Stuff

I am in a blogging rut. Not just posting but with reading also.

Most of the blogs that I read are Chinese adoption blogs and frankly, they are generally a bit stale these days. There is not much happening in the program. No one is getting excited about their referrals - there are no referrals coming.

What blogs do you read - even if they are adoption blogs I am thinking that I want to expand my repertoire.

Today the weather warmed up to -1C. What a nice break from yesterday's start of -29C.

We are having friends over on Saturday. This makes me happy.

The days are SLOWLY getting longer. Again, this makes me happy.

Dinner was really good tonight. I even have leftovers for lunch at work tomorrow.

I wish I was more creative.

I have a girls lunch on Sunday - looking forward to that.

Will the groundhog see his shadow? How much longer will winter be?

My bamboo plant never seems to change. Doesn't grow, doesn't die. Odd

I am really liking the new show OFF THE MAP.

I have a spot on my back that gets itchy all the time. It is the same spot.

That's about it for me right now.

SEVEN YEARS!!!

Seven years ago today I said I DO to the most fantastic man in the world from there I became the luckiest woman in the world!!

We were married on a beach in Cuba and it was perfect. Today we celebrate our 7th anniversary and I don't even feel a little bit itchy...

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY H!! You have made me one LUCKY and HAPPY woman!!

I LOVE YOU!!

Winter

HAPPY NEW YEAR READERS!!

I don't think I was ever a fan of winter - even as a child. You would think that all kids would like to play in the snow and build forts and snowmen. I can really say that I was never a fan.

What I do remember about snow and being outside when I was little was freezing cold feet. Freezing cold fingers. Nose hairs stuck together because of the cold OR a constant drip of the nose that usually ended up in your mouth.

I also remember the lung shrinking that you felt when you breathed in the cold air. I remember the moisture of the mitten and on your face when you would put your mitten up to your face to warm the air.

I tried skiing - I thought, if I enjoyed a winter sport, maybe I would enjoy winter more. That wasn't too successful either. I kept getting cramps in my feet and when you have those ski boots on, getting them off to deal with the foot cramps was just not going to happen.

I constantly wondered how I could make the spring come sooner. What could I do to make the snow go away to make way for the better weather. I thought if there was no snow, then there was no winter.

My solution - as a child - was to take all the snow around my house and lay it out on the road, on the side walk anywhere I could smooth it out. After the smoothing process, I would stomp it, breathe on it, spread it out more. When it turned to water, I would get more snow from pile and do my best to melt it.

I REALLY thought that if I could melt all the snow, then spring would come.

These days I am an adult and I still have the same distaste for winter and snow. However, now, instead of laying the snow out and trying to melt it, I drive through as much as I can on the edges of the road to spread it out and hope that the smaller piles melt faster and spring will be on it's way.

Another Year

Yet another year has passed on the calendar - and in our wait as well.

Apparently, while I wasn't looking, we passed our 4 year LID. I can say that I don't give our adoption much thought these days. It doesn't seem real and I honestly don't believe that it will happen for us.

We have a 'bail out' date in our mind and unless things change and speed up quickly, we are not going to make it. I think that waiting 8 years for an adoption is ridiculous and we won't be waiting that long.

There are so many things we did wrong during the preparation for this adoption. So many questions that we didn't ask and so much misinformation we got from our agency. If we were to do it all over again, we wouldn't.

Apparently I am a little bitter today...

On that note, I wish the one or two remaining readers that I have a Happy and Healthy New Year! May the wishes you have for you and your family be realized.

Until next year...

Overwhelmed

Overwhelmed is how I am feeling these days. There is so much on my plate and some days I think I am going to break.

I recently 'received' a new project at work. It is something new and unfamiliar to me with a huge learning curve and I am trying to grasp my head around it. It is important and I am nervous. I don't do nervous well. It isn't often that I feel like this. Of course all my previous duties are still the same at work, this is just added on top of it.

I am not at the 'dread' stage, but certainly overwhelmed.

Home life is crazy right now too. With Christmas on the way and shopping, wrapping etc. my brain is full - over full really and I don't know that I can put anything else inside of it.

I am over half way through the shopping. I have more to go and LOTS of wrapping and delivering to do before I will start to be able to breathe again.

There are other things going on in my life right now too that take both time and brain power.

I KNOW it will get better, but right now I am not able to see the light at the end of the tunnel...soon, I hope soon!

OPPS!!

