Mortimer's Mom

Wet

it's hard to blog funny when the TV is filled with images of devastation. the closest we've ever come to something like this up here was the Ice Storm. The biggest shelter in town had around 2500 people and it was hell, I can't even imagine being in that stadium right now.

As far as I know, I don't know anyone directly affected, except for Shelba, who is safe and is waiting for news on her parents' house.  We've been wearing rubber boots all day, the rain having made it all the way up here. Dumpling delighted in the puddles, but being soaked before even reaching the car sort of made me realize how truly horrible the conditions must be down there if we're soaked all the way here.

Now, since some of you have been leaving not-so-subtle hints about the Dumpling's adventure, here is what I know: she was good, she ate like a pig from all the vendor's displays (they went to the farmer's market), tried fruits that she would never try with mommy around, and loved playing in their sloppy backyard. Their cat survived her enthusiastic games, though he did fight back a little and she went on and on about the booboo from the meow....  Her special aunty even stopped by the next day, so she must have not been a little terror!

Now, for the Rock Star groupies like me, how much are you loving Suzie? I liked her first because she's Canadian, but her performance on Rhapsody made me forget about Ty, it's Suzie all the way, That Girl Can Rock!

Inventory has come and gone, now comes the analysis of what's missing, what's broken, and all the posting mistakes we've made during the expansion of the empire.

Speaking of the Empire, I'm spent. I am so tired, working day and night, something has to give. So after much debating back and forth, and as much as I hate admitting this out loud, hubby and I have come to the decision that we are longer capable of being full-time stay at home parents AND work at the same time. It was doable with one small store, it's no longer possible and Dumpling is suffering.

So she will be starting her 2 mornings a week at toddler school next week, but we are currently running ads on craigslist and have signed up for mybabysitter.com in the hopes of finding someone to come to the house 3 days a week to provide so stability in Dumpling's schedule and a bit of free time for mommy and daddy to run errands and do work without having to park Dumpling in front of the Wiggles.

I hate this. I never wanted to have someone else involved in the child rearing, but the reality is that the new store is a big success and we can't hand that over to anyone else at this point, so we need to come up with something. Also, with Sprout on the way, I think it will be good to have someone already here ready to help with Dumpling if we have our hands full with Sprout.

So we are looking for a Mary-Poppins, who will do educational stuff and crafts with Dumpling. Since we speak 2 languages at home, we have agreed that whoever we hire will need to be either a native English or French speaker. This rules out all the foreign nanny agencies, so we have a bit more work to do. Also, we don't need housework or cooking, so I think we are going to look for a university student with few classes.  Any tips on interviewing care givers?

not dead

No no, I haven't dropped off the face of the earth and I'm not still trying to fix the virus-laden computer, though I am still sitting in front of the same darn computer at the store, printing 30-page long inventory lists for the big annual inventory tomorrow.

Lately, I have been working my little butt off, almost 7 days a week. We are between summer schedule and regular schedule and we are sort of 2-men down, so hubby and I are filling shifts left and right, running our regular household errands, dealing with the Big Dig of 2005 in front of our house (re-doing the sewage pipes from the house to the city) and preparing for this big inventory. Somehow in there, we are trying to keep the Dumpling amused, loved and fed.

Thankfully, today my friend IH offered to take Dumpling for a while and take her on an adventure. This could be a spectacular event or a total disaster, as Dumpling is currently going to a very oppositional phase and can be very difficult at times. While I am willing to just go back home and let her stew for a while when she gets to be too much, I'm not sure how her special aunty will deal with a possessed Dumpling if she should decided to grown horns today.... (And no, you don't need to email me, I'm sure her mood is completely and totally related to our increased work schedule and the Dumpling Shuffle that ensues from it. But at this time, there is nothing we can do about it. She will start toddler school in September and we are looking into a more long-term child care option)

As for me, I slept crooked a few days back and my shoulder and neck have been killing me since.... But the new fall TV season is on the horizon, so there is no despair!!!!

I'll try to post more regularly, and let you know how the Dumpling's big day out went.

RIP 6 Feet Under and other TV news

So I didn't post again last night, I was too busy blowing my nose in my shirt, sitting alone in my basement balling my eyes out that the series finale of Six Feet Under. The epilogue was probably the highlight of the television year for me. So what if the Claire/Ted thing was a bit schmaltzy, I soooo wanted him to follow her to NYC, I was quite content with that turn of events. And I was blown away by Keith's passing, absolutely no pun intended. Seriously, it never would have occurred to me that Alan Ball, genius, would have shown us how they all died, but it made such perfect, perfect sense.

