My middle name is Catherine, and in university my friend Dave used to call me a Chatty Cathy. A seriously accurate nickname. I can be quiet sometimes in a large group of strangers…but that’s pretty much the only time. I talk a lot, I talk loud, I make a lot of noise.

Little Miss Sunshine totally gets this from me. I guess we should have anticipated that, when we gave her the same middle name. We brought it on ourselves!

Today we were walking to the bookstore and the whole way, she did not shut up once. It was all, “Look! A girl! What girl doing? Girl have blue coat! Girl walking! Look! A doggie! Doggie sooooo cute. Doggie walking! Doggie brown. Look! A car! Car red. Car go fast! Ha ha, car funny!”

She’s seriously adorable. Two is awesome.

Here are some other things she says a lot of lately, that I can’t get enough of.

After we speak to her sternly about something:
“You not mad anymore! You happy!”

When we’ve been busy with something, and she wants to check in:
“Knock knock!”
Followed by us saying, “Who’s there?”, and her smiling enigmatically and dancing away.

When one of her older siblings is crying about something:
“Gal Smiley sad! Me not sad. Me happy!

Every single morning:
“Me alreaaaaaaaady brushed my teeth! Me no waaaaaana brush!”

She’s seriously halfway to 16 with this stuff. She also has this amazingly adorable/frustrating pout when she doesn’t want to do something — she crosses her arms, looks down at the floor, and puts on a frowny face. It’s rude sometimes but so cute I can’t bring myself to scold her. And more than half the time, she’s doing it just to try on the emotion — she’s not even really cranky or upset.

As shown in this conversation, which happens pretty much every day:

Me: Time to go pick up Gal Smiley from school.
Her: Me don’t waaaaaaant to wear my coat!
Me: You have to.
Her: Okay. Me no waaaaaaant to wear my mittens!
Me: You have to.
Her: Okay. Me no waaaaaaant to wear my hat!
Me: You have to.
Her: Okay. Let’s go!

And she dances away.

And just today, she had to interrupt our naptime story to have this conversation:

Her: You’re funny.
Me: You’re funny.
Her: Oh, me funny! Right.

Continue story.

Don’t ever change, Funny Girl.

So! NaBloPoMo is really spanking me this year (that was for Bibliomama!). I’m so burnt out. November has been brutally busy and I have no creative energy left. Bleh.

Then I thought, hey, other bloggers have been doing Christmas wish lists…how about an Etsy wish list?

Ooooooh. Gooooood.

It’s probably too late to order anything from Etsy from the States, and expect it to be here in time. But if you like to gamble with customs and you’re willing to pay for expidited shipping, consider these goodies that are on my own personal favourites list.

First up, I think these bookmarks by Sharon Montrose would make a really nice stocking stuffer for any avid readers you know (like, say, Mrs. Carl Sagan):

Sweet Life Paper is my newest favourite Etsy shop. She makes customized pads and I bought one this year for each of my kids’ teachers. There are so many beautiful patterns I don’t know how you’ll ever choose, but I think I like this one the best:

My hair is wild and out of control at the moment, so I need a little clip to hold it back from my face. Wouldn’t a clip like this from Oh Faro be so much nicer at a Christmas party than a boring grey snap clip from the Superstore? I think so!

For my birthday last week, the kids gave me a new winter coat that is a lovely plum colour. Unfortunately, my old coat was brown, so my beige and orange hat and mitts don’t look so great with the new coat colour. I have fallen madly, uncontrollably in love with this scarf from Toggle UK and we are DESTINED to be together. Plus, scarves are cozy and cuddly and just scream Christmas, don’t they?

I’m always on the lookout for new jewelry — my current collection is very small and I’m looking for some more elegant, grown-up pieces these days. Unfortunately, many of my favourite Etsy sellers for jewelry have closed up their shops at the moment — must be because it’s craft fair season. In any case, I’m getting these in my stocking for sure — I won a gift certificate to Lillyella’s shop and used it a few weeks ago on these earrings.

And while we’re wishing for jewelry, I love the idea of this Mommy Necklace from MncMoon. It’d also make a great grandmother gift, don’t you think?

Handbags are always a great choice for sisters, sisters-in-law, and nieces. Also, for me. I’m getting very close now to not having to drag around a diaper bag with me, and I have exactly one (1) purse to my name. Again, many of my favourite Etsy sellers for handbags have their shops closed right now, but here’s one from Bag Ladies in PA I actually bought for my older sister last year, and would gladly add to my own closet. (They also have many nice wristlets and pouches. Just saying.)

