Saturday Sept 23^rd

We brought the aspiring organic farmers to a spot where we pay for the right to pick fruit. Seems like a genius idea to me ... load up on cow manure, sprinkle some seeds then let the dumb schmucks pay you to pick your fruit. Makes child labor seem like a waste of money. They even charge for entry to the place ... which begged the obvious question - why the hell am I paying Farmer Bob $2 for a 15 month old child to walk around and torment the farm animals?? While the answer was not immediately obvious it became clear once I saw Brennan eating the raspberries right from the plant ... they charge $2 to cover the cost of the fruit my kid is ingesting. More likely it was the dumbasses beside me who bring their entire herd out to graze for an hour or so, thereby driving up the cost for us quasi honest folk who actually pick and pay. They must be from the States.  

We stuck to raspberries and a few apples this time and tried to avoid the more challenging fruit (cherries give me diarrhea).  Upon our return to the homestead the missus and the youngun baked a raspberry cake with our bounty. I be right grateful for all their hard work!! 

Saturday Oct 7^th,

Halloween costume shopping today. Why so early you ask? Only someone unfamiliar with Jessica would ask that question. She believes in being prepared, to the point that a nuclear holocaust could not take me by surprise.

Sarah decided she wanted to be a Princess. Why do all little girls want to be a princess? Why not a bull fighter, or a cowboy, or Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings?? Hell, I would even take Frodo at this point.

Jess took her to Party Packagers and realized that each purchase of a costume was preceded by an enema for the ass reaming that would happen at the checkout. It was decided that a 3 year old wouldn't really understand costume quality, so we downgraded to Wal Mart et al. Turns out even they can't get a princess costume right but if you want to dress your toddler up as a barnyard animal you are good to go. We eventually found a middle of the road solution at Loblaws ... yes, it is much more than your neighborhood grocery store these days.

Picking a costume for Brennan was a no brainer ... he being the unholy spawn of Satan. We picked up a little devil costume at said grocery store, which was perfect because we wouldn't have to pick up horns seeing as he already has a pair sprouting naturally from the top of his head!!

Turns out dry run was required before the big day, so we dressed them up for Meaghan's 1st birthday party (she being the daughter of my cousin Mike and his wife Rebecca, although truth be told I don't see much of Mike in her but that could just be me). There was really no need to dress the kids up in their Halloween costumes but we decided to throw everyone off and screw with them a little (yes, I am kidding, it was a theme party).

 Sunday Oct 8^th- Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving, or as I like to call it the annual "how much turkey can you eat without puking" day finally rolled around. Last year I ate about 5 pounds of turkey then tried to play hockey a few hours later ... I couldn't decide if I wanted to fall asleep on the ice or puke on the ref. This year I decided to exercise some self control and not eat myself up a pant size.

Bev and Luigi joined us and were promptly issued a feedbag for their use. This year we decided to cover our new chairs with a cloth because The Bev has a nasty habit of spilling red wine on light colored fabric ... I sometimes wonder if she is marking her territory or just trying to create her own Rorschach test, thereby driving me crazy every time I pass by the chair.

Something that bothers me about Canadian Thanksgiving ... where the hell is our football??? The US gets football on Thanksgiving and we get soap operas. And no, the CFL doesn't count.

Friday Oct 13^th,

I took Brennan to the pediatrician and the dumbass decided to screw with us a little. This woman has a receptionist/assistant that would have had a good career torturing prisoners in a Russian gulag. I think she is medically incapable of smiling and that believes that Cruella de Ville was soft. Brennan sees her coming and screams, which is probably due to the fact that she displays all the compassion of a Somalian warlord when giving children needles.

The pediatrician herself seems to have an aversion to buying pads of paper. Whenever she tells us to buy some over the counter medication for our kids she rips off a corner of the paper bed covering and scratches out her illegible babble for us to decipher ... I feel like a cryptographer on acid when I look at her writing.

Brennan has had a chest infection for, ohhhh a freaking year!! She can't seem to get her shit straight and get it cleared up and on this visit she informed me that she was picking up an abnormal heart murmur. Apparently it is common in young children and tends to rectify itself over time but she wanted to run a battery of tests ... ECG, x-rays, another CG of some sort with a different vowel on the front, etc. Jess freaked out but I informed her that this pediatrician is the reason why second opinions were invented.

Brennan got all the tests and the pediatric cardiologist confirmed what I already knew ... our pediatrician is a dumbass. No issues with Brennan's heart. The only question is why the hell do we keep going back to that idiot?

Saturday Oct 14^th,

Halloween decorating time. Jess believes that every holiday requires decorations, including those not normally celebrated in the Fraser household. Chinese New Year, Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah, Mardi Gras, etc. We rent a small 50,000 square foot warehouse to hold all our decorations and probably need to consider hiring a full time decorator.

This year the theme was orange and purple spider webs strung across the entire house. It looked like a giant arachnid with some serious intestinal problems squatted over our house. I don't think any of the neighborhood kids were sufficiently scared because a couple of the little teenage bastards smashed my pumpkin ... not Jess'  but mine. I think they were envious of my artistic talent and could not bear to be in its presence. Next year I am rigging an electric current through the pumpkin and going to watch the little pricks crap in their pants as they get a taste of 25,000 volts!!! Now THAT'S Halloween fun!!!

 Thursday Oct 18^th,

More decorations. This time it is my birthday so Jess and the kids decorated the house as a surprise. I am not particularly uncomfortable with getting older; rather I have come to accept that a birthday is just a reminder of the slow, ceaseless march towards our death. Funny how older men are "distinguished" and older women are just plain "old" ... I keep telling Jess that when she hits 40 I am trading her in for 2 20 year olds. She likes to remind me that when I hit 40 she is just kicking my ass out ... seems like she has been putting too much thought into it. 

Friday Oct 20^th

I officially turned 37. I didn't feel any different but apparently I lost more hair during the preceding year. I think it has to do with the fact that my high testosterone levels are burning the hair off my scalp but my doctor has other theories (I think he might be dipping into the narcotic samples he gets from the pharma companies and have concluded that his diagnosis is flawed).

Jess went hog wild at Banana Republic, which was great for me. Having kids we rarely splurge on anything for ourselves and think that rolling bums for loose change is a perfectly acceptable past time. 

Bev, Luigi, Rosa , Jen and  Jason came over to eat cake and drink Luigi's Red Stripe beer ... I mean really, what is a birthday without crappy Jamaican beer? Luigi decided that one stubby bottle was an appropriate gift and that anything more might set a precedent that he would later regret. What a prince he is.

I especially liked watching Brennan slip into a sugar coma. He packed in more sugar than at any other point in his short existence and proceeded to run around the house as if possessed by Macaulay Culkin on speed. Sarah had her own version of a sugar high, which required Bev to read numerous story books in succession until her tongue felt raw and her right forefinger started bleeding from turning the pages.