Bibliomama

photo credit creative commons license This year we're spending New Year's Eve at the arena (Champagne on Ice - ha ha, get it?). I'm not really bitter, since we've had quiet ones at home with the kids the last couple of years anyway, but come on... who schedules hockey tournaments where you have to play New Year's Eve AND New Year's Day? Last year the kids did make it almost all the way to midnight, but this year Angus will have to go to bed earlier or be playing half-asleep tomorrow at eight. New Year's Eve is a funny holiday. I've always sort of felt like I should be partying, or climbing a mountain or burning sage or something to commemorate the old year passing away and usher in the new one. On the other hand, it's so soon after Christmas that I'm often exhausted and still trying to dig out, so I sort of resent the (self-imposed) notion that I have to do something. Now that we have the kids, we either get together with other families that...

I just wrote in an email that I've discovered over the past few days that blogging is one of those things that, once you start not doing, becomes easier and easier to not do. Having written that, it became apparent to me that I need to start blogging again very, very badly. Christmas at my sister's was great. I love my sister. I love my sister's house. I love my sister's husband and children. But sweet Baby Jesus I'm just getting weirder and weirder. I hate travelling. I hate having to worry about all the stuff I need to take with me. I hate realizing that it's a stupid thing to worry about -- I was only going to London, Ontario, what could I possibly forget that I couldn't borrow or buy at a twenty-four hour Shoppers' Drug Mart, which is where my pharmacist sister used to work so chances are she already has five of it kicking around her linen closet right behind the beautiful beautiful codeine anyway? I hate worrying about what clothes to bring -- I...

Amber commented on my last post that Christmas is a Jekyll/Hyde holiday, which sums it up perfectly. This week-end has been heavy on the heartwarming glowy joy that is Christmas and light on the enormous pain in the ass that is Christmas, thankfully. Most of the presents are wrapped (except for the book I bought for my sister that I had to read first, just to make sure it was good), most of the baking is done (a whole bunch of fantastic shortbread toffee cookies and a whole bunch of failed squares of one type or another, not one of which turned out perfectly), school is done which means no more library books to put away or homework to finish or math bags to organize until January. Tomorrow is for cleaning and packing and Wednesday we leave with my parents for my sister's house. It's good when you get a small space in which to reap the benefits of hard(ish) work. Yesterday was our annual Christmas party -- a core of four families and whoever else from our wider circle is avail...

This season is SUCH a double-edged sword. Last night we bundled the kids up near bedtime and took them on a walk around the neighbourhood to look at Christmas lights and wrestle each other into the snowbanks. It was so cold and still and clear. I loved Christmas. Then we came back home. The living room is full of boxes of decorations and the kitchen table is covered with Christmas cards and the little wallet-sized pictures that I always order way too many of to go in the Christmas cards and there's flour all over the floor and baking sheets and cooling racks everywhere. I hated Christmas. photo credit creative commons license We're going to my sister's for Christmas because she has the cousins, and my kids have basically professed that Christmas without the cousins sucks, and I know it's going to be fun, because they have a big old house and a beautiful attic play room and the kids will have fun and the my parents will be there and we'll all be together with g...

Obligatory disclaimer: I am a lucky, lucky woman. I have a great family, a nice standard of living, haven't endured undue hardship or grief. I shouldn't complain. This morning SUCKED!!! I have this cough. This cough that visits at least once or twice every year, and I can't remember the last Christmas I wasn't making really unpleasant noises and worrying about waking up the house and being glad that I didn't actually have to be asleep before Santa would come, because sleep wasn't something that was going to happen (it's hard to sleep while your entire diaphragm is in revolt every seven to nine minutes and you're in constant fear of throwing up or becoming incontinent). Since I was little, every cold or flu I've ever gotten goes right for my lungs. I have inhalers now, as well as narcotic anti-cough pills that help a little, but it seems like it was too little too late, and my airways? They're reactive. Over-reactive. Hyper-reactive. Super-mega-...

Two in one day. Limitless capacity to perform. Audiences! Adoration! Costume changes!

Our cleaning lady came tonight. I was going to just wait until she was done in the kitchen and make supper, but my lovely husband knew I coughed all night and wasn't feeling great, so he came home and volunteered to take the kids out for dinner so I wouldn't have to cook. I thought this sounded great. Of course, we both forgot the part where my kids won't go anywhere without me, so we all went out to Swiss Chalet, which is great, because I still didn't have to cook and I do cherish a special, slavish affection for the Festive Special. On the way there, we passed an Esso station. Eve: Mommy, what does E-S-S-O spell? Me: Esso photo credit license Eve: What? Me: Esso Eve: No. Not S-O. I said E-S- S-O. Me: I know. It spells Esso. Eve: What? How can four letters spell two letters? Angus: It's a gas station. Eve: What is? Angus: The Esso. Eve (yelling): Why isn't anyone telling me what it spells? Angus: Oh my god. Are we almost there? ******* We ha...

