Dear Internet,

I'm sorry that I've been neglecting you recently. I've been very busy unpacking and assembling Ikea furniture. The picture on the bottom left-hand corner illustrates exactly how I feel whenever I assemble Ikea furniture:



The kitchen and bathroom are done, the bedroom is almost done, and the living room needs lots of work still.

A lot of people in this neighbourhood stop to talk to me. Most of these people are old men.

Things will get back to normal soon and I'll be online more. Apparently I missed some drama in p101 about poop in a pack and play??? LOL.

Yours Truly,

Saraline

Does anyone in Montreal want a free patio table with chairs? The table is a bit wobbly but the chairs are very sturdy. The set is stainless steel.

I also have a bird cage for small birds. I used to have finches and it's also a good size for a budgie.

I'm busy packing up my bedroom today, and it's the last room I have to do, and then I'll just have last minute stuff to pack on my last day here. I'm so excited, but it's so much work! I can't believe how much I've got done already.

There are lots of things to see and do in Montreal. I'm particularly proud of my neighbourhood park, which is Jarry Park. I also like taking them to whatever festivals are happening at the time. Last year when my Gramma and sister Mackenzie came, we did the Fantasia Film Festival, the Jazz Festival, and the Fireworks Festival all in one day.

I like to take people to my favourite restaurants. There's Mazurka on Prince Arthur, which is a Polish restaurant. They have fantastic perogies! If we just want to stay in the neighbourhood, we either take a short walk or order delivery from Sady's on Liege. Their burgers and fries are superb. I think they make their own hamburger patties. They also put coleslaw on the burgers, which may sound strange, but it's so yummy. When my dad was here, he tried an all-dressed burger with the coleslaw, and he liked it so much that he now puts coleslaw on his burgers at home. For breakfast, I like to take people to Las Palmas on Jarry. It's a Salvadorian restaurant and I looooooove their breakfast. I'm going to miss being so close to Sady's when I move, but I'll be a bit closer to Las Palmas.

Is this person serious? Why would anyone pay those prices for something that's so easy to make yourself and made out of STRING? How much time and effort does it actually take to braid hemp?

That braided hemp keychain is the same price as this awesome diaper cover that I saw on etsy today. I know which one I'd rather spend eight bucks on.

In all the excitement over the new apartment, I forgot to mention that I saw a filming of Just For Laughs Gags at the park yesterday. I've lived in Montreal for four years, I think, and this is the first time that I've seen this. (For non-Canadians reading this, Just For Laughs Gags is a candid-camera show where they play pranks on supposedly unsuspecting people. Just For Laughs is a comedy festival in Montreal.) I've always hated this show. It's just not my kind of humour. My old roommate Kate thought that the people getting pranked were stupid. "Oh, I came to Montreal for a comedy festival, and now there's a 100 dollar bill on the sidewalk attached to a string. I think I'll chase it!"

Well, it was pretty obvious what they were doing. There were two cameras in full-view and a sign that said, "Caution, Just For Laughs Gags filming in progress." The people on the show are obviously getting pranked on purpose. In my opinion, this makes the show even more lame. Like, lamer than lame.

I stayed far far away after I saw the sign, so I didn't see what prank they were doing.

I took a long nap with Eliot and had a weird dream. I currently live in a co-op and I'm moving out in July. In my dream, the guy who lives downstairs (co-op president) came upstairs and told Adam and me that we had to leave two weeks early and we had signed something agreeing to this. Adam was like, "What the fuck, Saraline, why didn't you tell me about this?" I was like, "This is the first I've heard of it!" I went outside to argue with the neighbour and insisted that I had signed no such agreement. He didn't seem to have this agreement to show to me. He said I had to move out two weeks early because it was the law and I'd only paid half the rent for June. I was sure I had paid the full rent. I said we'd see what the police thought, and called the police.

While waiting for the police, I woke up inside the apartment. Adam asked what happened about the moving out two weeks early thing. I said, "I don't know, I was waiting for the police and then I woke up in here, so I thought it was a dream! But if you remember it too, then it must not be a dream!"

