There Were Two-Ton Kangaroos Before We Came on the Scene

It's been kind of a crappy week. I'll spare you the gory details, except to say that perimenopause is not for sissies and my already-dire iron levels are in danger of plunging even further. That coupled with the suffocating, enervating heat and humidity meant Monday and Tuesday were pretty much a write-off. Which was okay, I didn't miss anything important, Lucy and I spent some quality time in my reading chair in front of a fan with some pretty good books. The problem is always re-entry. I end up feeling like Rip Van Winkle, unsure about the customs and expressions in this world that's continued to rush by as I lay fallow.

I dragged myself out to book club last night with ill grace, after apologizing to my husband for snapping more than once (I know it only seems like the worse I feel the dumber his questions get). It was good. We had read Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, which was splendid. He does an amazing job of making centuries of human history comprehensible and digestible, while also doing a fairly poor job of concealing that he thinks we are a complicated and fascinating plague on the face of the earth who should probably all commit ritual suicide. The title may as well have been Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Sucking Hard at Nearly Every Opportunity. This naturally led to a spirited discussion between the idealists and misanthropes in the group. Also, there used to be marsupial lions in Australia. Marsupial. Lions.

It's meet the teacher night. Why do I hate meet the teacher night so very much? It's at a reasonable time. The set-up sounds logical and minimally chaotic. The weather is fine. Is it because going back to school stirs up all my old insecurities? I seriously would rather have a root canal right now and I really don't understand why. Of course, I actually do have to make long-overdue dentist appointments for myself and the kids and I'm not doing that either. I can't remember how to talk to people.

Eve and I had a really great week-end at a cottage with friends. This Sunday I'm going hiking in Gatineau Park. This is just a blip. I'll be okay. Well, not in the long run because clearly we're all doomed.

Mondays on the Margins: Writing About Books for Marks

In my School Libraries course last term (the one with the instructor who annoyed me), I did a Book Talk project on five YA books that had been made into movies. I thought I did an awesome job, but of course the instructor found all kinds of nit-picky details that weren't in the assignment instructions but we somehow should have just guessed that she wanted. One of her comments was "you should be honest about whether or not you've read all the books - students will be able to tell if you haven't, and you'll lose their trust."

SAY WHAT? As IF I'd do a book talk on a book I hadn't read. If I hadn't read it, I would just read it the night before. Okay fine, I can't read every single book in the library, but I can read all the books I do book talks about - are you saying you don't, Ms. Instructor, because maybe that's why I don't trust you. Hmph.

So my course right now is called Genre Fiction and Readers' Advisory, and so far it does seem like a Golden Age in Library Tech Courses for me. The whole discussion board is people going "omg, you loved that book? I loved that book! Have you read this book? I've totally read that book too!" And my first assignment is a book review.

......

I CAN DO BOOK REVIEWS. I'M AWESOME AT BOOK REVIEWS. THIS IS GOING TO BE SO FUN.

But you know what's coming, right? Yeah, cue the choke.

But wait. What if I'm NOT as awesome as I thought? I don't usually do them for marks. I usually just do them however I feel like. People TELL me they're awesome, but those people aren't college instructors, mostly. I put in my student profile that I have a book blog - what if that set up an unreasonable expectation of greatness? What if I do it wrong? What if I leave something out? Think, think, overthink, obsess....

Give head a shake. Pick awesome book, write awesome review.

Here it is:

*************

                I’ve been a fan of the horror genre since I was quite young, although at this point in my life I find that the best horror is at least as sad as it is scary, stemming from an archetypal fear of loss and mortality. Horror is also a very pure expression of Aristotle’s catharsis, as evoking the emotions of pity and fear is paramount in the genre.

                Also, although I agree with Diana Tixier Herald that “each genre follows rules governing plot and characters - and abides by certain taboos - that are acknowledged by authors, required by publishers, and expected by readers”, and that some “readers of genre fiction do not like to be surprised, and often feel cheated by twists in the formula”, I personally find that the best examples of genre fiction do tend to put an original twist on the genre blueprint.

                M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts succeeds admirably, in my opinion, in bringing a fresh perspective to a common horror trope (which is not revealed until partway through the book, so I won’t reveal it here), and in evoking pity and fear in abundance. The events in the book take place in a future version of England, after an event known as “The Breakdown” has caused widespread death and destruction. A small cast of characters are on an army base at the beginning, but events force them to flee into the dangers of the surrounding area in search of a new safe haven. Carey tells the story in the present tense, which lends an urgency and immediacy to the proceedings. He also reveals the full details of the threat gradually, building suspense throughout the opening chapters, which only tell us that a group of children are held on the army base and given the basics of a classical education by a succession of teachers.

                After the first violent upheaval in the action, the cast of characters is culled to four principal players: Melanie, who is infected, and considered by most other people to be a monster, yet she exhibits the most integrity and the strongest moral code of all the characters; Helen Justineau, Melanie’s favourite of the teachers, who is determined to protect Melanie at all costs, because she cares for her but also to atone for past transgressions; Sergeant Eddie Parks, stoic and embittered by the state of the world, determined to complete his mission and baffled by Justineau’s feelings for Melanie; and Dr. Caroline Caldwell, whose missionary zeal and ferociously single-minded quest for medical truth and personal glory have erased all vestiges of compassion or empathy or humanity. Later in the story, Private Kieran Gallagher is introduced, with a quick, vivid sketch that fills in his background and personality to an amazing extent with the fewest possible words. Carey has a gift for flawed, nuanced characters.

                The fact that the beginning of the book takes place largely in a classroom setting allows Carey to set in place a solid underpinning of great literature and Greek myth. The discussion of Pandora and Epimetheus creates resonant themes of human curiosity and hubris, while references to the Brothers Grimm foreshadow dark fairy tale elements with no happy endings. Words and language are important to Melanie throughout the story, as tools both to understand and control the world; this, along with Carey’s remarkably assured writing, strengthens the narrative thread and elevates it beyond much purely formulaic genre fiction. With Melanie and Miss Justineau, Carey perfectly renders the relationship between the worshipful student and the beloved teacher, while Dr. Caldwell’s solid, detailed scientific explanation of the pathogen that generated The Breakdown lends the story a chilling element of plausibility.

                Although there are moments of pathos and connection, the story is devoid of easy sentimentalism, reflecting on some fairly unpalatable but uncomfortably discerning truths about human nature. There is no deus ex machina or Hollywood ending, although the conclusion does contain a skewed kind of optimism.

                I would recommend The Girl With All the Gifts for anyone who likes intelligent, literate horror, and look forward to future books from this author. 

****************

Let's be honest, yours are the only opinions that really matter to me anyway. 

Day 20

Eve and I are home from the book fair and tired. We had an interview with her teacher who I already loved. She said Eve obviously doesn't face any academic difficulties, so she thinks they should focus on preparing for middle school and high school by working on the challenges of things like group work dynamics and subjects that Eve finds less engaging, like geography (poor kid has a little dead spot in her brain just like mine, where mapping skills should be). Then she said Eve was awesome, which, duh, but always nice to hear.