Today at work I was working away and using "PASTE" in our computer program at work. I was doing some mindless work going from one item to the next. I took a little break and looked at some e-mail and then I copied one of the e-mails to use in a blog post. Then I went back to work doing my mindless task. Well...I ‘pasted’ the e-mail/blog post into the work computer program and hit COMMIT. It is done – DONE!!

There is no deleting it! That was the ‘beauty’ of this new system – there are no deletes EVER. If you make an error you do another entry and say that the last entry was an error.

Not quite sure what to do about a ‘blog post’ entered as an entry in error. Anyone who looks at that item from here until the end of time will be able to read what I wrote...

OPPS!!

Laughing

Go here and read the post dated today.

I am still laughing!!

Stuff

Today when I got home from work there was a UPS truck outside of my door. I quickly jumped out of the car because I didn't want him to have knocked on the door and driven away as there was no answer.

We arrived at the door at the same time. I called out to him that I was there and he handed me the two packages.

I came inside, put them down and didn't think about them again. Tonight when I was tidying up, I saw the packages again. They had all sorts of bar codes on them. I then thought about the bar code reader app that I had installed on my new toy. I decided to get it out and see what the reader would say.

Up until this point I had scanned bottles of water, packages in the cupboard etc. So I thought this would be a real test.

I scanned the bar code and it took me to a web page for UPS and and there was a delivery receipt saying that the package was "Left with the Lady".

It is a small thing, but I thought it was cool.

That is about all that is on my mind right now. Well not really, but that is all I am going to share at this particular moment!

New Dinner

I am the cooker in the family. I plan, shop, cook and sometimes clean up. Husband and I have a menu plan and that has certainly helped, however, making the weekly menu is torture for both of us.

Last week Husband was away at a conference. At this conference they were giving away calendars with recipes on them. Husband came home wanting to try this one so I thought I would give it a try.

First off it says total time - 20 minutes - cooking and prep. It was much longer than that. That said, if my kitchen was a bit bigger and I could just push things aside and deal with them later, perhaps it would be quicker.

Anyway...Here is my Asian Bok Choy Stir Fry!!

The Ingredients

The Sauce

The Meat (I forgot to picture it while it was cooking)

Bok Choy and Garlic cooking

Adding Snow Peas

Adding the Sauce

Putting it together with the meat

The Finished Product!

It wasn't bad. Husband enjoyed it more than I did. I am sure it will end up on the menu at some other time.

Memory

At work I have a locker in the change room that I used when I went to the gym – DON”T LAUGH!!! I haven’t used the locker in…a while.

I really didn’t even know what was the in the locker as it has been so long.

The “been so long” part was a problem. I had absolutely no recollection of what the combination was for the lock – NONE, nope, nada. That was about 2 years ago.

Last week, I was walking down the hallway at work and the combination for my lock just popped in my head – JUST LIKE THAT!! I don’t know where it came from or even if it was the right combination. I headed over to the locker room and after trying a few different locks (as I couldn’t ‘quite’ remember which locker it was either) BOOM – It opened!!

I was actually quite stunned that it opened and then excited to see what was in there – or not excited if it was stinky gym clothes from a couple of years ago. The excitement didn’t last long. There was nothing to get excited about in there. I kept repeating the combination over and over in m head until I got back to my desk so that I could write it down.

Funny thing about memory, I can still remember my high school locker combination like it was yesterday... 7-57-34

Memories

When I was little I remember the 'little' bird around all the time. They were kind of a mousy brown and hopped around. I later discovered that they were called Chickadees. They were so cute and so small and EVERYWHERE!! I don't however remember the black and white ones as shown here in this picture.

As you get older, your focus changes on things. I suppose I didn't notice the little birds anymore. I am sure that they were there, I just didn't notice them or pay attention to them.

Life goes on and then it doesn't.

In October 2001 my dad died. It was very sudden and very unexpected and he was far too young. His wishes were to be cremated. We honoured those wishes. There is a cemetery not far from here that has scattering grounds. A lovely wooded ravine type area. There is a platform built that juts out over the ravine. From here is where you can scatter the ashes of your loved ones. This is what we chose to do for my dad.

As the ashes were being scattered and the tears were rolling down my face I saw a bunch of little tiny birds exactly like the one pictured above. I don't remember noticing them before - with this colouring. But there they were - LOTS of them happily flitting around. Now every time I see one of those birds, I think of my dad.

