Shiny, lucky (and kinda rambly)

You guys! This weekend has been super shiny and awesome. With tree acquiring and salt dough and tree trimming and bunting making and friends and dinner and cocktail hat making and and secret santa-ing and a hors d'oeuvre and 25 people squeezed in here. SHINY I tells you!

The tree was acquired early Friday morning from City TV's Charity Tree Deal. Whereby the kids at City fill up Dundas Sq with Christmas trees (and this year a SUPER jaunty tenor choir - LOVED those guys) and sell Christmas trees to raise money for The Food Bank. Which just works for me on a bunch of different levels. Firstly of all, the getting up early and walking down there, all bundled up makes it seem like an occasion. And the square smells so GOOD. And we get our tree and we get to make a donation to a charity that's a pretty big deal for me.
As an aside, can you imagine how difficult it would be to have to worry about something as basic as feeding yourself or your family? I'm IMMENSELY grateful never to have been in that position; but you guys, I feel like all that is is luck.
Where was I?
OH YAH! My sweetie carried the tree home two and a half city blocks for us, hoisted over his SHOULDER. And oooh la la but that man looks good getting his lumberjack on. Mouth-dryingly yum. Then of course we had to grump and wrangle about where exactly we were going to put it. (I won!).
The bear was WIGGLY with excitement about the whole process. And was an enormous help putting the lights on the tree. He's available for a modest fee if you're looking for a short blond to help out by standing on wires and cooing
"Izz so boot-a-wul (beautiful). You see? you see? Ours tree is Boot-a wul!"

Next came a foray into the unknown for me. We made salt dough! I'd never done it before, but I saw the how-to over at Aunt Peaches (have you been over there? YOU SHOULD! Really, she makes beautiful stuff, but even better, her writing is extraordinary; I went for the paper flowers and stayed for the laugh-out-loud-with-a-dash-of-heartbreak storytelling. I'm a fan.)

Anyhow, the bear and I whipped up a batch of salt dough gingerbread chaps. Only some genius (me) decided to add a bit of food colouring to the dough. They turned out the same anemic, fleshy pink as my legs after a long winter. Not cool. Creepy in fact. Like a trayful of nekkid faceless people. But we painted them a nice gingerbready colour on Friday night and we're all agree to never mention it again.


On friday night I also made a bit of bunting,

And some smooching paper birds.

And Saturday morning the bear and I made craft paper gingerbread guys to decorate for our secret santa shindig.

And lastly I got WAY overdressed for that self same party. See:

And I made a cocktail hat! Well technically I stuck 3 dollarstore coasters on a dollarstore headband and painted them black. But I'm totally calling it a cocktail hat! See:

It was a fun time. And you guys are all invited for Our New Year's Soiree!

Hey as an aside, I worry a bit about sounding smug when I write about the nice stuff in my life. BUT, I AM lucky and writing it down helps me remember that I am, and it helps me to pluck the shiny, awesome moments out of the drab ones. That said, I TOTALLY won't be offended if you skip the Lucky Me posts!
x

Surprised? YAH I was!

You guys! I totally got HAD. I got surprise birthday partied and I had NO IDEA. And it was the most fun ever.
First some back story...
My last two birthdays, through nobodies fault really, have been pretty lousy. Last year there was super fun swine flu, and the year before that turning 30 was a non-event.
So this year I asked my sweetie to take me for High Tea at MoRoCo, (MMM CAKE!). The plan was to get all gussied up in a tea dress and make my sweetie wear a tie.

Any how. On Saturday my sweetie told me he had booked a haircut and did I want to come and lurk around the Anthropologie store next door I was all "HELL YAH I DO!" (dude! Anthro!). So there's the hook.
So on our way there Andy pulled the "oh hey, can we stop here? I have to pee" card and dived into a mall entrance. And that would be the Line.
I was all "of course". And I followed him down some step, through some doors and past a few arcade games. I was still pointing to the washroom sign while I did a total double take at my chums shouting SURPRISE. There's the sinker.
I was totally surprised and so happy I almost lost it and howled like a baby right there. But I didn't instead I...
BOWLED!
Andy had organised a vintage Americana themed bowling party. The alley was perfect and he roped my very good chum Sarah into balloon decorating duty. And there were animal noses! But most importantly of all there were a bunch of people whom I love. Kicking my ass at bowling.




