Can I Get a Mulligan?

I'd like a do over please. For the whole day, actually from before I even woke up. If you'd be so kind as to arrange that for me?
Oh go on.
Please?
Here's why today was the poops:
1.
My subconscious is a douche canoe. Just before I woke up this morning it was all "Oh hai! You've been a little relaxed about this parenting thing lately... so, hows about you have a super-realistic dream about your kid falling out of your 8th floor window. THERE YOU GO!"
It was rubbish. Really really rubbish. and that's all I have to say about that.
2.
The Bear fell on his face in real life. Right onto the edge of the table, so he has a huge bruise in a straight line just above his eyebrow. Causing me to look up concussion symptoms again and again and again and again. (See item 1, above)
3.
I lost someones dog.
Our dog park has a two gate system, kinda like an airlock. And the gates are sprung loaded and heavy. I got the first gate open and was wrangling the cart and Dilly through it when a sweet little dog fellow nosed past us. "Hey guy. Whatcha doing?" I asked him.
It turned out that nosing through the second gate, on which the lock and spring are broken was what he was doing. Whoosh, off he went. I left teddy in the airlock and went racing after him, swiftly followed by his owner. Who assured me that racing off was his gig and he'd prolly wind up in Riverdale. My fault? Not exactly, but I still felt lousy.

So today has been a bit poops. BUT tomorrow I will tell you how awesome Dapper Hat Day was. and there will be pictures.
Here's a picture of that bear playing with his daddy's shoes, for no reason but that I like it.

Dapper Hat Day!

He's ready! Are you?

This Thursday the 15th of October I declare to be Dapper Hat Day. The day where you wear a dapper hat and maybe go for an ice cream.

So you're probably thinking "riiight?".
but see, Dapper Hat Day makes perfect sense, and here's why:

Winter is coming and winter is lousy BUT it does give you the opportunity to wear hats. Celebrating Dapper Hat Day is, I purport, a nice way to look winter in it's steely-Grey eyes and say
"Yeh, whatever Winter. Check out my HAT"

AND this time of year wearing hats is still kinda novel and awesome and you don't have to concern yourself with earflaps or practicality or nuthing. Just the DAPPERNESS.

And how are we defining dapper?
Well that, my chums, is up to you. Any hat that you might look at and think "Man alive! This hat is dapper - as hell/all day long/like a red snapper" Well then BINGO!
for example:

A toque*? Meh.
A toque with a FEATHER on it? GRACIOUS yes!

A 20 year old, sweat stained, Adidas baseball cap that I swear to God, SWEAR TO GOD I am going to "lose" mister? Nope.
A lovely trilby? You betcha!

AND we shall be celebrating Dapper Hat Day with a spot of ice cream. Because nothing says "In your eye Winter!" like seasonally inappropriate ice cream. If you'd like to join us well then you SHOULD! You totally totally SHOULD. We'll be parading our fancy Chapeau to The Baskin Robbins on Church at 7.30 and you could meet us there imaginary internet peoples!

Or you could stay where you are, pop a dapper hat on, choke back a little ice cream and take pictures to send me so I have a super happy. If you happen to be in say, Ireland or England, (HI Mama and Sarah!) you make the whole affair international and thus loads, loads better.

*Toque is Canadian for beanie. Also, lookit ma! I speaks Canadian!

Where, Where, O Where?

Hey you know what our soft furnishings really lack?
Scatter cushions? A cuddly hand-crocheted throw? Scotchgard protection?
Close, but no cigar.
Desiccated bull penis?
BINGO.
But don't worry, Dilly has that situation covered.


But where to put it? Where to put it? Where where where?

And yes, golf claps at my genius sweetie for giving the dog a dried shlong.

Let Me Count The Ways...

So, this is a post that is mostly just me smooshing on my sweetie, because he is awesome. You know why he's awesome? Well...

Because it's a Friday, and this is a long weekend, and it's raining and he got out of bed and went to work anyway.

And because he has spent the last week poking around in my I-tunes Most Played folder, then scouring the internet looking for if-you like-those-guys-you'll-like-these-guys recommendations and then acquiring me music. Swoon.

And because he is super supportive. Here, for example, is a sample of an actual g-mail chat conversation we had:

Andrew: ...although I have just thought of a way to make your writing better my love.
'tis very simple, for a while I thought there was something missing.

Me: right?

Andrew: you need some big, helicopter-killing cats... or killer whales

Me: YAH I do.

Andrew: that sort of thing

Me: For sure rouge animals is where it's at.

Andrew: nooooooo, intelligent killers.

Me: yup. rouge intelligent killer animals

Andrew: yep, then you will have the perfect writing style

Wild Thing, You Make My Heart Sing...