The next section of the dream was pretty hazy. After the hazy part, I went to the store to get jelly donuts. The woman who usually runs the dep by my place was there, but she was training a teenage girl. They didn't have donuts but it looked like they had squares, but I couldn't really see them because there was a window with a lot of condensation on it in front of the squares. I kept asking what the different squares were and the teenage girl was getting really annoyed. I finally picked something that cost five bucks and something, and gave her a twenty along with some change so I could just get 15 back. She gave me a couple nickles and pennies back. I said, "Can I have my 15 bucks please?" and she said, "Oh, this 15 bucks?" and put it in her pocket. We started arguing and swearing at each other. The owner of the store looked apprehensive. The teenage girl stormed into the back of the store. I asked the owner if I could use the phone to phone the police. She said, "I'm going to call the police, in case she's trouble when I fire her!"

While she was calling the police, a random man came up beside me and grabbed an unimportant paper out of my hand. I glared at him and took it back. He said, "Oh, I thought it might be a prescription for some nice drugs." We joked about that for a bit, and then he said, "Don't you recognize me? I'm the bear!" Random flashback of answering the door to someone in a bear costume who ran away. Me, in awe: "You're the bear?"

End of dream.

The bear? The bear????? Whut? And why did I keep calling the police?

Wish me luck!

I don't want to go into the back-story because I might jinx it. But wish me luck anyway?

*keeps fingers crossed*

I got a message from someone on a dating website saying "hi" today. I looked at his pictures, and my reaction to the first three pictures was, "Ewwwwwww."

The fourth picture was a picture of him without his shirt. This shirtless pic caused me to have mixed feelings.

Then I thought about this journal's "who would you do Wednesday" days and how jstar22 often made her choice based on who had better hair. (This dude has terrible hair.)

Hmmm. Hot body, but bad hair. He has a really bad really short haircut and it looks like he puts oodles of gel in it. GROSS.

But he has Brad Pitt's torso. Hmmmmmmmm. I don't know what the rest of his body looks like though. Maybe he has chicken legs. Maybe his personality should factor into this sizing up of him. Oh wait, he doesn't seem to have any. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

PROS
-Brad Pitt torso

CONS
-hair
-no evident personality
-bad fashion sense

I'm still conflicted. On the one hand, I'm a responsible mom who shouldn't be running around chasing Brad Pitt torsos. On the other hand, I'm not really chasing him because he messaged me first.

Okay, the cons win. He looks like someone who's cologne would be way too strong on top of everything anyway.

I spoke with my mom yesterday and she told me that she was hanging the laundry up outside when she heard a strange knocking sound. She looked by the steps leading up to the deck and saw a snake with a snail stuck to its head. The snake was trying to get the snail off. My mom tried to get the snail off for it, but it quickly slithered away and hid under the deck.

I said, "Wow, you weren't scared of touching the snake?"

She said, "Well, I didn't touch it with my hands! I used a hockey stick." I started laughing.

"No wonder it hid under the deck!" I said. "I would've done the same thing if you were coming after me with a hockey stick!"

My mom was silent. I guess she didn't think it was that funny.

This video is cute. It made me smile and want to dance even though today is kind of crappy.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

( Who comments the most on this journal? )

Three people on my friend's list have dyed their hair red in the past 24 hours. I did that once! :) It was fun, but it was kind of a pain in the ass for me to maintain. I'm low-maintenance. I've been back to brunette for awhile now. I hope you all enjoy your new red hair.

Freya and Eliot get along well. She's surprisingly gentle with him. She taught him how to pet her by walking back and forth under his outstretched hand. She sits patiently and lets him pet her and sometimes she even purrs. Sometimes he pulls on her but she's very tolerant of him. He pulled out one of the whiskers above her eyes one day and she flinched but didn't bite him or scratch him. She does take it out on me and bites me when she's fed up with him though.

She's also kind of dumb. She'll go and lay down underneath him when he's in his jolly jumper and then she gets upset because he keeps jumping on her. Silly cat.

My dad's car got stolen. He got a rental and got rear-ended. Then they found his car, and it was only damaged around the lock. The only things missing were his GPS and his sunglasses. He found out on youtube that his car is very easy to steal and it can be stolen within 10 seconds. He's getting a club for his steering wheel now. The funny part is that when it was stolen, he had parked it in front of a courthouse and it was surrounded by police cars. He's lucky that he doesn't live in Montreal. This is what we do to police cars in Montreal:



(I still get a kick out of those videos a year later, although I could do without the commentary.)

