Onwards. I missed the following: Five Thing Friday. Silent Sunday. Grace in Small Things. And posting in general. So here are Five Silent Things That Grace My Life. This should fill the void left by my silence or at least give you something to read when you should be doing something else, such as your work or tending to your toenails. I warn you that I will be completely silent all of next week because I am not turning on this computer even one time. Not once. Zero. I love you all, and I will miss you, but I will not miss things like the grotesque picture of the man-dog-goat-thing that Clayton just sent me or the seven hours a day I spend reading random twitter streams for no reason. I’M ON A BREAK!

1. OK, here’s the first one because OMG how cute. They were getting ready for bed and The Bun said, “QUICK GET THE CAMERA THIS WILL BE REALLY CUTE!” Which was weird because, um, what? Anyway, it WAS cute. They both picked their nose but I won’t post that one and then they had this big hug, or “huggy” as we call them around here because you don’t really get much opportunity in your life to talk baby talk so you should do it when you actually have baby-like people around, and then stop when you start to irritate yourself. HUGGY.

2.  We have been trying for what feels like 1000 years to take The Bun and The Birdy out to Saanich Historical Artifacts Society to ride the little trains.   Every time we go, the trains are not running in spite of the fact that — like last weekend — it said in the paper that they were.   For some reason The SHAS exists in a tiny pocket of geography wherein it is 26 degrees hotter than everywhere else in a ten mile radius.   Nothing improves the experience of driving for half an hour with over-excited kids to a mosquito infested acreage criss-crossed with fascinating train tracks THAT NO TRAINS EVER SEEM TO RUN ON than a heat so intense that taking four steps in any direction causes  you to faint from heatstroke.   Needless to say, The Bun was determined to enjoy his day at the “train place” (regardless of the fact that the elderly gentleman tinkering with one of the coveted trains-that-can-be-ridden-upon had NO idea if or when the trains may ever run again though he thought that Bill had taken a few kids out on one earlier maybe or he wasn’t really sure if at all), so we did what any fun family would do:  we walked around the tiny train track.

3.   After the train place, we were desperate for fresh sea air in the hopes that we may cool down.    We decided to go to a beach we used to take Malcolm to when he was wee, called Roberts Bay.   I LOVE this beach.   The water is warm and healthy and full of interesting sea life.   There is a sand bar, lots of crabs living under rocks, shade, herons and a lot of boat traffic to observe, if by “observe”,  I mean scream, “A BOAT A BOAT HI BOAT HIIIIIII BOATTTTT!” every time one goes by.    The kids got soaked but it was worth it.   Next time, we may go ahead and bring something like “bathing suits” or “water shoes”.    I don’t know though, that might be too radical.

4.   Also this week, we spent a bunch of time hanging out in the backyard, which I like because I can lie in the shade on a lounge chair and read a trashy novel while the kids entertain themselves which is actually now a reality, at almost-2 and just-4.   They actually PLAY, people.   They do.   Not always together and not always without biting and randomly pushing each other over by using the old palm-of-hand-on-nose technique, but it does happen.   The Bun is into building stuff, like machines.   Like this.   Awesome.   And look!   Beside him!   A trashy novel!   And behind him!  The garden!     All good things.

5.  OK, you’re going to look at this one and say, “Um, so?”  But trust me, this is big.   THIS is my backyard and THIS is a California poppy.   For at least five years, I’ve planted California poppies at every house we’ve lived in.   I’ve dumped packets of seeds into various types of dirt, in the sun, out of the sun, wherever.    I’ve seen these things growing out of concrete on the highway, that’s how tough they are, but I’ve never EVER successfully made one come up in my garden.    Then I was out watering a couple of days ago and highlighted against my dead lawn was THIS.   Fo’ serious, people, I done did it.   It’s a fluke because it came from a packet of assorted seeds I got from the counter at Butchart’s for 50cents because The Bun desperately wanted it and it did not come from any one of the ten packets of California poppy seeds I planted all over the rest of the garden, but stil:  I iz poppy grower!  For realz!

