Information overload

As usual, I consumed most of the newspaper on the bus on my ride to work this morning, and I have to tell you that the news was not good.

Aside from the fact that I now have a new big boss (holding off judgement on that for the time being) I read that Mattel has announced another massive toy recall for lead paint and dangerous toys. Then I read an article that says out of 250,000 births in Canada every year, as many as 1,700 babies suffer skull fractures or other traumatic injuries during birth. And to completely wreck my morning, a new study confirms that "eating large quantities of junk food when pregnant and breastfeeding could impair the normal control of appetite and promote an exacerbated taste for junk food in offspring."

Sigh. It's enough to make you want to crawl back into bed and hide there for a day or two, isn't it?

Since I went looking for it and you might want to do the same, here's the Mattel recalled toys list. It mostly affects Sarge from Pixar's Cars for lead paint, and some Batman, Barbie, Polly Pocket and other toys for dangerous magnets. We have a Sarge, but he's been with us since Christmas and the recall period is for Cars from May through August 2007. But still!

I mean, seriously, when you think of name-brand toys you can trust, don't you think of Fisher Price, and Barbie, and Mattel, and even Thomas the Tank Engine? These aren't dollar store junk toys, for goodness sake. I'd rant a little more on this topic, but Ann Douglas has a great article up over on Yahoo Parenting that says it far better than I ever could.

As for the birth injuries article, well, that just makes me feel a little bit better about my decision to go with the midwife. And about my consumption of junk food? I'll have to pause a moment to wipe the crust of honey cruller sugar from my fingers while I formulate a proper response to that one. In the meanwhile, I blame my mother.

The news isn't all bad, though. If you're looking for something a little more lighthearted, field reporter Fryman sends along this link to a photo gallery on the Globe and Mail's web site of roadside mascots, including the World's Largest Atlantic Salmon, Perogie, Fly Fishing Rod and - of course - Hockey Stick and Puck. Canadiana at it's best! How many of them have you seen? Wouldn't it make a great end-of-summer road trip to tour around and check them all out?

In which I rant just a bit

It's my last day of vacation and I'm feeling a little cranky about it. Plus, ya know, I'm old now, and entitled to be curmudgeonly without warning.

So to celebrate this mood of minor annoyance, today I present to you the top five things that piss me off.

1. People who don't acknowledge common courtesy.

It drives me nuts when I slow down to let someone into a lane ahead of me, or stop to hold open a door, or step back to let someone else go first, and they don't even bother to acknowledge me. I don't need a bouquet of roses, but a nod or a smile or a wave (or god forbid, a "thank you") would go a long way.

2. People who don't signal lane changes.

Apparently, I have a whole set of issues with lane changes. (Can you tell I drove back and forth through Toronto recently?) Also on their own sublist of things that piss me off are people who think they are entitled to your lane simply by virtue of the fact that their lane is ending, regardless of the fact that you might currently be occupying said lane, and people who must occupy the buffer of space I'm trying to leave between myself and the car in front of me as we hurtle along the 401 at the speed of light.

3. People who dribble on the toilet seat and don't wipe it up.

It happens. Either you dribble a few drops when you stand up to wipe, or you are one of those people with stronger knees than me who can hover over the seat and give it a good spray when you pee. Regardless, would it kill you to take a minute and a square or two and wipe the seat when you're done? I really shouldn't have to do it, and it's nothing short of disgusting to sit down and realize that you just sat in someone else's pee.

4. People who sit on the gym equipment and chat.

I like to move quickly through my weight workout to keep my heart rate up, and I was told many years ago by a trainer that it's best to stick to a particular order, working the larger muscles before the smaller ones. While I don't mind jumping out of order if it's busy and there's a lot of people using the equipment, it drives me nuts to have to wait for a machine because someone is sitting on it while chatting with someone else. Frankly, it also kind of bugs me when people sit on the machines between sets, and when people don't wipe down the equipment between uses. Hmmm, looks like I have some issues with the gym as well. Maybe a little too much testosterone in my system?

