I’m on vacation and spending way too much time tonight trying to get posts and pics for Celebrity Candy to load. And it’ll be a WONDER if I can actually post this blog post. The Internet gods have not been with me while I’ve been on vacation. Which is probably a sign that I should actually take a vacation….

We did have a post in mind to write tonight, and we were totally excited — we really wanted to write it. And in case you’re wondering, we’re speaking in the first-person plural because we just read a book in which one of the characters was trying to obliterate his ego by speaking in the first-person plural, and we quite liked the idea of that. What do you think, Gorgeouses?

Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of reading on my vacation. We went to Josh’s parents’ farm for a few days, and we’re doing another week in cottage country — which would be sweet if only my Internet were working properly and I could load photos of sweet Rascal in the now-shallow lake water…. For now I can only tweet them.

So keep up with me by checking my Celebrity Candy blog, Twitter and Facebook (like us?)! I’ll be back up and running as soon as we (Josh and I) figure out this photo issue! Could be as soon as tomorrow, so check back — I got farm pics!

OH! Wait! We — well he — JUST figured it out…!

Sigh, I love this pic. Ooo! And now that we can post pics again, I’ve been meaning to share this pic from earlier this month….

That’s awesome Todaysparent.com editor Alex Mlynek, moi and Tori Spelling. Tori was totally lovely this time and felt bad for insinuating that I was short (“I feel so tall! It must be these shoes.” No, not the shoes!). Read all about it here!

Well, life can go on now. Josh put an end to the photo crisis. I can’t tell you how many back flips I want to do right now….

More to come — it’s been a long frustrating night. I plan on updating a little more regularly here. But you know where to find me now when I’m not here, right?

Here’s one more photo for the road woohoo!

Betty White! (And don’t worry about Minden and Maaarge! We have an awesome yogi taking good care of them and our home. But they do say hi…! Meoowww! Miss….)

Love!

xo Haley-O

I can’t come to the computer right now because……..

Ha! HAPPY NEW YEAR, GORGEOUSES!

While my cat is sitting on my computer (actually, it’s Josh’s computer, and that picture was taken last week), I’m here beaming ear to ear and over the moon because this blog — my baby, my Cheaty Little Monkey — has won two Canadian Weblog Awards.

FIRST PLACE for Best Life Blog!

Third place for Best Written Blog!

I’m honoured, grateful and verklempt, of course. And all the other winners are amazing. So go check them out. There are of course so many other awesome blogs out there — please find my personal favourites in my links.

When the awards were announced New Year’s Eve, shortly before the clock struck twelve, I may or may not have done actual somersaults, possibly a full back flip, and lots of rolling around kicking my legs up in the air on the living-room floor in front of our little New Year’s party. Josh, my sister and her husband were very confused when I broke out of nowhere into all that gymnastics and “OMG OMG OMG”s. Half a glass of wine does do funny things to me, but still.

What a way to start the new year.

When I learned I was a finalist a few weeks ago, I started thinking about this blog in a different way. Like it was an entity separate from me — breathing and expanding and contracting on its own while I went about my day. There it stood, more poised than I could ever be, as the jury read it, judged it, graded it. I’m proud of Cheaty Monkey…. And I’m very grateful for everything “she”‘s given me. Seriously.

Sighh. I’d love to stay and chat (believe me), but I really shouldn’t be at my computer writing about life right now. I should be enjoying this brand new cottage with my extended family before we head back to the city.

I also have a Betty White to bark “COME. HERE. NOW.” at — before she gets eaten by a wolf or black bear, or before she dares step dainty paw on the (cracking) ice that’s coating our beautiful lake. I better go…!

Mind you, OMG!, someone’s SKATING by our cottage right NOW. CRAZY! CRAZY! LOOOOK (bottom right)!

It was the best picture I could get, bygones. That person is…CRAZY! And now I can’t even hear my thoughts because the 6 dogs who are here with us are barking at him.

Happy New Year, Gorgeouses! Thank you, as always, for being here.

Love!

xo Haley-O

Ohh, the Google hits I will get from all those wonderful people out there on the lofty virtual quest for “monkeys riding bikes.” It’s sure to be stat-blowing. I mean, if I get as many people coming here for this (a sure thing) as I do for my now-famous-among-foot-fetishists “Worst Celebrity Feet” post — a proud, proud moment in my blog writing career — we will rival Perez Hilton. No. Doubt. Anyway, the post hasn’t even begun, and I digress.

I digress.

So I have a video for you. A “vlog,” if you will. One of my more web-savvy friends tells me THE PEOPLE WANT MORE VIDEO on the Internets, so I’ve been taking video for you. Plus I write all day, so this gives me a bit of a breather. Mind you….

Anyway, now it’s your turn to indulge me. Maybe it was the heat today, I don’t know. But, to me? This video of my kids attempting to ride their bikes is hilarious. Checkit! (You may want to turn down the volume. I took the video on my blackberry — hence the fuzzies and high volume. Bygones!)

The video was cut short, in case you didn’t hear, because the Monkey SCREAMED for me: “MOM!” You can imagine how frustrating it is when it’s 100,000 degrees outside and your kindergartner is screaming while walking her bike. Did I mention sooo slowly?

So did you laugh? Come on, did you see the Rascal barely sitting on the bike? Pretty much riding the bike as if it were a scooter (only without any kind of glide or semblance of speed)? Gold!