Are we excited about the imminent release of Where The Wild Things Are?
Why yes, yes we are.
How excited?
This excited:



Dude, let the wild rumpus start!

baby-nesia

We were at Teddy's doctor's office yesterday, he was having his 18 months shots (um, yep, tiny bit late. I suck) and the waiting room was LOUSY with tiny pink parcels of cute, or 'ovary bait' as I like to think of them.
Sweet little squishies ranging from 2 weeks to 6 months all kitted out in pink Baby Gap. Oodles of them.
I had forgotten.
Forgotten how completely irresistible tiny-baby noises are. From the mewling lip-smacking of the brand spanking new ones to the delighted-with-the-world chuckles of five and six months old. And I'm pretty sure (based on no scientific evidence whatsoever) that the little blighters give off some kind of give-me-loves-I'm-awesome pheromones.

I had to come home and look at this, call it aversion therapy if you will:
Hoo Yah! There it is!
Are you wondering "Dude? Dude, what is up with your lips?"

I bet you were, and let me tell you, in detail and at some length.
Pre-eclampsia is what is up with my lips, gaining 35 lbs in three weeks is what is up with my lips. All of it on my face. I didn't even know that lips could get fat, but yep, apparently they can. If you poked me I dented then sprung back, like a water bed.

As lousy as I looked, I felt worse. This picture was taken at 7.15 pm on the day I was induced; I had gone for my 37 week check-up at 11.30 that morning. I'd had like 7 or 8 different sets of hands up my foo foo, I was in a room on the high risk pregnancy ward and I was having teeny weeny contractions. And it was still a better day than the day before when it looked like I had another three weeks of the suckiest time of my life still to go. Also, have I mentioned the puking?

So yah, pregnancy. Not my favorite.
And yet.
And yet...

Two things happened this Saturday, the first was Nuit Blanche the second was our three year anniversary of moving to Toronto.

Nuit Blanche was awesometastical, it's a one-night-only, all-night art exhibition that covers the whole city. What you do is stomp around in your sensible shoes looking at lovely art things. (I salute you girl in Dundas Sq with the hooker heels on, though in retrospect it's possible you were in fact a hooker)
Lovely art things like this:
Which is a message I can really get behind! This was a huge light rig strung across city hall, and it would flick through random letters then settle on the words for a few minutes. We happened to be around for this sequence, which came complete with creepy jackboot-y sounds and was very 1984. Standing around with a 100 or so other people in the night, trying to find meaning in random letters was deliciously surreal, and kinda fun. I reckon that if we'd have got the Hope, Love, Life phase the experience might have been a little different (and suckier maybe?)

And this:

Run! Run from the giant silver bunny of awesome. Save yourselves, I'll stay here and loot the shoe shops of the Eaton center.

The night was just warm enough, it didn't honk down with rain and the atmosphere was completely Torontonian, as in friendly, cheerful and willing to be entertained. I really do love this city.

And you guys! It's been three years! We've lived in Toronto for three years! Sometimes it feels like they've gone gaspingly, blinkingly, crazily quick. Other times it seems like we've been here for ever.
And they've been three really big years. Big, life changey years, with the baking a baby and the HAVING a bear around and the head injuries. And the complete lifestyle changes and the career choices and the pooch acquiring and the adulthood finally arriving. They've been awesome for the most part. I really feel that our lives here are better and fuller and happier than they were in London.
A big part of that is our lovely chums, really we know some seriously awesome folks, this whole emigrating thing could have been lonely and hard and kinda poops without them. So big kisses right at y'all.

What Not To Wear?

I have no idea what I'm supposed to be wearing now. Not as in right this second, (right this second I'm wearing a snuggie and a tiara) but now; as in,
in Autumn,
at (almost) 31,
and at 30lbs less of a fat ass than I was in July.

I DO have some nice clothes, (all, I might add, chosen and supplied my my ridiculously chic mama) but I get these bizarro pangs of uncertainty about them. I will, for example, try on four different outfits and decide on one; but SECONDS before I leave the house I slither back into the jeans, sneaks and hoodie that seem to be my uniform. I dress like an unhip 12 year old boy. Ironically my kid dresses like a GQ model, see:

What I really need is a Reachel Bagley, she's a stylist and has a rather smashing blog called Cardigan Empire, where she essentially holds your hand and steers you 'round the curves of the business of getting dressed. Kind of like the What Not To Wear folks, but with class and humor and she doesn't dress everyone like a New Jersey housewife.

At half way to being not a fat ass (Yes, 30lbs is half way, and yes, I was the size of an Orca) I am starting to feel a bit like there is an attainable goal at the end of this. As in, ME - not fat. I have promised myself a Reachel-over Look Book as a "yay for me" treat in another 15lbs time.
but for right now I am shamelessly lurking and trying to step away from the hoodie.

And hey guys, if you happen to run into Reachel's babies whilst on your travels, then give them a hug from us and point them in her direction, she's been waiting for them.

Not Too Hasty

The Bear wouldn't want to make a hasty decision, especially not when the question is such an age-old conundrum.

No wait, on second thoughts maybe it's not too bad.