And here's the man himself, examining the score board.150? Yah, that would be my guy. (Also his hands in this shot make my palms sweaty and my mouth dry. yum.)
And lookit here's my kid, who's score was DOUBLE mine.

After bowling we can home for chili dogs and beers and noisy fun times, then went on to my brother's OWN surprise party. Which was EXTRA fun too.
I know I say I love this city a lot, but I think what I really mean is that I love our lives here and our extraordinary friends and how lucky we are.

Lucky. But not at bowling.

P.S. You guys, I'm really glad that a trip to Anthro is a wear-something-niceish occasion for me. Sure it's dorky but there could have been sweatpants.
x

Still Alive... And PLOTTING!

I am I am!

I've been... slacking. And lounging. And playing out. And ignoring housework. And sipping martinis in our courtyard with my girl chums. and stomping to the parks. and sewing summer dresses (because I don't have enough of those nope nope nope). and watching my bear play with his new water table. And sitting in the sunshine with my brother. And eating icecream with my sweetheart (who is turning swoon-inducingly blond in the sun). And spotting new awesome street art projects to see with Teddy. and and and...*
It's sunshiny, see.
And cleaning the bathroom when it's sunshiny outside is like honking a spit in Mother Nature's eye.
That's my theory and I'm sticking with it.

Anyway. I have good intentions and there's rain in the forecast, so here's what's coming up chez my blooge over the next little while:


June is Sew What month with two of my favorite bloggers. Melissa of Until Wednesday Calls and the Cynthia (The Sewing Dork herself!) are running a challenge where you pick one type of fabric (linen, denim, whathaveyou) and stick with it for each project. I'm going with knits (because they scare me and I want to practice). You guys should join in, s'going to be heaps o' fun!

They other thing I'm doing is this



Which is just what it says. It's a creative kick in the pants. Only without the kicking (or the... pants?)
It's free, there's no obligation to share if your don't want and a bunch of pretty awesome folks are on board. I'm going to be using my camera. And I SUPER excited about it. (and also maybe a bit nervous? but in a good way).
There's still time if you want to play along with either of these. And hey maybe we could compare notes?

*Wow. Reading that list back is funny. I don't mean to sound smug (Do I sound smug? Maybe? Little bit? Sorry if I do...) it's just that I feel like my life is pretty charmed and writing down what's good is a nice way of reminding myself.

Serendipity Strikes!

You guys! You guys! Today I got smooched FULL ON THE MOUTH but the sparkly unicorn of serendipitous shopping. I did, I did.
(Today was a much better day than yesterday!)

And here's why; for the last two months I've been eyeballing a pair of sketchers sandals. These fella's here (only in dark brown):


They're cute, they have enough of a heel to look like lady shoes, they're as comfy as a pair of Merrel's, they go with lots of things, and they're cute.
I didn't instantly get them because, well, $70 plus tax. And I thought maybe I should hold out for something in a neutral.

This morning Teddy and I were strolling around and decided on a whim to pop into the Winners on the corner (something we never usually do) and...
There they were. In my size, in a lighter colourway than the ones I'd been looking at. And the best part? They were 39 squee - inducing bucks.
I pounced on them like a... something that pounces on shoes? (A Puma maybe?)
I came home and called my sweetie.

Me: SWEETIE Igotnewshoes FOR CHEAP they were right there and the ones I wanted and everything.

My sweetie (bemused): That's good.

Me: No you don't understand. THEY WERE RIGHT THERE! IN MY SIZE! And I got them! MINE MINE MINE!

My sweetie: Ohhhh-kay?

Me: mine mine mine...

