Um, I moved.

Have you ever had a song stuck in your head? I do ALL THE TIME. Frequently, it's the Playhouse Disney "bananas for birthdays song" and I wake up at 4am with "na na na nana nana-hey!" playing over and over in my brain, but when it's not that, it's either The Lion Sleeps Tonight or...some horrible song by P!nk. Now, I know it's en vogue to be a parent to a toddler and complain about toddlers' music and television choices, but those things don't bother me. "Bananas for birthdays" makes me kind of happy. I like watching Handy Manny. And I find The Lion Sleeps Tonight to be kind of a constant comfort to me. I don't mind having either of those things stuck in my head.

P!nk, on the other hand, drives me up the bloody wall. I've tried to discuss it with other people, but no one seems to feel the way I do. My fiance thinks it's funny that I get so disgusted any time a Pink song comes on the radio. His littlest sister actually likes P!nk and doesn't understand what I'm talking about when I complain. No one gets it. I cannot stand P!nk.

It's a complicated problem. The thing is, I want to like her. She's the underdog, she's the outside-the-box, anti-hero pop star. I love pop, and everyone loves hard-luck stories, so I feel as though I should LOVE P!nk, that she should be the Britney Spears foil (for clarity, I LOVE Britney Spears) and should fill some kind of musical gap. But I don't. Her music drives me nuts - it is a constant irritant. It makes me want to write an angry blog. Here's why:

She SUCKS.

It's inescapable. I want to like P!nk because she's smart and she's different and a lot of the time her song lyrics reflect that. But the woman has NO talent. Once upon a time, she put out some good stuff. She was new and likely had little to no creative control over her music, and songs like Most Girls and Just Like a Pill likely drew her into the spotlight and into the hearts of some. I used to love Just Like a Pill - it was a mixed-CD staple for me. However, things changed.

The first P!nk song that I really hated was Stupid Girls. It was really the beginning of her downfall for me. The idea behind the song was intelligent, and the lyrics were pretty good. But for the first time, it was SO obvious that her voice is...awful. And I hate to say it (ok, I don't), but I find it difficult to be synpathetic to her sarcastic, judgmental message when she's such a poor singer. It sounds a lot like she's speaking up against people trying to get ahead based on their looks, but she doesn't seem to have any real merits.

The next big offender was So What. Where do I start? The blatant exploitation of her failed relationship? Calling your ex a tool is so...Well, we all know what it is. But even worse, her lyrics started getting BAD. I thought overuse of the word "tonight!" was just a cliche - it's hard to tell if she's joking.

Then there was Fun House. I don't know where this song came from or why she began singing in that silly, irritating high-pitched voice, or why anyone would. It seemed almost as though she was trying to cover up her lack of musical talent by doing strange things with her voice.

Raise Your Glass is the worst, though. Ok, yes, we all knew that P!nk wasn't a pretty, girly type, but in this song she really proves that she has all the femininity and sex appeal of a dump truck. She might think she's a nitty-gritty dirty little freak, but I think she's a man-shouldered tranny-ish, aging enbarrassment. What's with the guitar sound effects? WHY DO YOU ACT LIKE A MAN? Or even worse, a stupid frat boy. Mock lest ye be mocked?

I don't feel bad for P!nk. Hollywood wanted you to change? Sex change? You've done it to yourself. Get out of my head.

I'm continuously surprised by how maternal my daughter is. Growing up, I was never interested in babies. Yes, I babysat, but only because of the lure of money. I never played with dolls; I couldn't figure out what you were supposed to do with a Barbie. But Seville is maternal. She got five (!) dolls for Christmas, and she showers every single one with love. This morning she's paying special attention to Melanie, a Cabbage Patch doll her aunt bought her. First thing, Melanie was stripped down and given a diaper change. Then, because Melanie has no pajamas, Seville removed her own pajamas and dressed Melanie with them. She then took her for a walk in her (Melanie's) stroller around the livingroom. Later Seville came to me and asked for a bottle. As she's been off the bottle for a long, long time now, I asked "for you, or for baby?" Her eyes lit up with glee as she told me "for baby!" I got an old bottle out of the drawer and assembled it and handed it to her. She came back five minutes later asking for milk for baby.

