Lately, the kid has been all about the bedtime sing-a-long.


And I've been forced to realize that I know the lyrics to far too few songs.

We spent some serious time on the classics: the Alphabet Song, Old McDonald (according to my child, Cookie Monster lives on the farm), Twinkle Twinkle, Happy Birthday, Baa Baa Black Sheep and Itsy Bitsy Spider. And then I ran out of ideas.

My brain can seriously not recall the lyrics to any other kid's songs at will.

So I started singing the only other two songs that I can apparently remember in their entirety: "So Happy Together" (Who the fuck are The Turtles?! How do I even know this song?) and "Blister in the Sun" (Yup, a song about masturbation. She's taken to calling it the "Check Out Song". I win at parenting.)

Reflections on a third week without processed food, booze, dairy or sugar:

• Wow, only one week left? That went pretty quick.
• HOLY CRAP - I haven't had a single drink in 21 days!!!??? My liver must be so bored.
• I made sugar-free pumpkin muffins and actually enjoyed eating them. I cut the honey from this recipe and added some raisins - I said "sugar-free", not "devoid-of-sweetness".
• Sugar-free coconut tapioca on the other hand: meh. Tastes like nothing and has the consistency of chunky mucus. Good thing buying the pearls gave me a giggle (see pic).
• Yes, apparently no sugar or booze for 3 weeks turns me into an 8 year-old. Let's hope my liver has received the same rejuvenating treatment as my brain. Next week is tequila shots and Cinnabon!! I'm kidding. Mostly.

Two unrelated but equally brilliant things to read:


"Epidemics seldom end with miracle cures. Most of the time in the history of medicine, the best way to end disease was to build a better sewer and get people to wash their hands. “Merely chipping away at the problem around the edges” is usually the very best thing to do with a problem; keep chipping away patiently and, eventually, you get to its heart. To read the literature on crime before it dropped is to see the same kind of dystopian despair we find in the new literature of punishment: we’d have to end poverty, or eradicate the ghettos, or declare war on the broken family, or the like, in order to end the crime wave. The truth is, a series of small actions and events ended up eliminating a problem that seemed to hang over everything. There was no miracle cure, just the intercession of a thousand smaller sanities." ~ Adam Gopnik for the New Yorker


"Lo, in the twilight days of the second year of the second decade of the third millennium did a great darkness descend over the wireless internet connectivity of the people of 276 Ferndale Street in the North-Central lands of Iowa. For many years, the gentlefolk of these lands basked in a wireless network overflowing with speed and ample internet, flowing like a river into their Compaq Presario. Many happy days did the people spend checking Hotmail and reading USAToday.com.

But then one gray morning did Internet Explorer 6 no longer load The Google. Refresh was clicked, again and again, but still did Internet Explorer 6 not load The Google. Perhaps The Google was broken, the people thought, but then The Yahoo too did not load. Nor did Hotmail. Nor USAToday.com. The land was thrown into panic. Internet Explorer 6 was minimized then maximized. The Compaq Presario was unplugged then plugged back in. The old mouse was brought out and plugged in beside the new mouse. Still, The Google did not load." ~ Mike Lacher for McSweeney's

Reflections on a second week without processed food, booze, dairy or sugar:

• 30 days is a hell of a long time. Stupidly long really.
• Pork rinds (unflavoured, lightly salted, I admit that we're stretching the definition of "unprocessed" a tad here) are either the best or the worst snack food on the planet. I'm pretty sure it's completely impossible to eat more than 5 in a single sitting. I'm thinking that marketing them as "the anti-Lays" could be a genius maneuver. Or perhaps I shouldn't quit my day job to pursue a career as an ad exec quite yet.
• Standing in the middle of a gas station snack bar and realizing that there isn't a single thing they sell that you can eat is a far more disturbing/depressing experience than you might think it would be. They didn't have any pork rinds.
• I'm a little bummed-out that my sugar withdrawal wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. I'm also not missing booze as much as I thought I would. I miss cheese/cream/butter/yogurt more than I would have guessed since I really don't eat that much. I think I miss processed meat like salami and pepperoni more than anything. Which is just creepy really.

Do anyone really know anything about how to create and maintain a strong marriage?


Recently several bloggers I've been reading for years have announced their separations. I won't claim to have any personal relationship or connection with these people other than reading their blogs. I'm also not one who thinks that because you write about some aspects of your life means that you're not being honest or authentic if you don't blog about every aspect of your life. Even people who share their lives publicly have rights to privacy.

But still, I was shocked. In each case.

I am the child of divorced parents. Sure my parents didn't separate/divorce until I was in my late teens, but I was my mother's confidante far too young to have any illusions about the stability of their marriage for the many years leading up to it's inevitable demise. So I guess I figured that I was a bit of an expert on what bad, failing marriages look like: the extremely limited communication; the years of uncorrected miscommunication; the lack of honesty - at times straight-up dishonesty; the constant inappropriate disparaging comments made to children about the other parent; the utter absence of affection; the hostile silences shared far more often than laughter; the walls of emotional distance erected and wielded as weapons of offense and defence, etc.