But it was quite the pitiful sight, sitting alone on the couch, my hubby having gone out with friends, just balling, with the dogs wondering what the heck was wrong with me!

As for the rock gods tonight, Marty rocked, Jordis was a big disappointment, and I don't care if he's Canadian, get JD off my TV, noooowwww! I still think Ty is my fave, just 'cause he's too hot for words!

And in the real world, the system is back up and running (cross your fingers that it lasts more than 24 hours), we are still about 7 days behind in data, and the new merchandise is being delivered at a rate that includes every single delivery company you can imagine, and a skid. Yes, a skid. So long little ma & pa gift store, hello the empire of M*rt*mer Sn*dgr*ss!!!!

a bad omen

this past Saturday morning, my lovely Dumpling woke up at 8:15. No good could come of that, I should have known.... My daughter used to be an 8:00 am baby. For almost a year, she never made a peep til 7:45, but then, she turned 2 and reset her clock and started waking up between 6:15 and 6:45. I am not a morning person, so she's been getting a lot of daddy time this past few months.

On Saturday, we were completely shocked when we got out of bed so late to find a still sleeping Dumpling in her bed.  We had some breakfast and made a plan for the day. The highlight of the morning was going to be a trip to WalMart, or my daughter's idea of Disney World. But as we pulled into the parking lot, my cell rang with a call from the small store: the computer, which had been sluggish and uncooperative for a bout 2 weeks wouldn't cooperate.

We turned the car around and my husband dropped me off at work, where I have been since then. Well, OK, I've gone home to eat and sleep, but otherwise, I've been sitting there, un-installing, re-installing, scanning, deleting, de-worming and losing a shit-load of data. Some kid somewhere thought that w32.licum would be a fun worm.... What started out as an .exe file that wouldn't work on the cash register software turned into a complete loss of the hard-drive, a reinstall of Windows and every single piece of software.

Then, the battle really began. Because the cash register software people are morons, there west coast hours are highly incompatible with my east coast life, and it turns out that just because you give them a big box full of cash, it doesn't actually entitle you to support.....  At this point, we have the software re-installed, but no actually *licensed* as our store yet, as the licensing guy apparently likes to take 3 hour lunches and hasn't bothered typing in his little sequence in my perpetually pc-anywhere waiting host......

Yeah, so I've been having a grand old time, drinking strong coffee and getting killer computer headaches, coming home to a wired 2 year old who desperately wants my attention. Thankfully, my husband is a stellar parent who has been keeping her more than entertained in my absence. he even took her to the dentist today, and found out that her molars are coming in, probably explaining the annoying teeth-grinding she's been doing non-stop.

Anyone look into human cloning? Because I could certainly use a second me right now! What's keeping me sane: Rock Star INXS (don't get me started on just how wrong it is, yet how sinfully delicious!), the finale of Six Feet Under (2 days later in Canada) and homemade tuna casserole. (Forget chocolate, the crusty cheese on the egg slices is what I crave these days!)

Curves

Today was a day of indulgence for me. After a morning stroller walk to the bank, where Dumpling did her usual rounds entertaining the tellers, I took her home for her daily Wiggles while waiting for the babysitter to show up. In July, we had a nice girl named V come over Monday and Tuesdays from 11 to 4 to entertain the child while we ran errands. But we must have paid her too much, because she up and left to travel through Europe. After 2 weeks sans-babysitter, we were starting to get a bit overwhelmed.

I'm struggling to keep staffing issues at a minimum with the early retirement of two of my girls at store #1 and the return to school of every single person at store #2. So Dumpling's entertainment was falling by the wayside, consisting mostly of runs to the grocery store. Thankfully, another girl named M, who has babysat for us a few times in the past, came back from her own travels and is available to give us two 4-hour periods a week, just on different days.

Sooooo, today M came at 11 and I left to go work on some stuff at store #1 with a new girl. She's thankfully very, very smart (I only hire severely over-educated people: she's a bio-chemist who's earning money for a year before starting med school!!!), so she didn't really need me very much. With a babysitter at home, I headed over to the mall and sat in the dark with Jessica Simpson in very short shorts. She's a very curvy girl... but I am not a 14 year old boy, so the movie was only so-so.

With an hour to go before I could return home, I decided to go to the GAP. I love GAP. I'm a GAP whore. I especially love the discount rack at GAP. I have gotten some amazing stuff off the discount rack. But today, I perused the new jeans selection. Man, they have a lot of new jeans. I tried on a pair of flat front trouser types that I had hoped would fit me like a glove, but they fit more like a soggy mitten, so I skipped.

