i think i figured it out

no one is in much of a writing mood because of the never ending winter of 07-08.

i smell spring in the air, i know its close. its just hard to imagine all this snow will ever be gone.

poor Emma is so tired of snow gear. the kid wants nothing more then to wear her rubber boots and a spring jacket and not have to take that extra 10 mins to get out the door everytime we go anywhere.

of course i am looking forward to that also.

as of late, the 9 year old attitude has been out in full force. this includes such classics as 'you are so not fair!!!' and 'ARRGGH!' and dont forget the ever popular 'you ALWAYS are so mean' . ahh to be 9 again. i just chuckle and walk away. this, of course, angers her more. oh well. guess what baby girl, mommy was a 9 year old girl once also and knows all your tricks.

it makes me laugh but also makes me realize why my mom chuckled at me all those years ago and i couldnt figure out why she wouldnt feed into my anger. LOL

Emma had a good easter at her dad and Granny's house. She came back here Sunday night and Monday i had a hunt for her. she was pretty stoked.

if you can believe after a 4 day long weekend, tomorrow we have another PD Day. yep.. so that means its a 3 day week. throw in march break and i think they have had about 2 weeks of school all month

so there is my update. i will do it more i promise.

Snow Days... SUCK!

we have had more days this season where the buses are canceled due to weather then any year i can remember.

its ridiculous.

but we are still no where close to near the snowfall record for Ottawa. i heard on the news the other night we are off by 110 cms.

this is the second day this week in fact where there is no school for this reason. Emma hates it. she loves going to school. she has since day one. i actually use it as a form of almost punishment. serioulsy. 'Emma this is your last chance, if you dont do what i told you, you are not going to school tomorrow!'. you want to see a girl work fast after that. its pretty funny.

so now she is sitting, watching 'are we done yet' and eating fruit salad. because its really slippery out we cant really go walking so i think we are gonna bake. we have to do something interesting or we are both gonna go nutty.

Speeding Makes Mommy Upset

Is it just me, or are drivers in this city getting more and more impatient and reckless?

A few minutes ago I was coming home from a playdate with Declan and Jackson in the van (Well, actually I had driven past our house to hit the Tim Hortons up the road for an after-playdate coffee, but anyway...) and there was a man in a black pickup truck following me up the road.

There are four elementary schools on the street, including the one our eleven-year-old goes to.

In the Gatineau area, one must go no faster than 30KM/hr in school zones between the hours of 7AM and 5PM, Monday-Friday, September through June. All of these rules are posted on every school zone sign so that it is easily read in both official languages. It's not rocket science. You see a school zone, you slow down. You leave the school zone, you speed up again. What's hard about that?

These laws work when people are patient. Unfortunately, the guy in the pickup truck was anything but. He tailgated me through the first cluster of schools as I did 35-40KM (which is technically speeding, but keeping a 6 cylinder van at 30KM is tricky at best when someone is tailgating it). When it came to the fourth and final school on the road (my eldest son's) we were heading uphill, so I let go of the gas to slow down again.

Once I got to 40KM, Pickup Guy decided he had had enough. He passed me on a solid line, going uphill, during the day, on a school day, in a school zone just so that he could get to the red light at the top of the hill, where ironically there sits a police station.

I can't even begin to describe how much red I was seeing by this point. Road rage doesn't overcome me easily, but throw in a stressful couple of days, a teething toddler, a tired preschooler and a man who doesn't care who he endangers as long as he gets to his destination at light speed, and you have a recipe for one angry mother. In a single act of selfishness he put himself and a family at risk, not to mention broke a law set up to protect young children (who were thankfully all safely inside the school).

I admit to being a bit of a jerk myself at this point. I swore (hopefully not loud enough for my kids to hear over the Backyardigans movie playing in the back), flashed my brights and laid on my horn. Obviously this did a lot of nothing, unless you count making me look foolish and out of control. He, in turn, ignored me.

I was secretly hoping he'd also be turning into the Tim Hortons so I could give him a piece of my mind, but in hindsight I'm glad he didn't. I can't be a stay-at-home-vigilante. I can do my part to make the world a safer place, but interventions like that are best left up to the police.

I know some readers may be snickering under their breath, thinking 'Quebec drivers', but I'd have to disagree with that stereotype. I'm in Ottawa regularly and I see just as many careless traffic violations across the bridge as I do here. It's not a Quebec thing, it's a societal problem and we need to start treating the cause and not just the symptom.

People are stressed, families are overworked and overtired. Everybody's in a rush and nobody really knows where they're going. As Ottawa-Gatineau is still growing by leaps and bounds we're going to see a lot more of this. Traffic is getting worse. Some people are so frazzled that their minds don't even process how their actions can have dire consequences. But being late for an appointment is far less devastating than causing someone's death trying to get there on time.

I admit to feeling a little jolt of glee inside every time someone gets ticketed in a school zone, or for doing 150KM on the 417. That feeling is only temporary, however, as I know they'll do it again and again and again. A slap on the wrist doesn't seem to stop them.

Still, I wonder: How do we curb this problem? Is graduated licensing the answer? Stricter penalties? More police surveillance? Better public transit?

I wish I knew. I'm just glad that we're safe at home for another day and I didn't throw a coffee at someone's windshield out of spite. Shame on me for even thinking that!