Wet teenagers, humph!

It rained last evening.  I mean RAINED.  Big honkin' raindrops.  The water seeped into every crack.  Yes, even that one.  When it rains in January in Eastern Canada it's not really raining.  It's making ice.  The rain hit the car windows, doors and me then immediately froze.  What was I doing standing out in the rain in January beside my car?  Why, scraping of course.

It was fairly easy to remove the ice build up from the windows since it was relatively warm outside.   Start up the vehicle and the heater helps to remove the crusty surface of ice that's a good couple of mm thick.  I was still wet though.  If you were to pass by at that moment you would have seen me staring longingly at my car port.  Remembering happier times when if I had to go and pick up an ungrateful child at work I could just hop in my de-icified vehicle and drive away.  Remembering a time when it was my vehicle sitting under the protection of our carport and not the dead vehicle of another.  Two others actually.  Two others in Florida.  They don't have to scrap away ice in Florida. 

I got into my car, sopping wet.  Drove on ice covered roads that only idiots venture out on.  I went to pick up One of Four from her volunteer job. 

"What took you so long.  I've been waiting out here for 20 minutes!  I could have taken a bus in that time." she said to me in a snotty teenaged voice.

"Did you look outside?  Do you know how long it takes to scrap off a car and drive here in the freezing rain?" I snap back.

"Humph!" she huffs as she turns away from me.  She's still pissed off.

"YOU"RE WELCOME!!!" I yell.

This morning I heard about it again.  The mommy bus didn't get to her fast enough last night.  She was cold and wet because being a teenaged girl, you don't wear mitts, hat and a decent set of boots.  That wouldn't look good.

Yesterday a lady was telling me how lovely One of Four was.  I stood staring at her as she said this, wondering.  She must have thought that perhaps I hadn't heard her because she repeated it.  I wanted to ask if she meant physically or in general as a person because I don't get to see her lovely side.  She's a teenager and reserves that loveliness for non family members.  It's the teenage way.  I get the "It took you 20 minutes to come and get me while I stood here in the rain you peeon."  Then later, "did you save me some sausage dressing from the turkey like I asked."  Never a thank you at any point passing her lips.

What's the point in this post?  I'm going to Florida and I just might not come back.

One of Four Bobble Head

This is the Christmas gift that One of Four received from her friends for Christmas.  I wonder what it's like to have friends.

So glad the drawing group is up and running again after the holidays.  It's hard to find naked people to sit still anywhere else.

Happy New Year

The girls were gifted "Turkish Delight" by a family member.  They tried it for the first time and found the lemon flavoured candy to their liking.  The rose flavoured ones tasted like old people proclaimed one of the four.  Her sisters all agreed.  I didn't ask them how they knew what old people tasted like.  I'd rather not know.


Happy New Year.  Is it almost Summer yet?

Santa Paws is coming!

Only 4 more sleeps.

Thanks Kurt!

Pretty Things

 He knits....who knew!

Once again my belief is confirmed.....artists know how to throw a mean pot luck.  There was a wide range of interesting fair.  I brought my Kahlua Cheesecake.  I stood back against the wall and watched the reaction to the dessert.  I wasn't sure at first if people liked it or not and I wasn't even sure if it turned out this time.  They would take a bite and seem to pause turn to the person next to them, whisper something then slowly take another bite.  I'm not used to that in my house.  If my family likes something they inhale it before they miss out on seconds.  After watching this reaction repeated by a number of people, finally I got my answer.  A petite French Canadian woman took a bite after receiving a whisper from the person next to her, and let out a long satisfied moan.  The French aren't afraid to express themselves!  WooHoo....it was good.  By the time I got the spring-form pan back it looked like someone had licked it clean.  Weird.

Chocolate Kahlua Cheesecake

Servings: 10 people or One Chocoholic;-)

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups of graham cracker crumbs
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted

Combine first 4 ingredients; mix well.  Press firmly into bottom or 9 inch spring-form pan.  Bake at 325 degrees for 5 minutes; cool.

