Today was One of Those Days. We need groceries, so my lunch was walnuts, cashews, half a red pepper, and a cheese string; a button fell off my blouse and I had to fix it with a tiny binder clip; my EPUB file wouldn't validate; the nice sandals I haven't worn since last summer gave me pinkie-toe blisters; there was work tsuris; due to an unfortunate ( Read more... )

What to say about 2012 at my house? I'm getting to the age where it's hard to remember what happened or which year it happened in (or maybe it's not my age, it's just me). There were some family weddings, there was the Epic California Road Trip (not that epic if you do road trips a lot, but epic for us), there was SP's tenth birthday (tenth! TENTH ( Read more... )

Always go to your regular paediatrician. Especially if he's within a decade of retirement and has seen it all ( Read more... )

A couple of years ago SP had an allergic reaction to amoxicillin, one involving red spots. They send you home from school if you have red spots. DH took her to see her paediatrician, who determined that it was not the Chicken PopsTwo Mondays ago SP's school phoned me to come and collect her because she was in the office complaining of dizziness and ( Read more... )

6 things make a post?

1. DH needed new shirts and running shoes, SP needed new sneakers, boots and snowsuit, and as a result I have had to go to the mall twice in the past week. (Twice because the shoe store had to get the purple Converse high-tops via interlibrary loan from another store; they only had pink and Batman. Sigh.) Twice. In one week. ( Read more... )

So I meant to post from Israel. Then I meant to post about our trip after we got back. Now somehow it's October and Erev Yom Kippur and I haven't posted anything at all since the end of August ( Read more... )

2011 is going to be a banner travelling year. Last week, as I mentioned, I was in Boston for four days; in August DH, SP, and I are going to spend almost a week in Chicago; and just last night I booked tickets for SP and me to my cousin's wedding in Tel Aviv, where (or whereabouts) we will stay for ten days (plus two days' travel time). This may ( Read more... )

So the other day my boss sent me and my colleague R this weird PowerPoint thing she'd found somewhere (no idea where -- maybe one of her kids sent it to her), which was about how arabic numerals came to be (turns out, it's all about the angles). I didn't realize it at first, but it had a soundtrack. R sent me an e-mail the next day going, what on ( Read more... )

DH flew in from Toronto today. His flight landed 35 minutes late, which meant that my mom, who had a friend's retirement lunch to go to, had to drop SP and me at the airport and, er, take off; this turned out to be because someone checked in a bag and then didn't turn up at the gate to board the plane, such that Air Canada had to find the bag and ( Read more... )

So we've now been in Calgary for about four and a half days. (Our suitcase has been here for three days.) Bizarrely, I haven't cooked anything yet except one batch of blueberry muffins. (Tomorrow it will be saskatoon muffins, because at the Cochrane farmer's market yesterday I bought two bags of frozen saskatoons from the Hutterite produce stand. ( Read more... )