Yes, I’m gearing up for the end of the year (school year) madness. Even though I’m not back at work yet, I still have a bunch of stuff to do. Like tomorrow night is my school’s grad. Even though I haven’t been there for over a year, I promised the students that I would be back to announce the grads as they walk across the stage. This has always been my thing, and I really enjoy doing it. Besides they always seem to have a problem finding someone who can say some of the names. For instance Sathananthalingam is just the last name of one of our students. Her first name is still 12 characters long. I don’t seem to have much difficulty in saying these names so I’m always called upon when there’s a long name like that to pronounce. Then on Thursday is our end of the year staff breakfast. Even though I went last year, I think I’m going to beg off this year. I don’t really want to sit through all the goodbyes of staff I don’t really care about or know. Besides I anticipate it being difficult keeping a little guy who is *almost* walking still for like 4 hours. It’ll probably be more trouble than it’s worth and frankly I don’t care that much.
My mum was down for a couple of days and we had a really nice visit. This was the first time she stayed for more than one night. We decided the last time she was here that it didn’t make much sense to just stay for one night because it was all so rushed. We really didn’t do much. We managed to get out for a long walk and admire other people’s front gardens. It gave me all sorts of ideas for mine. And we had my brother and his wife over for dinner Saturday night. They left around 21:00 and my mum, dad, hubby and I stayed up till 23:00 talking about baby D and his birth. Even though it wasn’t that long ago (14 months) there were a couple things I had actually forgotten. I love reminiscing! Yesterday we went to church together and then came home and finally hung up some pictures I’ve been meaning to get on my walls. I will still have to get some more pictures as I have a humongous wall in my family room that could use some lovin’.
This time next Monday I will be at work. I am trying desperately not to think about it for fear that I will lose my mind. It’s only for 2 weeks; 9 days in fact so I’m sure I can do that. The worst will be when baby D goes into daycare and it’s a full time arrangement. If hubby was staying home with baby D the whole time as we had planned I probably wouldn’t be as nervous, but my Dad will be watching him for 3 days. I’m sure it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but he’s old-school German and tends to have his own way of doing things and criticizing mine. I guess I’m just afraid that he’ll be letting baby D scream himself to sleep or feeding him large chunks of stuff that he might choke on or possibly being too rough on him. I’ll just have to keep thinking happy thoughts that everything will go fine or I’m going to make myself sick thinking about it.

Hubby’s birthday isn’t until June 5, but since I always try to get him something really great I tend to start early on the gift. He’s been going on and on about getting a PS3, but frankly we just can’t afford it. I mean, first of all we used to have a Super Nintendo and the original Playstation. Where are they now? Exactly. We eventually got sick of them and they (I believe) are currently sitting out in the garage waiting for a yard sale. Then looking at the cost of the system and then the games on top of that…not bloody likely. I figured the only reason he even wants a system is to play Gran Turismo again. You’d think that when he drives for a living that he wouldn’t want to play games that involve driving. Like I don’t think it would be much fun to play a game that involved answering phones or typing. Just me though.

So I checked out ebay and found an auction that had 23 games, 3 controllers, 2 guitars plus the PS2 with a high bid of $280.00. I tried to see if it was a good deal by checking the cost of the new system with the important games that hubby would’ve wanted from the 23: Gran Turismo 4, Grand Theft Auto (x4), Guitar Hero II, III and Encore: Rocks the 80’s. I couldn’t even find all the games for sale, but suffice to say that the system, GT4, GHIII plus 2 guitars was already over $300.00. So I put in a big of $300.00 max and won the auction for $290.00.

Since the guy listed that shipping would be from Toronto I asked if I could pick it up instead of paying the $30.00 for shipping. Unfortunately Toronto is a big city and he was clear on the other side of it from me. He offered to take $10.00 off if I’d still make the trip, which I did. That was Monday. When I got home I hinted that I had a really great gift for him and maybe he wanted it early. After all it was exactly 1 month to the day before his actual birthday. (I’m so horrible) I just couldn’t wait to give it to him. Besides he has Mondays off and we weren’t doing anything that afternoon. I couldn’t seem to convince him to totally give in, but he he’d think about it and maybe the following day I could give it to him. He was started complaining that he was feeling dizzy by dinnertime and ended up staying home from work yesterday.