1.  This is my first post on my new website which looks exactly like my old website but is not the same, trust me, it’s all different back here in administrative land and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that it scares me because why can’t I understand these simple instructions?   Is there something wrong with ME?   Or is it YOU?   That’s what I’m wondering, really.   If I can blame you.   But I can’t really blame anyone because I wanted to make this change and so some really nice people helped me to do it and it’s not their fault that I’m afraid of change and of sharks and of that funny lump that’s just developed behind my ear.   (What is that?   Some kind of ear cancer?   That’s what I need to know.)    Long story short:  new website!   That looks the same!

Update:   The strangest thing just happened.   What is it?  You ask.   Well, I’ll tell you.   I sneezed.   No, I didn’t pee.   Yes, it did hurt my back.   But simultaneously, I whacked the keyboard with my left hand and now my screen is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT.   But honestly, I like it better.   That’s like Instant Grace.   Thanks, Universe.

2.   I got to hold a brand new baby this week and by brand new, I mean really really new, fresh from the baby belly.    OH, so cute.   Tiny!  It’s impossible to hold a brand new baby without exclaiming repeatedly about how TINY!   How small the hands are!   Tiny!   And did I mention, OMG, so tiny!   And if the baby has hair, which this baby does, also the HAIR!   The baby has hair!  You can hear yourself saying these things and you know everyone is saying the exact same thing but you can’t help yourself because the darling little thing is so damn TINY!   And HAIRY!   Awesome.   Love the baby.   Smooch to the new baby.    Hi Lucy!   Lucy is an adorable name and also one of the names that we had thought about for The Birdy so extra smooch for an extra cute name.   Clayton says I smooch too much on the internet.   Sorry Clayton.   Smooch.   It’s like a tic.   I can’t help it.

3.  Four years plus a few months ago I was super-extra pregnant with The Bun and I was turning on the shower and the phone rang and I turned around to answer the phone and I put my back out in such a way that I was completely paralyzed and absolutely could not move, period, full stop.   Which sucked SO BADLY, you have no idea.   Being nine months pregnant and unable to move when everyone knows that all you do at nine months is pee and then sit down and then get up to pee some more, and then sit, and then eat a bag of easter candy and then pee and then sit.   When you are immobile, you’re limited to the easter candy and still you need to pee but can’t.   To make a long story slightly less long, I’ll skip to the part where I went into the hospital by ambulance because HELLO, I COULDN’T GET UP TO PEE, and when I got to the hospital the nurses mocked my suggestion that they check to see if maybe in addition to the back problem, a baby was about to come out.   They laughed about it in the hall!  Oh, she’s so funny!   Except, ha, I wasn’t wrong, was I?   My point is that during my stay there, I was reading a book and it was really funny and for four years I’ve been trying to remember what that book was and twice have bought books which were not the right book but had similar covers and it’s been driving me crazy, not on a daily basis, but when I think about it.   And yesterday, someone posted something on a message board that I read and it linked to THE BOOK.   So I can check one thing off the list of things that regularly make me crazy.   If you’re wondering, the book was Hypocrite in a Poufy White Dress.    I remember it being funny, but I’ve just ordered it (I think it was a library book the first time or I loaned it to someone who didn’t give it back) so that I can see if it was really funny or if I was just high from back pain and also BEING IN LABOUR because yes, my water broke while I was reading this book.

4.  Really famous writer Joe Finder joined my fan page on Facebook mostly because I joined his fan page and then told him he had to join mine because everyone knows that fanning is reciprocal or else bad karma will befall the non-reciprocator (only I didn’t say that because it was just a Twitter thing so I said, “Hey, I joined yours, now you join mine” but the idea is the same) and it makes me look much more legitimate when famous NYT best selling authors join my fan page.    It also reminds me that I am not a famous NYT best selling author and what if I never am a NYT best selling author and no one ever buys a book from me ever again and I die a failure and alone and am eaten by sharks?   Could happen.