Then we went back to the book fair. It was crazy busy and crowded and I had to go out in the hallway every time somebody used debit or credit again and fighting through the throngs of people wearing winter coats made me claustrophobic and panicky,  but most people were awesome and we made a metric fuckton of money for the school library and by the end of the evening everything was hilarious and math stopped working in the library for a few minutes around seven o'clock and we thought about asking the principal if next year we could pipe oxygen into the library during the book fair like they do in Vegas. Then there was a lull and I walked around finding picture books and making them seem dirty (which wasn't that hard, really - There was an old woman who swallowed a stick? Oh what a trick, to swallow a stick? Seriously? Okay, she swallowed the stick to hit the puck, but come ON.) Then we played with the pom-pom pens that we had hidden behind the desk because the students kept whacking each other in the face with them. You click a little button that makes the pom-pom fly off, and it WAS oddly satisfying. 

Then we went to McDonald's and ran into some people who had been at the book fair, which made the night feel very small townish, in a good way. Then we came home and watched Bones. It started with a scene in a playground, and Eve said "oh, great. A bunch of kids are about to find a gross dead body. Why do we always watch this show while we're eating?"

Then she said something about dogs and I remembered that I had to show her this, which made me fall off my chair laughing earlier today. When she stopped laughing she said "WHY did she even sign him UP?" As a special bonus, we read the headline in the sidebar which said "Polish playground bans Pooh because 'it doesn't wear underpants'". 

And now I have to get ready for bed because Eve asked me if I would read the Bad Kitty Christmas book she got at the book fair to her just for fun. And I said I would. Because it does sound like fun.

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.

Shaky Thursday

How do I do this again? Blog without a specific event and pictures to anchor me? It's been a while.

I was feeling a touch surly last night, although mostly still shaky. I'm taking a basic Computers course in my Library Tech Diploma. Until now I've been able to muddle through all the courses even though I'm not terribly comfortable with computers and they keep changing course platforms on me; but NOW, I'm supposed to be learning about computers ON A COMPUTER. It feels somewhat akin to learning how to race cars by building my own car and then racing it - I worry there could be a catastrophic injury.

So I was starting a little late because of all the World Series nuttiness, then school starting, then Matt being in Asia and Eve having the flu, then Blissdom, because I knew the first assignment wasn't due until next week. I was working through the chapter on Windows 7, clicking all the buttons and thinking this was pretty good, useful and simple even - some instructions were just to 'notice' things. I can notice things! I'm a kick-ASS noticer! Then I got hung up on something (displaying windows side-by-side, if you must know, STOP LAUGHING, I'm good at other things!) and had to email the instructor, and then I started reading through the learning plan just to make sure I hadn't missed anything (of course I'd missed anything, I'd missed lots of things, did I mention they keep changing course platforms and I'm really bad at computer stuff?) and there way at the end is this one line: Exam at Mohawk.

Say what?

Since I'm doing the embarrassing confession thing already, let me just be up front about the fact that the first couple of courses I registered for were ONLY offered through Mohawk - it doesn't really matter, it's all through Ontariolearn.com, which is a clearing house for courses offered through a whole bunch of colleges. But some of the later courses are actually offered through Algonquin, which is the college nearest to me. But the Algonquin college registration interface is completely impenetrable, as far as I can tell - I've never been able to find the page where I register. So I went on registering through Mohawk, which has a really user-friendly interface but is in goddamned HAMILTON, five hours away.

Look! I figured out the snipping tool!

So I fired off a panicky email to my instructor, but it was almost midnight because I'd spent the evening helping out a friend who is solo-parenting her baby for the week and then Matt tried to install some viewing program that buggered everything and then spent another forty minutes trying to UN-install it, so I wasn't going to get an answer last night.

Whatever. Fine. I'm cool.

NO,OF COURSE I'M NOT COOL, ARE YOU INSANE? I might have totally screwed up because I was too stupid to figure out how to register at Mohawk, I might have to drop a whole course and be that much further behind in the diploma that I'm ALREADY doing so slowly that disco will probably be cool again by the time I'm done. That or drive five hours to write an exam at Christmastime.

No, no, enough of that. I'm a grown-up. I can accept that I make mistakes, and even if the worst-case happens here, it's not the end of the world. It's not death or dismemberment. It's only community college. I went to bed, played some Words With Friends, read a little and hardly laid awake all night worrying at all.

This morning there was an email from my instructor. She said of course I can write the exam at Algonquin and sent me a link to register for a proctor. Then she congratulated our family on the Little League World Series thing, because yes, I'm not above still using that as an excuse for everything - "I'm distracted in this course halfway through October because baseball".

Shut up.

Surly Thursday: Fear and Loathing at the School Barbecue

So I had a doctor's appointment early Wednesday morning. I made it early because I knew I was going to get weighed and I wanted to go without eating. This was a stupid, stupid idea. It was stupid because I know I've lost some weight and I shouldn't have been so hell-bent on the doctor's scale showing the most possible weight lost, and it was stupid because I live in a suburb that's reasonably far from downtown, which is fine in off-hours when the traffic is normal, but during what we like to call "escape from Barrhaven" when everybody's going to work, it takes an insanely long time to get there.

So I left an hour early for a drive that should take twenty to twenty-five minutes, and I was late, and stuck in traffic, and having a panic attack. I made it in around twenty minutes late, and managed not to burst into tears in the waiting room, and the doctor still saw me. And my weight loss was duly recorded and praised, but it was rather unfortunate that I was also there for a blood pressure check.

My doctor suggested strongly that I increase my medication dosage since my anxiety seems to be riding a little high. YA THINK? So to sum up - fuck you, fucking anxiety, you are HARSHING MY BUZZ.

After the doctor, I sat in my van and took some deep breaths. Then I drove to Starbucks and met The Maven and Sarah. And, well, I'm not going to talk about that now, because it makes me unable to stay surly. I drank a bunch of tea and basked in their awesomeness and we talked and laughed and interrupted each other and said no, you go first, and talked some more and laughed some more and the people that were there trying to get work done probably cursed us in their heads and wished we'd shut the hell up and two and a half hours flew by like nothing.

Thursday I started getting stuff ready for my birthday party on Saturday, and did an assignment and a quiz for my course, and it all would have been lovely, except it was the day of the effing school barbecue, which I used to be able to just not tell my kids about, but as soon as Eve was old enough to listen to her friends and read the memos she was bringing home I was screwed.

It shouldn't be that bad. I know a lot of people at the school. Some of them even like me. The weather was nice although it was supposed to be raining. It was only two hours long. Why does it strike terror into my heart and make me loathe all of humankind?

I'll get to that in a moment. I have to add that, as I was backing the van out of the driveway and talking to Eve about something, there was a horrific clunk that scared the hell out of us. I realized that, now that the huge snowbanks that made backing out terrifying are gone, my husband decided to move the basketball net from his truck's side of the driveway to my van's side. So while I was trying not to hit his vehicle's mirror with my vehicle's mirror, the mirror on the OTHER side of my vehicle whacked the basketball net. My reaction was somewhat disproportionate. I mean, it's possible - probable, even - that he wasn't expressly setting me up to wreck the van and feel like a total failure as a competent driver and human being. It's possible he was just trying to move the basketball net away from the tree. Regardless, it was a less than auspicious start to the whole ordeal.

