Ever Seen The Likes Of Me Before?

We tried to devise a game plan as we knew that if we opened the door the moth would fly inside.  With the kids freaked out and waiting down in the driveway, I was set to throw a rock at the door in hopes of startling the thing so it would fly away.  As I paused to calculate my plan I heard a neighbour walking by.  I called out to him to come see who was visiting me.  I felt so much better about myself as he exclaimed, “Wow … I have never seen anything like that before!”  Then, he just reached out to flick it off the door.  Unbelievably, the moth climbed onto his finger instead.  He got a good grip and my neighbour couldn’t shake it off.  To my amusement he said, “Oh well, I’ll just take him on my walk with me.”  He left walking up the street, headphones on, music grooving, and his hand held slightly up in front with moth warrior in tow.

I Have You Now!

I saw my neighbour again this morning and he told me the moth hung out with him for at least 10 minutes before deciding he was done and flew away.

A True Fan

Having been a season’s ticket holder with her husband for many dedicated years, this was the first game she had ever gone to by herself.  She thought about just staying home, but decided to go down to the Staples Center with the great intention of giving her tickets away in a random act of kindness type of moment.  To her surprise, no one would take her tickets.  The gift was too great and people felt it must be some suspicious trick.

Unwilling to give up, she made the choice to go inside and find two fans sitting higher up and offer to trade tickets with them.  While grabbing a bite to eat she met a father whom she thought would be elated to give his child the experience of sitting in prime seats, but he declined.  He also did not trust the situation.  She kept on trying to give and it took until the second quarter for her to have a taker.  A very lucky young man heard, and believed her when she said that she was at the game alone sitting in incredible seasons tickets seats and that she had an empty seat beside her available.  He decided to join her and he was the most grateful person for the gift he had received.  An ear to ear grin and a slowly whispered “Thank You” was the perfect end to her night.

We chatted passionately on the subway about the state of human nature.  Is it that we don’t give enough so people aren’t used to receiving?  Is it that scams do happen so often making us reluctant to trust anyone? Do we trust some people and not others based on appearance, age, or other factors? The way fellow fans reacted on that night left her feeling that a bit of the latter was true.  Before we parted ways she revealed to me that she has wealth beyond comprehension including jewels, incredible cars, and a high heel shoe collection to die for!  She stressed the importance of being kind to every single person you meet because you never know their story.  We shared a big hug and I have been thinking about her story ever since.

A short while ago we grabbed our bag of potatoes off the ground to cook with and noticed one of them had been gnawed on. Naturally we assumed the puppy had done it so we moved the bags to a new location.  When we went to use the potatoes again, another one had been chewed on.  We then relocated them to a higher place unreachable by puppies.  Many days passed and our potatoes remained safe.

One day, after awaking from a deep mashed potato slumber, we found a potato that had been left on the counter, still on the counter, but with a big chunk chewed away.  This is when my heart skipped a beat, because the puppy had been in her crate all night! The curious thing is that there was other food left on the counter, including a pie and nothing else was touched.  What kind of beast only goes for raw potatoes?!

Thinking we had a mouse on our hands we took all our food out of our open pantry, but saw no signs of anything else being eaten or chewed on.  We have not found any droppings either.  I am open to the thought that it could be some kind of bug since there are so many weird ones here in California.  We let a few more days pass and with our potatoes all gone, we didn’t have any more incidents.  We set a mouse trap with peanut butter, which is supposed to be the most effective bait but we didn’t catch anything and the peanut butter remained in tact.

Eventually having bought more potatoes for Christmas, we decided to do a test.  We put out a few food items and left a potato at the foot of our stairs.  Sure enough, in the morning, only the potato had been gnawed on!  Now we’re thinking we have some kind of well read mouse who’s on a potato only diet for some life enhancing reason.  This same mouse must only poop in a golden box somewhere, because we still haven’t seen any droppings.

Evidence

We set the mouse trap again, but with a small piece of potato on it instead of peanut butter.  The next morning, the potato piece was gone, but the trap was still intact with no critter!  Last night we tried again, but we tied the potato piece to the trap so it would be impossible to pick it off and escape.  This morning we found that the trap had been triggered, but nothing was in it…and the potato was gone!  What am I dealing with here?!?!

This photo does not do the size justice.

Wow, it’s true what they say about food in America.  They like to give you unnecessary mega sizes!  I took my kids to the movies and ordered a popcorn combo so I could save 75 cents.  We ordered 1 large popcorn and 2 drinks with an extra cup to share amongst the 3 of us.  My eyeballs popped out of my head when they handed it all to me.  The drinks were abnormally enormous.  I made a remark to the guy who took our order and he told me it was a promotion they were having.  He said that for a special time the large drinks were going to be 44 oz. That’s over 1L!  The popcorn tub was shocking as well, but the out of control part was that they just gave us our free refill right upfront in a separate cardboard box.  This was for our convenience so we would not have to leave our seats during the movie.  The irritating thing is that they didn’t tell me about the promotion up front.  The kids were thrilled of course.  I am ashamed, although I guess not all that surprised to admit that we had it all polished off by the end of the movie! If everything was half the size we would have been just as satisfied though.  What are they trying to do to us?! If they want to give me a special promotion, lower the price of the movie…now that would make a lot of mom’s happy!

