What you do when you discover a friend is trying to kill you...

True story!!

So, it started fairly innocently. I bought a bike, in the hope that I could go on bike rides with my kids once Mari has mastered starting on her own. I was thinking of lovely flat country roads or parks with no people to see my mastery of the two wheeled contraption.

My good friend, who I know occasionally read this, so I won't give her a name, lets call her Maeve, oh wait, Marcy... better, well, this good friend Marcy was excited and said, "Lets go for a bike ride." I thought OK. How bad could it be? Of course the last time I road a bike was in Hinton and my parents lived there in the early 1990s. But that wasn't that long ago...

Then it started to snow and rain, but finally the weather improved and I reminded Marcy that we needed to go on that promised bike ride. I had visions of us tooling around residential streets sweeping by a corner of the reservoir and returning to the house refreshed and rejuvenated.

But here is what happened.

The roads around here may look flat but they are all subtle inclines. I discovered early in our ride that she was planning on doing the whole reservoir. HAVE YOU SEEN THE SIZE OF THE RESERVOIR?

I was proud of my nerves of steel as we took the walk way over Glenmore. The mere sound of the traffic freaks me out. We went up more hills and then we crossed back over Glenmore trail again. And then up some more hills. I now expected to reach the peak of a very large hill, I won't say Everest, but a sizable hill. And yet I still staring at a long steady incline that ran along Glenmore towards the Lakeview golf course.

It was then that I realized I was very close to death. Maeve, oops I mean Marcy had outstripped me and was waiting patiently. I think her plan was to get me to the golf course where she had hidden a shovel and there she could discretely do away with the evidence. I think that might be it, although her face betrayed none of her intentions. But one should never trust the people that look too innocent.

I caught up to her and deciding that I dare not go any further I said, "I have to go home NOW!" She showed great concern and even offered to turn back with me, she even showed me a shorter way home. Oh, and she called to make sure I got home alright. So maybe I was wrong about her plan, but you never know. And besides if she didn't have a shovel hidden I would have died anyhow and then she would have had to drag my body to the hospital without help and that wouldn't have been very nice of me.

So, I saved everyone a lot of grief when I wimped out.

I plan to be in traction for the next few days, so don't be surprised if I don't answer the phone or the door.

Rethinking my life

You know when you have one of those moments. Those moments that causes you to stop suddenly and take stock of your life. In a flash you question ever major decision you have ever made, you pause and wonder about the meaning. Well I had one last night.

Wes and I were watching TV and there was a news story about some European singing competition. At the end of the story they stated how some careers had been launched by this competition and they showed a clip of a very young 70s group singing Waterloo. WATERLOO.

Wes said, (and I'm not making this up) "Who is that?"

I gasped and stared and thought "who is this man sitting beside me?" How could I have not known that he didn't know this? How have we been married his long with out this fact surfacing?

Pause for thought...

The dress

We have a wedding reception to go to in a couple weeks. I have hardly any clothing. Since I have put on a few pounds - ahem, and had kids and live in an eensie wee house with no storage, clothing has been low on my priorities. I have 3 pairs of pants, 2 pairs of capris (one which somehow shrunk in my closet over the winter) and two skirts. None of my tops are good enough out anywhere were the lighting is strong enough to show the stains.

So... now what do I do?

In couple weeks I'll be celebrating a new couples love for each other in tight capris and a stained and frayed dress t-shirt??

Off to the mall to buy a new dress. A process that I find utterly demoralizing, since I have obtained the figure of a slug with large boobs.

I was able to find two dresses, one of which is pretty straight forward. The other is tricky. I seemed deceptively easy at the store, but this is one tough dress.

It has a full body slip thing since the outer fabric is fairy sheer. It is attached at the shoulders so it would seem it would be pretty straight forward.

It took me five tries to get it right. Some of the combinations included the dress on backwards, the slip twisted, the slip inside out inside the dress (right way on), and the dress around my shoulders but stuck behind my neck. At one point, I thought I would have to have help getting it off, but my kids had gone to the park at the end of the street.

I considered yelling, "Gavin, Bronwyn, Mari, come help your mom, she is stuck in a dress." But I thought twice about it.

I did finally get it on right and off again. Wow!

I hope I don't have to go shopping again for clothes for myself now for another 3 or 4 years!

Snowy weekend

It isn't really that big of a surprise that we should have snow in early May. That is pretty typical for Calgary. But... we had so much snow this year and winter was so long that it is just adding insult to injury.

We still managed to have a fair bit of fun. Well, the adults painted a lot but the kids managed to keep busy. Wes allowed Gavin to pick out his own paint for his room. I had selected a few options and wanted him to pick from those options and I thought he had chosen. But he went with his dad to the paint store and return with SUN yellow. Seriously the brightest paint you could ever imagine!! Honestly. So now I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate the paint without blinding everyone in the family.

Bronwyn has been quite tired and I am just watching her. I'd love to see her perk up soon.

Mari is slightly more argumentative than normal. She really doesn't seem to understand that I am the Mom and that gives me a natural authority. To her I am just a person to be negotiated with and eventually overruled so she can get what she wants. Little tyrant!

The kids are anxious for "summer to come back" as they say it. Me too. They all have bikes, and in fact I bought myself a bike too. YEAH! So I have to get back in the swing so I can try and keep up with them. We also got them roller blades. They all did in-line skating classes at school and they loved it, so we got some skates so they could carry on learning.

Bronwyn was at the doctor the other day. I'm not sure he believed me when I said that she was out of her scooter and bike most evenings. Until he got a look at her shins and her knees, then he laughed and said, "I guess all the bruises and scrapes are from being on your bike and stuff?" Well, and who knows maybe her sister has kicked her in the shins a few times. Who knows!

We are looking forward to May long weekend. Yes we are that desperate right now!!