December 1st

Happy December 1st! December 1st is my 5th favourite day of the year. December 24th, December 25th, Easter, my birthday, and then December 1st. I think I love this day so much because it marks my favourite month.

It may also have something largely to do with eating a chocolate a day to count down til Christmas. My Granny would get all of us a girls a chocolate advent calendar each year. First, you had to find the number. Then you got to peel back the cardboard window and see the little square of $.04 chocolate which you were sure contained more wax than chocolate. Then my favourite part was popping the chocolate out to see what mold it had been poured into. Whether it was a Christmas bell, or an elf, or a lantern.

We were very disappointed when we got older and my Granny sending the calendars. So, we bought our own. Some years I'd get the Christmas patterned ones, then another year I would get a looney tunes calendar. That one was even better because you counted down to New Years as well. Now this year, we have gone a little more sophisticated and we have lindor advent calendars. And now I am going to go, pull my advent calendar out from the closet, and find out what ball of goodness awaits me today :)

It's Almost Pumpkin Carving Time Again!

I've never really been into Halloween until I was an adult. Most of that was because we weren't allowed to go trick or treating. To this day, I have never gone. We would do church functions and "fall celebrations" so we would still get candy and be able to dress up. As an adult though the thing my sisters and I most look forward to is carving pumpkins and handing out candy to the trick or treaters that come to my parents door.

1. The pumpkins. Now the pumpkins we carve aren't your toothy smiling jack-o-lanterns. They are usually very time consuming and a lot of fun. It's family time with my sisters. We go up to my parents house, and clean out our pumpkins, roast the seeds, get messy and complain each year that next year we aren't going to choose hard patterns to carve. And each year, we choose something just as complicated if not more than the year past. Some patterns have included southpark characters, Nemo, Puss n'Boots, the Last Supper, dragon, Calvin & Hobbs, Betty Boop, Snoopy, Spongebob, Wile E. Coyote, Sir Hiss and Prince John... and a few more misc ones.

2. The candy. Okay, so there is a fair amount of candy that doesn't end up going to the kids. We usually try to buy lots so that we have lots left over to divide amongst ourselves. But we all (3 sisters) like going to the door and seeing the trick or treaters dressed up. Especially the really little kids in cute costumes. Even though its not really fair, we tend to give the really cute little kids a bit more candy than the older "witches" who look to old to be trick or treating anyway. They little kids aren't going to be eating as much as the big kids! So I guess its a reward to the parents for having cute kids.

3. Dressing up. We as sisters like dressing up ourselves. We have dressed up in our prom dresses, and in our wedding dresses, and as angels. We don't go anywhere, we just dress up for fun.

4. The husbands. Okay so they aren't quite enthusiastic about the pumpkin carving as the girls are. They have both atleast done a pumpkin atleast one year, and this year the newest husband will be giving it a go. But they come up and hang out to enjoy time with the family.

This year I am looking forward to getting to dress up Zoe. Even though she wont know or care about anything, I get to dress her up and take pictures muwhaha.

So if you want to know what pumpkins we'll be carving this year, or what we will dress up as, you'll just have to wait for the pictures or come by my parents house! :)

Fake Meat Eaters

There are a lot of people in the world who choose to be vegetarian either because they dislike the taste of meat, but primarily they are vegetarian due to the inhumane (shouldn't it be inanimal anyway?) treatment of animals.

So what I wonder, is why do vegetarians try to make so many things look and taste and resemble meat? With Thanksgiving just being over, I saw a link for some fake turkey with cranberry stuff that tries to resemble the look, taste and texture of turkey. If you like turkey so much - why not just eat it. They are slow, ugly and tasty. Look around at the animals we eat. We aren't eating any attractive intelligent animals here! Ex 1: Turkey. Ex 2: Cows. Ex 3: Pigs.

If you are going to be vegetarian that's great, then eat vegetables and non-meat products. But if I'm not going around shaping my meat to resemble vegetables, why are you shaping your vegetables to look like my meat?

These Are A Few Of My Favourite Rooms

In most of the houses I've lived in, and a lot that I would visit frequently, I'd have a favourite room. There was no formula for why a room would be my favourite, there would just be something about it a particular room that I enjoyed being in the most. It would just feel peaceful in the room and enjoy being alone.

Growing up it would typically be my bedroom. In the first house I remember living in, it was the bedroom to the right at the end of the hall. I liked kneeling on my bed when it was dark when I was supposed to be sleeping, and I could look out the window and watch the cars go by due to the placement of the street lamp at the bottom of the hill. It was even better when it was snowing.

In the house after that, once again it was my bedroom. It was in the basement right at the bottom of the stairs, so I still felt close to the family. I would often peek out the curtains and watch the rain bounce off the pavement, or since it was right in front of a school, watch cars circle the parking lot and keep my eye out for anything that looked amiss. The room also had a little half door in it right beside my bed, which led into the storage room. The storage room also had a normal door on the opposite side of the stairs.

I don't really have a favourite room in my apartment. It used to be the master bedroom before we switched rooms. It had lots of light, and I would enjoy laying on the bed reading comics.

Sometimes at a guests house or when babysitting my favourite room would be the office, or it might be the sunroom with tons of plants or even just a normal room that had a great view of city lights. I am a sucker for views of city lights.

Hopefully the next house I am in I have a favourite room again, one I just enjoy being in.

What is your favourite room?

