Randoms

What’s that? You’re tired of looking at a post of me whining about my husband’s (really ugly) facial hair? Ok…

• We had our youth retreat this past weekend, and as per usual, had a crapload of fun. We had an awesome speaker, incredible weather (14 degrees!), and an action packed weekend away together.  Preparing for a retreat is one of the most exhausting things I do in my life, and leading up to it, I’m usually so swamped I don’t have time to look forward to anything we’ll be doing.  But once we’re up there, settled into our cabins, I usually take a few minutes by myself, sitting in the lodge where we meet and just get ready for what lay ahead in the next 2 days.  I sleep terribly on retreats, and usually by about 2 pm on Saturday I’m ready to curl up in a ball, but they are SO.WORTH.IT.  I love our youth, and I love our retreats.  But can I also say that I LOVE getting home on Sunday afternoon, and partaking in Ben and my’s usual “home from a retreat” ritual?  We shower, order a pizza, get a movie and then crash on the couch the rest of the night.  The feeling of being able to relax, veg out and know there are no looming deadlines is such a sweet feeling. 
• Ben is on a sugar fast.  For a few reasons – one because he just wants to spend more time thinking about God’s work in his life and thinks that this will be a good reminder.  And two, because he knows how crappy sugar is for you and actually has the discipline to make a healthy choice.  I say “good for him!”, but do you know how much MORE guilty one feels when they want to stuff their face with ice cream, cookies, halloween candy, etc only to have one’s husband politely decline the offer?  I can almost HEAR his heart getting healthier, while mine continues to beg me to stop clogging it’s arteries.  Overall though, it has been a good exercise for me too – it’s made me SO much more mindful of the fact that there is refined sugar in EVERYTHING.  Perhaps one of these days I’ll do something about it, other than shrug my shoulders and go “meh”.  Seriously though, Ben has set a great example of discipline and healthy choices and I think it will be something we push for as a family. 
• I played Christmas music for the first time on Monday.  It felt great.  I know, I know, big deal…everyone’s feeling the Christmas spirit these days.  But do you want to know what did it for me?  Going grocery shopping and buying our first box of clementines of the season.  Nothing to me screams “it’s mid-November….start getting excited!” than eating a teeny-tiny orange (which are WAY easier to peel than real oranges, in my opinion) and then having my fingers smell like Christmas for the rest of the day.
• Ben and I have a new game!  We’ve managed to find pockets of time over the past few weeks to hang out (amidst busy schedules and his dirty moustache preventing me from wanting to sit across from him), and it’s been great.  We’ve been playing Monopoly Deal (thanks to Phil and Sheena for that find).  It’s a card version of Monopoly and for the first 4 times we played, Ben won.  And I’ll be honest when I say that the third time he won, I got GA-rump-y.  Like for real grumpy.  Like I didn’t talk to him for a few hours after, and I tried to justify my bad mood by other things because I really didn’t want to admit that I was pretty mad about losing a card game.  But I was.  Since then though, I’ve gotten over myself, and we have played a few games most nights.  (And my losing record has drastically subsided thankyouverymuch).

Well, there you have it, the randoms in my life these days.  See you soon!

Annnnd it’s back.

Sigh.

I am sad to have to admit this, but sadly, my husband’s dirty moustache is back.  Remember this?  Yeah, it’s back, in all it’s full fledged sketchy-creeper-I-want-to-steal-your-kids glory. 

I thought we were past this – he’d done it once, gotten it out of his system, and would never need to return to the realm of ugly facial hair.  But, then, along came Movember.  You may be familiar with this trend – the month of November is well known as the month when men can grow moustaches and raise money for prostate cancer, and awareness for men’s health.  A real men’s solidarity thing you know? One of our friends from church is doing it with his colleagues, and when he told me, my first reaction was “please don’t tell Ben. He’ll want to do it too”.  And alas, he found out.  Although he’s not really doing the “raising money for a good cause” part.  Just the “now I have permission to grow ugly hair on my face part”. 

So, here I am.  Right where I never thought I’d be again.  So, if you happen to run into us at the mall or somewhere else public for the next 2 weeks, and it looks like we’re not really together,  don’t worry – we’re not having marital problems – I’m just making sure I’m not associated with the thing on his face.

All’s Fair

This past weekend, I surprised Ben with tickets to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto.  It’s a pretty big deal around these parts, and elementary school kids from far and wide all get to take a field trip there at least once in their school career.  Most people I’ve talked to, when mentioning that we went to the fair all commented “oh yeah, I went there once, in grade 4″.  That was my last experience with the Royal Winter Fair too.  Grade 4, with my class.  All I really remember was how enthralled we all were with how the cows and horses went to the bathroom.  It wasn’t uncommon to hear “there’s one! Over there! look it’s pooping!” scattered among the 9 year old conversations we were having that day.  I will forever have etched in my memory the first time I saw a cow pee, which happened to be at the fair, and very near to my head. The gallons and gallons of urine pouring out of this cow was quite hilarious to me and I’m pretty sure left me with my mouth wide open.

So, now that I’ve successfully spent an entire paragraph talking about barn animals relieving themself….perhaps we should move on hmmm? So where was I? Right. The Fair.

