This is what Sarah & Jay’s new puppy looks like. She finally resembles a dog instead of a guinea pig!

I was such a lump today. I hate it when I have days like this! Even my poor pups were bored, and I was too lazy to even take them for a walk, or take them to the dog park. Shame on me!

Not too much excitement around here lately, but that’s a good thing!  Ben seems to be settling into single life quite well.  He’s making plans to move in with a couple of buddies who are planning on buying a house, and renting a room from them in order to save up some money.  He does his third year apprenticeship in January and February.  Then just one more year to go, and we hope he can take that next fall, and then he’ll be a journeyman carpenter! His boss did give him a $2/hour raise, and he starts back at his radio studio producer job at the end of the month, so I suppose he’ll be back to working 7 days/week again.  Ughh…. better him than me!

Respite care is going quite well for me, but I know now, why women my age don’t have babies!  I find it hard to get any work done with the older child, because the one year old is into everything we try to do, so we have to mostly pray that the baby has a nap!  The weather has sucked, so we haven’t even been able to go for walks, or play outside.  Hopefully that changes soon!

Yesterday I took the dogs to be groomed, and then on the way home we stopped at the off leash park here in town.  I had never gone before, because I didn’t know if they would listen well enough.  But hubby took them on Sunday, and said they did well, and LOVED it, so off we went.  There were probably 10 other people there, and about 2o dogs.  My dogs loved it!!  They had a blast, and ran, and ran, and chased the other dogs.  They were really well behaved!

The puppy in this photo, is Sarah & Jay’s Siberian husky puppy.  They picked her out a few weeks ago, and are visiting her again today.  They take her home August 9. I can’t remember her name, but they named her after the resort they stayed at in Maui when they were on their honeymoon.

Well time for a nap.  Those kids wore me OUT!

This photo has nothing to do with this post, I just put it up, because I love it! I took it of her when we went to the zoo the second last week of school. You’ll never guess what I’ve been spending my day doing!!?? I did some cleaning, and got the laundry going, took care of some bills, and then finally phoned my cell phone company (which I’ve been putting off for 2 months). I have now been on HOLD for over 2 hours!! Gah! The have been playing Gloria Estefan the whole time I might add! Every 5 minutes, they interrupt to say, “We apologize for the delay, please stay on the line to maintain sequence” Well stop apologizing and answer my goddamn call! Geesh!

Ben and Graham just showed up at the door wanting to trade lawn mowing for food, so I’m likely going to have to hang up anyways! Gah!

This is the one year old brother of the little boy I work with at school. I’m doing respite for his Mom, so I’ve been looking after the pair of them 3 times/week for 2-3 hours/day, while she gets out. She’s really enjoying the time to herself! I’m finding it quite challenging amusing both a 4 year old and 1 year old! The little guy is so busy, and wants to be doing everything we’re trying to do. I’ve totally blocked this phase of life from my mind obviously, as these 2 are about the same age difference as mine were, and I don’t remember it being a problem! Although this little one is quite a bit more demanding than Ben ever was.

BTW Ben broke off his engagement to Jessica, and took her to the airport to fly home tonight. He’s a mess, needless to say.

Well if the telephone conversation I had with my son today is any indication, tonight 2 hearts may be broken. I feel so bad for Ben, but there’s not a thing I can do to help him, other than to be there for him. He knows she’s just dragging him down. He said at one point, “I lover her though… otherwise our relationship is great… shouldn’t I be standing beside her?” I told him, “Sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes a problem just is too much to take on, whether it be drugs, or addictions, tempers, etc. Sometimes loving someone isn’t enough to “fix” it.

Right now he’s working 2 jobs, plus doing the renos on the rental house they’re in. And she’s sitting on her ASS. I told him, “I don’t know how someone who loves you so much can sit and watch you do all that!”

I can’t believe that Jay and Sarah are celebrating their first wedding anniversary today! They went to Banff to spend a couple of days in celebration. They also bought a new Canon digital SLR camera for themselves for their anniversary gift.

Fortunately things are going lots better for Sarah and Jay, than my male spawn. Jay graduated from University in May with his degree in Crop Sciences. They managed to sell both their condos by the end of June, so they were super relieved to get them sold! Sarah made $100,000 in just 2.5 years time! Jay didn’t make nearly as much, but he still made a bit of money on his. Jay moved to the farm at the end of April, and Sarah moved out there the first of June. They had to live with Jay’s folks up until a week ago, because Jay’s sister and hubby were really dragging their feet about moving. Sarah was getting FED UP! But, they’re all moved into the cute little 90 year old farm house, and very glad to be finally able to unpack their wedding gifts!

There have been a couple of additions to Jay’s family. Two of his sisters have had babies in the last 3 months! So now, they have 3 nieces and one nephew! Sarah loves it, because she gets all the baby cuddling and baby sitting she wants, but has the freedom of no kids still! They have a trip to Thailand planned for next year, as well as building their house, so they have no intentions of starting a family for at least another year.