From the new styles, I had my eye on the straight cut, because I really like the wide waistband and the fabric was soft like flannel. But the anorexic 14 year-old sales girl came over and told me I should probably try on the *curvy* ones, that they would fit me better... nothing like a insult disguised as a helpful tip. I wear a size 6 for heaven's sake!

Well, I tried them all on, and take that you skinny little girl: the curvy ones looked like hell on me, while the skinny ones fit perfectly! I mean, I do look curvy in them, I'm a woman and I've got hips and an ass, but I do not need to be reminded of that fact by a kid who thinks anyone over a size 2 is big!

She's a rocker!

*typepad just ate my post.... the re-write might not be as funny*

Sometimes, my husband is a genius. Thanks to a tip from a Blue Rodeo mailing list we are on, hubby found a free outdoor show from 6 to 8 pm in Burlington Vermont. We've been toying with the idea of taking her to a concert, but we really didn't want to take her indoors anywhere (too loud) and most of the evening outdoor shows are too late. But this was perfect!

So we drove down after lunch, with a napping Dumpling. We got to Burlington, left our car near the Park where the show was going to take place and spotted the tour bus. So we strolled along to the back of the stage, only to find Bob Eagen reading the paper on a chair and Jim Cuddy strumming his guitar under a tree! We chatted him up, he greeted Dumpling by name (I'm sure he didn't actually remember her name, he must of heard us coming up) and the serenaded her for a few minutes and *let* her * strum* his * guitar* !!! Can you imagine! Our FAVORITE singer let our toddler play his guitar! Of course, to Dumpling, Jim Cuddy doesn't hold a candle to Murray Wiggles, but still, to us, it was pretty exciting.

After a walk around the town center and a long visit to the nearby playground, we stretched out our blanket 40 feet form the stage and joined the 300 people who were there to raise money for hungry Vermonters and see the show. I can't believe how few die hard Blue Rodeo fans from Montreal made the drive, but all the better for us!

The show was great. But even better was watching Dumpling rock her little tush off for 90 minutes! She took her best Wiggles move - Wags the Dog, Point your fingers and do the twist, I am a dancer - and applied them as best she could to the rocking sounds of Blue Rodeo. The people on the nearby blankets were all transfixed!

For the Encore, people got up and went near the stage, so our by-then pajama-clad Dumpling got up on our shoulders, thrusted her hand up in the air to the rhythm of the music and rocked til the end. All that was missing was the lighter!

After the last song, we went backstage again and got to say goodnight, before making the drive back, a sleeping Dumpling dreaming of her rock debut.

Photographic Evidence can be found here. Seriously, if she's already rocking hard at two and half and is already backstage hanging out with the band, does this really bode well for her teenage years????

that's MADAME sh*t disturber to you!

There are days when I just can't leave well enough alone and yesterday was one of them. For those of you not familiar with International adoption and adoption from China in particular (hey, we got lots of new readers following our television debut!), let me give you a very, very quick primer.

You sign up with an agency and you do your paperwork, then your papers go to China and you wait, and you wait, and you wait. While you wait, you feel the need to commiserate with others in your situation, so you join yahoo groups. There are DTC groups, which go by the month your papers went to China, groups for middle-aged parents, groups for single parents, but by and far, the mother of all groups is the big group, known as APC.

APC boast over 16000 members, yet the same 12 people seem to fload the list everyday. And then, there are newbies with questions and the inability to search the archives first to see if, oh my, someone else might have asked the same question before!

By and far, this list is very right-wing, Christian leaning. Anyone who doesn't fit the mold doens't fit. I, as a Canadian Jew who didn't have to hold a bake sale to pay for my adoption do not fit the mold. So most of the time, I just hit delete. Actually, I don't even have to hit delete, I am on no-mail and only go over and read the messages I am interested in when I have time. But once in a while, certain topics get me pretty riled up and I feel the urge to chime in. A while back, I shared my personal experience meeting a Chinese birth-mother a the home-renovation store. And I did take great offense when someone on the list implied that people with money didn't adopt, and further insulted when same person implied in her apology that while people with money do sometimes adopt, people who have to make a financial sacrifice are much more worthy parents.

Anyway, this week the list has been totally abuzz with two topics that would be too long to go into but basically come down to this: the largely middle-American Christian community have been waving the flag of Chinese adoption so high that us non-mold-fitting people are starting to feel really left out. So I piped up.....

