complete randomness

I had always found Walmart's "roll back the prices" signs amusing as often the savings would amount to a few cents, but this one really takes the cake. The orange sticker says a savings of $0.50/kg and yet both the other prices remain the same. Hmmm.... something's fishy here.

Finally a tree that the goth crowd can appreciate! Part of me wants to take it home, cover it in black and white decorations and watch The Nightmare Before Christmas.

The disclaimer, "No fairy tale creatures were harmed in the making of these shoes" does not apply here.

RIP scuba phone

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After months of working sporadically, my beloved Sony Ericsson W550i Cell Phone has gone on to wherever it is that cell phones go when they die. One minute it was working, the next the window showed nothing more than a brilliant display of colourful pixellated confetti. I choose to put the blame on the corporate giant known as Walmart as the phone was in working order when I placed a call prior to entering the store and it was no longer working once we left. Logically speaking, it must be Walmart's fault....right?? We won't talk about the fact that it really hasn't worked all that well since it took a dip in the toilet about a year ago (thanks Lex).

I thought for interests sake I would show you my cellular progression beginning with my white Motorola behemoth of a phone, that was so big that it couldn't fit in my pocket and had no extra features to speak of, and ending with my sleek new HTC touch phone, with its fun iphone-like touch screen capabilities. I was really torn between the HTC and the Blackberry as both had the email and PDA like features that I felt I needed but in the end since neither had the Worm Forts game I went with my first choice. Yes, the worm game really would have been a selling feature. For the first time ever, I actually had to consult the user manual to figure out how to use my phone.

Apparently today is autistic pride day. So....uh....happy autistic pride day- now go and educate yourself . Maybe I should go out and buy a cake or something. You can never have to much cake....or perhaps a nice tiramisu. A little harder to decorate but I believe that it could be done.

Did I ever mention how tired I was of wood tick season? Now that the deer are coming back out of the valley and wandering through the yard to look longingly at our garden and check the integrity of the 6 foot high electric fence, the place is crawling with the suckers (bad pun, i know) A simple trip out to the trampoline, across the neatly shorn yard, can yield 2 or more. I never really had a problem with wood ticks before, but this is getting crazy. Every day I'm picking them off the kids, the dog the deck etc. I grew up on a farm, but I have never seen anything like this. The older kids are thoroughly disgusted...having become rather citified during their formative years and continually ask what the purpose of a wood tick is. I wish I could tell them...because i would really like to know the answer to that one too!

*Edited to add: After a brief seach on ask.com, my quest to find the answer to the purpose of a wood tick has been abandoned. Apparently they have no real purpose.

weekly lessons

1. The sound of your child falling down the hard wood staircase is one that I hope not to hear again

2. It is very difficult to draw a convincing horse with an etch-a-sketch...kitties and puppies even

3. Tylenol has this sick joke where the recommended dose is 1.5 ml and the dropper only goes up to 1 ml. If you have ever tasted children's tylenol you would know that there is no way that you can trick your sick child into taking that second dose....none....even if you do managed to get the dropper through barricade of little fingers and clenched teeth the chances of the tylenol remaining in their mouth and not sprayed all over your own face is extremely small.

4. When someone refers to their sale horse as perfectly broke, you should ask them to clarify whether they are referring to the degree to which the horse is trained or if perhaps something is broken....like their sanity

5. Yes, it can rain too much

6. Wood ticks aren't so bad....until you start finding them in your bed and on your walls. That's when I start to have a problem with it.I think that about covers it. I will spare you all the emotional crap we've been going through as of late. Raining outside, raining inside, it's all starting to blur together.

coffee junkies unite

This isn't going to come as a shock to anyone, but I really appreciate a truly good cup of coffee. The dark coloured liquid that Tim Horton's tries to pass off as coffee is not coffee. In fact, it's an embarrassment to the sacred name coffee. But, I buy the stuff....I don't enjoy it but I drink it. I like my coffee black, the way it's supposed to be...pure, untainted coffee. Tim Hortons coffee cannot, in my opinion, be consumed this way. Copious amounts of cream and sugar must be added to make the beverage bearable. It's funny what we will put up with for convenience sake. I even reheated my truly terrible cup of joe, because i didn't finish it while it was hot. It's even worse the second time around. Damn Tim Hortons and their nicotine laden coffee.