Visiting

Last week-end Eve and I and my parents drove down to London to spend Thanksgiving with my sister and her family (the boys stayed home because Angus was writing SATs Saturday here in town). This week-end I drove down to Waterloo with some friends to go to an Oktoberfest event with friends that had moved there in the summer (Matt went to Watertown with Angus for baseball - Eve had music camp at school and found it inexpressibly amusing that Matt and I were both going to places that had Water in the name. She's weird).

Both week-ends were great, except I'm getting worse and worse at staying at other people's houses. It's never been my favourite thing. I'm a weird guest. I use a lot of ice. I need a lot of showers. I hate getting up in the morning in a strange place. And I'm used to keeping my house a few degrees above a walk-in refrigerator's temperature and this fall has been unseasonably warm, so I was melting for close to the entire time. I don't know if the perimenopause thing has fully kicked in that way, but unless I was right out of a cold shower and standing in front of a fan I was uncomfortable - and other people were wearing sweaters. It makes me afraid that I'm going to turn into a weird(er) recluse who never goes anywhere. Is it just me? Everyone I was traveling with seemed to just take it all in stride.

Besides that, it was all great. Eve joined school band for the first time last year and had an amazing teacher who really encouraged her and it was a great experience. He invited her to volunteer at a band camp he runs at the school in the summer, which she did, and finished all her volunteer hours before she even started high school. But all my friends were kind of dicks about how she kept saying "band camp", so my sister and I told her to watch American Pie with my niece. She watched it. She said "screw all of you, I'm still calling it band camp". And this is why I love her. They also watched the first episode of This Is Us, and I got to be there when the penny dropped near the end of the episode and they were very satisfyingly open-mouthed and shocked and impressed and teary and it was an epic moment.

I haven't been to an Oktoberfest event since university when I went to a Waterloo bar that just put an '-ausen' on the end of its name and got drunk, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Since we're older with more disposable income now, we bought tickets to a more authentic venue and it was really cool (Dracula jokes aside). There was a band that was a polka band and a cover band, and traditional dancing that was really cool, and traditional food that was delicious, and people in lederhosen and dirndls, and a mechanical bull that I didn't ride because I was wearing a dress (I have some regrets).

And now I'm home, and a comfortable temperature, and had a good sleep in my own bed, and I miss my sister and my friends. But Eve just came home and said "I have an egg test tomorrow so you're all getting poached eggs for dinner". And Angus made the honour roll again last year even though he went to Oklahoma for the Junior Sunbelt Classic one week before second-term exams. So there's that.

This Is Your Brain on Jet Lag

You get home from Hawaii on Sunday evening at four. You go straight to your mother's for Easter Dinner. You bring your kids home. You do four loads of laundry and go to bed.

On Monday your husband leaves the country again. You go to your mother's to pick up Easter dinner leftovers. You forget half of them but that's normal, you're a forgetful person. You go back for the mashed potatoes.

You also go grocery shopping and buy stuff for book club, which you just realized you're hosting at your house in two days. Shortly thereafter you look at the calendar and realize that book club is not until next week and wonder what you're going to do with twelve avocados.

On Tuesday you go to Shoppers Drug Mart and stand in line to pick up your prescription. You give your name and wonder why it's taking the girl so long to find it. You then realize that you're not actually there to pick up a prescription, you're there to buy cold medicine for your daughter. You apologize and slink away.

You go out into the parking lot and realize to your abject horror that you're parked in a handicapped spot. You look around wondering if anyone noticed and then realize that it's not, in fact, a handicapped spot but a former handicapped spot with no sign and the pavement symbol mostly painted out, just like you realized when you PARKED THERE TEN MINUTES AGO.

On Wednesday you drive out to Stittsville to discuss and sign your final evaluation from your work placement. It is glowing and wonderful, and you really hope you don't do anything jet laggish to screw things up. It goes pretty well, except you drive over a curb in the parking lot on your way out.

On Thursday you pick up your mother to go watch your daughter in the school play. You stop for gas on the way. You put in your credit card, follow the instructions, pick up the nozzle and stick it in the hole and wonder why nothing's happening. You're about to yell "THIS THING ISN'T WORKING" when you realize you just forgot to select the grade.

