Category: 5 things

Five lessons I learned during my first family portrait shoot

Look what I did this weekend!

Baby Everitt: 6 of 10

No, I didn’t go out and have another boy… but after spending a lovely morning taking pictures of Baby Everitt and his sweet parents, I sure was thinking about it!!

Everitt is the son of my friends Sheila and Rob, and this was my first ever not-my-family photo shoot! Exciting — and more than a little nerve-wracking!! It’s one thing to be taking pictures of your own kids, when you can boss them around or give up and try again later, but to take on the responsibility of capturing decent pictures of somebody else’s family was a lot more stressful than I expected!!

Everitt, who turned four weeks old the day these pictures were taken, was a dream baby. His bright blue eyes watched the crazy chattering lady with the clicky black camera with bright interest and infinite patience. His parents, bless them, were equally patient.

I had some ideas in my head going in of shots I could take like classic newborn poses, close-ups of fingers and toes, and other examples I’ve seen. Trouble is, even babies don’t sit still and they can be as wriggly and vexatious as toddlers! And I certainly didn’t want to stress out mom or baby when they’d been kind enough to invite me in. So I kind of went with the flow, and while I did a little “stand here, move the baby this way” kind of directing, mostly I moved around and tried not to be too intrusive.

Here’s five things I learned about taking pictures of newborn babies:

1. The macro filter works great on fingers and toes, but unless you capture the baby’s face straight on, one of the eyes will be out of the plane of focus. Applies equally to the nifty fifty wide open at f1.8.

Baby Everitt: 7 of 10

2. Shoot in RAW for extra exposure control, and what you can’t fix in RAW you can hide with B&W!

Baby Everitt: 3 of 10

3. Even when baby fusses a bit, snap a couple of frames.

Baby Everitt: 4 of 10

(And this one, too. It was almost a discard, but the more I looked at it the more I thought it captured something essential and lovely about those early, bleary days with a new baby in the family!!)

Baby Everitt: 10 of 10

4. Keep an eye on your LCD when the light is harsh or contrasty. I had to toss more than half the images because the baby’s face was overexposed beyond redemption in the bright light streaming in through the window. Next time, I’m bringing a muslin sheet to cover the windows — or at least draw the curtains a bit. I’m used to northern light — southern light is much harsher!

Baby Everitt: 5 of 10

5. It’s hard to go wrong when you start out with a really gorgeous family as your subject!

Baby Everitt: 2 of 10

Not bad for my first time out of the house! There’s a few more worth sharing on Flickr, should you be curious enough to see more. 🙂 Thank you so much, Sheila and Rob and especially Everitt, for inviting me into your home and for being so darn photogenic!

Five warm and frost-free indoor places to visit on Family Day

The weather forecast for Family Day in Ottawa looks just about perfect for Winterlude’s outdoor activities, which means that the entire population and half the tourists will be skating on the Canal or zooming down the ice slides at Jacques Cartier Park. Had enough of outside? (If you haven’t, here’s five ideas of free things to do!) Looking for family-friendly and frost-free indoor activities for this Family Day? Here’s five suggestions!

  1. Visit the Children’s Museum at the Museum of Civilization. This is the best hands-on museum in the city, and a place we visit several times a year. Swab the deck, put on a puppet show or build a house — there’s no shortage of fun activities here. One of our favourites! Special for this Family Day only, kids under 18 accompanied by an adult get in FREE!

  2. Try an indoor playground. Okay, so not exactly thrilling for you, but kids can never get enough of these noisy, colourful, chaotic places. Cosmic Adventures in the east end and Playtime4Kids in the west end are but two of many choices in town. This is not exactly a cheap afternoon out, though — Cosmic Adventures will set you back $13.99 per child ages 4 – 12 plus $3.99 per adult.

  3. Take in a movie. Planet 51 and The Princess and the Frog are both playing at the Rainbow Cinema at St Laurent. Admission fees are $4 per person, all ages, with an “early bird” special $2 price for shows that start at 10:00 am. At those prices, you can even afford a popcorn or two!