5. People who don't say "excuse me" when they need to get off the bus.

This one is my number-one irritant right now. I've been idly thinking about blogging it for months. Almost every single morning, I sit on the aisle side of a shared seat on the bus. A surprising amount of the time, I'm sure the vast majority, when the person sitting beside me needs to get off, rather than saying "Excuse me" or even "This is my stop", they simply make a lurching thrust toward me that I'm supposed to detect and interpret as an intention to get off the bus and that I should get out of the way. This is a relatively new phenomenon, and it pisses me off every single time. Seriously, how hard is it to say "excuse me"? I usually toss in a smile for free when I do it.

And they say we Canadians are overly polite. Bah!

By all means, don't let me rant alone. What cheeses you off?

Random babbling on a Monday morning

The good news is, this is the LAST Monday I have to work until after Labour Day. Having a certain amount of seniority means I get almost five weeks of vacation time this year, and in addition to a week in June and a couple later in the summer, I have booked off every Monday through June, July and August. Yay!

The bad news is, I have to work five days this week and the forecast calls for wall-to-wall sunshine. What a drag!

The good news is, the Sens are playing in game one of the Stanley Cup finals tonight. Go Sens GO!

The bad news is, the game starts at 8 pm and the end of regulation time will be dangerously close to my bedtime. Please, hockey gods, no overtime on the weeknight games.

The good news is, I've made contact with a few potential caregivers this weekend, including two daycare providers and a nanny.

The bad news is, I'm tired of interviewing caregivers and more than a little gun-shy about starting all this over again. My standards for personal connection are considerably elevated (and they were pretty damn high to begin with!) and my financial threshhold is getting dangerously high, too.

The good news is, I have hugely satisfied my recent craving for family friendship by getting together with some old friends last week that I had lost touch with, and spent Sunday with not one but two different groups of friends who are like family and family who are like friends.

The bad news is, with all that socializing the house is a disaster and I have no clean underwear.

The good news is, my backyard is in full bloom, from the lilacs to the irises to the apple tree to the honeysuckle and the myriad other perennials that are self-sufficient enough that I haven't yet neglected them to death.

The bad news is, we still have a 12' diameter dirt circle we have to resod from where the pool used to sit. It looks alarmingly like a crop circle in our backyard. I'm thinking of painting a red target in it, just to see if the neighbours react.

The goods news is, I actually managed to whip together a post this morning, which is more than I expected to be able to accomplish because there is simply not enough hours in the day to do all the stuff I've been trying to get done lately.

The bad news is, it's a pretty sad excuse for a post. I'll do better tomorrow, probably. Or, you know, maybe not. See, that's the fun of coming here lately. You never know which of the 17 personalities I've been cultivating will be holding the pen. Today, I think it was a group effort.

Another reason to love Rick Mercer

Following our heated rivalry for the 2005 Canadian Blog Awards, Rick Mercer and I have come to an easy peace (inasmuch as I stopped obsessing about him and he continued to not notice that I exist.)

Just now, I was futzing about on the computer looking up bits for our trip to Bar Harbour, and the Rick Mercer Report was on in the background. I suddenly knew he must have been thinking about me all this time, maybe quietly lurking on the blog, when I heard his skit featuring the Stephen Harper Home Pregnancy Kit, which lampooned the new child tax credit from the recent federal budget with the tag line, "Canada's New Government - Fooling Families Two Budgets in a Row!"

Sing it, Rick!

In which I dump the contents of my inbox into your lap

I have so many little mental post-it notes stuck to my forehead that I can't see through them anymore. I've got to get some of this stuff out, coherent post be damned.

Do you like free? I like free. Do you like camping? I like camping somewhat less than I like free, but even stuff that I don't ordinarily like, I am magnanimous enough to like if it's, well, free. So I'm all over KOA's annual free camping weekend. Pay for a site, or one of their funky little cabins, on Friday May 11 and stay for free on Saturday May 12. This will be our third year (see previous adventures here and here) and like last year, our 'camping' will consist of cramming the entire extended family (six adults, four kids under six) into a perfect little cottage at the Ivy Lea KOA campground near Gananoque. I can't wait!

***

Camping not your thing? Prefer culture to campfire? How about a live performance of the Barber of Seville, direct from the Metropolitan Opera House, broadcast directly to a local movie theatre in high definition? I love this idea, and wish the boys were old enough to enjoy or at least appreciate it. It's happening this Saturday in select theatres. I wish I could go!