5.  All the other things I can think of are actually Whines wrapped up in Graceful Spuddles so that it doesn’t appear that I’m whining when really I am.   Surely I can think of another good thing.   Can I?   Something?   Anything?   Bueller?

Oh, OK.   The laughter of the kids.   The hysterical, happy fun they have together, right before one of them falls over and starts screaming about how he wants the police to come and tear down this house so he never has to take anther step in it again.   But all that shrieking and laughing is awesome, except maybe the shrieking could stand to have a little less volume.   And please, NOT at the top of the steep wooden stairs.   Yesterday they were shrieking and laughing at the top of the steep wooden stairs and running in and out of each other’s rooms and slamming doors (which is a recipe for finger squashing but that didn’t happen so that’s a good thing) and somehow all that door slamming fixed the door to The Birdy’s room which has been warped and uncloseable since we moved in, so that’s a good thing.   Right there.

The End.

Conclusion: Let’s start using the words “irony” and “crap” interchangeably. No one will notice.

1. It’s pretty nice that — even when I’m in an ironic mood and am snappish and short-tempered and feel wronged by everyone ranging from the mailman (for not delivering my funky camera strap) on up to the CEO of McDonald’s for having those ironic Happy Meal “toys” this week (a bad CD is NOT a toy) — when I try to take a shower in the morning someone still loves me SO MUCH and can’t stand to be apart from me for even TEN MINUTES that they will hurl themselves against the bathroom door (and when that fails, bash the door with a chair) sobbing their heart out because THEY CANNOT SEE ME. No, it wasn’t Clayton. It was The Birdy. She’s only 20 months old. I’m sure in time she’ll grow to feel relieved that I’m in the shower and not up in her face, telling her to watch TV already because Mummy is busy. But for now, it’s kind of endearing, in a paint-damaging sort of way.

2. The really ugly apple tree in our backyard has big pink blossoms on it, which means we are entering into the two week period where it actually looks like it has the potential to be pretty before sinking back into its regularly scheduled program of being a blight on the face of the planet. Pretty flowers are good, right?

3. I’m really struggling here to come up with another thing. That’s sad, isn’t it? Oh, here’s one. While I was in the shower and The Birdy was hammering on the door, The Bun was busy in the living room setting up (i.e. throwing everything onto the floor) a DISCO IT’S NOT YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY that had choreographed dance steps and a soundtrack provided by a plastic fish that uses a fan to blow smaller plastic fish into the air. The DISCO IT’S NOT YOUR BIRTHDAY PARTY was pretty funny, but then it took me half an hour to clean up and The Bun and The Birdy got into a fight over the air-blowing fish and I took it away and got mad and then they got into a fight over the helium balloon with almost no air left in it and then I made them go outside where they stood at the door and screamed “MUMMY WHEN ARE YOU COMING OUT? WE MISS YOU!” Which was nice, too, seeing as I’d just threatened them with permanent removal of the disco fish and perhaps everything else that they’d ever owned or fought over.

4. None of us have the Swine Flu.*

5. Last night I slept with The Birdy because she was sad and because I was mad and fighty and frustrated and stroppy**. It was 1000 degrees upstairs where she sleeps and just walking into her room made me mad thirsty so I got her a bottle and she went back to sleep and then I fell asleep and slept through until morning for the first time in four nights and I realized that I love flannel sheets, especially when they are old and sort of thin and have tiny little bumpy balls all over them from being worn out, because they remind me of being a kid and being tucked in so tightly by my mum that my arms couldn’t move, sort of like being swaddled but not as a baby, as a full-fledged adult who is feeling fussy and whiny and in need of being taken care of. (I ended a sentence with ‘of’. My bad. Apologies to editors everywhere.)

And that concludes my ironic list.

* Gratuitous mention of the Swine Flu so I can tag the post “Swine Flu” and get about a million more hits than usual because no one who is anyone is currently googling anything else. Except those who are.

