Moving

For various reasons I've decided to start fresh elsewhere ... you can now find my blog at http://bluebunny.wordpress.com/

Frustration

Ever feel like you're banging your head against a wall?

That's the way I've been feeling a LOT lately.

I hear the message "reach out", ask for help, be willing to admit when I can't do it on my own. Where some say there are answers, none are forthcoming for me. Clarity does not come, reassurance is absent, comfort unattainable. Companionship fluttering out of my grasp.

I find myself calling much into question lately. Where I find myself, where I'm heading, my beliefs, my desires ....

I feel lost. alone. limited. frustrated. like a hampster running around in a wheel - not really going anywhere, not doing any real good.

and I'm sick of it.

I want to have purpose. meaning. to feel needed and wanted. to give of myself in a meaningful way. to pour out the passion I know is within.

I feel like I must be doing something wrong, but I don't know what. Einstein said "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results" ... so why is it I try in different ways, with different people, different approaches, different techniques I end up in the same quagmire of depression, disssatisfaction, loneliness, dissillusionment, disenchantment and just plain BLAHness?

Socks!

I finished off the socks I'd been knitting myself finally ... I'd post a pic, but that would require my taking them off to get the lighting decent & that's not happening! I finally see what the fuss is about - they are the most comfortable socks I've ever had! It's rare that my feet don't feel frozen in the wintertime & they are just nicely warm :)

I've already cast on for my second pair. :)

Whatever Happened to the Kindness of Strangers?

We got hit with some pretty nasty weather yesterday & everyone's been driving more cautiously, myself included. This morning the roads were clear and barely an iy patch to be seen. I managed to find one.

I'd slowed down to enter the turning lane and hit a long stretch of black ice. There was nothing I could do - if I steered the car right, I'd slide into oncoming traffic. I hit the brakes and hung on. I was fortunate I was going so slow - the car slid the whole length of the lane (and it's a long one!) bumped onto the concrete island dividing the turn lane from the main road, knocked over a street sign but came to a stop before hitting the traffic light pole, thank goodness!

I sat there for a moment, stunned. A woman waiting at the lights was looking directly at me. There were plenty of cars around who saw what happened. Not one stopped. Not one rolled down a window to ask if I was ok.

I waited a moment to be sure I was ok, and drove off unhurt and the car only a little scratched, thankful it wasn't worse but feeling very dissapointed in people.

sick

The absolute worst part for me about being a single mother is when I get sick. Lots of other stuff is hard, lots makes my heart about want to burst, lots make me feel. helpless but when I get sick - REALLY sick, I AM helpless.

I managed to get to the dr's office this afternoon to get diagnosed with some kind of throat infection - maybe strep. I took a course of antibiotics as soon as I paid for them. I dosed myself with ibuprofin.

Then I got the shakes. BAD. I got scared - my little one is not quite ready to handle making a phone call should I become incapacitated. I downed fluid, stole one of his freezies. An hour in I called my friend, who was a nurse for advice. I couldn't even think sraight.

My friend reminded me I could take some ASA as well, so I did. The shakes continued for another hour. That's a LONG time :(

I'm relieved to be finally feeling like I'm thinking straight again, and to have stopped shivering. It's almost The Child's bedtime and I'll does myself up one more time with antiobiotics and line up the asa & ibuprofin by the bed and hope that a god night sleep helps improve matters immensely so I can at least pretend to be supermom again in the morning!

Give your boss the heave-ho

From Office Playground, the Boss Toss!

Unusual class project

Children make coffin for dying teacher

"Crowned in Peace"

A friend sent me a link to an incredbily sad video on youtube that briefly told the story of a little boy who lost his life due to seat belt failure. The parents of the boy had published the video to promote seat belt saftey awarenss. They are recommending parents look for car seats that have 5-point harnesses that can hold up to 80lbs as if their son had been in a 5-pt harness he would still be alive today.

Definitely a good message to hear. More rsearch to be done on my part as the family in question lives in the Sates and safety standards are different here in Canada, so investigation is needed.

BUT that's not why I'm posting tonight. Something on the related playlist caught my eye; "the life of noah steven" Being curious, I clicked it & the video started playing. I stopped it only a moment in, as from the photo montage alone I could work out the essentials. A link to a blog was listed above the video. Off I went to read. and read. and read. and cry.

The story of this family has short-circuited most of my brain cells at the moment. I'm amazed at the amount of love, faith, strength and togetherness this family shows in their pictures and posts. They have gone through some awful times and have managed to remain positive and able to see the good in this world.

So, I'm suggesting a peek at the blog, which is as much as story about Faith as it is about this beautiful boy and his loving parents and sister ..... take some kleenex with you....

Noah Steven Crowned in Peace

"I dead you!!"

The Child's newest favourite phrase - perhaps we've watched a little too much Siderman and Harry Potter lately!

A Giving Heart

Go read Troll Baby . Take some kleenex. 's all.

