I have been holding off on buying a Kindle (or any kind of e-reader) for months. I understand the appeal - takes up less space, download books instantly - but holding a book, smelling it, feeling the pages, is just part of the experience of reading that I love. Same goes for magazines and newspapers. I could subscribe to my favourite magazines on my iPod or read the news online, but it's just not as much fun if you can't cut out articles, sniff perfume ads or get newsprint all over your fingers. You can curl up in bed on a stormy evening with an electronic device instead of a book, but for me it's just not the same. I can't imagine reading The Night Before Christmas with Eli on an e-reader.

In some cases, I looove the new-fangled versions of things. Online banking, buying movie tickets, ordering clothes, Google Maps - all lifesavers. Other times, I like doing stuff the old-fashioned way.

I don't like Keurigs. I understand why people like them...in theory. Hundreds of yummy flavoured coffees that are ready to drink instantly. What's not to like? I'm by no means a coffee snob or purist. I will drink Maxwell House out of the giant can if that's what's available. But a Keurig is essentially just hot water poured through a plastic cup. It doesn't really brew. We had one at a previous workplace and I didn't like it at all. The coffee never seemed HOT and there was no happy little caffeine buzz. We have a Cuisinart coffee maker and it takes a few minutes for the pot to brew, but it's worth the wait.

I don't like electronic calendars. Google Calendar, iCal...don't like 'em. Don't trust 'em. Seeing my calendar with back-to-back meetings for a week in advance gives me the willies and it wouldn't matter if it were an emailed meeting request to go shopping with Kate Middleton, I HATE clicking "accept". I will always have a day planner and I will always write my appointments in it, same as I will forever and ever write my daily to-do lists in blue ink and cross things off with red.

I have a love-hate relationship with online recipes. When I cook or bake something I've usually found it here or here or here or through a random Google search that generates a gazillion recipes that all look amazing. I lug my dying laptop into the kitchen, set it up on the counter, and get to work. As a result, my computer is a shitshow. There's batter splatters all over the monitor and between the keys. I'm pretty sure cookie dough and cake batter has fallen into my keyboard and baked in there. Cookbooks and handwritten recipes are the way to go and I'm trying to amass a collection of tried-and-true favourite recipes on my trusty little 4x6" cards.

E-invitations give me the willies a little. Remember when you were small and your friends would give you invitations to their birthday parties? Or you'd receive an invitation to a wedding shower or a housewarming party? That never happens anymore thanks to Evite and Facebook Events. Which, again, I get it. It's convenient, it's free, it's the easiest way to get in touch with people (sadly) and it makes it effortless for even the slackerest of slackers to RSVP. I kind of miss getting formal invitations to things and sending them out as well. This leads me to birthday wishes in general. Getting 200 Facebook "happy birthday" wall posts from people you don't hear from 364 days of the year isn't as nice as getting just one birthday card, phone call, or face-to-face wish from a friend.

What about you - any old-fashioned things you can't bear to part with?

When you get married, people want to know when you're going to start having kids. You finally have one and you think, now people will STFU about our reproductive status. They do. For five minutes.

Eli was a whopping three months old when we started to hear it.

"Are you going to have another one soon?"

"It's easier to have them close together, you know...get everything out of the way at once!" 

"When are you going to have another?" 

"You want them to grow up together."

"You're 31 now, so really you have a few years left...you have time for one or two more, maybe even three!" 

It's amazing how EVERYONE ELSE knows what's best for you, isn't it? How casual acquaintances, random strangers and family members you haven't seen in years start offering advice on when your ute should be occupied and how many times. And I know as Eli gets bigger, it's only going to get worse. After all, each week that ticks by is another week Eli and his Phantom Future Sibling aren't going to GROW UP TOGETHER!

The truth? "Family planning" is just a hilariously-named drugstore aisle to us. We don't have a so-called plan for our family. Peter and I have never sat down and said, "OK, We're going to have X number of kids at Y intervals". We don't know if we're having more kids, period. Maybe we'll have three or four. Maybe Eli will be enough. Maybe we'll add another kid to our family and then call it quits. There is no "plan". We have been blessed with a beautiful, healthy, happy little boy - he's plenty for us. If we're blessed with another baby, great; if not, wonderful. We're having fun and we're happy.

As a friend put it recently, "there's nothing wrong with stopping at one." So, so true. However, the idea of an "only child" seems to be a foreign concept for many people. "But...but...he'd be so lonely without any brothers or sisters? Who would he play with?" horrified people ask. Ooooh...we never thought of that. We were just planning on keeping him penned up in the linen closet for the first two decades of his life. WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN WE FINALLY SET HIM FREE?

