Netflix - the dark side!

We are thoroughly enjoying Netflix.  Seriously.  It's good stuff!  For the cost of renting less than one video per month, we have access to a crazy amount of television shows and movies and documentaries. Definite gems that you can't find on television unless you pay for the whole premium satellite package.  Like "The IT Crowd", "Breaking Bad", "Supersize Me", "Degrassi Junior High" and "Degrassi High" (campy and out-dated but so nostalgic!), "Quantum Leap" and the "X-files".  And anything with Louis CK in it.

Recently Cory changed the Wii settings so that Netflix thinks we're American. I was nervous about that at first, but it doesn't seem to have impacted anything else that our Wii will do.  And no one has come pounding on the door accusing us of stealing programming we're not entitled to.  So I've relaxed and started to enjoy it. Really enjoy it.

Suddenly I find myself confronted with a whole host of television programs that I didn't know existed.  The American programming includes Disney programs that our Canadian one won't (for some copyright reason). It has way more television and way newer movies.  Apparently "The Hunger Games" is already on Netflix.
So, I have greedily devoured such trashy programming like "Sister Wives", and have caught up on missed episodes of "Malcolm in the Middle" and  "Everybody Loves Raymond"... and turns out, I actually enjoy documentaries.

But... with every advance in technology, there is a dark side.  A very, very dark side.

"Toddlers and Tiaras".

I stumbled across that the other day.  A 'reality' show that follows three or four young children and their parents, as they prepare for and participate in a Beauty Pageant.

And my jaw dropped.

These parents (okay, mostly mothers) are spending thousands of dollars on glitzy outfits and professional pageant coaches so their daughters can win crowns and titles and money doing the pageant circuit.

I saw five-year old getting spray-tanned, a four-year old being fed pixie sticks to wake her up because they'd gotten her up so early in the morning to have her hair and make-up done, a cute seven-year old being fitted for false teeth because, god forbid, she'd lost her two front teeth already.  And the one that made me cringe the most... a two-year old who's father was shaving her eyebrows, because she'd been unfortunate enough to inherit his bushy eyebrows.  I kid you not!  He was SHAVING her eyebrows.

And the mother of this two-year old, was talking to the camera and saying that it was important for her to learn about this beauty regimen now, while she was young, because it's very important for her to maintain her looks because her husband needs her to, or something crudworthy like that.

Oh gag!

Then these children go up on stage in crazy sparkly dresses, or bedazzled swimsuits, flashing fake smiles and wiggling their bums at the judges.  And they compete for prizes such as "prettiest smile", "prettiest eyes", "little Miss Glitz", "Supreme Queen" or whatever.  And the moms fake their enthusiasm when their daughters come in less than first place, but then complain to the camera that the pageant was fixed or that their daughter will try harder next time because it is her destiny and she SOOOO loves this lifestyle.

WTF?

Ohhh, and then, of course, the families all have to get together before the pageant and pray together.  "Thank you Jesus, for what you have given our little Betty-Sue, may she shake her booty before that room full of pedophiles and may she always measure her self-worth by her looks, the smoothness of her fake tan, the length of her false eyelashes, and the lack of razor burn on her forehead.  If she doesn't bring home the top award, help us to belittle her and tell her she just didn't try hard enough so that she understands, Jesus, that our love in contingent how beautiful other people think she is.  In Jesus name, we pray..." blah blah blah.

I asked my husband if we had beauty pageants here in Canada (please don't tell my girly girl, if we do) and he said that our equivalent to the Beauty Pagent parent would be the hockey parent. Hmm... interesting comparison.  Some food for thought.  But a topic for another post, because I avoid hockey at all costs, so my experience with hockey parents is at an arm's length, thank god.

And so, that is the dark side of Netflix.  My new-found ability to watch exploitive claptrap and sit, disgusted, gleefully slinging judgement at the idiotic parents that set feminism and healthy childhood self-esteem back generations.

And, like a train wreck, I can't seem to stop.  I've already watched four episodes and can't wait until the kids are in bed so I can watch another...

Happy New Year

This year, I resolve to bake more.  

