Winery...the gateway to good wine

I would have taken picture of the place we stayed at, but apparently I forgot to haul out the camera and take a picture of it.  I’m funny that way.

I did get a picture of the vineyards.

Not very pretty yet, but in about a month all these plants will be blooming and a new wine season will be under way.  

The Inn/B&B where we stayed was amazing.  They really went above and beyond to make sure that we had everything we could possible need.  They had this amazing plate of cheese and crackers along with chocolate waiting for us when we got to the room.

Enormous cheese plate, crackers, and chocolates

Room with double sided fireplace

Sitting room area with really comfy couch

There was so much cheese that we couldn’t finish it all and brought back half of it with us on Sunday.

On Saturday, Dre and I took it easy.  We spent the day touring the little towns around and looking at the shops.  Everything was quaint and very small town.  We saw a home improvement store and Dre goes, “That Canadian Tire is so small…it’s a Baby Tire!”  That man is too cute…errm…handsome and witty for words (he doesn’t like words like cute to be linked to his person…just makes him cuter in my opinionJ!

Cute old house

Another cute old house

Small town theatre...it's playing 2 movies

Amazing hand made Belgian Peanut Butter Chocolate bar.

Then we hurried back so we could catch the 4PM tour of the wine estate.  I would show you a picture of the machinery and casks used to make the wine, but Dre was so enraptured with the whole process that he forgot to take pictures.  

Instead Dre and I concentrated on knocking back  …hmm…sampling lots of wine!  We even bought 4 bottles of the stuff to bring back with us.  

So all in all, the weekend was very nice and relaxing!  Dre and I are definitely planning on going back sometime in this or next summer so we can take advantage of the beaches and the sun.  

When the world conspires to make you look very, very dumb...

I take OPKs (ovulation predictor kits) every day leading up to my ovulation so I can tell when I'm about to ovulate.  Simple, right?

Hmm, not so much in my case apparently!

I haven't taken one in the since December since I spent the majority of this year pregnant so I had them all in my big box that I ordered from an online provider.  Last Sunday, I pull a test from the box and pee on it and it comes out NEGATIVE.

Well, that wasn't the shocking part.  The shocking part was that the OPK didn't even have a faint line indicating that my LH hormone was starting to rise. LH hormone surge suggests an ovulation in the next 24-48 hours so usually there is a line even if it's really faint.

I take another one on Tuesday and that test is just invalid.  It's a dud test so the control line doesn't even come up.

Yesterday, I'm in my lovely walk-in closet that my dear hub built for me and I pull out 2 tests intending to stuff one in my work bag so I can test at my usual 2PM time.  I flip the test over and "OMG, what is THAT!"

So here's an explanation...tests from this place come in the same type of packaging.  The OPK have a green cover and describe what they are while the pregnancy test are all white with some illegible writing on it.

The problem is that I forgot tabout the OPK being green and peed on 2 white PREGNANCY tests this week by accident.  Amazingly enough, Dre didn't seem to think I was as stupid as I thought this story made me seem when I told him.'

Now, I'm off to the dollar store to find pregnancy tests since I wasted mine this week.  If you don't hear from me soon, it's because I'm still hunting around for cheap tests 'cause there's no way in hell I'm paying $15 for ONE First Response test unless I'm trying to confirm what my cheap ass pregnancy test already told me.

New laptop

So I haven’t posted much this week.  I think it’s because I’ve just been counting down the days to my 4 day weekend which starts in 2 hours!

Also, I’ve had a couple of big projects at work which have left me with no free time to put down words on paper…errr…on a computer screen…or whatever.

Today, I am on the lookout for a new laptop.  If you know me IRL (in real life), you would be asking yourself, “Why would snowclouds need a new laptop?”

Excellent question since we bought an extremely expensive laptop just last March to replace our dead desktop.  The answer!  Dre won’t share “his” laptop and leaves me with my 6 year old piece of junk that can’t do two things at once or it freezes and dies or freezes and crashes.  

So now I’m looking for a brand new laptop that I will be purchasing with my 2^nd work bonus of the year (where I work we get 2 bonuses per year based on company performance and personal performance).