Will Little E be an only child? Or will he be the oldest in a baseball team-sized brood? We don't know.

Until you see me with an epidural stuck in my back, just assume there are no siblings on the way. And don't worry about it.

[+] Eli is super mobile now. He's getting to be really speedy at crawling, especially when he's heading for something he's not supposed to have. He's like a magnet when it comes to the dog's toys, the laptop cord, the water cooler, anything electronic, you name it, so sadly, baby gates are on the must-buy list for this weekend. Also, when I pick him up, his little front has dog fur stuck all over it no matter how much I Swiffer, so I feel like a dirtball. He just gets this wild look in his eyes and heads for the closest thing that he shouldn't be touching. You know how in interviews they ask celebrity moms how they stay fit, and the broad always gives some stupid response like "It's just from chasing after my kid", and you want to shake her and shout WHATEVER DJ TANNER? Maybe she's not lying after all. In the time it took me to write this paragraph I have had to run after Eli three times.

[+] Big Brother is good this season. Lots of drama already and it's only been a week. Staying up for Thursday's episode is a challenge because it doesn't end until 11:00 and that is waaaay past my bedtime. Anything in the double digits is pushing it for me. But can we talk about the use of "y'all" for a second? I get that it's a thing people say but last night Willie said "y'all" FIVE TIMES in one sentence. Is this normal? Wee bit excessive?

[+] I read The Marriage Plot last week and now I'm reading Then Came You. Anyone else read The Marriage Plot? Thoughts? I only liked one of the characters so that made it a little hard to get into.

[+] I went on a wild goose chase yesterday to get Tory Burch flats at a consignment store in town for $40. I missed them by 10 minutes :( But I've also been spending money like a Kardashian lately so I need to get that in check.

[+] Speaking of spending money, but only a little bit, Second Cup has Italian sodas for $1 until July 29. I had the lime the other day and it was like drinking a 7Up only way fancier and prettier. #treatyoself

[+] I haven't really talked about running since the Blue Nose. It's still a thing that happens. Last night I did 10K for the first time since running the half. My IT band feels a lot better as long as I keep foam rolling, doing stretches for my quads, and watching my stride. I'm all done at physiotherapy and now I'm just starting to work up to longer runs again. The weather has been hot which makes anything longer than four or five miles a challenge for me, but last night was perfect for running.

[+] Plans for this weekend include Friday night pizza party, going to the gym, babyproofing, Tall Ships festival and figuring out what to do with the container of raspberries in the fridge.

Happy Friday!

My mom never wore makeup when I was growing up. And I don't mean, "nothing except for a bit of powder and lipstick". I mean none. Zip, zero, zilch. The closest thing we had to makeup in the house was ChapStick. I always imagined other girls got makeup tutorials from their moms, while I was floundering in Shopper's Drug Mart with my allowance in my pocket, unsure of where to begin.

The first time I tried eye shadow was at my friend's house. She had an entire drawer of makeup we were playing with. I loaded up the applicator with a nice violet hue and gave my eyes a huge swipe...underneath. I looked in the mirror. It didn't seem quite right. "What are you doing?" my friend screeched at me. "You look like you got punched." I just laughed like it was intentional, wiped it off, and vowed to figure out how to wear eyeshadow like a champion.

I read YM and Seventeen every month for tips. I pored over articles detailing how to apply eye makeup based on your eye shape: almond-shaped, close-set, wide-set, hooded. Then I looked in the mirror. I couldn't (and still can't) identify my eye shape. I just see my eyes, not one of the illustrations from the article.

I winged it. I covered up things that needed to be covered with concealer (the wrong shade). Mascara was pretty much a no-brainer. I steered clear of anything that required precision to apply and learned quickly that I'm not a dark lipstick kind of girl. In the early 2000s, I discovered bronzer, which, unfortunately, does not come with instructions. And so I paraded around, winter, summer, spring and fall, with my whole face the same uniform shade of brown, except for my eyelids, which were usually a shockingly pale and frosty pastel shade. Why why why why why? I amassed a huge makeup collection, every garish colour and hideous texture you could imagine. There was glitter, there was shimmer, there were metallics, and the bronzer, ALWAYS THE EFFING BRONZER.

A few years ago I threw out 90% of my makeup. No more coloured mascaras and teal eyeliner and muddy lipsticks and glittery glosses. My new, pared down collection looks really skimpy by comparison, but at least it's comprised of products that don't make me look like a demented clown.