They are also very excited, because they went a week ago and picked out their Siberian Husky puppy. That’s her that Sarah is holding. They get to pick her up in a few weeks. They’re very excited about that! They also got a new Canon SLR camera that she’s been drooling over for months. They got it for their first anniversary gift.

Can you believe that it is their first anniversary tomorrow!?? I sure can’t! They’re in Banff for a couple of days to celebrate.

This post will probably explain quite a bit of the reason for my long absence. As I previously posted, Ben and Jess moved to Kelowna at the end of March. Well that didn’t go so good. Ben was so homesick he was a wreck! I just kept telling him to hang in there, and maybe it would get a bit better. It never did. Then, good friends went down to visit them on the May long weekend, and that made even Jess homesick for here and all the friends they had. They found that her friends were kind of still just stuck in high school mode. I will also add that it took Jessica over a month to find a job. Then she QUIT it again after just a couple of weeks. So they went from her earning $15/hour here, and Ben working 7 days/week at 2 jobs here, to just one job with him earning $20/hour!

So they decided to move back here. For some insane reason, hubby flew the pair of them out here for a weekend ($800!!!) and they decided to make the move as soon as it could be arranged. Ben wanted to leave her here so she could start looking for work and a place for them to live. I told him NO. She should stay and work as long as she could (you see that hadn’t admitted to us yet at that time that she’d already quit her job). He phoned a few days after they had gone home, and I said…. you know Ben, you can move back home and go back to work (he already knew he was getting both his old jobs back), and Jess can stay there and keep working, and get things ready for the move. He was quite happy to hear that at the time.

A couple days later, he phoned and wanted to know if they could BOTH move in here while they sorted everything out. I told him No. Well he was PISSED and totally offended that I wouldn’t let her move in here. Later that day I emailed him to tell him that she wasn’t going to sit around here unemployed while the rest of us are out working. I told him I was sick and damn tired of her not working, talking about going back to school and getting a driver’s license and doing nothing about it! Well he was mad and hurt!

Anyways, when they moved back here, he called and asked if they could spend the night until they got their power hooked up, we said no problem, and they spent a couple of days here. Hubby knew a guy who owns the insurance company here in town. His business is 2 doors down from the house Ben and Jess are renting. He got her a job there making 16/hour!! It was perfect! They get their house rent-free for 6 weeks, because Ben laid all new laminate flooring, baseboards, and casings in the house. Next he’ll be tiling the kitchen and bathroom floors and installing a new toilet and vanity. It’s a perfect situation!! EXCEPT that she worked there one day and QUIT!!! I was livid! We told Ben exactly what we think of her work ethic, and that we love the girl, but she’s got to get her shit together! Of course they didn’t like that a bit, and she is avoiding us currently, but slowly coming around. Ben is fine with us now. I just feel so bad for him. He loves her to bits, but he can’t afford to support her already!! Nor should he have to! Her mother finally ripped into her too. Oh, and BTW, she still is not working, and they’ve been back over a month!

Hard to believe I haven’t posted in 6 weeks. What a slacker! I do generally post at least once a day on Twitter, and often on Facebook.

I’m going to catch you all up in segments, as it could take a while. Work is finished for another year, and this time I was fortunate enough to be left in my current position, and not get moved around. The end of the school year was crazy busy. It always is, and we took all the kids to the zoo the second last week of school. That was lots of fun, but it was HOT and a lot of walking which my knee didn’t like very much.

Our principal retired this year, so there were a lot of activities and extra things going on with that. This little girl pictured here is her granddaughter. I worked with her this year. She was just diagnosed as Autistic a month ago. Grandma and Grandpa are going to retire in BC, so I made our principal a DVD of all the photos I had taken of her over the course of the year. I did a slide show to music, and she cried when she played it. I thought it was a good way for her to “see her” whenever she was lonesome. I also gave her a photo album of some of my favorite shots I’d taken. She was really touched. (hard to believe that a year ago she moved me out of the preschool program, and was mad as hell at me!) Karma is a bitch!

Due to the fact that I turn into a big, fat hermit during my summer vacations, I’ve decided to do some respite work with the little boy (the dancing man) that I worked with. I’m going to be working with him 3 days/week about 3-4 hours each day. Some times I’ll be looking after his little one year old brother too. It will make me get out of the house, and I wanted to do this for his family, as his Dad recently had a nervous breakdown, and Mom’s been through a lot! Dad has been able to continue working, but not much else.

I’m also going to go to try out aquasize. I’m starting tomorrow morning at 8:00 AM. It’s an hour. Then I’ll shower and change and go over to my boy’s house. I’m hoping that I really like it. A couple of the girls from work are going to come with as well.

Well that updates you on the work front. More to come…..

This is the same little guy that I work with that I took for his first haircut. He has recently been diagnosed with a severe anxiety disorder. You’d never know it, by looking at him in this video that I took yesterday during gym.