We picked up Eve's friend whose parents weren't able to take her. We walked down the street to the school.

So here's the story. It's a big school. There are a lot of people. You think that knowing a good number of people should mean that you can find someone to talk to - maybe more than one person! - but the truth of it is that most years I end up wandering around feeling fat and awkward and lost and alone while Eve runs around getting hot dogs and freezies and going on bouncy castles with her friends. It's in a wide open field, so the sun blazes down relentlessly for the entire two hours. There's loud annoyingly perky music playing. There are about six picnic tables for about eight hundred people. I saw my friend's kids, then I realized she'd sent her husband instead of coming herself and felt a brief flash of total hatred for her. Then I couldn't find Eve and her friend for a good half hour, wherein I went from "it's cool that at least I don't have to stay with them the entire time because they're old enough to go by themselves and you know nothing's going to happen with all these people around in a contained area" to "jesus christ, I'm going to have the only kid who ever disappeared in full view of the entire school, out of a contained area". And just as an extra little bitter garnish, I realized that my husband usually doesn't come because it's baseball season and there's always been a game on barbecue night. But this time there WAS no game, and he was just sitting home in blissful silence and coolness and non-fat-social-leper-weirdness. After having put the basketball net right where my mirror would hit it. Then I found Eve and her friend.

You can imagine how well things went when I got home. Just kidding. Mostly. I do it because Eve has a great time, and I know that as a parent sometimes we have to do things we don't like for our kids. I just sort of fail on the part where we're supposed to do it halfway graciously.

Off to the drugstore. Hopefully as a side effect, the anxiety meds will also treat the overwhelming tendency to be a petty cow.

Distance Learning - and I use the term advisedly

There was a scheduled chat for my course on Mobile Technology for Library Technicians last night. There haven't been any chats in my last few courses. I haven't missed them, exactly, but they can be fun and productive. It's a rare chance to get a glimpse of fellow students and share ideas, when usually we're all toiling away in isolation and only seeing the odd remark on a discussion board. I tend to have a good time in chats because a) I can type really fast, so I'm always able to reply quickly and address people before ten more comments have been entered and b) I'm old now and, whereas I used to concentrate on getting the right answer the most times, now I try to get the most people to comment on how funny I am. I can't seem to stop myself from trying to get the professor to say "Allison, you're being slightly inappropriate." In the really tough course on subject analysis, wherein the Dewey Decimal System almost drove me to rack and ruin, the chats were a great opportunity to commiserate, realize that everyone was having an equally rough time, and share strategies for not letting the course break us. So yeah, a good chat can be useful and entertaining.

Last night's chat, on the other hand, was a total clusterfuck.

It was too early in the course. Nobody had read enough to have any really intelligent questions or enlightening comments. There is a huge number of students, so it's almost impossible to follow a conversation or reply to someone or keep track of who the instructor is addressing. A couple of people had posted in the discussion groups about making their own QR codes, which had made me afraid that this group was going to be way more advanced than I am in mobile technology and I might be out of my depth. If you're the kind of person that thinks it's kind of horrible of me to go into the chat worrying that people might make fun of me for sounding dumb and then proceed to make fun of people for sounding dumb, this is probably a good time for you to go read something else.

So there was an online quiz we had to do. There were a few technical difficulties with the online quiz. There are almost always a few technical difficulties with something at some point in these courses. The instructor had already told us in a group email that she was working on it, and not to worry about it.

Many, many people were very worried about it. They had not gotten perfect on the quiz, and they didn't understand why. They had seen that other people didn't get perfect and didn't understand why either, so they felt entirely justified in demanding to know why they didn't get perfect (obvious answer being 'you answered some of the questions wrong'). They couldn't see if their answers had been submitted properly. They were VERY UPSET that they couldn't see if their answers had been submitted properly.

Then there's the part of the chat where (this happens even in the good ones) several people want to know when we will getting back our marks from the first assignment. Even though it's always been clearly laid out when we can expect to get our marks back. Then someone (or several someones) always ask "how did we do on Assignment 1?", when what they really mean is "How did I do on Assignment 1?" and, well, yeah, you still have to wait for your mark, because the instructor is most likely not going to say what she's actually thinking, which is, "most of you fine, a couple of you really well, and some of you should get whatever money back is possible and buy lottery tickets" .

My husband came up to make me tea as I was staring in disbelief at the screen. I told him what was going on. I said "somebody just asked what WiFi is". "Say that you're confused about your sexuality", he said helpfully.

"Nicole has to leave early to walk her dog", I said. "Forty people just said good-bye to Nicole." He gave me my tea and told me not to bang my head on the table too hard. Someone asked the instructor if she had any advice for doing well on the course. She suggested reading the lectures and working carefully on the assignments.

The last time I had a course with chats, the power went off here just as one was about to start. I have a bad feeling that might happen again.

Surly Thursday

Thesauruses (thesauri?) tend to make me surly. First of all, I have this irrational feeling that if I use a thesaurus, it's kind of cheating. It's not really a hundred percent my own work any more if I have to get a word consult. But more than that, doesn't it often turn out that using a thesaurus doesn't really work? I was writing an assignment and looking for a synonym for 'celebrate', as in 'celebrate diversity', but I'd already used 'celebrate', and didn't want to use it four more times. But 'beat the drum for diversity' really didn't seem appropriate. Neither did 'blow off steam' or 'carouse' or 'ceremonialize'. And 'drink to'? Yes, my marketing assignment was really going to fly with my brilliant plan to organize a book club for elementary school students wherein we all 'drink to diversity!'

So yeah, this course. It's called "Library Marketing and Advocacy". Except it just started being called that - last term, before they reworked the entire goddamned curriculum for Library and Information Technology Diploma, it was called "Client Services". I looked at this course title back when I started the program, and I thought "that course is going to be a walk in the park where I just write nice little papers about courtesy and treating clients with respect and delivering great customer service and bullshit like that". And I bet it WOULD HAVE BEEN if I'd taken it a couple of term ago. Bugger. BUGGER! As it is, my husband had to talk me down off a ledge last week as I was starting this assignment, because the only thing that freaks me out more than computer database work is anything that smacks of (shudder) SALES. I could not sell water in the desert. I could not sell potato chips to stoned people. I could not sell pasties to Rihanna. I do not possess the Marketing Gene.

And then people hurt my feelings on Twitter. And then people hurt my feelings on Blogger. And then people on Facebook made fun of string cheese, and people, the fact that I can have a cheese string and fifteen almonds at three-thirty is the only thing preventing me from committing shawarmageddon or a cheeseburgerpocalypse all over my Weight Watcher points right now, so just BACK THE FUCK OFF MY DELIGHTFULLY STRINGABLE DAIRY PRODUCT, WILL YA?

There's a package of chicken breasts in the fridge. I think if I have to cook it I'm actually going to kill myself.

