Americanuck

Our ensuite toilet was starting to hum. Ok it was more a honk. It’s had this peculiar quirk for a while now, getting progressively worse and theorized to be due to a slow leak in the tank. After a flush you would hear a “gulk gulk” noise for a bit then it would quiet except for the odd hiss. Every so often the “gulk gulk” would come back followed by a whistle or outright howl and scare the bejesus out of the cats, and I’m sure really pissed off the neighbours. I’m sure they were trying to figure out where that noise was coming from. It was getting worse, happening more often and at ALL times of the day and night randomly vibrating and bellowing us out of a nice sound sleep.

Rather than wait for someone to complain about us, Tom went to good old Home Dept and picked up some new toilet parts and spent part of this morning installing them hoping they will do the trick rather than having to replace all the moving parts. So far so good (knock wood!!) My awesome little plumber man! It’s been a quite honk free night. Oh my gosh does this mean no rude toilet wake up call tonight?

There are signs of things that are starting to need some work around here and in some cases, outright replacement. HOPEFULLY we will get into a house sooner rather than later so we can invest the time and money into fixing THAT up rather than this place. I mean I love this place but it’s really a rest stop on the way to true home ownership. I’m DYING to have a house of our own where there aren’t any RULES as to what I put up for window treatments or pets or anything like that.. well outside of City LAWS but I can deal with those. Not like I want a pig for a pet or anything… hmmm a pig….awwww PIGGIES!!!

Speaking of piggies I have TWO count em TWO piggie calendars! I have one for work from my wonderful Boss Linda and one from my wonderful Hubby. The best part is, they are totally DIFFERENT piggie calendars so I have one for home and one for office. Both of them are all babies pigs, cos really that’s when they are cute face it! Older they are… well BACON!

It was clean once….

What is it about boys that makes them such dirty creatures? I mean, I don’t want to pigeonhole every single teenage male, but this phenomenon doesn’t seem to begin and end with my own Boys. I’ve heard similar tales from other harried and frustrated Mothers who despite their best efforts cannot get their Sons to keep their rooms clean or to, well, bathe on a regular basis. That is unless there is a woman in the picture to impress. To be fair, the messy room is not unique to the male gender, but that curiously rank smell definitely is. I recall friends of mine of the male persuasion who’s rooms were scented with eau de sweatsock. Sean isn’t entirely innocent in this, but he’s the lesser of the two piggies.

This evening I asked Sean to pitch out some of their laundry as he’s out of clean clothes, or rather those clothes that he actually likes to wear. I still do Sean’s laundry though I’ve asked Chris to start doing his own as he’s living here ‘rent-free’ at the moment and even if he wasn’t, he’s old enough to be doing laundry his own-self! Of course, this is done on an ‘as-needed’ basis, based on his criteria for the ‘needed’. Needless to say our definitions are not the same. Not even from the same dictionary.

I put a bunch of Sean’s clothes in with a pair of Chris’ jeans that I swear were ready to walk away on their own. K, Gross. I have to fight the urge to put on a hazard suit and rubber gloves every time I pass within a few feet of their door, never mind venture in. As I stepped that half a foot in the door to grab the laundry I got a whiff of that mixture of sweat, unwashed old laundry and oh probably the remnants of something Chris let rot in there until the last time I made him clean up his mess just before Christmas and I RAN for the kitchen to grab the Fabreeze and the air freshener. I stood there waving both around madly spraying everything in sight and closed the door. There, if I can’t see it, it’s not there. Ahhhh, sweet merciful denial.

Then I washed my hands for five minutes.

Ladies in our wonderful Son’s futures, who ever you may be please note, I tried. Best of luck.

