Daughter-ish Stuff

A few days ago Eve texted me from school to say her BFF's mother had given her permission to go off school grounds during recess to Tim Horton's for an iced capp, so Eve wanted to know if I was okay with her going too, even thought they're not technically supposed to leave school property during recess until next year. I said yes. She then sent me this:

THEN once they got back to school she asked me to text her saying I'd dropped off their iced capps at the front desk, in case anyone asked where they got the iced capps. Then she deleted all the texts except the one I sent. Total badass, that girl.

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She gave me this card for Mother's Day:

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I was hanging out with her BFF's Mom after she took all the girls to Comic Con for BFF's birthday. They were talking about how girls still send nude pictures and the other mom and I were goggling and despairing. Then the BFF said "one guy asked me for pictures. So I sent him a picture of Jesus. Before I blocked him". We don't have to worry about these particular girls in that respect, at least.

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On the week-end when the boys were away, Eve and I watched The Edge of Seventeen (AWESOME movie, totally awesome). In the movie, Hailee Steinfeld is a teen-ager who starts falling apart when her best and only friend starts dating her 'perfect' older brother.

Me: "Hey, I just thought of something." Eve: "What?" Me: "You have an older brother. This could totally happen to you." Eve: "Please don't." Me: "It's okay. You're nothing like her. You don't just have one friend. You have three." Eve: "...." Me: "Which one do you think it would be?" Eve: "STOP!"

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On Tuesday nights, Matt and I go to a bar a block away with some friends for beer and wings. We used to have to be home by ten because Eve didn't like to go to bed alone. Now she's fine with us staying out as long as she can lock the door. Last week she sent me this text:

Having a daughter is fun. 

I Don't FEEL Like Writing

Or doing much of anything, if I'm being honest. I'm done all but three and a half hours of my work placement and I was looking forward to a quiet week with Matt gone AGAIN, but I kind of miss working, and I can't settle to any wholehearted loafing and it's been mostly too cold to walk much (yes, I do have a treadmill now that you mention it, how kind and helpful, shut up). I went to a Lumineers (and Kaleo, swoon) concert with friends that was wonderful even way up in the cheap seats, then I had book club, which was great, and not only because I actually managed to go to the right house this month (don't ask), and yesterday I finally started cooking again after a few weeks of an absolutely pathetic showing in the kitchen. I also made a couple of significant phone calls, to book driving hours for Angus and pay off a forgotten FedEx taxes and duties bill, so, you know, that used up a fair number of spoons. I still have to make a doctor's appointment for me, make dentist appointments for everyone, make an appointment for Eve to get orthotics and *goes fetal with hands over ears* THAT'S TOO MUCH TELEPHONE.

I picked up Eve and two friends from after-school play rehearsal today and took them to Wendy's. They regaled me with tales of their sex education class where they were asked to list reasons why someone might practice abstinence and why they might decide to have sex. Someone had left a paper behind with answers on it: answers on why to abstain included "penis petit (small penis)" and "si tu es un enfant de Dieu (if you are a child of God)". Answers on why to have sex were "penis gros (large penis)" and "I like getting girls pregnant and runnig (sic) away". Ladies and gentlemen, our tax dollars at work. I told them about book club last night - let's just say that if you bring accidental-dong biscotti to book club, I AM going to be immature and giggly about it and make inappropriate comments until you fervently wish you'd just gone with cannoli (apparently the apple doesn't fall far from the tree).

Angus passed his driver's ed and starts his ten driving hours next week. His BFF since nursery school got his G2 on the week-end and showed up to pick up his younger brother from school after band, resulting in Eve pointing and screaming "OMG, NOAH'S DRIVING - oh, he saw me, he doesn't look impressed".

And now it's 8:41 and I'm not sure where the day has gone yet again. I did just throw out an empty carton of buttermilk, having used it all on four magnificent batches of biscuits. Often I forget about it and end up pouring some out. So there's that.

Bluesfesting While Anxious

Before I had kids, I went to Bluesfest regularly, usually with a friend (my husband isn't really into live music. It's okay, he has a lot of other good qualities). It was downtown so I would bus nearby or to my friend's place and we would walk over. I saw John Hiatt, Buddy Guy and Saffire and the Uppity Blues Women (they were great musicians and hilarious - one of their songs was called Silver Beaver, and it's about pretty much what you'd guess from the title - and while I was looking them up to embed the link I read that one of them died and now I'm sad) and The Blind Boys of Alabama and a bunch of bands I didn't even know or can't remember now.

