Now I Understand

When I was really small, my mother was the walking definition of a what we now call The Sandwich Generation.
She was almost solely responsible for looking after us, her children, and her parents.
To increase the level of difficulty, my grandmother and I were both under extended stays in the hospital. I was there for under a year, in and out with testing and observation. My grandmother was on the intensive care floor and did have the luxury of leaving. My sister had just started half day kindergarten. My father worked all sorts of crazy shifts and was rarely home. My grandmother's husband was at home in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's.
Mom was putting a lot of miles on her car.
I am thankful I am not in the same boat. I am one of the lucky ones who has a support system.
Little Man needs a little extra help with building his self esteem. His teacher thankfully recognized this need and is helping him and us by providing someone at the school who can speak with Little Man. This week he is also going away on his first overnight without his guardians. It is an intensive workshop on building esteem. From the information I have gathered, it will conversations, role playing and character building. I wish they had this when I was younger.
On the other side of the sandwich, Hubs's father is now a permanent resident of where I work. He is not able to remember day to day activities and needs a lot of reminders and hints of what he needs to do next. Understandable he is very angry with his family, doctors and support staff.
To balance out all the crazy, we are taking a lot pleasure in the normal living things and when happy, exciting news visits, we jump all over that.
First order of the day, we decorated our Christmas tree!

Reno has now taken up position to wait for Santa.

He only leaves his post for personal moments, food and bizarre sounds and sights only he can see.
Mom in law received some excellent news, so we celebrated!

I even brought out my good dishes that have not seen the sun since I started my new life.
I even made a roast with Yorkshire puddings.

Finally because my brain is moving in all sorts of directions, those crazy hamsters at the wheel, I have a few projects I am working on.
Still knitting the OpArt blanket for Little Man. It is larger than when you last viewed.
I am working on a toque for Hubs called Antler Hat.

Using my Blaze skein inspired from The Walking Dead Season Two created by Bohemia Fibers, I am knitting up My Cup of Tea Socks.

At the end of the day, we will just keep on keepin' on...

Winter In Canada

Winter has arrived in my sleepy little town in southern Quebec.

That first morning you wake up and see everything glistening with a blanket of white covering up the things you wanted to put away before the first snowfall is actually kind of pretty.
You have those first few moments where you are almost in that highly advertised Christmas spirit that has been floating around since the week before Halloween.
Then you step outside and cruel Mother Nature viciously sucks the breath right out of your lungs with a crack.
That is when I run back inside and grab my cup of coffee and pick up my sticks for more quality television time.

I have made some great progress on Little Man's blanket.

Napoleon approves!

The Apple Pie Experiment

Since Little Man absolutely loved my OpArt blanket, he requested me to make him one in his favourite colours.
Since he rarely asks me to knit him anything, I said sure, why not.
I think his blanket will glow in the dark.


Since we still have about an orchard's worth of apples in our basement, I figured I would give this apple pie thing a go.

I chose to follow the Apple Pie By Grandma Ople recipe.
When I started mixing the concoction on the stove stop I started to wonder if perhaps it might be a tad too sweet for the Hubs to manage.
He has this thing where "too much sugar makes his tickle"


All I know is that it smells really good and mostly of apples.
It might turn out ok.


Since I had quite a bit of dough left over, I made this cookie things.

Pastry wrapped around peanut butter and Laura Secord Chocolate spread.

While Napoleon sits in his sunspot,

i am going to knit and continue watching Reign.
Have a good day everyone!

Survived Halloween

Halloween was amazing in our little Quebec town.
You could hear the screams for miles.
There was not a lot of clean up needed on our property because the trick or treaters refused to come anywhere near our door.
I wonder why......




The most amusing part was the difficulty I had trying to take a photo with Pyramid Head interacting with the tweeners.
The treators aged 10 to 13 absolutely refused to stand still long enough to receive candy in their bags let alone hold still long enough for me to take a 30 second photo.
The younger ones however, were very bold.
They treated the whole experience like they were visiting Mickey Mouse at Disney World; not some mass murderer from a horror flick.
When I walked with the little man so he can do a bit of trick or treating himself, we could hear the screams coming from our home for miles.

I finished my OpArt blanket for a friend:

It turned out so well Little Man has selected some vibrant colours so he could have one for his room.

I will start his blanket as soon as I finished my Newfoundland Mitts for a friend.


I'm off to make lunch.
I hope you all are keeping well!