I'm as susceptible to Christmas blues as anyone. I agree that expectations get out of hand, the stress level can be just stupid, and I often stop and wonder WHY am I doing this again? And yet, I composed a blog post in my head entitled "Bah Humbitch" upon reading a Leah McLaren column that told everyone not to send her Christmas cards, especially with stupid pictures of their children wearing Santa suits or antlers. And I left my first negative comment at a blog I generally really like today (not a 'you suck and you're stupid and I hate you' comment, just a 'this is a little unfair and I'm a little put out' comment -- I know, it must have really stung, in amongst all the comments telling her how fantastic and wise and one hundred and forty percent correct she is). And for the life of me, I can't really figure out why. photo credit creative commons license Okay, maybe I can, in the case of the Leah McLaren piece (it's called 'I...

For the most part, when you have a baby, the night becomes a different country. There is no longer the day when you are awake and the night when you sleep (assuming you roll that way to begin with). The whole twenty-four hour period turns into chopped-up segments of sleeping, waking and a zombie-like, in between state where you often appear to be functioning normally but frequently you discover you've put the phone in the refrigerator or poured yourself a bowl of diet coke. My husband and I were lucky with our babies sleep-wise. Both of them slept through the night early on and were quite easy to put to bed. My profound sympathies are with those who go through years and years of being woken by children or enduring three-hour bedtime fiascoes consisting of crying, screaming, emotional blackmail and absolute desperation. That's not to say our nights are uneventful, though. I don't know if couples exist who go to bed together, read books side by side, turn out the light ...

We have some friends who moved to Australia this summer, so this is their first snow-less Christmas season. They profess to be overjoyed at this. Which I don't disbelieve at all, but I can't really empathize. We had quite a bit of snow on Wednesday, and it was windy and cold and I had to take the kids to the dentist and I slid through one intersection and it was a pain in the ass parking and slopping in there with our boots and everything... and I was just ludicrously happy. Today it took me and Eve half an hour to walk home from the bus stop, which is just at the end of the street. She flung herself at every snowbank, slid belly down onto driveways, climbed the highest ones and bellowed that she was the queen of the castle and, well, you know what that makes me, but it was still enjoyable. I'm convinced that part of my depression in November was that we didn't have a proper fall. It rained so much that there just weren't enough of those clear, sweet, sharp days w...

So my friend Collette is notoriously cheap -- really, she likes being called cheap, if we try to tone it down to 'frugal' or 'sensible with money' she gets offended. At one Christmas craft show we went to, they had citrus almonds for sale, which we sampled. They were delicious, but she refused to pay five dollars for a tiny little bag of them (even though it was fetchingly wrapped in sparkly gold snowflake-printed cellophane and tied with an adorable ribbon). I, of course, bought the five-dollar bag of almonds, brought it home and stuck it in the cupboard waiting for an occasion auspicious enough to warrant hideously expensive almonds, until they went stale and I had to throw them out. I'm not sure what the word for me is, but it's even less complimentary than 'cheap'. Can you believe that there is no recipe for citrus almonds online? Well, okay, I'm by far no computer whiz, but I've googled dozens, nay, hundreds of recipes from 'chocolate ...

I WAS thinking more along the lines of a gentle snowfall of fat, white flakes on a day so still you could hear every flake land... NOT so much for 60-kilometre winds and 15 centimetres on dentist-appointment day... BUT I did ask for it. Here's to you, Amber -- hope it's balmy in your area today (I almost said 'around your parts' but that seemed rude). Guess I'll get out the Christmas cards. Happy Wednesday.

We've recently started giving the kids an allowance. We bought them Moon jars from Mrs. Tiggy Winkles'. Moon jars are three triangular canisters that fit together and have a band to hold them together. The three canisters are labelled 'spend', 'save', and 'share'. I wasn't sure how difficult it would be to convince the kids to divert a portion of their allowance into the 'share' jar, but they were quite receptive. Angus and I have been looking through the World Vision catalogue. He's intrigued by the mosquito nets -- he's keen on donating some and he also thinks it wouldn't be a bad idea to get one for his bed, since he thinks he might have seen a few suspicious-looking mosquitos around and he's been feeling distinctly malaria-susceptible lately. He doesn't want to do the bunnies or guinea pigs -- he's willing to admit that in certain cases they might need to be eaten, but he'd rather not be directly responsible f...

When Angus was three-ish, we went over to a friend's house whose daughter had a toy cash register. It was love at first sight. He played with it the entire time we were over there and talked about it for days afterwards. At his next birthday, it would have been just plain cruel not to produce the 'cash richister'. I hated that damned thing. It made annoying beeping noises, the toy money ended up under the couch cushions, and some kid at a party put Doritos in it so the drawer didn't open as well and felt greasy even after I washed it (the kid's mother, quite sensibly, said that her son had just put in the cash register what had the greatest value to him, so fair enough). I looked forward ardently to the day when he wouldn't yearn after every plastic piece of crap in existence. photo credit creative commons license Then came Eve. Along with a metric crap-ton of Disney Fairy Beauty Sparkly Pink Mermaid Princess dolls, nightgowns, dress-up clothes, sippy cu...