Hannah's Surly Thursday post can be found here. So proud to be Spreading the Surly...

Who's the Nuttiest of Them All?

I was just emailing one of the commenters from yesterday's post saying that I wish people didn't have to feel like they have to say "my anxiety isn't as bad as yours" when talking about their anxiety. I really don't think I'm the Queen of Anxiety. I'm not the anxiousest in the land. But also, wtf is up with all the anxiety? Is it the genetically engineered corn? Is it a by-product of people idling their cars? Is Dr. Doofenshmirtz blasting us all with an Anxiety-inator?

Everyone in the Tri-State area will henceforth weep with agonized indecision when asked 'paper or plastic?'

For me right now, transitions are especially bad. I changed clothes five times trying to get out of the house to go to the school. Then I went to the portable which is Eve's classroom but the teacher wasn't there. By the time I found the correct room, I was sweaty and breathless and ready to burst into tears. But once I was in the room, I was totally fine. Of course, the fact that the main message was "tell Eve to keep being awesome" didn't hurt, but even if there were issues I think I would have been okay. I just can't get myself from 'at home making soup' to 'at school talking to teachers and helping at book fair' without much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

The book fair was fine - fun, even. I knew most of the people I was working with, except one woman who was blonde and pretty and very nice but didn't quite get me, and I felt bad that I kept making her sort of freak out. I started filling out an order form and I did it at the top instead of the bottom which was not correct but also not the end of the world, but she was blushing and hyperventilating trying to point out my mistake and she kept saying "I'm sorry", so I patted her on the shoulder and said "it's fine. And believe me, this won't be the last time tonight that you have to tell me YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG",  but that didn't seem to help. She didn't stay long after that - I'm hoping that was planned and that I didn't scare her away.

Most people were incredibly nice, even when there was a line-up or we screwed up with the credit/debit machine. Then there was one woman. I was doing pretty well with the adding stuff up in my head, but it was late in the night and I was tired. Generally, I would tell people the total, they would give me some money and I would do the "13.50, fourteen, fifteen, and five is twenty" while counting their change out of the box. This woman did that thing where it was six-fifty and she gave me a twenty and then five dimes. And.... I was lost. I knew it should be simple, but my brain seized up and I was too embarrassed to use the calculator, and so I tried counting the change out. She just looked at me, so I said "did I do that right?" and she said "No. It was six-fifty and I gave you twenty-fifty and you gave me thirteen." And then just looked at me some more. Until I said "You need fourteen?" And she said "Yes." So I gave her another loonie and an unvoiced wish that her eyebrows would be infested with public lice because wtf? She needed to dispense a little humiliation instead of just asking nicely for another dollar? She's lucky I didn't take her out with a moustache eraser.


I picked up the kids from my Mom and Dad's and we went home. Eve babbled at me for a bit, and then I explained that I'd been at the book fair all evening and I really needed some no-talking time, so she kissed me on the cheek and went upstairs. She came down a while later and said "I was thinking it was about six o'clock, and then I wondered why my eyes were closing and I really wanted a hug from you and I realized it's NINE." So she crawled into Matt's spot with her Fuzzy over her head and went to sleep and I came to bed and it was the first time she slept with me while I had my CPAP mask on and lasted all night. So that was nice.

Feeling snarly

I went to pick up Eve from school and came home with what feels like a nasty, tangled yarn-ball of upsetness in my stomach. I will herein attempt to untangle these grimy strands of emotion - lucky you.

Eve has had four teachers thus far: her English homeroom teacher, who she adores; a French teacher, who she likes; a male science teacher who she triple-extra-special adores; and a music, art and dance teacher who she really likes. Today she came out of the portable looking extremely downcast and handed me a letter informing us that science and music, art and dance will now all be taught by the French teacher, due to 'increased enrollment'.

1) This sucks. She was so excited to have the science teacher, who has taught Angus and who all the kids love. He had her all fired up. About rocks. Seriously - we were walking home from my Mom and Dad's the other day and she explained the entire life cycle of a rock to me, and then said her favourite rock was obviously sedimentary because hello, it's AWESOME, and then metamorphic, which is only slightly less awesome, and then igneous, which I guess is the least awesome but still, fairly awesome. On library day she got a book on rocks and minerals so she could do extra study.

2) This sucks. The teacher they had for music, art and dance runs the dance club at recess in her spare time. Clearly, she has expertise and enthusiasm for dance. Her last name is hyphenated and the second part is -- I shit you not -- DANCE.

3) This is not a huge deal. Shit happens. It's a good school and Eve is a good student and she will learn about rocks no matter who is teaching. We still have the awesome homeroom teacher. Kids are adaptable.

4) This is insulting. The letter from the principal says brightly that she is 'confident that the transition will be seamless' and that she's happy that the kids will have fewer teacher contacts. Well bullshit, the transition is already not seamless - I took Eve for a haircut after school and she started telling our hairdresser about it and almost started crying. There's no way kids aren't affected by this, even if the disruption is temporary and they eventually adapt. And I actually don't think that fewer teacher contacts are necessarily a great thing - if a particular student has issues with a particular teacher, sometimes it's a good thing if they're not together all day every day.

5) This is life. Things change, and sometimes undesirable changes are unavoidable. Which sucks.

6) I shouldn't be as upset as Eve is. When Angus started JK and he was supposed to do a book presentation and I realized near dismissal time that he'd forgotten his book at home and almost had a nervous breakdown, I had to start learning that I couldn't go through school with them experiencing all the same fears and anxieties I did the first time around at the same level. I have to keep learning this over and over again.

7) I don't have to tell Eve that she shouldn't be upset. She's allowed to be upset. Because this sucks.

Okay. I've unraveled my tangled skein of sensibilities. I've discovered that ninety percent of it is major suckage. I've just told Eve she can have ice cream before supper and watch Glee and she said "You're going to let me drown my emotions?" Yes. Yes I am. Sometimes losing a really great science teacher hurts as badly as losing a boyfriend. And sometimes, instead of unbraiding your feelings, it's better to just pile two scoops of mint chocolate chip on top of them.

So I went on this field trip...

It was really far from the school, just like that other one - over an hour on the bus.

BUT I was sitting with this really nice woman who moved here from Edmonton last year and we talked about books and teachers and working for the government and the time flew by. We were in the second seat from the front, so there was a nice breeze but not a 60mph wind whipping my hair into a Medusa-like frenzy.

The weather forecast was 35 degrees with the humidex, with possible thunderstorms.

BUT it didn't feel that hot or humid, and the whole place was shaded, and the weather was perfect and beautiful and it didn't rain.

We were going to someplace called MacSkimming Outdoor Education Centre, which I was led to believe was a kind of conservation area, and we were told to bring bug repellent, so I was envisioning swampy ickiness swarming with frogs and mosquitoes. One woman at book club said, with great portent, "I've always managed to be unavailable for that one", and I quailed, QUAILED, with terror.

BUT it was actually a pioneer village, there was no swamp in sight, and the bugs weren't that bad.