***

I thought this was way wicked cool. Michelle at Scribbit created a custom search engine for mom blogs. I liked the idea so much, I added it to the sidebar. Scroll down (waaaay down, gosh that sidebar is taking on a life of its own!) to give it a try. Michelle has added more than 1500 mom blogs, so you can do a custom mom-blog search on whatever tickles your fancy.

Blogger ingenuity at work to make your world a better place! (And I'm happy to sponge off it, for the price of a link!)

***

And now for the laundry list of other things. (That's a funny phrase, isn't it? I mean, who makes a list to do the laundry? Lord knows I need a list to keep track of just about everything else in my life - you thought I was kidding about the post-it note reference above? - but I've never been compelled to make a list to separate my whites from my colours.)

Man, I get some weird shit in my in-box. Lots of people want me to tell you about their stuff. I am ashamed to admit, I simply ignore most of them. It seems terribly rude, and makes me feel ungrateful, because I know it's nice people like you who made this blog a place worth of solicitation. So I've decided that every so often I'll just dump all the stuff I get into a single post and I can stop feeling guilty about it. (I kind of got this idea from Paul Wells, who said he posts every 100th news release he gets, in its entirety.)

So in this post that is dying for any sort of a segue and more or less in their own words, I give you:

The Tutorlinker: "We use Google Map API to search and point tutors. Parents/students can simply type their address to search and compare tutors in their area and there is no registration. Tutors can go through simple registration step to be listed."

Centre for Disease Control's Mom2Mom: "CDC’s new website has a lot to offer, and I want to make sure that the word gets out. So if you have the time and the inclination, check out the site share your advice - you can even share your past blog posts on the message board - and engage with other moms."

The Starter Wife: "After being blacklisted from premieres to pilates, Molly Kagan (Debra Messing) searches to rediscover life after divorce. A brief respite in Malibu and some oh-so-Hollywood friends prove to be the perfect cocktail for her transformation from "Starter Wife" to her new life. Based on Gigi Levangie Grazer's New York Times best seller of the same name, The Starter Wife also stars Judy Davis, Joe Mantegna, Miranda Otto & Anika Noni Rose. I am working with USA network to help raise awareness for a promotion that they are running for The Starter Wife in conjunction with Ponds. Their contest, “40’s and Fabulous” is an essay contest looking for stories from real women about why your beauty and confidence now makes you happier and more comfortable in your 40s than you were in your 30s or 20s. To enter, all you have to do is visit the official site. Five winners will be showcased in their own USA commercial -- and win an all expense paid weekend of pampering in Hollywood, including a fashion/beauty makeover and tickets to The Starter Wife premiere!"

(Full disclosure: the end of this e-mail offered a Ponds gift pack in exchange for posting something about this. I am *not* accepting anything in exchange for this link, just adding it to the pile in case it's something one of you might be interested in. Me, I had a hard time reading right to the end, what with my eyeballs rolling back in my head like that. But hey, to each her own. And hey, if you do enter the contest and you do win, you're morally obligated to bring me with you to the pampering and premiere weekend, right? I mean, I'm all ethical and shit, and I'm mocking the whole concept with my usual subtle finesse, but Hollywood pampering and premieres? I'm all over that!)

Edited to add: Rats, I forgot one! I wanted to tell you that Scattered Mom from Notes from the Cookie Jar is hosting a cross-border candy swap. Since Beloved was so excited to get a package of candy from the States during the last candy swap, I think I'm maritally obligated to sign up for this one. You only have until March 25 (this Sunday) to sign up!

Say something - anything!

Sorry, I still don't have much for you today. I'm still feeling crappy, and still working my ass off to get my Very Important File done at work. And even though I usually love my job, this week I'm feeling frustrated and demoralized. I'm sick and working extra hard and frankly am not feeling the love from the people we are working hardest to satisfy.

I have some ideas for posts percolating, but simply don't have the time to crank them out just now. By the time the wee beasties are in bed, I don't have the energy to turn on the computer.

This too shall pass.

Motion denied

I would like to put forth a motion to amend the bylaws, please. There should be a rule that the body is only allowed to house one virus at a time. Multiple viruses will not be permitted to inhabit the body. Specificially, cough-inducing chest cold viruses shall completely vacate the premises before the arrival of migraine-accompanied stomach viruses.

