Shopping and diving

Last week we spent from Wednesday on in the city, catching up on clothes shopping, movies (Over the Hedge, Pirates of the Carribean) and city living. People often ask me why I shop for clothes here in Toronto, when London is much more fashionable. Well, I aint my Mama's baby for nothin'! Even though I resisted the tactics of the 'Queen of the Bargain Hunters' as much of possible, some things have stuck. Like not spending double the cost per item. I picked up a cute tank and shorts set for Stefa at Jacob Jr. that cost me $14. Tell me where I could get the equivalent in England for 7 pounds? Maybe the bottom of a bin in a charity shop, but who's got the time to rummage around for something decent.

Another reason we came back to the city was the influx of people coming to visit. Orest's brother Roman arrived on Wednesday afternoon, and then Orest himself arrived on Friday evening for his 3 week holiday. The males got together for a day of golf at the cottage on Sunday and we've stayed on from then. Good thing, too - there was another heat wave in the city, with tempareatures reaching 37, or 45 degrees with the humidex. We're sitting around the pool with the warm breeze coming off the lake and the water to cool us off with. We both know there's things we should and could be doing around the cottage, but the weather is just too damn nice. At least I can claim I did one job today: I helped Orest turn the grip bars around on the diving board. Apparently, every year, there's a 50/50 chance that these bars get installed correctly. So I guess this year, we're on the wrong 50% this year and we had to take them off and install them back so that they were actually of some use when going up the ladder. I'm surprised the Health and Safety Inspector didn't catch that earlier, but as it's already caused two accidents (including one to Adriana), we knew it should be fixed.
When Adriana fell off the diving board, it was a classic parental moment. First someone else's child slipped, hooked her leg onto the rail and ended up suspended upside down until we could assist her off. As we're trying to assess her injuries, I can see that Adriana is still running on the diving board and call out to her, not once, but twice: "Stop running, can't you see it's slippery and dangerous on that board??" Two seconds later, Adriana slips off herself. (Luckily she landed on her feet, but there was a bit of bump in behind her ear where she touched down on the concrete diving block.) It is just so satisfying to say: "See! Didn't Mama tell you not to run? Are you going to listen to your mother next time?" It's like providing the ultimate justification for my role as mother.