Yes, I will be buying a laptop instead of using the money for my student loan or for anything else that sensible.  I don’t like doing sensible stuff with my bonuses.  Also, my first bonus got paid out at the beginning of April and it mysteriously ended up in Dre’s brand new TSFA account…well not that mysteriously.  Dre met up with our investment advisor early on Tuesday to sign the papers to setup the account and I didn’t want to go downtown just to sign papers to open one for me so it all ended up in his.

Anyways, this is what my brand new laptop will look like when I get it.

Pretty isn’t it?

Yes, I will be wasting $75+tax just to make the cover prettier…it’s my laptop and I’ll do what I want to…err…cry if I want to!

Dre and I are going to wine country tomorrow.  Well, I’m not sure it’s wine country per say (is that how you spell that?), but it’s a winery with a B&B attached to it which is good enough for me.

We’re going and I’m planning on drinking lots and lots of their yummy wine, doing lots of BD since I’m supposed to ovulate sometime in the next 2-4 days, and lots of nothingness and relaxing.

We’re gonna have a great time!  I might even have pictures to post on here when we get back on Sunday or Monday…if I don’t forget my camera.

***Update:  Dumb ass Dell wouldn't customize my laptop because it was on sale and they were trying to get rid of old stock.  Okay...  So I asked what was better with the new one that was $100 more.  Answer...faster USB ports????? WTF and new generation processor.  Hmmmm, and if I went with that one I still couldn't get my pretty design on the cover as it wasn't one of the options for the new "better" laptop.  Not impressed!  I'm still getting it, but I don't think Dell did much to try to please a repeat customer so maybe next time I'll walk my money and repeat business to Futureshop or Best Buy and give them my business.

Gardening plans

Do I actually have something to say today?  No, but I’ve been told that I don’t post enough anymore;-P

Dre and I are debating whether or not we’ll make a garden this year. Last year, we made one at the bottom of our tiny yard—most of the yard is taken over by a huge deck and the rest is sloping down—and we found that it screwed up the drainage of our land.   

So on Monday, Dre dug up the raspberry bushes and planted them somewhere else in our yard and covered the place where we had our garden and raspberry bushes.  And folks, it was like magic…the water instantly disappeared.  Amazing!



I know it still looks wet, but it was raining when I took this!



Now, we don’t know if we want to dig up another area of our tiny yard to make a garden because we’d also have to deal with the fact that the ground under the grass is in fact 100% clay.  So we would have to mix that crap with organic matter as the online articles say.  What the articles online don’t dwell on is that that organic matter is usually sheep crap!

Lovely picture isn’t it.  Digging around in clay/sheep crap this summer…makes me want to garden even more!

I could make the garden right by the stairs.

The other option I have is to plant potatoes in a great big garbage bin—apparently that works really well—while planting everything else in great big planters on the deck or in the backyard.  I think we’ll go visit good, old Canadian Tire again this weekend and see what we should do.

I also convinced Dre to go with me to Costco this weekend.  I love Costco!  I went with Dre’s sister—she’s my Costco buddy—on Monday, but I can always find more stuff to buy over there.  Also, Saturday is food sample time at Costco and I LOVE samples!  A lot of the time, I don’t want to buy a huge jar or pack of something that I’ve never tasted before…this is where food samples come in handy!

The real reason we’re going to Costco though is to buy to huge bags of fertilizer and seeds so that we can reseed our lawn and seed the patch of lawn we destroyed with the garden last year.

So Saturday should be really busy for me since we’re going to go visit Costco and Canadian Tire.  Then I need to clean my house and cook for my girl’s night that evening.  I haven’t figure out what I’m feeding everyone yet, but never fear there will be alcohol…lots of alcohol!  Hmmm, first I need to figure out what to cook for the girls…

Babies EVERYWHERE

There are people having babies right around the time I would be due left and right.  

At first, I was so thankful that none of my friends were pregnant so that I could avoid what hundreds of women seem to post about on TB.  Having pregnant friends/relatives/coworkers EVERYWHERE!