I would further like to move that all viruses be banned from inhabiting the body when said body is up to its eyeballs in work, or when the progeny are dealing with their own viruses.

A near miss, and keeping track of 200 calories

Hmmm... this was supposed to be a lament, a rant, a bonafide panic post about how the security IT guys cut off our access to Blogger. I came in to work yesterday and fired up the browser as usual, flipped open my favourites to the Blogger dashboard and got the Web filter screen telling me access was denied. I'm sure if the vast majority of you weren't being buffeted by gale force winds and the snowstorm of the year, you'd have heard my wail of dismay. Not only could I not access any Blogger dashboard tools, but any Blogspot comment boxes were blocked as well. I was, to put it mildly, not impressed yesterday.

But hey, look! Here I am. *looks furtively over her shoulder for lurking IT security guys and knocks on wood*

So instead of the tirade against free access to the Web, here's something I've been thinking of sharing with you for a while.

For those of you keeping track, the 5 lbs that I lost did in fact find their way home to me the next week. Well, not all of them. I'm down 2 or 3 lbs net, which is still not bad. I knew the 5 lbs was too good to be true. I'm still a little disillusioned, as 3 lbs of weight loss over six weeks of concerted effort doesn't seem like enough of a reward to sustain my enthusiasm. (And yes, I know it's less about the pounds and more about how I look and feel, but that doesn't seem to be changing much either.)

But for now, I'm still committed to healthy eating and good choices and all that crap. On that subject, I've found a couple of bits worth sharing recently. Have you seen this illustration of what 200 calories looks like? All the pictures display the portion sizes relative to each other, so you can see how much or how little 200 calories gets you. Compare, for example, kiwis to Hershey's Kisses. Very cool.

For those of you who have really been around for a while, you'll remember that I joined weight watchers online summer before last, and our relationship ended on less than amicable terms. But I always did like their online tools, like the food diary, and the database with the calorie and fat counts of various foods. This calorie counter database seems to have all the same tools, but it's free. And you know how I feel about free. Seems pretty comprehensive and very easy to use (although I admit, I've only been playing with it for a couple of days.)

And now, just as I'm ready to hit publish and be grateful to the kind souls in IT security who must have realized the error of their ways and re-granted our access to Blogger, I see by the error message across the bottom of my editing window that my connection to Blogger.com has died yet again.

Universe, are you seriously trying to tell me to move to private domain and blog hosting or what???

Apparently the sickly iPod was contagious

In yesterday's comments, Madeleine assured me that the dead iPod, the dead cordless phone and the sketchy Blogger connection were my technological 'three', and that my week should improve from there. You know, bad things happen in threes?

I wish.

I got home from work and ran the dishwasher while I was making dinner. By the time dinner was ready, the dishwasher had run, but for the second day in a row, there was water in the bottom of it. This time, the water filled the entire bottom of the dishwasher to a depth of 10 to 15 cm.

Crap.

So I hauled out our trusty home repair book, and even found the owner's manual for the dishwasher, neither of which were helpful. I called for a service appointment, because despite my pretentions otherwise, what do I know from appliance repair? To their credit, they are able to come by tomorrow, the only day of the week Beloved is home with the boys.

But the real indignity is that I still had a dinner's worth of dishes to wash. By hand. Oh, the humanity.

I haven't washed dishes by hand for a good four years. Washing dishes was one of my jobs from the time I was about eight years old, and man how I hated washing dishes. Washing dishes by hand is for chumps.

And to make matters worse, I made bake-permanent-sticky-sauce-to-the-dish chicken and burn-the-bottom-of-the-pot risotto for dinner. I even used a collander, for the love of god. A collander! Had I known I would be washing the dishes by hand, we would have ordered pizza and eaten it from the cardboard box.

I even had (brace yourself) an apron on. Me, the domestic anti-goddess, in an apron washing dishes by hand. Surely it's one of the eight signs of the apocalypse.

Civilized homes should not be without functioning dishwashers. I would give up the oven and the clothes dryer before I gave up the dishwasher - and maybe the microwave, seeing as how Tristan doesn't eat food any warmer than room temperature anyway. But for the love of all things holy, don't mess with my dishwasher.

Worst commercial song appropriation ever

Beloved and I are watching American Idol on TV. Well, Beloved is watching it and I'm futzing about on the laptop, half paying attention.