My friends came up with the idea to cook up some fresh crab and enjoy a night in with garlic butter and wine.  I had eaten crab legs before so I thought the whole thing sounded pretty good, except for the fact that crabs remind me of spiders.  Oh well, I figured my friends would lead the way, I would drink the wine and look the other way most of the time.  They did make me go shopping with them to buy the crab though.  We went down to a marina area so we could pretend like we ‘caught’ our own fresh dinner.  A lovely man reached into the hundred-leg tank and pulled out a huge crab like it was nothing.  The next thing that happened let me know this night was going to be more than I was prepared for; my girlfriend asked how to cook it.  I thought they had done this before!  When I heard the man say what we had to do I knew I was going to have to be involved, that this would be a group project and I could not hide from it.

Just Look At All Those Legs Crawling Around In There!

Learning How to Hold a Crab

It's Really Happening, A Fresh Crab For Dinner!

We ran through the plan all the way home.  Take the crab out of the paper…pick it up in the right way to avoid the pinching claws, hit it REALLY hard on the middle of the sink to crack the shell instantly and have it be over with…remove the top shell and discard the parts we don’t want…boil it…eat it.  Of course the kids caught wind of our excitement and gathered around, refusing to miss our attempt at this.

Take the crab out of the paper: The crab slid right into the sink and turned around to stare at us. I have never looked a crab in the face before and I think we all froze for a moment.

The Stare Down

Pick it up the right way: My friend’s husband was designated to do this.  He kept going for it, but could not commit.  Finally he made the move.  He did it all wrong and it was totally awkward, but he managed to get it into position.

Trying To Hold It Right

Hit it REALLY hard on the middle of the sink: We missed the REALLY part and ended up with a sort of tap.  The crab jumped out of my friend’s hands and back into the sink and ran around like crazy with it’s big angry claws.  Oh the screams! The kids were screaming, we were screaming, the kids ran away, and we kept screaming.  Eventually we stopped, drank a lot of wine, and composed ourselves enough to try again.  Success!  Then it hit us, we had to do it two more times because we had 3 crabs altogether.  We got smart and kept the other two in the paper until the deed was done.

In the end after drinking more wine to forget everything, I was actually able to enjoy our meal.  It was really hard to eat it after I just saw it running around.  I did spill garlic butter everywhere trying to get the meat out of the leg, but no one can dispute the fact that I was an active participant in a crazy dining experience.

Guaranteed to Keep Your Tootsies Toasty!

I also brought the fun with me in the form of a barrel of glow sticks.  After all, it was a girlfriend’s birthday party and we all need to live it up on our special day.  As I walked up the driveway to the house though, I knew this was going to be a different experience.  Candles lit the walkway, which led around to the back of the house where a blue-lit pool with a red-lit hot tub let off a sensual fog that filled the yard.  There were swanky lights strung around and groovy music playing.  As soon as my eyes took in all the people I realized my fashion faux pas.  I was dressed for an outdoor night time party complete with a tuque and bohemian braids, while everyone else was dressed in designer cozy sweaters and high heels or slinky boots.  Most of them were gathered around a bonfire having very sophisticated conversations.  This was not your typical backyard bonfire either, it was a glorious architect designed bowl with gas flames.

A Bonfire With Class

Now  I had two choices here: I could quickly ditch my coat and leave the glow sticks by the side of the house, or I could stay true to myself and inject some fun into this party.  I went with choice #2.  I took two glow sticks out for myself, wrapped them around my boots and spiced up the conversations.  Oh I definitely got the ‘I’m better than you’, and the ‘We are too grown up for that now’ looks, but I could tell they were all cold and wishing they had warm boots like me! I do admit though, I was secretly pretending this was my fab house.

Who would have thought that when we moved to LA all that would change for us?  Los Angeles is home to the LA Kings hockey team.  This week the Canucks came out here to play them and we were able to go to the Staples Centre and watch the game! We weren’t even stuck in the nose bleed section, we had 3rd row seats in the 200 level right behind the goalie net.  The price we paid would shock Vancouver fans.  We were able to go for only $45 each!  There were plenty of tickets available on StubHub, many were even below the $20 range.  At these prices, Vancouverites could fly out to LA, see a game, and enjoy a great California weekend for less than a ticket to 1 game at home.

Staples Center Arena

I was a little nervous going to this game though, because we all wore our Canucks jerseys and the kids brought their giant #1 foam fingers they carefully packed in our move.  I didn’t know if the Kings fans would appreciate that.  As it turned out, we walked into an arena almost half full of blue white and green! Then it hit me…I remembered someone had told me that LA is Canada’s 3rd largest city.

Can You Spot The Canucks Fans?

When the Canucks scored the cheers were so loud you might have wondered if they were playing on home ice.  The game itself was really exciting and having the chance to be so close to Roberto Luongo kind of had my heart pumping too!