Catless

In the last couple of months I have had to put down both of my cats because they were sick. It's quite sad because all my life I have had cats. There are things I miss like having a cat that runs to the door to come and greet me, jumping up to cuddle on your lap and just have someone to pet. The bonuses are I don't have to worry about always checking to make sure that the cats are out of the baby's room. I don't have to worry about putting a glass of milk on the floor and guarding it from the cat and that my dinner is safe from the cat jumping up on the table to eat it. Not having cat flavoured everything is nice too. But they certainly bring a nice companionship, and one day when we aren't in an apartment anymore, and Zoe is older, we will be catless no more.

My me time.

There is about 20 min of each day where I don't miss James and enjoy being by myself. Usually Zoe wakes up between 4:30-6:00 to eat, before going back to bed for a couple more hours (because I want to sleep more!). I usually feed her in my bed, and then put her back in her crib.

I climb back into bed and enjoy stretching out and having the whole bed to myself. I can lay in the middle, I can sleep diagonally, I can stretch like I'm doing a jumping jack. It's great. I just enjoy the feeling of the sheets against my skin as I drift back off to sleep. At night I'm used to him being there, so its not the same even though I have just as much space. In the morning James always got up for work early, so it feels normal not to have him there as it's starting to get light again. And I know one more sleep has gone by, and I'm that much closer to seeing him.

No Insignificant Pain

Everybody has pain in their life. It's a fact of life. Some of us go through wayyy more pain than others, but just because someone's pain might be "worse" than anothers, it doesn't mean that the other pain is insignificant. The situation could always be worse, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt when you are going through it. My husband is away for a month for work. It's sucks. I miss him terribly. But it could be worse, he could be away for 3months, 6months, 3 years. My sister's husband works 24hr shifts, so he is away for a couple nights a week. They have only been married over a month. It still hurts. I have friends who can't have children on their own, and going through embryo adoption processes, and have not had success so far. It hurts. I have friends who have one child and would love to have more. It hurts.

I had been thinking about this as people have been telling me "atleast James isn't gone overseas fighting". Yes, it is good and I'm grateful. It doesn't mean it's not hard having him gone at all.

I think with everyone, and hopefully I haven't offended anyone, that we are all grateful for what we do have, for the family, for the friends, for having food and shelter, etc etc, but the trials we go through still affect us. The key is to treasure the good things, cry through the bad things, and not to lose hope. People tell you "it could be worse" as a way to try to be positive. Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing. But when people tell you that, say yes it could, I'm thankful it isn't, I'm hurting in this moment, but I know I'll make it through.

Family and Their Family.

This evening, my cousin Chris came over for dinner at my parents house. He lives in Saskatchewan, but was out visiting his birth mother. His birth mother, Desiree, actually lives in Denmark, but she comes out to visit some of her family in the area. So Chris, his mother, his mother's daughter, and an aunt all came to dinner. In was a neat visit for a couple of reasons:

1. I always love my family and getting together with them. My dad's side of the family is huge, but we can not see an aunt or a cousin for years, and get together at a reunion or wedding and have an amazing time. Chris was one of those cousins whom I didn't spend a lot of time with, but he was memorable. Probably because he was the one who first made me watch Robin Hood Men in Tights when I was young, and probably not a movie my parents would have let me watch at the time. I brought up the memory tonight, and we had a great time laughing about it. He was excited to see us girls and meet our babies too.

2. The other dimension that was neat to see was his relationship with his birth mother whom he has only been in contact with recently. A couple of years ago, his mother somehow got my mom's name and contact info through the internet that was linked to his name. I know I've heard specifically how, but I can't remember. My mom was very careful not to get too involved in case this wasn't going to be a positive event. Desiree would call my mom occaisonally from Denmark. My mom gave the contact info to my cousin Chris at some point, so that the decision would be his to pursue it or not. I'm not sure when or exactly how things happened, but obviously he did choose to be in contact, and I almost think he made a trip to Denmark to see her, but I'm not positive. But he made the trip from Sask to see her here. They seemed to get along well, and I believe he did refer to her as mom. Yet he still talked about his mom (adopted) and her prize winning gardens and you could tell the affection was there in his voice. Everything seemed very natural and I enjoyed seeing the interaction. His love for his adopted parents didn't change, it seemed as if he was just lucky enough to have 3 parents.

I sometimes wonder what a relationship would be like between my husband and his birth father. Everything depends upon both parties. The both have to have an accepting attitude. I know James has wondered too if he would want to punch the guy or have a relationship with him. I think a lot of that depends on how his father would respond.

But it was really great to see a positive situation and to see that it doesn't change the love for the adopted parent(s).

I decided to start a blog.

I really have no idea why I started a blog. I'm going to go with something to try and take up even more of my time. I have no idea what types of topics I'm going to post, or how often I'm going to post. Most likely something from serious to funny, to events of my day, and probably a lot more frequently at first and will slowly dwindle out.

So I figured we'd start with how I named my blog. Twisted has been a word that has frequently been used to describe me. Well, those who got to know me past the teacher's pet me. Whether I was taking a conversation waaayyy too far, or something was said and my mind automatically twisted it into something else. I'm not quite as bad as I used to be.

So that brings us to Tittering. No, it has nothing to do with tits. To titter means to laugh. My husband says it frequently. So when something is sort of funny, not enough to actually laugh, but enough that you verbally say "ha-ha", he says "titter-titter".

Of course all of the words in the title had to start with the same letter, because I'm a fan of alliteration.