lifepassedby.com | Starting again

Spring where are you?

kasper — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:17:35 +0000

Just when I thought the weather was starting to become more spring-like, mother nature decides that winter isn’t over yet and dumps snow down on us. How depressing. I must say that I pretty much shut myself in the house during winter, so with the nice weather I had just managed to get my son out of the house and into the sunshine. We did have a couple of nice days there before it got yucky and cold again. Hopefully this Easter weekend will be nice.
With the change of seasons I get antsy to get my house all cleaned up. It’s such a mess at the moment. I should really be holding a garage sale to get rid of a ton of junk, I’m just so unorganized. As I start to put away my winter stuff I start thinking what the hell did I wear all of last year when the weather was nice. I always feel like I don’t have enough clothes. Me and every other woman out there I’m sure. Mind you in the last couple of years I’ve managed to donate 4 garbage bags worth of clothing to the Salvation Army. I am in desperate need of new pants. Of all the shopping I could do I absolutely HATE shopping for pants. They just never seem to fit properly. I usually go for the petites since I’ve got short stubby legs, but often enough they’re too short or the regulars are just too long. I suppose I could just them hemmed, but I’m just to lazy for that kind of commitment. When I get all frustrated with clothes shopping I can always just buy a bag…have you seen the ones at Lucky-Brand? Oh man are they ever sexy!
So as it works out this year, Easter Monday is my little man’s 2nd birthday! Holy cow, I really can’t figure out where all the time went. I have been madly painting his bedroom to get it all ready for his birthday. Okay, so I started it over the March Break and it was supposed to take like a week, but as per usual with me I decided to do more and more things and therefore it’s taken that much longer to get done. The horrible thing is, the poor little guy has had to bunk with his dad and me since then. Hope it won’t be terrible trying to get him back into his own bed when I finally get his room done. I’ll post some pics of the the before and after in another blog entry. Unfortunately I wasn’t thinking of doing before and afters so the before is after I’d already cleared the room and started patching holes, but hopefully you’ll get the idea.

Fevered Weekend

kasper — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:17:31 +0000

What a messed up weekend! My poor little man has had a rough couple of days. Thursday night he started to get feverish, but we managed to get it down with some Tylenol. Friday I got the dreaded call from daycare, but they didn’t need me to come and get him, they were just telling me that his temperature was 100°C and it was okay for them to give him Tylenol. Saturday afternoon after his nap his temp spiked to 104°C and I took him to Emerg to see what was going on. On the way over he vomited several times so sitting in the waiting room was a treat reeking of puke. I ended up throwing out the dollar store mittens that he managed to fill with vomit. Ewww. When we were finally seen the doctor had a look into his ears and immediately saw the problem. Baby D was suffering from an ear infection. I didn’t doubt his expertise, but I was surprised since he hadn’t been rubbing his ears or anything. We filled the prescription for Amoxicillin and went home to relax. We started his meds that night, but he managed to throw up shortly thereafter so we just left it for the following day.
Sunday morning I got up late, but found hubby cuddling a sleeping baby D on the couch. Since it was only 9:30 I was surprised that he was asleep as naptime isn’t till at least 10:30/11:00. At least he had managed to eat breakfast and get some meds into him and no vomiting. BUT… when hubby and I looked at him he was covered in angry red welts! WTF?! Luckily the children’s clinic was just about to open so we rushed him over to be seen and were told that this seemed to be a reaction to the Amoxicillin. I found this strange since he’s had it before, but apparently that’s not unusual. We promptly threw out the meds and were given a new prescription to now get rid of the hives.
Strangely the welts seemed to fade before we even got the new stuff into him, but when we woke up this morning you’d think that we had beaten him overnight! Yesterday I was all set to get him a medic alert bracelet alerting emergency personnel that he was allergic to penicillin. After getting ourselves squeezed in to see baby D’s pediatrician this afternoon, he thinks it’s possible that he is allergic, but that it’s also possible that it’s a coincidence and that there’s something else causing the hives. So I just have to keep on with the new stuff we got from the clinic. What a mess! We originally got meds to treat the fever and ear infection, now we’re no longer even worried about anything but the hives that were the result of treating those problems. Go figure!