Lastly, those who know my Etsy wish list know I am totally obsessed with pincushions, and the best pincushion shop on Etsy is The Daily Pincushion. I have loved them for ages, and I finally bought one this year — for my mom. Sigh.

And those are just the Etsy things on my wish list. If only we were millionaires!

Dear Angelina Jolie;

You must have some kind of powerful inner strength just to get out of bed in the morning. Every time I am at the grocery store, I see a picture of you or your kids or your life partner on the cover of some magazine. One week it’s all, “We love her!” and the next week it’s all, “She’s a fake!” One week it’s, “Angelina loves all the children of the world!” and the next it’s, “But she feeds them Cheetos and that makes her EVIL!”

How do you do it?

Sure, I know you’ve got those impossibly cute kids and a mansion ten times the size of my house. You’ve got nannies and a chef and millions of dollars. You’ve got sex appeal and a killer wardrobe and a handsome-if-childish life partner. You’ve got film work for fun, and humanitarian work for self-esteem.

But Jesus, I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I had to worry about someone watching my mothering skills every single second of every single day. Sometimes I lose it, and I snap at the kids. Sometimes I am tired so I let them have cereal for dinner. Sometimes I’m not quite done my blog post for the day so I let them watch an extra episode of Caillou.

Sure, sometimes I take them to the park or play games with them or help them with their homework. But you’d never see that on the cover of a magazine, if I were famous. No, they’d only be interested in publishing that one time, ONE TIME, I spun around too quickly and knocked Little Miss Sunshine over with my backpack. ONE TIME, people.

And heaven forbid my husband come home late one night, or casually say hi to another woman at a party, or go on a work trip. No breaks from routine in any way! ANY WAY! Otherwise, it’s certain doom for your marriage. How do you learn to ignore those kind of rumours? How do you stop your mind from letting in even the tiniest, weeniest, sliver of doubt?

My life as a mother and wife could not possibly handle that degree of scrutiny.

No matter how much money or fame or beauty I had.

You can keep your life — I’m happy over here.

(But if you have any hand-me-downs for me or the kids, I’d be happy to accept them.)

All the best,
Lynn

Here’s a mystery. Sometimes we get Swiss Chalet take-out for dinner, you know, when we’re feeling very upscale and chi-chi. When we do, I order a quarter chicken dinner with rice on the side, while Gal Smiley orders a chicken-on-a-kaiser sandwich with rice on the side.

Whenever we get home, however, our rice side dishes are not the same.

My rice is always mushy and overcooked. The individual grains of rice are huge and bloated, and the overall taste and texture is unappealing.

Gal Smiley’s rice is always light and with perfectly divided grains. The grains are a bit on the hard side but for some reason, this makes them impossibly delicious.

Both Gal Smiley and I agree, her rice is good, my rice is not worth eating.

Fast food. It’s just so unfathomable.

So, how was World Trivia Night?

WTN was so awesome. I really get far too excited when I go there, but man, do I ever love the trivia. They asked about Due South! I loved that show! I knew lots of answers but there was also tons of stuff I did not know, so thank heavens for the whole team approach.

And also, I ate tons and tons of candy. Holy cow, there was a lot of sugar. XUP came by to say hello (her team was totally crushing us, they are apparently brilliant) and I think she was pretty horrified at our spread. XUP is a very mysterious woman in that she believes that stuffing artificially coloured and flavoured fake-food filled with refined sugar into her body is a bad thing (what up, XUP?). I think it was the Nestle Crunch “breakfast cereal” — a breakfast food that lists sugar as its first ingredient — pushed her over the edge.

The sugar hangover the next morning was TOTALLY worth it, though.

Julie of Thoughts of a Smother Mother was able to make it after all, which rocked, and she totally saved our bacon on that Ace Ventura question. Also, she’d just spent the afternoon being serenaded by BILLY BRAGG, which OMG, SO AWESOME. I will live in envy forever.

And Bibiomama came too, which was incredibly brave of her given that we had never actually met in person, and she totally saved us on that Lars Von Trier question (think, think, THINK). She came for the chips but stayed for the trivia and I think she’s a convert.

In the end, we answered 85 questions correct out of 100, which put us in 11th place. But they allow ties in the scoring, so although we finished “11th” we’re really probably like, the 60th team down. But out of 188 teams, I still feel like that’s okay. And also, did I mention the candy?

