Ok, so usually when I work alone in my office, when I’m concentrating really hard, I pick my lips. It’s a horrible habit and very bad for my poor lips so, starting yesterday I’ve been trying to pick up another habit which is slightly less destructive.

Yesterday I tried playing with my hair. Braiding my bangs was a very good fidget to keep my going when I was concentrating however, when I got up to go to the bathroom I left one forgotten braid in my bangs. I was mortified when I went to wash my hands and saw this scraggly little braid sticking out from the side of my head on a 90 degree angle. It was enough for me to reject the hair thing.

This morning I focused my attention on my belly button (yes, yes I know, it’s very strange but I had a very good reason). I figured my belly button’s hidden so I can’t, by accident, leave myself with a horribly embarassing mark of my fidgeting. My belly button’s also a tough little thing so it’s un-pickable, and therefore, I can’t hurt it. Sure it might look weird, me playing with my belly button and all, but hey, it’s a habit I only have when I’m alone so who cares.

Well, this is kinda gross so if you want to continue to respect me as a fine upstanding citizen you might want to stop reading here.

For those of you who don’t, I have a shameful secret…my belly button smells funny. After playing with my belly button for a very satisfying ten minutes or so while reading through a stack of case studies I leaned my head on my hand. I was immediately struck by this strange smell, not altogether unpleasant but still an alarming combination of rosemary and motor oil.

Weird eh? I mean if it smelled like another body part (feet, armpits, hair, whatever) I wouldn’t have been so shocked but this smell was just so shockingly new. It wasn’t a Jaime smell and yet there it was, right in my belly button.

So there, now you know.

The rain finally broke this weekend so the ark building has been put on hold. The sun brought with it a sudden growth spurt in the garden and a whole slew of questions…

‘what colour tiles should we buy?’

’should we take the dog to the vet’

‘where should we put the tv’

‘how much should we spend on renovations’

‘where did we put that damn fan’

and, perhaps the most perplexing question of all, ‘why is the dog napping in the sun again?’

Meeka loves to sleep in the sun on the back deck, she actually chases the sunny spots around the yard. Now on a brisk spring day I can understand this but it must have been 25 degrees yesterday (Celcius that is) during the heat of the afternoon. Meeka lay there, he tongue lolling on the wood creating a neat little wet ring of moist breath. Her sides heaved in and out with every hot panting breath she took. Every half hour or so she wandered back to the toilet for a little refreshment (yes she did have water in her water dish and no she didn’t drink from that).

I tried giving her ice cubes, she ignored them.

I tried moving her into the shade, she moved back into the sun.

I tried clamly explaining to her why lying in the sun wasn’t the most intelligent of all plans, she barely cocked an ear in my direction.

So, interneters, is this normal behaviour for a dog or is Meeka (a) trying to get rid of excess water weight, (b) getting herself really thirsty so the toilet water tastes extra sweet, (c) trying to get sun stroke cause she really likes the way the world looks when she can’t see straight or (d) really too stupid to notice the correlation between lying outside in the sun and getting hot?

My morning tooth brushing routine says a lot about how I’ve slept the night before.

If I’m walking around loading the dishwasher, putting the kettle on, watering the plants and occasionally running back to the sink while I brush my teeth I have slept fantastically. You will only find me like this about once every two months.

If I stand in front of the sink staring into the mirror letting gravity do most of the spitting for me I have been woken up about half an hour too early by the dog, the neighbors handyman, the garbage truck, a crazy drunk guy in the alley, or my husbands razor sharp toe nails. You will find me like this about 90% of the time.

If I sit on the bathmat brushing my teeth while huddled in my bathrobe pulling myself up just enough to spit in the sink when the foamy toothpaste becomes just too much to handle. Well then I have been woken up at midnight, 2am, 4am, 5am, 6am, and finally 6:45am. You would have found me like this this morning.

I’m blogging while drink tea and eating a cookie which is both a happy and a sad thing.

It is happy because I am drinking the ‘good luck tea’ my Mom sent me all the way from England. It’s a great work tea because, since it’s a green tea there is no need to face (1) the innevitable dissapointment of discovering that someone’s stolen your milk from the office fridge again, or (2) the even more innevitable dissapointment of drinking herbal tea and suffering throught caffine withdrawal.

Also I think the tea really is lucky. Not in a ‘oh look my button suddenly reattached itself to my shirt’ way but certainly in a ‘ahhhh, life is starting to make sense’ kinda way.

Now for the sad part…

I love Peperidge Farm cookies! They are delicious and chewy and oh so sweet. How could they possibly bring anything but joy. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I just finished the last one - very, very sad. Actually not only have I finished the last one but I have also dumped all of the crumbs left in the bag into my waiting mouth. Very elegant, as you can imagine, luckily no one was passing by my office at the time.

I need to let you all in on a little secrect. Actually it’s a very big secret but in my infinite generosity I’m sharing it anyway. There is a Peperidge Farm Factory Outlet! I don’t know exactly where, Bert is the holder of that precious drop of information, but I can find out if you are ever in need of one-dollar-already-expired-but-still-damn-delicious-cookies-of-great-goodness.

Think about it.

Our hotel in Ottawa was in the hi-tech district. Evil sounding companies like tech-expert-super-tronics and such dominated the landscape on the left hand side of the road while unimaginative rows of identical houses in complexes such as wild river estates, presided over the right. It was kinda freaky and earily quiet on a Saturday night. It seemed unlikely that Bert and I would find anything to do.

Until we saw the elk. Head held high, a frozen prance captured on the end of a six foot pole the sign was clear - ‘Elk, 3km’. Hmm, elk huh, well who doesn’t like elk they’re like giant deer and the only thing better than a big version of something is the minature version. And I don’t think there’s any such thing as a miniature deer.

Forgoing a lazy adventure floating down the concrete ensconsed ‘wild river’ and not quite ready to take on the laser guided sling shots guarding the secret vaults of tech-expert-super-tronics we were left with the elk.

3 km we drove on.

2 km through the high tech housing complex and then the third on a tiny road. Glass and asphalt compounds were quickly replaced with dirt and trees.

‘Elk,” another sign read, ‘100m’.

We eased up the gravelled driveway and came to a stop in front of a big white house. As far as the eye could see 15 foot fences streched across the field. A sign on the door instructed us to ring for the elk, so we did.

After a couple of minutes a middle-aged lady came to the door. Bert and I glanced quickly at each other, we had thought that elk-raising had to be the product of some male cockamaney plan. We didn’t expect Mrs. Houswife sporting a happy mothers day pin and all.

“Ah,” she said, “do you want to see the elk?”

“Yes please.” Bert answered, he is a very polite gentleman afterall.

“Follow me” the intrepid housewife answered leading us into the garage. We marched across the concrete floor towards the french doors on the other side of the room. Just before we got to the french doors our housewife stopped. She quickly reached over and flipped up the cover of a large white freezer.

“We have four kinds of sausage.” She explained, “elk burgers and ground elk meat.” Stepping over to a second freezer she executed the same flip of the wrist to reveal another stash of shrink-wrapped meat. “Elk steaks.” she explained.

So Bert and I saw our elk. And hey, we bought some too. We stopped off at a grocery store (see previous post on description of breakfast) and Bert convinced the vegetable guy to give us some free ice to pack our elk in. It tasted good, I mean really good. I want to go back again and see those glorious elk in their big white freezers…is that wrong?

As for the lame mall - well I decided that it is so lame that it doesn’t afford any further mention. Let’s just say that a mall that takes up three entire blocks should have more than two dozen discount leather, dusty imports, and outdated calendar shops.