Laying it on thick at lunch, I asked him if he wanted a piece of cake for dessert. He said he did, so I asked if he wanted “birthday cake”. He laughed and said ‘fine’. So I got the candle in the piece of cake and sang Happy Birthday for effect. When I got home on Monday with all the stuff I had it stashed downstairs at my Dad’s since he’s out of the country at the moment, so we agreed that he would change GM and I’d get the gift ready. I made him close his eyes when he got downstairs and I had the games fanned out across the floor and was holding the guitar. When he opened his eyes it took him a minute to figure out what he was looking at and then he asked ‘you got me a PS3?’. “Nope sorry, just a PS2″. At which point he realized how many games there were and he was shocked.

So we played Guitar Hero III a bit downstairs while trying to keep one eye on GM who was loving crawling around new surroundings. Then we managed to get the very heavy tv (which my Dad gave us since he bought an HDTV, but hadn’t bothered to move yet) up 2 levels to our bedroom, where I got everything rearranged and hooked up. We’ve managed to spend an exorbitant amount of time playing games over the last 2 days (yes he called in ’sick’ again today).

It was a horribly yucky grey, cold, rainy day today. I don’t know where my brain’s been at lately, but my days are all messed up. I was sitting down to breakfast this morning looking out at the nasty weather thinking “at least I don’t have to go outside today…”. Of course today is Friday, so I have to get the recycling to the curb. DOH! Plus I had to get some yard waste out too. When we moved into the house we inherited a huge mess of branches dumped on the other side of the fence. I think we’re probably better off renting a chipper or something to get rid of them instead of following the city rule of only putting out 3 bundles per week. Especially since after all the lugging from the backyard, they weren’t even picked up! grrr
Finally baby D’s conjunctivitis has almost cleared up. The day after his birthday (April 13th) when I took him into the doctor for his yearly check-up I noticed that he was getting a cold. Hubby was really worried because my Mum had been at baby D’s birthday with serious laryngitis which she got while on a trip to Egypt. He was afraid that she’d maybe given him something exotic. We did mention it to the doctor and he thought it was probably just coincidental. After a week of a fairly bad cough, he started to get a goopy eye. I swabbed at it with a warm, wet facecloth and hoped that it would clear itself up since the eye drops I had from the last time had expired. I had finally had enough and made him a quick appointment on Friday the 25th. Unfortunately his usual doctor wasn’t in, so I had to see his colleague. She seems nice enough, but said that she wouldn’t prescribe drops. I ended up getting oral antibiotics, which the pharmacist was surprised to see I was supposed to administer 4 times a day. She thought that was pretty taxing for an infant and I soon began to agree with her. Luckily baby D liked the medication, but I found his eye getting worse instead of better. It was starting to look like he got punched in the face. The skin under his eye was red and raw. By Monday I called the office again and explained that on Sunday when he woke up he couldn’t even open his eye – poor baby! I asked to have the same drops I had had before re-prescribed. I was very happy to hear that I didn’t have to come back in to be seen or get the script as I live about 20-30 minutes from the office. They called in the prescription and I managed to get the drops after my family dinner Monday night. At the dinner my brother callously asked if I had rubbed my son’s eye in raw chicken. So tactful. But his eye did look terrible. So happily now it’s almost gone, which is great since it’s a serious struggle getting the drops into his eyes. I’ve been trying to sneak them in while he’s nursing, but he’s on to me now.

As of tomorrow, my husband and I will have been married for 1 year and 5 months. This is just a drop in the pan considering we’ve actually been together for over 12 years. If my mother hadn’t pushed us to get married (I was 3 months pregnant with my son) we probably wouldn’t have done it. I mean we loved each other and were committed to each other, I guess we just didn’t feel the need to get married. Which is actually funny since I, like most every other girl out there had dreamt about my perfect wedding. From the wedding invitations to the flowers to the reception and the honeymoon I had daydreamed about it since I was a little girl.
The longer my hubby and I spent not dealing with the marriage possibility the less I figured it would ever happen for me and I pretty much gave up the dream. My mother just couldn’t deal with my baby being born to parents who weren’t married, so she got right down to planning. Being pregnant (totally planned mind you), we didn’t have the time to order special wedding invites or anything. In fact I think my mum just called around to invite the guests. I had one of the smallest weddings ever I’m sure. Would you believe that there were only 14 guests? Talk about an intimate service!
Much to my surprise, even with the tiny rushed ceremony I managed to have 2 large bridal showers. I was absolutely floored by the stuff I got. The unfortunate thing about receiving lots of gifts is all the thank you cards I had to write in return. I swear I still have writers cramp!