Husband speaks Spanish.  Pretty fluently.  It’s wonderful.  It’s also what attracted me to him 15 very short years ago.

Yesterday was our 14th wedding anniversary.  Last week marked 15 years together exclusively.  A week ago, 15 years ago, he picked me up at the International airport in Belize and we made our way for a few blissful days in Cancun before jumping the nearest chicken bus back south down through Central America where we set up house for a brief time in San Jose, Costa Rica.  We met there briefly the year before and kept in touch for many months until I made my way back down after slinging beer to get up enough cashola back home.

15 years ago last week we fell in love.  He was my adventuring, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants, grab-world-by-the-tail sort of guy… and I loved hearing him speak Spanish.  He still is… hence he went along with my pressing to purchase our own little piece of the Yucatan two years ago… no matter how dinky and bare bones. I can’t imagine this time with anyone but you… and three little beach bum miscreants to show for it!

Happy Anniversary, my love.  It’s 15 years of adventure… some scary.  Some exhilerating.  Always inspiring!

Maybe after the next 15 I’ll actually speak a little Spanish myself…..

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I can’t believe it’s seven days since last post… things are moving at quite a clip around here and when I do have a chance to sit down I’ve photos to edit, my own professional website to update and nothing less than what has become a nasty Flickr obsession to satisfy!  But it will not be satisfied and before I know it I have killed hours upon hours, eyes glued to screen, drool oozing listlessly from my chin many precious moments scouring Flickr for the most amazing photographs to plagiarize try to emulate.  Crazy!!

OMG… and a tiny, little community newsletter to yank from pinched sphincter by the time we leave….

And five weeks of school work to plan… and prepare… and pack.  Condensed into the smallest possible amount of space ever as we are only packing two bags to check.  For five people.  For five weeks.  Because we are taking the regular old bus from airport to resort rather than taxi or shuttle.  Because we- and by we, I mean husband-  want to walk God knows how far with said bags so as to catch regular old Mexican public transportation to save the $50 bucks it would otherwise cost us….

Let it be known:  I’ll be taking this savings in silver jewellery later in the week, thanks!

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Now, I admit, I’ve never been one for creepy crawlies. Regardless the species. Insects. Snakes. Arach- just about anything. Frogs and other wet, slippery water and muck dwelling dudes pretty much round out the list of creatures I’m OK to know exist for whatever reason they’ve continued to evolve on this lovely, green earth, but don’t much care to see first hand.

Except for Peepers, or thumbnail sized Chorus Frogs, to whom I was just introduced a couple of Junes past, visiting in-laws in Virginia. Interesting that I lived there for over six years and never ever saw one. Apparently, now with kids, I am more inclined to crawling amongst those that dwell in moist grass and mud.

Quick related story: Youngest son, at time newly minted four-year-old, manages to squish, crushing pick up one of the cute, little critters. As he squeezed, with three little clumsy fingers, tiny creature from crowded muck all life was immediately crushed out of teensy weensy froggie form, unbeknownst to well-meaning child. Holding lifeless creature in his tiny palm, poking him with stubby index finger, states solemnly in a hushed little voice, “Look, he’s sleeping!”

Ack!

Anyhoo… regardless our own small part in the crisis that has become their rapid and imminent demise as a species, I am totally bummed to hear this news. OK, fine. News to me in this, my insular and narrow world of soccer, swimteam, and the sickly repeated rapid and imminent demise of the celeb-utards at PerezHilton and People Magazine.

However, thanks to CBC Newsworld, I’ve raised briefly my gaze from celebrities navel to world at large… and what do I find but frogs and amphibians on the brink of extinction…. Now for those of us utterly, completely and downright effing incredulous skeptical of Adam and his frigging rib, this is more than somewhat unsettling.

We’re talking about frogs and amphibians for crying out loud. Those that came long before us. Those that made their way tentatively from the water to the shore… before the dinosaurs. Before mammals. Just… before dammit…. They’ve bloody well been here, like, forever! And now…

Are facing a crisis by, surprise-surprise, our hand, and that of a near-invisible fungus that has spread around the world over the last decade. Our modern day canary in what has become our modern day, and so very global, coal mine.

Honestly….

Speaking of environmental crisis, I can’t help but mention an ongoing regional issue I consider to be somewhat local, only because I frequent the city that reaps the rewards of the blatant rape and pillage in addition to sharing a neighborhood with those who, as party to the rape and pillage, also reap the benefits- hence they can afford a SECOND HOME in our area where the median home price is over $550,000. There’s no getting around it: Oil produced from the bitumen lying in the sand under Alberta’s boreal forest is one of the dirtiest fuels in the world. Under current conditions, extracting one barrel of synthetic crude from a mine requires roughly two to four barrels of fresh water from the nearby Athabasca River (an amount top water scientists say the river cannot sustain), along with 750 cubic feet of non-renewable natural gas and about four tonnes of tarry sand and “overburden” – the industry term for… soil.