A commercial comes on for Wendy's, the hamburger chain, and Beloved nearly chokes. I miss the visual, but the music running in the background is the Violent Femmes' Blister in the Sun.

Seriously.

It's not that I'm some boomer-wanna-be bemoaning the appropriation of the music of my youth; I just think if you're going to lift a song for its funky bass riff, you should at least think about what that song means to one of your major demographic groups. They're selling a squeaky-clean, family-friendly hamburger chain and they use that song? Tell me how these lyrics makes you crave a hamburger, fries and a frosty?

When I'm out walkin' I strut my stuff
Man, I'm so strung out
I'm high as a kite and I just might stop to check you out
Let me go on like I blister in the sun
Let me go on big hands I know you're the one
Body and heat I stain my sheets I don't even know why
My girlfriend she's at the end and she is starting to cry
Let me go on like I blister in the sun
Let me go on big hands I know you're the one

So that bit about "I stain my sheets" - that was from ketchup and mustard, was it?

I mean, seriously!

Dead iPod redux

It's a damn good thing it's sweeps week on the major networks, because I've got nothing but re-runs for you here today.

This was supposed to be the post where I raved about the fantastic service I got from Apple.

As you know, my iPod died a week ago Friday. On Saturday, I spoke to someone at Apple, and on Tuesday, a box arrived on my doorstep to return my deceased iPod to its mothership. I missed the Tuesday night pickup at the UPS store, so it went out on Wednesday. I followed its progress on Apple's Web site, and was amazed at how quickly it was processed. On Thursday, the Web site indicated a replacement iPod had been shipped, and if we hadn't been out of the house, I would have had it in my hot little hands some time around 6 pm on Friday. Now that's impressive service... if we'd have been home, it would have been exactly seven days from problem to new iPod.

As it was, I had to wait an extra two days because the delivery company works Monday to Friday only. When I got home from work yesterday, sure enough, the new iPod was waiting for me. Since it had been sitting on the porch in minus 20 degree temperatures all day, I thought it prudent to let it warm up to room temperature before I plugged it in.

By the time I finally sat down to load some music on the new iPod, I was pretty excited. I plugged in the USB cable, watched as iTunes opened, and selected a few songs to load.

That's when I got the first error message. I tinkered with it, and it got worse. I went to Apple's Web site support and followed some instructions. (I am always a bit relieved to see the error messages I'm receiving addressed, but ultimately disappointed when the proposed solutions never seem to work.)

I called Apple support and spoke to one agent, who walked me through the steps I'd just taken, and when it didn't work for him either, he referred me to a 'product specialist' who walked me through a few more solutions. Are you shocked to hear that none of those solutions worked, either?

They're sending me another box today, so I can return this ex-iPod back to its maker, too.

For those of you keeping score, that's four iPods in six months. Yikes!

The worst part? My cordless phone died in the middle of my conversation with the guy from Apple support. And, just now Blogger crapped out as I was typing this with its suddenly ubiquitous message, "Could not connect to Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail."

You think maybe the universe is trying to tell me something?

Another dead iPod

My iPod died on Friday night. Again. I mean, seriously. How many times do I have to go through this? There's no doubt that iPods are to MP3 players what Kleenex are to facial tissue and Frisbees are to flying disks, but there's a limit to how much patience I have for technology that dies multiple times in the same year. I love the holy hell out of it, but it's more fickle than a hungry, overtired two year old.

After three hours of useless troubleshooting on Friday night, during which I once resurrected it like Lazarus only to have it die again when I tried to load the music back on it, and reinstalling iTunes not once, not twice, but three times on two different computers, I finally gave up.

We got it last summer from Best Buy, and bless Beloved's paranoid susceptibility to marketing, we bought a $40 product replacement warranty. When we returned it the first time, less than three weeks after we bought it, they simply took the dead iPod from me and gave me a new one still factory-sealed in the box. I was highly impressed.

Saturday, I headed out into the frigid morning expecting the same service. But much to my dismay, when I showed up at Best Buy with a handful of unresponsive iPod, they told me I'd have to either contact Apple, who offer a one-year warranty, or Best Buy's customer service telephone number. Either one would take a minimum of 10 days to get a working iPod back in my hands.

