Obstacles

I realized earlier this evening that my vertical peripheral vision, if there is such a thing, has somehow become significantly heightened over the last couple years. I found myself stepping over things whose presence I hadn't actually registered until I was already on the other side of the kitchen: a bright orange xylophone and a mini power drill. What were they doing on the floor of my kitchen, you might ask? Well, that would be something to ask my son. Regardless, much to my dismay the living spaces in our home are frequently the dumping ground of various toy collections, discarded suddenly during routine laps around our living room/dining room/kitchen. If I were to wager a guess, I'd say that Keith and I are not alone in this constant battle of toy-landmine strewing. And I suppose I should admit that there are still many times where my peripheral vision fails me and something gets stepped on awkwardly, but they are amazingly few and far between.

Life in the Anderson home has become fairly routine over the last few weeks. Keith is working two or three evenings a week, as well as weekends. Last week, he worked three evenings straight and we had a taste of what "off-shifts" would be like: for three days the only times we saw each other (awake) was for about 5 minutes around 5:15 PM each day and briefly one night around 4 AM when the smoke alarm in our bedroom started chirping and we had to remove its batteries. "Mommy's at work" and "Daddy's at work" have become frequent responses to Kai's constant inquiries.

Speaking of Kai and questions, we have being trying to help him with his word order, but as of yet, to no avail. One of his favourite questions of late has been "what that is?" Oddly, although he has the word order wrong, he has a sufficient grasp of proper grammar when there is more than one object in question to ask "what those are?"

Lastly, I just found out a few days ago that butter tarts are a uniquely Canadian thing. Who knew? And really - butter tarts? The amount of butter in the recipe makes that a very odd name - it would make more sense to call them "brown sugar tarts".

Wind

Today is a VERY windy day. I woke up around 5:00 am to the sound of our house rattling. When I went downstairs, the flue in our fireplace was flipping up and down. When I went back upstairs, I noticed that the curtain in our bedroom was flapping in the wind, even though the window is shut. It might be time for some weather stripping. Here at work, I hear the dumpster lids swinging open and slamming shut outside. It sounds like someone is driving a truck around inside the ventilation system. I just checked the weather station reports for the lab - we've had a number of gusts that have reached 90 miles per hour. That's pretty fast.

Last Friday 17 cars in our parking lot at work had damage due to the wind. There has already been one damaged today. I didn't take the chance with our van and left it at a park n' ride down the hill, taking the shuttle up to the lab. Here's hoping that it's still intact.