At this moment, she's taking Melanie in a drive in her Kozy Koupe. Unfortunately, Seville can only drive backward, so it's becoming a frustrating cruise for her. GTG.

I'm the queen of getting all worked up over stupid letters to the editor. I have to restrain myself against writing in to tell people every time they are wrong, wrong, wrong. I've been this way pretty well as long as I can remember, but it really flares up when I read the paper more consistently.

Take this for example. Now, this bears so explanation, if you're not a Strathcona County resident. Sherwood Park has several tiny traffic circles in residential areas, but only 1 main one, refered to frequently as "the traffic circle". It's a bit unusual. It has only 3 exits, which seems to cause a whole slew of confusion. Because of it's odd shape and few exits, two of those exits are straight through. That doesn't really make it any less of a traffic circle, but for some reason, several people seem to think that suddenly regular traffic circle rules don't apply, or, in the case of Bertha McLaughlin, the outside lanes are not part of the traffic circle.

Of course, that's absurd. Bertha McLaughlin is a self-righteous idiot. If you read the letter I referenced, you'll see that she doesn't like "young" drivers (she's "questioned" them on their driving skills, since she's such an authority, despite publicly proving that she doesn't know how to navigate a traffic circle) and thus has anecdotal evidence that "young" drivers are far worse than people of a, I don't know, greater age. (Note: I say "young" drivers because I fully believe this to be all perception - I'm 28, despite the fact that people usually peg me for 21 or 22).

I read that letter when the paper was delivered to my house a couple of weeks ago and truly meant to respond, but, like many things, I didn't get around to it. Luckily, someone else did. Beth Blackstock said exactly what I would have, and she was tactful! I'm not sure how heavily her letter was edited by the editor, but I applaud her! Ms McLaughlin should have felt like a tool, but instead she responded and proved herself to be a tool. "The lanes I referred to were outside the traffic circle, not inside and I do not have to brush up as I know traffic circles rules quite well." Have you ever observed such a contradiction???

Ms Blackstock wrote back and was again dignified and tactful. It's way too late for me to jump in to this discussion, and I doubt the newspaper will let it go any further, but I just want to say something Beth Blackstock was too mature to say. Bertha McLaughlin - you are an idiot. You made up your own rule as far as the traffic circle goes, and you are now treating everyone else like they are stupid for not following your absurd rule. You whine that drivers stop "without warning" in free flow lanes and you have to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting them. Brake lights should give you sufficient warning. Look where you're driving, or don't drive.

I hate winter. There's nothing at all appealing about it, to me. I hear people say "I love snow but I hate cold" or "I love the way it looks" but those statements don't apply to me. I hate snow AND cold. I hate the way it looks. My car was (and still is) covered in about 3 inches of snow this morning. I have a garage, so this shouldn't be a problem, but the logistics of it still have not worked themselves out, so I'm left brushing snow off every morning. Everyone's told me the roads are treacherous. Great. I'm going to work from home a couple of hours and go in after traffic has died down a bit. On the other hand, I have a photographic client who, as of last night, was still considering doing an outdoor photo shoot today after work. I really hope she changes her mind.

I had a very intense yoga class last night. I'm very much counting on yoga to get my ass back into shape - I'm about 6lb above my comfortable weight (yep, I've lost 4lb!) - but getting back into the routine of going 3 or 4 times a week has proven a challenge. I skipped my Monday evening class. My excuse was that my brother in law had just gotten out of the hospital, and we were visiting him, but the fact of the matter is that we finished with that in plenty of time, but by that time I had it in my mind that I'd stay home. I went to last night's class (Wednesday evening classes are the hardest, so I take some credit for that) and I will absolutely go to my Friday morning class. Then I have to drag myself to my Friday evening class. The problem is that I stopped going so frequently in the summer, and then when I was going strong with it in September, I was rudely interrupted by a car accident. No, I didn't have to miss 5 weeks (2 would have been more than sufficient) but that really hurts the cycle.

