Next to Christmas or maybe right up there with Christmas, this is one of my favourite holidays.  I LOVE going to see the fireworks.  The really incredible thing about my condo is that we can see the local fireworks from the balcony!  WOOHOO!  Sure they aren't as loud as if you saw them in person but you still hear plenty of noise.  I hope to be grilling some hamburgers and hotdogs for the evening and then... FIREWORKS!

I hope that everybody has a safe and happy holiday.

I asked Eduardo to discuss the household chores because I felt they were getting out of whack.  This was really brought home to me this weekend when the kids wanted to go to the pool and Eduardo was frustrated that I couldn't go because I was cooking in the kitchen.  I got to thinking about what Eduardo does around the house and what I do around the house and really is out of whack in my opinion.

Eduardo does his and the kids laundry.  He does the garbage and vacuums.  He also picks up the kids on whatever nights we get them and takes Piero to swimming lessons.

I do the groceries, my laundry, clean up after everyone and supervise the kids cleaning up their stuff, clean the kitchen, do all the dishes, do the cooking for myself during the week and feed everyone else on the weekends, clean the bathroom and pay the bills.  With respect to the kids, I take Kylie to swimming lessons, get them ready for bed most nights, do all the middle of the night stuff and drop them off at the baby sitters whatever mornings that is necessary.

Now Eduardo didn't say that it was equal but in trying to discuss what it was that we did, he said that all the cooking that I do does not count towards household chores because it is not necessary for me to cook for him and the kids.  When I told him I did this cooking to give the kids nutritional meals he thought that was worth nothing.  He figured ordering out was a better option.   I don't think we have the budget to order out 3 meals every weekend and I know I certainly don't want to eat restaurant food every weekend.   I don't consider that particularly healthy.

Should I really test out this theory that he is ok with me feeding him and the kids trash for 2 days?  I can throw down soup from a can, pork and beans from a can with cut-up hotdogs and frozen pizza.  I think that is better on the budget than ordering out Chinese food (which is what I am sure he is thinking).  But should I do this?  If I don't have to cook for Eduardo and kids I can do other things that only I like... like eating raw vegetables... that don't take up as much time.  Or what I do cook would last for more meals because I am not sharing it.

Thoughts?  Too passive-agressive?  Too getting even?  Or am I reacting in an honest manner to the feedback that I am creating too much work for myself?

Piero is now in Level II of swimming.  After just 3 classes of Level I, he managed to make it to Level II.  Eduardo has been helping Piero at the pool with practicing for his classes.  He is able to swim on his back for 30 or 40 feet.  There is a fair bit of flailing involved but he makes steady forward motion.  He is able to swim for shorter distances on his front.  We are very excited about this first step to getting the hated vest off of Piero.  Now that he is taking classes, he absolutely does not want to go in the water with it on.  We have been very firm that he must know how to swim properly before he can go into the pool without his vest when we are not in the pool watching him.

Kylie is also excited about going into the pool without her vest on.  She thinks she is swimming but she really isn't as I have to hold her to keep her afloat.  The other day I got distracted by Piero saying "Look at me, look at me" so my attention did not stay on Kylie.  She went down the steps and into the pool and dropped like a rock as soon as she let go of the stairs.  Ooops!  Of course, I was just inches from her so grabbed her quickly and nothing bad happened.  The weird thing about it is that she didn't scream or cry or anything.  She just started reaching for the rail of the stairs.   

The kids are growing up right before our eyes!

In case you were wondering,  I am trying to fund an Emergency Fund of one month's expenses.   We had been focusing on paying down our car debts.  We haven't accomplished that yet but we are very close on one vehicle.  If all goes well, we expect to have our Jeep paid off on January 3rd 2010.  We then expect to have our Beetle paid off by Spring 2011.  It would be nice it if was sooner but it will depend on how much money I can squeeze out of our budget.

But it has been bothering me that in our zeal to pay off the cars,  we don't really have any extra money put away for emergencies.   Our bank account is not completely empty every month but nothing is really set aside either.  We had a small stockpile in April but sadly Uncle Sam took it to pay for taxes.  We didn't manage our tax bill very well last year.  This year will be much better.

