I finally got the photos to upload. Turns out they were HUGE and that was why Blogger was crashing with the uploads.

There were about 200 photos in all, and we received about 100. There were a few more we really liked, so maybe I’ll make a personal photo gallery one day and upload them there. For now, these are my favorites from our casual shoot with our wedding photographer:

I know I haven’t posted in a while. On Wednesday we got the cd with the photos from our casual shoot with our wedding photographer. A few of them came out great and I wanted to post them here, but Blogger won’t let me. I’m fed up and had enough of it, so you’re not getting to see them. More on knitting later!

When I got out of the shower last night I opened the bathroom door and saw this scene at the landing at the top of the stairs. Kinda made me feel domestic.

Saturday night my family (sans Laura who was at camp) went up north for dinner at Yannick’s family’s house. We had a great time up there, and during some downtime I hung my sock yarn from a little pouch on my wrist and knit. I did the same thing last night while we watched Hoodwinked on DVD, and by the time I went to bed here is how the sock looked- all that is missing are the toes:Yannick had stayed up north after the dinner because he had some work to do with his parents on Sunday. I got a lift back home with my family, and since he wasn’t home I got some knitting in on the surprise bowling socks too:
I would have had a lot more done, because he originally told me he’d be home no earlier than 7pm. So I spent until 3 doing all kinds of errands, figuring I’d still have a good chunk of time to work on the socks that I can’t take out when he’s here. Instead he called me at 4:30 that he was on his way home. I didn’t know how far away he was, so I put them away so as not to be in the middle of a row when he got back. Turns out he only came to pick me up to go to my parents’ for dinner around 6:45pm, because he met with my parents first at the tux place to go over the details for the wedding.

I made a mistake in Tuesday’s post. The title of the comedy show I saw wasn’t “Women on Top”. It was “Women Fully Clothed”. This is only a wee bit embarrassing, because all day my MSN profile had the header “…tonight women are on top!…” When I was asked about it I explained it was because of the title of the show. Now I just look kinky.*

The show was excellent. Amazing. If you are a woman, know a woman or were a woman, I really suggest checking it out if there are still show dates left. 5 women whose names I forget at the moment, but one of them is the star of The Jane Show, and the 4 others you’ll recognize from somewhere. I’m too lazy to get the program, but you can find out about the show at hahaha.com so go look there. 2 hours of skits and songs that every woman can relate to. It doesn’t matter if you are in your 20s or 80s, if you’ve had kids or not. Great, brilliant comedy.

Our time at the show was marred, however. Let me preface this by saying “he’s fine”. No, really, really loudly “HE’S FINE”. I need to stress that.

The show started at 8pm. My mom received a call on her cell phone from my brother Mike at 7:55pm. He and Aaron (my other brother) were playing ball hockey at an arena in St-Laurent, Aaron was having chest pains and was now being rushed to the hospital by ambulance. My dad, who was still at the store, would be meeting them there. That’s it. We couldn’t leave, because the 7 of us (me, mom, Bubbie, Robyn, Amy, Carol, Fran) had arrived in one car. We also didn’t know where to go if we did leave. So while hysterical, the entire first act was overshadowed by worry and fear. At intermission we got a bit more info on what led up to them bringing him in, but nothing about how he was, because everyone’s cell phones were turned off. We had to call Yannick who had been at the store with my dad when they got the call. He was an angel and drove around with Kevin helping to get Mike’s car and my mom’s car (that Aaron had borrowed) back to the house, as Mike went in the ambulance with Aaron, and my dad would be meeting them with his car. After the show we found out that Aaron was brought to Sacré-Coeur Hospital, and that they thought they knew what was wrong but that they were waiting for the cardiologist and arrythmiologist (sp?) to come see him in the morning. So of course my mom and I went straight home, got her car and went to the hospital.

I’m not going to recap the worry and fear we endured all night, nor how nervous Aaron was, or anything personal. You all know what we would have been feeling. If you have a loved one, even a loved pet, who is big, strong and healthy…almost indestructable…and then is suddenly rushed into the hospital for the first time in his life, attached to plugs and snaps like he’s the Bionic Man…you worry. It’s family, it’s a part of you, it’s a puzzle piece that makes you whole and you never think about it until you start to worry that piece might disappear and you’ll be left with a hole you never thought you’d have.

Wednesday was a blur of waiting, tests, waiting, tests. I was supposed to go to work but didn’t want my mom to miss anything if the doctors only spoke French, so thanks to a suggestion from my Bubbie, my dad told me I could go to the hospital. Later in the day our cousin Mona arrived (my bridesmaid Stacey’s mom) and my aunt Fran (my mom’s sister). Around 3pm Mike arrived, delaying going to work until 6pm. He was so sweet, and brought Aaron a magazine, candy and the sports pages.

