
HOWEVER, the moms are not stupid, they are just good at biding time.

Three hours later when we hooked up, we negotiated a trade.

The trade consisted of the husbands taking all the kids and the moms going to the beer gardens.

See?  We aren't just another pretty face.

Because we were there for almost 12 hours, a play by play could get quite epic so here are some highlights:

the "pretend you are really excited, because we're going to the fair again...yes, we said we would never make you go again, but we are, so suck it up and smile." photos in the car

the food (definitely the high point for me), sadly I got no food pictures because when you have a donair in one fist and two bags of mini donuts in the other, a candy apple wedged between your knees and a lemonade stuck in the crook of your elbow, there is no free hand for taking photos. 

The fact that this is the first year that our kids when on rides and we got our money's worth out of those stupid wrist bands we get suckered into every year.

(Thomas and Luke pretending that the carousel is making them puke, nothing like a good puke joke to an eight year old - unless, of course, it's a good fart joke.)

the fact that Lucas finally reached the marker on the sign that allows him to ride the big kid rides. 

the dog agility (this is where Jason and I pretend that we are TOTALLY going to get Bella into dog agility classes because she would be so awesome at it.  It's good to have traditions.)

the rodeo (again no pictures, not because of food, although I was still working my way through the 2nd bag of mini donuts at this time, I was just to lazy to get my camera out of the bag.)

So, there you have my favourite parts of the fair.

1.  Beer Garden
2.  Making a Clever Trade with the Husbands
3.  the Food
4.  the rest of it

What are yours? 

Let me know in the comments and I'll draw names for the two books I mentioned at the top of this post.