The company I work for is feeling the economic pinch just like everything else.  This too has been bothering me as being unemployed without an emergency fund is not somewhere I wish to be.  As a result of the economy, they have temporarily ceased matching our 401k contributions.  This certainly reduces the attractiveness of sticking vast amounts of money into this very non-liquid asset.  Since the attractiveness has worn off of this investment, I have reduced my pay-in to 1% and the amount that my pay cheque is increased is going into a savings account.  I am a little floored by how little my pay cheque has increased due to taxes being taken out.  You really do get a lot more to invest in your 401k before taxes.   Contributing to a 401k really is a great investment strategy but not at the price of your financial fitness being out of whack.  So we have shifted our priorities temporarily and I will be keeping track of our Emergency Fund funding on the blog.  I encourage everyone to think about putting a little bit of money away for emergencies.

I have decided to take up another blogger's challenge and look at my plastic trash.  Because I very much need to lose weight, I have decided to put my own spin on the challenge.  Can I lose weight simply by avoiding plastic trash in the food I eat?  I am not going to try to starve myself but use sensible food management practices like eating when I am hungry.  I am going to try to work out like I usually do because I believe that exercise is part of a healthy lifestyle and something I always want to be in my life - no matter how much I am not into exercising.

The only thing I guess I am changing is removing plastic encased food from my diet.  This is not likely to be complete removal as I still intend on drinking milk and eating cheese but I intend to stay away from processed/convenience foods, candy and junk food.  My first posting is on the Challenge blog

Do you even notice when you lie? 

When you say you are too busy to do something with me, do you think I don't notice that you just blew an afternoon hanging out with someone else?  Apparently you weren't that busy, you simply didn't want to spend time with me.  Just because I don't call you on it doesn't mean you got away with it.  Like I always tell my kids,  "Actions have consequences"  Nowhere does it say that the consequences have to immediately follow the actions. 

A blog was written by a husband and wife team talking about balancing household chores and caring for children.  Many comments were written about how the other spouse is 'keeping score'.  One blogger wrote this in response:


Would you be keeping score if you felt appreciated?  I think not.   Just imagine how many spouses would not be keeping score if the other spouse just acted like they cared about what the other person was doing to keep things going.

I know I don't mind going out of my way to do something for someone when I know my actions are going to be appreciated.  But to go out of my way to do something for someone to turn around and have them bitch when I ask them to do something in return?  Exactly how many times do you think I am going to do something willingly for you when you can't do things willingly for me.  I am not talking about tit-for-tat - you do something for me and I will do something for you.  I am referring to general attitude.  Eventually, your general attitude of "Why the f--- are you bothering me?" will grind down my general attitude of "Sure".  Already I see myself not offering to do things that I might have offered to do in the past.  Now, you need to ask me.  And even then,  I don't jump on it like it would be a pleasure to help you.  I do it because you asked and I am still nice enough.  One day, I suspect that I won't even be that nice. 

Thank you for saving Kylie.  I don't know if I performed your move properly as I had only ever seen pictures of how to do it but a friend told me that if it worked I must have done it properly.

Sincerely,
A grateful parent

At church, the kids picked up a candy.  They were sucking on it while driving home and also as we walked to the house.  Part of the way to the house, Kylie started crying and said something like "me pasa".  I got down to look at her and get her to repeat it but I didn't understand what she was trying to tell me.   Piero told me what she was trying to say.  She swallowed her candy.  Ok... and the big deal about that was?  For some strange reason I will still looking at her rather than standing up in frustration over the big deal about swallowing her candy prematurely.  She started screaming even louder and pointing at her mouth.  I looked inside and the sun was glinting off a perfectly round candy that was stuck in her throat behind the little dangly thing.   OMG!  I immediately turned to Piero and asked him to run and get Papa.  After a second's pause in which I said..."Run". he took off to the house.  I leaned Kylie over my knee and started patting her back.  Ok... harder than patting but less than pounding.  I didn't want to hurt her.   All this accomplished was copious amounts of drooling over the stuff I had dropped next to me.   Ok... NOT WORKING!  Heimlich manuveur? How do you do that exactly?  I had Kylie standing but leaning over and I got behind her.  I put my hands under her chest... I think.  I have no flipping clue at this point where I put them.  I then did a sharp push in.  Was it in and up?  Just in? Just up?  Again... no freaking idea at this point.  Imagine my complete surprise when that single jab resulted in a candy and a bunch of water spilling out onto the ground.   I don't even know if Kylie was crying through this or not.  I do remember her crying after the candy came out.  This took so little time - although it felt like a freaking eternity - that Piero hadn't even made it to the front door.   I tried to call him back but it was no use.  He wasn't listening because he was no intent on doing what I asked him to do.  I finally calmed Kylie down to the point that we could continue walking to the house.  Eduardo came barreling out of the door just after we started walking to the house.