We saw some incredible saves by Luongo

Fight!

Our interactions with the Kings fans were pretty decent.  The guy sitting beside my husband took a big bite out of his hot sandwich and cheese sauce squirted out all over my husband’s pants.  We all laughed about it and the guy commented on how he  loves coming to games when the Kings play Canadian teams.  He said if he had squirted cheese sauce on a Philly fan there would have been an all out brawl!  In the end the Canucks won and only then did we get told off.  “Go back home where you have pot and free health care!”, some young kids yelled at us.  Hmm … jealously gets you nowhere my friends!

Los Angeles Vacations

Sleepless nights!!! Who wants to go back to sleepless nights?! Well, our puppy cries and howls in the middle of the night so we have to get up and take her outside in case she needs to piddle.  Just picture me outside in the pitch dark freezing in my pajamas, trying to follow the dog around with the light of my cell phone.  Amen we finally bought a mega-flashlight.  My friend told me the howling is because dogs are pack animals and she is just feeling lonely and looking for her pack (us!).  We now have the puppy sleeping in a crate by our bed.  Which basically means we are ‘co-sleeping‘.

During the day when she whines we run through the same list we use to do for our babies when we had no idea what they were crying about.  Is she hungry, or thirsty, does she need to go outside, is she just bored, does she want a belly rub, or need to play?  We have to follow her around as if she was a toddler to make sure she doesn’t piddle or poop anywhere inside the house.  When she goes outside we are supposed to cheer really loud and make a very big deal of it.  “Yay! Doggy made a poopy!”  (sound familiar?)  It hit me really hard this week…we have to pick up EVERY SINGLE poop this dog will have in her whole entire life.

What Is She Thinking About?

As I read Emme‘s latest post I became more frightened for my future.  Fuzzywinkle Furry Pants has control over her and with just a glaring look, she is able to get her to make posters about cats. When Emme’s not looking, the cat sneaks off and tweets too.  You know what they say, kids and technology these days!  We better watch our backs and raise an independent, yet loving ‘child’.

Off to check in on the sock-stealing bundle of joy…

Here’s how we managed to stall the kids for so long-and how they were ultimately victorious:

1st We told them we could not ever have a dog because some of our family members have allergies.

This lasted for at least a year until they became more outgoing and confident to talk to other people on outings.  Like any kids, they love to pet dogs at the park.  When they started making conversation they would ask dog owners what kind of dogs they had.  One day someone said they had a hypoallergenic dog. “What does that mean?” they asked, “It means this dog is good for people who have allergies.”, the owner replied, thus lighting up our kids’ eyes and moving us onto our second strategy.

2nd We made it clear that hypoallergenic dogs cost a lot of money and it wasn’t something we could afford.

Over the course of the next two years the kids saved all the money they got for birthdays and holidays.  My husband and I just thought they hadn’t found anything they wanted to buy yet and were perhaps saving up for an X-Box or something like that.  Imagine our surprise when they came to us and said they had saved $1000.00!  When they asked us where they could go to buy the dog and how soon could we do it, we had to think fast.

3rd We were renting our house and told them the owner did not allow pets in her house.

This made them angry, but they understood and went to get guinnea pigs instead.  Needless to say, the squirmy poop-a-lot pigs did not fulfill their need.  We then became the family who would take other people’s dogs for walks and pet-sit if they went out of town.  Our kids would disappear at house parties and we would find them sitting with the dogs.  We bought them an ultimate care guide book about dogs and told them they would have to read the whole thing.  Sticking true to their quest, they did everything asked and behaved very responsibly.

Their big win came when we told them we were moving.  The very first words they both screamed were “NOW…we get the dog!”  Believe it or not, we still managed to hold them off a while by explaining that we needed to be completely settled in our new house with all of the unpacking done.  After what must have felt like a very torturous 5 years for the kids, they arrived home one evening to see their new best friend sitting at the door with a big doggy smile.  A grand victory indeed!

OK, she is pretty cute!

Picture a game where there is a long straight boring track dependent on chance cards which represents the public system, and a fast track with bright colours, bonus tokens and get-ahead for free cards that represents the public magnet program.  Magnet programs offer focused specialties in areas such as: math/science, humanities, law/government, performing arts and medical related careers. At this point I am familiar with the middle school edition.

The Game of School

Here’s how you play: To get your child onto the magnet school track, you must have the most amount of points.

How to earn points: Starting in grade 1, apply to get into a magnet school with the intentions of getting rejected. Look at the stats from the previous year and find a school that had a large amount of applicants with minimum available spots. When you receive your letter of rejection you will be given points. Repeat this every year.

When it comes time to apply to the specialty magnet school you are interested in for your child, entrance will be considered for those with the highest points first.  Don’t worry about having to meet any other criteria.  Entrance has nothing to do with academic ability or a talent for their specialized program.

Warning: Should you be accepted at a school during your years of questing for rejection, you will lose all your points!

There are no special considerations given to new-comers such as myself.  I am welcome to play, but I can only hope to have beginner’s luck.