** Stroppy may just be the best word that the British invented that North Americans haven’t taken over and made their own.

But first, five things:

1. The weather. The weather changes everything. Oh weather, I heart you. Maybe I’ll get a bumper sticker to that effect. Except not, because bumper stickers make me angry. Unless they are super extra funny, which is rare. Anyway, there is something so astonishingly GREAT about being barefoot on the grass eating popsicles. I mean, the sticky clean-up sucks and sometimes you step on a bee or a tiny piece of Lego that’s been embedded in the grass since 2004, but you know what I mean.

2. The laundry. As you know, because you’ve been following along closely and I talk of little else, we have a new washer and dryer. There is nothing so satisfying* as being able to do laundry in your own house instead of trucking it all to your mum’s and then forgetting to ever pick it up again, spending the next six months wondering what happened to your favourite jeans.

3. It’s possible — and I don’t want to jinx anything here — that we may one day get over the coughs that are plaguing this household. If I squint, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Which might not be a good thing, come to think of it.

4. Yesterday I thought I may have caused permanent blindness by inserting my contact lenses with a finger that was still coated with green food colouring from an ice experiment I was doing with the kids. The good news is that I’m not blind. I know! Every day that you wake up Not Blind is a better day than one where you wake up, you know, BLIND.

5. The Canucks are sweeping the series. Yes, Clayton thinks I don’t care. But I do. I CARE. I just have missed every single game since 2005 because the games are on during the exact same two hour period when I am rocking babies or reading to toddlers or have accidentally fallen asleep in The Bun’s bed. I haven’t actually seen a game in so long, I couldn’t even name a player. That’s how bad it is. BUT I AM HAPPY ABOUT THE SWEEP. I am. Somewhere deep in my heart, I’m still a hockey fan. I promise.

*Well, obviously there are more satisfying things. I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect.

1. It’s a beautiful day. That’s got to count for something, right? We’re off to go kite-flying in the park while doing laundry at my Mum’s house. Because no, we still do not have a washer and dryer that is attached in any way to our home and functional. And the laundry is beginning to emit a smell similar to that of low-tide near a sewage outflow.

2. My garage is tidier than it was before we took all the garbage out and heaped it on our lawn.

3. At this exact moment, no one is wiping their snotty nose on my person.

4. I’m reading a book and it’s unexpectedly good. I can’t remember what it is or who wrote it though, so don’t ask.

5. Finally caught up on uploading all the pics from my camera, including these two new faves of my beauties:

PS – If you want to see all the millions of pics I take of my kids on Flickr, you have to friend me first.

Five things, that’s all it is.    Five things that have graced my life.   Five good things. More info here.

Hey, we all need a list of good things, just so we remember that it’s not all parking ticket disputes, exhaustion, and — if you’re me — back pain and random numbness. That one’s pretty specific, but you know what I mean.

1.   The click of a new friendship. I went a long time without making new friends. I don’t know. I’m totally afeared of friend-rejection so I never really put myself out there, I kind of lurk in the background and skulk. But then when I lucked into some amazing friendships and that is just the best.

2.  When my kids dance to the closing credits of a movie.    Like real, full on, tumultuous dancing. They call it “the word music” and they practically kill themselves. When I say “practically”, I mean it because The Birdy is always smashing her head on the World’s Ugliest Fireplace or the floor or her brother, and The Bun tends to miss when he leaps from the couch to the ottoman either squashing her or maiming himself on one of the plastic toys that carpet the place.

3.  The fancy leaf pattern that the coffee girl made in my latte this morning. I love that they bother. For real. I mean, right away I covered it up with a BPA laced plastic lid, but the gesture moves me every time. It makes me want to hug a barrista. A lot of people don’t bother with details anymore.

4.  Construction paper projects. Crafts save my life, even though I kind of hate crafts and never do them myself. I mean “crafts” in the loosest sense of the word: glue, paper, googly eyes, paint, pipe cleaners. We call ‘em “projects”.

5.  Blue sky. Oh, blue sky. STAY.