My brother

My brother is wonderful. He is sitting beside me and making me say this.

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Long Week

This had to have been the longest week ever. You know it is going to be a long week when on Monday I kept thinking it was Thursday. Again on Tuesday I thought it was Thursday.

When Thursday actually arrived, I thought it was Friday...sigh...

Friday finally did arrive though and it was a long day at work and to make everything so much better, I developed a cold just in time for our long Thanksgiving weekend!


Speaking of Thanksgiving, we have THREE dinners planned for the weekend and I don't have to cook any of them!!


Speaking of cooking we have implemented menu planning - we do one week at a time. I am sure many of you have been doing this forever, but this is new for us and it has been working out really well for us. I will make up the menu and the grocery list on Sundays and then shop for everything I need for the week. We have been eating better, wasting less food and emptying out our cupboards and fridge.


Speaking of shopping, I get really irritated when I find expired things on the shelf. Aren't the stocking people supposed to rotate the stock?? I am generally very good at checking the dates in the store, but sometimes one slips by me and I don't notice until I am home.


Speaking of home, I would love to stay in my pj's for the whole weekend snuggled under the BEST blanket in the world and get better. I will just take things slow and easy and enjoy the family time that we have.

Happy Thanksgiving to all!!!

46...

I wasn't going to acknowledge these LID's anymore - I really wasn't. However, for some reason, this month it has been on my mind a lot.

Probably due to yesterday's post.
Probably due to blogging again.
Probably due to the summer being over and us saying we would make a long term decision.
Probably due to sending an e-mail to Dolores yesterday.
Probably due to the fact that after 46 months, how can you NOT think about it.

I will endeavor to forget again...

WHAT??

Yesterday when I was going through my Google Reader, there was a post from RQ. Generally I just glance at the title of the post and move on. Yesterdays post was titled PROJECTIONS. Again, I generally don’t click on the link and move along. Yesterday I clicked.

You can imagine my surprise when I saw OUR LID there on the screen! I was shocked. This is a first (I think ) and to say I was stunned would be an understatement. So according to RQ, a ‘good’ scenario would be that we would receive our referral in December!! WHAT?? Of course, we all know that that is NOT going to happen, but I was still shocked to see our date there.


Image courtesy of Rumor Queen

In my head I am still thinking a few years will pass before we see our referral and at that point we will decide if this is still something that we want to pursue. Things change, life changes and a 5 or 6 year wait was not something that we counted on. We have gone forward with our lives and are not in the same place that we were in January 2006 when we started this journey.

We don't know what the future will bring - we didn't think that things would happen as they have so we won't think too much of the future. We will continue to take one day at a time that we have been doing for the last four years.

How Many...

Sitting at dinner tonight I was facing the window and watched the leaves rain down. Every time the wind picked up there were more and more leaves falling. They were blowing and swirling and falling and going everywhere, including the BBQ while I was trying to cook.

It got me thinking - how many leaves are there on a tree? Seriously, how many?? Thousands?? Hundreds of thousands? I have no idea what kind of tree is in my yard – I know it is not oak or maple or elm but that is about all I know about it. I know I could Google it, but why?



My back deck is covered with leaves, the grass is covered with leaves, there are leaves EVERYWHERE and yet, the tree doesn't look like it has lost any leaves.



Aren’t you glad I started blogging again??

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Testing

Testing from my new phone

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Things on my mind

• If your shoes are too heavy, get lighter shoes rather than dragging your feet.

• How come the grocery store never has the bananas at the right ripeness for our purchase?

• How do you know when a pomegranate is ripe?

• My favourtie Montrealers are in town.

• I bought myself a new toy.

• I should post more pictures.

• Family is who you say it is.

• I don't know where all this blogging urge has come from.

• I am happy the new TV season has started - favourite new show so far (I have only watched 2) Hawaii Five-O

• Girls weekend this weekend!!!

Thats about it for me right now - there are more things on my mind, but not that I am going to post here.

AAAHHHH

I have been playing around with my blog and I shouldn't do such things...

This is going to be a work in progress while I learn HTML and how to change things...

Bear with me.

Blogs

Since I have renewed my interest in blogging - well posting really. I have always been reading blogs, just not commenting on very many.

However, my blog list is a bit...lacking. Over the years some have gone private, some have closed their blog, some are just not my taste anymore and various other reasons.

So tell me - what blogs do you read. They don't have to be adoption blogs but I would love to add some blogs to my Google Reader.

Please share...