Cleaning out the clutter

kasper — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 05:44:59 +0000

Once again I am faced with the daunting task of cleaning out my computer. I have been down this road before and I must say it scares the crap out of me. I’ve got so much stuff amassed over the years, that it’s just hard to start all over and quite possibly lose a lot of it. If my computer weren’t running like a snail I wouldn’t even be dealing with this now, but I just have to get some courage up to start all over again I guess.
One thing I know I won’t have to worry about is drivers. There are so many sites out there that will allow me to retrieve lost drivers. I swear just about anything you could think of is available online these days. Like for instance I was looking for an old camera manual…bingo! online. Or how about upgrading my old printer, just look-up epson drivers and once again I am shown a myriad of sites allowing me to update my drivers. Or better still was my ailing graphics card with it’s sadly lacking driver. A quick check online under nvidia drivers quickly had me all setup and ready to go.
I’m still chicken to plunge headlong into a complete reinstall of my system as I’ve managed to get myself all messed up in the past. To the point where I had to take my system in to a repair shop to reverse all the damage I managed to do, so maybe I’ll exhaust all other options first.

Mish Mash

kasper — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:36:48 +0000

More social bookmarking. I came across this site called Acobay, that while it is a social bookmarking site, is a bit different. This site aims to connect people via their “Stuff“. For instance, I drive a G5, so I’d add that to my stuff page with a review of the car and then others who have the same car would add their reviews. There is an area to discuss their stuff as well. Though it’s just in it’s beta stage, I think this site has some definite potential. Worth checking out.
Another weekend has flown by almost without me noticing. How the hell does that happen? Today I spent most of the day trying to get my front door knob replaced. When we moved into this house we were only given a single key for the front door, which I suppose was no big deal for the single lady living here, but since there are two of us needing the one key that can’t be copied we needed to do something about it. Moving at the speed of a snail, we finally got around to getting a new door knob and I finally decided it was warm enough today (0° C) to tackle the job of putting the new knob on. The old one was a total bitch to get off. It didn’t behave anything like the new one I was replacing it with, so I had to fiddle with it forever. It always seems that whenever I attempt to do some project for myself I end up calling my Dad up to help me with something I can’t quite do. I hate not being independent enough to do it myself, but I guess I’d rather have it done right. I love the new knob but the only thing that bugs me is that the locking mechanism on the inside of the door is like the bathroom locks where you have to push and twist the handle. The old one had a button in the middle that you had to turn to lock. The old one was easy to see if I’d forgotten to lock the door, but I’ll just have to get used to the new one.
Tomorrow I start my dual jobs. I will be doing my old-new job (wtf?), okay, the VP secretary thing which is new as of November, in the morning. So when I get in at 7:30, I’ll be getting all the supply teachers arranged for any absent teachers. Then from like 9:00 till 11:30 I’ll be across the hall in Guidance where I will be totally winging it since I’ve only had like 2 hours of training and the girl who trained me has left the country for the week. Wish me luck, cause I don’t think I have a clue how to do much over there. Probably would be a good idea to go to bed about 2 hours ago in order to get a good night sleep. Yeah, night.

Baby’s got a new bed

kasper — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 02:53:28 +0000

So my son has been out of his crib for a few months now I suspect because he couldn’t deal with the noise of the plastic mattress. I attempted to have him sleep on the mattress on the floor at first thinking that it was the confinement that he had issue with, but when he scrambled off the mattress and onto the floor night after night I gave up. I really didn’t want to spend the money on a toddler bed, as they just grow out of them, and then you’re left with just another baby item to store in your garage. I know from his frequent visits to our bedroom that he really likes using pillows, so this past weekend we trekked out to Ikea to get the boy his very own toddler pillow. Note to self…Ikea is evil! Okay, so $12.99 for the “crib pillow”…how the hell did I end up spending over $500.00?! Okay, so here’s the breakdown: $189 for the extendible bed frame, $179 for the mattress, $15.99 for the sheets, $29.99 for the duvet cover and pillow case, $5.99 for the pillow, $19.99 for the duvet and $8.99 for a new laundry basket. If you’re following along with math, you’ll be saying ‘but that doesn’t add up to over $500′. Well there’s tax, plus the stupid bed didn’t fit into our car, so like $79 for home delivery.
So the bed is fabulous and I’m so proud that my little guy has his own bed. He must be pretty proud too because for the 3rd night in a row he’s gone straight to bed without any issues and without me having to stay in his room until he falls asleep! Wahoo!

