Many, many years ago, a new type of store opened in our fair city. The first of which that had the audacity to actually charge people for the honor to shop there. Being the curious yet cheap frugal person that I am, I insisted on having a closer look before committing myself. So I sauntered inside...

...and was unceremoniously kicked out for not having a Membership Card.

Harrrumph!!!! Like some kind of Secret Society, I wasn't even allowed a peek!

Well, that did it. As I stood empty-handed outside their doors I vowed then and there, "As God as my witness, I will never again step into Costco", dodged the onslaught of crazed shoppers like a lone salmon swimming upstream, and slunk off to Wal*Mart.

I stayed strong though; enduring years of family and friends raving about great deals, special items and Members Only Privileges. Then Daughter started going with her friends' families and providing first-hand praise... the pressure to succumb to the Dark Side became nigh-unbearable.

When it was discovered that as a healthcare worker, I was entitled to a discounted membership rate, I was done for.

So today in true Scarlett O'Hara fashion, I declared "Oh, fiddle-dee-dee" broke down, AND broke my Vow of Costco Abstinance.




It was quite the experience.

After hours of wandering around aimlessly pushing The Largest Cart I have ever attempted to manuever, I was sorely tempted for a bit of revenge by asking some poor Costco employee to get me down a box.

"No, not that one down here.

I want THAT one on the top shelf!"



Nah ... I couldn't.

But I also couldn't get over some of the merchandise.





Like cans of stewed tomatoes big enough to feed Italy.


Or crates of hockey sticks stacked above racks of fresh sliced bread.

Now I have to worry about the temptation of bulk shopping sprees resulting in the need for a larger van, bigger freezer and a whole lot more storage space in my home.

Oh, well. I'll worry about that tomorrow.

After all, "Tomorrow is another day!"

"Well, *I* haven't been sick in a long, long time!" I proudly declared to the dental tech cleaning my teeth.

"Oh, yeah" she continued. "There's been a really bad bug going around the office lately. The other girl got ill, then I was away yesterday, and we nearly cancelled your appointment today."

Scrape, scrape.

I glanced again at her.

Gloves. Check.

Mask. Check.

Whew. I sat back in the chair and relaxed. We moved on to other albeit one-sided-for-the-most-part conversations.

An hour or so later, I was outta there. Yay! No more medical appointments for me! After five visits, the work was finally all done. Now I could enjoy my weekend which, because it was early Friday afternoon, started just a wee bit early. Woot!

How wrong I was.

What started out as a sore throat Saturday has now blossomed into what suspiciously feels like strep throat again. Although "sore" throat doesn't quite describe it adequately.

Searing pain that travels from your throat up into your ears painful.

Pain reliever commercial "Lightning-Bolt" style painful.

Chewing-on-glass-shards painful.

Well, you get the gist.

Staying home from work yesterday and today because I basically can't talk, I was hoping this was just a simple cold. But no congestion, sneezing or runny nose... then I feared the flu; but other than severe larygnitis with a touch of fever and nausea, I don't think it's that either.

Aw crap.

Maybe I need to go to the doctor.


But I sure as hell am NOT going back to the dentist.

I thought my age was finally catching up with me.

That my mind was going.

And my family was convinced as well.

It started two nights ago. Because we have a long but thin driveway and three vehicles, we play musical cars each night to park in proper order for ease of escape the next morning. I moved the van so Daughter could park in front of me, then I plugged them both in (a necessity in Winnipeg winters if you actually expect your car to start the next morning).

And because I have just a titch of OCD (okay, perhaps a titch more than a titch), I always put my keys into the front pocket of my purse when I get inside.

But early the next morning as the rest of the family slept, I was running around madly, late for work, looking for my keys which seemed to have disappeared overnight.

I checked all my pockets. No keys.

I dumped my purse. No keys.

I dumped my briefcase. No keys.

I crawled on the carpet, running my hands under furniture, thinking the cats had perhaps mistaken them for their latest jangly plaything.

No keys.

Dammit. So I woke up Daughter for my spare set and dashed out the door, planning to resume the hunt that evening.

And hunt I did. I spent hours searching the house, kicking snowbanks around the driveway, even looking inside the fridge in case I had gone completely bonkers....

I racked my brain to try and figure out what the hell I did.

Then came the phonecall. Daughter was out for the evening and found my keys... in her purse. In a zipped pocket of her purse.

Aha! I wasn't going crazy after all! Ha! Ahahahahahaha!!!! Yesssss! Old Age hadn't got me yet!

There still was the question of how the keys got into her purse... she doesn't remember picking them up .... but she has been known to do some strange things in the middle of the night....

Regardless, I have now made certain I shall never accidentally misplace them ever again, at the same time ensuring daughter will be way too embarrassed to pick them up.

Even IN her sleep.

This past Christmas, I was worried.

Really worried... about a small gift I planned to stuff into Daughter's stocking. A pair of woollen mittens in the likeness of racoons.

Yeah, you read that right. Racoons. With big ears, telltale "eye masks" and black pompom noses.

By the way, my Daughter is 17. Not seven.

SevenTEEN.

I couldn't help myself; when I discovered them among other fleece-lined woollen cuties - green bulbous-eyed frogs, snakes with long braided tongues, brown monkeys, fuzzy teddy bears... well, I couldn't resist.

But then I worried she would be crushed on Christmas morning, thinking I still considered her a child. I almost didn't give them to her.

But I did.

And I needn't have been concerned. She loves her racoon mitts and wears them constantly.

