I figured that Liliana and I would try to be productive on our first day of just the two of us. We went to sign the girls up for swimming lessons only to find that at the three pools closest to us, all the classes for Liliana’s age were FULL. Awesome. We signed Kaylie up and I told Liliana that I’d take her swimming myself, as she was quite disappointed that we didn’t get to sign her up. I DESPISE putting on a bathing suit and going into what Noah calls “people soup”, but the kid loves to swim, so I’m going to take her swimming. We also hit up the library (INTERNET!), Walmart, and Old Navy.

Running errands with just one child is SO easy. Alone, both my kids are pretty easy to have around. Together, well, let’s just say that they’ve got a little bit of togetherness cabin fever. This back-to-school thing could not have come soon enough.

There’s not a whole lot happening that I’m missing blogging about except that this weekend my youngest brother Brandon and his wife Roxanne are coming to visit and we’re pretty stoked to see them. We’re heading to the zoo and going geocaching. If hell freezes over, I’ll even write about it! With pictures!

Being cut off from the internet when you live in a new place where you know NOBODY makes for a very lonely existance. It reminded me of the time last fall when my marriage fell apart and then I was diagnosed with Lupus and then they said JUST KIDDING! It’s just arthritis! No wait. Never mind. We really have no idea why you’re all puffy and splotchy and why random limbs all of a sudden double in size but here, let us hook you up to an EKG for six hours and then make you leave the hospital with a horrific stomach bug in addition to everything else which will cleanse you of all the fluids that were in your body and make you run to the bathroom and wonder do I sit or do I put my head in the toilet bowl or do I grab a bucket so I can do both? All this while I was going through a very antisocial time and I was working 60 hours a week and I’d shut down my blog after a nervous breakdown and I just didn’t know what to do with myself anymore.

It’s kind of like that but without the marriage problems and without the 60-hour work weeks and without being wrongly diagnosed with a terrifying disease. As much fun as that was.

Since I mostly interact with my friends online (or by text message) (I’m not much of a phone person), not being online means that I miss posts about babies being born (or not born) and really, seeing photos of newborns and reading birth stories is how I got addicted to this Internet thing in the first place.

At least withdrawal from the internet isn’t as bad as withdrawal from antidepressants. There are no lightning bolts in my brain and I’m not vibrating and I’m not seeing things that aren’t there. (Or are they?)

I was up half the night with Liliana, which is not normal. Don’t hate me for saying this, but she’s always been a great sleeper. From Day 1. She never had her days and nights mixed up and has been sleeping 12-hour stretches (with brief feeding breaks when she was really tiny) since she was 12 weeks old. So, when she wakes up in the middle of the night crying or screaming, it’s obvious that something is wrong. She was given some Tylenol two nights ago and again last night because I didn’t know what else to do. She also ended up in bed with me and I am not a fan of co-sleeping. I’m selfish and I like my space and I like my kids to be in their own beds. Unless they’re sick.

She woke up this morning barely able to speak and sounded pretty hilarious. Noah decided to stay home with her since I only work two days a week and didn’t want to miss a day and he works outside and it’s supposed to feel like 38C (100F) outside and heatstroke just isn’t all that fun. (Both of us love staying home with them, so we usually either take turns or decide what makes the most logical sense.) (Or who’s more likely to get scorched by the sun.) Today was supposed to be Kaylie’s last day of daycare before she starts school next Tuesday, but I’m pretty sure she’s happier to spend the day with her dad.

It’s hard to tell sometimes whether Liliana’s sick or not because she doesn’t let anything hold her back. She ate her breakfast just fine and was quite chipper as they drove me to work this morning. Noah then took her to get checked out and she apparently has swollen tonsils and an ear infection. Poor kid. I checked in on her early this afternoon and Noah said that she’s almost completely lost her voice, which means that he’s not had to deal with much fighting or yelling today, which really isn’t all that fair but I guess I should feel special that my children save their fighting and yelling for when I’m home with them and Daddy is at work.

I hope you’ll forgive me for my lack of blog reading and commenting and writing and that you’ll be patient while I try get through this horrible internet-less time. First-world problems are so harsh.

Have you entered to win that cruise yet? WELL WHY NOT?

I like my job but I dread leaving the house in the morning.

My laptop screen is mostly dead. It works for an hour or so a day – after much effort to get it on in the first place.

I’m completely anti-social.

I miss my Regina friends.

I can’t take any more of Liliana’s baby talk.

Or tantrums.

I still haven’t completely unpacked.

I’m hungry but everything I look at turns my stomach.

I ate four hot dogs yesterday.

All I want to do is curl up on the couch with Season 3 of ER.

Or Season 2 of Bones.

Maybe with a rice bowl from Bad Ass Jacks.

With extra sauce.

My super-long (two-day) work week is over and I get to spend the next five days with my two very favorite people.

I know I’ll get out of this funk eventually, but if I try really hard at it, I sink deeper into the pit.

Baby steps.

I’d like to know why Liliana can abstain from using the washroom on a 4.5-hour car trip but can’t go 5 minutes during her (not-so-) quiet time.

I’m working on getting all my old archives public again. I’m going through the posts one by one and resizing all the photos because I’m paranoid and there are a lot of creepy people out there. I’m not afraid of my photos being stolen, I’m afraid of my photos of my children being stolen. 107 posts down, 958 to go!

