Signs of spring in our neighbourhood...

Lenny and I were sitting on the front porch enjoying an early evening breeze.  I love our front porch, especially in the spring around dinner time.  You can always smell somebody's barbecue working and the wafting sweetness of the lilacs from next door.  Neighbours wave hello.  Lenny chews on the ears of her teddy bear.  The Robeau has done such a nice job with our front garden.  It really is a peaceful, quiet little oasis, right here in the city.

All of the sudden, the calm was broken by the sound of a high strung looking guy yelling into his cell phone. Picture Ziggy from The Wire in a stiff Blue Jays cap.

"Bro, I can't go to jail for this, Bro.  If I go back in I'll do six months this time, BRO!!!"

He stops to listen to whatever his "bro" on the other end of the line has to say for himself and starts pacing in front of our white picket fence.  His eyes wander and he catches a glimpse of Lenny.

"Oooooohhh!  What a CUTIE!"

He waves at her, adjusts his ball cap, rolls his eyes at whatever he just heard through what I can only assume is a pay as you go "burner" mobile and then, back into the cell phone:

"BRO. Listen to me.  If I do six months for this, I'm gonna get out and KICK. YOUR. ASS. Dawg.  Believe it, Bro." 

And just like that, he was gone, speed walking towards the Danforth.

"Well, what do you think of that?" I asked Lenny.  She looked thoughtful and replied with by blowing a long, wet, raspberry.  "Me too, Bro" I said, "me too".

You know what's cool?

Take a look at the sidebar on your right.  No, the other right.  Somebody's been nominated for a Canadian Weblog Award, in three categories (Family & Parenting, Humour and Life).  Isn't that nice?  This seems like a great opportunity to thank you for reading.  Your comments and emails are wonderful and remind me that I'm not blogging in a vacuum.  Although, if I had to blog in a vacuum, it would be one of those Dyson ones.  You know, the one with the ball.

WOW.

Forget I said that.  I think I was reaching to come up with something humourous involving parenting and my life.

You all know that I don't vacuum.

Blogging from Buffalo

The Robeau and I are spending Victoria Day, that most colonial of holiday Mondays South of the border in Buffalo, New York. We've already enjoyed seeing some of downtown near our hotel and hope to balance some sight seeing and book reading / relaxation for the rest of the weekend. Even on short trips like this, not far away from home, The Robeau and I travel very differently. As I discovered on our trip to New Orleans a few years back, he is of the "relax and do nothing in the hotel room" variety and I am of the "chart it, graph it, see it all" variety. My theory is that this has to do with him traveling so much for work (it's no big deal) and me not being very well traveled (it's a BIG freaking deal). In life, I am not type A. Not at all. On vacation, I'm crazy type A. So he's doing his best to come along with me and look at STUFF (Stuff in a different city!) and I'm here blogging in our room at the Hyatt Regency because it feels like I'm being more productive than it does when I'm lying in bed reading. I need to get my head checked. But not this weekend. TOO MUCH TO DO!!! TOO MUCH TO SEE!!!

Here's the view from our hotel room. Where I blog.