Alone at last

kasper — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:32:44 +0000

I kept meaning to get back here before now, but somehow I didn’t. Blame my son for not going to sleep faster, or blame my hubby for not putting him to sleep (”you’re so much better at it”), blame the ADD type tendencies I have when sitting down in front of my monitor. I am constantly getting sidetracked when I’m on the computer. I begin to do one thing, then have to look something up, then I stumble upon something really cool and continue along that vein until I totally forget why I sat down in the first place. It’s so aggravating!
So I hope not to see any more family for a while. Two weeks ago my Mum was down for a weekend visit with her dog. If I have to hear one more time from hubby that he’s spotted a dog hair that’s been left behind I think I’ll shoot myself! Though my Mum means well, I get a little tired of her criticizing the way I parent MY son. Then this past weekend we got hubby’s Mom. She doesn’t drive so he had to drive 1½-2 hours to pick her up and then the same to get back home again. She’s a nice enough lady, but I just don’t feel that comfortable around her and she doesn’t get around very well, so I had to keep helping her up the stairs and such. Hubby’s sister was supposed to come down on Sunday for a visit and to pick up his Mom. Only problem was it snowed. She being a “sucky woman driver” according to hubby was too scared to make the journey down, so we got to keep Mom until Monday afternoon. So now I finally have the house to myself (well no one to entertain), but have to clean up all the aftermath.

Dreaming of a new kitchen

kasper — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 10:55:34 +0000

I know it wasn’t all that long ago that we moved into our new home, and at that time I was really excited about the kitchen. But as I live with it I’m more and more aware of how not great it is. At the very least I could do with some new appliances.
My kitchen has some very cool features, like 2 sinks (separate, not a double sink) and the counter is curved in 3 places, it’s just that it wasn’t professionally made. The cabinets overlap in places or have gaps in others. It’s really not noticeable unless you live with it, but since I do, it’s annoying.
But the worst is that I have a cooktop and separate oven, which I thought was so cool when I moved in except that it’s a Viking brand from like 1980! So I’ve done some minor poking around to see what’s out there and if I can put some money together I’d really like to get an induction cooktop. The biggest advantage would be my peace of mind where my son’s concerned. Apparently the surfaces never heat up. I’m not exactly sure how they would cook, but that’s not really my problem. They’re pretty expensive because it’s a new technology, but a girl can dream.

Back in the saddle

kasper — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:32:50 +0000

Finally back to my very dusty corner of the web! The long absence from this site started with a little boy (who shall remain nameless) who no longer wanted to sleep in his crib. I must admit I tend to take the path of least resistance whenever possible. So instead of simply putting my son in his crib and walking away I would let him fall asleep on my chest while watching tv, then transport him up to his bed. This worked very well for a while, though it didn’t leave me with much time to myself. It eventually got to the point where I couldn’t even get him into his crib after being asleep. Somehow the little darling seemed to sense that he was being put in his crib and would immediately wake up, jump up and start screaming. It was almost like he was terrified of his crib. This progressed to me sleeping with him in my bed. As you may well have guessed this left NO time to blog, knit or shower for that matter. This went on all summer. It’s only been in the last month that I finally dismantled his unused crib and put his mattress on the floor. He still doesn’t sleep on it (I think because it’s plastic and makes a fairly loud crinkly noise when he moves), so I’ve set up a thick comforter on the floor. Finally with a consistent bedtime routine and some perseverance, I’ve managed to get him to sleep in his own room… for most of the night. From time to time he still gets up in the middle of the night and crawls into bed with us, but I feel like we’ve come a long way and am proud that he mostly sleeps on his own.
I returned to work full time in mid-August. It was a strange adjustment but I quickly fell right back into things and soon felt like I’d never left. In mid-October I got an email from an old colleague out of the blue, offering me a promotion. I stewed over the offer for a LONG time, and finally decided though the job sounded tailor made for me and was fantastic, the much longer commute would leave my son in daycare for 10-11 hours which I couldn’t deal with. With a heavy heart I turned down the promotion, but it just got me thinking that there were other opportunities for me out there. In the last month and a half I’ve had the opportunity to try my hand at a different position within the school. Our guidance secretary Dawn, is out on stress leave and Jenn, the VP secretary moved into her desk. We were going to get a supply to cover Jenn’s desk, but I suggested that I take it to get a bit more experience with different job duties. It’s a refreshing change, since I used to be on reception and therefore chained to the phone. Now I don’t answer any phones (okay, except mine), I can have a conversation with a co-worker without checking to see who’s at the counter, and I can move around without anyone hollering for me to get back to my desk. The best part about this job is that I’ve managed to automate our staff attendance coverage using excel and some handy formulas. It’s so fantastic to be able to use my brain and computer skills instead of the same old, same old on my old desk. I guess the only thing about the new (temporary) position, is that I start at 07:30 which basically means that I should’ve been in bed oh, like 2 hours ago…

