Muse Still Missing

So please enjoy these photos which are completely out of order. Why is it so hard to move them around?

The Regional Cross Country Race

Number One Son came in 18th out of all the 12 & 13 year olds, all 145 of them!

Number Three Son came in 22nd out of 240 8 and 9 year olds!!

The oldest group is off

Number Three waiting for the gun in the Reebok Hockey cap that never leaves his head

Of course, I had to get some shots of the spectators while the runners were out of sight in the woods.

One in particular

A great day was had by all

Fall Colours

Despite the grey skies threatening rain all last weekend the colours were still brilliant in the Park. Here's a few photos.

Going through the creek

Reflections

Cold boat ride

Yes, that's me cutting the cheese

It's amazing how life can get away from from you when you are not paying attention or you try to do something new. I am helping some friends out one day a week in their new shop, The Cheese Gallery. It's a fantastic place where you can buy a hunk of stinky cheese, sip a cup of tea, have your favourite painting framed or even enjoy a glass of wine with some cheese and crackers. In a town of 1400 people sometime you do have to be all things to all people. So on Tuesdays I can be found behind the counter - yes, "cutting the cheese" (sorry, hanging out with boys does tend to rub off on me) It is great fun, I am learning lots about the cheeses from France, England, as well as our many fine Canadian artisan cheese makers. Of course there is lots of joking about the old Monte Python Sketch and thanks to the wonders of YouTube I can share it with you.

But back to the problem of letting things get away from me. The boys seem to be coping with me not picking them up from school and my wonderful Other Half has rose to the occasion making dinner for us but this week I also had to go down to the city for a day and of course picked up a nasty cold bug and spent yesterday in bed watching "Glee" on demand. Today I am feeling a bit better, still have a pounding headache and won't make it over to the school to help with the Terry Fox Run. But I hope to sleep enough to be able to rally tonight as we have tickets for a Fundraiser and I borrowed a dress just for the occasion which is a big deal in my world. So the laundry has piled up, there's no food in the fridge, I'm hoping the boys have kept up with their homework and the poor dog hasn't been walked in days. How silly of me to have thought every once in a while that I would like to have a "sick" day. As my youngest said last night when he came in to say goodnight to me, "but I thought Mummys didn't get sick." They do but it's rarely worth it.

Still at their beck and call

When the boys were little I was literally at their beck and call. For years I never seemed to be able to enter REM sleep because their was always a diaper to change or worse, an entire sleeper to be peeled off a cranky baby or a bucket needed beside a nauseous toddler or wet sheets to be changed. During the day it was constant diaper changes, non stop nursing, meal prep and clean up. One day morphed into the next until slowly we came out the other end of babydom and entered preschool world. Now I had a few hours with everyone off at school, time flew by in a haze of errands run without a stroller and quick uninterrupted conversations with friends. The nights were less hectic, I found myself waking up in the morning thinking that something must be wrong, no one had called out for me.

And so now we have moved all too quickly out of those early school years into the era of pre-teen angst and a whole new round of becking and calling. I have more time without them but now it's not as easy to make plans with friends because inevitably someone will need to be taken to the arena or picked up from dry land training or so-and-so wants to sleep over and can we go rent a movie or go to the theatre to meet the gang? It is never ending. I used to call the lists and schedules I left for whichever set of grandparent was babysitting for a few days "The Care & Feeding of the Brothers Grimm" but now it's less care and feeding and more "Chauffeuring and Digital Monitoring"

There's homework and the dreaded school projects. There's hockey practise and football tryouts. And now there's facebook and MSN monitoring. Our eldest doesn't have a cell phone yet and isn't really lobbying for one (although Number Two Son is) but I am starting to think it might not be a bad idea so I don't have to turn up at the arena only to be told he's going home with so-and-so or arriving at school to find no one there because they have all made plans and I'm not in them.

I'm not complaining, I just don't do change very well. Every transition I find myself clinging to the old days of making meals with one in the high chair, one on the floor with all the tupperware out of the cupboard and one playing with Play Doh on the counter. Now it's rushing to get a meal on the table before practise, watching which website they are surfing out of the corner of one eye while I squint with the other to read another permission form for yet another sporting activity. Change is good, change is inevitable but I still don't have to like it.

From the sublime to ridiculous in under three hours

Summer is over and I just haven't had the blogging muse strike me in a very long time. But this morning I am sitting drinking my second cup of uninterrupted coffee because it's just me and the dog at home. Yes, no boys (they slept over at my Dad's) and my Other Half is off at a much deserved golf weekend with the boys. Did I mention that I had the house to myself last night? I don't think in the three years we have lived here I have been alone in it for more than a few hours. I love being alone. I watched Date Night last week and I loved the scene where Tina Fey's character describes her fantasy of being alone in a quiet hotel room with nobody touching her and drinking a Diet Sprite. I got my fantasy last night.

Alone, lit a fire and opened a bottle of wine, fired up the Kindle and read some of Quinn Cummings essays from Notes from the Underwire. It was perfect. And this morning as I await the return of the mob I have had time to make myself a pot of steel cut oatmeal which takes at least a half an hour and I try to make but never have time to eat, catch up on my favourite blogs and start planning for the arrival of four more children, two mothers and two extra dogs for the night. From the sublime to ridiculous in under three hours.

So back to the reason for my absence from the blogosphere this summer, I think I might have to take a look at what I am doing in this blog, a few others I read have either disappeared or have been reinvented, not sure if I need to do anything as drastic as that but I think something needs to change.

Wordless Wednesday is so easy in the summer

Life Lessons

I've been away for a while and I am only back on a temporary basis. Life keeps getting in the way but that's okay for now. I am sure I'll be back with a blogging vengeance in September. Something about back-to-school time. In the words of that Grand & Toy ad, "It's the most wonderful time of the year ..." So for now I will simply post a couple of things I have learned lately.

Always check all your pockets. In the past year we have, as a family lost quite a few things. These things were small and electronic so therefore their value was not directly in proportion to their size. The items were a brand new iPod Nano owned by Number One Son who lost it up at the cottage last summer. We looked everywhere, several times and finally bought him a new one for Christmas. The other thing was my small camera which I was convinced had gone out with the Christmas wrapping paper as the last time I used it was Christmas morning. We replaced that one a couple of weeks later and the replacement was promptly dropped by Number Two Son on the floor of the Alphorn Restaurant so the lens is now permanently jammed.

But back to the Life Lesson learned here. When it came time for me to pack the boys' stuff for camp I dutifully aired out their sleeping bags and even cleaned out their toilet kits and in doing so unzipped all the pockets. What did I find in Number One's kit? His old iPod that he had carefully packed last August. Hmmmm, do you think he ever opened his toothbrush holder either? So now Number Three Son has graduated from Number Two's iPod Classic which was my original to a barely used Nano. Lucky 8 year old that he is.

As for the camera? Well, we headed down to the pier one evening after soccer practise so the boys could cool off and I grabbed a backpack out of the front all closet to throw the towels in and opened one of the six or seven pockets and found ... you guessed it. The missing Christmas camera. So once I get the jammed one fixed we will have two identical Canon Sure Shots. One to take pictures with and one to lose.

Hope everyone is having a great summer, especially all you Asian spammers we bloggers love so much, I've never had so many comments I can't understand.