My sweetie doesn't appear to understand about The Sparky Unicorn of Shopping Serendipity. (See him carefully place the bargains in just the right spot to be found by just the right person? With his sparkly unicorn horn? and sparkles? and maybe rainbows?)
So I'm telling you guys. This is them and I heart them AND the unicorn who delivered them unto my feeties.



x

My Kung Fu is Strong -ish. Kinda. Maybe

I took another class. A Tai Chi class this time. And you guys! It was super fun too. I'm doing this thing where I have to do at least one thing that's out of my comfort zone every week.
I decided about an hour before the class that I was going to go (thereby robbing myself of days of barf-inducing anxiety). I just put on my sweats and went. And It was GREAT. It's a really interesting way of moving, like if yoga got mad and decided to kick someone's ass really slowly. And there was a diverse and interesting group of people too. Like

Hong Kong Grammie (a grammie from Hong Kong), who made all the moves look as easy and natural as shaking a towel to fold or stirring dinner.

Horny HORNY guy. Who's warm up included standing directly in front of the gaggle of cute ponytail girls and doing pant-splittingly high kicks. Badly.

Aforementioned cute ponytailed girls. All graceful leaping around in perky t-shirts and giggling.

Khaki Chan. The super-clean-cut looking white guy of indeterminate age who has all the poise in the world, barely moves a muscle and looks like he could kill you with the twitch of a perfectly sculpted buttock.

Tie dye t-shirt guy. Who does not have all the poise in the world but who bumbles along cheerfully.

And me. Wearing sweats that could expose my bum at any minute (got to have a lookit those) and a Fraggle Rock t-shirt. Grinning like a mad thing every time I pick up something new and don't fall over.
So yah. It was fun. And out of my comfort zone, and I think it helped me suck less at Flamenco. I'm going again next week.


P.S.
It's possible I'm going to end up with a schedule as busy as a 12 year old suburban kid.
Deep water running-Monday, Tai Chi - Tuesday, Flamenco - Wednesday. Gym all those other days. If I start cutting class to hang out with this cute boy from my building (hi sweetie, I mean you) and writing E.F. HEARTS A.T. FOR LIKE EVER on my binders somebody better call my parents.

Perfect Happiness

My dog. Perfectly happy. With mud.

Teddy thinks she's HI-larious.

The Birthday Bear

Here's what the bear got up to on his birthday...


But NEVER FEAR... dun dun DAHHHH... Monkeys V's Robots is a GO for Saturday 20th. Come hell or high water. I can't wait to show you guys the STUFF. (I have a squillion cupcake flags all ready to go and banners and bunting and yadda yadda yadda!)

Hey, stupid hats aside; the sight of my sweetie's hands on the bear's funny little almost-bald head just makes my heart chirp like a happy bird. I really am a lucky.

Living For The Weekend...

Weekends are nice. I know, not the worlds biggest and greatest revelation, but this one was pretty magic.
Mostly because of my sweetie. He really is awesome.

I got extra sleeps whilst he got up with the bear, then he cooked a huge and elaborate snausagy breakfast and Elliot came and shared and brought natas (Portuguese custardy tarts... Mmmm).
We went for a stomp around Allan Gardens and he made me laugh so hard I had to stop and hold on to a bench for a minute or so.
Got to love those poop jokes.
I really am lucky.
Hope you had as good a weekend as I did.
x

Good(will) Karma

Remember how I was worried about working up some lousy karma by altering a vintage dress? And you all were so lovely and reassuring? (Thank you SO much for that by the way, consider me pep-talked!)

My sweetie comes home early on a Friday so I had some bear-free time to go poking and rummaging and prodding at The Goodwill. I put on something easy to whip off in a tiny-space-speed-changing-challenge, sharpened my elbows to optimal defensive capability then headed off.

And I totally scored!

Recently I've been eyeballing other peoples' denim skirts covetously. Old Navy has a few styles of them at the moment but I haven't even been trying things on in there (so as to avoid the shiny, mass-produced pretty temptation).

So, I had a vague idea that I wanted a denim skirt. An A-line one. In a light-ish wash. That wasn't too short...
OK, so not so vague; and I don't know 'bout you but normally going thrifting with a set idea of what I want means that there will be NOTHING but 1980's embroidered sweatshirts on the racks.