There was a lot of waiting and worrying, and doctors giving too much information and then not enough information. But the results are great. Yes, Aaron has something wrong. It’s called Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. The website I’ve linked to tells you in plain English what that is. What’s great is that all the tests Aaron did showed that while yes, he has WPW, he is not in any danger right now. He had the one attack, and that was the first of his life, and could be the last of his life. By 6pm he was discharged from the hospital and told that he can resume a normal life. No restrictions whatsoever on any activities, sports or anything. Well, he was told to not drink excessive amounts of caffeine or alcohol…but isn’t that just good advice for everyone? If he were to ever have another attack, just like the website says, they would then discuss the possible need to go in through his groin area, pass a filament up to the heart and burn off the abnormal pathway. They say it’s a very routine non-surgery. Once you have it, you’re fixed for life. If you don’t have it, you can treat the WPW with medication if necessary. But for Aaron, right now none of that is necessary. No meds, nothing. Just follow-ups every once in a while. :]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]

It was such a relief to hear those words, and you could see it on his face when he found out. He started smiling again. We immediately called my dad, Yannick, and poor Laura, who was up at camp and only found out what was going on when she called my dad at work to ask him why Mom wasn’t answering her cell…only to be told that “Mom’s at the hospital with Aaron”. “Why?” “Because he was rushed in by ambulance last night”. I don’t know what he told her, but when I went outside with my mom’s cell at one point, Laura called hysterical about why no one called her and she thought Aaron was being rushed into open-heart surgery or something. It’s hard when she’s so far away and I hope she understands why we wanted to wait to call her once we got all the test results.

Speaking of which, I need to tell you how impressed I am with the Sacré-Coeur Hospital! Aaron was brought in at around 9pm Tuesday night. Among other tests, they did an EKG that night, plus whatever else I don’t know about before I arrived. They did blood tests throughout the night, and in the morning he saw both a cardiologist and an arrythmiologist. A few hours later he did a stress test on a treadmill, and an hour after that got the results from the c-ist and the a-ist again (I don’t feel like typing those words over and over). An hour after THAT he was scheduled for an “echographie” (English name?) of his heart and had that within the half hour. The test took an hour, and by an hour after that the doctors had reviewed all the results and told him he could go home! That is unheard of! Less than 24 hrs in the hospital, and ALL the tests were done, and the results were reviewed, and the doctors saw the patient. He was home by 6pm!! Had he been at any other hospital, Wed AM they would have said “well, we need to schedule you for a stress test.” Maybe it would have been that afternoon…maybe a day or so later. The results would take a day, then the Echo would have been scheduled…maybe for the following week…and so on. The speed was amazing, the doctors and nurses were so friendly, and everyone made the effort to speak English to my mom (she speaks French, she just didn’t want to misunderstand anything). They were all so curtious and polite and helpful! And the hospital itself- wow! The hallways were wider than anything I’d ever seen…you could have probably 3 beds side-by-side in each corridor. There were people getting around (blood tests and inter-office memos and stuff) on bicycles with carts attached! Carts! Like bike-mounted ice-cream vendors. It was so cool. And the cafeteria was gorgeous, they called it the Oasis and it really was a small getaway for a moment. Pretty decorations, a rooftop terrasse, they had people making fresh sandwiches, they had a salad bar…they even had a yogurt bar! You could make your own parfaits with yogurt, different blends of nuts and granola and different berry toppings. What hospital is like that???? It was amazing. Absolutely amazing. And they made us feel so much better.

So, again, Aaron is fine. He’s got something odd, but so does everyone else in our family. And we are very, very relieved. We also have to get the other 3 of us kids tested, because it might be genetic. I worked on Yannick’s striped sock during some wait periods in the hospital. As you can see, I have finished the leg of the sock and am about halfway through the heel flap. I’m doing the reinforced heel. This is still the first sock of the pair.

When I got home from the hospital Wed evening I still had that poodle skirt to make. I finished it by 11pm and Yannick brought it over to my mom’s for me. More on the skirt tomorrow.
Yannick wasn’t home tonight, so I got in some work on the surprise bowling socks. This is where they are so far. I chose to do just over an inch of ribbing instead of the 3.5″ the pattern called for, because he really doesn’t wear socks that are that long. The chart is 104 rows to the instep, and that’s already over 8″ long. The cream bits you can see are the beginnings of the first bowling pin. It’s split, half on each side of the sock. What’s odd is that the sock will be seamed at the back, but that last pin doesn’t come together to make 1 whole pin. It will always be split with a brown bar down the middle. I guess they wanted to make it easier to seam and to keep the rest of the pattern evenly spaced up the front of the sock…but had I designed it I would have made the 2 halves of the pin line up, and people who seamed it would just have had to be careful.

*Not the “on top” part. The “womEn” part.

I deserve an award.