Love!

xo Haley-O

PS: I am SO excited to show you my very first print article for Today’s Parent. It’s the Celine Dion piece on p. 26 of the October issue, which should be on stands or in subscribing Gorgeouses’ mailboxes any day now. Cannot wait to share it with you! I can’t even tell you the thrill I had reading it to my kids this afternoon (it’s short and cute). The monkey’s eyes lit up in actual admiration…. Sighh. Fahklempt!

I just spent about an hour sitting with my legs up on my suitcase just people watching and waiting for Emma to arrive with the keys to our hotel room. Familiar thoughts rolling around in my head: “WHY am I here?” “I could totally just bolt!” “Is that…?” “Should I say ‘hi’ to her or just turn the other way because it’s, like, 1000 degrees in here and I’m schvitzing and not ready, I mean, ‘hi’ can wait…we’re here all weekend.” “WHY am I here?”

The BlogHer conference can be a little overwhelming at first. I remember last year: I got in to the hotel, looked around the lobby at little groups forming, listened to the echoing “squeeee”s, and then I ran up to my hotel room and just stayed there for a bit. I think I must have changed three times: went down in a green shirt, went back up to my room, came back down in a black shirt, went back to my room, and went down again in a different black shirt, and finally started saying some hellos.

I’ll be okay. I just take a while to acclimatize.

I’ve actually been in NYC for a few days now (after a lovely few days in the country). We stayed at a hotel in Brooklyn — right across the street from the JAIL. Talk about JEEBIES. We walked alongside it, and a car drove by with a bunch of SCARY-looking dudes yelling up at the barred windows: “YO JOOOOO! YOOOO! JOOOOOO! JOOOOOOOOOO!”

JEEBIES!

My family and I spent the day in Manhattan yesterday, walking along the sweltering streets, past one-too-many crackheads and a sunglass store at which I purchased these babies….

I was in mid-sentence at the time of this picture-taking, FYI. They look a little big on the sides, but it’s just the angle (I hope). I went in thinking — “I will not buy mom-glasses, I will not buy mom-glasses.” Success, I think!

So there’s that. And this….

Betteh White in NYC! It was VERY hard to leave her this aft….

OY!

Gotta go. Party at the Canadian Embassy. Promise I’ll start being more social.

LOVE!

xo Haley-O

So I have a little favourite thing I’ve been meaning to share with you. By now you probably know I love The City and Kelly Cutrone — the tell-it-like-it-is fashion PR guru and author of If You Have to Cry, Go Outside. Well, I must have been searching for Kelly Cutrone’s commentary on The City one night, I don’t know, but I came across her new internet talk show with (who knew?) her BFF Justine Bateman, whom most of us remember (and probably wanted to be at one point) from Family Ties. The show’s called Wake Up and Get Real, and it’s a series of short YouTube vids of the two of them telling it like it is.

I think I’ve watched every video they’ve published because I have all that time on my hands, you know. Although I (obviously) loathe the one where Justine shows us exactly what she does with the poor gophers on her property, the show’s da bomb. And the work Justine has done to help save the internet is really admirable.

Although she is a wee on the skinny side, I love the show she did on weight. It’s positively brillers….

And, most recently, I loooove the show she did on her “OLDER FACE”!

Is it just me? Is she not teh awesome???

Kelly and Justine always seem to talk about the things I’m thinking about. I’ll be 36 in September, and I’m thinking about aging. Ever since my tooth situation, I’ve been feeling less attractive than ever. And this chai detox? Holy breakout, batman! (Oh yes she did just write that!) But, the thing is, I don’t obsess care about it like I used to. I feel like my “inside” has finally taken over the “outside.” Maybe that comes with a) losing a front tooth, and/or b) gaining 80 pounds in pregnancy and actually living to tell about it (versus when you were in your 20s and almost died when you gained 0.5 pounds since breakfast)? I do look a lot different than I used to, and, like Justine, I feel more represented by my current face. Welcomed frown lines provide the perfect balance for my sweet-and-innocent, smiley features. I still look younger than my years, or so they tell me, but whatevs, you know?

That said, this extra weight on me — this 10-20 lingering pregnancy pounds — does NOT represent who I am inside. When I look in the mirror before I go to work in the morning (still shocked at the image of me in work clothes after all these years!), I look much thinner than the me that I see in photos or occasionally catch glimpses of in store windows.

I don’t know what the story is with my weight. But, if I keep going as I am — speaking from the inside, and hopefully worrying less and less if people are staring at my, erm, gumline — I feel like it will just melt away. All that, and maybe a jog now and then? Me? A jog? You read that right…. I keep hearing it in my head. And my intuition is on fiyah lately….

Sort of like a few weeks ago, when I was naming our new puppy Betty White, and all I could hear in my head when I was thinking up names for her was “BETTY…. BETTTTTYYYYY!”

WELL, just this morning, I learned that the old woman who died in our living room four years before we moved in here was named BETTY!!!! And her last name began with a W!!!!! And sounds a lot like WHITE!!!!! Eeeeeeeeeeeaaahhhhhhaeeeaearardafdeqrgaq4go!!!

CREEPY!!!

Anyway. Here are some other hot “older” celebs I love and want to age like….

And, of course….

Love!

xo Haley-O