We moved to even more of a suburb. We had a couple of kids. Bluesfest moved somewhere a little less accessible and I stopped taking public transit and got less comfortable with it. Bluesfest got much less Blues-packed, but that wasn't really a factor for me - I like the blues, but I understand that the festival has to attract a wide demographic to sell more tickets. It fell off my radar a bit, it always took me off guard when it started in early July, and whenever I thought about it, I would think "I have to go back someday" but I kept not doing it. Until last year when Alison and I saw Styx and Foreigner in the pouring rain, followed by a double rainbow.

This year I was determined to make myself go. I thought I should bring Eve to at least some of it, since she likes music, and we like doing things together, and it would be the summer! Yay! Mother-daughter adventure, live music in the sun! I told her we could go see Iggy Azalea if she wanted to, and she was stoked. I bought us both passes at a good price the first day they were available. I felt all smug and cool and culture-consuming.

For about four days. Then I realized that Eve and I both have tendencies towards anxiety, and we both kind of hate crowds, and we're not that great with really loud places. Also, I don't love driving, especially downtown, especially when I don't know exactly where I'm going, or where to park. And I also hate hot weather, and Bluesfest is in Ottawa, in July. And as it got closer, I realized my husband wasn't even going to be home to walk me through the route I should take and possible parking spots - he was going to be in freaking Detroit or Dallas or some other city in the states that begins with D, and I was going to have to do this TOTALLY ALONE, except for my kid who I would probably scar for life by screwing up and driving the wrong way down a one-way street, or parking fifty blocks away and not getting to the festival site until all the music was done, or just sobbing in absolute terror.

Basically I looked at myself in the mirror going "THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU???"

School went on. School ended. Zarah came for a week and that distracted me. Then she left and I spent half a day in full-blown panic. I actually thought I might have to cancel.

But here's the thing. This is me at the beginning of every canoe trip, and dance, and party, and any event where I have to leave my reading chair and my house and my comfort zone: Why am I doing this? Who thought this was a good idea? I can listen to music and look at nature and make up witty quips at home. Why didn't I stay there?

The first night I had to breathe exaggerated deep breaths on the drive down and literally almost threw up.

The second night, I put on the dress I wanted to wear. I opened the door from bedroom to the hallway and Eve said "you look pretty!" I said "I feel like I'm showing too much of my boobs." She shrugged and said "enh."

The third night I took a couple of her friends who had tickets and met my friend Nat, who is WAY too cool to listen to Hedley but hung out with me out of a mixture of friendship and pity, with which I am TOTALLY fine. 

And partway into the experience, I remembered what I always realize: Sometimes you just have to get out of your house and do stuff. Because the world is big and inside your head can get very small. Because amazing opportunities will present themselves. 

Because you'll meet people who are a little different. 

Because you'll hear a familiar line of music, or fall in love with an unfamiliar one, or see an amazing view, or navigate a new stretch of river, or stretch a new set of muscles, and inside your head will get a little bigger. 

Because you'll be All Out of Love, Lost in Love, Making Love out of Nothing at All, and Every Woman in the World.

Because you'll find a seniors' centre that offers their parking lot as a fundraiser, and you'll know that most of your friends will refuse to pay for parking on principal, but you don't give a flying fuck because now you know exactly which address to punch into the GPS every time you drive down, and where to park, and how long a walk it will be (not long), and after Iggy Azalea (who is surprisingly very sweet and whose music is much less noisy and unintelligible than you assumed it would be, even in the second row) your daughter will sigh ecstatically and say "You don't even know how happy I am right now."

Because your husband will say "you should be proud of yourself, in some silly little way", and you'll say "uh, yeah, but not quite", and he'll say "sorry, I was trying not to be condescending" and you'll say "then you're doing it wrong", but it will be okay, because, yeah, it was kind of silly and little, but you did it. And next year you'll do it again. Hopefully minus the Kanye, because, *visceral sudder*, gah, the sweaty heaving mass of humanity you had to drag Eve through to get to the exit after Hawksley Workman? NOT pleasant.

Wordless Wednesday: Balance

She's in Awe of Me. Clearly.

