Chelseaville (a song for Stacey courtesy of Jacob Moon)

Jacob Moon has a funny story about how he wrote this song that I won't share here. He does this song really great live; I found the version on the album to be too honkey-tonk for me (although it isn't honkey-tonk, it's just a lot more countrified than live version). Anyway, this one's for you, Gordita:

Way back, back in the day
You used to wear your blond hair long
We'd sit out on the front porch swing
Laughin' at the world
Never want to be like that
So all this time the city lights were in your eyes

Oooooh, don't go
Stay here in Chelseaville
Ooooooh, don't go
Stay here in Chelseaville
Stay here if you love me

Freeways and traffic jams
What you want with all that noise?
Just to come home to some one-room dive
Which is all you can afford
If you want to live downtown
Why, baby, why
When you know that I can't follow?

Ooooh, don't go
Stay here in Chelseaville
Oooooh, don't go
Stay here in Chelseaville
Stay here if you love me

Sleep out on the lawn
Underneath the prairie sky
If the wind blows and brings us change
Will we be strangers?

Things are going better.....

Ji-Huen came out of the shop today. She's doing fine now, driving well and sleeping it off in the underground. :) I missed her and felt quite cooped up in the apartment the past several days.

I took a long walk today to the library and back (before we picked Ji up from the doctor), and that was good. It gave me some headspace, and for a moment standing upon a mountain of trash, I thought about the way my life was when I lived in Alberta, running through the forest and stumbling upon moose and deer and beavers. We were always just two steps away from being in total wilderness, and I loved that. I miss that like crazy here. Sure, we can drive out of the city and spend a few days on the farm (hello, Saturday!), but to be in the forest, the uncultivated land, the hills that are more like mountains than speedbumps, the prairie stretching out before you once you clear out of the trees.........am I filled with some crazy longing today or what?!

In response to some other questions I've had, the job interview went well last week. It turns out it wasn't an interview at all, but testing to see if I and a bunch of other candidates are competent enough to do the job. Once they're done processing those results, I'll be called in for some more testing, an interview, and an extensive background check. Hooray! But I feel very confident and I want it, so that's almost the same as having it, eh? :)

Canada's newest permanent resident.....

C'est moi! Jason and I just got back from the immigration office, and my PR card is coming in the mail in the next two weeks. Hooray! So in all, it took almost exactly 13 months from the day they received our application to process it, and it would have been a shorter time if we hadn't had to wait almost four months for the FBI to mail me a police certificate. So there's hope for all of you out there going through this same process: it will eventually end.

On a similar note, the woman who did our final interview/signing of important documents thinks it will be no big deal to get my PR card to have my married name! That is above and beyond awesome! I'm so glad we brought in the marriage certificate and all my other new ID with my name on it. That was just a bonus.

In other news, our car has had a spot of trouble. She's in the shop at the moment. :( So we're deciding what we're going to do about that.

I think that's about all my news.

!Feliz Dieciseis de Septiembre!

Happy Mexican Independance day! Contrary to popular belief, it is in fact on the 16th of September (hence the name of the day), and not on Cinco de Mayo (or the 5th of May). Cinco de mayo is when the Spanish threw the French out of Mexico. Dieciseis de septiembre is the day the Mexicans threw the Spanish out of Mexico. So, !Viva Mexico!

What got me in the mood for all the celebration? Well, Dana was over last night and we were talking about bilingual/multilingual children (I'm reading a fantastic book called Raising Multilingual Children by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa that's all about language acquisition in the brain and all those sorts of things--I'm only on the second chapter but it's AWESOME!), and Dana mentioned how she had started studying Spanish at uni and that she'd like to start a Spanish play group with my kids and her kids. So I said okay, but maybe we can speak German sometimes? So my kids get a chance to pick up German from a native speaker. Isn't that cool?

That's about all I have to say. Hayley and I are going to Guelph tonight to see Jacob Moon in concert (if you know who that is; I just found out this week). I'm pretty excited. I heard one of his songs online, and he sounds great. I'll let you know how it goes.

Wikipedia Experiment--thanks Jared for the idea!

Here's a fun thing that I saw on my friend's blog. Go to wikipedia and enter your birth month and day (sans year) and you can find interesting events, births and deaths on your special day. Here are my top three events and births, which I thought were relevent to my life:


1095 - On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appoints Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land.
1582 - In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage licence.
1975 - East Timor declares its independence from Portugal.

Just a tiny explaination of why I chose these three facts: 1095, because I love Muslims, and being a Christian I share in the shame of the Crusades; 1582, because I've read many of Shakespeare's plays (currently working on reading all the comedies); 1975, because I've been to East Timor. It was interesting to see through the timeline about four or five different things happening in Albania on my birthday, so I suppose had I been born in Albania to Albanian parents maybe I would have been considered a lucky kid and have gotten some interesting name like Liberty or Freedom From The Ottomans or just plain Albania.

I share my birthday with:
1489 - Margaret Tudor, wife of James IV of Scotland, grandmother of Mary Queen of Scots
1628 - John Bunyan, English cleric and author
1757 - William Blake, British poet and artist

It's surprising how many people are on that list that I've never heard of once. So I picked three of the four with whom I was familiar.

That was fun. The end.

Something Good in the Mail

Don't you love it when you find a happy surprise in the mail?

Yesterday I got a letter from Immigration--and things are good! All they need to do now is interview me. They've even got the refund cheque coming to us. Hooray! So that will help tide us over until I get hired. Also, it means I'm almost a permanent resident!!!!!! I'm so psyched.

