Frozen Nowhere

 Yesterday was my birthday.

 

I turned 35.

 

I’m trying not to have a slight mental breakdown at the thought, “OMG, I’m in my mid-30s!”… Yes, I know… to some people that is not “old”… but its hard when you realize that, you are a “thirty-something” and yet you aren’t where you THOUGHT you should be at this stage in your life. I thought I’d be married to a great man, have a home of my own with a yard and a garden and a nice kitchen, and we’d be settling into life.

 

Instead I’m 35, going through a divorce (and that is dragging its feets), in debt because of my ex and my lawyer, living in a rental basement suite (with no yard of my own, no gardent of my own, and although I have a kitchen I would like to someday have an oven that didn’t BURN everything I try to make (the temp is off)). I mean, I have great kids — but they are only in my life 50% of the time. I have a great boyfriend — but he lives in a different town and therefore we can’t really have any future together (good thing neither of us wants a future right now)… I have cats… and I have plans.

 

Just thought… well… that I would KNOW where i was going by now.

 

I guess that’s not how it works, you never can know where things are going!

 

But it was a busy busy weekend for me.

 

I rushed home from work at 5:00pm, got home at 5:30pm. TheEx dropped the kids off at my home at 5:45pm. I got them cleaned up (why is my daughter ALWAYS covered in something? Geesh!) and GirlChild and I got makeup on (laugh)…

 

And we went to the giantly HUGE airport (Diefenbaker International) to pick up Serin who had agreed to come and visit on his way back between Seattle and Toronto…

Now… airports are a sticky situation for me, because, you see GirlChild has decided that she is afraid of airplanes. Not that she has ever been on one… she’s just afraid of them. So the first few minutes when she found out that we were on our way to the airport she was terrified that I was gonna force her to go ONTO the plane and she was having NOTHING to do with this insidious plot to make her go on vacation against her will (um…. yeah… I don’t KNOW either)…

 

But she realized that she didn’t have to go on the plane, that Serin was coming OFF of the plane instead (and that we’d be driving in the car, not going on a plane)… so she was good with that!

 

At first GirlChild was kinda “not so sure” about this newcomer into her life. She had been assured that I did, in point of fact, KNOW this person, and was reminded that she had spoken to him on the phone (and, had actually given him grief about not having gotten yarn for her for some socks that she had wanted me to knit for her, but which I had needed to get in Toronto… so she had called and actually NAGGED him!!!) and that she had regularily chatted with him over iChat… and then decided that he MIGHT be okay (which in her world meant that she stopped hiding behind me and actually deigned to make eye contact). BoyChild, on the other hand, started off talking about his new Bakugan (I don’t know either) and continued to chatter about it all through supper and until I made them go to bed (late)… good thing ONE of my kids isn’t shy at least.

 

Because I have the weirdest arrangements in my house, I had poor Serin sleeping in the living room… where he apparently spent the entire night being stalked as prey by the cats. I’m sure they sat at either end of the airmattress and just waited for him to twitch all night. 

(twitch)– POUNCE–”HEY!!!!”–repeat… (snerk)

 

Saturday was interesting… the kids got up around 7am… at least that’s when I heard them up. GirlChild went into the living room to inspect Serin again, then came to my bed to tell me that he was still there. I’m sure she spent a good 5 minutes wandering up and down the hall “reporting” to me that he was there, that he had put the blanket over his head, that he was asleep… I bet its hard to sleep with a 6 year old staring at you (and having to lay still or become prey)… so eventually the kids got the adults up and Serin wandered off to have a shower (which meant that the kids could turn on the tv)…

 

Poor Serin got dragged about the city so much that he started recognizing different places (laugh) because we had to go past the same things a bunch of times. I guess its different when you live in such a small city (we can drive across the city in about 15-20 mins)… and often you only have only one of everything (unless its Walmart, we have 3 of those so far) to choose from.