My sister just called from camp in a panic.

Laura: “Do you have a poodle skirt?”
Me: “No.”
Laura: “Can you make one by tomorrow?”

Apparently she remembers a time when she was about 9 and was crying because she wanted a poodle skirt for a costume, so I had got some fabric and made her one on the spot. Now she’s at camp and all the staff need to dress up, and she thought she still had it and told her friend that she (the friend) could borrow it. Only she no longer has one. That’s where I come in.

So tomorrow I will be skipping the Montreal Knits meetup to make my sister a poodle skirt from scratch so she can lend it to her friend. Ain’t she lucky?

I deserve an award.

My sister just called from camp in a panic.

Laura: “Do you have a poodle skirt?”
Me: “No.”
Laura: “Can you make one by tomorrow?”

Apparently she remembers a time when she was about 9 and was crying because she wanted a poodle skirt for a costume, so I had got some fabric and made her one on the spot. Now she’s at camp and all the staff need to dress up, and she thought she still had it and told her friend that she (the friend) could borrow it. Only she no longer has one. That’s where I come in.

So tomorrow I will be skipping the Montreal Knits meetup to make my sister a poodle skirt from scratch so she can lend it to her friend. Ain’t she lucky?

I deserve an award.

My sister just called from camp in a panic.

Laura: “Do you have a poodle skirt?”
Me: “No.”
Laura: “Can you make one by tomorrow?”

Apparently she remembers a time when she was about 9 and was crying because she wanted a poodle skirt for a costume, so I had got some fabric and made her one on the spot. Now she’s at camp and all the staff need to dress up, and she thought she still had it and told her friend that she (the friend) could borrow it. Only she no longer has one. That’s where I come in.

So tomorrow I will be skipping the Montreal Knits meetup to make my sister a poodle skirt from scratch so she can lend it to her friend. Ain’t she lucky?

Liar. It’s all about about whether I win or lose! And I have to win!

I’m very competitive. Very. I just saw on JayJay’s blog about her little *competition* with her brother (I think he wins…) and think that is something very likely Mike and I would do. My other brother Aaron and my sister Laura don’t seem to have the same streak Mike and I do. We have been engaged in battle for many years via puzzle books to see who really is smarter. We compete over board games. We compete over songs on the radio (knowing the artist and song title are each worth 1 point).

So it was great fun when I won those games Saturday night. I think the name of the word game was “Slang Teasers”. I haven’t heard of other games like that, other than Balderdash (I think). The way you play is that one of the 4 (or more) people has the book of slang words and definitions, and they pick a page and word at random. They read and spell the word out loud. Each player writes it down and tries to come up with a realistic-sounding definition. Meanwhile, the “Slang Master” writes down the word and the real definition. All players give their papers to the SM who mixes them up and reads them all out loud, including the real definition. Then each player guesses which is correct. You get 1 point for guessing the right one, 1 point for each player who guesses *your* definition as being correct, and 2 points if you are the SM and no one guesses the correct answer.

Is it cheating if I say I figured out how to win? The book’s definitions were so cheesy that all I had to do was write my answers in a similar style. Anyways…

If anyone out there wants to test their smarts against me, bring on the challenge LOL!

I had such high hopes for last night. I was going to get home, make supper, get into bed and knit. I hadn’t knit more than 20 rows all weekend and was looking forwards to settling in for a nice long stretch. INSTEAD I stopped for groceries, got home an hour late, did a 1 mile workout video, took a shower, made some bean salad for lunches for the week, made some greek salad for lunches for the week, made some granola for snacks for the week, realized it was 10 o’clock and I hadn’t eaten supper yet, made a slice of toast, ate it with some apple-ginger juice and a banana, and got into bed. It was early, only 10:30pm, but I was suddenly drained and needed the rest more than I wanted to knit. Plus on Sunday night I’d started a book my cousin Robyn gave me, called Girl’s Poker Night, and was enjoying it. I thought I’d get into bed and enjoy a good half-hour of reading or so, then crash.

Mother Nature had other plans. The MOTHER of all thunderstorms hit, and I spent 15 minutes walking around the house with a flashlight (in case of a power failure) making sure I knew where the candles and matches were (in case of the same power failure). Then I called Yannick to see when he was coming home (not early enough to make me less scared). Then I verified all the windows on the top floor because the rain sounded on each like burglars trying to break in. Then I got into bed, read 4 pages, and went to reverify the windows again. My night continued like that until midnight or so when I finally fell asleep. The thunderclaps and bright flashes of lightning woke me up throughout the night too. Crazy storm. Wicked cool though. I wish it had taken place during the day so I could have seen it.

Tonight I’m going to the Montreal Just For Laughs Comedy Festival with Robyn, her mom, my mom, my grandmother and my aunt Fran. We’re going to the Women on Top show. Should be fun!