  4. The Museum of Science and Technology is still one of the boys’ favourite places to visit. In fact, we’re overdue for a visit — this may be our activity of choice on Monday. Lots to see and learn, and lots of ways to burn off a little bit of energy too. A family of five can get in for $18 (how I love places that respect the fact that not all families come in fours!!) but the annual family membership pass is a bargain at $72 for unlimited admission to the Science and Tech Museum, the Aviation Museum and the Agriculture Museum at the Central Experimental Farm.

  5. Go bowling! We’ve recently rediscovered bowling and the kids love it. MacArthur Lanes, Walkley Bowland Merivale Bowling Centre all seem to be open tomorrow (but please don’t take my word for it — call ahead!) and cost is in the range of $5.00 per person per game, plus $2 to $3 for shoe rentals. Beer and nachos for the grownups is always optional!

However you’re planning to spend it, Happy Family Day!

Five ideas for Family Literacy Day

Did you know that Wednesday January 27 is Family Literacy Day in Canada? From the Web site:

Family Literacy Day takes place every year on January 27. ABC CANADA Literacy Foundation and Honda Canada created the day in 1999 to encourage families to read and learn together. […] Literacy is more than books. There are many ways to strengthen your literacy skills – all it takes is practicing for 15 minutes every day. Reading, writing, playing a game, following a recipe or even singing a song all help prepare children for challenges ahead and sharpen skills for adults.

Now, I’m guessing that I’m preaching to the choir when I tell you that literacy is one of the most important tools you can give your children, but I’m always looking for new tips and ideas for turning learning into a fun family activity.

Here’s five ideas for inspiring literacy in your family every day:

  1. Encourage your kids to tell stories. When you’re waiting in line, or in the car, or otherwise find yourself with time on your hands, create a story together based on something around you. See that man with the bright yellow t-shirt? What do you think he had for breakfast this morning? Why is he wearing that yellow shirt? Is his favourite colour yellow? Do you think he wears yellow every single day, one day wearing yellow pants and one day wearing yellow underwear? Why? You can get really silly with this, but it’s great fun and my kids love it.

  2. Did you know there’s a Sesame Street podcast? You know I love Sesame Street, and you know I’m fixated on my iPod. What could be better than the Word on the Street podcast from the creators of Sesame Street?!

  3. Sing it! I mentioned the other day how astonished I am that Lucas, not yet two, knows the melody if not all the words to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and he’s been calling out the last word of each line to You are my Sunshine for months now. This year’s official theme for Family Literacy Day is “Sing for Literacy” and ABC Canada has provided access to free karaoke videos online.

  4. Wear your words. This is a neat idea for older kids from ABC Canada’s family literacy tips pdf: write a story or a poem on an old pair of jeans. Love this idea!

  5. Make yer own books. Tristan was about three when I helped him make his first book, made of pictures cut out of a Thomas the Tank Engine catalogue. He made his own first comic book around age five. All you need is a single letter-sized page cut into quarters and stapled along one edge and voilà: instant 8-page mini-book ready for words or scribbles or stickers or whatever your child can think of. If you like, get fancy and use a hole-punch and ribbon or yard to bind the side. The only problem with these is that the kids make them by the pile and I never have the heart to throw them out!

Care to share? Add your thoughts for making literacy fun in the comment section!

Five things that are making me happy this Christmas

I have to tell you, I love the (relatively) new category I’ve added of “5 things.” On days like this when I’ve got a handful of half-baked ideas that just won’t come together, or when I feel like chatting with you but can’t get organized enough to assemble a coherent post, I can always crunch them into a ‘five things’ post.

So here we go, five things that are making me happy about this Christmas season.

  1. If it ain’t done by now, it ain’t getting done. I call this my official Christmas tipping point, when the joy of the season and the excitement of anticipation finally eclipse the stress of of planning, organizing, wrapping, baking, and shopping. Time to release my inner child. Yay!

