You know you have become a true Ottawaian when...

Okay, I have partially ripped this off of my sister's list and a list that was tabulated in Ottawa magazine, but most of these are my own. Feel free to add yours...

1. You have a great suit for work on, but you have white sneakers or any shoe from MEC on your feet.
2. Your kid is four and you're still breastfeeding it.
3. You complain about the traffic (which is non-existent)
4. You aspire to become a Public Servant
5. You won't spank you kid; in public or otherwise
6. You give up smoking
7. Most of your wardrobe comes from MEC and/or is made of hemp
8. You spend over 20k on childcare every year
9. Over 75% of the people on your party list are Public Servants and Lawyers
10. You have a cottage and it is 12 minutes from your home
11. You shop "organic"
12. You ride your bike to and from work (see point 1)
13. You have a nanny and its not considered a luxury but in fact a way of saving money (see point 8)
14. You are more afraid of the police than the crack-heads
15. You paid over 400k for a townhome in the 'burbs
16. You restrict your highlights to blonde, otherwise its too racy
17. You wait until you're in your 40's to start having children
18. You dress badly (upscale to you is the Bay or Cleo)
19. You have named your child Sienna or Bryce or anything ending in an "ie" rather than a "Y"
20. You have forgotten the words to " O Canada" in French, but know them backwards and forwards in English
21. You know the truth about Max Keeping
22. You are surprised to find out someone is straight.
23. Your boys swim instead of play hockey (I think in Quebec you can actually be stoned for this...)
24. You install floating floor (over hardwood!!!)

This May Alarm You...

As mentioned in my first blog I have started a Neighborhood Watch program for our block (yes, the entire rest of the city can drop off the face of the earth for all I care, so long as the few hundred feet of property around me are okay...). In the last three weeks three of my neighbors have been broken in to (one while they were home no less!), so it would seem we are in the middle of a mini crime wave. Like many of my neighbors, upon hearing fo the break-ins I called an alarm company for an estimate. So the guy shows up promptly the next day to regale me with horror stories about the woman down the street being attacked in her home by her ex husband who is a "pathalogical thief in this area" and how my dog will be killed by a lethal screwdriver weilding man any minute now... He also went on about how scared I was and how scared my children are and how he deeply cares about me and them....At this point I was scanning the room for a screwdriver... I finally managed to get rid of Robert Stack by telling him that my husband would have to make the final descision and we woud get back to him. (for those of you just tuning in, I am not married nor have I ever relied on my husband to make descisions). In the end we have decided to forgo the alarm for now. Maybe it has something to do with my rural roots, maybe its because I hate the thought of driving my neighbors up the wall every two hours because some squirrel has set the damn thing off (I think squirrels have excellent connections on the blackmarket trading front....). Mostly I think the thirty dollars a month could be better spent on dog food for our giant man-eating dog; Killer (seen above)