Snowflakes that land on my nose and eyelashes...

The Darlings are watching The Sound of Music.

They are watching this movie for the second time today.

They took a three-hour break to go for a very long bike ride while Zio walked with them, stopping for ice cream along the way and playing at the covered bridge and playgrounds. I had stopped the first playing of the movie at the halfway point so they could do this, and when they got home they demanded that I start the movie again. I couldn't, seeing as I was in the middle of hanging laundry outside, and I in turn demanded showers of them.

I forgot that when the Big One doesn't drink enough liquid, she gets mean. She is normally a beautiful, quiet child. Dehydrate her, even slightly, at your own peril. Mean. Angry. Venomous....and since no one else was available at the time, she took this out on her brother.

Thus began The Screaming. I was almost sure you could hear it out to the highway, but I'm probably underestimating the volume, since my hearing is less than 100%. Screaming. No words, just screaming. Blood-curdling (I've always wondered how far you had to go before a scream became "blood-curdling". I wonder no more.)

I felt it best to continue with the laundry.

Eventually someone was in tears, and he came out to tell me he'd been hit and pinched, although I suspected this not to be the entire story. I went in and indicated that both of my progeny should go to their rooms for a while, but I was met with a resounding, "NO!" so that was a bit of a bust. Instead I tried taking the movie away until apologies were issued.

Not my smartest move. The screaming became Howling. Loud howling, enough to knock out my hearing aids (they have a safety device whereby they shut off and act as hearing protection at a certain decibel level. Excellent.) and enough to make me realize that the only way I could gain control of the situation was to dole out liquids. Stat.

After forcing them to drink half a litre of juice and water, they were on better terms, apologized to each other an me, had their showers, finished the second half of the movie and opted to watch it again. They are waiting for CBC's 'Find Maria' tonight, as they'll pick the final Maria tomorrow night. They are totally into this whole Sound of Music thing. It's very cute. Except for the screaming and the howling.

They can both sing quite well for little kids, and as quickly as they learn the songs in the movie, they sing along. Tomorrow they will start one week of art and drama and music camp, and they're both very excited about that.

Funny, this camp thing. Many children that we know attend summer camps; duration varying from one week up to the entire summer, and mostly, the children seem to love them. I hated day camp, it was boring and unimaginative and hot and there were never kids there that I liked. There is a huge variety of summer day camps here, so we're not limited to the run of the mill arts & crafts let's take crepe paper and twist it and then cover it and ourselves with glue so we can wrap it around a wine (whiskey, rum, coke) bottle. That was to be our crowning achievement for the week....and I'm pretty sure that at the end of this current week, there will be a show. Maybe I'll skip work to go to it.

what they learn

"I had a bad day, Mumma," said Big One.
"Oh?"
"Yeah. Bad. But not like your bad days. Mine wasn't about molecules."

Macchina rosso

Buying a new car takes forever. We went to the Toyota dealership wanting to look at a Yaris, but after a drive around I found I was not so thrilled with that car. The gauges are in the middle of the dash, and I didn't like looking over at them. That, plus the fact that it just wasn't very comfortable, whereas the Corolla was. The Yaris came with $1K back from the feds, but other than that, there wasn't much difference in price or in gas mileage. So we chose the Corolla.

It took about an hour to go for the two test drives, after waiting for the salesman to find the keys for the second car, and for both Hub and I to drive both of them (with the salesman, and with Big One, who was along with us. Little One was at a birthday party). After that, it was waiting for the salesman to get all the data together so we could make a decision, which we'd already done. He got the books anyway, and went through them, painstakingly slowly. It took another hour to look at everything and make decisions about which options we wanted, and to sign a piece of paper so that I could ring the bell. When you buy a car, you ring a big bell and everyone claps. It's very fun. More cowbell. We need more cowbell.

Signing the piece of paper with the salesman meant nothing, however, because that's just the thing that says you're going to give them a small deposit and the middle toe of your right foot as surety that you're really buying the car. Then you meet with the finance guy. You get to wait to meet with the finance guy, for longer than you want to, and you have to go and get Little One from the birthday party. The finance guy went through more excruciating detail about the financing, the options, the money we could spend on top of the money we were already spending. While he highly recommended extra insurance in case one of us dies or can no longer work, and while he really really tried to push us to spend that extra $1600 to get said insurance, we had to turn that down in favour of physical protection of the vehicle. Rust protection, fabric protection, repainting twice in the lifetime of the vehicle to cover up stone chips...etc.

We didn't need no stinking insurance. We're going to live forever, healthy. At the time, while talking to the finance guy, we didn't know that. We weren't sure about the extended insurance, but after asking if we had time to think about things, we chose to wait. No one tells you that you don't have to make decisions immediately, but if you ask, you'll find out that the car company is more than willing to give you enough time to make rational decisions.

