Over the past few months the topic of having children has been coming up more and more often and it’s starting to get complicated. Here are a few of the dilemas which have arisen:

1. When would a baby best fit into Berts olympic dream?

2. When would a baby best fit into Jaime’s career?

3. 3 months maternity leave, then what?

4. I haven’t spoken to my Dad in 4 years, if we have a baby should he be part of its life

5. How long could we stay in our one bedroom + office appartment for after having a baby?

6. If we want two we need to get cracking with number one, but if we adopt number two then we have more time right?

7. How are we going to manage with no family to help out within 1000 miles?

Oh yeah, and the biggest one of all, why is it that at the ripe old age of almost 29 I don’t hear a single tick (or even ticklet) from my biological clock?

Do you think I’m broken?

If heaven is a place where all bad emotions dissappear in my heaven the top two gonners would be jealousy and anger.

If heaven is a place where you can eat your favorite food all the time and never get sick of it then in my heaven plates would be piled high with lobster and chocolate truffles.

If heaven is a place where you can finally get around to all those things you’ve always wanted to do then my heaven would be dotted with pole jumping pits and the latest childrens book by me.

If heaven is a place where everything makes you smile then I would finally be able to find that bloomin leprauchan again cause damn it he wasn’t standing by the big hole this morning even though I took a potato with me when I walked the dog (as per Dan’s advice). Maybe I’m using the wrong kind of potato, it was one of those little red ones, should I take a Yukon Gold instead, you know cause leprauchans always have a pot of gold? Or a good old fashioned baking potato, the giant kind that gives you a whole lotta potato for your buck?

I saw a leprachaun this morning…honest to goodness. Only he wasn’t small, he was very tall and very gangly. But he had bright red hair which came to a point in the middle of his forehead. He was wearing a bright green rain jacket and a slightly darker green pair of pants. He was standing looking into a big hole in the ground (a construction hole) and no one else seemed to see him.

I figured that seeing a leprachaun was a sure sign that I was going to have a lucky day.

Except that I’m not Irish (although I have been mistaken for being Irish before…and Swedish, and Scotish, and Icelandic - pretty much anything pale and delicate) so the luck apparently didn’t work.

I got caught in the rain while I was walking the dog, I had to completely re-write a letter for my boss because he changed his mind completely about what it should say, I have a hole in my tights and my big toe keeps slipping through it, and my left contact lens is driving me bonkers.

I think maybe I need to catch the leprachaun in order for his luck to rub off on me so, next time he’s standing there looking into that construction hole I’m going to tackle him at the knees. My only question is, what do I do then?

a) try to stuff his six and a half foot frame into my pocket?

b) rub his head and make a wish?

c) run like hell so he doesn’t kick my ass for getting his green pants dirty?

Saturday was Quebec day which was a giant pain in the ass cause they removed all of the garbage cans from the park (apparently the Montreal police are deathly afraid of garbage can fires when it’s 30 degrees, hot and sunny). Anyway in the spirit of ‘how all things impact me’ this really sucked because there was nowhere to dump the dog-pooh bag on Sunday morning.

They say that golf is ‘a good walk spoiled’ yeah right, try walking for 45 minutes in the hot sun with a hoard of flies following behind trying to get at the delicious pooh entre you’ve so cruely packaged in a seemingly inpenetrable Provigo bag…that’s a good walk spoiled.

Anyway, even though pretty much everyone had the day off on Friday I got yesterday off instead which was great cause everything was actually open for a change.

So Bert and I went to the bank. The bank has been putting a hold on my pay cheque ever since I first started getting it. I argue with them every month but it doesn’t seem to help (and no, my employer has never bounced a pay cheque). The last time they finally promised that they wouldn’t hold my checque and then, after I went ahead and deposited it, they proceeded to put a whopping three week hold on - without telling me! During that three weeks they:

1) charged us the monthly fee even though the cheque they were holding more than covered the minimum balance to have the fee waived

2) charged us interest on bills we paid from our overdraft account because they were holding a cheque that would have more than covered the bills

3) offered us a no-annual fee credit card and then charged us a $99 annual fee

4) reimbursed our falsly charged interest and monthly fee to someone elses account

So yesterday Bert and I went to the bank to sort everything out. Bert started to get justifiably stroppy when the woman said that even though TD signed us up for the credit card, TD Visa is a completely seperate entity…we would have to take up the annual fee issue with them on our own.

First bank-related question: Why is it that banks never take responsibility for their actions?

Anyway after a full half hour of painful sorting through all things financial, we finally had resolution. As we turned to leave the guy who had taken over our fiasco called us back.

“Wait a minute, you don’t have overdraft protection.”

“No, we canceled it after you charged us $19 interest while the cheque was on hold.”

“Oh, I’ll put it back on your account.”

“Uh, no thank you.”
“Ok, I’ll give you this different overdraft program.”

“No, we really don’t want it.”

“I’ll just add it to your account just in case.”

“No, seriously we don’t want it.”

“If you don’t use it we won’t charge you.”

“We still don’t want it.”

“If you’re not being charged what do you care if you have…I’ll just give it to you.”

“No!”

Second bank related question: Why don’t banks understand that no means no?

I am seriously considering burring all of our money under the back deck. Oh wait, now I’ve told you. Well in that case, I would never, ever, in a million years consider hiding our paltry life savings under the back deck!

This weekend Montreal is finally shaking of the last vestiges of a cold-rainy spring - except that it’s almost raining now. But realistically the weather doesn’t matter because Montreal has entered summer fun phase.

The dog and I walked up St. Laurent yesterday. They’ve closed the street to traffic so everything’s spilling into the streets.

The restaurants have constructed terraces and now, for a short time, one can go to a fine dining restaurant and slip bread to ones dog under the table.

The stores have jam-packed racks with arbitrary prices slapped on with cardboard and string. At any point in time ten women are trying on the exact same skirt over their pants in the middle of the road.

Poker Party and Play Station have set up exhibition stands to keep the men occupied while the women peruse the shops. They don’t have a license to sell though so there’s a constant stream of dissappointed men leaving the tents empty-handed.

There’s a Formula-1 car too (it’s the Montreal race this weekend) and it was tiny. I mean how-can-a-man-fit-in-that tiny. Can someone who’s been to a race tell me whether the cars really are that small or was I seeing a mock-up?

There was also a stand for signing up for credit cards (those places go everywhere) and the young guys doing the sign up decided to try to suck me in by being nice to Meeka. Except they did it all wrong.

At the exact same time two of them jumped in front of us and shouted a disjointed chorus of ‘hey dog / what a cute dog’. Meeka lept six feet in the air and five feet horizontally across the road.

Which was full of people.

She landed next to the sunglass guy who just at that moment was trying to run down a lost sale offering, ‘ok, ok 50% off’. That sent her dashing forward dividing two teenagers holding hands very sweetly. The girl squeeled and curled into a one-legged standing fetal position of horor.

Meeka and I quickly slipped down then street leaving everyone to sort themselves out. But I heard the young guy saying, and we dissappeared into the crowd, ‘woah, wait a sec, you mean you don’t like dogs?!?’

Great work credit card guys, you’ve destroyed another budding young love.