Wednesday (yesterday) was Take Our Kids to Work Day. Matt was planning to take Angus until he realized that he was going to be in Japan. He arranged for a colleague who is also a family friend to take him instead. Then his best friend's mother mentioned that she could take him to the General Hospital where she works. He really, really wanted to do this (because he wanted to see the operating room and get lectured on health and wellness, you understand, not because he'd be spending the day with his friend), but he was worried that it wasn't polite to withdraw from the other committment. We were discussing this at the dinner table and Matt said he thought it was fine for Angus to go to the hospital, we would thank the other person and let them off the hook.

Then Eve said "...or he could just stay home with Mom and fold laundry - I KNOW THAT'S NOT ALL YOU DO, I REALIZED IT WAS REALLY OFFENSIVE AS SOON AS I SAID IT PLEASE DON'T TAKE MY FOOD AWAY."

Then Angus got sick and ended up having to stay home yesterday. I made every effort to look busy and important. 

Wordless Wednesday: Girl in Orange Fedora

All photos from Eve's session with the incomparable Sarah McCormack.

Sleepover of Awesome

I'm not sure how I feel today. If I evaluate how well I'm "doing summer", it comes out okay. I'm not hiding inside from the heat all the time; I've been to five baseball games and the beach. I've taken Eve shopping for groceries and clothes and had a blast doing it. It feels like we're more than two weeks in, which is good because it means we've packed a fair bit in. I did manage to dig up the weed-choked flower-and-herb beds in the back yard, but I haven't managed to top them up with soil and plant anything, so that makes me a little sad, although we're still in Schrodinger's trip territory - Angus's baseball team will win/will not win Provincials tomorrow and then we will travel/not travel to Calgary for Nationals (you heard that, right, Baseball Gods? WE MIGHT NOT WIN. No cockiness here. Outcome is uncertain). Which makes it hard to plan things like flower and herb beds that need daily watering.

I'm feeling a little unfocused. I'm phoning in my course work. I haven't blogged much. I'm reading the same amount, but little bits of a bunch of books instead of one long stretch of a single work, which I think is making me a little twitchy. Eve is in drama camp next week, so I should probably try to sit my ass down and read or write something for a couple of hours just to see if I still can.

Since we were too tired to plan a party or anything the last day of school, Eve invited two friends over for a sleepover the following Friday. Three girls doesn't always work that well, and I'm not someone who can pull off effortless parties, but these three mesh really well together, and a minimum of planning plus their effervescent personalities made the whole thing extremely amusing and entertaining.

First, some movie preparation: we went to Kernels and said "What's the biggest bag of popcorn you can legally sell us?" The girl said "Come back in twenty minutes". Added benefit:: once I was carrying this baby, she didn't want to go to Joshua Perets anymore, so I probably saved at least three times what it cost.

Preparatory lip-glossing, courtesy of Marianna's Mom.

Turns out bubbles are pretty much ageless in their appeal.

Is there any rule about three on a wand?

Eve enacts The Matrix with bubbles instead of bullets:

I know I'm easily amused, but is this not just pretty freaking cool?

Then they walked to Starbucks ALL BY THEMSELVES, and I was not worried, not a bit. Because who is going to tangle with a passel of badasses like this?

Then, the donning of the aprons. 

A few eggs may have been harmed in the filming of this segment of our evening.

They actually did all the mixing and measuring themselves, in between all the posing.

They did the icing themselves too - I'm sure you couldn't tell.

Then we turned Eve loose with an Icing Scribbler and a picture and voila - Dauntless Cake. 

Then they had supper, with fancy drinks.

And manicures, because they're all elegant and shit.

Fuzzy nail polish.

Then a movie - which I had seen on a list of "movies you should make your kids watch" and realized I had never watched myself. This resulted in the catchphrase for the rest of the party being "It's okay - it's the eighties."

Then air-mattress-blowing up, blanket-fluffing and tuck-ins. And an acceptably quiet level of hilarity until midnight or so (apparently Marianna is really bad at the Game of Life).

And the next morning. Still friends! And we have to get Marielle some unicorn pajamas. 

Summertime, and the Grocery Shopping is Funny

I always kind of liked grocery shopping with the kids when they were babies. They usually slept or looked around and I felt a sense of accomplishment at the end. Unless we got caught in the rain on the way back to the car. When they were toddlers it was even better. I'd plunk them in the front of the cart and they would make lion noises or eat a cookie or a cheese bun (yes, I always paid for it) and we would make silly comments about whatever we were buying and they would entertain the other shoppers.

