I am so very pleased to have updated to the newest version of WordPress.  Oh yes, so very pleased.

However, my header is lost…  I shall definitely make this a priority to rectify.  Certainly.  I will fix this very soon.  Very soon… I may even take this opportunity to change things up visually, yet again.  Call it ADD.

However, I have other more immediate priorities.  Namely, the June Issue to be pulled effortlessly, yet again, out of my ass.

So, until the weekend.  I will be minus a header.  Likely my head, too.  For it is up my ass searching for June Issue… and I don`t know that it can ever be truly recovered.

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Thank the freakin’ almighty… or all of my recent hard, bloody work, because… mi Filipes just gave his official notice this past week.

Yes. He will be leaving his job. That’s right… his job. That pays him money. Money that supports his family.
Uh-huh. Yup. With no job to go to.

We are officially putting our faith in the almighty universe to the test.

Not to mention our greenthumbs… Sally’s and mine. OK. Mostly mine. The child is nine. He loves the idea of planting… of growing… his own food. But he doesn’t love the idea of digging, building and creating new beds, raking, yanking weeds that have runners extending clear through to China, or any of the other remaining facking dirty work that has to be done, in fact, to make things grow.

However, just as with the universe, we have faith that our shiny new gardens shall provide.

Or… I suppose I could pole dance while slinging beer and 99 cent chicken wings get some kind of real job.

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It was actually raining and snowing the day you were born.  And after all my rants over the past many weeks about Mother Nature’s wrath, it really wasn’t so different four years ago.

I just didn’t care.  I was too busy just anticipating the safe, healthy birth of a healthy third child.

Beyond any expectations, you were a girl.  Born with big round eyes wide open.  Already watching, knowing… feeling what was going on around you.

My baby girl.  You were perfect.  Fat.  Beautiful.  With a thatch of fine, fair hair.  Upon seeing you, plopped wet and screaming upon my stomach, I wept.  My baby girl.  An immediate bond of solidarity amongst our boys.
Now you tell me- alot- that you “are a different kind of girl”.  And I know to you that means, you don’t have to do things the way others do them… or, more specifically, the way you’re told.  But to me that means, you are a wickedly beautiful, whip smart, funny, snuggly, sensitive, nurturing, generous, dancing, singing, girly-y, rough and tumble, tough as nails, purple-loving kind of girl unlike any other.

Don’t get me wrong.  You present, daily, a range of new and different challenges.  Daddy jokes that you’re smarter than Mummy… not quite yet, but getting there fast!  Despite our rantings and screamings, our little daily conflicts, you have me completely wrapped around that perfect little finger.  I am yours.
So very special to me, it’s hard to find words.  But what I can manage is, that, as with your brothers, I never imagined I could love so completely.  With your arrival, I grew a new heart… and you filled it up to overflowing.

Fidge, my life is so much bigger with you in it.

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If I had to sum up my Mother’s Day weekend… this would do it.

Happy, happy, happy like fuscia; stripey… and completely unwound.
Despite the wretched weather. It started cold and sleeting and then warmed up, evolving into very, very cool and raining. For 72 straight hours. However after watching Friday’s ‘local’ news, I was able to implement a little exercise in gratitude as I watched our compatriots over the mountains… dig out from under one full metre of snow!!

But as I always say… if you want to rape and pillage our Great, so very embittered, Mother… and then brazenly pave your streets with gold, encrust your SUV’s with diamonds and eat poor folks babies for breakfast… well, you take your lumps.

I digress…

The positively shite weather did allow for complete and total sloth-dom. Movies. Food. More food. Naps. Yes, the entire weekend was a total write-off for getting anything done… ie. load of new soil needs allocated to new beds… new beds that are still waiting to be built… blah. blah. blah.

This weekend, thanks to Our Dear Underappreciated Collective Mother, was just about hanging with the maniacs, hanging with mi Filipes and doing a whole lotta what you don’t often get an excuse to do… absolutely nuttin’!

Oh… except for outing with the miscreants on Saturday night.