I was not impressed. I've been pushing myself to do a minimum of two, but preferably three, workouts at the gym each week, and my iPod has been carefully loaded with music to burn calories by. I had made it through my Saturday workout without it, but I have to tell you that listening to Angler and Hunter (rant for another day: why on earth does my women's-only gym play Angler and Hunter on its TVs on a Saturday morning?) definitely detracts from my energy level and my enthusiasm for the whole workout.

Petulant, I started flipping through the Best Buy product replacement plan (please take a small moment to admire the fact that I had not only kept but could find in a timely manner the receipt and warranty) and read the fine print: even though the warranty covers a period through July 2008, its obligation to replace an item ends after one replacement. In other words, even though I paid for two years of coverage, if I were to get a replacement iPod today and that iPod died again in six months, I would be SOL. Given the fact that I'm on my third iPod in the first six months, I don't like those odds.

So I called Apple, and they have sent out a box I will use to send my recalcitrant iPod back to its mothership, or at least a satellite repair depot. I asked the very nice lady at the call centre somewhere in Pennsylvania whether they would repair or simply replace it, she said they would make a cursory attempt to repair it, but would likely simply replace it. It should be back in my sweaty little hands in 10 to 14 days.

That leaves my Best Buy warranty intact for the next iPod failure. At least now I know to expect it. In the end, my annoyance with the iPod's untimely demise is at least reasonably offset by the fairly decent repair and replacement service from Apple. I don't have anything nice to say about Best Buy, though. A two-year product replacement plan should replace products for two years, wouldn't you think?

Imagine they held a winter festival, and forgot to invite winter

Warning: Those of you reading from the Prairies might want to breeze past this one. Sucks to be you, doesn't it?

Been a long time since I blogged about the weather. Did you know that as a Canadian citizen, we're constitutionally obligated to discuss the weather at least 37 per cent of the time? And with a winter like this, especially with the undewhelming performance of the Senators (hockey being the other topic we are constitutionally obligated to discuss), there's nothing else worthy of conversation.

What the heck is up with this weather, anyway? It's mid-January, and we're still waiting for winter to arrive. We've had two, maybe three snowfalls, plus a few dustings. The temperatures have been in the range of ten or more degrees (Centigrade, bien sûr) above the norm almost every day. Quite frankly, as a cautionary tale on global warming, it's scaring the hell out of me.

Every February, Ottawa has a winter festival called Winterlude. Central to Winterlude is the Rideau Canal, a 7.8 km skateway recently certifed by the Guiness people as the world's longest. Also popular are the ice scupltures and the snow playground.

Who would have imagined that Winterlude, nestled deep in the cold heart of February, would be in jeopardy due to unfreezing temperatures? In the Citizen today, they had a little graphic stating that we need at least 10 days of temperatures below -15C for the Canal to freeze. There are only 22 days until the start of Winterlude, and the long-term forecast doesn't show a single day that will get that cold.

To my great surprise, I'm finding that I'm actually missing the winter weather. I miss the way the snow insulates sound, so that when you go for a walk on a snowy winter evening, the world is peacefully silent except for the crunch and squeak of snow under your boots. I miss the ruddy hue on the boys' chubby cheeks. I miss that biting, shocking blast of cold that snatches the air out of your lungs when you first step outside.

Who knew it was possible to have a year without a winter? And who knew I'd be disappointed? It's just not right, I tell you. There are some things we can count on, and a cold Canadian winter should be one of them. It's just not right.

Donder. Not Donner, DONDER.

“You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen;
Comet and Cupid and DONDER and Blitzen…”

Ah yes, it’s that time of year again. Those of you who know me well are rolling your eyes and saying “oh no, not the reindeer thing again.”

Yes, the reindeer thing again. If I can educate just ONE person each year about the correct names of Santa’s eight reindeer, my work here will be done.

I had a post half-typed up about this when I realized that I’ve done all this before. Why reinvent the wheel when I can just cut and paste my post from last year? I wrote:

As you might know, my last name is Donders. As such, it has been my lifelong quest to set the record straight and right the wrongs entrenched by Johnny Marks and Gene Autry.

Here’s a little history lesson for you. The poem “A Visit From St Nicholas”, commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas”, was written back in 1823 and is generally attributed to American poet Clement Clarke Moore (although there have been recent arguments that the poem was in fact written by his contemporary Henry Livingston Jr.)