But when you have little kids, it always feels like a treat to be allowed to run any kind of errand by yourself. You feel almost weightless - no solid little body to swing from car seat to grocery cart, no worrying about losing someone in the produce maze, no stopping little hands from dropping a watermelon on the bread. So when they started school, I would go grocery shopping when they were in class.

And now we've come full circle, where it's kind of a treat when they're around and decide to come to the grocery store with me. Eve's come a couple of times on week-ends - this usually results in me letting her buy whatever kind of cookies she wants, as well as some kind of frivolous cosmetic accessory.

She had no plans on Monday and we had a list of stuff for her mini-party today, so we headed to Loblaws. This, in part, is the script:

"LOOK AT THIS NAIL POLISH. It's, like, FUZZY!! Really? Are you sure? Thank-you thank-you thank-you!"

Photo by Tony Alter

"That guy had gigantic holes in his earlobes, and looking at them made me want to cry for all humanity."

"Let's get some Lucky Charms!" (Me: Get the small box). "'Hearts, stars and horseshoes! Clovers and blue moons! Pots of gold and rainbows, and me red balloons!' I watch too much television."

"I touch rotting fruit and it magically brings it back to life. I'm so magical. Everyone should invite me over to their house. If they have rotten fruit."

(Me: We need pickles and curry paste) "Why do we need pickles?" (Me: Because we're out of pickles) "Why do we need pickles?" (Me: WE NEED PICKLES). "Okay, fine, we'll get pickles. I want some nuts. (Me: We already have peanuts.) "I just want some nuts." (Me: WHAT KIND OF NUTS). "Um, like, cashews."

Oh thank goodness, whole grain!
Photo by Mike Mozart

"I'm going to go home and fuzzify my nails. While eating cashews. With.... my toes, I guess.

(Me: We missed the curry paste.) "I'll just hang out by the cupcake mix until you get back."

"I came here with Daddy, and he was very confused by the self checkout."


Then there's the soundtrack, which, since we got the Sirius satellite free trial, is all Billy Joel all the time. If she's in the front seat and something else is playing, she yells "You're not Billy Joel!" and switches it. Then, naturally, commentary.

Only the Good Die Young - "So wait, does he want to be bad? That's inspiring."

Pressure - I can HEAR the oldness in this song.

Don't Ask Me Why - "I like this one. Even though it makes no sense. She used to be an only child, now she speaks French? So what - foreign languages get you siblings?"

I'm not sure how I'm going to go back to grocery shopping alone.

Mondays on the Margins: Various Assorted

A couple of months back, I got wind of NetGalley.com, a website through which publishers "provide digital review copies to professional readers, including booksellers, librarians, media, bloggers, reviewers and educators". I shouldn't visit that website, I thought. I'm drowning in books. Even though the review copy stream has slowed down since my original contacts at a few Canadian publishers have left, between library books, Kindle books (DAMN those daily deals, DAMN them!) and books I've bought, the stacks have grown, the queue is alarmingly long, and sometimes it makes me feel a little stressed. Not grateful and happy and excited, the way one SHOULD feel when blessed with this embarrassment of riches, but stressed. For no really good reason, because aside from a course or two, I'm free to read whatever the hell I want, but I definitely wasn't in need of a further source of books. Certainly not one where the requesting and delivering of said books is as easy as a mouse click.

So I definitely didn't go on NetGalley and create a profile and request sixty-six or so books and then feel all giggly and smug when the approvals started rolling in and my Kindle app filled up with YET MORE books. Free books. Books that haven't quite been published yet. 

It's true. I have a problem. 

Sometimes I get turned down, for one reason or another. I feel unreasonably annoyed by this.

One of the quirks and - sometimes - pleasures of my NetGalley shelf is that, when I click on a book to begin reading it, unless I research it on Goodreads first, I generally have no idea of what I'm about to plunge into. Unless it's an author I already know, there are so many books that I've usually lost all memory of the plot synopsis, and with some titles and covers it's really hard to tell what you're getting into. The first book where this really made me feel like I'd been (in the immortal words of one of my old professors) "led down the garden path and then clobbered with a birdfeeder", was The Quick by Lauren Owen. It starts off like a prim, proper, everything-in-its-place Victorian novel, then takes a whiplash left turn into.... well, it's also one of those books where you can't say much without giving everything away. It was a really interesting reading experience.