16 oz cream cheese (I sometimes use 3 packages instead of 2, and I use the light cream cheese myself.)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
2 eggs
1/4 cup coffee, brewed, strong
1/4 cup kahlua
1 tsp vanilla

Beat cream cheese with a mixer until fluffy.  Add 3/4 cup sugar gradually mixing well.  Add 1/2 cup cocoa.  Add eggs, one at a time.  Stir in the next 3 ingredients and pour mixture into the pan with the crust.  Bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes.  (Sometimes I leave it a bit longer as it doesn't seem quite done enough in my oven at this point.)  Cool to room temperature then add chocolate shavings if desired.  Chill 8 hours or overnight.

Post Apocalyptic Basement Flood

We're getting there.  After the flood we had in our basement when a pipe burst at the end of August the insurance company hired a restoration company to do the clean up and rebuild.  The clean up went well, but the rebuilt didn't until we kicked them out.  Now it's coming along nicely.

We're rethinking the curtians in the bedroom but they may still grow on us.  The dog was an added expense, but it's still the best an most efficient way to get a dog hair bed spread out there.  The walls are missing that finishing touch....kid hand prints.....but that will come soon enough.

Mom and Dad, when you fly into town you'll stay in Hunter's  new room.  The three of you should be very comfie there together. 

If only someone would give me money to do this.....

Today, the drawing didn't come easy.  It was a fight all the way to make the models look like...well, people.  At one point this afternoon one of my drawings looked more like a gargoyle than a model, but it was wonderful non the less.  Three beautiful people to draw.  The morning was a new Asian model and this afternoon there were two men posing together.  One was a perennial favorite of the group that moved out of town but called to say he was back today and would love to work.  Yeah!  So the group co-ordinator added him in.  He also came with his dog who also makes a good model.  She loves to pose with him.

I was speaking to one of the other artists who was telling me that his wife was going to come to try to draw for the day but backed out at the last minute. 

"Boy will she be sorry!" he said.

He was mentioning that his kids find it hard knowing that they are the only ones out of all their friends that have penis' hanging in their dinning room.  I had to laugh. 

"I would never hang my work in my dinning room"  I told him.  "I don't have a dinning room;-)

Sometimes it's just good to get together with like minded people who are as demented as yourself and help you feel like maybe you aren't so different after all.

La Merde

My 9 year old called the family in to ever so proudly show the food chain she had been working on all evening for school.  Mr. P. reminded her earlier that feces was part of the chain so she quickly added it in.  Being in French immersion, she was required to complete this task in French as she is learning Science using only French.  She used the internet as a translator for the words she didn't know.

Beside a cute little picture of a pile of poo were the following words:

le merde

Her bilingual sisters burst into hysterics and she turned red.

"But I used Google translator" she said vehemently. 


Indeed it does translate poop that way.  But were she to complete her project in English and write 'shit' we'd probably find it unacceptable.

I used Google to translate the following:

I need to go poo = J'ai besoin d'aller caca  (Google then asks "Did you mean poop?")

I need to go poop = J'ai besoin d'aller merde

I need to defecate = J'ai besoin de déféquer  (but who the heck says that!)

Another dictionary I checked shows the various ways in which merde is used.  From the innocent to the most vulgar (heavy on the most vulgar side.)

So what did I learn?

I asked my 14 year old what she says when she has to go .... merde ..... at school.  She says they just don't say that. 

Thinking about this further I realized that generally I don't tell too many people that I have to go .....well, you know.  I just quietly excuse myself for a washroom break.  Those that do like to share this kind of information with others (and you know who you are, and no, it's not Mr. P.) the level of vulgarity used is split about 50/50.

BTW....if you want to say the "shit hit the fan" it's "la merde a frappé le ventilateur"

And finally....why is shit féminine?

