Growing up in a house full of girls, I wasn’t much into watching football. It was something on the TV that my dad or my grandfather watched when I wanted to watch something else.

Now I live in a house full of boys, all of them sports enthusiasts, and if we had cable I still wouldn’t get to watch what I want to watch, but we don’t and CBC lost the rights so whatever. There really isn’t anything on TV now, it being the summer, but that is another post.

So as I said I live in a house full of boys who are lovin the sports. They will watch Hockey, Golf, Soccer, if we had it Basketball, and of course Football.

Right now we are at the beginning of the CFL season and every year the Calgary Stampeders have a fan fest. They serve a pancake breakfast, open the field up the the fans, run some drills and stations, give away prizes, and introduce the public to the players. You actually get to touch them. (that came out wrong). Anyways it all free.
This is Tweedle 3 going deep.
Tweedle E is reading the situation and getting ready to pass.
This is the boys with the Stamps mascot the runs up and down the field when they score a touchdown.

The coach giving some pointers.

We had fun and GO STAMPS GO!

Back in the day, there were only 4 maybe 5 different kinds of movie ratings. G (general, for everyone), PG (Parental guidance, almost everyone), Mature (you had to be at least 16 or was it 14), R (you had to be 18 and there was usually nudity or extreme violence) at least that is how it went in Canada.

Now it goes something like this.I think they are missing PG-13 or is that American. Also here in Canada some movies that are rated R in the states are rated significantly lower. I guess thats what we get for having a more liberal society. Politics aside its all confusing.

Then you get into the warnings… talk about adding another layer of vagueness. My middle Tweedle went to a birthday party about a week ago and saw the movie Mama Mia. I didn’t think much about it because I hadn’t seen it yet and the score was all ABBA. What is there to worry about? Later that night when my husband and I were at the video store I grabbed the back of the movie and saw PG (Parental Guidance) with nudity and theme warnings. Needless to say I was a little disappointed that he had seen the movie and phoned one of my sisters right away, who I knew had already seen the movie. She assured me that there wasn’t any gratuitous sex scenes, but was alarmed herself that the movie was shown at a 7 year olds birthday party. With themes about marriage, shacking up, homosexuality, and a a daughter trying to find out which of three men her mother had affairs with was her father, she found that highly inappropriate for seven year olds. It doesn’t matter how good the soundtrack is. Heres hoping my little Tweedle’s “ADHD” kicked in and he wasn’t interested.

That night after the kids went to bed Mr. Wonderful and I settled in to watch our own movie. “The Bank Job” rated 14A (kids 14 and older can see) with a warning for violence, language, and sexual content. We thought it would be might ok because at least there wasn’t a warning for nudity. The movie opens right away with the sexual content and doesn’t get any better from there. I attributed that to the English (European) sense of entertainment. I was wrong.

Friday we rented the movie Crossing Over. The movie has been raved about all over the radio. It stars Harrison Ford. I like him so I was looking forward too it. We had to turn it off. This movie was also rated 14A. In the 30-45 min that we saw of it, It had Gangsters, sexual acts, nudity and according to kids in mind we didn’t get to the meat of it. None of this was on the warnings. I was chatting with Mr. Wonderful after, we came to the conclusion that we weren’t the target audience. This movie (except for some heavy immigration themes) was visually targeted for the teenage boy and meant to fill his head full of garbage. Too bad, I would have liked to explore some of those themes.

I’m not out to get these movies I’m just expressing the frustration with the vagueness of the rating system and wondering why these institutions/ organizations think these movies are appropriate for 14 and older. I’m not even old enough to see some of the stuff I saw. I also hate wasting my money.

We are entering the last phase of school. The boys have a week left and projects are winding down. Although I would like to take D’s car project and make him do some adjustments, I am leaving it up to him. He needs to learn to do the work without me pushing him, and he needs the grade he deserves, not the one I deserve.
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I am officially into the second half of my thirties. I find I am no closer to some of my goals than I was 10 years ago. Obviously those goals are not much of priority maybe I should look at them again and make revisions. I don’t want to be 40 and have a midlife crisis.
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I am presently training for the Melissa’s half marathon even though I am only registered for the 10. I’m not sure I can be committed to the training schedule so we will see what happens. I’m doing this mostly to lose weight and secondly to prove to myself that I am strong. I have until the end of september. That seems far away but it really isn’t.
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Just had interview #1 for a piano teacher today. He was very professional, and highly qualified. He recieved a music degree in London Ontario, taught a kingston and has taught at mount royal for 15 years. Now he does private lessons.