Well, now I can’t seem to get away from it and for some reason this week I’ve been having a bigger problem with it.  I thought I was doing okay and past everything now that Dre and I are on the road to TTC (trying to conceive) again, but it seems like it’s hard to get by that feeling that, “I SHOULD be having a baby in September, I SHOULD be this far along, I SHOULD be doing such and such this summer.”  

Anyways, half of Dre’s co-workers are pregnant and not only that, but most of them are due a couple of weeks before I would have been due.  So, I don’t really want to hear about it most of the time especially when Dre comes home and announces to me that his co-worker is now 23 weeks along.  Why I needed to know that is just beyond me.

This morning, I had a business meeting and I noticed one the presenters was pregnant.  She told us she was due September 23^rd.  Really!  I’m happy for her, but it seems like I just can’t get away from these August/September due dates.

So needless to say that with all of that and the fact that half the blogs I read announced they were expecting around the time I would have announced it has made me a little depressed and down.

I’m gonna end my ranting now.  I think it makes me come across as bitter and angry, but some days that’s how I feel.  I guess that before I had a miscarriage I didn’t really understand when people would talk about being bitter and angry about the situation/people/comments/etc.  It’s hard to understand if you haven’t been there yourself I guess.

Finding a post title is damn hard!

 Earlier, I sent Dre an email

Me: Make a note to ask Receptionist for your March Chiropractor Expenses

Dre: But that’s why I have a wife…

The man sure likes to walk on the wild and dangerous side.  So annoying!

So then I felt the need to point out that I won’t be following him around at the chiropractor’s today making sure he asks.  His response…

Dre: But my wife love meJ 

Aw, he’s so cute and so amazingly annoying all at the same time…sassy husband!  Same as when he was helping the BIL assemble his new BBQ this weekend.  He kept asking where his beer was.  As if I was gonna go get him one.   

Hmmm, husband…have you met me?

Eventually, Dre and BIL got done with the BBQ and the in-laws fed us.  See I’m not above whoring…errrm….lending out my husband to score food.  Especially when that food is those yummy potatoes my SIL makes or the fact that she likes to drink almost as much as I do.  So of course we drank Porn Stars.  They were fabulous!



Our drink of choice was of course...PORN STARS.
 That is not one, but the glass is pretty and I don't feel like loosing my job when I googly Porn Star at work.
Wonder, how many clueless people Googled that got my post instead...hehe!



Hmmm, he reads this so I might have some explaining to do in a day or two.  

Errr, husband I wasn’t trying to get food out of your sister or taking advantage of poor BIL’s complete lack of building skills (according to SIL that is…he’s always managed to build stuff when I’m around, but that might be cause Dre’s around to keep him from injuring himself).  

Yeah, maybe I should just stop typing now…



Beat off those pounds

In the news, AF finally decided to join us.  I didn’t even need to POAS to induce her into coming!  

So now my ovulation should fall right around the time Dre and I are going for our much delayed anniversary weekend.  Dre is rubbing his hands in glee at the thought!  Hehe…

Our wedding anniversary is in February, but we had cancelled our trip to the Sandbanks where we were supposed to stay at a vineyard and take a wine tour and drinks lots and lots of wine.  The wine drinking was the problem you see since I was pregnant.  

So when I had my miscarriage, I suggested to Dre that we take a chance and rebook our trip.  So…in 2 weeks we are taking off and going to drink lots and lots of wine while doing the baby dance and not counting one damn calorie.

Have I mentioned that I’ve started counting my calories in the hopes of losing some weight.  Dear little failed pregnancy gifted me with 4 extra pounds which I managed to pack on in the month after my miscarriage.  Apparently, miscarriages are not conducive to loosing weight.

So I said, “Screw you body!  I refuse to weigh over 160 lbs!” since that would officially put my 5’7 frame into the overweight category according to all the lovely BMI charts out there.  No thank you!

Now, I could go do another boot camp with my SIL.  Side note...she wants to do another one.  She’s obviously lost her mind and yes she reads this!  The problem is that I loathe, despise and abhor exercise.  Where those words too strong to convey my dislike?  No.  Good.

Also, when we did 2 months of said boot camp I lost 0 pounds which was very depressing.  Yes, I lost some inches, but for doing thousands upon thousands (I’m not exaggerating this time) of push ups I would have thought I would lose some weight.