The weirdest thing of all was that Eduardo said absolutely nothing to me about this whole event.  Not a... how are you? How is Kylie? What happened?  Nothing.  When Kylie started crying a bit when she saw him... he said something like "Calm down" and turned away to walk back up the stairs.   I completely don't understand that.  I tried to talk about it to him a couple of times.  He let me talk about it but didn't say anything at all in return.   Now, I didn't expect him to bend over and kiss my feet for my efforts but I guess I expected some kind of comment even if it was just acknowledging how scared I was.

And boy was I scared!  I can't believe how calm I was under the circumstances.  I hope the calmness wasn't because of some lack of feeling on my part towards the kids.  I know that I hugged both of them afterwards because I was so happy that they were both there and safe and sound.    

I looked at the clock... 6:26.  This was exactly the same time that I looked at the clock yesterday and within a few minutes the day before.  I rolled over.  A bit later I looked at the clock again - 7:10.  It was 7:12 yesterday and more or less the same time the day before that.

As I rolled out of bed, I once again pondered the accuracy of my alarm clock.  It was absolutely incredible that I was woken up, without fail, within minutes every day for the last couple of weeks.

And for those of you wondering how an alarm clock could not wake you up at the some moment every morning?  You must be thinking that I actually set my alarm at night and wake up to the sound of my alarm clock beeping.  I don't.  I wake up to the insistent pestering of my cat, Timmie.   She wants to lick my nose.  Or maybe, she has simply figured out that if she keeps after my nose I will eventually get out of my bed and she will get her breakfast.  I suspect it is breakfast that is motivating her more than the desire to snuggle up close to me.

And although I don't like Timmie trying to lick my nose while I am sleeping... it is far more pleasant to wake up to her persistent ministrations than it is to wake up to the beeping of my alarm clock.

So we were resigned to having no air conditioning this weekend.  I went home and saw the sign on our door that said that A/C was going to be on!!!! The repair was just a repair of a prior weld job.  I was jumping up and down with excitement.  I turned on the air and left the house to walk to the natural foods store.

On the way back... I saw a little stair that went down into the forested area next to the main road.  Wouldn't it be so much nicer to walk on a trail than next to 4 lanes of traffic?  Umm... perhaps not?  The trail went down to the little stream and then went along the stream and dead-ended after a few minutes.  Return or continue on?  I decided to continue on.  After fording the stream a few times on rocks to get from one navigable side of the stream to another,  I finally made it to a road - hot, dirty and wet!  It was a bit of an adventure.  From there, I walked through a new park and admired how very nice it was.  I finally got home expecting a cool house and walked into a hot and humid place. *sigh*  I called the emergency number to tell them that our A/C wasnt working and was told to wait until 10am the following morning - the water was simply cooling down. 

10am the next morning, I called PROMPTLY. We had had a miserable night with everybody - kids included - complaining about the heat.  We spent the entire morning/early afternoon on the balconey.  Then the afternoon sun rolls around and we had to vacate it for an 80+ degree condo.  It was absolutely horrible and we were incredibly cranky.  I was close to tears.  The people who take care of the emergency calls were getting completely snippy that we were calling repeatedly (we had been told at 12:30 it was fixed and clearly it was not) and had knocked on doors in the building to find out who didn't have A/C.  I did get to meet some neighbours!  Finally, Eduardo takes us all to the new park that I had walked through.  It was actually nice outside... FAR FAR nicer than our condo.  We stayed there until the torrential downpour started.  At that point, we ran to the KFC and had supper.   There was no way in hell that I was going back to our apartment to cook something.  Afterwards,  we went back to the park.  We truly had a fun time at the park.

And a pleasant surprise awaited us when we returned to the condo.  AIR CONDITIONING!!!!!  The condo was finally cooler and cool enough by bedtime to actually sleep reasonably well.  Yesterday we were talking about how cranky we were and I think the issue was that we  KNEW we should have A/C and didn't.  It was one thing to know that A/C was not available and we would just have to deal with the issue.  It was a completely different thing to know that we could have had A/C but didn't.