In all, time with the finance guy took another 1.5h, then there was the hand-shaking and the smiling, and we went home. They gave us a little bit of money for the old car, which we had to take home again with its putt-putt motor.

This was Saturday. The new car took just over a week to arrive, and in the meantime the exhaust blew out on the old car and it got very very loud. Deafeningly loud. Impossible to drive sort of loud. Intense.

Monday we got the new car, and it's very nice and I'm very happy with it. It's sort of my car, although neither of us claim outright ownership of either car.

Really though, it takes a very long time to buy a new car. It's not for everyone.

shhhhhh

Although a lot of regular life has been going on, I haven't had anything to say about it. I got on a plane and went to Winnipeg, stayed for 48 hours, came back. There was a big family birthday gathering for my great-uncle's 80th. Some people I hadn't seen for 20 years, probably longer, and it made next to no difference...they looked the same as I remembered them.

We've had visitors, and now they've left. Busy weekend of wine touring in Niagara (and a lot of wine-buying) and other touristy things. I think I'm getting a bit weary of Niagara....not that I've been everywhere by any means, but rather because there aren't any new releases right now and I've tasted what is currently out there. I think. I could just be suffering from a severe bout of ennui.

The old Corolla died, we got a new red one. I like the new car quite a bit, mostly because it's got air-conditioning and I like that in a car. I don't like AC in the house, but in a vehicle it helps to keep one awake and not totally buffeted by the wind.

Work is work, it's slow and nothing new is happening right now because it's summer and people go on vacation and crystals don't grow in the humidity and who knows what else....but it's the normal summer research doldrums. This probably doesn't happen at schools located in more temperate climates, but I've noticed in this country that when summer hits? work slows. This happens mostly in July and August, because May and June are generally conference months (although the IUCr is in Osaka at the end of August....I'm not going to that one) so everyone rushes for those, and then July and August...August especially...no one works. It's not as bad as in Europe where everything closes down, but it's slower than usual.

Our summers are short and intense, and people use them to their best advantage. You don't want to waste a single sunny moment...lately we've had intense rainstorms though, making the air wet and heavy.

And perhaps it's this holiday feel that has crept into me, reducing the amount of time I want to spend pondering my existence or my work or my spiritual endeavors. I don't get holidays this summer, because I'm a casual employee (a.k.a. no fixed address) and I don't get paid if I don't work. Getting paid is good when you have car payments (we traded daycare payments for car payments. woohoo.) and when you live beyond your means like I do. Maybe sometime I'll get a real job that has benefits and all the rest, but for now I'm still enjoying what I do. At the end of the year we'll evaluate it all.

Back to work, after a few days off. My job has changed a little bit, since now I'll just be doing paperwork for the NMR Centre, but I'll be ensconced in the X-ray lab three days a week. Monday and Tuesday? I'm not going in. I could go in, but I'm not going to, and instead I'll stay home and work (in the garden and sit in the sun and read books).

As I've mentioned before, Wednesday is Staff Lunch Day, when, in the summer months, we eat on the patio at the grad club and eviscerate faculty and grad students without mercy. Then, after our veggie burgers and barbecued chicken salads and perogies and french fries and iced teas and waters (and one lonely little half-pint of County Ale) we go back to work for the self-same faculty and grad students again. We mostly do this so that we can tell more crazy stories about them the next week.

Today V and I were having a great laugh at one particular grad student's expense. He came into the lab, and asked me (he was going to ask J, the boss, but I waylaid him. In my opinion, my boss does too much work and too many things that he shouldn't bother doing. In my other opinion, my brilliant talents are underutilized...one of my most brilliant talents is stopping people in their tracks with a look.) if he could have four datasets finished up for his committee report.

"So, Mike, how much time are we talking about here? When might this report of yours be due?"

"Welllllllll. It might be due on Friday. I have some of the files, but I don't think that very many of them are finished. I just need some rtf files and some pictures."

"Day after tomorrow then Mike? That's what we're talking about? Four datasets in less than 48 hours? Excellent. It's people like you who rock my world."

Mike is six foot three and weighs in at about 250. I don't weigh half that much, and I'm five feet tall. He is clearly nervous, but he wants his data.

See, this is the thing. People come in and they know they're asking for something that's near to impossible to do. They, we (because the staff are all chemists too, many of whom have at least gone through an MSc and most with PhD's) are all great procrastinators, but the faculty and students have it over on us in that they can procrastinate, whereas we aren't allowed to.

I know of what I speak, being a former faculty member. I also knew though, having been a staff member before that, that it would never be a good idea to ask of someone that which you could not fulfill yourself.

"It's not a big deal," I said to Mike. Then I looked at him intently, he turned to stone, and V and I swept him out the door.