I'm still more or less clueless when it comes to makeup. I still don't know what shape my eyes are. I can't do a smoky eye, or apply eyeliner without looking like I was drunk driving at the time. I haven't mastered the knack of wearing red lipstick. I don't know how to contour properly or apply foundation with a brush. False lashes? Forget about it. I don't love makeup. I think of it as a necessity. I don't enjoy putting it on - it's like wearing deodorant or brushing my teeth. I don't "play" with makeup. I've never been in a MAC store, and Sephora is scary and overwhelming for me. That said, there have been times when a certain product has made me feel just a smidge more confident or polished. I don't usually wear any lipstick, but when I do, I feel "done".

Am I embarrassed when an 11-year-old girl looks more put together than me? Maybe a little. Would I rather be spending more time than absolutely necessary in front of the mirror to look presentable? Absolutely not. I just shoot for somewhere in the middle of "troll" and "Barbie". It seems like a happy medium.

Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop prompt this week is to list the seven worst things about being an adult. It was surprisingly hard to come up with seven things that are really terrible about being grown up, but here are some of the worst.

1. No more summer vacation. Even if you take a week or two of your hard-earned vacation days during the summer, it's not the same as having a full two months off in the summer to do absolutely nothing but eat Mr. Freezies, ride bikes and build sand castles. The craziness of the work days leading up to and immediately following a vacation of any length makes it almost not worth it. Basically, any vacation you have to earn is not a vacation.

2. When you get sick, you have to get your own ginger ale. One of the "nicest" memories of being sick when I was small was my mom making sure I was comfortable, whether it meant soft PJs and a good book, a cool washcloth for my head, or a bottomless glass of ginger ale. Luckily my husband is also a good nurse, but if he happens to be working, there's nothing quite like making a dash to Shopper's in between bouts of puking to get your own ginger ale.

3. Certain behaviours become creepy. You shop at Garage and you have to pretend you're shopping for your teenage niece. You're itching to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair so you sneak on with a random 7-year-old in hopes people will think it's some kid you're looking after. You want to read the Hunger Games but can't find it at the bookstore? Well, that's because it's in the Young Adult section. Right next to Twilight. And just like that, you become one of those women.


Ditto for having One Direction/Justin Bieber/Carly Rae Jepson on your iPod. You know I have all three.

4. Paying adult fares for everything. A seat at the movies is a seat at the movies, yet the kiddies and the old folks get a sweet discount. And who hasn't wanted to order the bug-shaped mac-and-cheese off the kid's menu for $3.99, but you can't because you're over 12? Us in-betweeners get the shaft.

5. Successful people who are younger than you and make you feel inadequate. I never feel quite so unaccomplished as when I read a story about some whiz kid billionaire raking in the dough off some cockamamie scheme he probably dreamed up while trippin' balls in his dorm room. Or when I see some starry-eyed 25-year-old author signing copies of her best-selling novel. Or when I go to have a baby and the frigging doctor is younger than me. It makes me feel like an elderly unachiever.

6. Your alcohol tolerance plummets. You know those nights when you're a young pup and it's like "I CAN'T GET DRUNK, NO MATTER HOW MUCH I DRINK! TEE HEE! LET'S DO MORE SHOTS!" and you wake up the next day with rum actually seeping out your pores...but you feel fine? Well, that must be awesome, says the old lady who had like four glasses of wine at a wedding last Saturday and spent half of Sunday with her face in the toilet. The upside: going out is much cheaper.

7. So does your metabolism. I used to eat fast food at least once a day and ate whatever I wanted, 100% of the time, without thinking about it. People would say things like "That's going to catch up to you one day!" And I was all, "TEE HEE! LET'S DO MORE SHOTS!" And then it caught up. Don't get me wrong, I still eat what I want to but then I have to run 59710134 miles to burn it off, or cancel out a French fry binge with salads the next day. Waaaaah. "Enjoy your vegetables, ANGELA LANDSBURY" says my 17-year-old toothpick self.

There are so many things about Eli right now that I don't want to ever forget. He'll be eight months old tomorrow and it's such a fun age. I feel like I say that about all the ages, but really, he keeps getting more and more awesome to be around.


Here are some of the things I want to remember:

The crazy way his hair stands up like a fluffy dandelion on top.
The way he giggles, babbles, sings and coos when he's having fun.
The way he waves his arms when he gets excited, like a bird flapping his wings.
The chubbiness of his feet and legs. Oh, those thigh rolls.


His ticklishness and the cackly giggle he does when you tickle him.
The way he thrashes his arms and legs around when you throw a blanket over him and ask, "Where's Eli?" And the huge smile you get when he finally pops out.
How he dances to any and all music. He's not picky about the genre. He just likes to bop.
The way he's just as amused with a napkin or a plastic water bottle as he is with the fanciest toys.
The way he rips apart his alphabet mat every single day.
The way he freaks out in the bathtub every evening, as if each bath is the BEST. TIME. EVER.
How he giggles at the dog whenever we come downstairs and pulls on his ears whenever he can get ahold of them.