Ben has asked about it in the past, and since we had to be out of our place for a few hours on Saturday (another open house..booooo), I thought I’d surprise him with tickets.  I had high hopes that it would be as cool as I would remember, and I figured “hey, if it’s good enough for Charles and Camilla, it’s good enough for me.” 

So we went (with James and Christy, because anything is more fun if they’re with us).  And it didn’t disappoint.  I mean, the first thing I saw right in the parking lot (where funny enough, they were keeping some of the cows) was a big steaming pile of poop come out the rear end of a cow. Not a bad way to start the day if you ask me.

Here’s a few of the highlights for your enjoyment:

1) This little baby goat.  Seriously people.  Not much is cute than a little baby goat.  Except maybe that bulging vein coming out of my forehead.  That’s pretty cute too, I guess.

 

2) How excited Ben got about this bull. (ummm, I think it’s a bull…I’m not so much with the livestock…sorry Dad B, I try).  He weighs 2200 lbs and is Ben’s new best friend.

3) The ridiculous amount of free samples we partook in. Here we all are cheers-ing over a 1/4 ounce of maple syrup.  I’m pretty sure in my every day life, taking shots of pure syrup isn’t on my “to do” list…but there’s just something about free samples that makes you throw caution to the wind….because hey! Doesn’t get much better than free!

 

Oh what’s that? You want a list of everything we consumed that was free? OK.

• prime rib and yorkshire pudding
• goat cheese curds and spread on crackers
• copius amounts of pretzles dipped in gourmet mustards, spreads, dips
• tea
• carrots (yeah, that’s right. Some farmers were straight up handing out bags of carrots.)
• Arthur’s fruit juice
• Soy beverage drinking boxes (blech)
• Wheetabix
• Orange juice
• bread and margarine (yeah, I know right? Just pieces of bread spread with margarine.  Dont’ worry, even if that IS the most basic meal….I still felt compelled to partake)
• edited to add: a few tablespoons of  flour in a ziploc baggie…I can’t believe I almost forgot about this…

Oh, and in the category of “Things that weren’t really free samples, but my husband managed to get them for free anyway, because that’s how he rolls”:

• Beer
• Soy byproduct that you’re supposed to feed animals, but Ben asked to eat some of it anyway, so they let him.  He said it tasted like grass. 

 4) The world’s biggest squash.  (and yes, I know it looks like a pumpkin, just trust me, it’s a squash)

5) the Superdogs dog show.  I sadly have NO photo evidence of this, so you’ll just have to believe that it was a highlight.  I’m not really a “dog” person, but I’d probably pay at least $5 to see this show again.  Not so much because what the dogs did was so awesome (although it was kind of cool), but mostly because the dog trainers were hilarious.  See, they had to run alongside their dogs as they raced around these courses, doing their jumps and tricks.  And let’s just say these trainers weren’t so much what the kids are calling “in shape”.  So, it was really, really funny watching them try to keep up with their dogs. 

Also, there was this one dog, a little bull dog, who the minute he came out on to the floor, started head butting stuff and knocking it over.  (pretty sure it wasn’t part of the act).  Then when they finally calmed him down and convinced him to do the jumps, he would waddle his little butt up to each jump and barely make it over, scraping his underside on the top of each jump, and meander over the next one. 

So, all in all, a good day.  I would recommend heading down there yourself if you’re in the area.  And if you want the real in-depth experience, I’ll even loan you my husband, who will be able to tell you what you’re supposed to look for in a cow (vein-y udders people, that’s the key right there), probably score you some free samples that weren’t supposed to be free, and take cool pictures for you, like this.

An Open Letter to H1N1 (I know right? How very 2009 of me)

Dear H1,

I feel as though we’re tight enough now for me to call you by your first name. I mean, all I ever hear about anymore is H1N1 this, swine flu that. You could at least reciprocate the attention once and a while. Would it kill you to take me out for dinner?

I mean, I know you’re busy. What with all the infecting millions of people and effectively instilling fear into a culture that is hungry for something else to obsess over. (And you thought Michael Jackson would still be the talk of the town…)

Don’t get me wrong H1, I know you’re serious and all. And, if I’m being honest, I definitely don’t WANT you, but even you have to admit the incessant news reports are a bit much. We get it. You’re dangerous. You kill people. You suck to have. Did you need a gold star or something? Are you really waiting for your own version of This is it: The H1N1 Movie to hit the theatres? I’m sure we could work out a little arrangement or something. You stop infecting everyone, and we’ll promise to talk nice about you.

Unfortunately, H1N1, I don’t think we’ll ever see eye to eye. I personally think all the attention you get is ridiculous, and you seem to think that it’s your mission in life to hole people up for a week of their life fighting off your symptoms. So, I’ll do what I can to keep you at bay (well, minus getting a vaccine): multiple hand washings, I’m trying my darndest to stop chewing my fingernails, I’m coughing into my elbow, and I’m even putting on hand sanitizer from time to time. You might get me, you might not. We’ll just have to wait and see now won’t we swine?

Sanitized and affectionately yours,

 Karmyn