Recently, I read in a Book Riot article that The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey was a book that I should read immediately, before more was given away about it. I was giddy with the realization that I had the book from NetGalley RIGHT THAT MINUTE, and it was AWESOME, and I .... can't say a whole lot more about that one either. Except it's so much more than just a book of.... this genre, and I loved the nuanced characters, and the clear-eyed presentation of the human condition, and the perfect, poignant rendering of the child-teacher relationship in extreme circumstances, and if you like books of this genre you should definitely read it, except you don't know if you like books of this genre because I haven't told you which genre it is, because I don't want to give anything away. It's a dilemma. Use your best judgment.

The tagline for reviewing NetGalley books on Goodreads is always "review copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review". We'll see how they feel about that when I review Fields of Elysium, because oh, my god, oh, the badness is so bad with this one. It's the worst kind of adolescent wish-fulfillment Twilight rip-off, written by someone whose first language almost certainly isn't English, or reality. There are phrases like "she tossed her head back, burying her hands into her glossy hair in the sexiest way I'd ever seen a girl act. That picture was too much for my eyes. I looked away and bored my eyes into the waterfall." Also, "I had become a ghost, just drifting down the corridors, unnoticed by their Gucci bags and Prada shoes". Aw, their bags and shoes didn't notice you? Stupid unsentient accessories. The requisite situations where the heroine is hurt or put in danger so the hero (who acts like he hates her but of course loves her) can rescue her are cringe-worthy. At one point she blacks out and hits her head on a desk, and then laments the disfiguring scar that will ensure that no man wants her (grow some bangs, duh). The hero visits with some future-world healing ointment, and she piteously requests that he put it on for her because she doesn't have a mirror. That's right - she's too stupid to find her own forehead.

Eve came downstairs a while ago and said "there was this book at school called Jacob's New Dress. Can Jacob be a girl's name?" I said maybe, but maybe it was more about gender roles. We looked it up, and it is, which is cool. She said "like - he's a drag queen?" and I said, no, he just doesn't conform to normal gender stereotypes. She said she was a little surprised that there would be a kids' book about that, and I reminded her about my friend Amanda who has an eleven-year-old transgender daughter, which means that a book explaining gender fluidity to kids is, in my book (ha), a good thing. Then I said "of course, some parents probably won't WANT their kids reading about it", and Eve said "well, tough bananas. It's a thing."

So there.

Thank Goodness My Head is Attached

Last night Matt and Angus were out at baseball and I was in the kitchen cooking a bunch of stuff while Eve was reading on the couch. I told her I was just going to go upstairs and wash my face and then we'd have dinner. I took off my apron and threw it over the top of the couch. I kicked off my sandals which I wear in the kitchen because they have orthotics in them and it's better for my feet and back. I walked upstairs and into my bedroom and into the bathroom, stuck a scrunchy in my hair and washed my face. Then I reached for my glasses, because I always wash my face, dry my face, then wash and dry my glasses before putting them back on.

No glasses.

I looked around, confused. I always put them down to the left of the sink on the counter. I moved the little baskets that have my nail clippers and hair clips and stuff in them. No glasses. I looked to the right of the sink, where my hair dryer and straightener live. No glasses.

So now I'm totally confused and also blind so it's really hard to LOOK for my glasses. I go out into my bedroom and check the bed in case I did something really weird and threw them on the bed before going into the bathroom. I go back and recheck the bathroom counter.

Photo from Flickr by kenny_lex

Finally I call down to Eve that I'm having a really embarrassing problem and ask her to come help me look. She can't find them either. I'm wondering if I have to put in my contacts to look for my glasses and feeling like I'm flat-out losing my mind.

Finally I go back downstairs. My glasses are sitting on the end of the kitchen counter. I guess when I divested myself of my apron and sandals I took them off too in the orgy of stuff-taking-off and didn't realize I was walking up the stairs blind. I guess I should be glad I didn't accidentally get naked.

Later on, Eve decided she was going to start watching Community on Netflix since she was done Merlin and her cousin Charlotte loves Community. Then she discovered that Community was no longer on Netflix and was pissed off and decided on Bones instead. Except when she came down to tell me, I searched Netflix on my computer and Community was right there. I asked her how she was spelling it and she was spelling it with a U instead of the first O. "How embarrassing for you", I said.

She came over and looked at my computer sheepishly. Then she pointed at me and said "look lady, you lost your glasses, so we're keeping this between us".