 

I took everyone out for breakfast, then we went to witness BoyChild’s Tae Kwon Do class in the abosolutely FRIGID dojo (I think they had the a/c on already!). We then zipped over to the bank so the kids could deposit all their bottle money (and all the change they had mooched from my purse) into their savings account (and so I could get real money). Then out to Costco…

 

I decided that I could buy myself a birthday present this year (laugh) and decided to get a new crock pot at Costco beause the one I had was clearly inadequate for my needs (I need something that I can program, even rudimentarily, in order to avoid coming home to burned or unfinished meals due to the fact that while the recipe says “cook for 8 hours on high” I am actually not HOME for 10 hours… and I would like something that went from “high” to “keep warm” after 8 or 9 hours so I don’t char the crap out of everything I try to make)… On top of that I needed to get a membership in MY own name (since theEx had obviously decided not to renew “our” account with the money he got back for having the premium membership) so that slowed us down…

 

We had about 2 hours downtime before I remembered (while I was in the shower, of course) that I had promised Megan (from Megan’s Bloggy Blog and Sugar Bites ) that I would be coming over around 3pm to pick up the cake that I had ordered from her! OOPS!! Thankfully its warm (ish) so running out with my hair still dripping wasn’t TOO big a deal…

 

Serin decided that he should play with his GPS to figure out where she lived, and I think the fact that no matter what it said I didn’t follow its instructions (“turn right at Whitney”, “no”, “turn right at Ave X” “no”….), but I think that at least amused Serin for the 15 min drive across the city as I argued with what a GPS thought would be the best route…

 

The cake, as I said before, was absolutely GORGEOUS! And you could TELL it was very chocolatey even before we ate it (it RADIATED chocolate flavour!! YUM!!!) and I would DEFINATELY recommend Sugar Bites to anyone in the area that wanted a beautiful cake made for ANY occassion!!

 

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonie/3458138438/” title=”IMG_8860 by Moonslark, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3611/3458138438_65e182bd1b_m.jpg” width=”240″ height=”180″ alt=”IMG_8860″ />Hand Painted ladybug!</a>

 

See??? The cake even had these sweet little ladybugs on it!! The kids were fascinated by bugs made of icing and everyone wanted one on their piece (laugh).

 

Thankfully, we had a bit of time AFTER we returned from picking up the cake so that I could change GirlChild into her party dress before people arrived (other than Serin, who, by this point was likely exhausted by travelling and being eaten by cats and being dragged all over the small city and having to chat with small people all day)…

 

G showed up first and was re-introduced to Serin (whom she had met 6 years ago at the baby shower I threw myself when I was pregnant with GirlChild)… and I decided that I should likely check with Reg (who has decided he doesn’t want to be referred to as “RGG” because that doesn’t have enough vowels) to see if he was still coming (it was 5pm at that point and I hadn’t heard from him all day, which is really unusual!) with his girls.

 

When Reg and the girls arrived we ordered pizza, and then C and my parents came and everyone made me open presents (which is not my favourite part of parties, I just like excuses to have people visit me!) while the kids ran rampant in the bedrooms, the cats cowered in my room, and the adults nibbled on the fresh fruit and veggie platters…

 

It was really a very NICE little party! Not TOO many people… and everyone seemed to have fun socializing.

 

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonie/3457325083/” title=”IMG_8871 by Moonslark, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3497/3457325083_21126e87e9_m.jpg” width=”240″ height=”180″ alt=”IMG_8871″ />Reg — aka Really Great Guy </a>

 

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonie/3458142544/” title=”IMG_8870 by Moonslark, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3481/3458142544_0d5c898359.jpg” width=”500″ height=”375″ alt=”IMG_8870″ />Paige and Shaylee (Reg’s daughter)… and Gale</a>

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonie/3458152660/” title=”IMG_8884 by Moonslark, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3536/3458152660_82213d3e73_m.jpg” width=”240″ height=”180″ alt=”IMG_8884″ />Reg and I</a>

 

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/moonie/3458153848/” title=”IMG_8885 by Moonslark, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3499/3458153848_dc663b2712_m.jpg” width=”240″ height=”180″ alt=”IMG_8885″ />Reg, Pam, Cami and Paige with the cake!</a>

So… that’s it for now… I’ll have to disucss Sunday in another post (laugh)