  2. After more than a decade of asking for it, and trying to catch it on TV, I’ve finally got not just one but TWO copies of my all-time favourite Christmas movie, A Christmas Story. I PVR’d it last night on CBC, and my brother burned me a copy of his DVD yesterday. I tried a few years ago to share this with the boys but they weren’t old enough to appreciate it. I’m saving it for a special Christmas Day family viewing. Yay!

  3. It’s super-quiet here in the office (I still *so* love this job, btw), and the crisis that had me and several of my colleagues in a panic for most of the past 24 hours seems to be on its way to being resolved. My dad is on the way for a tour of our broadcast studio and operations, and after this afternoon I’m on vacation until January 4. Yay!

  4. My brother and his family are in town. The kids really love their cousins, and it’s wonderful to have family together at Christmas. They may have to leave a little earlier than anticipated, based on the storm that may or may not happen this Friday and Saturday, but I’m still happy just to have the gang together. Yay!

  5. I really do love Christmas. This year was the most stressful yet as far as preparations go. I had a hard time initially coming up with the perfect gift for everyone, and plans kept shifting on me. But now it’s all good and the boys are excited as the presents begin to pile up under the tree and we’re down to just one or two more items on the advent calendar and it really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Yay!

Share the joy, what’s making you happy this holiday season?

Five ways to interact with Santa

Back in the day, the only ways you could “interact” with Santa were to stand in line at the mall to sit on his knee, or maybe at your parents’ annual company Christmas party.

Now that we live in an interactive world, though, not only can your kids write a letter to Santa, or listen to Christmas Eve updates of his whereabouts from the local weather man, but you can get e-mails, videos and track the big dude yourself starting early in December. Here are five fun ways for kids to communicate with Santa, starting with my fave.

1. The Portable North Pole. I love this app, madly and deeply. Whomever came up with this and put it together is brilliant. I did this last year and the look on the boys’ faces was priceless — and though I haven’t been all the way through it this year, I can see they’ve made even more improvements and personalization. You the parent have to go in ahead of time and set it up, supplying your kids’ first names, something they’ve done that’s good, a photo if you like, and other personalized details. They give you a link to a video, and you can visit it later with your kids. I must remember to go in tonight to set up all three boys, so they’ll know Santa is thinking about them!

2. Letters and e-mails to Santa. Yes, it’s true, you can e-mail Santa and he’ll reply, but isn’t the ritual of writing and sending an actual paper letter, and then the eye-popping excitement of getting something back in the mail box, worth the extra effort? In Canada, you have to mail your letters before December 16 if you want a reply. Mail to:

Santa Claus
North Pole
H0H 0H0

Or you can send an e-mail through canadapost.ca/santascorner. (Hmmm, in the US, it seems that the US Postal Service has stopped providing a Letters to Santa service this year. Any other ideas from our American friends?)

3. Norad’s Santa Tracker. When I was a kid, I remember watching with slack-jawed wonder as Percy Saltzman, the weather man on Global News, talked about Norad tracking Santa as he began his journey around the world on Christmas Eve. I think just about everybody has heard of Norad’s Santa Tracking service, but I had no idea of this charming history to the project, courtesy of WikiPedia:

In 1955, a Colorado Springs-based Sears store ran an advertisement encouraging children to call Santa Claus on a special telephone hotline. Due to a printing error, the phone number that was printed was the hotline for the Director of Operations at the Continental Air Defense (CONAD). Colonel Harry Shoup took the first Santa call on Christmas Eve of 1955 from a six-year old boy who began reciting his Christmas list. Shoup didn’t find the call funny, but after asking the mother of the second caller what was happening, then realizing the mistake that occurred, he instructed his staff to give Santa’s position to any child who called in.

In 1997, Canadian Major Jamie Robertson took over the program and expanded it to the Web where corporation-donated services have given the tradition global accessibility. In 2004, NORAD received more than 35,000 e-mails, 55,000 calls and 912 million hits on the Santa-tracking website from 181 countries. The site now gets well over 1 billion hits.

