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.

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.

I hope next year I’m more into the holidays. I haven’t been for some time now maybe because my husband doesn’t like them due to his job. He delivers pastries for a high end pastry company and is extremely busy around the holidays. Now that GM is almost a year old I really have to get more in the spirit for his benefit.
Sunday I will be entertaining the in-laws. I’m We’re really not into entertaining. Or at least not used to it. Even though it’s not that much we have told our families that we won’t be traveling for a while to visit because we can’t afford to spend our money on gas. Once I go back to work we’ll have more money to spend of stuff like that, but for the next little while we’re going to be really strapped. So with that said his family is coming to us for Easter this year. His mom is still cooking the turkey (thank goodness), but we’ll be responsible for everything else. It should work out better anyways because this way I don’t have to lug all GM’s stuff with us and he might actually nap since he’ll be in familiar surroundings.

SPOILER ALERT

I must rant about The Biggest Loser (sorry – I’m hooked). I absolutely HATE Ali. I actually felt sorry for her when she got voted off and was very impressed with her weight loss efforts. That laugh of hers is totally annoying me, not to mention her standoffishness. She didn’t want to team up with the women when she came back into the house and instead chose to stick with her pink team colours. Okay what really got me tonight is her totally backstabbing Brittany. I thought for one moment that Brittany might actually make it through the elimination unscathed. That bitch Ali actually said that she felt like she was forming an alliance with Brittany. Last time I checked you don’t vote out people you’re allied with!! Then what’s up with Dan? I mean, I guess he had a tough decision to make since Jay was his team-mate, but Brittany was right in pointing out that Jay is definitely the bigger threat. Wasn’t Dan continually going on about doing whatever he needed to to get himself farther in the game? Sad to see Brittany go, it just won’t be the same.