When we first got into our groups with the instructors, I realized that the entire area was covered with those tiny pebbles just like the ones around the bench at baseball, and I had a flashback to 12 seven-year-old boys kicking the rocks in a deafening rock-sliding din and blinding choking dust flying around and I was just taking a deep breath for a consciousness-losing screaming session....

WHEN the instructor said to the kids "look, we're standing on these little tiny rocks, and the temptation for you all to kick them around while I'm talking will be strong, but if you do that no one will be able to hear, so we need to listen respectfully and keep our feet glued to the ground". AND THEY DID.

We went to the schoolhouse and they let the kids dip quills in inkwells and do lessons. Some of the kids got ink all over their fingers. And hands. And arms. And faces.

BUT they let me help wash it off in the bathroom before lunch. And one little girl said "thank-you for washing my face" very politely.

They let the kids lift relatively heavy logs, grind corn with honkin' big mortars and pestles, drill into tree trunks, use hammers, and wield two-man crosscut SAWS.

AND yet everyone went home with all digits and limbs intact, and they were all thrilled at everything they got to do - Eve said gleefully, "they let us use inappropriate tools!"

I know, I know - everyone was waiting anxiously to commiserate (I don't want to say 'like a bunch of rapacious vultures hovering around looking to tear with vicious beaks at the carrion of my misery' or anything). Unfortunately, there's just no story here. I'm about equal parts relieved and disappointed.

I went on a field trip.... and it was fun.

Building a log cabin

Stuff I was Thinking While Driving Around

I was out running errands - library, grocery store to get stuff for a good field-trip lunch for tomorrow, because remember this little piece of hell manifested on earth? I decided it wouldn't be fair not to experience the same unsanctified splendours with my younger child as well. That's not true, she actually brought the form home and begged me to sign it and send it back RIGHT AWAY because the first three Moms got to come and she was pretty sure no one else would send it back the very next day (uh, yeah, because NO ONE ELSE WANTS TO GO), so I did. Only afterwards did I realize it's an all-day deal again and it's supposed to be 35 freaking degrees out again and I have to ride on the bus. Again. Please god let the epi-pen chick not be in my group.

....and flowers for my Mom to plant in our front planter, which she does as a birthday gift for me. Of course last year she bought the flowers, which meant I appreciated the effort but hated most of the flowers. This year I bought the flowers, which means she'll still plant it for me but will hate the flowers. We share not one iota of aesthetic sensibility, my mother and I.

Every time I'm driving and I see someone walking along the road hauling grocery bags I have the immediate impulse to stop and give them a ride. I remember hauling grocery bags, and while sometimes it felt like good exercise and a reasonable part of the day's work, sometimes it was just a slog. It would have been awesome to have someone pull up and offer me a quick ride home in an air-conditioned vehicle. Of course, it would have been awesome if it was someone I knew, not some crack-brained stranger who might have a knife hidden under the driver's seat or some kind of paralytic drug that she would administer in order to render me helpless while she parks in some secluded area and forces me to listen as she reads aloud from The Magicians or Little, Big, or some other book that she adores and can't figure out why every single person she recommends it to thinks it's dreck.

So I don't offer anyone a ride, because I am no longer the struggling student or carless young person. I am now the crack-brained stranger. In case that wasn't clear.

As I was pulling up to the mailbox on the way home, I saw a woman walking on the sidewalk across the street who had obviously just been running. She was.... thin. The adjectives I want to insert there are 'painfully', 'skeletally', 'excessively', but I acknowledge the possibility that she just has a marathoners body type and maybe she's completely healthy. I imagined getting out of my van and calling out to her, "you look a little too thin", and her calling back, "you look a little too fat" and the two of us cheerfully going on about our days.

Mondays on the Margins have been postponed due to my post-traumatic field-trip disorder

Eve's class has been going to the community pool for the last three Mondays to learn 'life-saving skills'. It was great. She's been a very slow starter in swimming; she loved being in the water, but she wouldn't jump in, didn't like going under water, and needed water wings well after the other kids her age were eeling around without flotation devices. This was fine until she went to summer camp last year and couldn't pass the swimming test and ended up having to hang around in the shallow end with little boys in life jackets. So I put her in a private swimming class, and she's made enormous progress. Over March Break, my friend and I took the kids swimming and she passed the swimming test easily, even though it was a long swim in water over her head. She got a little nervous before the first Monday, but passed the test again, didn't have to wear a lifejacket, somersaulted into the water and jumped off the diving board for the first time ever. She was loving it. She was loving it so much she asked if I would come watch at the last class yesterday. Which also meant supervising the girls changing in the locker room.

The class has fourteen girls and six boys.

The proper life-saving technique would have been to say NO FUCKING WAY. But I said sure, why not? Because I'm stupid like that.

The thing with the girls at this age -- tell me you've noticed this -- is, even the ones that are sweet and nice and funny and obedient on their own turn into little turds when they're in a group. On a bus? They lose their everloving shit in five seconds flat. Trying to open windows. Trying to close windows. Flinging their bags of stuff up on the racks. Trying to get the same stuff down from the racks. Sitting backwards. Sitting upside down. Arguing over which guy in the Hunger Games is better and saying "My name is Slim Shady" over and over. There are rows of empty seats and nine kids squished into the very last ones, because ya know, having a quarter of a butt cheek on the last seat, that makes you cool.

Then we're in the locker room. All they have to do is take off their clothes, put their stuff in a locker, put on their bathing suits and get their towels out.

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I think it would have been easier to build a time machine. And I am not mechanically inclined.

Some of them took minutes just to pick out the perfect locker. Some of them collapsed on the bench and their stuff was immediately scattered in a five-metre radius. Some of them were so preoccupied with not being naked that it took them twice as long to get changed, and the rest took all their clothes off and looked around vacantly, as if they couldn't remember the next step. This tiny, cute-as-a-button blonde girl took out a plastic ziploc bag with her epi-pen, inhaler, and brush in it and looked at it and went 'oh my gosh!' and I said 'what? What?' in a total panic, thinking she was missing something vital and about to have some kind of medical crisis. She opened the bag, took out the brush and said "THAT'S not medicine!" and put it on the bench.

Then my head exploded, so that took a few more seconds.

Then we went out on the pool deck. It was raining, and there were some leaking pipes, so you can imagine, the "OH MY GOD, IT'S LEAKING, IT'S A FLOOD, WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE OH MY GOD, Selena can you sit beside me on the bus on the way home?" They were all supposed to sit down and wait for the instructors, which they did for about half a second, then they were up and changing seats, and inching along the wet ledge in front of the seats trying really hard to fall and crack their heads on the concrete until I snarled at them that they were all horrible, wretched little ingrates and if they didn't park their little butts in a seat and stay there, they would shortly be in need of some REAL life-saving. Because I'm good with kids like that.

Then they had the actual lesson, and that was cool. I just sat there sweating, had a brief conversation with another mom about how if we were teachers we would both be raging alcoholics, and Eve went off the HIGH DIVING BOARD! Then she wouldn't shut up about how it hurt her leg and she had a headache, and I told her I'd never met anyone who could ruin a magical moment as effectively, and she said "well then welcome to your first time!"

