"Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down, until tomorrow I'll just keep movin' on."

Anyone else just tear up at that line? Yeah, I did. The words to the theme song of The Littlest Hobo. In fact, if you click that link you can actually listen to the theme song and it makes me totally tear up. My mother laughs every time she tells the story of me and the The Littlest Hobo. I watched it religiously as a child, and every. single. time. I cried and cried when the show was over because the theme song was so sad.

If you haven't seen the show (which, if you're Canadian and haven't seen it.. where were YOU in the early 80's??) the basic theme is this dog that travels around the country, stopping to help people in need. When they don't need him any more, he moves on... it broke my heart in two when he had to leave. I don't know what it was that I was so sensetive to - animals? loss? I don't really know.

I move a lot. I believe that without any exageration, I've lived in over 40 houses in my life. Four provinces, three countries. My parents divorced when I was six, I think... grade two... Mr. Finlayson's class... I had two houses from then on. For a while we lived three months at one place and three months at another... then month to month, then week to week. Finally we just stayed at mom's house for most of the time.

I seem to be carrying on the traditions of moving. This will be my son's fourth home, not including the times at the grandparent's houses. I want to stop moving, but I just can't. I want to own a home and stay there, but the time has not been right. I've had good reasons for moving. I got divorced and couldn't afford the house, I downgraded a bit and still couldn't afford a the place without returning to full time work, I found a place I loved and wanted to buy but my son's allergies to the environment were unhealthy...

This time, we are moving because our family is growing. In six months there will be a baby in the house. Right now we are in a two bedroom apartment. There are two home offices and a preschooler and it is way too small.

The new place we have found is 600 more square feet, two floors, three bedrooms and a small office. This means that Major Man will have his own office, I will have my own office and the children will share one room (since the baby won't actually sleep in the room for quite some time...). My office will be upstairs in the heart of the house with the living room, dining room, kitchen, while Major Man's office will be downstairs in the solitude that he craves.

And my own washer and dryer.. oh my gosh, no more waiting and timing my washing! No more hoarding change or runnign out of change and having laundry pile up.

And the backyard is HUGE, fenced and has trees. I love it. It's a duplex, so I'm really hoping that the neighbours aren't partiers, but we take that chance here in the apartment with neighbours all around us.

So for now I'll return to the familiar tasks of packing and purging. I got rid of four big bags of clothes and a huge bag of old shoes today. And my mother came by and took away a ton of M.'s baby clothes, leaving much more room and much less for me to pack. I've already packed away a TON of clothes that I probably won't fit in until September. All my summer clothes and the work clothes that I won't need until I return to the work force.

I'll try to post more between the packing and purging, it tends to bring forward a lot of emotions.

I cannot get enough of nannies. Nanny 911 and Supernanny are two of my favourite shows to watch... These are followed closely by Crash Test Mommy.

Why do I love these shows? Because they make me feel like a wonderful parent. Normally I feel really bad when I'm judgemental... but these people... these people!! First of all they WANT to be on TV... and the behaviour of the PARENTS. Oh. My. Gosh. I'm watching this family tonight and I'm almost in tears because of the behaviour of the parents - they yell and hollar and scream. Every time I can't wait until the nanny reams out the parents.

I remember going through some rough times as a parent. I was a single mom. A broke single mom. I struggled to make ends meet and when I failed I would become very stressed out. But at no point did I scream and yell and berate my child. Maybe it's because these parents expect the other parent to rescue them. Personally I think that they just don't see themselves for what they are, abusive and repulsive.

Tonight this poor little boy just started crying when the Nanny left. He knew in the bottom of his little boy heart that this lady had made a huge difference in his life. Before his parents yelled at him and treated him unfairly and then suddenly this woman comes in and things change. It just broke my heart.

There are rules I have about parenting:

• Speak to your child kindly.
• Smile at your child when he walks in the room.
• Don't up the ante by yelling over your child.

Don't get me wrong, but I am NOT the perfect parent. But I feel a helluva lot more confident about my parenting skills after watching these shows.

So I was sitting around working yesterday while listening to the radio and they had an 'email question' in which you emailed in an answer to their question. The question in question was "if you have a tattoo, tell us why you got it".

Now I had a good answer so I sent it in. Here it is:

"I have a tattoo of a Canadian flag on my shoulder. While I was working over in Europe I may have gotten in to a weencie bit of trouble and may have had my passport taken away until I left the country (Austria). That freaked me out ... I mean someone could have mistaken me for an American! So when I finally got my passport back and got the hell out of there, I came home and tattooed the Canadian flag on my shoulder. Those Americans may fake out the Europeans with their fake Canadian passport covers and fake Canadian flags on their bags... but no one is going to tattoo the flag on their body unless they really are Canadian!"

I thought it was pretty funny my own self and I like the story because when I got kicked out of Austria I went directly to Italy for three days and that's where I met Major Man who is now my husband. (And he's American, but I digress)

Well. I won! And the read the story in an abbreviated form on the air... which was slightly embarassing to have all of my city know that I was once kicked out of a country, but oh well.

I won a $100 gift certificate to a great little Mexican restaurant in town and I was entered in a grand prize draw for a trip for 2 to Mexico. Woot!

Never mind the fact that Major Man, despite being my husband, is still going through the immigration approval process and were we to win, he could not go. Sure he could leave the country but good ol' Canada might not let him back in. But we could always hope.

PS -> Sorry for the delay in posting to the blog, I've been way sicker with this pregnancy than the last one, prompting one doctor to say "maybe you are having twins!" just before I kicked his butt most completely.