I hate when I cry… I’m not a girl who deliberately sheds tears just to get attention – I’ve known my share of “those girls” and they taught me a valuable lesson: don’t be like them. But sometimes, frustration just gets me so ferclempt that I don’t know what else to do and I just need a quick release, and for some reason, crying gets it out.

It happens when I feel stupid… I remember my high school French teacher drilling me about something in Moliere, and I didn’t know what the heck she was saying, and she just kept repeating the same thing to me over and over again. I had this deadpan stare and I was thinking, “If I didn’t understand it the first time, what makes you think repeating it incessantly is going to help?!” Finally a classmate whispered her question to me and I fumbled out an answer. I left class with hot red cheeks and had to rush into the girl’s bathroom because I needed to just get out of my frustration. Perhaps this is where my mental-French-block comes from. Feeling stupid in French class makes me ferclempt.

I get ferclempt if I’m driving somewhere I’ve never been and get lost. Nothing gets me more steamed than driving around in circles, being closer and closer to arriving late, and not finding the address. I had an internship at the Ottawa Sun my first summer here and every day they would send me to some obscure location – this was pre-GPS era and all I had was a map and a choking feeling in my throat. I quit after a week (not because I was always getting lost but because they wanted me to cover something that was completely against my principles and I refused). But that job made me ferclempt.

Stupid people make me ferclempt. People who love drama or self-loathing. People who are complainers. This all drives me to freclempt-cia.

So the next time you’re feeling frustrated or at your wit’s end, don’t get to the point that you burst into tears, like I childishly do… just think of the word “ferclempt.” It’s a silly enough word that it just might take the edge off!

So here I am in Ottawa, working on the lappy, trying to keep up with a puppy who is loving his new-found freedom and is constantly disappearing into one room or another (luckily his new tags jingle so he can’t hide for very long). When we moved to Canada in the summer of ’98 I went straight to Montreal and my parents and brother had a house in Kanata (Ottawa); when my bro moved out they also moved to a new house in Embrun. Even though my parents’ last two houses weren’t “my” house, it was the people – my mom, dad and brother – who made wherever they were a home. There was still those familiar voices and the same wonderful laughter, and the same amazing smells when dad was making breakfast or mom had a pot of spaghetti sauce on. I could always find my Nanny’s brown and white comforter tucked away in a closet, and our VHS tape of The Princess Bride will forever be in the big heavy teak drawer of the wall unit.

When I first left Florida, where I grew up and truly considered home, I found adjusting to my new life and surroundings in Montreal really challenging. I felt lost without my pink stucco Boca house, but with time, I quickly learned that you can always come home, as long as you’re surrounded by the people you love most in the world. It’s not about the colour on the walls or the wood floors underfoot instead of the cool ceramic tile of our Florida kitchen… it’s about having the comfortable familiarity of a dad who whistles while he’s cooking or a mom who strokes my hair in her lap and a brother whose contagious chuckle can be heard from any room in the house.

And, just as a quick side note, today is my mommy’s birthday… a mom who is a best friend, who taught me to cook and was my study buddy (right through till university) and always made me feel safe and warm and loved beyond belief. HAPPY BIRFDAY MOM! Love you xxoo

Our regularly scheduled RANDOM THOUGHTS… is being trumped with HUMUNGO news that I’ve wanted to share with everyone for three looong months!!!…

This has been something I have been dreaming about since I was a little girl and would line up all my dolls for breakfast – there was Barnaby Arnold, Keith Edward, Tommy, Emanuel, My Buddy, and Rufus the Pound Puppy for good measure. They’d all sit in a neat little row, not uttering a word, and wait patiently as I made them plastic eggs and toast in my Fisher Price play-kitchen. I’d serve them one at a time, and they were such good little baby boys, eating in silence and then bringing their plates to the kitchen to wash them out with the air in the plastic sink. Then it was bath time, a new set of clothes (which fit neatly in a plastic case in my closet), and school. I went from being mommy to Miss Cox the kindergarten teacher, and they would do craft projects (that’s where Barnaby got that purple mark on his bald head) and take tests (Keith had a learning disability and always got D’s on his exams). Emanuel was naughty and would wear the paper dunce hat in the corner. Tommy threw-up green Play-doh one time and was sent to the school nurse, nurse Cox.

And now it’s finally real. No more playing. No more imagination needed, and no more pretend. There’s a new baby on the way, and Mike and I could not be more excited. We can’t wait to hold him and feed him and give him kisses. We can’t wait to spend time playing with him and watching him grow. We are so overjoyed. This is such a blessing. I am soooo happy.

Congrats Andrew and April on the new little boy! NO I’M NOT PREGNANT!