Pumpkin Pie and Knitting Stuff

My parents arrived for Thanksgiving and we all survived.
This was the first time I was not working during the holiday.
I invited my parents to eat at our place on the actual day for a change.
I think it was very difficult for my Mom to actually let someone else do the cooking.

This proved a trifle too difficult for my Mom, so she instructed her captive audience on how to make a pumpkin pie:


Reno is the only one who actually knows what went into this pie.

And he is not talking.


The visit might have proved too much for my parents. Little Man scared the crap out of them with a preview of his Halloween costume. Upon their return home, their doctor questioned their dietary habits of recent days because the blood levels were a little off. I guess when you are used to eating food prepared with little to no spice, the body gets out of whack when things like garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper are added.
The parental unit did say the food was very good, just they cannot really eat as much as they did. Good thing we don't do this too often.

Since I booked off this week in celebration of Halloween, I have been doing all the weird little things that I enjoy.
I cooked my Halloween costume:


Selected some pumpkins:


Baked a Tarte Tatin with those apples we picked a little while ago:


Did some knitting:
My So Called Scarf


Holding Hands,Feeding Ducks complete.


Op Art Blanket is almost complete


Now I am catching up on television.
I started watching Ravenswood, which is a spin off from Pretty Little Liars. I love creepy television. If they ever bring back Twin Peaks, I'll be in my glory. I'm also caught up on Walking Dead and Revenge. I started Watching Marvel Agents of Shield. and The Blacklist. Wow! Has that show ever left me with so many questions.

I just have a few tweaks to work out on our Halloween costumes and I'll say this holiday has gone perfectly well for me. After things are put to rights, I'll put up a few pics of our Halloween adventure.

Ritalin

I had a ten minute break this morning at work so I turned to the Journal De Montreal.
I was reading an article that was discussing the usage of Ritalin in Quebec amongst children is much greater than in all of the Canadian provinces added together.
The author was questioning why this would be the case.
Are the Anglophones more tolerant of their youths? Are Francophone children more hyper than their Anglo friends?
What I found interesting is the lack of information about the different parenting styles.
From my own personal experience I can easily note the differences.
Look at the school system.
Wherever your child attends school, are they allowed to call their professor by their first name?
I have spoken about this on a previous post.
To recap, I was trying to figure out this new little friend to which Little Man was constantly referring. Turns out, it was his teacher.
There goes an easy step to clearly defined boundaries right there!

Another notable difference, Children will be children!
Oh really?
So because they are simply a child, they get to call all the shots.
We have to be careful not to stifle their creativity.
We need to talk with them.
Cannot use punishment because my parents used punishments on me and I did not like them.
You are afraid your children will not like you?
Why?
Do you not have any friends your own age to talk, laugh and joke?
Honest truth.
If you tell your child no, I swear they will not self destruct.
they may scream, call you names, say they do not love you anymore, but I swear they will not die.
In fact, when they hear that little word no in their adult life, it will not come as such a shock to them. They will even be prepared to deal with the aftermath by actually finding alternative solutions.
They may even learn how to form persuasive arguments.
Wouldn't that be a blast?
A high functioning adult able to look after their self in the real world.

All of that takes a lot of work.
We want things now.
We hate to wait.
Short cuts are big money makers because of this attitude.
Instead of reading the book we buy Cliff's notes.
Instead of writing the essay, we google, copy and paste.
Instead of trying to create high functioning young people, we pump them with drugs so they can be better controlled.

Yeah, I don't see this exploding in our face 10 years from now.

Apple Picking!!

and Comiccon!
We eventually made it to Comiccon in Monteal the other week end.
It is very difficult to explain to someone what Comiccon actually is if they have never had it a part of their culture.
At first I was just trying to describe the experience:
Well, it is a lot of like minded people coming together in one huge ass room to fawn over things that we grew up with and participate in discussions with people who are currently in that industry.

OH
Like when I go to my tool convention?

Do you have people who dress up in costumes at tool conventions?

No. That would be weird.

Get ready for a whole lot of weird then.
Evil Grin.


We should follow them! I'm sure they know the way to Comiccon.
...and we have not even been inside yet!


The coolest vehicles evvvaaarrrr!


Nature even visits Comiccon.

Hawkgirl, Wonderwoman, Master Cheif were there as well, but we were a little to shy to have our pictures taken with them.

For some reason we were not too shy for these two.

So? How did you like your first Comiccon?

Next year can we dress up?

Absolutely!


In our region, it is apple season.


This was the first time I ever participated because usually I have to work.


It does not take long to fill two very large shopping bags.

These are Honey Crisp.


I see a lot of baking in my future.
See you all later.