Raisinpie

After much thought I have finally come up with some New Years goals. Last year I knew right away (to stop purchasing scratch & win and lotto tickets) I succeeded for the most part. I still buy for the lotteries when they are over 20 million, which doesn’t happen very often. So I think I have saved around $300 dollars in the year 2009 from limiting my lottery ticket spending.

But this year I was having some difficulty  coming up with goals. Alas drum roll please:

• To eliminate soda pop from my diet (club soda is still good)
• To limit my milk intake to chai lattes and cereal (when and if I eat cereal most cereal tastes like nothing)
• To stop being so hard on myself. (I’m crazy I feel guilty when I am away from work. I have gained weight this year rather then losing.)
• To blog weekly about my knitting which is what this site is suppose to be about but it has diverged into something else that really no one but myself reads.

Like I mentioned these are goals not resolutions. I am attempting to change some habits. Supposedly it takes 30 days to change a habit. Wish me luck folks.

KNITTING

I am knitting Isobel.  This is a small shawl designed by Scotlands Ysolda. Here is the link to her blog http://ysolda.com/wordpress/.

I was eating a bag of baked/salted broad beans yesterday afternoon and I started to question, What is a Broad bean? Is it a lima bean? Hmmm so I visited that wonderful source, the internet and Wikipedia and discovered that there are many many names for Broad Beans “Broad Bean, Fava Bean, Faba Bean, Field Bean, Bell Bean or Tic Bean ” Wikipedia and they are indigeonous to Africa but grow everywhere.

I also discovered after I had polished off half a bag of these broad beans that they are a natural alternative to Viagra “Some also use fava beans as a natural alternative to drugs like Viagra, citing a link between L-dopa production and the human libido” Wikipedia………….. that is when I put the broad beans away for another day. I sat for a few minutes to determine if I felt friskier then normal but alas nothing. It is humorous to think about though. Eat your broad beans and come back to life! Tee hee

On other sillyness I accidently covered my hands in a version of crazy glue. It was another brand name which I can not remember right now. Anyways I left the house right on time got my son to his destination on time and thought to myself, Safeway is open lets buy some glue inwhich to fix my boots. I purchased the glue, sat in my van with my foot on my lap and proceeded to open the glue container, glue the flappy thing on my boot and put the cap back on the container of glue only to realize my hands were sticky!? I grab my liquid hand sanitizer and rubbed it all over my hands in a feeble attempt to remove the glue. I read the label and discovered I needed to call the poison centre. I raced home, jumped out of my van, ran to the house, flung my coat of and ran a sink full of hot soapy water while I hunted for my phone book. (I have 5 phone books right now….what’s up with that??).

My telephone call to the poison centre began with, “Hi my name is Ilona and I’m (insert age) and basically I’m an adult but I just put crazy glue all over my hands… by accident. I was fixing my boots and well now things aren’t working out so well.” The fellow on the other end was very patient and didn’t sound like he was laughing at all. He told me to wash my hands in hot soapy water and then to coat them in vasoline. Yup vasoline. Well it worked and I am happy to report I am now crazy glue free….yeah!

Then I came to work sat down and got my period. All in one day. This is the life I lead….it’s rather odd sometimes and very very very busy.

Recently my son’s teacher has been reading the Witches to the class and my son has been questioning me about how I would feel if a witch changed him into a mouse. Hmm well I wouldn’t be overly pleased. Well last night (Sunday & bath night) my son told me, his brothers and his Grandma why he didn’t think he needed to have a bath.

At supper time I mentioned to my young son that he was to have a bath tonight before bed as it’s Sunday and tomorrow is a school day. He replied with this very detailed reason as to why he didn’t think it was a good idea for him to have a bath….My son said that witches can smell ‘clean’ kids but they can’t smell dirty kids because the kids smell like dog pooh and witches don’t like dog pooh but they can smell clean kids. And then something about  how would I feel if a witch came and turned him into a mouse (again with the mouse) because he had a bath.

My Mom was sitting beside me swallowing her chuckle and his older brothers were looking at him munching on pizza and I must have had a WTF look on my face. I had food in my mouth and was trying not to choke, but once the food was swallowed I could not hold back the laughter. My young son gets a gold star for the best excuse I have ever heard for not having a bath…It was the best.

I was on-course yesterday so was not in the office. As a result I missed all the action. Here in my corner of the world, there was a hostage situation (read here http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/hostage+taking+ends+peacefully/2128080/story.html). My office building is directly north of the WCB building and according to my colleagues our building was evacuated around noon. My understanding of what happened….

• 8:30 am police cars were cutting off colleague from having a smooth uneventful drive to work.
• Once at work colleagues were looking out the south facing windows trying to figure out why there were police officers with big guns, and people were leaving the building…fast.
• A short time later, the building manager came flying in the office and told  everyone with a south facing office to close their curtains, turn the lights off, get away from the windows and shut the doors.
• The building was evacuated around noon and no one could get to their cars and had to find alternative ways home. According to one colleague she said it was like a ghost town when she left the building except for the police there was no one else around.

While this was all happening, I was in an all day workshop, on the southside of the city and didn’t have a clue what was happening downtown till 5 pm. I drove by on 109st and thought look at all the cop cars much be a bomb scare. Well it was a scare but not a bomb scare. I didn’t find out until I got home and switched on the tv to check the news and then called a few colleagues on the telephone. Everyone in office is a-okay.

My corner of the world is still my corner of the world but yesterday the whole world was watching and I didn’t even know what was going on as I was learning about ‘The Art of Difficult Conversations’.