Seville's started saying "love you". I think she's on a growth spurt as well. She went from eating essentially nothing over the course of a day to stuffing her face. She had a bowl of corn flakes and an entire banana before I'd even had breakfast. I love that she's so self-sufficient now. I love that she sleeps straight through the night. I do not, however, love that she's just decided she doesn't like baths any more. It's only happened in the past week. I run her a bath and Layton strips her down and she waddles into the bathroom and I say "hop in", same as always. Usually she makes a very serious attempt to get her knee over the side of the tub (she's very short) before I have to plop her in. Lately, I say "hop in" and she either just tells me "no" or dilly-dallies around. The other day, she looked around and said "potty", then headed for it. Aside from some amazing triumphs in the first week we had it, she has shown nearly no interest in the potty, so I figured she was just trying to distract me. Nonetheless, I lifted the lid for her, and directed her little butt as she tried to sit down (her aim is off) and got her a magazine. As expected, she only sat there for a minute, but didn't do anything. Then she stood up and grabbed a bath book - a plastic, inflated book that won't be ruined by the bath, of course. I thought maybe she was going to head for the tub, but instead she laid the book open on the floor, and started stomping on one of the pages! Then she carefully flipped to the next page and started stomping on it. It was pretty hysterical, so I turned around to tell Layton what she was doing, and by the time I turned back to her, she'd peed on the floor.

Ok, back to worrying about driving in this terrible mess.

I find myself thinking about Sydney Anderson a lot. Sydney Anderson passed away last month. I met her a few weeks earlier - I took fall photos of her family. It's all very cumbersome and difficult for me to explain, but when I read the email her mother, Tracey, sent to me saying that Sydney had passed away, I had to read it at least 5 times to make sense of it. It doesn't make sense, of course. A four year old is not supposed to die, especially one who is so full of life and sunshine. I locked myself in my office and cried a lot. I went home and burned a disk of every photo I took that day. Dropping it off was hard. My heart felt broken. It still does.

I've met a great many people in the past few months, and seen some amazing and beautiful things. I don't know whether any of those things or people will stay with me the way Sydney Anderson does, though. I hope her little soul has found peace. I hope her family finds happiness in their pain. Life can be so unfair. Where is the lesson in a child's death? What good does it bring? I don't know, but I cannot resolve to just accept it. Life can be so cruel.

Where have the days of blogging gone? Nowhere, actually. After four months of being busy with other things and waiting on this and that, I've actually been blogging for work this past week. Having a job description which includes blogging is a bit surreal - isn't that everyone's dream job - but I'm gotten so far from the world of writing everyday that I've found myself run into that big brick wall of writer's block once or twice. So I think I need to bone up and start blogging personally, despite having become somewhat more private than I used to be, and running the risk of my coworkers re-encountering this blog and using it's contents to make fun of me (ok, I might deserve it if they do). Anyway, here I am blogging.

It's a bit hard to believe that Seville's nearly 17 months old. The first year crawled by, especially compared the the past four months. She's not a baby any more - she's a little girl. That blows my mind. Maybe it really hit me when her cousin, my niece, Scarlett was born in October. In spite of the fact that she was a fair bit bigger than Seville was at birth, she still seems so tiny. Since Scarlett's (Seville calls her "Scar") birth, Seville's become obsessed with babies. She has a little stuffed baby, which she got for Easter and ignored until the past few weeks, that she carries around, and hugs and kisses. She feeds "Baby" a bottle and gives her a soother when she's sad, and puts her down to sleep in the tiny crib my parents bought for her. On one hand, she's such a girlie-girl. She plays with dolls, is obsessed with clothes and her hair. On the other hand, she's the family dare devil and is afraid of NOTHING (and even likes to scare her other cousin, given the opportunity). If you ask her whether she's a girl or a boy, she will tell you, unequivocably, that she is a BOY. No matter how I try to convince her otherwise.

I guess it's not unusual. Kids are lucky at that age - they don't have to impress anyone with gender stereotypes.

People ask me all the time how I "do it all" - work full time, run a successful side business and have a family. It's taken a long time to develop the balance that's made my insane life tolerable and enjoyable. I love all the things I do though, and have no plans of giving any of them up any time soon. I suppose it's not just balance - there's a lot of delegation involved. I'd totally fall apart if I didn't have an amazing fiance who does housework. My mom does my grocery shopping. I hired a wedding planner. I'm still strongly considering hiring a maid. I have someone who does my scrapbooking for me. Life has really come together.

Well, I should go take a bath. I have two book club meetings in 9 and 10 days respectively and I haven't started either book yet!