These Little Piggies

You know the saying "Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes"? Well, I don't really know if it's a "saying", but I've seen it everywhere when referring to babies. On cards, scrapbooking supplies, clothes. It's supposed to evoke a mushy "awe how cute" emotion, but it has taken on a new emotion for me.

I feel like I am always tending those little piggies. I have 60 finger and toe nails to take care of. Not something I ever thought of before I had kids. I spend part of almost every day chasing around a toddler or fighting to restrain an infant to do the chore. I even carry the clippers in my pocket some days, since neither of the kids let me do more than a couple at once.

Nothing terribly deep on my mind today...

Wedding Pancake

I have always been an entrepreneur. My first business was teaching piano, then a Creative Memories Consultant, and then a wedding cake decorator. I had an unofficial business named "Nancy's Fancy's". I know I know...it's the cheesiest thing you've ever heard. I like trying to turn my hobbies into cash. But I found that if I'm trying to make money from them, they're not fun anymore.

Here is the tale of how my hobby went from fun to flat.

The first wedding cake I made was for someone I knew. The quote they got for the cake they wanted was outrageous, so I agreed to do it for half the price, having never assembled a tiered cake before!

It turned out awesome! It was about 18 inches high. Chocolate mousse filling with rolled fondant icing. Since I was driving a sporty little VW GTI at the time, I borrowed my parent's van to deliver it to Cultis Lake.

When we got to exit 176 on the freeway, the transmission died! Colin had to leave me ON THE EXIT in a broken van with a wedding cake to go find a cell phone (back in the day when cell phones weren't a mandatory accessory for every human being) . He got my parents to bring my tiny-trunked car to the exit. Luckily, the cake just BARELY fit in the trunk, and off we went to Cultis Lake (I still don't know how my folks got their dead van home). We got there just as the ceremony was starting.

Cake # 3. Ah yes.

It was a Saturday morning wedding, so the cake needed to be delivered Friday night. I'd baked all the cakes beforehand, and when I got home from school that Friday, I started to decorate. It was a simple 3 tiered circle cake without any decorations, which is actually harder because the decorations hide the imperfections.

I'm icing quickly, since it's only 5 hours away from delivery time. I've got the bottom two tiers done when Colin comes back from school. He dips his finger in the icing and said, "This tastes salty". I say, "you're probably sweaty since it's hot out". He says, "taste it for yourself".

I don't taste the icing usually because I am so sick of the taste by then. I taste it though, and it is AWFUL! Not sweet AT ALL! I get upset and go to scrape it off the cake so I can make a new batch, but THE ICING WON'T COME OFF THE CAKE!! It has solidified hard as rock on there.

I taste the icing sugar I'd purchased out of the bulk bin at Save-On-Foods and it is not icing sugar. It's baking powder. Just so you know, baking powder + milk = ROCKS.

The cake is ruined. And I have to deliver it in 4 hours.

I went to Save-On and asked to speak to the manager. The cashier says, "maybe I can help you. What is the problem?".

Me: "I'd rather speak to the manager, you'll refer me to her anyway"

Cashier: "We usually resolve issues without needing to escalate it to her"

Me: "Ok. I'm a wedding cake decorator and I have a cake to deliver in 4 hours and the icing sugar bin 1080 was filled with baking powder and I iced my cake with it and now it won't come off the cake so not only is the icing ruined, but the cake itself is ruined!" I am crying by now. "I don't even have time to BAKE the cake let alone decorate it again, so I'd like to know what you're going to do about it!".

Cashier: "Let me refer you to the manager".

Well duhh. I told the manager my story and she gave me all the supplies I had wasted to make both the cake and the icing. Then, since I didn't have time to bake the cake again, she gave me big slabs of cake from their bakery so I could cut my cake out of them. I was pretty impressed. Now THAT's conflict resolution!

I still didn't have time to decorate it all that evening so I got the "ok" to deliver it the following morning.

I had to deliver it to Surrey. Not 5 minutes from my home, the driver (who will remain unnamed) slowed down rather abruptly for a red light, and SPLAT! The top tier cascades to the floor of the vehicle along with my sanity.

I had an instant nervous breakdown. As I stared in disbelief, I wondered if I should have kept the rock hard icing on instead.

We got to the location, and I luckily brought extra icing, so I started to fix it. It was not going well. As I said earlier, plain cakes leave little room for error. The icing job has to be perfect. Something needed to be done.

I went into the reception hall and looked for anything I could use to cover up the pancaked spots while the chef was yelling at me to hurry up and get it off his counter. I cut off some of the bows on the chairs and nabbed a flower or two and turned the minimalistic cake topper into a piece of art. A piece of art that covered the whole top tier. A piece of art that people look at say, "huh? What is THAT supposed to be?".

This was the only cake I never photographed.

Friends of ours went to the wedding (it was their cousin getting married). The bride and groom never mentioned that the cake didn't look AT ALL how they ordered it, so I guess they were too pre-occupied to notice.

When you are at my funeral, know that I'd still be around for several years more, had it not been for this sweet confection.

I did a few more after this with a "no delivery" policy, but it was still more stress than it was worth.

So now I do it for fun.

Parking Lot Party

My Mac is dead. I didn't know it was possible, but it is. And it's expensive to fix. So I'm stuck with my S-U-P-E-R S-L-O-W iBook until sometime in January. So no photo uploads and no playing Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook :-(

But that's ok. This story has been on my mind for several months and it needs no photos.

So, way before Christmas shopping began (It must have been late October or early) November, we went to Wal-Mart because they were having a sale on diapers. Off the 4 of us went after dinner one night to take advantage of the deal. We got the diapers (woo hoo, the last box!), looked around for awhile, then went back to the car.