Then we had to get them changed back into their clothes. So, the first part in reverse, but much, much worse. Because now they were wet, and there were hair issues, and more pieces of clothing had to go ON their bodies, and oh god, the humanity.

Two girls disappeared into one of the private change rooms and every time I looked at their four little feet, they seemed distressingly still and not moving around in a putting-on-clothes-type manner AT ALL. The little blonde girl kept saying "Where's my Epi-pen?", which, okay, fine, you should know where your epi-pen is, but I'd told her EVERY TIME that I had put it back in her backpack, and I'm pretty sure it was for food allergies and WE WEREN'T EATING ANYTHING. Naked little girls were combing their tangles out with excrutiating slowness - I swear, they were staring at me challengingly at the same time. Did I mention there was a bus waiting for us, and we were edging up on school dismissal time? And that if we got out to the parking lot a bit early I might be able to score some meth or something to dull the pain?

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One girl put on her dress and then couldn't find her pink leggings. She searched along the piles of stuff on the bench and found them. The little blonde girl had a dress on and winter boots, but her legs were still bare. I said sweetie, don't you have something for your legs? She said 'oh yeah', and looked at the bench and picked up HER UNDERWEAR, which apparently was hitherto considered optional, and then said "where are my leggings?" And yes, you've got it, girl number one had put on girl number two's pink leggings. I grabbed the pink leggings girl number one found in her bag, thrust them at girl number two and ordered her to put them on and said they could trade back tomorrow (you know, the day when I would be hiding in my house lest I spy an 8-or-9-year old child and have a screaming flashback). 

Everybody was heading towards the door except me and the little blonde girl. Eve had gathered up my purse, her bag of wet stuff and my sweater. She said consolingly "all you have to do is grab your water bottle, Mom". Blessed child. I think she sensed that the next time blonde girl asked "where's my epi-pen?" my answer was going to be "in my neck". 

Well, it's KIND of funny

I shouldn't have promised a funny story, when really it's funny in a very particular, some might say slightly pathetic, kind of way.

So I'm working away at my library technician diploma, one course at a time, right? And a lot of these courses are about stuff that I've had little or no exposure to, and the learning curve can be steep. But I'm fairly intelligent (shut up, I am so) and I work through them and it eventually comes clear and I generally get between 93 and 97 percent on a course because I am and always have been a keen, anxious, overly perfectionist student. A couple of times I've emailed in assignments and felt like I hadn't done terribly well, either because the assignment was, in fact, difficult and I wasn't sure of my answers, or because it seemed too easy and I worried that I'd missed something (I tend to overthink things, in case you hadn't noticed). Every time this happened and I talked about it, I felt sort of embarrassed when the assignment came back and I HAD done well. We all knew those people in university who got all hyper about every exam or essay or lab and said "OH MY GOD, I'm TOTALLY going to fail" when in fact the worst thing that probably could have happened was that they would get an A instead of an A plus, and even THAT probably wouldn't happen. I like to think I wasn't quite that person, but I'm not entirely sure.

So. The course I'm taking this term (Subject Analysis and Classification) is HARD. Remember the rousing pep talk our instructor gave us at the beginning? Well, she wasn't kidding. The first assignment, which was on Library of Congress subject headings, went fine - I got about 80, which was fine with me. Then we started on Dewey Decimal numbers. Now, numbers are not really my friend at the best of times. I try not to talk about how bewildering I find a lot of math stuff, because Eve loves math and is good at it, and I hate the 'girls are bad at math' stereotype, but the fact is, I'm a girl, and I'm not great at math, it's a fact. And this isn't math, but it involves charts and graphs and  there are these schedules, and from the schedules you go to tables, and then you go to other tables, and then you put all these numbers together to form big long other numbers, and there are rules with seventy-five exceptions and it is labyrinthine and counterintuitive and it does NOT make me want to sing Oh Sweet Mystery of Life At Last I've Found You.

I did something I hardly ever do with schoolwork. I went into denial. Things were busy, and I didn't feel like I could gain much ground with the short periods of time I had, so I figured I'd wait until Matt was away this week and a couple other things were done, and I would take the kids to school in the mornings and take a few days to get caught up on the exercises and then work on the assignment which was due next Sunday.

We had a great week-end. Friday we watched a backlog of Modern Family and Big Bang Theory episodes on the PVR. Saturday we went to our friend's 40th birthday party, which was a blast. Sunday morning Matt left and I was noodling at the computer before picking up Eve at one friend's house to take her to another friend's birthday party. I casually checked the course schedule just to make sure I was on track for what I had to do this week.

And I saw that the assignment was actually due LAST Sunday. Like, TODAY Sunday. Like, in ten HOURS Sunday.

I stared at the date, checked the calendar, stared at the date some more. I thought, I wonder why I don't feel worse. Maybe I'm in shock. Why don't I feel worse? Why am I not hyperventilating?

Then I realized, hey, I'm not in shock. I'm a grown-up. I screwed up. It's one assignment in one course. It's not the end of the world. I'll take Eve to her party then I'll come home and crack the books, and I'll get as much of the assignment done as I can, and I'll go from there. I probably won't fail the course, and even if I did, the only sucky thing would be losing the money and having to take this bitch of a course again.

Personal growth, I'm telling you. HUGE personal growth.

So I did all that stuff, and the first part of the assignment went not abysmally, if not swimmingly. The second half was much worse. We were supposed to reverse-engineer these incredibly long numbers, and I got the first two, but after that I could get to maybe the second decimal place and then I was stuck. The kids were in bed, it was nine o'clock and I thought, I COULD stay up until midnight and work until the very last second, but it probably won't get me much further, and one or two extra marks isn't worth the exhaustion and aggravation. So I hit send, and then sent my instructor an email explaining that I had let myself get behind and I was sorry for the less-than-stellar assignment, and I would work on getting caught up for the next one.

I congratulated myself. I emailed my husband and called Pam and they congratulated me also (I sort of made them, but they seemed fairly sincere). I went to bed and slept like a baby. I was sort of looking forward to getting the assignment back and waving it in people's faces (figuratively, I don't want to break any noses with my laptop) and saying 'look, I TOLD you it was really hard and I might not get a ninety, and THAT'S FINE.'

And then the next day my instructor emailed me and told me to go ahead and take a few extra days if I needed them.

Why, Universe? Why do you mock me like this? Why won't you just let me grow?

He Who Rejects Change is the Architect of Decay

Then BRING ON THE DECAY, I say. I don't do well with change (I may have mentioned this before). It doesn't matter if the change is mighty or miniscule, positive or pissy, it stresses me the fuck out. Not intellectually - I look forward to the changing of the seasons; I like the freedom that summer holidays bring; I also like getting back into the routine of school, piano lessons, me and the kids reading in my room at night before bed. I like the satisfaction of finishing one course and the challenge of starting a new one.