There were 5 skirts! In my size (squee!)! I had to try them all on, and eventually came home with two. Which you guys, has never happened to me before.
Here they are:


This one is by Tommy Hilfiger and it's nice and heavy and the stitching has that slightly more expensive look (what IS that? It's subtle but it's totally there.)
I love how my sweetie is flying Teddy around, superman style in the background of this picture.
I snagged this one because I liked the 70's retroesque thing the pockets have going on.



I also found a very silly lacy scarf that my inner 6 year old demanded (Oooou! Like a flamenco dancer! clap clap stomp. WE WANTS it. we wants. PLEEase?.)


I got it, it was all of 2 bucks and my poor inner 6 year old, I won't let her eat cookies anymore so she probably deserves something.
I also scored a shirt dress that I love so much it may get it's own post (or possibly a marriage proposal).
What I'm saying is, it looks like my karma is doing OK.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life... and I'm feeeeeeeelin'...

tiny bit hung over 'acshully.*
Last night was SO much fun you guys! Chums and chocolate and cheese and a spot of very good champagne (thank you lovely Mark!) a super New Year's make.

I made heaps of truffles, something I love doing, coating little balls of yum in more yum is really satisfying.
Here's what was left of them this morning as I (as blooming always) forgot to take pictures of them when they were all artfully arrayed,



Our chum Ian is a vegan, so I whipped together some Reese's PB cups inspired truffles sans dairy. And some almond and dark chocolate ones too. If you've a hankering for the recipes just let me know and I'll post them.

Our chum Ali brought cheese aplenty and caused something of a feeding frenzy. Mmmm cheese. And while we had intended to play Monopoly, we didn't get around to it, on account of the riotously fun times.

I hope you guys had as awesome a time as we did and are feeling as all "HELLS YAH!" about 2010 as we are.
xxx
*apologies to Nina Simone!

Castle Awesome - The Big Reveal

How the devil was your Yuletide? Ours was SUPER fun times. With PIE!

I finally put the last bloomin' stitch in the last bloomin' crenelation of Castle Awesome on Christmas Eve. The delay was because it was either take a break and make something else or toss the whole damn stinking thing down the garbage chute. On fire.
So I made some Very Weird Things, pics of the which will be posted once the Very Weird Things have been handed out as gifties.

As soon as I had finished the castle my sweetie decided that a photo shoot was in order, here's how that looks in his head:
Yup. Stormtrooper, Boba and a sand person. I LOVE it.

And here's what it looks like sans Lucas
That is Fred 2.0, notice his hair (mane?) and hoofs. And slightly skinnier neck. He's built for speed.

And here's the big reveal:



The longer version is HERE.
Opening gifties and lounging around and watching the bear poke his presents happily was HEAPS of fun. Also fun was how Crazy excited my sweetie was in the run up; Christmas eve he planned the big tree/present reveal with military precision and he wrapped all the Bear's presents so they were easily OPE-able by small monkey paws.

On Christmas day itself he rustled up a roast beast and trimmings and was ALMOST gracious about the catastrophic buttock kicking both he and I received at Monopoly.
Seriously, it was a brutal. Our chum Ian handed us our collective ass, but it was almost as if my sweetie had particularly angered the Monopoly gods by pooping in their knicker drawer. He was in jail 6 times. And he had a grand total of two properties. TWICE.

Present wise, I scored some very pretty earrings and a lovely sweater but more importantly, I had the BEST time with my boys AND my sweetie isn't back at work until after New Year's.
Oh and hey! did you see our tree? If not this is what it looks like:
and it smells yummy. OK. Done now.

Say what, kid?

I just wanted to talk a bit about how my kid communicates and how totally freaking hilarious I find it.
When Teddy was tiny I would sign to him (yeah, I'm that mama, feel free to punch me). We're not talking deep philosophical conversation here, just the basic stuff, bottle, hungry, drink, sleep, down. So, with a few words he got the sign first and then couldn't be bothered to learn the spoken word for AGES (the lazy bum).

Now he uses the words he knows strung together in different ways to describe different stuff. (Instead of learning new words... the lazy bum)
Like...