He said he only uses the sizuki method of piano as it trains the students to read music better. He also says that it is faster than most methods. He tells me that at the end of 3 books of sizuki, the children will enter conservatory music at grade 4. I started out in sizuki, but switched when we switched piano teachers when I was young.

His preference is to have the parent beside the child at the piano lesson so they know what is going on, and so they will ask the questions most children don’t. He also says that all his students have about an hour long lesson. He charges a flat rate of $120/ month for each student. Some months they get 4 lessons some months they get 5. Still have a few more to go but I am very impressed. I think he is out of our price range. No wonder he can afford such a nice place.

Seems that I am on a textile theme today. The title may lead you to believe that this post is about “what not to wear”, but I assure you it is not. It is of a more serious nature. Yah right!

Whilst the Scotts and Our family were camping, Mr. Wonderful and Mr. Scott came upon a log of wood that looked like an anatomically* correct male pair of pants. The rareness of such a find led us to save the “pants” for a ceremonial burning on Saturday night.

After Dinner and after smores we built the fire high and hot. We shared ghost stories. In between the ghost stories one of us was to tell a story of how the pants came to be.

There was a story of the demise of one Obi-wan-pinoccio. He wasn’t a real boy after all but he had the force. He became a jedi and fought battle droids but alas young Obi-wan-pinoccio went out in a blaze of glory and all that is left of him were his pants. He was to burned as some Jedi are.

There was a story of a magical pair of pants, that if worn could make one invisible. These pants had more than just invisibility powers for the person who donned said pants. The wear had an inexplicable ability to control anyone else who was wearing pants. Because of this great and disturbing power, the One pair to rule them all had to be burned in the fires of Mordor I mean Crandall.

Finally the story of an unhappy man who liked to scare little children, came into some knowledge of some old magic that made him more powerful. Because of this power he was able to make young Tweedle E fall from the truck and caused many of the hurtful things that happened while we were camping. He was able to do this because he had turned the wood elves and fairies to his power. Luckily an old wise wizard knew more and was able to trap him in a tree. Then he was cut into pieces. Each piece was hidden far from the other so as not to be reunited. For should the pieces be reunited and the spell said, there would be a resurrection of sorts and he continue doing evil. The old wise wizard would have burned him, himself but he was being hunted by the turned wood elves and imps. He only had time to hide the pieces so that later he could return to give them a proper burning. Unfortunately the old wizard died and was therefore unable to complete his task. It is now our responsibility to complete his mission.

And with that being said we placed the pants on the fire and chanted “BURN HIM! BURN HIM!” I’m sure the other campers were wondering what was going on as it was 10:30 at night. The strange thing though was the pants took a long time to catch fire and when they finally did a huge flame burt forth. Crazy!

*anatomical was more like a Ken doll than elephant pajamas.

As it turned out I didn’t have any scarves. I didn’t even have a camera with a charged battery to document the dance. I did however have a few tie-dyed shirts here that the young women made for camp and with much gusto, bravado, and whatever else you want to call it, I entered the backyard (to maintain some sense of dignity) and danced my little heart out. I leaped for light, I spun for sun and it was good.

Hopefully the fact that I used tie-dyed shirts will “kill two birds with one stone.” North Korea, your mommy says its time to play nice. Maybe that would actually work if I actually did the dance.

This winter has been long, this spring has been dismal and now its almost freaking June. I want a garden. I want my veggies to grow. I want to get warm. Maybe there is a purpose to you not shining your rays our way, but please reconsider. I’ll be more loyal. I’ll even do a sundance if necessary, silk scarves and all.

It is inevitable. No matter how hard I try to be organized, when camping I always forget something. I plan. I make lists. Then I start early. Alas there is only so much a person can do ahead of time. Then like last year its crunch time, packing is interrupted and now I’m without toilet paper for the weekend. Really I don’t know how I survived.

I really should give myself more credit. It’s not every woman that enjoys camping and can get a family of five out to the mountains with minimal luxury. Some have tried and failed. My secret… bring another family with you. More times than not they have remembered what you haven’t and vice versa. (thats latin for “other way around”)

This year we were joined again by a family of Scottish decent, or so their name implies. For the purpose of the next few posts they will be referred to as the Scotts.