That's my good news. In other news, yesterday was Jason's last of three days in a row off. Now he has to work for seven days straight. Poo.

Last night also found us at Nathan & Andrea's house, eating some dinner and playing one of my favourite games in the world: Settlers of Catan! We had actually brought our game, hoping they knew how to play and willing to teach if they didn't. We found out they are Settlers ADDICTS, and they have all the expansion packs as well. OHMYGOODNESS!!! So we had a great time learning to play both Cities & Knights and Seafarers at the same time. And now I'm starting to think that once you have, you can never go back. I think I know what will be on my Christmas list this year.....hmm!!!

On a related note: anyone out there like Settlers? We should really get together sometime and feed the addiction. I'd love to play with five or six people, that would be absolute insanity. Call me if you're a Settler!

The wisdom of teeth

I'm back.

Big events from the past week:

Getting all four wisdom teeth pulled in twenty minutes or less! Thank you, Dr. Lam! You are awesome with whatever it is dentists use to extract teeth! I felt nothing besides the aweful stinging and burning of the needle administering the local anaesthetic into the roof of my mouth. The only really bad part of the whole thing was the first two hours afterwards when I couldn't talk because my entire mouth, lips, and tongue were totally numb. I also couldn't swallow, so I felt like I was drowning on my own saliva. Nice picture, eh? But by drinking lots of chocolate milk, fruit smoothies, and cold water, I have gotten through it. Thank you also everyone who prayed for things to go well and an easy recovery. Things went awesome, I had minimal bleeding the few hours after, despite my worries nothing has gotten stuck in the gaping wounds to cause infection, and I feel great. I only used some acetaminophen the first day; otherwise I haven't had much pain except opening my mouth too widely too soon. :)

In other news, I think it was this week or last week (sometimes I lose track of time) that I talked to Stacey and heard the girls are coming out in October for some fun times in Toronto! So I'll be hanging out with them, and they'll maybe be coming here, or something. Anyway, I'm excited to see my Mano 'womens' (as my good friend Delphine would have said).

My nephew Caleb seems to have started on rice cereal sometime this week or something. I learned from my sister that there is apparently a huge discussion among mothers as to whether to start your kids on fruits first or vegetables. My opinion (which I came to yesterday while making applesauce) is that whichever one, make sure they taste good. You know, I always hated vegetables as a kid. But now when I eat Indian food, I almost always get the vegetarian meals because they taste so much better than meat curries, because they do these crazy things to veggies that make them awesome.

Sunday we went out to the farm (aka Mum & Dad's) to see our little brothers and to go apple picking. We only got about sixty pounds this time, and all Gala. Only Macintosh and Gala were ready, so we might go back again for some others in October.

Yesterday we made applesauce using our old-school canning jars that we found at the estate sale in April. Old jars, with rubber rings and glass tops. Very cool, archaic even. More than half ended up sealing. I don't know really what went wrong with the others. But we checked them this morning, and they weren't sealed, so we'll reprocess those. Any tips, (older) housewifeys?

Earlier last week, I also got a call from a certain place wanting me to come for an interview! So I might be getting a really awesome job soon. That's my hope, but I expect they'll hire me once they meet me. Good news!

An old way to flirt, or you learn something new every day

I was browsing in the library the other day and stumbled across a book about the history of Ontario by a certain Peter Baskerville. No relation, as far as we know at this point, but we haven't really looked into it. It seems likely, as there aren't that many Baskervilles around here. Anyway, one chapter had this cool thing about "Handkerchief Flirting," the way young courting couples would circumvent the gossips of town in the 19th century. I thought you might be interested to see what the signals are (in case you still live in a small town, regularly carry a handkerchief, and are so shy you often flirt from across the room).

Laying it on right cheek = I love you
Laying it on left cheek = I hate you
Drawing it out of pocket = do you love me?
Putting it over right shoulder = follow me
Putting it over left shoulder = not just now
Waving it with right hand = will you be out tonight?
Waving it with left hand = I’ll call for you
Covering your face = I don’t want your company
Holding it at your right side = do you want an introduction?
Holding it at your left side = never mind an introduction
Placing it around your neck = may I see you home?
Crumpled up in right hand = yes
Crumpled up in left hand = no
Dropping it = come now or never
Folding it once = call me by my right name
Kissing it = the same to you
Tieing it in a knot = remember you are engaged
Holding it open in front of you = if you speak, I will
Throwing it up = will you see me home?
Putting it in pocket = goodbye

Government Propaganda

I discovered something else in "Cousin" Peter's book: the Canadian Rosie the Riveter. She is the Bren Gun Girl, encouraging women in WWII to join the war effort. I like her.

Canning Fun...or the post composed of smilies

So as a good housewife (sans children), I have been doing a lot of canning this summer. Our most recent accomplishments are: Pear Rooibos Jelly, Chili Sauce (neither chili nor sauce, more of a generally good-tasting tomato-based food relish), and Blueberry Jam. I'm having a lot of fun, really. Didn't know I'd be buying so many dozens of mason jars the first year & a half of marriage. :)

On a related note, if I've given anyone any sort of homemade concoction in a jar, could you try your hardest to return the jar to me? They're reuseable, which is even better than recycling. :) Just got the Curious George movie soundtrack by Jack Johnson from the library, and I've been inspired by the song "The Three R's," which I naively assumed from the title would be about school work.

Enough randomness for one day. Haven't gotten a job yet. Yes, I applied to the Cambridge midwives. No, they don't want me. At least they let me know that they found someone else.