Unfortunately for her, she doesn't realize that after you have a couple of kids, embarrassment kind of becomes foreign territory.

I've Fallen and I Still Can't Really Get Up

We're a mixed-bag of viruses over here. Eve has been stuffy and her eyes "are pretending to be waterfalls", Angus has the voice of one of Hell's lesser demons. He went to school this morning, and I picked him up at noon for an orthodontist appointment - when the receptionist heard him talk she suggested I not bring him back. I had a sore throat and bad sinuses on Tuesday morning, which suddenly morphed into the Barfing Plague on Tuesday afternoon. And my husband has somehow been dodging among the large-droplet-contagion without getting wet so far. He did have to put my socks on this morning so I could get Angus to the orthodontist, since I wrenched my back muscles so badly in the process of turning my gastrointestinal system inside-out that I could hardly move. Turns out it's almost as hard to put on someone else's socks as it is to put on someone else's glasses (if you've tried, you'll know what I mean). "What the hell are you doing? You can't just bunch them around my ankles, I'll never fit them in my boots. Okay, DON'T PULL THEM UP SO FAR, you're strangling my feet! Don't you WEAR socks? You SUCK at this!"

Yes, I am always exactly that gracious a patient.

As a result of all the germs and fatigue and shit, I haven't been able to get out to the CPAP place to get replacement filters for my machine, I haven't been able to feed my children and I haven't written anything OR read anything all week. All I've done is watch multiple, out-of-order episodes of Bones on Netflix, while undergoing this weird phenomenon that often takes place when I'm sick, whereby I develop acute feelings of loyalty and affection for a particular show that got me through some rough hours. "I have REALLY been undervaluing this show - the subtlety and lyricism! The gentle humour! The rendering of existential despair as it pertains to a traditional humanist value system! And wow, David Boreanaz has really maintained an admirable set of abs to this point in the series." I'm finding it a little hard to move on.

While I regain my strength, have a few pictures of Eve celebrating her 11th birthday and Matt's Nana's 91st (I baked the cake but forgot to buy candles, and I had a one but not a nine, so I had to turn a six upside-down). Eve was born one week before Nana's eightieth birthday, so we've always been able to figure out easily how old Nana is (Eve Plus Eighty.)

She has a cousin that lived to 98, and she figures she can top that.

I vote yes.

Gray Thursday?

The whole concept of Black Friday eludes me. I mean, Boxing Day makes a twisted, horrifying sort of sense, I guess - you just bought a bunch of stuff for other people, then you go buy a bunch of stuff for yourself, and it comes in...boxes...or something (I don't shop on Boxing Day either). But Black Friday? That sounds like a plague or something. Crap, it just occurred to me that if I Google 'Black Friday' I might discover some extremely good reason why Black Friday is called Black Friday.

I'm not doing it. Can't make me.

Anyway. There is no way in hell I will be crashing through anybody's door at seven o'clock tomorrow morning. BUT Eve needed a Christmas outfit and some pants that fit for the winter, and I needed some goat milk lotion from Crabtree and Evelyn (shut up, I totally needed it) and Angus was staying after school for the evening to referee the grade seven volleyball tournament. And it's Thursday, NOT Black Friday.

Yesterday Eve said "so you'll pick me up after school?" and I said "Yes". And she said "and we'll go straight to the mall?" and I said "Yes." And she said "....in my pajamas?" And I remembered that her class was helping with the JK class's Teddy Bear Sleepover (cutest thing EVER, they've been doing it since Angus was in JK - the kids bring their teddies to school, they lock them in the principal's office overnight and when the kids get to school the next morning the teddy bears have broken out of the office and made a big mess in the classroom; Angus's teddy bear was making paper airplanes - Eve's was half-buried in the bead bin) and told her I would bring her some clothes.

Turns out a lot of places at the mall already had stuff on sale, AND it wasn't full of crazed bargain-hunters. AND I hate the mall less when Eve is with me because she thinks everything is AWESOME and EPIC and she laughs at my jokes and people smile when they see her petting all the fuzzy sweaters.

We went in the pet store and squealed at the adorable sleeping kittens. An older couple came up to us and the woman said "excuse me. I have a question. I don't know you, but..." and I was briefly terrified that we were about to have a horribly awkward encounter, but they just wanted to know what size pants to buy for their granddaughter who was the same size and age as Eve.

At one point Eve said "so there's extra small and extra large. I'm trying to imagine what extra medium would look like".