On Friday you almost scoop a half cup of uncooked rice into your dog's bowl instead of dog food.

On Saturday you watch funny half-naked men and have some drinks.

On Sunday you throw axes and feel thankful that you can blame anything wonky on the drinking.

On Monday you think you should be fully recovered, but you still feel the urge to yell "THIS THING ISN'T WORKING" at intervals, and the thing not working is your brain.

No wonder my husband is kinda dumb sometimes. This traveling business is hard on the thinking, y'all.

Pieces (Parts?)

In my university residence, there were two guys named Andrew. I knew one of them had a glass eye, but I could never keep straight which one it was, so whenever I was with one of them, especially if there was alcohol involved, I was always stealing surreptitious glances at their eyes trying to figure out if one was fake.

In one of my Comp Lit seminars, there was a guy with one arm. When he wore a shirt with the guy from A Clockwork Orange on it to class one day, I realized he looked almost exactly like the guy from A Clockwork Orange. A few times the class went out for drinks, but I was always afraid to get drunk around him because I was terrified that I would blurt out an insensitive question about what happened to his arm. Which, in retrospect, probably wouldn't have been that big a deal and he probably got asked all the time. But back then, many things seemed like a big deal that probably weren't.

Also, it's possible that I drank too much.

Day 14

I really have nothing. My general existential ickiness isn't following the curve I was trying to bend it into. I did work out today, which is a small victory since I really felt like just sitting - which reminds me of an article I just read on how we should be making our kids move more and moving ourselves more other than just in small bursts of activity that we pay for, and I agreed with everything about the article except its title, which was "Sitting is Still Killing Our Kids", and that is so needlessly inflammatory and sensationalized and click-baitey it almost negates the good stuff in the article for me. I'm so sick of things being titled "Number Four Will Blow Your Mind!" and "Six Suppers Containing Spinach That Your Kids Will Devour!" and Some Really Clever Third Thing I Can't Think Of! You don't know my mind. You don't know my kids. Can we cut down on the titular hyperbole a tad?

I just opened my email and Etsy sent me a November Gift Guide. At the beginning was the same black linen sundress that is at the beginning of every Gift Guide I get from Etsy because I looked at it once, and apparently some algorithm has decided that I MUST HAVE IT. Dudes. It's November. Let it go.

But then I came to the miniatures. The miniatures. As Eve says "why is it that small things are so cute and perfect just because they're small?" Well, sweetie, partly so we don't abandon our kids on that mountainside where an eagle pecks out your liver when they turn two and learn the word 'no'.... but I digress. So geez, look at this shockingly realistic tiny roasted turkey so your dolls can have Thanksgiving dinner. And this unbelievably beautiful tiny lemon layer cake so your dolls can have a birthday party. And this pile of tiny wine bottles so your doll can go on a bender after her boyfriend leaves because he's sick of getting flak for putting his feet up on the tiny coffee table - she's better off, chances are he wasn't anatomically correct anyway. I couldn't find a tiny bottle of Maalox but fortunately there are myriad tiny toilets. Who knew dollhouse life could get so sordid?

Soylent Blissdom: It's People! Peeeeeople!

Yes, it's been a couple of weeks since Blissdom. Yes, I've taken my sweet time assembling this post. Yes, I'm a little conflicted about what to write.

I love the enthusiastic, fired-wired-inspired posts from people who have discovered their Inner Writer, or Inner Entrepreneur, or Inner Brand Spokesperson. I love hearing about people who had their creative potential unlocked by a panel or a microsession. I love Lesley, who is now practically the Blissdom Poster Child, or should be, and I love seeing what Blissdom started for her.

Lesley, rocking the Jack Skellington look

But I'm not young, or fired-up, or especially unlocked. I've looked into my Neighbourhood of Inners, and let me tell you, it's full of assholes. And I'd like to say that Blissdom stuffed a gag in the gob of my Inner Name-Caller, or obliterated my Inner Confidence-Sucker, or shouted down my Inner You-Can't-Do-Anything Reaffirmer. But I'd be lying.