We have the STUPIDEST car alarm. We've wanted to get it shut off since we got the car, um, 2.5 years ago, but just have never got around to it. You see, once you open any door, you have 10 seconds to put the key in the ignition and turn it, or else the alarm will sound. This is fine for someone who has no kids, but when you have two kids to get from stroller to carseat, it is REALLY ANNOYING to have to open the driver door and disarm the alarm first, leaving your kids running around in the parking lot as you do this.

One way around the parking lot chase, is to open Nate's door and shove him in, which gives you 10 seconds to then open the driver door and turn the ignition. Colin usually uses this method, but I find I am not fast enough for it.

Anyways, back to the story. We get back to the car, and Colin unlocked the trunk for the stroller. Then, he chooses the "shove-Nate-in-before-disarming-alarm" method. Obviously it takes more than 10 seconds to put Nate in his seat, so he closes Nate's door letting him climb in his seat, opens the driver door, and puts the keys in the ignition.

Meanwhile, it's my job to put Evan in the other side of the car. The parking stalls at Wal-Mart are not very wide, so sometimes it is a challenge to squeeze the infant carseat in. This time was particularly difficult, as the person beside us parked a foot into our stall! I barely had enough room to squeeze MYSELF between the two cars, let alone the massive carseat, so annoyed, I had to return to the back of the car to tell Colin he'd have to reverse the car in order for me to get Evan in.

Colin went to get into the car, and realized that Nate, who was not strapped into his carseat, had locked himself in the car (note, the keys are in the ignition)!

We tried everything to get him to unlock the doors. We must have looked like idiots. We got him to press the button, but he kept pressing lock. Lock. LOCK! He happily he had free reign of the car, pretending to drive it, turning his CD up, dancing to the music...he really thought we were playing a game.

After about 10 minutes of trying, the lady who parked in our stall came out and saw two quite obviously frazzled parents, with a cold, crying infant, who were trying to coax a singing toddler to open the car doors. She laughed and said, "Oh, that's so funny!".

I lost it. I am usually an even tempered person who avoids conflict at all cost, but this set me over the top. I said something like:

"WHAT exactly is funny about THIS? My kid has locked himself in the car and my baby is cold and hungry, and if it weren't for your horrendous parking job, I would have been able to get my door open before he locked himself in there!!"

She squeezed past me and drove off asap. An offer to help would have been nice.

Luckily, Colin had unlocked the trunk. After 20 minutes of trying, he managed to unhook Nate's carseat by getting in the trunk, shoving his arm between the two seats, and bending his arm in a way that no arm should bend to hit the seatbelt release. Then, he was able to force the back seat down far enough to squish the upper half of his body through far enough to reach the lock. I was almost in tears because I thought Colin was going to get stuck and injured. Then what would I do with a crying baby, split-in-half-husband and locked in toddler?

But we did get in, so I got to phone my mom back who was on her way to my house to get my spare set of car keys and bring them to us. Thank God she has our house key!

We learned a few lessons though.

1. Don't let Nathan be in the car with the key in the ignition. (like, duhh you're saying...but try having our stupid alarm)

2. Take an extra set of keys.

3. Get our alarm disabled.

I'm back

Contrary to popular belief, I am still alive. There are a few reasons I have not blogged in over 3 months. Here's one:

And another:

And another:

But I need to stop making excuses like "I don't have time". Well, that's not really an excuse, it's true. But I don't think there will EVER be enough time so I'll just have to make time. Writing is a creative outlet for me. And besides, with 2 kids, I have so many stories that I may just bust if I don't get them out!

It took so long for me to remember my user name and password that I don't have much time today, but I want to make blogging a weekly thing again, so please check back soon.

Ok, Evan, I'm coming!!!!

Welcome Baby Evan

A little late than never, but welcome to our little son Evan! He was born 2 weeks early on Aug 16th at 7 lbs 8 oz (thank goodness he was early at that weight!!). After a short readmission to the hospital to treat his jaundice, he's doing fantastic! He's a pretty laid back baby (so far), and is cute as cute can be! Nathan loves him (sometimes a bit too much), and obviously Colin and I are thrilled with our new arrival. Both boys are asleep so I should be too, so this is a short post. But hopefully I'll be a little better with updating my blog once my newborn offers me a little more freedom!

Ketchup Catchup Catsup

Nathan loves ketchup. He calls it dip. Actually I guess he loves most liquidy foods that he dips things into, but ketchup seems to be his favourite and he eats it by itself and with a host of other things.

Got me thinking that ketchup is a personal thing, and every person has strong opinions of what ketchup is good on. If you hate ketchup on eggs and see someone eating it, you're more likely to say "EWE! You eat ketchup on eggs?" instead of just letting it be. So I'm going to give my brain a break from thinking of serious (and upsetting) matters and instead, think about ketchup.

Here's my list of things I like ketchup with, some common, some not. In the comments, add any of your odd ketchup fetishes so we can all say "ewe" together.

Hamburgers
Hotdogs
Corndogs
Hashbrowns
Fries
Kraft dinner
Scrambled eggs
Cheese slices (this one's Nathan's)
Meatloaf
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Canned pork & beans
Boiled cabbage with vinegar

Hmmm. That's all I can think of for now.

Beautiful Days

What a beautiful day! Overcast, about 19-20 degrees (which in pregnancy terms is about 27 degrees), I wish it would stay like this all summer! I can go for a walk without sweating for the rest of the afternoon. Still too hot for socks or sleeves though.

The heat really bothers me when I'm pregnant. Doesn't bother everyone though, I do have several preggo friends who aren't bothered by it at all! Lucky.

One thing I love about really hot days, though, is playing with water! And that just happens to be one of Nathan's favourite things to do too. He's probably play with the hose outside in winter if I let him.

Catching water drops out of a hose