Since seeing Grease not too long ago, Zip has had an unnatural and oh-so-aggravatingly inappropriate fascination with mooning… anytime… anywhere.
Much to the delight of Zip and gaggle of young, neighborhood maniacs he got the opportunity to share his fascination with pretty, done and so very teased and stuck up neighbor teenage girl. Around the fire. There she sat… innocently twirling a black marshmallow over the low flames, lost in thoughts of Zack Ephron… his tongue and other select body parts, discount designer clothes, and how she’d really rather be elsewhere smoking a big fattie… than hanging with a bunch of snot-nosed kids and old fogies, Zip squared up… only a mere nose length from her fresh, pretty, young face… bent over and let her marvel… he even did her the pleasure of spreading his skinny little cheeks.

OK… before you go and say it. I know very well this deranged expression of exhibitionism is a direct reflection of my own inadequacy as a mother….

Particularly apropos only hours before Mother’s Day… I consider myself effectively honoured!

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Oh my…. Honestly, if it had been my choice I’d have kept my freshly run fanny right here on my cushy, cozy sofa. Watching Oprah and the lovely, inspiring Tina Turner and the caricature of her former self, the entirely manufactured, Cher.

In fact, I even called to make sure that, in fact, it was still going on, given the butt load of rain we endured, wrapped tightly most of the afternoon in down blanket on comfy, cozy sofa, peeking pathetically out the window welcomed today. Hoping secretly, the lazy, self-involved, wanting to stay very solidly put concerned, conscientious mother that I am, in fact, that it wasn’t. You know, catching cold and all…
“Oh, it’s not raining now. And, like, there’s no wind. So, we’re on.” She said in her perky, oh so very eager, aging valley girl sort of way.

“Hmmm-mmm. Grrrreee-aaat….”

So we arrived. Zip, was of course, excited. It wasn’t raining, after all.

For the first. five. fucking. minutes.

The kids didn’t care. The coaches: Oh so active. Oh so eager. Oh so friggin’ enthusiastic. And dressed for rain, of course. Parents: not so much. After all… there was no rain.
With the rest of the miserable lot… I sat. I saw. I got soaked. And cold. I looked up. Fresh snow in the mountains.

Oh how I miss the warm, Virginia spring rains. These bitter cold, sleet-slash-rains of Canadian Rockies spring time.

Truly. Suck.

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If you’re listening… um… I mean, reading…

I love you both. Barack… you in particular. As a Canadian, I love you. As a Canadian, and I will readily speak for my northern counterparts, we love you. We welcome a president of like mind. As we don’t have one heading our own ‘administration’…

However, as much as I love you… as a Canadian… and a Canadian supporter of Barack for Prez, my hackles are stimulated in a bad way everytime I hear an American I like, state with absolute:

“I would never have been able to accomplish what I have in any other country than the United States of America.”

Aaaargghhh!

Perhaps, “I would never have been able to accomplish what I have, without the hurdles/barriers/challenges that I have been forced by this, the United States of America, to overcome.”

Now… as a Canadian… this more accurate statement, I can get behind.

Regardless, I love you Barack! Ditto, Oprah!

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And so… spring has come to The Valley. A gorgeous weekend.  Dear Old Mother Nature gives us a reprieve…
Here as I write, I am awash in the sun, having just made herself known from above the jagged peaks I gaze upon from my small, cozy living room. From my gushy, cushy sofa. With my coffee and my most favourite coffee cookie- thanks Bernie’s!

It’s delicious. And it’s as it should be at this time of year.

The skidderoos are going for sleepover at Nan and Pops tonight. We are going golfing. The AGM. My one round of golf a year. Because my fee also includes steak. I do not golf without the promise of steak.

A quiet… sunny… day…

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And so the great news.

Our closest, largest town is getting an independent standing Starbucks. Yes! It’s only taken… I dunno how many years, but just as everybody has had Starbucks out the ying yang and everyone is starting to complain about the quality of the supermegaestablishment-yes, even The Man loves his coffee-conformistbottomlinebeforequalityfourfackingdollarsa cuponeoneverycorneroverabilliontrillionsold coffee stops, we are getting one.

Sure, now, just when mom ‘n pop coffee bars are making a gasfireplacecozychairscreativeinspired
non-conformistlivemusicliquorlicensenanaimo-hempseed-bar resurgence, we are finally getting one.

Sure, for the past two years, we could go to the new Starbucks kiosk in the Safeway… but… it’s… Safeway.

And whether it’s in our closest Safeway or standing independently on the Cranbrook fastfood strip… it’s still a fucking hour away!

Hello mom ‘n pop… vanilla soy latte and a nanaimo bar please. And make that with a shot of Bailey’s…

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