Found this site in my online wanderings and I’ve been having fun with it since:

My Heritage Facial Recognition

You upload a picture and it scans your face and then matches you to a list of 2400 Celeb pictures. It’s hilarious! I’ve run many different pictures of all of us and some people are consistent, but it obviously focuses on certain characteristics, for me I KNOW it’s my nose. My most frequent match ups are Kate Winslet, Sandra Bullock and Shirley Mclaine (haha) along with some people I’ve never heard of..

It’s hard for me to find a picture of Tom where he’s not making a face at the camera so his are all over the map. My fave one though was his match to Lucille Ball!

Here are some more examples… too funny

Belinda/Kate

Tom/Ewan

Sean/Natalie Wood(!)

Chris/Brad

Try it, it’s fun!

Does anyone else feel like they must immediately put all Christmas decorations back in the box? I’m sure the Kids think I’m the biggest scrooge in the world when it comes to decorations, because if I had it my way they would be up for a couple of days and then back in the box the minute Christmas is over. Of course being married to an Elf the way I am that doesn’t happen, that and the Boys would kill me.

Tom and I went for a nice dinner out last night as it was just the two of us and it was nice not having to cook or clean up after all that. Walking there (the restaurant is barely a block and a half away from home) we passed our building and we could see how many places through the windows that faced the street that didn’t bother to decorate . I mentioned that if I was some old lady living on my own I doubt I would bother either. There are a lot of Seniors in our complex and I’m sure a great portion of those that didn’t decorate are seniors or single people.

I suppose a lot of the way I feel comes from the fact Christmas usually meant fighting in my house growing up, mostly over money, and the fact, you know, it would have to be spent. I’ve ALWAYS made it fun for the Kids and hid my own natural disdain for the holiday. Meeting Tom helped to turn things around for me because he is so naturally full of the joys of Christmas, it’s really hard to be a big poo about it.

I got an extra two days off work as the holiday fell over the weekend, and Tom got the weekend and yesterday off. He’s back at work today, and will be working for a several week stretch on a late shift so I won’t be seeing a whole lot of him a little while but it was sure nice having some full days together. It’s too quiet here when nobody is home but me.

I went out for a walk in the light rain as I was going a bit stir. Of course once I got outside it started to pour.. figures! It’s a good thing that I like the rain and didn’t really care that my hair got wet, I mean seriously where was I going that anyone would care? I could have turned around at any point but it was refreshing. I have to remember to NOT wear the nylon jacket when I go for a fast walk though (urgh sweaty!!) I really wish we were nearer a park though. I’m sure I look really stupid to the people I walk by, because I’m usually listening to something I really like on my MP3 player which causes me to bounce around and smile.

I love music and I love this player. Tom got it for me as a surprise before our Georgia trip. I couldn’t get it to work before the trip though because I didn’t have long enough to play with it and discover a stupid setting that was preventing WMP from transferring my purchased songs, but since I figured it out it’s been great. It’s 1 gig so it keeps me going for a long time. He got me a new pair of earphones for Xmas too which are really light and hang on well. My other pair, the wire was starting to go. I don’t use the ‘ear buds’ because my inner ear is too small and they just pop right out, they hurt like hell too.

Ohhh caught myself just smiling at my ring again. I’ve been doing that the last couple of days. I’m such a jewelry whore. I suppose if I could, and it didn’t look really stupid, I would be wearing a ring on every single finger. Rings are my favourite things EVAR! Ok JEWELRY in general is, but damn, something about rings that get my eyes to sparkling. I suppose because it’s one of the few things you can see all the time other than bracelets and they get in the way. Earrings and necklaces you have to see in the mirror unless they are long enough to dangle. Rings you can watch the flash of the light on them winking back at you. Like I said to Tom, I love ALL my presents but I can have favourites!!

T’was a wonderful Christmas!

The turkey dinner turned out FAB if I have to say so myself. The turkey was so darn juicy and tender (bless you butterball) of course it helped that I didn’t have to keep it warm for anyone to come home, that can sure dry out a turkey I tells ya!