My recent reading list has included Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, The Cellist of Sarajevo   by Steven Galloway, and February by Lisa Moore. So today I'm going to be grateful for living somewhere where I don't have to lie sleepless on the floor of my hallway in fear of being bombed in the night: for being able to pour a glass of water from the tap whenever I want: for being able to cross the street without wondering if I'm in a sniper's sights: for knowing my husband goes to work somewhere where his life isn't constantly endangered by poor safety standards and the capriciousness of the ocean. I think it's important to read books like this, to know that some places and some lives are so different, to know why people flee their homelands and what they've left behind, to know, in my case, how good we really have it. No place and no life is unassailable, of course. Catastrophic illness and injury and horrible accidents can happen anywhere. The expre...

I guess the list of things that drive me to the depths of despair is not that short. Watching the news. Bathing suit shopping. Trying to explain to my husband why my hair sucks. Never being able to remember which guy was prime minister when. Trying to help my son with his math homework. But cleaning out my cupboards? That's a whole new definition of despair. It's like dragging out hundreds of brightly labelled examples of how disorganized, slovenly, careless and unwholesome I am. I'm a freaking stay-at-home Mom -- shouldn't my cupboards be meticulously-planned, graphed-out marvels of neatness and order? Cans of tomato paste and bags of rice should leap into my waiting hands, ready for inclusion in my nightly menu meal. How the hell do I end up with six cans of black beans and no tomato soup on a regular basis? How many times can I get hit on the head with the same goddamned package of whole wheat pasta? And I swear to God, you know that disease where people are born and...

It's a P.D. day. Which means in some ways everything is more relaxed, since the kids don't have to be bustled off to school or picked up. In some ways everything is louder and bouncier and more crowded since, well, the kids are indisputably HERE all day. I was lazing in bed this morning after Matt had left for work. My alarm came on which meant CBC radio, and I was listening to somebody talking about an alternative prison system where inmates are taught spiritual centeredness and belief systems, which apparently is better for lowered recidivism rates than being whaled on by guards and sodomized in the shower (go figure). Eve came bounding in. This was the conversation: "I want to get dressed. I need a pretty dress to wear to Marianna's. Usually you're facing that way when I come in. Where's that blackish blue dress with the polka dots?" "It's too small." "Awwww. I thought it would look nice with my rice necklace. I was thinking this...

I'm feeling a little out of sorts. Generally I enjoy falling asleep to the drumming of rain on the roof. But it's freaking December! I really have no right to complain, because I did really quite like the freakishly mild November weather. My Mom and Dad are on my side -- my Mom says she can't get into the Christmas spirit with no snow, and my Dad said he felt like a moron putting up Christmas lights in a t-shirt last week-end. My husband said normally he'd agree with us, but at this point he couldn't care less if he ever saw snow again.  photo credit creative commons license I need snow. I've wrapped all my Christmas presents while looking out into my backyard at an herb garden that's largely still viable -- in DECEMBER! In the capital of CANADA! I don't think I can start the Christmas cards though. I don't know the real story about global warming. I know there have always been cycles, I know the Depression dustbowl happened without all the ind...

This is my daughter's first year in school full days. My 'job' for the first few months was supposed to be getting the house in some kind of order (honestly, I was just aiming for 'not squalor'), doing some writing and getting into some kind of shape (honestly, I was just aiming for 'not perpetually lying in bed in a carb-laden endorphinless stupour'). Life does keep getting in the way, but significant headway has been made in the house (eight giant bins and four garbage bags of stuff donated, the laundry room floor rediscovered and a few flat surfaces actually staying empty for up to twelve hours at a time!), I got through NaBloPoMo with a small amount of grace and pride left intact (I wasn't reduced to cataloguing my medicine cabinet or describing my kids' rashes, anyway), and I've discovered a few healthy meals the kids will eat (sometimes I even cook them). I make it to the gym on a semi-regular basis again, and I try to go for a half-hour wa...

I was working in the school library this morning. It was extra busy because the library was closed Thursday and yesterday, so it was a steady stream of classes. There were also classes I don't usually see, so I didn't automatically know everybody's name to check out their books. photo credit creative commons license The library technician I work with is great, but she lacks a certain freewheeling wackiness, and I kind of see it as my job to generate a supplement. The problem, I've realized, is that if kids aren't used to humour being present in a certain location, they lose the knack for it. A good number of the teachers do joke around with their classes sometimes, but the library has clearly been a solemn, formal place.  There's nothing more embarrassing than making a play on words with some kid's name, or saying something witty about their book choice, and having it go over like a lead balloon. And this school has kids named Scout, Flip and (I kid y...