3 am snow removal. Yuck. I especially hate it when they keep going back and forth up the street for an hour. I'm so glad it's over until next winter. *knock wood*

I really like the old cartoons that King of Cartoons brings on Pee-wee's Playhouse. This one is cute:



On Pee-wee they cut it off about halfway through so this is the first time I've seen the cat sitting on top of the bowl. That part reminds me of Freya sitting somewhere where she shouldn't be and looking smug.

I understand wanting a natural birth or a home birth. What I don't understand is wanting to keep the placenta. What would you do with it? Blow it up like a balloon at your kid's birthday parties? Wouldn't a picture of the newborn baby be nicer?

Someone posted a picture of their placenta in the natural birth community when I was pregnant and I actually had nightmares. I dreamt that I'd had the baby but the placenta didn't come out and it was still inside of me forever. One of the first things I asked after giving birth was, "Did the placenta come out?" I didn't keep it, and good riddance!

Eliot has hated baths since he was born. Bathing him makes me feel like I'm torturing him because he screams his little head off. Today I got smart and took a bath with him. It was a lot better. We got in and I started washing him, and when he started to cry, I just put him on the boob. I washed the rest of him while I was breastfeeding. When he was done, I put him back in the water and we played with his ducks and I showed him how to splash the water. He loved it! He was actually laughing in the bath tub! This way was a lot easier than trying to hold a screaming, thrashing, slippery baby while making sure that he doesn't kick his baby bathtub over.

It sounds like someone in my building is having a drum circle. WTF, Tam Tams is on Mont-Royal.

When I was pregnant, my mom sent me a shit-load of my books from when I was a kid. There were even a couple of books that belonged to my dad. I think it's cool that Eliot now has books that belonged to his grandpa when he was a little boy.

I've been reading them to him for awhile, but until a couple of weeks ago I wasn't sure if he was actually interested in them or if he just liked the sound of my voice. My mom and my aunt were both laid off recently, and my uncle has fewer obligations at work, so they decided to start an online family book club. The book we're starting with is Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden. (It was an excellent book, by the way. I liked it much better than the other book I've read by him, Three Day Road.) I knew that the only way I'd get through this book with a baby around was to read it out loud to him, and guess what? He was looking at the book to see if there were pictures! He was a bit disappointed that there weren't any and looked away.

It's funny that something so small can seem to be so amazing.

Anyway, I think he likes stories that rhyme the best, so I've been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss and Jillian Jiggs.

Susan (Adam's mom) sent this to me this morning. It's pretty funny.

why moms can't do yoga


*dies of cute*

I just breastfed Eliot for like three hours. I fell asleep at one point and when I woke up he was still latched on! He's going to be enormous tomorrow.

I'm typing this while breastfeeding because that's all I do these days. Eliot is teething AND having a growth spurt. My nipples want to cry.

He has one of those aquarium things on the side of his crib that light up and play music. I couldn't figure out how to get the thing to work. Adam couldn't turn it on either. The other day I put Eliot in his crib, and guess what he did? He turned the aquarium on! Now I feel old and dumb.

He still likes his jolly jumper. I put Pee Wee's Playhouse on when he's jumping and he laughs and laughs. It's a show that I can enjoy watching with him.

My step-dad and step-brother are both on facebook. I think that my step-dad tries to embarrass my step-brother on purpose. I just saw this on my step-brother's wall:

Happy Valentines Day "Punkindoodles"!

from yer Pops

Haha.

Have I mentioned that my mom got laid off? It may or may not be temporary. She was thinking of going back to school, but the colleges in her area offer courses to become things like millwrights and engineers. These are jobs that would be needed in factories but all the factories are closing. She's a little stressed out.

My dad and step-mom went back to work after xmas. My step-dad got a job at a water treatment facility. People may not need new cars, but they'll always need clean water!

Eliot's growing fast and I have to get him bigger diaper covers. I'm trying to decide between sticking with super brites or switching to apple cheeks. (The diaper service is giving me a choice.) With the super brites I would have to go up another size after this one. The apple cheeks are adjustable so he would be in them until he was potty trained. But apparently the apple cheeks might need inserts??? I don't know anything about inserts. The super brites are easy to use and I haven't had any problems with them other than the fact that Eliot keeps growing out of them. The apple cheeks are apparently manufactured in Montreal and it's good to support local businesses but I find the concept of inserts to be perplexing. What are they for? Why would a diaper cover need them? I don't know! Maybe I'll get a few of both so I can try the apple cheeks out and if I don't like them I can stick with the super brites.

This was probably a boring entry for people who aren't into cloth diapering.