Rained out

kasper — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:05:38 +0000

Just got back from a miserable day in Barrie. It was a grey rainy day before we started out and it never really got much better. We went up to belatedly celebrate hubby’s birthday which was June 5th with his family and his sister’s friends. One of the friends brought her 3 daughters along and with our niece who is generally moody they were all miserable by the time we arrived. They had gone up early to make sure we got a shelter, and had been there like 3 hours before we got there. On the way up we stopped to get burgers for everyone as instructed by hubby’s mom. When we arrived she said that she only told him to bring our own food, but he swore that twice she said that we should bring the burgers. That pissed us both off because we wouldn’t have stopped and spent money we didn’t need to otherwise.

We did use the Baby Buzz patch on baby D and between the super smelly patch and hubby and I swatting away the pesky skeeters, I don’t think the baby got any bites at all. Wish I were as lucky. About 10 minutes after I arrived I got a bit bite on my forehead. That I am aware of, I got 3 on my hands (including one right beside the nail on my pinky finger), 1 on my forehead, 3 on my ankle and tons on the backs of my thighs. Talk about itchy!!!

Eventually after we ate the rain stopped so we went on a little walk around the park to view the animals. We saw an albino raccoon, a bear, wolves, foxes and various raptors. It was so sad though, the poor wolves were just running around in circles and obviously had been for some time since the ground under them was all sunken in. I was told that all these animals had been rescue animals, but I wonder if any of them would’ve chosen death over this captivity. Poor animals.

I was hoping to be home by eight since it’s my first day back at work tomorrow, but as usual I couldn’t pry him away from everyone and it was after 21:30 by the time we got home. I’m surprised I’m even writing this - I should be in bed! So I’m off to hopefully get a good night sleep before tomorrow.

Another rainy day

kasper — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 17:17:01 +0000

I absolutely LOVE thunderstorms and goodness knows I’ve gotten my fair share lately! Unfortunately it does make for miserable looking days though. The sun is just starting to peek out from behind the clouds now. I’ve got a few errands that I need to get done, so once my Dad gets back from the Flea Market I’ll probably head out. I want to go get baby D those mosquito patches and then I have to go to the bank and cash a cheque I got for web design, then finally I’ll end up and my home away from home - WalMart and get baby D some more food.

My Dad just finished painting his bedroom, so now instead of the cave-like brown that was originally there it’s a mutt coloured (he used the dregs of about 3 different paint colours) off white. It looks so much better now. Because he’s in the basement he needs it to be as light as possible and now it finally is. His painting just gets me thinking about all the things I still want to do around here (money permitting of course). Besides painting baby D’s room and our master bedroom, I’d really like to change up some of the light fixtures. I really like that the previous owner had all the same fixtures in each bedroom so that there looks like there’s continuity across the rooms. As much as I really want to stay away from changing these ceiling lighting fixtures, I think I may have to put in ceiling fans. The house is very open and it’s hard to get air to circulate properly. I’ll have to see what happens, but I have to find 1 model to use across all 3 rooms for sure. Then there’s the bathroom light fixtures. The original ones I’ve got are those hideous fake gold horizontal vanity strips across the top of the mirror. Once again they are all the same across the 3 bathrooms, but I’d really like to get something from even the 1990s! If and when I actually get around to changing these up I’ll be sure to post a pic.