No, wait, that's not right... I hate baking!  I resolve to NOT bake more.  Why put the local bakery out of business.  

Or the local Grandmas...  They like baking cakes for my children.  I'm doing them a favour by constantly asking them to do so!  :)

Having said that, here's Connor's birthday cake.  

Step 1: Using a cake mix (hey, I'm not Martha Stewart, give me a break...), bake the cake in a pan that's apparently too small.  Allow it to leak all over the oven so that you are multi-tasking and baking a second cake at the same time.

Step 2:  After shutting off the smoke alarm and allowing the cake to cool until after the children go to bed, using green food colouring, liberally slather a container of icing all over the cake.  Use the flat edge of a table knife to smooth it.  Try smoothing in flat in the opposite direction.  Give up on smoothing it flat.  Disguise it with sprinkles and in your best icing handwriting, draw a number so that there's no question that a 6 year old iced the cake...

 Step 3:  Give up!  Raid your children's board game stash and cover the ugly bits with the board game pieces.  And yes, Eric, I did humiliate this poor board game in such a disrespectful manner.

Step 4: Remember that it's the six-year old that has to like the cake... NOT the adults.  And he did.  Especially the part where we allowed him to shoot the bird at the cake after the candles were blown out!

 Happy Birthday to my crazy little New Year's Baby!

 Connor opening some of his gifts.

 Kirstin and Brooklynn decked out in their coordinating party dresses!

 How we spent the afternoon... playing board games and eating.  What a great way to ring in 2013!

Happy New Year to you, my few faithful readers, and a very Happy Birthday to my six-year old!  My best New Year's Eve gift, ever.

Christmas Concerts - Part 3

Alex's Christmas Concert performance.

Christmas Concerts - Part 2

Connor's Christmas play.  He's the one in the dragon costume!!!

Christmas Concerts - part 1 - Kirstin

Kirstin's Strong Start class performs Jingle Bells!

Santa's citizenship

My children wrote letters to Santa last week.  Complete with full colour illustrations of the gifts that they would like this year.  

Alex's letter (edited several times over the course of a couple of days):

Kirstin's letter:

 Connor's letter:

I have to commend their efforts.  But I also cringed when in my mind I calculated the budget required to fulfill this years' dreams!   Two DS's and a Wii U?  Not to mention the Star Wars Lego Millenium Falcon which bears a hefty price tag of $99 for something that's likely going to be spread all over the living room by Boxing Day, and inadvertently vacuumed up over the next several months.

Oy!

So I had a conversation with the children about how Santa's elves don't know how to make electronics, and Santa actually has to purchase those types of gifts.  And how if we ask for too much, then it makes us look greedy and it takes away from his budget for all of the other children in the world.  They seemed to be okay with that explanation. Alex even amended his letter to state that if given the choice, he'd prefer the Wii U over the DS.  (The more expensive Wii U --- but something the whole family can share so maybe a better bang for Santa's bucks)

Kirstin has only asked for one thing... the 2012 Holiday Collector Barbie.  Not something I would ever consider purchasing for her.  She's still at an age that she destroys the hair and undresses the barbies and loses the clothing.  The "collector" status of any barbie in our house is greatly dimished the second she gets it out of the box.  Still what are toys if they aren't meant to be played with, right?  And it's the only thing she wants for Christmas.  An ethical dilemma I'll leave to Santa to solve.

I guess we'll have to see.  I think Santa's going to pick and choose from the wishes of my children.  I doubt that he will bring them everything their hearts desire.  But maybe he'll bring them one or two things they want, enough that they'll still be excited by the magic that is Santa.

The kids kept harassing me about 'when are you going to mail our letters' and I kept procrastinating hoping I could get away with keeping them for future scrapbook potential.  But they prevailed in their nagging... so I took photos and we sent the originals away. We mailed them to:  

Santa Claus, 

The North Pole 

HOH OHO  

Canada Post must have delivered the mail rather quickly because on Wednesday, they each received a response from the big guy himself!!  Which was pretty exciting around here.  The letters were form letters so each one got the same letter. At this time of year, with the sheer volume of mail Santa must receive, it's no wonder he writes one letter and sends photocopies to everyone else.  My children thought that was very wise of him.  They even commented that it was how I do our Christmas letter, too.