The original poem reads, in part:

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Dunder and Blixem!

As explained on the Donder Home Page (no relation):

In the original publication of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" in 1823 in the Troy Sentinel "Dunder and Blixem" are listed as the last two reindeer. These are very close to the Dutch words for thunder and lightning, "Donder and Bliksem". Blixem is an alternative spelling for Bliksem, but Dunder is not an alternative spelling for Donder. It is likely that the word "Dunder" was a misprint. Blitzen's true name, then, might actually have been "Bliksem".

In 1994, the Washington Post delved into the matter (sorry for the noisy link – it’s the only copy I could find online) by sending a reporter to the Library of Congress to reference the source material.

We were successful. In fact, Library of Congress reference librarian David Kresh described Donner/Donder as "a fairly open-and-shut case." As we marshaled the evidence near Alcove 7 in the Library's Main Reading Room a few days ago, it quickly became clear that Clement Clarke Moore, author of "A Visit from St. Nicholas," wanted to call him (or her?) "Donder." Never mind that editors didn't always cooperate.
[…]
Further confirmation came quickly. In "The Annotated Night Before Christmas," which discusses the poem in an elegantly illustrated modern presentation, editor Martin Gardner notes that the "Troy Sentinel" used "Dunder", but dismisses this as a typo. Gardner cites the 1844 spelling as definitive, but also found that Moore wrote "Donder" in a longhand rendering of the poem penned the year before he died: "That pretty well sews it up," concluded Kresh.

So there you have it. This Christmas season, make sure you give proper credit to Santa’s seventh reindeer.

On DONDER and Blitzen. It’s a matter of family pride

Christmas crazies

In the Citizen this morning, there was an article (sorry, subscriber only - why do they do that?) about the hot 'toys' this Christmas and how people are frantically bidding outrageous amounts for them on eBay. The article notes,

Over the two-week period beginning Nov. 23, eBay has sold 6,470 Wii units across Canada -- most at double their retail price of $280. The Playstation 3 has sold 7,060 times at an average of $2,317 -- four times its retail price of $550. Meanwhile, the Elmo T.M.X. has been sold 10,247 times for an average of $30 more than its retail price of $44.99.

I'm going to have to back this rant up a little bit. I'm going to ignore for a moment the whole idea of the bidding wars, and just shake my head in dismayed disbelief that anyone would pay more than FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS for a video game console. I'm not spending $500 for both boys combined, and don't anticipate doing so any time in the near future. Not in this lifetime. (If the lottery fairy dumps a load of cash in my stocking and deems it must be spent on home electronics, a new computer for the family and a Canon Rebel digital SLR are at the top - and bottom! - of that list.)

But seriously, did you see that last line in the quote? People are spending an average - an AVERAGE! - of $75 for an Elmo doll. And while I think $75 for Elmo is questionable in an eye-brow raising sort of way, I simply can't conceptualize paying over two thousand dollars for a video game system where you still have to pay extra for the damn games. I don't have enough italics, caps and exclamation marks to fully express my astonishment and contempt.

These things will all be back on the store shelves, not to mention their regular price, by mid-January. What on earth is possessing people to pay these outrageous amounts?

What's the best gift you are giving this Christmas, the one you can't wait to give? And would you pay four times the retail price to give it?

A little something for everybody

I can't even remember the last time we had a ramble around here. I've got a whole bunch of flotsam and pretty pieces of beach glass that I've collected, but I have no idea what to do with them. So, I'll drop them unceremoniously into a single post and let you make something of it.

First, if you haven't been there already, you should go check out Nancy's blog. She's doing a fun Christmas craft or activity every day leading up to December 24.

Second, speaking of holiday activities, my Christmas lights really hate me this year. Or is it the other way around? Back in November, when I was still pregnant, I found myself on a step-ladder hanging the outdoor lights. It was only after about 40 minutes, when I got all the way to the end of the string and my arms were aching from being lifted over my head for so long, that I realized I had started at the wrong end. I had to pull them all back down and re-hang them with the plug on the end nearest the receptacle and not furthest from it. I only mention it now because yesterday I noticed one of our three strings of indoor tree lights was not working. After some fidgeting, I decided the string was officially dead, and needed to be replaced. Of course, this was the middle string. So I very carefully unstrung it, trying hard not to dislodge too many ornaments, and very carefully wove a new string into more or less the same space. When I plugged it in, another string of lights died. When I tested the removed string, it worked fine. So I unstrung a SECOND string of lights and restrung the original string. With all the shifting and yanking and replacing of ornaments, the tree looks like it was decorated by a band of blind monkeys, but at least the lights are working. For now.