Love it!

4. Friend Santa’s on Facebook Last year, there was a kerfuffle online when Facebook refused to let Santa have more than 5000 friends but the Norad Tracks Santa page has more than 37,000 fans. And if you’re in it for the presents, the I Believe In Santa Claus group has more than 150,000 fans and seems to have regular giveaways.

5. Follow Santa on Twitter. Alas, Santa is not immune to the celebrity social media phenomenon of having squatters steal his identity, but you can trust updates from @noradsanta (official twitter ID of the Norad Santa Tracker project) and @SantaClaus is keeping a public list of who’s naughty and nice! (And, those of you with a more cynical inclination to the holidays might appreciate the tweets of @loadedsanta, definitely not safe for kids!)

Five things I love about my Mazda 5

As you may remember, I made a (ahem) somewhat involuntary switch from driving a Dodge Grand Caravan to a Mazda 5 last July, when I wrecked the van and it burst into flames. (You know, I’m still a little twitchy even five months later?)

I’ve been meaning to write a follow-up post for months. Even though I was a very reluctant comer to the title of minivan owner back in late 2007 when we bought the Caravan, I had come to love the feeling of driving around in a spacious, elevated and insulated little world of my own. As it turns out, we had the minivan for exactly the right amount of time — I’m not sure we could have easily managed those earliest days with a newborn, when you never leave the house without a stroller and a bag and a bumbo or some sort of other seat and a ridiculous amount of other gear. One thing I’ll say for the Grand Caravan, we never lacked for places to put stuff.

That was my main concern in switching back to a car, even a station-wagon sized car like the Mazda 5. Would we all fit, with a car seat and two boosters? Would there be enough room for a full load of groceries? Would it be up to the task of hockey bags, strollers, and the rest of the crap we haul around with us?

Turns out, the answer is yes.

Truly, I love the Mazda 5 to death. Not only does it have more than enough space for us AND our stuff, but it doesn’t have that soul-sucking stigma that a minivan has, and it’s way better on gas. Here’s five things I love about my Mazda 5:

  1. It fits a full load (and I mean *full*) of groceries without flinching. I usually fold down one of the seats in the third row (it has a 50/50 split) and that together with the bit of space at the back is more than enough room. And, when I had to bring home new closet doors from Home Depot, to the amazement of the young fellow helping me cram them into the car, I managed to fit an 7′ x 4′ box into the Mazda and close the hatch by folding down every seat except the driver’s seat and the one directly behind the driver.

  2. Even with all the seats in use, there’s still plenty of room for day-to-day stuff. There’s just enough room in the back for a couple of grocery bags, or a folded up stroller, or a couple of backpacks, and it seats six quite comfortably. (Can you tell I have issues with space?)

  3. It has heart, and pep. I drove a little Mazda 323 for about a decade, and this car reminds me of why I loved it so. When you press the accelerator, it wants to go. It doesn’t feel heavy and lumbering like the minivan did. It feels, even with the automatic transmission, like you’re driving it instead of just steering it.

  4. It’s cheap to fill. The $75 fill-ups with the minivan made me choke every single time. The Mazda takes $45 to fill and I can get 500 to 600 km of city driving from that.

  5. I can park it easily and I don’t need a step-ladder to scrape the windows. The minivan was just a beast to manouever, and a bear to clean off in the winter time. I haven’t had to do anything more than an ice-scraping so far this year, but at least I can do that in a couple of minutes. And, I can reach the middle of the windshield!

185:365 My new Mazda 5!

In the interest of fair reporting, there’s a couple of things I’m still not quite sold on. The automatic wipers are a little flaky. The ride is not as smooth as that of the Grand Caravan — but to me, that just adds to the “driving instead of just steering” enjoyment of the ride. I miss the giant double glovebox of the Caravan and the extra space around the seats, and I think the middle seat might get a little messy in the winter with kids with snowy boots clambering over and around it to get to the back row of seats. Ingress and egress from the back is not bad, but was far easier in the Caravan.

