Oh Canada!

Between Oprah's show ending (in 2 years), our school board president's mysterious murder?/suicide? and all the rain lately, it's been an odd week in Chicago. Today I left work slightly early to go to the other nanny share house for dinner and a dramatic presentation of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I figured I'd bring dessert. It was hard to find some decent dessert downtown so out of a fit of desperation I just went into the Corner Bakery near my train stop hoping to find something . . . anything I could bring.

I walked in and found some $12 bundt cakes and picked a chocolate one. There was another woman there staring at some boxed brownies --she finally picked a box and I said "Go ahead, you were here before me" and motioned in front of me in line. She thanked me and said "It's odd here, people usually aren't very friendly." I helpfully said "In corner bakery?" because I'm slow at the end of the day and she said "No, Chicago. Did you grow up here?" and I said that I'd only lived here about five years and said that it was oddly friendlier than some other places I've lived (sorry Texas) and I said that it takes a while to get used to but it's a good town.

The person currently being waited on during this was having some sort of confusion at the bakery selections and was taking forever so the lady and I continued to chat. She's from Toronto. Everything I know about Canada I learned from reading For Better or For Worse comics for about 25 years so I said something like "Oh yeah, isn't Canada's Thanksgiving in October?" and she seemed surprised that I knew that and said it was but that the big holiday was right after Christmas. Thanks to the comics, I knew that she was talking about Boxing Day.

Then it was her turn to go to be waited on. The guy rang up her $25 box o' brownies and then she turned and said "Are you just getting that?" and pointed at my bundt cake. I said "Yeah . . ." confused. She told the counter guy "I'll get that too".

Now that is just craziness! If buying a stranger a $12 bundt cake is her definition of being nice, she is going to be very disappointed in her time in America. Niceness here is defined by someone not coughing directly on you when you're riding the train. Niceness is making your dog poop on the grass and not the sidewalk. Niceness is pretending to try to avoid hitting people with your golf umbrella even if you're faking it.

Naturally I was unaccustomed to this sort of benevolence and I said "Are you sure? You don't have to do that. Are you SURE?!" and she smiled and said "Have a good holiday" and I said "are you SURE?!" and then because I was being rude I said "Wow. Wow. Thank you!" and then awkwardly stood there not knowing what to do. So I said "Thank you!" again and went to the train.

Now I guess I have to pay it forward. I will have to be nice to someone else before the end of the year. I'm even going to do it all Canada-style.

So to the lovely Canadian lady at the Corner Bakery tonight--thank you! I hope you start to love Chicago and I hope that you have a good first American Thanksgiving.

Well this is not what I expected

I've heard stories of kids chewing on their crib rails. They even have crib protectors you can buy a crib protector made out of plastic to protect the wood from your toddler's teeth. Naturally they don't make any the same size as my unusually wide crib rail but they seem to work for other people.

But this?

This is not what I expected:



That's the cushion to our counter stool. He's chewed the threads out. What is extremely annoying is that the wood of the chairs perfectly matches the wood of the kitchen so we were going to sell them with the place. This means if we ever put our place up for sale, I'm going to have to buy new fabric and reupholster them on my own for someone else to enjoy. And I'll have to pick a fabric that is not so delightfully chewy.

So far this is the score card:

Dog: 1 chair damaged, one rug destroyed, two bath mats ruined
Baby: 1 chair damaged, 1 crib damaged (teeth marks)

So far it's a pretty good tie. Bath mats are so inexpensive I don't even count them. Now I understand why my parents didn't have nice furniture until my brother was in college.

Cavity

I went to the dentist yesterday. I have two cavities.

In retrospect, it may have been a mistake to spend the month of October eating my own body weight in candy corn.

A very expensive painful mistake.

If the shoe fits?

Rob always sends me photos each morning of Austin so I have something in my e-mail to make me smile when I get to work. Today I got this:



It's hard to fully notice what's wrong since the image is blurry. But the shoes are on the wrong feet.