MyFriendJen and I are already planning our costumes for next year. We are SO THERE.

So, how did the Giant Fundraiser go?

Well. I think this is a little fresh in my mind and I’m hoping in a week or so I will feel better about the event. Right now, though, I have to say I am feeling kind of sad about it and I really need to just take some deep breaths and understand that it’s all over and let it go.

I mean, everything went okay — there were a few small crises during the day but we resolved them all with little difficulty. But my biggest fear about this day was that people would not turn out for it, and sure enough, our numbers for this year were way down from the past two years. Looking back, I’m not sure what I should have done differently but of course, the second guessing is killing me.

Also, the thought of all the man hours I put into this thing, only to have it be a so-so event, is not making me too happy right now.

I mean, it really did go okay. So I’m really hoping that in a couple of weeks I will feel more positive about it.

But I can say, I won’t be running this event next year.

And now…a deep breath, a shrug of the shoulders, and on to new things.

It’s Giant Fundraiser day! Man, will I ever be happy when today is over.

I know I have the kind of personality that takes on too much, and then tries too hard to make everything perfect once I’ve taken the job. But man, was this ever a lot of work. I hate to be a whiner but I have to say two things: first of all, as the head person, you wind up doing a lot of jobs that no one else wants to do, all Little Red Hen “Then I’ll do it myself!” type stuff. Secondly, whenever I did put out a call for help with stuff, it was always the same four or five people who came forward to say they’d help out. I always felt so bad taking advantage of the same people who were already helping with six other things, but I guess it’s just hard to recruit new people to get involved with something they have no prior experience with.

Still, I hope some excited, energetic, new parents come forward to help out next year.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the school to have about 25 nervous breakdowns. Wish me luck!

I’m off to World Trivia Night tonight and the lovely and hilarious Bibliomama will be joining me! I’m awfully excited. And I’m sure the six bags of candy I bought are really going to help with that.

In the meantime, let’s take my mind off of trivia night with a little Dance! Show! Update!

This week I was all about the love. And the hate. The love-hate. Oh dance show, you do play with my emotions!

Loved It

Ashleigh and Jakob are totally clicking for me. I can see why some people really don’t like Ashleigh — there is something wooden about her in her everyday life. But I like her dancing, and I adore Jakob (he’s my fave right now), and they continue to get better every week. I loved their hip-hop and thought they kicked ass. Nat didn’t like it, though, so I may have some Jakob-love bias here. When I get that job as a judge on SYTYCD Canada, I better bring Nat along with me to provide counterpoint.

I also loved Legacy and Kathryn’s Paso Doble. The Paso is my favourite ballroom dance, if done well, and only the most committed dancers can do it well. I watched this one twice — the first time I was totally transfixed by Legacy, so I had to watch a second time to see Kathryn, but she was fantastic as well. This couple is strong and have The Chemistry and I hope they will go far.

I really enjoyed the Channing and Victor bird number — I think this may be my favourite Tyce choreography ever. I agreed with the judges that this was the first time I really felt I could see what Channing had to offer. I don’t think they deserved to be in the bottom three at all, and it’s a shame that Channing’s spark of personality came a little too late.

Lastly, I think I liked the contemporary by Ryan and Ellenore. This couple is still lacking some sort of magic for me — they need to work on The Chemistry, I think. But they both danced this piece well, and man, do I ever love Travis Wall as a choreographer. Often times, you go to the movies and you are struck by an actor’s great performance, or maybe the beauty of the cinematography. But it’s rare that you notice, during viewing, how awesome the writing is — I basically only ever feel the power of pure writing when I’m watching a Charlie Kaufman movie. I feel the same way about Travis — usually dance performances rest solely on the shoulders of the dancers, or maybe you’ll notice a great costume. It’s rare to feel the raw power of the choreography — to appreciate the originality of the movement and the idea of the choreographer himself, during the actual number. I feel that with Travis — I’m always blown away by the beauty of his ideas. So this number, while perhaps missing a little something, still blew me away.

Man, am I ever rambling today, eh?

Hated It

Mollee and Nathan are really going downhill. I understand why the judges gave them a second chance this week, but they just don’t seem to have the maturity and discipline to put together a powerful, moving performance. I love Laurieann Gibson as a choreographer so I put the blame on their crappy jazz number squarely on the shoulders of Mollee and Nathan. Nathan, in particular, I see as one of the weakest men and he’s on my hit list.