I liked them too... so much in fact, that I wanted some to cover my very own cold hands. So after Christmas I treated myself to a set - but not racoons.

Then a few days ago I acquired a second pair. This time some sad-eyed skunks (because you can never have too many mitts when you live in Winnipeg).

It's easy to tell that these last ones are, in fact, skunks. Okay, easIER to tell when they aren't being smooched by a cat.



But I couldn't figure out what the heck my first pair were... I thought they were cute with beady eyes and long floppy ears. But I had thrown out the tag that revealed what they were supposed to be.


I finally DID discover what they are; but let me ask you. What do YOU think they look like?


Oh, and if you're going to tease me about wearing kiddie mittens... well, in my defence, if they weren't meant for grownups, they wouldn't make them in adult sizes.

So there.

Nyah.

Never.

Ever.

Try to drastically change your blog template unless you are on vacation for two weeks straight.

And are daft enough to actually waste those two weeks glued to your computer screen, that is. I wasn't THAT crazy. Oh no. I wasn't on vacation so I spent every frickin' evening and weekend day on this thing.

Fourteen days of cursing, swatting curious cats from the keyboard, the odd yelp of joy when something DID finally work, and various attempts of trying unsuccessfully to explain to my family exactly why I've been ignoring them for a fortnight.

I don't think they believed me. Especially hubby. Whenever I tried to convey my latest problem, his eyes would glaze over and he would simply respond with "so you're almost done?"

Yeah, I worked on this puppy until I was literally dreaming of code. But it was worth it. I still have to finish my "bling" page and some other minor things to work out, but I was bound and determined to get this up today.

I hope YOU thought it was worth it too.

Now I'm off for a stiff drink; and will be back with a regular post tonight.

Gad I hope it's still here when I get back!

As you can probably tell (gad, I HOPE so), things have been eerily quiet around here this past week. But that doesn't mean I haven't been blogging per se. Well, not posting I do admit, but I have been working on a fairly large and complex bloggity-project for days now.

Since I'm a glutton for punishment, I've been working every night on a new design for my blog. Hey, it's a New Year; time for a change, no? I have been revamping a template originally designed for Wordpress, so I've been re-coding and creating images so it'll work in Blogger. So far, so good, but it's not quite ready for you to see yet.

Think of it as RBB 2.0; soon to be released to the public. Once I am nearly done tweaking (I would never dare be so bold to say I was ever really finished), adding widgets and fixing errors I'll do a reveal. Hopefully in a few days.

So keep those fingers crossed that I don't blow the whole damn thing up...

And once I am sure it doesn't, I'll get back to my regular, non-regular posting schedule.

If the Internet can customize commercials as you surf, why can't television?

For instance, I lurrrve watching The Food Network.

Yes I AM a Foodie Junkie.

We even own a few celebrity cookbooks. (Okay, I have as yet to actually *ahem* USE them, but that's not important right now...)

Nevertheless, I can't think of anything better than a huge weekend brunch in front of the TV watching show after show from Ricardo, Giada, Nigella ...


... and especially Jamie. Talk about tasty.

Saucy, fresh and full of rich body.

Yummy.

And his recipes look good too.

Mmmmmmmm.....




Whaaaa?

Err, sorry about that.

But what grinds my gears are the commericals that run at each break. They leave a LOT to be desired:

• McDonald's
• Quaker Weight Control Oatmeal
• Gravol (WTF???)

But the absolute worst?

After watching chef after chef deftly grate huge blocks of hard parmesean, fresh mozerella and aged sharp cheddars all dripping from super sharp metal rasps, THIS is not the next thing I want to see:

Eww, Eww, EWW! After literally grating down the foot, they disassemble the human skin scraper and tap out THE MOST disgusting pile of greyish crap!!!!

Gaaaaaag!

I just lost my appetite.

I cannot fathom how the hell this is appropriate advertising.

No matter how cute Jamie is.

School, it seems is never out. At least for me.

Even on holidays like New Year's Eve.

Last night our annual home movie marathon was set to begin. This year though instead of movies, we had one of THE BEST comedies ever made stacked up and ready to spin.

Twenty-five disks of Get Smart. The original 1960s series from the comic genius of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

I knew we would never be able to watch them all, but we still looked forward to playing as many as humanly possible. However when we turned on the DVD player, there was no sound emanating from the stereo speakers.

Nada.

Ziltch.

Which was quite a conundrum, since it worked quite fine the day before.

And as he always does, hubby jumped to the conclusion that the cats had crawled behind the TV and unplugged the cables. I rolled my eyes because:

1) I'm the one who hooks up electronics around here and know the cables are all inside a cabinet

and

2) Cats don't have thumbs to actually pull cables out of sockets.

Smug satisfaction and and a well-placed "Told You So" came when I discovered hubby had left his headphone adapter jack in the stereo, thereby cutting off the speakers.

Ha! Hahahahahaha!

Sadly, I didn't laugh long.

2009 started off on a bad note as early this morning I couldn't connect to the net on my laptop. Oh the horrors! My wireless network wasn't even showing up on my system anymore. It was gone.

Nada.

Ziltch.

Which was quite another conundrum, since it had been working quite fine yesterday.

After hours of troubleshooting, phone calls to our internet provider, resetting the modem and router more times than I care to admit, and NEARLY pulling cables in the basement, I finally realized what the problem was.

The little button on my keyboard that activates the wireless was turned off. Which must have been pressed by Dakotah when she was taking her typical morning stroll on my laptop.


Stupid cats.

Lesson learned?

Don't tell hubby or I'll never hear the end of it.