You'll be happy to know that while I got a ton of encouraging emails from like-minded families, never mind by killer ladybug posse, I also got a few emails praying for the salvation and rescue of my daughter's soul. I'm sure G-d is very happy to know that if He isn't looking after her soul, he's got someone down here doing it for Him!!!!

Almost Famous

so, I just spent 3 days doing professional shopping: buying, buying and more buying to keep the shelves stocked well into the holiday season, or til the second week of September if all the Trading Spaces viewers keep visit the website!

The gift shows do provide a few perks: hubby books us into a luxury hotel, I get to do a little personal shopping is some great Toronto stores and I walk about 25 kms and go down one pant size! Man, it's a lot of walking in 3 days, my legs are soooo sore right now, I'm favoring the basement couch to avoid the 2 flights of stairs to my bedroom!

A few days ago, I proclaimed green the new orange (which had been the new pink). There were some doubters, but I'm here to tell you, green is IT! I went to H&M and walked away with nothing but lovely greens. And the prices? Holy Canoli as my hubby would say! I know the quality isn't there, but for trendy non-closet building items, it's perfect.

True Story time:
Monday morning, hubby and I stroll down Queen street for an hour before heading to the gift show. It's early, most of the stores are closed, there aren't too many people on the street. A woman on a cell phone with a young teenage son is walking from the opposite direction. She passes us, stops dead in her tracks, holds down her cell phone and screams: "Oh my god! you were just on TLC!" I couldn't believe it! We weren't even in our own city where the show was filmed. And Queen street, lots of people, what the hell are the chances?!?!?

My final thoughts are on the recent happening in Blogistan: there was a lot of hoopla while I was away. Some people I hold near and dear got a good bashing, and some whom I used to think very well of turned out to be big disapointments. I'm all for disagreements. The people you find on my blogroll are people I respect. I don't always agree with them, but I have enough respect for them to keep it on an intelligent, non-troll level. I for one, have no intentions of leaving this blog. I know some of my posse are having second thoughts these days about blogging. I understand there feelings. I'm gonna try to stick around though.

blogging from the road

Thanks to a complimentary ethernet cable (found in the drawer of the mini-bar of all places!), I am blogging from the comfort of the leather recliner of our swanky boutique-hotel room in Toronto. Hubby and I are here on business, replenishing the shelves of the stores for the fall and winter, but because he loves me and he knows I don't do the Super 8 motel, we are going to be staying in the lap of luxury, where for a certain price, you can leave with everything: the leather recliner, the bed, the bedding, the towels, even the solid wood entertainment unit!

We are completely without dependants for the next 3 days, having  left the baby at the kennel and the dogs at my parents, oops, the other way around!  But they are all in safe hands until our Tuesday night return. If I have any energy left tomorrow after walking and shopping for 10 hours, you'll be hearing from me again, if not, see you Wednesday.

a behind the scenes look

OK, so you watched us, now you want to know how it REALLY was.... let me just say, had I written this post 6 weeks ago right afterward, it would have been very different.... We are THRILLED with the room, minus the nip*les. We took those down a week later, after all the friends and family had come over to visit. We put up those paintings we had and have pretty much left it as is since then. We did order wall sconces for the fireplace, but they are still in a box, I haven't gotten around to putting them up. Ines and Shady also really like their room and have left it just as you saw it in the bounce back: the couch is squeezed back together with the small tables on either side, and they changed the knick-knacks on the TV unit. That's it.

We are also very, very, very pleased with the episode itself. It was hilarious and totally spot-on for representing each of us. Jay is absolutely exactly as you saw him, that was NOT an act. (to the poster on the boards who said he had quite enough of "the little man", just imagine living with him 24/7!)

Now, the less fabulous stuff. I was very bummed with the actual process. First off, Laura is quite the diva. She didn't say one word to us during the 3 days, except for what you saw on screen. If the camera wasn't rolling, we didn't exist for her. I'm told by Ines that it was pretty much the same thing with Doug. After the reveal, I was looking forward to talking to Doug, but the camera switched off, he said goodbye and poof, he was gone. Not one word, not one picture, if it wasn't for the show, I would have no proof that he was actually here. (same for Carter, though all the girls in the neighbourhood got their picture taken with him over the 3 days and told us he was quite the charmer!)