Eli turns eight months old tomorrow. I'm happy I've been able to spend the past eight months with this little guy and am looking forward to our summer together.

2012 is halfway gone. As the French say, "Qu'est-ce que fuck?" How did THAT happen?

Back in January, I made a list of monthly goals for the year. The halfway point seems like a good time to check in and see how I'm doing.

January - Start using my slow cooker more. SUCCESS!
Leave it to me to succeed at a goal that involves eating. Throughout the winter, we enjoyed at least one slow-cooker meal a week and I found some good new recipes. Thank you Pinterest and this blog for the delicious meal inspirations!

February - Try a new exercise class or a new workout video at home. SUCCESS-ish...
In February I started training for the half marathon, so I was running four times a week and I didn't really try any new workouts. However, sometime in the first half of this year I downloaded and started using the Nike Training Club app which I have sung the praises of on here many times already. But seriously, I can't believe this app is free. You should get it. So this goal was a success, just maybe not within the month of February.

March - Do a super duper spring cleaning. SUCCESS but it took a brazilian years.
I started in March with one of those "one chore a day to a deep cleaned home" lists. The trouble with those lists is that by the time you get halfway through, the first things you did need to be done again. But I did it and finished up in April sometime. I think the only thing I forgot to do was polish the wood. And really, who cares about polishing wood? What is this, Victorian-era England? Should I just shine the silver and boil the bedding as well?

April - Take a mom and baby class with Eli. FAIL
Sorry Eli.

May - Run the Bluenose 10K. SUCCESS!
I ended up doing the half marathon so it was a success-PLUS. So that makes up for being a shit parent in April and neglecting my baby's social development.

June - Take a trip to somewhere new. FAIL.
We went to the Bel-Air for fried clams instead of Fred's. I don't think that counts.



This is how I vowed to punish myself over the rest of 2012.

July - Wear a two-piece to the beach
Ughhhh is all I have to say about this.

August - Buy groceries at the farmer's markets and from local producers
Another food-related one, so I'll probably win.

September - Complete a home renovation project
Sooo many ideas for this!

October - Get a makeover
This one sound fun. New clothes and a new haircut? How is this even a goal?

November - Plan Eli's first birthday party
I'm already stalking Pinterest for ideas as I cry into my keyboard about my little boo turning one.

December - Volunteer
Looking forward to this as well. The best part of doing good deeds around Christmastime is you can reward yourself with Bailey's and eggnog.

I had a bit of a come-to-Jesus with the ol' blog last week. I was getting fed up with the whole blogging thing and feeling like I don't have anything interesting to write about. I debated shutting it down, starting from scratch elsewhere, you name it...and then it broke, and I got sad, and I decided she's not going anywhere. There's a lot of history on here! I got engaged, got married, had a bebe, got a dog, all documented here in this little blog. I can't get rid of her. I made it private for the long weekend so you all couldn't see the fustercluck design while I was off gallavanting on the beach. Fortunately, Blogger seems to have gotten its act together over Hoser Day Weekend and things are running tickety-boo again.

Speaking of Hoser Day weekend, it was great. We enjoyed our first mini-vacation away as a family of three. There was beach time, pool time, eat-your-body-weight-in-fried-seafood time - all the essentials of a good long weekend. Step One in making Eli a water baby is complete. He loves swimming, splashing, and eating sand. He is his mama's child.

Other than vacation, I have been busy lately...

• going to physio and whipping my IT band back into shape
• running and thrusting around awkwardly in my basement, AKA doing the Nike Training Club App workouts
• baking blueberry-banana oatmeal  (the recipe is all about strawberries but I blueberried it up)

•  buying dresses with palm trees on them. I don't even know.

• I feel like time is flying by too quickly. My little boy will be eight months old next week. 
• I feel COMPLETELY out of touch. For example, every time I go downtown I have a five-minute panic attack where I cannot decide what is appropriate to wear. Maternity leave + living in the suburbs = I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE KIDS ARE WEARING THESE DAYS. I feel like all my clothes are wrong and I have nothing to wear. 
• I'm excited for Big Brother, the Olympics, the wedding we'll be attending this weekend and the Dark Knight Rises.
• I'm bothered by the article I read last week claiming fake tans are carcinogenic. As in, spray tans and self-tanners. Self-tanners which I've been using since 1999 BECAUSE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE. So I've been Oompa-Loompa orange for more than a decade for no reason. 

How YOU doing?