At another point she said "OMG (yes, she said the letters) I thought that mannequin was a real person who was TOTALLY STYLING. No one could ever wear that outfit now because that mannequin rocked it so hard."

We found a drop-dead gorgeous Christmas outfit at H&M - my jaw literally dropped when she came out of the change room. We had dinner in the food court. Eve got complimented twice on her t-shirt. We held hands and made fun of silly clothes and skanky clothes.

I got my teeth cleaned this afternoon, which I hate more than almost anything in the world, and it was STILL a kick-ass awesome day.

I always lost at hide and seek too

The prompt for today is "tell us about the last thing you hid".

When I got home from Zarah's, I had two shopping bags that had presents for the kids in them (mostly for Eve, because pretty much everything Angus is getting comes from Best Buy or Evoshield, not quaint little shops in downtown Barrie). I was exhausted from the drive, and I stuck them in a corner of the living room, intending to deal with them better the next day. Five days later, I realized that they had been sitting there, not particularly well closed, right next to where Eve practices the piano every day, and she hadn't looked in them. I realized this because she reminded me that they were there, and asked me if I could move them because she was having a progressively harder time resisting the temptation to investigate.

And that is what kind of kid I have.

Something Before Midnight

I was supposed to babysit Rose today while Eve went to Marianna's. Eve got wind of this and refused to go to Marianna's until after Rose left. Which was good, because Rose completely prefers Eve.

First she was like "musical toys! Spoons! Cups! This place rocks!"

Then she was like "THIS IS TOTAL B.S! WHY WAS I LEFT HERE WITH THESE BUFFOONS?"

Which, as it turns out, was just "WHAT'S THE THING THAT MAKES YOU FEEL BETTER WHEN YOU'RE TIRED AGAIN? OH RIGHT..... ZZZZZZZZZ...."

Then she woke up and she was all "WTF?"

Then she was all "My Mom's back.... LATER, LOSERS."

Not-Quite-Surly Thursday

Have I mentioned how much I love everyone who reads and comments here, and how I would totally buy you all homes in the south of France if I could? Even though I still don't know if we should get a dog? Because I really really do, and I really really would. And we are completely maybe getting some kind of dog some day.

I picked Eve up at school dismissal to whip her over to piano lessons, then whip her back to the school so I could do my interview with her teacher and then we could work the book fair for the evening, which is always nuts because all the parents come in before or after their interviews.

I had my usual four-minute interview - Eve's enthusiastic, Eve's bright and interested and wonderful and when Eve and Marianna sit close together they talk too much. Check. I went back to wait with Eve for the librarian to arrive and unlock the library. She was six minutes late. There were people lined up and pounding on the library doors like they were high and the last cookies in the world were in there. The school secretary asked if I would be confident opening the book fair alone and I said yes because if I didn't I was afraid they would all pounce on Katy when she came in and chew her down to the bone.

Did I mention that the debit/credit machine wouldn't work inside the library, so every time someone wanted to pay with plastic we (mostly me because I don't get cold) had to go out of the library, around the tables where they were selling school t-shirts, and out the double glass doors into the cold November darkness? And then sometimes the machine would still fuck with me, like "take me outside. Now I'm thirsty. I'd like a pony. Is that five green bars you see? Oh, now it's two red ones. Maybe I'll connect to the wireless and maybe I won't, what are you gonna do about it?" An extremely classy operation, it was. One guy said he felt like he was going to get his books home and discover that there were a bunch of letters missing. At one point the principal said we should try the conference room, and one man yelled across the library to his son "I'll be right back, I'm just going into this room with this lady". So that was awesome.

Anyway. We made a buttload of money for the school. Eve was awesome, both for her math skills and her entertainment value. The kids were awesome. I always feel extremely useful at book fair time. Also, Eve just read the third paragraph of this post because she demanded approval rights if I was going to tell the world that she and Marianna talk too much, and she said "now I know why I want to be an author - I get those skills from you." So that doesn't suck either.

Day 12

You know it's a bad NaBloPoMo post day when I resort to day-counting. I know it's a bad brain day when I have to stop and wonder how many days it's been and then I realize the Mo stands for month - IT'S THE DATE, STUPID.

Today I was getting dinner ready in the kitchen and Eve was asking me questions and her voice was coming from a place it doesn't usually come from - she wasn't in the bathroom or at the top of the stairs in the doorway to her room, which is where she's usually yelling from when I'm in the kitchen. I asked her where she was and she said "in here".