We had an awesome time partaking in the pleasures of one National Park called Waterton Lakes. Again, we stayed at the Crandall Mountain campground. No sooner had we put up the tent, the boys started asking, “Wheres this?”, ” I can’t find that.”, “Maaawwm. Where is my…?” This is to be expected as I packed most everything and checked and rechecked the clothing bags etc. (How I forgot the hot chocolate and smore stuff I’ll never know, but at least they were clothed.) It was later in the day when they had misplaced things after touching them that I was starting to get frustrated. Its harder than I thought raising “good lookers.”

After sometime I came to a realization. Boys like to put things in their pockets. “Check your pockets please.” became the new theme. Thanks to this little phrase my response time was reduced to 5 sec. So if you have boys about the age of 3 and older and they like to carry things small enough to fit in their hand, I suggest checking the pockets first.

It is a very rare occurrence. In fact I’m not sure if this has happened before on a non-holiday monday. Today I woke up at 6:15, laid in bed for a while thinking of all the little family errands we would do. We were going to go to the bottle depot, play in the yard, replant the pole beans that were dug up by the squirrels and maybe plan our next camping trip. Nothing too arduous.

Anyway it took me a bit but as I snuggled into the warm body of my husband next to me, I realized “Oh darn it’s monday”. Normally this would have put me into a bad mood, but I just had such a good weekend, that I was fine.

Well now that the day is half over, it doesn’t feel like a saturday at all. I did get a lazy walk this morning and some garden observations, but it was back to the grind stone. I really miss the days when my kids were too young to go to school. When maybe a monday could feel like a saturday and there wasn’t as much pressing down on me, or them. The only problem with that is there wouldn’t be a third tweedle.

Well I should go. my phone is ringing yet again. I wonder what it could be this time. Like the garage holding a tenants car hostage isn’t enough. Maybe what I really long for is not having to work.

So race fans, the moment you were waiting for the story of my run. Two saturdays ago (April 25) I got a ride out to Canmore and ran in my first fun run. Back in February, I think, I registered for the 6k. I wanted to start my running life off feeling good and confident. The last week before the race I changed it to 12K. Needless to say I was nervous and not so confident.

The race was sponsered by the Rocky Mountain Soap Company. A portion of the profits went to the PInk and Green foundation. Pink for Breast Health and Green for Environmental stuff. Pretty clear eh?

The race consisted of a 6k loop with two ginormous hills that I had to run/walk twice because I was doing 12k, and I like torture. I was feeling pretty good at about 7 or 8k. I got my groove, but then the hills started to get me. I wasn’t ready for them, so I had to walk up most of them. I did run in parts and at the top of the steepest hill there was a chocolate station so it wasn’t all bad.

Aside from the hills, one of the hardest parts was the finish line for the 6k was right next to the turn off for the 12k. There was music and bells and cheering and announcements of awesomness and I still had to do another loop. I think if I didn’t have Leslie (coach) with me I might have jammed out like so many other and just completed the 6k, but I didn’t and I was glad. I’m still glad even though when I got to the final hill and was running to the finish line people were leaving and there wasn’t any fan fare.

The final hill, I did run up, my legs were burning and I almost couldn’t do anymore, but then I saw the finish line. My brain shut off my body took over and ran me into the line faster than I had been going the whole race, or at least that is how it felt. Kinda weird, kinda cool.

I only got a little veclempt twice. Once while I was lining up to start. I couldn’t believe I was here and it was my first run and all these people were doing the same thing. The second time was when I saw these kids running down one of the steep hills until they found their mom. They started yelling “come on mom you can do it” and then they helped run her up the hill. I was trying so hard to choke back the tears that I lost my ability to breath for a moment. Just so you know breathing is important in aerobic exercise.

I was a little sad that my family couldn’t make it, but I’m sure Tweedle D felt the same. You see he had his Kub Kar rally the same day, so we had to divide and conquer. He came in second in his class and I finished a 12k so all went well. Maybe next time they will come and see me.

All in all not bad for a first run, chocolate, Rocky Mountain Soap company Swag, beautiful scenery, and knowing the next runs are going to be a piece of cake, because, as it turns out this one will be my longest this year.