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!

To make a long story short, my mum and dad bought me a Canon Pixma MP620 for my birthday because I asked them to and even went to the shop with them and selected it and carried it to my car (which in itself was no small feat because carrying a printer plus managing two small tempermental beasts children in one of those stores where you have to pay for a shopping cart and you don’t have a quarter is, well, difficult.   To say the least.   I could say more, but I won’t because this is a quick post.   I have to have a shower while Mickey Mouse Club House is still on, so no time for small talk.

I brought the printer home and left it in the front hall for several days, which everyone knows is the first step to connecting any networked printer.    Buying the printer coincided nicely with my tax deadline and I needed to hook it up in order to print the spreadsheets which I haven’t done yet because why do them when you don’t have a printer to print them on?   Exactly.   Yesterday, being the last possible minute to do this, I decided to hook up the printer.   I assumed — because I am an idiot — that it would be easy because it’s a Mac and MACS JUST WORK and Mac recommends Canon printers so together they also must JUST WORK, except for the part where they don’t bloody well work together at all, do they?  The joke is on you.   Except, in this case, “you” means “me”.

The first step in setting up your new Canon Wireless nightmare is to remove 5000 pieces of orange tape that are applied on every single bit of surface inside and out of the machine to prevent movement during shipping.   I can only assume that the printers are shipped on refurbished Concord jets and simply dropped from near the atmosphere onto the shops which are to sell them.   There is no other explanation for the amount of movement that the Canon factory obviously expects the printer to have to endure on its voyage.    Or maybe motors are attached to the printers and they have to make the ocean crossing alone with only a single printer cartridge and a fishing line for survival.   Or maybe they feed the printers to whales and then have the whales vomit them up on North American shores.   That would explain a lot about why the whale population is shrinking, come to think of it.   I don’t know.   I only know that it’s a lot of tape.   And why does it need to be bright orange?  Is the printer expecting to have to redirect traffic?   At night?   It’s a mystery, people, and one that I’m not going to solve.

After twenty minutes of tape and plastic removal, the printer looked like a printer should.   I cleaned a little space on the kitchen counter which was formerly used to store a stereo with too-short a cord to reach the plug, which has been there since we moved in.   Everything was going so well.    Then I got to the part where I had to put the computer on the network.   All I can say is, “What the PLUCK?”   Except I didn’t use the word “pluck” in that sentence, I used a different word that rhymes with pluck but is not suitable for younger viewers or right-wing Christian fundamentalists.

Here’s what I did.  I put the disc (labelled DISC FOR MACS) into my MacBook.   So far so good.   I followed the vague instructions which included various different loops where you hit “cancel” when what you want is to “install” and you then answer the same question 42 different times, only to loop around to the question again before you get frustrated and stuff your entire MacBook into the garbage disposal while screaming “SERENITY NOW, PLUCKERS!”  I didn’t do that, but I wanted to.   Instead, I took the kids to the beach and let them play in the ocean in their clothes.   It was therapeutic.   Want to see?

I did not write the word Love in the sand. I actually didn't even see it until I was looking at the pictures later. Neat, don't you think?

Then we went home and I went back to setting up the printer by repeating all the things I’d done before, installing the same stuff that I’d already installed hoping for a different result, which I think is actually the definition of insanity.    Then I did it again, for good measure.   By the time Clayton came home from work, I was slumped in front of the TV with the kids, drinking wine.   Me, not them.   I’m pretty easy-going as a parent but I draw the line at wine.   Well, in combination with TV anyway.   It’s one or the other, kids.   You have to choose.

Clayton saw that I was in a fragile mental state.   He’s good at sensing these things.   Probably the foaming at the mouth and eye-rolling helped to drive the point home.   He made dinner and then escaped outside to mow the lawn.      I put the kids to bed by telling them stories about how MUMMY HATES CANON PRINTERS and MACS DON’T JUST WORK, DO THEY?    They like that kind of thing, especially when the story ends with the Bad Macs going to jail and being eaten by fire-breathing dragons.

At 10:00 pm, I came downstairs to install the drivers again because if at first you don’t succeed, you should totally do the same thing over and over again until you go insane.    Then Clayton took over because he really hates to relax in front of a movie at the end of the day, he prefers to undertake impossibly frustrating tasks which have already been performed multiple times to no avail.    Then we gave up and went to bed.   We both cried ourselves to sleep and had bad dreams about the Error 300 code we had seen 4,560 times in the last hour.

In the morning, I had the idea that maybe if I hooked the printer up with the PC that I never use, it would be easier.   And guess what?  It was.   It took five minutes and it worked swimmingly.   From the PC.   That I never use.    So then I thought it would be “fun” (if by “fun”, I mean “suicidally depressing”) to network the Mac on now that the printer itself was working.   It wasn’t fun.   I won’t bore you with the details, but I will bore you with the solution.   Ready?   Here it is:

Step 1:   Click the little Apple thing on the top left of your screen.

Step 2:   Click preferences.

Step 3:   Look for the preference that says, “I prefer PCs because the DO just work.”

Step 4:    Click the printers/faxes icon while making angry hissing noises between your teeth and shouting at your kids that breakfast has to wait for at least ten more minutes.

Step 5:   Click the little plus sign to add a printer even though the printer you want to use is already selected on the list.

Step 6:  Click something else and then something else, because at this point you are just randomly clicking for the sake of forward movement.

Step 7:   Find hidden somewhere a little drop down that says “Canon Wireless Printers”   and you will see two Canon Wireless Printers on the list, one which says “Canon WP620″ and one which has a bunch of gobbledygook after the words Canon WP620.    Add that one.   Delete the other one.

Step 8:   Exhale. You are done.

I’m not sure why somewhere in the 200 page manual no one mentions that when you install a Canon printer on a Mac, the one that populates itself into all your printer settings is actually a phantom printer that does not exist and that you must unearth the other one with the same sorts of skills used by archaeologists when they dig up the bones of a pterosaur in the tundra, but maybe that just didn’t translate well into English.   There.  I said it.   It’s what my dad says every time he is forced to read any kind of manual, “GUESS IT DOESN’T TRANSLATE WELL INTO ENGLISH.”   I have officially become my dad.

And I’m only 38!   At least for a few more days.