Free Tax Programs

GenuTax - 30 day trial
Taxman 2006
StudioTax

I haven't tried any of these myself and none have e-file capability - I think the idea is you enter your amounts intop the programs, let them do the calculations & copy onto the paper form & mail that away.

This has been your public service announcement of the day :)

Money, money, money!

Lately I've been spending more time than I'd like trying to re-work my budget. It astounds me how it is I make a decent salary yet am always broke.

Out of curiosity (ok and maybe I was a little bored too!) I decided to work out how my monthly earnings were being divided up:

• 25% goes to rent


• 21% to daycare


• 13% utilities


• 17% goes to car-related expenses (car payment, insurance, gas)


• 16% is for food


• less than 1% clothes the kiddo & I


• less than 1% to debts


• pharmacy-stuff, coffee money, entertainment, insurance (life & renter's) and charitable donatrions make up the last 6% - I didn't bother breaking them each down

Notice anything missing? Yep, I have NOTHING going to savings. Or RRSP's. Or an RESP. And that's with tweaking and re-working the darn thing a bazillion-and-one times. Something is just very very wrong there!

I just can't fathom how other single parents DO it! In fact, I can't fathom how any single-income family manages to do more than get by! I'm better off than some, I know, but my kid isn't doing any sports, our entertainment consists of an outing to the Children's Museum or the library, maybe the video store, we shop mainly at consignment stores & sales, my car is nothing special - our life is not at all luxurious.

It's a mystery to me how some folk seem to have so much more. I suppose though the key word is seem - I guess I have no way of *knowing* the truth ....

Yet I still feel like a failure when it comes to money. I feel like I'm letting my son down by not providing the nest, by not being able to save for his future or mine! The only good thing I can say is I've paid off a staggering amount of debt since separating and if I can manage to keep it up, it should be all gone by the end of this year (other than the car payments). Depressing though that will only free up 1% of my monthly salary! *sigh*

I've got Sunshine on a Cloudy Day ....

LOL! thanks Douglas, for the comment!!! Here's what I probably deserved:





(I know, I know, something about lost marbles, right???)

Blah

This time of year sucks. Please send sunshine.

whimper.

Tribute to Canada

Received this from a friend and it's well worth passing along! Not sure on the original date of publication - too lazy to google it, lol!

Sunday Telegraph Article
From today's UK wires: Salute to a brave and modest nation
Kevin Myers, The Sunday Telegraph

LONDON - Until the deaths last week of four Canadian soldiers
accidentally killed by a U.S. warplane in Afghanistan, probably almost no
one outside their home country had been aware that Canadian troops were
deployed in the region. And as always, Canada will now bury its dead, just
as the rest of the world as always will forget its sacrifice, just as it
always forgets nearly everything Canada ever does.

It seems that Canada's historic mission is to come to the selfless
aid both of its friends and of complete strangers, and then, once the crisis
is over, to be well and truly ignored. Canada is the perpetual wallflower
that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her
for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow
dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired
and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those
she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her
yet again.

That is the price Canada pays for sharing the North American
continent with the United States, and for being a selfless friend of Britain
in two global conflicts. For much of the 20th century, Canada was torn in
two different directions: It seemed to be a part of the old world, yet had
an address in the new one, and that divided identity ensured that it never
fully got the gratitude it deserved.

Yet its purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two
world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of Canada's
entire population of seven million people served in the armed forces during
the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of
1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers
in the entire British order of battle.

Canada was repaid for its enormous sacrifice by downright neglect,
its unique contribution to victory being absorbed into the popular Memory as
somehow or other the work of the "British." The Second World War provided a
re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended
up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack. More than 120
Canadian warships participated in the Normandy landings, during which 15,000
Canadian soldiers went ashore on D-Day alone. Canada finished the war with
the third-largest navy and the fourth-largest air force in the world.

The world thanked Canada with the same sublime indifference as it
had the previous time. Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in
film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign
in which the United States had clearly not participated - a touching
scrupulousness which, of ourse, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any
notion of a separate Canadian identity.

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in
Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus
Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William
Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter and
Dan Aykroyd have in the popular perception become American, and Christopher
Plummer, British. It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a
Canadian ceases to be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as
unshakably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved
quite unable to find any takers.

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the
achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is
completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say of themselves - and
are unheard by anyone else - that 1% of the world's population has provided
10% of the world's peacekeeping forces. Canadian soldiers in the past half
century have been the greatest peacekeepers on Earth - in 39 missions on UN
mandates, and six on non-UN peacekeeping duties, from Vietnam to East Timor,
from Sinai to Bosnia.

Yet the only foreign engagement that has entered the popular
on-Canadian imagination was the sorry affair in Somalia, in which
out-of-control paratroopers murdered two Somali infiltrators. Their regiment
was then disbanded in disgrace - a uniquely Canadian act of self-abasement
for which, naturally, the Canadians received no international credit.

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless
friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan? Rather like
Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable
motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a
figure of fun.

It is the Canadian way, for which Canadians should be proud, yet such
honour comes at a high cost. This week, four more grieving Canadian families
knew that cost all too tragically well.