"CUP", cup can mean "hey, can you pass me my cup" or it can be used to describe ANY body of water; from puddles to the lake to the antarctic ocean on Planet Earth ("peng CUP!").
"Cup" and an open-handed pat on the head means "dude, it's hella rainy out here". A "FFFFISH cup" is an aquarium, naturally.

"Down" means up. Teddy will hop from one foot to another pretending to climb up your leggie and repeating downdowndown. Until you're all "Bear? Do you mean up?" then he nods vigorously and says "UP", but it's ALWAYS down first. Always.

"Bum" (which is totally my favorite) can either be a tail, say a squirrel's, horsie's, Dilly's or a dinosaur's, he's not fussy. Or it can be his dipes; horrifyingly enough he recognises the Pampers logo and nods "bum" sagely at it. Bum can also mean "my bum needs changing, but instead of letting you change it I'm going to run away squealing, could you chase me please?".

"Bag", firstly there's the obvious, bag means bag, but more bizarre is the fact that Daddy goes to "bag" every weekday. Teddy will remind me a few times during the day that "daddy bag". I guess because my sweetie takes his bag to work everyday? But really, who knows. Here's the bear wearing the daddy bag in question.

The way the bear talks now kills me. It really does. I love it so much I almost don't want him to get to big boy speech. But APPARENTLY purposely delaying your child's development for your own amusement is one of those "serial killer" breeding things. BOO. I can't shut him in closets or dress him in girl clothes either. So disappointing.

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.

Webcomics and... Stalking? (well maybe a tiny bit)

This Weekend was The Word on the Street. A book thing in Queen's Park that was completely awesome.

There were all kinds of talks and book signings. The one I was most excited about was the Webcomics one, where I might have been (a tiny bit) stalking Ryan North creator of Dinosaur Comics and Emily Horne of A Softer World.
They were both completely charming, as were Faith Erin Hicks and Kean Soo. Andy Belanger was there too.

I am rubbish at being a fan girl, really rubbish. The guys did signings after and that would have been the perfect opportunity to get something, you know, signed and maybe say hi. But I didn't because I totally choke around super-talented people. Totally.
In my head I'll be all ready to say,
"Hey Emily Horne of A Softer World! Your pictures are so pretty! and I like how benevolent your lens is to people's silly, beautiful minutiae, it makes the contrast of Joey's words even more of a sucker punch in the awesome nerve. "
Which is a bit dorky and long-winded but all true stuff.
Except, put me in front of Emily Horne of A Softer World and what comes out of my mouth is,
"HI! I like your EYEBALLS".
or "HEY Ryan North creator of Dinosaur Comics! Your brain makes me a happy"
or something even creepier than that.
Which is not cool.

Want to know what's so awesome about A Softer World, and also to feel like someone sucked all the air out of your lungs? Then go here.
And Dinosaur Comics? Well it's all awesome, all the time. Find it here.

Margret Atwood was also doing a reading and signing (I might have had a plan to use my fan girl spaziness that involved sitting in the front row of her reading and whispering slightly suggestive things while repeatedly touching my own face. That plan might have been thwarted by my tardiness.)
But lookit, here's a picture of her signing books and looking beautiful (you can't see them but she has great shoes).

Operation SSSH! - Mission Accomplished

YAY! I can finally let the kitty out o' the sack.
It was my sweetie's Birthday this Saturday. He turned a million and Saturday was his actual birthday birthday.
So I threw him a party. A surprise party. And he was ALMOST surprised. Which is good enough for me.

Firstly there were the invitations.
It turns out there is a reason graphic designers go to graphic designer school. Who knew? My amateurish effort...
And the wording said:
For anybody that cares, I used Picnik (the photo editing site) as I don't have any design software and I'm all with the lazy. The font is pupcat and the balloon I hacked from here.

So I made invites. Then spent the next month obsessing about the weather and the many ways that everything could go horribly wrong.
I also bought red stuff. Patterned red table clothes (of which I forgot to take any pictures), red cutlery that I did take pictures of...
red napkins (see above). Red side plates and red meat.
I spent the two days before cooking up a storm and stashed everything at my brother's house.
Figured out a way to get Andy to the island and me there first. So far, so The A team.