I haven't blogged in almost a month and when I finally do it's shit;-)

I found this in my kitchen this morning looking for brains.  It didn't find any.  Don't worry....I beat it to re-death with a soggy dish towel.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Just when I was about to give up art (yes, again) curiosity got the better of me when the organizer of the bottom line promised an interesting model for this morning.  I decided "what the heck" and went.

I accidentally tore a pastel picture I had put a lot of hours into, but wasn't liking, and my latest coloured pencil drawing is a disaster in the making.  Not a good art week.  But on the up side, we've had no death threats yet this week! 

This stunning creature in my drawings is my new favourite model. She's an extremely physically fit female (you probably noticed) that was graceful, and extremely professional.  She didn't move even the slightest amounts during her poses and had the loveliest chocolate coloured skin I've ever seen.

On the down side, when I went to pick up my work from the show that just finished, I noticed that it was damaged.  Both works had some damage on the frame and one with a scratch on the glass.  Disappointing considering the cost of the framing jobs.  The owner said she'd deal with the worst one (the other was not bad enough that I left it.)  We'll see.  I may have yet another fight on my hands.  I suspect once they removed the works from the walls after the Figureworks show to put up the new show they stored it incorrectly.  Sigh!

I now have a 16 year old with soon to be purple hair that can drive, albeit not very well. 

"But Mom.....I only hit one tree and it wasn't the actual trunk I hit." she said earlier this summer when practicing on our country property.

Thank goodness they don't allow them to get tatoos in the local parlours at that age, that's all I can say.

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Yesterday when my 14 year old was asked to open the window at school by her teacher she struggled until the teacher had to come over and show her how to work the mechanism.

"It's a good thing you're pretty." she told her;-)

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My 16 year old raised her hand in class yesterday and asked if the whole test they would be having today was going to be Multiplication.  This was in Law class;-0  She later told me they all laughed and she wasn't sure why until she realised she meant to say multiple choice.
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I learned at the last parents council meeting at our elementary school that cursive writing is no longer part of the curriculum and that they also don't plan on adding keyboarding lessons stating that the kids pick up their own method of keyboarding on their own.  We've started working with the little ones at home to assure that they can read and write cursive.  The schools feel that cursive writing is no longer necessary and is on it's way out.  We were also told that in the next few years kids would have "notebooks" in school and not need to write at all.  What are they supposed to do until then? one parent asked.  The Principal didn't have an answer.

God help us all.

Quiet Please

It's been a rollercoaster month.  Along with death threats and art shows came a flood which took out 3 rooms in our already small home and a case of head lice in one of the kids(only one bug and no nits.  Thank God!)  On the upside, the principal agreed to allow me to volunteer with White Mocha to go through the whole school with a fine tooth comb.  Literally.  This is something that has been bugging me for years and the school will finally allow us to at least perhaps reduce the problem a bit.  I very much doubt it will have a large impact, but at least maybe identify a few of the problem areas in some whos parents are willing to do something about it.

I will be picking up my art next week.  I did very well in the show.  I scored very high with two of the judges and good, but not excellent with a third.  She didn't like my use of hyper-realism mixed with an abstract background.  I'd like to say I've learned from it, but one of the pictures in the line-up for the next month is going to be done this way as well.  So far they didn't sell and I don't expect they will at this particular gallery.  Not the right demographic for the youth of the subject matter.  Also the high price of the piece will dissuade anyone interested.  The gallery gets 50% and out of my 50% comes the cost of framing and supplies so the price has to be hiked up to make it worth selling the work through a gallery.  In the case of "Handphibian" I will be making $3.75 an hour if it sells, even with the spiked price.  Hardly worth the effort.  If anyone is interested they are better off waiting to buy direct from the artists.  Not fair to the gallery and they have to make a living, but really, if you spend much time on a piece you're better off not trying to sell this way unless you are only trying to recoup the cost of the supplies.

Please God.....can we have some peace for now?  And I don't mean RIP kind of peace, just calm for a while.