And so it goes….

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Or anytime for that matter.

This child- unlike the boys, who now feel compelled to ham it up and work hard to never be caught unawares when I am about, camera in hand- provides me with unlimited casual, unrehearsed and natural opportunities.

I am without doubt raising a girlie-girl. She likes shiny.  Sparkly.  Purple.  And shoes that are tappy.  She does me her ballet- all the time.

“Look at my dancing, mummy.”

Pirouettes, arabesques, and oh-so-pointy toes in our living room, turned frenzied, spastic hiphopped, testosterone infused, mosh pit with Crazy Frog.

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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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Yes, it’s Saint Paddy’s Day. Yes, I completely forgot!

It was a busy weekend full of Nancy Green ski racing wind-up. I did have to bring the chips, after all.

We are, of course, also still preparing for second round of company. To arrive this Friday. It seems that preparing for guests has completely monopolized our lives this month. Why?

Because our cozy, little cottage house is no longer capable of storing our increasing collection of crap and has been reduced to a dumping ground of stuff. Work stuff. School stuff. Recreation stuff. Construction stuff. Hobby stuff. Kid stuff. Gardening stuff. Dog stuff. Food stuff. Laundry stuff. Never-ending and multiplying stuff.
GD STUFF!!!

And the basement, 1000 square feet of largely ignored useable space- grounds for dumping excepted, of course- has remained in varying stages of un-done/done. It is now time to get fully done. Painting. Flooring. Mouldings. Baseboards. Organize. Tidy. Clean. What better time, than when you are expecting guests. This is when, and only when, I am motivated enough to take this on. Why? Because…. I will not be judged.
Yes, we should probably, after eight years of perpetually moving and re-moving shit from room to room to room to room (rinse. repeat.), build a garage. And if I had the 50 grand to build a garage… I probably wouldn’t. The money would go immediately, without thought or hesitation, into creating a Mexi-home out of our little Mexi-shack and we would just flee this cozy, little cottage house altogether for the heat… sand, sea and surf- and no friggin’ stuff- of our little pile of sand along Mexico’s Gulf Coast!

Maybe instead of that afternoon snooze I took yesterday, I should have been preparing for this school week ahead. Then, as the responsible parent/teacher I am, would have known it was friggin’ St. Patrick’s Day. And created some nasty sweet treat of an appropriate shade of edible nauseating green.
Upon reflection however, and as I consider that after school this morning, I still have a room of laminate flooring to get down… unless an uncharacteristically productive hoard of cute little Leprechaun’s show up to lend a few tiny hands, St. Pat’s is gonna go pretty much unnoticed.

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The Texas Cousins are coming! The Texas Cousins are coming!

And so… despite my efforts of last November in preparation for the American Out- I mean, In-Laws, all gung-ho, getting this house decontaminated and exterminated prepared, wanting to do everything from laminate floor the basement to replacing our kitchen island, I settled for taking from Peter (guest room) to give to Paul (future bedroom of Fidge). Essentially shuffling our perpetually accumulating and unused shit from one room to another.

So, we begin again. Except this time it involves the transitioning from our cozy, albeit undersized room up here, to a larger one, nearer the boys, down there. But first… laminate flooring must be installed. New moldings installed. Thorough clean up and reorganization as belongings are transitioned upstairs and down. Over and over again.

Between now, today… Tuesday. And Saturday.

I’ve known these people are coming since last October.

What the hell happened?

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What more to say.  This is without doubt an iterative process.  Will proceed.  Iteratively?!?!

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OK, for those of you uncomfortable with issues of reproduction, now is your chance to clamp eyes shut, cover your ears, “LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!”  For those of you with sturdier constitutions, here’s the deal:  I’ve about had it with all the hanky-panky!

Let me say, I am sickened.  It’s fornication, pure and simple. 

The Ziplocs are getting it on with the Lock & Lock’s!  They are reproducing with complete, total and wreckless abandon.  My plastic food storage containers are multiplying at such an alarming rate they are overflowing not only from their designated pot drawer but also from the large cupboard they have come to mysteriously inhabit all the way across the kitchen. It is nothing less than an infestation.  

We aren’t talking about the lowly used yogurt and sour cream containers.  Sadly, I suppose I’d expect it from them…. No, no, no.  We are talking about a certain class of plastics.  Containers that should have a heck-uv-alot of better things to do than illicit, wanton touchie-feelie in the dark recesses of my kitchen!  There was left over chicken last night, for crying out loud!!

This nasty business has got to end.  How are my boys supposed to go about their simple task of unloading the dishwasher when they could easily risk tarnishing their innocence in the inadvertent witness of this wild copulation?!? 

Perhaps worse:  the overcrowding becomes just so gross and these beastly critters become so desperate for their own space that they begin to devour their young.

Help!  How can I possibly, humanely, take back control of my kitchen?!?!

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