But something in my body there is that does not love change (I was trying to do a takeoff on that line of poetry about something in nature not loving a wall, but I just ended up sounding like Yoda. Fuck.) The kids get out of school and I'm a panicky ball of angst. The kids go back to school and I'm a weepy mess. I got new glasses a couple of years ago and I actually wrote in my diary "I hate how they feel when I'm washing them. The lenses used to feel curvy and welcoming and now they feel flat and unfamiliar in my hands." (yes yes, I'm even a teeny bit MORE insane than you suspected, take a moment to process and let's move on). My hair dryer finally died a few weeks ago and I HATE the new one, almost solely because it's new.

So I'm focusing my negative energy on clearing the crap out of my house. Again. Because apparently there is an invisible Crap Factory somewhere in my house that keeps churning out more crap to replace every bit of crap I get rid of. Pam and I dropped five garbage bags and multiple boxes of stuff at Value Village today. Then we went shopping. Oops.

I also kind of want to start doing a regular book review day here, but I'm hobbled by the fact that none of the days of the week has a first letter that is amenable to alliteration with 'book' or 'review'. I mean 'Wordless Wednesdays' is a no-brainer and Amber used to have her 'Mat leave Mondays', there was a Friday Funny for a while...I just don't know if I can properly do a regular feature that doesn't have a catchy title -- is that even allowed in blogging?

Now I will distract you from my whining with multiple cute pictures of my daughter with her home-improved backpack and on the first day of school - and the one or two pictures Angus would consent to pose for.

It keeps going...and going....and going...

Oops, I took a week off. Not that I was on vacation or anything. Actually, the lead-up to summer vacation for the kids leads to a lot of hard work on my part. First I had to finish Eve's giraffe project, then I had to help Angus make up a disco dance to Stayin' Alive - will somebody tell me why we're still in school? The report card marks are all in, it's a million degrees in the shade, and the teachers are assigning silly make-work stuff that I end up doing most of because, in addition to everything else, the weeks of rain at the beginning of the spring baseball season mean that baseball is STILL GOING, which is okay for Angus since he'd sleep in his hat and glove if I let him, but Eve and I are SO DONE. Partly because we keep losing - she's in rookie, which means it's coach pitch, and our coaches can't. Which is not their fault, they're volunteers and it's a hard job, but there it is. She's usually a really good hitter, and this year she was in a terrible slump, and I have no eye for this kind of thing, so I had to wait for Matt to take her to a game and come home and say "um, it's because of the crappy pitching", which was a bit of a relief, but still kind of a bummer because naming the problem was very decidedly not going to make it go away.

So now we're in playoffs (a week later than we should be). The end is in sight. In fact, if we lost last night we wouldn't have to play our game tonight, we'd go straight to the week-end. I don't want to say Eve and I were looking forward to losing but, um, it's really hot and and we're both tired and... anyway...

Of course they frigging won. Eleven to two. Eve was on fire. She played first base and got someone out. She played second base and got someone out. She got a hit. Everyone got a hit. I don't know if the coaches were pitching better or we just got lucky and the other coaches couldn't pitch either and their players didn't get lucky. Eve reluctantly admitted that winning was kind of cool, even thought she's less than impressed about having to play again tonight. We stopped at the ice cream truck on the way to the car (which was kind of rewarding bad behaviour on the part of the ice cream truck guy - who the hell parks right outside the baseball diamond and sits there playing the song for two innings while a bunch of six-to-eight-year-old kids are supposed to be concentrating on baseball? Actually, the other team was a little closer to the ice cream truck - maybe he won it for us) and the guy asked her if she was on the winning team and we both almost said no without even thinking.

There's also the fact that having the only girl on a baseball team full of six-to-eight-year-old boys pretty much ensures that you have the best-behaved kid on the team. The unfortunate corollary to this is that you end the season pretty much ready to wring the neck of every other player. Seriously -- you were just asked not to kick the gravel for the fourteenth time and look, three seconds later you're kicking the damned gravel again? Really? Hey you, you're playing second base, stand up. Stand up. Stand up. Stand up. No really, you have to stand up. Um, any chance you could stop throwing that helmet against the fence? No? Okay, cool.

So if they have baseball they don't really have time to do homework. So I just do the damned homework because at this point I just don't care any more. They keep asking if they can just skip the rest of school and I keep saying no, partly because I'm afraid they'll miss something fun because shouldn't they just be doing fun stuff now? and partly because it's like a rule that you have to go to school, and I'm all about the rules (except the one where you don't do your kids' homework). But I'm weakening.

Mediocre Pictures of the Day of AWESOME

Mostly it was awesome because, you know why?

Because I wasn't on a FUCKING FIELD TRIP, that's why.

Not that this wasn't fun:



Okay, actually it wasn't that fun. It was fun going with the kindergarten class. OH MY GOD, A COW. OH MY GOD, A HORSE. OH MY GOD, A TRACTOR. Seven and eight year olds are just too freaking jaded. I found it mildly amusing when our guide told them to try not to freak out and laugh and shriek when the animals, ahem, relieved themselves, because it was upsetting and unsettling for the animals. I wanted to pat the woman on the shoulder and console her for having just uttered possibly the most useless statement anyone has spoken, ever.

I was soundly vindicated some moments later. OH MY GOD, IT'S PEEING!!!!!!!!

The only fun part was when I found my friend Collette who was there with her daughter's class and we sat on a bench watching the kids play on the play structure and talking about how badly we would suck as teachers:

Me: "Yeah, it would be bad. I'd have favourites, and I wouldn't bother to hide it. I would always pick the same kid to take the attendance list to the office."
Collette: "I'd be even worse. I'd have kids I didn't like, and I wouldn't bother to hide it. I'd be all, 'put your hand down Bobby, no one cares what you think'."

That was awesome.

So anyway, today. My Mom told me yesterday that she had decided that for my birthday she would plant my front planter for me. This is possibly the best idea I have heard ever. Of course, being my Mom, she was on my doorstep with bags of dirt and a bunch of plants by the time I wandered down from the shower, or I would have a 'before' picture, which would really bring home the full effect of this gift. Sadly, the lopsided display of overplanted grape hyacinths and the one measly yellow tulip with its mutant dandelion offspring went unphotographed.

But you still get that this is WAY BETTER, right?:



While my mother was slaving in the heat and dirt, I swanned off with Pam to buy linens, since the other night I rolled over and bed and my toe caught on something and there was a loud ripping noise. Shut up, it was a tiny hole in the bottom sheet becoming a great big gaping hole in the bottom sheet. So we went to The Linen Chest, where a lovely woman who I think might have been just a tiny bit high kept telling us that if we needed help to call her Rebecca - or maybe it was if we needed help to call her, Rebecca - and then she talked about how my smile was lovely and real and we - Pamela and Allison, which were beautiful real names - were warm, which was good because cold people sucked her energy. Then she gave us chocolate, so it was all good. I bought green sheets with tiny subtle polka dots in them.

Then we went to Pier One where I picked this up, ON A WHIM:



(Guys! It has CUPHOLDERS!)



...and this REALLY NICE warehouse guy helped us load it in the van. Then we went to Red Lobster for lunch and our server was named KAITLYN - and YES, she totally fit into the parade of INSANELY HELPFUL and possibly slightly chemically altered service people that came our way in the day of awesome.