We haven’t yet attempted a road trip with the Mazda, so that’s the last hurdle to be attempted before I give it a full five-star rating. When we bought it, the dealer threw in a free Thule roof rack system, so there *should* be plenty of room for our stuff. We’ll see!

In all, we had the minivan for exactly the time we needed it: our first year of adjusting to being a family of five. I’d read a lot of press on the Mazda 5 before we bought it, and many people opined that it would be a perfect car for a family of four but maybe not more than that. In all, I have to say that it is the perfect size for us. I may not feel that way when I’m the shortest one in the family, but I’ve got a couple of years left to worry about that!

Celebrating four decades with 5 things about Sesame Street

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the debut of Sesame Street. I love Sesame Street madly and deeply, and have since I was a preschooler. I may have mentioned that once or two dozen times before.

You know who else loves Sesame Street? My kids. Of all the children’s programming we have on DVD and tape, everything from Blues Clues to Looney Tunes to Pingu to Thomas the Tank Engine to the Schoolhouse Rocks series, the two things that Lucas wants to watch are the Muppet Show and “Bird.” Big Bird, that is. We have two old skool Sesame Street DVD collections comprising six disks of 1970s Sesame bliss, and they’re in nearly constant rotation at our place.

In honour of the best children’s program on television, here’s five things about Sesame Street.

  1. The same puppeteer, 75-year-old Carroll Spinney, has been playing Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch since Day 1. (Have you ever seen the very first episode, where Big Bird’s head is pointy and Oscar is orange? It’s very, um, disquieting.)

  2. In 2005, Cookie Monster went on a health kick and changed his iconic anthem from “C is for Cookie” to “A cookie is a sometimes food.” I think of this, together with the introduction of the inexplicably appealing but unbearably grating Elmo, as the show’s nadir in my own estimation. (Lucas, on the other hand, worships Elmo even though he doesn’t appear in the early episodes we watch on DVD. I saw a four-foot Elmo in the window of Mrs Tiggy Winkles and thought it would make a fun Christmas gift, until I choked on the $179 (!!!) price tag.)

  3. In its first season, the show won a Peabody Award, a Grammy and three Emmys, and Big Bird appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Sesame Street now holds the Guiness Record for most Emmy Awards, with an impressive 122. (Do the math — that’s an average of three each year for 40 years!)

  4. The guest star on Sesame Street’s first episode was James Earl Jones, long before he was the voice of either Darth Vader or CNN, reciting a very solemn alphabet directly into the camera. Apparently, the show receives more requests for guest-star spots than they can accomodate each season. Here’s the full list of celebrity appearances. And check out this terrific compilation by Musicradar.com of the 11 greatest Sesame Street guest songs — I think my inner indie fan loves the Feist and REM ones the best.

  5. The Old School DVD collections carry a disclaimer that says “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” I’m still perplexed by this. Is it the Ladybugs at the Ladybug Picnic discussing fire insurance? Is it the trippy, psychedelic animations? Is it the obvious Snuffleupagus-ism? Hell, I’d rather have the boys watching vintage Sesame Street than (insert name of any show produced by Nickleodeon or Disney here) any day.

And one bonus item: have you been watching the Sesame Street doodles on Google? If you’ve missed them, the Huffington Post has a slide show with all seven of them. The one with The Count is my favourite, I think.

(Hat tip to Shannon Proudfoot and her fun articles in the Ottawa Citizen this weekend, from which I filched some of the content for this post!)

Happy birthday, Sesame Street. 40 rocks!

Five ideas for family fun in Ottawa this Thanksgiving weekend

Looking for some family fun this Thanksgiving long weekend in Ottawa? Here’s five ideas! (Edited to add: please note this post was written in October 2009. The last four points still apply, but the Lego exhibit was, alas, in 2009 only. In 2012 I wrote a new post with five MORE ideas for Thanksgiving activities for families in Ottawa!)