Also, I’ve been slacking on the photo editing lately, so I’m posting them to my Flickr stream as I edit them. They’re over there on the new sidebar badge thinger. (Vancouver trip photos and lake photos are being added slowly.)

A couple nights ago, Noah asked Liliana to crawl into bed. So she got on her hands and knees and crawled into bed.

Anyone go to Pacey-Con this year? Heard it was exciting. (Link is to a spoof-ish video Joshua Jackson did at Comic-Con this year. I was a hardcore Dawson’s Creek fan in my teenage years.)

Noah was putting Liliana’s bathing suit on before he took both girls to the splash park. As he was trying to figure out how to put it on her, he asked, “Do you guys put bathing suits on from the bottom?”

Kaylie’s love of reading has been heightened this summer with new books for her birthday and new library books. Her favorite thing to do is lock herself in her (own!) room and read for hours. I don’t object to this.

Liliana is still a puppy and crawls around on all fours making puppy sounds and panting – she actually sounds like a dog. I’ve learned to use this against her to get her to do things she would otherwise object to, like telling her that her non-nightgown pajamas are for dancing puppies. (she’s been demanding preferring dresses/skirts lately because she likes to “dance like a princess”). So far she’s bought it.

I’m pretty sure Kaylie’s on the countdown until school starts up again. Her little sister loves to do everything she does and be everywhere she is. There are many times where this goes well. There are also many times where this ends in crying, yelling, and time-outs.

I’m trying to spend most of this weekend finally getting the house completely unpacked and organized, which is really hard to do when you’re as extremely lazy as I am; and when it’s really hot outside and all I want to do is curl up on the couch with a handful of freezies and a couple episodes of ER.

Today is a holiday here. Saskatchewan Day. I’m pretty sure it’s just a made-up holiday to get another day off work, but who cares! It’s a day where you don’t have to work but you still get paid! And any day like that is a GOOD day.

Yesterday evening, we went to check it out.

The mosquitos this year are INSANE. I’m not a huge fan of bug spray, but deemed it necessary.

These suckers are relentless.

There is a splash park right next to the regular park, but since it was hovering around 20/68 degrees, we thought it would be better to wait on the splash park until a hotter afternoon.

There was a little complaining, but within minutes of playing on the non-splash park, the girls didn’t mention it again.

There’s an amazing climbing tree in our front yard that my 10-year-old self would LOVE.

I promised the kids that we’d try to get to the splash park in the next couple days. This morning though, when we checked the weather, it called for thunder storms, not sun.

That’s okay though. I love thunder storms.

Noah took the girls out to the back yard in the morning, before it got all stormy and wet. I had a list of things I still wanted for the house, so we went and did that this afternoon. It started raining around 3:30 and only lasted about 15 minutes. Saskatchewan takes it’s rain very seriously though, as there was water everywhere.

When we were at Indigo, I went into Starbucks. As I was waiting in line, I saw something I’d never seen in a Starbucks before.

Stroopwafels!

Yum.

Liliana was sporting one of the pairs of shoes she got for her birthday. I’m kind of envious of her small shoe collection. Her awesome aunts have great taste. If I’m not mistaken, her skinny jeans are also a gift from an aunt of hers.

We were out for over four hours and the girls did amazing. I was quite impressed with them. Our last stop was the mall. The girls are seriously lacking in non-winter pajamas and The Children’s Place had a 50% off sale, so they each scored a couple pairs.

See the boxes and stuff in the background? The only room I’ve completely unpacked is the bathroom. Ugh.

I’m hoping for some hot sunny days soon so we can get to the splash park or try out our sprinkler, but if we don’t get them, at least I have an excuse to unpack, right?

You’d think.

Related: WHAT THE HECK?!?!?! At least we avoided the “Where do babies come from” topic for now. Phew.

(ps. I’m working on my post about meeting Schmutzie and the Palinode. Yes, yes I am. Words are not my specialty.)

One of the random pieces of paper I opened up was the note that Kaylie’s biological dad and I wrote back and forth when we were trying to figure out how to tell my parents that I was pregnant. We were in Grade 12. Probably in Comparative Civilizations class, as it was the only class we had together.

I also found the following note. I didn’t recognize the writing. I didn’t even know if it was written to/about me, as there is no greeting or salutation to be found. The thing is, it made sense to me. Also, I sat there wondering when it was that my heart went cold.

lying in my bed of disgrace
crying for my broken heart
not knowing what happened between us
why we never talked or spent time together
but for me the decision was hard
for all the tears I spilt
the blood I shed
the hatred I feel from your black heart
you never cared about me or my feelings
you thought I was something that I’m not
a prize, a piece of flesh
for this I take back everything
my feelings
my thoughts
my heart
and I pray that one day
you will open your mind and heart
the day of recognition
but on hill that
you will be a dark horrified monster with no soul

I read that, wondering who wrote it and if it was indeed to/about me. Then I read the other side of the paper.

an ocean of red
your soldiers lye in the final resting place
trenching through the soil of the dead
creeping, crawling, listening to the horrid sounds around us
in the distance, the screams of children
followed by the smell of burning flesh of the innocent
a flash of light sends the reaper after my soul
the agonizing pain as shrapnel pierces through my skin
the adrenaline rushes through
I takes my best friend out of his holster
I look down the barrel
pondering my life
is this worth it
why do we fight
can I continue

Most of the pieces of folded paper that I opened up, I could place. I recognized the writing. I knew who wrote them, and remembered that point in my life.

This one left me stumped.