Then we came home. And before I went to pick the kids up for school, I was looking out in the backyard at the cardboard wrapped chair pieces that my lovely husband has since assembled into an actual chair, and there was a fly buzzing around. So I opened the screen door - and it flew out.

See? Awe. Some.

I'm a Moron

And the universe is just fucking with me now. I volunteered for Eve's class's field trip this week, because I'd gone on Angus's and I didn't think fast enough to book a colonoscopy or have a crippling accident that would have convinced Eve I couldn't go on hers. And the teacher sent a note saying thanks for offering but we already have enough volunteers.

YAY. Full credit for good intentions (which I did not have, my intentions were distinctly grudging and ungracious) and no requirement for arduous follow-through.

Then she came out when I went to pick up Eve this afternoon and said she'd had two last-minute cancellations so they could really use my help after all.

SONOFABITCH. Should have maimed myself when I had the chance.

I get to drive by myself this time. It'll be fine.


Nan from Wrath of Mom was talking about movies she hasn't seen and movies she loved but couldn't watch now, which reminded me of A Room With a View, which I adored and watched over and over. Once I watched it with my friend from University. Jen was funny and outgoing and I was always a little in awe of her. She spoke her mind and worked in a bar and slept with older men. After the movie, she said wistfully, "you know, if I was living this movie, I just know that I would be in love with George.... I would kind of want Freddy (who would be her brother if she was living in this movie, but let's just let that go by)....

but I would end up sleeping with Mr. Beebe."

It was an impressive display of self-knowledge.

I Think I Know What We Should Do With War Criminals

Never mind hauling them off to the Hague. Just send them on a fifth grade field trip that takes place an hour away from the school. And make them ride the school bus.

Three classes. Twenty-five kids each. Three kids to a seat, when they're mostly too big to fit three to a seat, so they squirm and elbow each other and spill into the aisles and drop their water bottles, which roll under the seats, and then they try to climb under the seats to get them. A daytime high of forty-one degrees Celsius with the humidex. A bus with a non-existent suspension so your forty-year-old tailbone meets the seat with punishing force over and over and over. Five girls shrieking Justin Bieber songs directly behind your head. And that one kid whose face is somehow just really annoying.

It was Hell, manifested on earth.

The field trip itself wasn't bad, although I invariably volunteer for field trips, hope desperately not to be picked, get picked and wonder why the hell I keep volunteering for field trips. Except I really know why. I'm a stay at home Mom. Before my kids were in school full days I had very little difficulty justifying my existence. My husband would come home saying he'd had a rough day at work and I would say "really? Did anyone pee on you? Did you have to stop anyone from eating cat food? Did anyone nearly fracture your orbital ridge with their head while trying to reach the cookies in your backpack? Did you, at any point, hold vomit in your bare hand? No? Then shut up and help me bleach this."

But I'm nearing the end of my second year of both kids being in school full days, and I still haven't gone back to work. I know - it sounds heavenly. I assumed I would be giddy with freedom. I assumed my house would be spotless and scrupulously organized by the end of the first month, I would be finished my first novel by the end of the sixth, and OBVIOUSLY I would be thirty pounds lighter, because, like my mother said "you can go to the gym five times a week!"

From where I'm sitting at the kitchen table right now, I could reach out and lay hands on six novels, three textbooks, a kit for making twinkle tiaras, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Cheese Touch Game, a sock puppet wearing sunglasses, and a box of ant bait. That should give you a clue about the state of my house. The state of my ass? Let's not discuss it.

It's not that I haven't done anything. It's just that those six hours a day aren't as expansive as they seem once you're actually living them. Even though they seem like special, magical hours, it turns out they get eaten up and chipped away by stupid annoying crap just like every other kind of hour. I help out in the school library, I help out in the classroom, I take some courses, I go to for walks, I go to the gym. Sometimes I sit in my chair and read a book. Occasionally my friend Pam and I explore a new area of town or wander into a restaurant that serves us cupcakes instead of carrot sticks and asks us IF THAT's OKAY - those are good days. But I haven't started a business or trained for a marathon or even learned to play a Chopin waltz perfectly. I often feel like I haven't quite done enough with those hours, which then makes me wonder if I'm making the most of being a stay at home mom.

The days I go on field trips? I don't feel like that.

Helping in the classroom is a pretty cushy gig. You help dye some Ukrainian easter eggs, you help make stone soup, you read a book out loud, maybe you help someone build a pulley or make a bug out of playdough. You squeeze your butt into a chair that's too small and you get to be a fly on the wall watching what your kid does every day, which is kind of a kick. But field trips? Like I said, they make you ride the school bus - they mutter some crap about supervisional ratios, but really I think the teachers just want to share the misery. Because the school bus? The school bus would be too loud if that many kids all just talked. But they don't all just talk. THEY ALL YELL. Then you find yourself responsible for a group of kids which without fail contains some boys who will tear off ahead so you lose them and some girls who will dawdle behind so you lose them and frankly, I don't need the pressure - most of the kids who aren't mine at some point become so annoying that I flirt with the notion of losing them on purpose, but I'm always dimly aware that their parents probably find them somewhat less annoying and would probably not be overly impressed if I lost them. The last time my husband saw me checking the 'yes' box beside the 'will you be able to help'? question, with my usual grumbling, he said "you know, just because you're at home doesn't mean you have to volunteer for EVERY field trip". I looked at him blankly and said, 'um, actually I'm pretty sure it means exactly that.' Having to be behind a desk or on a factory floor or manning a customer service counter is a pretty solid excuse for not going on a field trip. Having a vague plan to put away the Christmas decorations that have been sitting on the stairs for five months? Not so much.

Anyway. Today we went to the Mill of Kintail Conservation Area. It's not only beautiful, it was much cooler there than back in the city, with the breeze off the river and the shade from all the trees. My son Angus actually thought the R Tait Mackenzie Museum was really cool. There was a scavenger hunt with half of my group of six took VERY SERIOUSLY ("okay, let's all split up and look for different things! I'm looking for the anchor! I promise I'll find the anchor! Jared, you look for the tree with the cross on it! Angus, what are YOU looking for?!") and the other half was eminently willing to throw over in favour of going to look at the headless crow in the woods. There was a hike in the woods with frequent stops for conversation about animal habitats and frequent opportunities for me to get in trouble (Employee: "Okay, what's the first rule of hiking?" Me: "No talking about hiking! No, wait, that's fight club..."). There were two girls who walked around holding hands and stroking each other's hair, which struck an exact balance between cute and creepy, until I realized they were part of the Bieber-song-shrieking group, whereupon I filed them firmly under creepy.

The bus ride back? Well, it was full of seventy-five sweaty ten-year-olds covered in bug spray, so it smelled even worse. But Angus suddenly decided that the loud silliness at the back of the bus in which he had enthusiastically participated on the way there was now 'annoying', so he decided to sit near the front and said I could sit with him, and slept on my shoulder for a bit, so that was kind of nice. When we got home he said "thanks for coming. It was nice that you suffered with me." He's eleven. I take my bonding experiences where I can get them.