1. The Lego exhibit at the Museum of Science and Technology. Free with museum admission, this is a wonderful exhibit in one of Ottawa’s best locations for family entertainment. We checked it out last weekend, and all three boys were thrilled with the hands-on Lego displays, and the amazing exhibits created by master Lego builders. They’ve put out separate tables of Lego for the big kids and Duplo for littler fingers. Even though we’ve got bin upon bin of Lego at home, we still spent the best part of an hour just in this part of the museum alone.

2. The butterfly exhibit at Carleton University. We tried this one year, but I’m just bug-phobic enough that I was uncomfortable with the idea of all those dangly legs and antennae. If you’ve got a higher threshold for insects, though, the kids will love having the chance to see so many beautiful creatures up close and personal.

3. Parc Omega. The fall colours are at their peak this weekend; why not drive the couple of hours out toward Montebello to visit Parc Omega? We visited last year around this time, and the scenery was spectacular. Here’s my post about Parc Omega from last year.

4. Saunders Farm. An Ottawa fall classic! There’s corn mazes, a Discovery Barn, a Barnyard Treehouse, a “haunted hayride” and — for the older kids — the Barn of Terror. We paid $60 for our family of five last year and found it was worth every penny. We might check it out ourselves again on Monday if the weather holds.

5.Take a hike! Let’s face it, the weather might not be ideal right now but the forecast calls for six months of winter, so you might as well get out and enjoy fall while it lasts! Two of our favourites are Mud Lake and Stony Swamp.

What are you doing this holiday weekend?

(Edited to add: Don’t forget to check out my updated post written in 2012 with five more ideas for Ottawa Thanksgiving fun for families!)

Five things that are freaking me out about H1N1

Are y’all feeling a little freaked out by H1N1, the so-called “swine flu”? I’m not usually one to get my knickers in a twist over the panic-du-jour (Y2K, avian flu, computer viruses — why are all the major media panic-attacks linked to either computer or human viruses anyway?) but this one is slowly but surely unnerving me.

Here’s five things that are freaking me out about H1N1.

1. Healthy 40-year-olds are apparently a high risk group, as are toddlers under two.

2. Schools may close, kids have to stay home for up to a week. So, I have an (extremely generous) one week of family-related leave, of which I’ve used most days already. One kid gets sick, needs to stay home for a week, then you know it will be exactly a week later when the next kid gets sick and has to stay home for a week, and there’s no chance that would coincide with whatever time the school is closed, and the nanny happens to be in another risk group so I need to consider protecting her… thank goodness for the generous leave, I couldn’t imagine facing it otherwise.

3. The seasonal flu shot may make you even more susceptible to H1N1.

4. I’m trying to keep the hyperbole from getting to me, but I do find myself conscious of all the shared surfaces I touch in a day — everything from the rails near the bus exit to the door handles at the Rideau Centre (I’ve actually started using my sleeve instead of my bare hand to push them) to the ATM keypad. It’s a slippery slope from here to OCD (and I haven’t even told you about my counting thing!)

5. I’m on the fence about the whole vaccination thing. I get most of the standard vaccines for the boys, and I’m mildly opposed to the Jenny-McCarthy-fearmongering that goes on around vaccines, but vaccinating Lucas for this one gives me the willies. Our family pediatrician doesn’t recommend the seasonal flu vaccine for kids who are otherwise healthy, but he does recommend H1N1 vaccination, which is enough for me. Almost. I read every word of every article like this one, though, trying to figure out which is the lesser of two evils. The one thing I can say is holy hell am I glad I’m not pregnant right now.

So what do you think? Will you get the H1N1 vaccine for yourself, and/or your kids? Is the hype getting to you, or are you rolling your eyes at the Chicken Littles among us? Have you made any other sorts of preparations?

Five things that are making me cranky

It’s Monday and I’m feeling peevish. Consider yourself warned. When I’m finally and properly annointed Queen of the Universe, here’s the first five things I’m going to fix.