On Sunday, I went to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  What a fantastic movie.  I loved it.  I near fell over at the shock of hearing I was going to either pay 8.50$ for a regular movie or 10.50$ for the Director's Hall.  The Director's Hall had stadium seating and reserved seating.   What can I say... for 2 extra dollars I went for the unobstructed view and got a seat right in the middle of the theatre.  If you like the X-Men,  I highly recommend the movie.  I truly enjoyed it although I expected not to enjoy it that much because of some reviews I had read.  

Over the winter,  Eduardo and I kept our heating low.  I did it to save money and he didn't complain about it too much.   I really don't think that either one of us is going to be keeping the A/C high to save money this summer.  It has happened Mike,  I like the cool air now.  Maybe not as cool as you like it... but cooler than what I used to like it at.  There will be not sweating our butts challenge this summer.  I want to be comfortable in the summer and sweating it out in an 80 degree house is not my idea of fun.   It seems that 70-72 degrees is the right temperature for us.

We are back to just having the kids on the weekend.  Kelly has quit her evening job because the pay just wasn't worth the upset to her sleep and the kids.  I am in two minds about this.  One side is cheering because I can get things done. It is hard to get things done when you are overseeing the never ending homework procrastination and trying to take the kids out at least once a week to give Eduardo a chance to study.  The other side is a little sad because the kids won't be around.  I won't be missing the homework oversight let me tell you but I will miss having the kids around and doing things with them.

I have to admit that I need to apologize to my Mom.  I almost never called Mom on Mother's Day.  Her birthday is right before Mother's Day.  I make a huge effort to call her either the day of or or a day or two in advance.  I knew this year that it would be hard to remember to call her on her birthday so I called her the day before.  I wanted to get the kids to call her on her birthday and sing "Happy Birthday".  I forgot, as I expected, because Tuesday is an incredibly hectic day.

After having experienced my first Mother's Day this year, I called her.  I am sorry Mom for not realizing how important it was to be remembered on this day.

I slept in because I really felt bad after staying up until 2am to play Scrabble with Eduardo.  It takes 3 to 4 hours to play Scrabble with him because he takes so incredibly long to make each and every move.   All the kids and Eduardo got up before me.  This is VERY unusual.  I am usually the first or maybe the second person up.   Piero made me toasted peanut butter and jam for breakfast which he was very proud of.  There is just one unusual thing about this... there wasn't actually any peanut butter on it.  Piero and Eduardo also made 'arroz on leche' which I love.

Afterwards,  Piero and Eduardo went out to buy Mother's Day presents for Kelly and I.  Eduardo thought he could buy flowers but Piero had his heart set on buying 'one of those books that she is always reading'.  He picked a scary book based on the picture on the front.  It wasn't particularly scary but seems to be a very good paranormal romance.  In fact,  I just finished reading a particularly torrid part of the book.  I think he would be horrified to know that is what he picked out for me.

I also got a very nice Mother's Day card in which he wrote.  "Thank you for reading to me and Beba and thank you and thank you for helping me with my homework" - and no, that was not a typo.  I just about broke down and cried on the spot.  Later, Eduardo was telling me about the gift picking out.  It was so sweet.  He was first looking for cards that had cats on it because I like cats and picked out a birthday card.  Then he picked out a card for another occasion that had a dog on it because my dog died (yes... about 4 years ago).  According to Eduardo, I almost got the following words on my Mother's Day card, "I am sorry your dog died."  I laughed then I started crying over his thoughtfulness.  This is the boy that vexes me to no end because he fights me on just about everything.

In all the day to day mess that is our lives, it is hard to remember that they are more than just an obligation.  They really are in my heart.  How easy it is to forget the love when you are dealing with homework and bedtimes and chores and bathtime and all the other things that require hard work and patience.

I am not referring to the statistics of how many marriages fail.  I am referring to these kinds of statistics:

•  It takes two to keep a marriage going but only one to screw it up.
• What are the chances that two people doing the right thing is going to occur more often than one person doing the wrong thing? I know... not very often.
  

• A marriage survives only with hard work.  Neglect will kill it every time. 
• You know anyone that likes hard work?  Neither do I.

• Marriage means you need to think of someone else before your self.
• Know anybody that doesn't think of themselves first?  I don't know too many people either. 

And that is why marriages tend to fail.

Since the kids are now at our house at least as much as they are at Kelly's, the garbage has gone back up to its all time high despite the fact that I am recycling paper and cardboard.  What is it that we are throwing out?