The process is nothing but hurry up and wait. We sat around more than 75% of the time. The rest of the time, we filmed interviews about we were about to do: "Next we are going to paint the panels on the wall". We would do interview after interview. Every time we returned to the room, the elves had done everything but the little part they want to film you doing. When you see us painting the light blue on the wall, in the first work scene, the rest of the room is already painted. Then, after you film your scene for 3 minutes, you go back to do interviews about what you just did: "we just painted the wall". By the time you are done, everything in the room is finished.

How much work did we actually do? Very little. I painted a 2 foot by 2 foot square of the wall color. I made the 4 pillows because I insisted. I recovered the chairs and the bench because I took it upon myself and pretty much hogged the staple gun so the elves couldn't get to it
**. Jay painted the coffee table for homework while I painted the base coat of the dark brown on the panels. Wynn is actually the one who did the finish on those panels the next day. She did an awesome job.

We did film carpentry scenes and Jay filmed that lamp scene (which actually lasted almost an hour and was probably unusable due to the fact that Jay was so funny, Laura was on the ground laughing with a camera over her head and the sound guy couldn't drown out the sounds of the crew laughing in the background), but no work was actually done at that time. The elves take care of everything: taping the room, laying tarps, painting, marking out the panels (except for the one we did on screen, but actually, the horizontals and verticals had been done for us, Jay just had to draw the corners). That's it. Like I said, I insisted on doing the sewing. The sewing elf is absolutely fabulous! He was very cool, we got to talk a lot and he pretty much just let me do my thing with the pillows because it meant less work for him. But if I hadn't made a big stink about doing it myself, he would have done it.

There was a huge amount of tension on the set at all times. The crew was on their last shoot and heading home. They were tired. And the didn't seem to like Laura too much.... I was actually excited at first, because I like her style and I thought she would do a great room for them. But in reality, she was very hard to work with. She didn't care about anything we had to say or contribute. She went to the wrong Home Depot, which turned into a big deal for the accountants so we lost about 3 hours on day one, waiting for a PA to go fetch the supplies she had bought the day before. At the end of the day, she got lost on her way to the right HD (a straight line AND OnStar in the car....) so we didn't get to stain the valences because we had no stain. There was also a huge mix up with the furniture that we bought. We called her and discussed the price with her and she OKed it. But then, she never accounted for it and we were scrambling at the end to make one chair and the bench fit in the budget. We ended up buying the second chair so it could stay in the room. All in all, we loved the design she did but there was no love lost between she and I.

** Some eagle-eyed posters did notice me "telling" Laura how things should be done.... By the time we were filming the staple gun scene on day two, we couldn't even be in the same room at the same time. I pretty much was trying to drown her out with the repetitive stapling. If you noticed in the reveal, once she and Wynn came in the room, my eyes were fixed to the floor and pretty much no one had anything left to say... the vibe just changed when she was around.

When it was all over, I felt completely depressed. I had looked forward to working my fingers to the bone and pulling a homework allnighter. We stayed up way later the week before when they came with the crane to do the exterior night shots of the house! Don't get me wrong: the crew is absolutely fabulous. They are the unsung heroes of the show. We hung out, ate together and laughed all the time. I knew that you got some help behind the scenes. I read all the boards and blogs, so I knew there were extra hands to built things and sew things. But I had no idea how little we would actually do.

Maybe it wasn't a typical show. Maybe because we started soooo late because of the home Depot debacle, they felt they had to do more to get it done. But I know that when it was over, I was totally bummed. I looked around that room and I couldn't really see what I had done, save for the pillows and chairs. Jay wasn't quite as bummed out, having had no expectations and being a big cynic: he never thought they'd actually LET him near the tools! I felt more like a prop: paint can, check. paint brush, check. Female Home Owner, check.

As for Ines and Shady, I will invite them to post their own feelings. Since they weren't as big a fan as I was, I think it was less of a letdown for them. And I know they are beyond pleased with both the room and the episode.

the dish

the post has been written. it will automatically post Friday at 5:00 EST.

they're really done

with all the hoopla surrounding our television debut (I didn't know that many people had computers on their laps while they watched tv....), I didn't adress the one downer in our house these days.

After a lovely Shabbat dinner on Friday night, a group viewing of said television debut, an icecream outing on Sunday afternoon and one last BBQ on Sunday night, the lovely D and her amazing husband A left town quietly on Monday morning, to return to TO for good. the 401 is a long and lonely road, and we for sure will go visit them, and the for sure will be back to MTL at some point, but it won't be the same.

Dumpling pointed to the long bench by the picnic table last night, where they always sat, and asked about DaDa and A**e... I didn't know what to tell her, but thankfully, she's too young to really understand that they aren't coming back....