And what was up with the judges slobbering all over Noelle and Russell’s foxtrot? Noelle did show a lot of sparkle in her face and I like that they both seemed very confident and relaxed. But still, the movement was messy at times, they didn’t always seem to click as a couple, and I don’t know, it was just blah overall. They should have been in the bottom three for sure.

Lastly, Karen and Kevin…oh how sad you have made me. Their Broadway routine was the only one I really had no interest at all in watching twice. I think the Broadway style in general is quite impossible to hit — people always groan about the quickstep. but I can think of exactly one Broadway-style number that I have enjoyed, and that is Kayla and Jason’s from last season (she wore a gold dress and they danced around a stool — it was a Tyce, I think). I don’t know, something just isn’t working for this style, and the show needs to do something about it.

Anyway. I’m so very, very happy the judges decided to keep Karen this week, but Karen and Victor together does not seem like a good match, so I’m worried for them for next week. I think they should have kept Kevin, really — Victor is just a low-rent version of Jakob, and Jakob is AWESOME.

In any case, things are definitely heating up on dance show. I enjoyed this week’s dancing much more (also loved the Wade Robson group number, but that’s just obvious, isn’t it?), and I felt that the camera work was greatly improved. Keep going, Nigel!

Many thanks for all the birthday wishes yesterday! It was a pretty typical day at home for me, but that’s okay, birthdays just aren’t the big festival they used to be. Around 5 o’clock I started to really fade in terms of energy — the kids had been a little rambunctous — and I thought to myself, “You know, all I really want for my birthday is an hour of peace and quiet, all to myself.” Then Sir Monkeypants came home and took all three kids out for fast food, while I stayed home and watched dance show, with no one asking to watch Dora instead or asking why that lady is screaming or if this is a “fighting” dance or why I am taking so long to get them some juice,

It was DIVINE.

Top it off with a giant slice of calorie-free cake (and some licking of the icing bowl) and it was a pretty fine day.

Now it’s Thursday, and I’ve been so incredibly focused on the Giant Fundraiser I am running for the kids’ school on Saturday (I have like, seventeen spreadsheets on the go, people), that I almost completely forgot that I have something else major on the calendar before the fundraiser, and that’s World Trivia Night.

World Trivia Night is tomorrow — Friday, the 20th — at Landsdowne Park here in Ottawa. It’s the largest live trivia event in North America (maybe the world, I’m not sure). Teams of ten get together in the big yellow barn and answer trivia for a couple of hours. This is totally my thing and when I take a few seconds to stop thinking about Giant Fundraiser, I get pretty excited.

This year is my first year entering my own team. I’ve tried in past years but it’s surprisingly hard to find people interested in this event. I get a lot of, “Oh, I don’t know anything, I wouldn’t be any help.” But really, everyone knows something. And also, it’s much more about the social aspect — I do not expect to win the event or even put in a good showing, I just expect to eat a lot of candy, maybe have a glass of wine (there is a cash bar), spend time with some cool people, and maybe get a cheap thrill out of answering a question or two.

So this year, my friend LuckySevens and I thought, hell with it, even if we are the only two at the table, we are totally going (teams are a maxiumum of 10, but if you have fewer, you can still enter). So we’re in, baby! I’m bringing the candy!

The main point here is that sadly, SmotherMother has had to cancel on WTN (trivia fans of the world shed a tear). So now I have one spot open on the team. Anyone out there in blogger land interested in joining me, LuckySevens, and seven of our other friends? There is a cost to the night — they upped the price this year, so it’s a rather hefty $30 — but I promise fun times, lots of sugar, and some cool blogging material.

As part of my ongoing quest to be a better cook, I recently purchased a garlic press, a little thing like this:

Photo from Marc Pinter’s Flickr Stream – there are a shocking number of garlic press photos on Flickr!

I figured I’d experiment with using real garlic in my dishes instead of just garlic powder (or worse, nothing).

However, I totally can’t figure out how it works.

Here’s what I think I should be doing: remove a clove; cut the tips off both ends; peel away the paper-like coating; pop that sucker in the press; press.

When I try this, though, I get very little garlic coming through the press. Almost all of the clove is left behind inside, and although I am sure I am removing all the skin from the clove, there seems to be a flat bag-like layer that traps everything in there.

So all I’m left with is a really, really flat garlic clove.

Any tips out there?