The interesting thing was the return address.  The letters came from the same place we'd sent them, only with a slight addition...

Santa Claus
The North Pole
HOH OHO
Canada.

Canada?

The thought had never occurred to me that the North Pole might actually be in Canadian Territory!  I just assumed that, floating in the middle of the ocean the way it is, it doesn't belong to any country.  But when you do some research, Canada and Denmark have land masses that are equal distance away and the North Pole could go either way.

How cool is that? A little seasonal geography to mull over this time of year.  We might actually share a country with all the inhabitants of the North Pole... Santa and the Mrs, the reindeer, the elves!    And if that is the case, well then that would make Santa Claus a Canadian Citizen!  He's one of us!  I love that!  I mean, we are known to be a generous, multi-cultural, overtly friendly bunch of people.  Why wouldn't Santa be a Canadian?   Makes sense.

What a fantastic claim to fame!  The most famous, loveable, generous, fun-loving man in the world is a Canuck!

I guess we've earned our bragging rights, hey fellow Canadians?

At the very least, we can stop apologizing for Celine Dion now...

Merry Christmas!  Hope Santa is good to you this year! 

Chris Baty sent me a personal message!

I love November!  It's "National Novel Writing Month".  When I stumbled across it in 2009, I didn't have any idea whether or not it was actually feasible to write a 50K word novel in a month (it's approximately 200 double spaced pages).  But I was up for the challenge.  At that time I had a 5, 2, and 1 year old.  They went to bed relatively easily, so I did all my writing after that, from about 9-11 pm every night.

Thus, "Patchwork Saturdays" was born.

In 2010, knowing I had 'won' the year before, I was confident that I could do it again.  This time I worked on a novel idea that had been percolating in my brain since 2006.  I wrote 50K words on "Undesirable".

2011, I wrote 50K words again, this time on "My Grandfather's Clock".

Seeing a pattern here?  I am.  I am excellent at starting things, absolutely horrendous at finishing them.  I now have 3 unfinished first drafts of three very different novels.  I'm pretty pleased with them.  They're rough, unpolished, and rambling... but underneath their rough exteriors, they're really quite good.  At least, they're they kind of book I would read.

So, this year... I was expecting a baby in early November!  Poor planning on my part.  November is MY month.  I shouldn't schedule anything else in November.  At all.  I really didn't have high hopes of getting much novelling done this year and was going to take 2012 off, although the thought really disappointed me.  But, I have a friend (I sucked her into Nano-ing last year) who was very motivating (she even wrote me a poem to inspire me!) and I though, what the heck, I'll give it a try.

I didn't start until November 7th.  So I was already 11,667 words behind right out of the gate.

And I didn't have any ideas for an original story.

So I cheated.  Well, technically I was a Nano Rebel (according to Nanowrimo rules).  I continued to work on my 2010 novel, Undesirable instead of starting a whole new story.

And somehow despite having a newborn, I hit the 50,000 word finish line.  Two days early! :)  I just left the laptop on and typed whenever I could, sometimes one-handed with a daughter or two on my lap. I now have a 380 page, almost finished, first draft off my 6 year story in the making.  I have to say, I'm very excited.  Maybe I can finish the actual manuscript before I go back to work next October and start submitting it to publishers.

Easy Peasy...I've got a few chapters to finish typing, some plot lines to tie up, then a heavy due proofing job that goes beyond spell checker, then I need 5-10 volunteers to read and critique, then compile their suggestions, do a re-write eliminating the crap, another editing / proofing job...

Nah, it probably won't be ready to call a manuscript by next fall.  :P

Anyway, the crux of my blog post wasn't to brag about my insane annual hobby, it was actually to brag that I  got a facebook message from the founder of Nanowrimo!  He posted a slogan contest on facebook, and I was one of the 7 people who won it.  He's sending me a poster as a prize, and he sent me a personal message congratulating me!  So made my day!!!

My slogan...  "Week Four: My children have no clean underwear!"

Now that November is over, time to catch up on the laundry and embrace the Christmas Season!