1) Polystyrene take-out containers.  These take up a lot of space and I must get about 3 of these each week from Kelly.  Because Kelly is so busy working two jobs and more than 40 hours a week, she doesn't have time to cook.  Kelly provides meals for the kids and usually also chooses to cook for Eduardo.   I think she is getting her food from the hotel she works at and all they provide are these types of containers.  So not only have I increased our garbage... I have actually substantially increased the toxicity of it.

2) Food.  It doesn't seem to matter how little you give to Kylie, she manages to not want her entire meal.  But boy... she sure wants plenty of after dinner food.  This isn't quite as bad for Piero but he too also manages to not want his entire meal plenty of nights and then STILL wants snacks in the evening.  Last night was a perfect example in which neither of them wanted supper.   In this case, neither of them barely touched it so I put it in the fridge for another night.  And lo and behold they managed to survive the entire evening without needing snacks.  The only way they can get up from the table when they barely touch their dinner is to acknowledge that if they can't eat supper, there won't be any other food being offered later - junk or otherwise.  Something I say a lot at our house is, "If you aren't hungry enough to eat supper, then you are too full to eat anything else".  They often don't eat all of their snack food either so we are throwing out parts of apples, granola bars and puddings.  Kylie is especially bad for this also.  

While we were on the hike,  we met some volunteers that were also hiking.  They help people on the hike and pick up garbage.  They showed us the garbage bag of stuff they had picked up.  It was almost entirely water bottles.  I have known for a quite a while that disposable water bottles contribute to landfill garbage but it sure hit home in a way that it didn't before that water bottle garbage is everywhere.  It made me really happy that Piero and I brought along our stainless steel water bottles.  They are not so expensive that you go into the poor house to buy them but expensive enough that you aren't about to pitch them when you are getting tired - not that I would do that anyway!  Not only that... the water that went inside of them was free!  My water bottle holds close to a litre of water.  My guess is that my water bottle will pay for itself within about 6 fill-ups.  It is a very quick return on your investment. 

I encourage everyone to look into reusable water containers.  I chose uninsulated stainless steel but do your own research and choose the bottle that meets your needs.  Even if you don't care about the environment, think about your pocketbook.  It doesn't take that many fill-ups before your bottle has paid for itself.

Apparently you can if you hiked for 7 hours on Saturday.  On Saturday,  Piero and I went with some other folks from the church to hike on Old Rag Mountain.  I didn't think to tell Piero that he had to stay with me and that put the hike off to a bad start.  We started out with another group coincidentally.  That other group went zipping ahead because they were much faster.  Piero has this incredible need to be first so he was practically running to keep up with the head person of the other group and leaving us far, far behind within minutes.  I just about killed myself trying to catch up to the point where I could get my breath and scream at him to stop.  Then I had to repeatedly yell at him to slow down because he was walking by himself at the front and we were losing sight of him.  He was just not into keeping with the group in the beginning.  A couple of hours into the hike, he finally got it into his head that he needed to stick with us.

We hiked with another family that had two little boys, one of which was Piero's age.  Old Rag Mountain is really quite beautiful so it was a great hike despite the fact that we started and ended the hike in the rain.  Once we got up near the top of Old Rag Mountain, the clouds were floating around us and it was very cool looking.  We couldn't see for miles due to said clouds but it was very neat to look over the edge and see absolutely NOTHING but grey clouds.  We made it to the false peak but not to the very top.  We ended up getting to a hard spot that was going to be too difficult to get everybody over.  Parts of it was more like climbing over rocks than hiking.  We turned around at that point.  I am rather glad that we did because we would have been hiking for at least another hour on top of what we did if we had of persevered and went to the peak.  Piero did a great job hiking despite being the youngest by a few months.  Just as he sat down and said, 'I am not going one step further' a couple members of our group that were just ahead of us started yelling, "I see cars!!!" and he got up and started walking again.  So he basically made the whole hike without complaining.

But OMG... I hurt now!!!

Dear Sir,

I am not sure if you are aware that a public bathroom is so named because other people besides yourself use it.  Next time you dribble all over the floor and the toilet, PLEASE WIPE IT UP WITH A PAPER TOWEL.  It makes it very difficult for anyone who comes after you to have a pee-free experience.  I mean seriously, if  you are so grossed out that you don't want to clean up after yourself, whatever makes you think that I want to do it? 

Yours truly,

The other people that share the bathroom with you.