Month: March 2009

Free groceries winner!

Hooray for Barbara from Mom on the Go, winner of the bag of free President’s Choice Blue Menu sample products! You’ll have to take my word for it that the random number generator (now with cool new widget generator!) coughed up #19, because I cannot for the life of me force my computer to do a print-screen. (And yes, I did compensate for multiple comments by the same person and the comment from me, too.)

Yay Barbara, I’ll be in touch to arrange a drop-off. Thanks to all who commented with your happy thoughts — they all made me smile!

It’s all about balance

It’s been a full month since I’ve been back at work, and we’ve settled into a comfortable routine that seems to be working out well for everyone. I think that this four-day week thing was a brilliant choice, and I’m so happy we were able to make it work. It’s made a huge difference in my feeling of connection to the boys’ daily lives and my ability to balance working with mothering. Three cheers for balance!

Five things I love about being back at work:

  1. Unencumbered freedom. I can get up and go for a coffee or a chat with a colleague whenever I want, stop in to shops and wander aimlessly on my lunch break, and nobody wants to crawl into my lap when I’m trying to go to the bathroom.
  2. Hot coffee. At home, coffee inevitably gets cold before I get half way through because I’m distracted by a hundred other things. At work, I often finish a cup while it’s still warm. Bliss!
  3. Grown-up clothes. Shoes that go “click-click” when you walk, make-up, and clothes that you need to iron and hang to dry or (gasp!) dry clean: all things I had more or less forgotten about in the last year!
  4. Being downtown. I love this city, and I love where my office is located. Coming downtown every day makes me feel connected to the city and the people in it in a way that I don’t feel out in the suburbs. And being able to leave it here every day and go home to those same suburbs is equally delightful.
  5. They’re getting along fine without me at home. Having a great nanny and not having to worry about what’s going on in my absence makes everything easier. (Wasn’t sure whether this belongs in this section or the next!)
  6. Okay, one more: using my brain for something other than finding the lost TV remote or calculating the nutritional value of pop tarts. (Although, that also sometimes belongs in the next section, because the mom-brain is getting to me lately and I wonder some days if I have enough brain cells left to actually do this job!)

Five things I hate about being back at work:

  1. Commuting. The buses are still farked up, running inconsistently and ridiculously overcrowded. I’ve had to stand the entire way downtown every morning and the afternoon bus is so crowded I almost missed my stop yesterday because I couldn’t work my way through the crush to get to the door. All this joy for the ridiculous price of $101 per month.
  2. It’s lonely. Odd, considering I see a hundredfold more people each day while downtown than I do on an average day at home, but even in a crowd I am by myself. Most of my day is spent in crowded solitude or working quietly at my computer.
  3. Sitting all day. I’m so used to moving all day long, chasing the baby and putting on laundry and picking up toys and walking back and forth to the school two or three times a day that just sitting here for hours at a time – while relaxing at first – makes me kind of twitchy!
  4. Trying to get a full day of domestic stuff done in four hours. By the time I get home, make dinner, feed/eat dinner, tidy up daily disaster, get lunches and bags ready for next day, put out clothes for next day, give various boys baths and get pyjamas ready, it’s almost my bed time. Doesn’t leave much time for fun with anyone, either.
  5. I miss the kids during the day. Sigh.

I had a much easier time coming up with the five things I don’t like than the five things I do like about working. Matter of fact, I could have extended the “don’t like” list by another five or ten items without much thought! But, all in all, I think it’s working out fine and I’m grateful that we’re on the path to that elusive but oh so important balance.

Where healthy eating and free stuff intersect!

In general, I like the President’s Choice line of products and I’ve blogged about them before. That’s why I didn’t hesitate to say, “Yes please!” when a nice PR fellow contacted me recently and offered to send me an assortment of new Blue Menu products from the latest Healthy Eating Insider’s Report for review. (I had to laugh that night at dinner when I realized what a Blue Menu product junkie I am — every single product from the spaghetti to the sauce to the bread to the shredded cheese to the dressing on the salad and the croutons were either President’s Choice or Blue Menu!)

The package arrived last Friday, and we’ve been working our way through the products. Here’s a list of what they sent me, and in parentheses afterward what we thought of it:

(Items without a link I couldn’t find on their website. Note to PC: I liked your products a lot more before I started looking for them on your site. Improve your search engine!)

I was perplexed but pleased when not one but two crates showed up, and was about to blame it on a serendipitous shipping mistake when I remembered that when the nice PR fellow offered me the sampling of products, I had asked if I could have a second set for a bloggy giveaway. Yay, free groceries to share!

Except, the package is one of those recyclable grocery bags just full of heavy, bulky stuff and I’m way too cheap to pay to ship it out to you. I pondered this one all weekend, and here’s the best solution I could think of: if you want to enter this contest, leave a comment and tell me — hmmm, let’s see, something that makes you happy. Anything that makes you smile will do it. I’ll make a random draw at 5 pm on Tuesday, March 2. (Edit: Tuesday is March 3. Oops!) If you win and you live in the Ottawa neighbourhood, I’ll drop off the groceries to you. If you are not within delivery range, I’ll send you a $15 President’s Choice gift certificate. Is that a reasonable compromise?

* We haven’t tried the Fair Trade coffee or tea yet, but I have to say “Bravo” to President’s Choice for this whole line of products. As you know, I’m working on ethical eating, and happily pay an extra 10 cents a pound for their Fair Trade bananas. Works out to less than a buck difference a week (yes, we eat a LOT of bananas) and I’m happy to pay the price. Next up, can we please have products that are Fair Trade AND organic?

BBC Books meme

(I filched this meme from a couple of friends’ Facebook pages. According to the original meme, the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 important books here. Thing is, I went looking for the original source of 100 books, and couldn’t find it anywhere. There’s this BBC Big Reads list from 2003, but it’s not the same. But hey, since when do we allow a little thing that factual sources stand in the way of good blog fodder. On with the meme!)

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘X’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
Continue reading “BBC Books meme”