She was reading in the reclining chair in the living room. No one ever reads in that chair. No one even sits in that chair. Usually that chair holds Matt's briefcase and/or baseball and basketball crap. She was cuddled up in it with her book and a blanket.

It was like looking through a portal into an alternate dimension.

I listened to some of a program on CBC today about homosexuals and the Catholic Church. The priest on the show said "homosexuals are welcome in the Catholic Church."

Let's all just sit with that for a bit and maybe revisit the issue tomorrow.

Mondays on the Margins: Book Fair Edition

A couple of months ago, Katy the library tech at our school said the principal didn't really want us to have the Book Fair this year.

Uh........ say WHAT?

WHO DOESN'T WANT TO HAVE A BOOK FAIR?

Eventually she said we could have the Book Fair. A couple of weeks ago Katy said nobody had volunteered for the Book Fair. The newsletter is online now, which is great. People were always complaining about getting more than one newsletter if they had more than one kid at the school - having it online wastes much less paper. The only problem is that almost nobody reads it when it's online, so nobody knew we NEEDED volunteers.

So I said no problem. I'll just come every day.

As it turns out, we got more volunteers, which thank god because I love the Book Fair and I COULD go all day every day and today flew by and the library is my happy place, BUT my introvert energy tank is empty and I fed my kids leftover Chinese food and no vegetables for supper and I am brain. dead.

I sold erasers that look like lunch boxes, makeup compacts, video game controllers, moustaches, guitars and licorice.

I sold long sticks with a hand on the end that were meant for teachers to use as pointers for whiteboards but were being bought by children for the sole purpose of whacking each other.

I was paid fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents for two books - in nickels and dimes.

I said "okay, I can hold the Super Ear for you, but only until four o'clock."

I said "please don't bite the eraser, it's not made of actual food" more than once.

I said "no, nothing is free" more than once.

I almost hugged a little boy who came in, closed his eyes and said rapturously, "I can smell the books!

I experienced total brain-lock while trying to perform a fairly simple subtraction. I think actual smoke came out of my ears. We usually have calculators. Tomorrow I'm bringing a calculator.

I bought Eve this book and this book and a few other books. Then I let her buy a poster with puppies on it. I guess I was weak from all the math.

Eve came in for the hour we were open after school. She's better at math than I am, so she was helpful. We were looking at books and she picked one that Katy said was really good but had a few inappropriate words, and Eve said "that's okay. I'm an inappropriate child." Katy said that was understandable considering who her mother was. Before we left, Eve did a killer version of Walking on Sunshine with one of the stick-hand-pointer things, which had Katy and me practically on the floor, although that was maybe partly fatigue. And math.

I'm exhausted. I'm going to bed. With a book. I think that's fair. Ha.

Halloween this year

Last year (when she was the biker) and this year, Eve decided fairly early exactly what her costume would be and pulled together all the elements herself - well, I did order her biker boots online, but come on, how could I not bring the awesomeness of Eve together with the awesomeness of biker boots, given half the chance?

It was a leather vest in her closet that inspired the biker costume. I'm not entirely sure what set her off this year, and truthfully I found the whole thing a little bizarre, but she was enthusiastic enough beforehand and convinced enough that it was 'epic' when it was all finished that I decided not to intervene. I've always said that costumes pulled together from stuff you already have are better than costumes you buy. Right?

For your viewing pleasure, my daughter.......

The Vampire Rapper.

...named J.Z. Dawgy Dawg. (I suggested J.Z. Bitey Bite as an alternative. She was unimpressed.)

For the Halloween party at our friends' place, I was going to just wear pajamas. Eve vetoed that handily. So I found some zombie stuff in our costume box. But the day of the party I just couldn't face the thought of plastering myself in zombie make-up. So I found a blue dress and put on some blue lipstick and made this sign.

Get it? 

Yes, I did give some thought to whether proclaiming myself FREE for use of the PUBLIC for the evening, and inviting all and sundry to PULL to OPEN (have you SEEN the crowd I hang around with?). As it turns out, there was one ten-year-old boy dressed as The Doctor who kept trying to get inside me all evening. It was slightly inappropriate and yet adorable and hilarious. 

Angus was a bag of Eminems. Matt was in France. 

I know. I'm surprised Eve consented to be photographed with us.