The Spread

After stuffing ourselves and battling the after dinner sleepies with a nice cuppa (coffee not tea)wonderful Tom cleaned up and shooed me out of the kitchen. After he was done we did our giftage with Mom.

As she was opening the box that contained her new perfume, she caught sight of the name. “Oh!!” She said, “It’s called ORGASM??” she pauses “Oh wait, or is it Organza?”

Ummm yeah Mom it’s Organza (by Givenchy) We were howling! My Mom is 73 years old, and said this so casually, so off the cuff. Classic moment.

‘Orgasm’ by Givenchy

Taken by Sean

As usual there were TONS of pictures taken. You can click on the link and find the rest of the Christmas Eve pix here on Flickr

We opened the gifts from/to her and everyone loved what they got. We drove Mom home when it got late and sent her home with a stocking to open in the morning and then after, we headed home to relax with a nice glass of “Whew we made it through another Christmas dinner” glass of Shiraz.

We slept in until 9:00ish. I got up to make our traditional Christmas breakfast, this year however we decided to mix it up a bit and ate FIRST, before gifts. Sean came popping out the minute I started digging for pans. “I heard noises!!” he said figuring that was the signal that he was able to get up. He was a wee bit crestfallen to hear we were to eat first. Chris crawled out of bed reluctantly at first until he remembered there were presents involved. We all ate and then Tom and I revealed this year’s ‘Gag’ which was for the Kids to read a poem that Tom wrote (and designed) which the had to read together.

You shoulda seen their faces when they clued in what was coming up.

We brought out the hats and scarves we bought for them to wear, and handed them the lyrics to the song “We are Santa’s Elves”. The deal was they had to ’sing’ the song on camera (video and still) wearing the costumes. We were surprised they were really good sports about it. We were wondering if it would take some coaxing (blackmail) but it didn’t.

Sing the Elf Song

I think it helped that Tom and I were wearing silly hats too…

Santa Tommy and Reindeer Belinda

We all made out like bandits. After dropping subtle (ehem) hints that I would LOVEEEE a Garnet ring (my birthstone) ok… practically pulling Tommy into every jewelry store we passed and pressing his nose to the glass to show him exactly the style I like (he says buying jewelry for me stresses him out cos I’m so picky) he did GREAT!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE my ring! Sean congratulated him on picking it out himself and not even needing his help (he was designated back up memory for what Mom likes)

He got me lots of girly things and Sex and the City season two, I got him lots of ‘guy’ things… yanno tools, those walkie talkie thingies that you can talk to each other miles away (go to the mall the other stays home.. no cell bill cool!)and some guy toiletries (for the Metro -sexual in Tom (ha) ) along with a couple of DVDs, The Larry Sanders show season one and Arrested Development season two.

Chris made out with lots of stuff for his electric guitar (hard case, strings) and new games etc.

Sean was pretty much all about games, three new ones plus stuff for his Nintendo DS.

Both of them got cool hard cash from Grandma Barbara. That brought on some biggg smiles (and immediate thoughts to what they could spend it on)

We received calls from my Mom and from Nan and Carol (Tom’s Sisters) and he called Linda (his other Sister) after he figured she would be up. She’s working tonight poor thing and with a cold too! Tom’s Mom is at his Aunts for the holiday so he will talk to her when she gets back. We both got gift cards from Tom’s Mom and we got Amazon gift certs (yay!!) from Nancy, Olive Garden (whoohoo!)and ‘Brain’ themed DVD movies from Linda (mmm brains!)

All of our Christmas Morning pix here on Flickr

I gave Sean my OLD digital camera (Kodak from 1998!) He has his own set of photos he took on Flickr too. Click Here to see Sean’s photos on Flickr

In the later afternoon it was time for the Boys to head over to their Father’s place as they were off to their Grandfather’s place for Dinner (and yet more presents)

All it all it was a wonderful Christmas. As Tom says they are just getting better and better!

Merry Christmas from the Per-Vells