Saturday dawned all perfect weathery, I went into a panic-driven flat spin (this is totally what gave me away).

My lovely chum Britt rocked up to help with the logistics and the heavy lifting, which is a teensy bit ironical as one of the bags actually weighed more than her. We were running late and I was wigging out and making a squeeeeeeeee noise through my ears instead of doing anything productive, so Britt called a cab and hustled us down stairs.

We got to the ferry terminal. Now, if you're in the UK you might not know that this weekend was Labor Day weekend (they don't spell Labor with a U on account of how they're wrong wrong wrong). There was an air show on. The island is the perfect spot to watch said air show. The ferry terminal was busy. Very very busy. Assholes to elbows busy.
More squeeeing as I realised that WE would be lucky to make the 12.45 ferry (the one the guests were supposed to be on) but then it occurred that they were also likely to be late. So I relaxed a smidgen.

We got over, and went racing for the BBQ area that I had picked out 3 weeks before on one of my reconnaissance missions. To find a group of roughly 35 people already ensconced. "NOOOOOOOO"
I didn't like my chances against all 35 of them and while I would totally back Britt in a brawl, Elliot is more of a skater than a fighter these days. So Britt went racing over to the contingency spot and she stood guarding it while we hefted the stuff over. Sterling work she did too, seeing off a group of invaders with nothing more than stern looks (and possibly a little muscle flexing).

Next I did some more flapping and Britt blew up the balloons that would theoretically lead our guests to the meaty fun times. Then she raced off and distributed them liberally. I did a bit of clucking and tweeting and moving things around pointlessly. Then Britt hung up the rest of the decorations. She really did an awesome job and I would probably still be there, crying softly, without her help. And she wore the most gorgeous dress ever. Fact. See:

We got mostly set up. Folks arrived, I changed into something that wasn't literally dripping with my own sweat, had a bellini and waited for my man.
Who arrived via the cunning and subterfuge of our chums Ian and Kate.
And
All was well.
My Sweetie says he had his best birthday ever. Meat was cooked and eaten, pooches were played with. My dog ran the length of the island to find us (that's a whole different story).
The bear ate his own substantial body weight in ribs and other meats. Much champagne was quaffed. Good times were had.
And the pictures?
Uhhh.
That's were it all falls to pieces...
I did take this one of my three favorite creatures, and it does pretty nicely sum up the kind of day it was...

Mama Sing The Blues

I should really preface this post with a note about just how badly I sing.
I sing badly. Really, really badly (at some point I will have to tell you about Japan and the Karaoke bar FROM HELL).
So, singing is not one of my talents, and the lack might be genetic. My mum also has more enthusiasm than ability when it comes to carrying a note but, rather marvelously, that doesn't stop her from singing A LOT. Not in public exactly, but in the car, in supermarkets, on a stroll. Any time something comes on the radio that she likes she will sing along, or hum if she doesn't know the words. As a kid I found it a bit excruciating ("Mum! People can HEAR you!") but that's because I was STUPID.
Now I absolutely adore it.
If I am lucky enough to be in the same place as my mum when the opening bars of Love Is In The Air peel out I know that there will be singing; and possibly even a subtle-but-jaunty hip swing.
Mostly what I love is my mum's ability to take unselfconscious pleasure in the moment.

Today as I poked around the Dollarama looking for exactly the right shade of "silk" flower (more on that later) I heard the opening ooooh oooh oh's of Kelly Clarkson's Because of You, my ears perked up and by the time the chorus kicked in I was warbling "because of YOOOOOOOOU" under my breath. It's not something I normally do, nor is La Clarkson usually my cup o' tea musically, and when I caught myself doing it I gave some thought to stopping instantly (for the sake of humanity) but I didn't. I just hummed along more quietly.
It wasn't until I got home (flowers in bag, song still in my head) that I realised how much closer to my mama it had made me feel. Like a genetic hug, delivered all the way from Ireland.
I now can't wait to hear my Bear whisper "Maaaawm! People can HEAR you" in mortified undertones. It will mean I am a proper mama.

Here's a picture of my beautiful Ma, just 'cause.