I did that.

He was particularly squirmy today and I had no idea that the shoes were on the wrong feet. Neither did Rob.

The nanny is the one who pointed it out when she came.

Whoops.

Austin was not pleased with our dressing skills and is looking into hiring a stylist.



Qualifications right now include knowing your right from your left and being able to use velcro successfully.

Random Monday thoughts - TV edition

I'm regretting that I told everyone I know that Vampire Diaries is a bad show because now it's actually a pretty good show but no one else is watching it. And it's good--I want to discuss with someone, anyone.

I also can't believe I'm still watching Melrose Place. It is horrible. I think this is some sort of reaction to the fact that I never watched the original Melrose even though everyone in the universe watched that one. So now I'm staying with this new inferior Melrose to make up for last time. I think I saw enough of Ashlee Simpson's "acting" when I watched 7th Heaven.

Every week I put on The New Adventures of Old Christine and Rob makes faces and I say "I'm only watching it because nothing else is on, you can change it" and he'll then discover that nothing else is on so it stayed on. And now I actually like it and I get annoyed when he turns to something else. He'll say "Wait, were you watching THAT?" and I'll say "Oh, no, I mean, no. It's not that funny . . . but there's nothing else on."

Gary Unmarried is absymal though. Horrifyingly bad. He's a painter but he might be on the radio or something as if any radio station owner would ever put the damn painter on for their own friggin show. Stupid Gary Unmarried.

Isn't it weird how when you like a show, even as impossible as it is, you'll stand up for it. Like "Yes, I know that they're always breaking into song but they're the GLEE CLUB." or "They're not ALL vampires--just those brothers. And that guy. And maybe that guy. And she's a witch. But they're not ALL vampires." and when it's a stupid show it's like "Oh for fuck's sake, no one is going to hire the friggin' painter for his own sports radio show, this has gone too far!"

I actually like that show The Middle. And I normally hate all things Patricia Heaton. What is wrong with me? What have I become?

That's all I can think of right now. NaBloPoMo is hard.

Time to get out the coat

Yesterday it was so lovely out. We went out and didn't need to wear a coat and when the sun was out it was almost warm. Today I could tell that it wouldn't be like that. Sky was gray all day. And it was cold. Colder than it has been lately. So I think tomorrow I might just have to wear my wool coat to work.

I was trying to hold off until after Thanksgiving and not wear it unless it got below 40 for one week. Every year I see people wearing parkas as soon as October starts and I didn't want to be that ridiculous. But dammnit, the other jacket I had was starting to get cold in the morning. So I think I have to find my gloves and just accept that winter is coming and that the cold is coming and there's nothing I can do about it at all.

But at least I got my flu shot today--at the grocery store. A guy was getting stuck in the arm at the pharmacy counter while I was wandering around looking for TriViSol and I asked his wife "flu shot?" and she said yes so I got one for myself. Just regular flu, not H1N1. But at least I'm covered. She gave me a sheet of paper and some coupons and naturally I waited until I got home to look at the coupons and one was 10% off of my grocery purchase that day. GRRRR! Oh well.

Now if only I'd remembered to get my coat dry cleaned last year, I'd think I was completely ready for winter.

Maybe it was dumb but

I got an iphone today. I was feeling inadequate about my cell phone when I was at a recent meeting for work and everyone had a smart phone. Then I read an article about Nancy Pelosi and it mentioned that she's so old school she has the same cell phone as me. Ok, the article didn't mention me but we have the same cell phone.

Dagnabbit! I can't have that happen!

So I bit the bullet and bought the least expensive iphone and I'm having fun looking at aps and figuring it out. Did you know that there's an ap for Pride & Prejudice and it's free? Hmmm.

I'm enjoying it. Plus, now I have the same cell phone company as Rob and we were able to get a cheaper home phone bill because we bundled everything together. So I'm SAVING money. Sort of. Kind of.

Ok, not really.

But I'm counting this as an early Christmas gift to myself.