1. Twitter and Internet Explorer 6.

For the last couple of weeks, Twitter has been on a campaign to kill IE6. In fact, it’s not just Twitter, it’s Internet-wide, but Twitter is being particularly annoying about it. I didn’t mind the constant message box at the top of my screen saying “There’s a better way to surf” but now they’ve moved the icon pictures over top of the text, so that the leftmost 20 per cent or so of the text is blocked. Dear Twitter, I *know* Firefox is better than IE, but my IT department disagrees. Please let me read my tweets in peace. I promise, we’ll upgrade sometime in the next decade. We’re on it!

2. Trying to leave a comment on Blogger.com blogs

Once upon a time I had a blogspot blog, but in 2007 I made the leap to WordPress and haven’t looked back since. Is it me or are blogspot/blogger.com blogs actually trying to make it as difficult as possible to comment? Blogger.com users, is there some way you can simplify your comment process? It’s so annoying that even if you’re one of my favourite bloggers, I’m not likely to bother leaving a comment if you’re on a blogger.com blog. It never remembers my info, I have to go through a ridiculous number of screens with captchas that only show up about half the time, and it’s an entirely far too convoluted process. And that’s for the ones where I don’t have to invoke my OpenID or worse, revert to my old Blogger.com ID because the blog is not open to non-google-account comments. Really? Life’s too short.

3. The new “coffee shelf” system at Tim Hortons

This one has been around a while, but seems to be spreading like H1N1. Now at Tim Hortons, instead of the clerk simply handing you your coffee at the cash register, you have to move two feet down the counter and pick up your coffee on the little coffee shelf. While I get that the intention is to keep the line moving along, if I’m still standing there fishing coins out of the bottom of my purse would it kill you to hand me my coffee where I’m standing? Do either of us really benefit from you walking down the counter to place it up on the shelf and me walking down the counter to retrieve it, and then me walking back to the cash where you’re already serving the next customer and double-checking “This is the one with three milks, right?” because you only have to walk all the way back to your office ONCE with somebody else’s double-double to make sure it never happens again.

4. Homework for five- and seven-year olds during the arsenic hours

Okay, so I’ve already whined about being on my own with all three boys three nights a week this semester, trying to cram in dinner and lunch-making and baby-herding and all the other joys that have to happen daily between when I get home from work and when Beloved gets home from work. I was just getting the hang of it all when suddenly it’s all out of control again, because we’ve added nightly homework to the mix. Because keeping Lucas off Tristan’s homework and keeping Tristan focused on his task and keeping Simon engaged in his task and keeping Lucas off Simon’s homework all while making dinner and empyting school bags and getting things organized for the next day? Every single night? Is going to make my head explode. Likely this week. It’s not even the homework I mind so much, as the fact that it’s interactive, parent-participatory homework. Sure, I’m all over staying involved in my kids’ education, but not to the tune of 20 minutes a night during the most horrific part of the day. Save me!

5. Loblaws

I really think they’re just existing to piss me off lately. I’ve been a loyal Loblaws shopper for years, but I really think it’s time to find another grocery store. I’m so sick of having my favourite products suddenly disappear, never to be seen again. And then, three or four weeks ago, they completely rearranged the inside of the Barrhaven store and I swear to god, I have not been able to find anything since. For someone who blazes through the grocery store as quickly as possible, using the store layout as a mnenomic device in lieu of a shopping list, usually with a cranky 19-month-old passenger throwing things out of the cart as fast as I’m putting them in, rearranging the store is about the most cruel thing you could possibly do. And then, I just read this weekend that the delicious SunTech tomatoes that are grown in Manotick, at most 10 km or so from my house, are now trucked to Loblaws via Ajax, outside of Toronto. Yes, they are shipped 350 kms to the west, to the main distribution centre for Loblaws, only to be trucked 350 kms BACK to Ottawa. And Loblaws still has the temerity to blithely label them “Grown Close to Home!” Gah!

That’s what’s twisting my knickers these days. What’s making you cranky today?