Basically, my parents did their best to avoid confronting and addressing their issues for the entire 18 years they were married. So I think I'd just assumed that people who made concerted efforts to identify and fix the weaknesses in their relationship were the ones that succeeded in having a solid, healthy marriage. That the secret to marital stability was to embrace the opposite path to the one that my parents took. To ask the serious questions. To truly listen to the answers. To seek professional assistance if/when necessary. In essence, to act like the emotionally-mature adult examples we want to set for our kids.

But perhaps there really are no "As" for effort. And that is really, really scary to me.


Edited to add: I'd read this piece before and was remind of it recently. Though I'm thankfully not having any marital issues (that I know of), it does give you something to think about in terms of what may often really be behind a divorce.

If you're pregnant or have ever been pregnant, this is your (safe for work) porn. You're welcome.

via Marvelous Kiddo

Reflections on a week without processed food, booze, dairy or sugar:

• Herbal tea sucks. People who claim to truly enjoy it are either dangerously insane or extremely adept at deluding themselves.
• It is possible to have dirty dreams about fudge that do not involve sex in any way.
• Pancakes without syrup are a waste of good ingredients. They will make you grumpier than you were before you tried to convince yourself that they'd still taste good.
• Avoiding booze and sugar makes me very productive apparently. After I've finished off the long list of household chores I've been studiously cultivating for the last 5 years of home-ownership via disciplined avoidance and procrastination, I'm going to have to learn to knit or write a novel or something because any time I'm not busy I instantly want a stiff drink and a giant-fuck bowl of fudge-covered popcorn. What I would do with that popcorn is definitely X rated.

Nuts are ok on this cleanse but I think I'll stick to almonds.

While I love camping and strongly identify with the rationale, this soup version of the Occupy movement is much more up my alley than living downtown in a tent city.


This song would be a good start to a soundtrack for protest soup-making. And a couple of these on the walls would also be inspirational. Beef soup anyone?

Sometimes even the little, simple things can matter.

via A Slim Winter

We start this next week.


Plus, no caffeine. Because I'm sick like that.

It's going to hurt. In a good way I hope.

I also hope that I have enough self-control to not rip the strawberry Greek Yogurt cup out of my child's hands in a moment of dairy-and-sugar-driven weakness.

We'll definitely be avoiding all known Starbucks (and LCBO) locations like the plague. I hear that being aware of your triggers is a key step for recovering addicts of all types.

Man, that first glass of wine going to taste a-fucking-mazing after 30 days.

I found the inspiration for my New Years resolution in the words and wisdom of others:

"Baby boy. You know when you're mad or sad or frustrated? When you rip things up or yell at somebody or slam a door or cry? Are you listening to me, Evan? Listen. Look at me. When you feel that way, there's a ball of red energy right there in your chest, under your skin, inside your ribs, on top of your lungs and all stuck up in your throat. It's red, a bad red. It grows and grows and makes you sick and sad. You need to learn how to let all that red go, love. Want to know how? You breathe it out. Breathe it out and see it all start to seep out of your mouth and your nose and your ears and your toes, and it goes up like a cloud and the breeze takes it away. You can see it, if you look the right way. And then here's what you do next. You think, as quick as you can, about the best things. Lego and hockey and macaroni and cheese with hot biscuits and Santa Claus and the skate park quick like 1-2-3-4-5. And then you'll feel something different filling up all that new space. A ball of blue energy. Blueish-green...

Evan interrupted. Turquoise?

Yes. That's the energy ball that cools you down and makes you calm, and it helps things to grow healthy and good. You can make that blue energy ball whenever you like, Evan, as long as you know the trick to it. There are lots of people who don't know the trick to it and they walk around all day long with their red energy ball getting bigger and bigger and then it'll be in there so deep it'll never get out and they won't ever be able to feel that nice cool blue, not ever. They'll just sadder and sadder and sadder until they forget what it feels like to be turquoise on the inside." ~ Sweet Salty


"begin now.
take a deep breath, see who is sitting here today- and ask what it is that you can offer her, what you can do to give her what she needs. what you can do to fully love her.

and then, i want you to start clearing away the negative energy you store within. while driving in traffic, let go of impatience, let go of frustration. while being inconvenienced, stop. relax. breathe. and let it go, what really is the rush? look into the eyes of those that serve you, at restaurants, at the store – and thank them. when someone pays you a compliment, don’t brush it off – embrace it and say ‘thank you’

when thinking of those that have hurt you- light a candle and send them light, surround them, wrap them up in beautiful healing light, and then let them go, they have their own hurts- and you have no room left in your beautiful body for negative energy." ~ Starving Artist Ink