Third, some tips from the peanut gallery. Fryman sent me this article in the Globe and Mail about how 96% of Canadian women contribute to the control the family finances, and the vast majority, 63%, have sole control. I have to admit, even though in my house I have pretty much sole control over the finances, I was still surprised to see the figure as high as 63%. Does that figure surprise you?

Fourth, also from the peanut gallery, this amusing link from the one and only Marla. I've been trying for days to come up with a post witty enough to support it, but I have failed abjectly. Therefore, I simply ask you to try to imagine taking a refreshing walk along the beach and finding thousands of bags of Doritos, washed up like 200 gram beached whales. Go ahead, if you can make something funnier out of this, be my guest!

Fifth, for those of you who came of age watching television in the 1980s (like me), I offer you the 50 greatest television commercials from the 80s.

And finally, a follow-up to my horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad day. This morning in his Action Line column in the Citizen, columnist Tony Côté addressed my request for his help to find, repay and recognize the kindness of that cab driver who was so kind to me. Well, not so much addressed it as, much to my surprise, simply reprinted my entire e-mail to him (complete with my full name and all - and I mean all - of the gory details, including the miscarriage, the forgotten wallet and the tears) pretty much verbatim. I was hoping he might help me find my way to a real person at Blue Line who could put me in touch with the cabbie, but it looks like I'll have to keep trying that avenue on my own. Instead, my most humiliating day is now available to a much wider audience than I could have ever reached through blog. Oy, how do I get myself into these things?

An open letter to Proctor and Gamble

Dear Proctor and Gamble,

At the risk of being rude, could I please ask just what the hell your marketing department has been smoking lately?

First, you come out with the Tide “the difference between smelling like a mom and smelling like a woman” commercial. This ad insinuates that mothers have an inherently unpalatable smell, but fear not because Tide with Febreeze laundry detergent will mask or even eliminate that unpleasant mother smell. (To see the ad, go to Tide's website, and click on "The Difference" under Tide Febreeze Freshness.)

Given that fresh baby is at the top of my favourite smells of all time, and Febreeze ranks somewhere after dog vomit and forgotten Tupperware container of month-old ravioli, I think I’ll do my best to keep smelling like a mother. If you think that ad was generally well received in the mothering community, you should read the 20+ comments on Ann Douglas’ blog, not to mention Ann’s excellent criticism. And don't even get me started about how there is no campaign about the difference between smelling like a dad and smelling like a man.

Second, what is the deal with the Have a Happy Period ™ campaign for Always pads? I can tell you I was nothing less than infuriated to tear into a new package of pads last night to continue mopping up the flow of blood after my recent dilation and curettage to see your chipper Have a Happy Period ™ slogan printed on the paper attached to the adhesive backing.

“Have a Happy Period”? Not so happy, actually. I was looking forward to not having another period for at least five more months, to tell you the truth. I can only imagine how much I would have hated to see that chipper little strip of paper staring up at me every single month while we were struggling with the pain of infertility. Months stretch into years, the desire for a baby grows into an obsession, and each month dreams are crushed by the arrival of yet another period. But wait, I feel better, because Proctor and Gamble is telling me to have a HAPPY period.

The “manifesto” on your Have a Happy Period ™ website says, in part, “This is the time when, if something is even slightly annoying, the world should know about it.” Look at that, I'm taking your assvice! This campaign is insensitive, trite, and quite a bit more than “slightly annoying”. And if anyone ever sent me a Have a Happy Period ™ e-card that said “feeling whiney, snippy and bloated? Try self-aware, concise and curvy”, I’d block their e-mail address.

I’m all for providing resources for educators and young women who may have questions, but I don’t think we’ve made much progress when we’ve gone from shaming women about their bodies’ natural functions to trivializing them.

Sincerely, DaniGirl

(with credit to the Pixies at the Whiner’s Ball)