I still haven't figured out how to move my blog to Wordpress. I still haven't found a way to make money writing that doesn't make me feel like I'm losing or corrupting or selling out my voice - the voice I finally felt like I'd found with blogging. I've seen other people do it, and I'm happy for them, but I'm not there yet; I might not ever be there.

And that's okay. Blissdom is a sprawling, wide-ranging animal, and not everyone will get the same thing from it.

What I get from Blissdom, is free, unfettered, week-end-long access to some wholly kick-ass people.

Like Nicole, who texts me telling me I'm wonderful and sends me chocolate-covered fruit when I'm sad and introduced me to Erica Ehm as if I was the famous person. She is the most delightful combination of sweet and salty (rarely has an unkind word for everyone, worked tirelessly for the Yummy Mummy Club and still had time for me and Hannah, and every once in a while comes out with a well-timed "Tell him to eat your dick!" just to keep things interesting) and I love her. 

And Hannah, who has the same stupid no-one-is-going-to-be-happy-to-see-me anxiety I do and is smart and witty and funny and lovely and pretends it's not weird that I can't let people eat on my bed and when she got there we were so excited that she screamed and I think I hit her in the face with my phone trying to hug her and when they played My Humps at the P.J. Party she yelled"Oh, fuck off - if I don't wear a two hundred and fifty dollar bra, my humps are ON THE FLOOR!" And I love her. 

If there had been nothing good about Blissdom except Hannah and Nicole, it still would have been well worth the trip and the admission price. But I also got to see Courtney, a fellow book-blogger I met at Blissdom last year and became blog friends with - she ran a microsession on blogging for mobile technology. She also wore a poodle skirt to the Throwback Thursday party, which, hello, insanely cool.

She was afraid no one would show up for her session, so Hannah and I said "We will! We will show up! Even if we are slightly hung over from a fabulously strange lentil carnival." Okay, we didn't really say that, but we were, and we did, and the session was was full of stuff that I didn't know and really should know, and Courtney is a great teacher, and we had fun.

And Schmutzie. Schmutzie is wise and kind and a national treasure and I love to read her writing but it's nice to hear her voice now and then, and plead for my yearly pity hug, which she claims is not a pity hug, so I should probably stop calling them pity hugs, because honesty is kind of Schmutzie's thing. 

Then there was my extra-special sparkly prize at the bottom of the Blissdom box this year.....

Kate! My Kate! She's a well-established blogger and Ambassador of Chill and she spoke at the Power Hour, so she's kind of a big deal, but I still persist in thinking of her as My Kate, and she's generally pretty gracious about it. . She came up to me and Alex and Jolene when we were having dinner (after I had already crashed Alex and Jolene's dinner) and said mind if I join you, and who could mind being joined by the quintessence of grace and charm with an effervescent sprinkling of goofiness? 

This was Kate's first Blissdom, so she didn't know about the dance-til-you-sweat-your-ass-off part of the Pajama Party. "I thought we'd be laying around on pillows" she said plaintively. It's okay, My Kate. Lots of people wear flannel their first year.

I spend so much time in the world feeling like a round peg in a square hole. There's something magical about walking around in a crowd of people who get that a computer screen can actually be a portal to a deep, wide, comforting and supportive and uplifting community (I just made the blogosphere sound like a really expensive bra, and I'm okay with that - presumably Hannah is too). 

So no, I probably won't turn up next year all fired up about SEO optimization (I like to stick quirky, cryptic titles on my blog post and rely on fate to lead people to them), or pitching brands for sponsored posts, or if I'll start writing in shorter paragraphs with the important information near the beginning. Some people would say I'm doing it all wrong. And maybe I am, but at least I'm doing it. Before I started blogging, I was hardly writing at all. I couldn't find a voice, I couldn't see a path. In a million years I wouldn't have shown up at a conference for people who write and called myself one of those people. 

Do I call myself one of those people now?

You bet your ass I do. (Yes, I wish this was my ass. It's Nicole's. It's kind of a tradition for Nicole's fabulous ass to show up in my Blissdom post). 

After the pajama party on the last night, when Hannah and Nicole had gone to bed, Courtney knocked on my hotel room door and invited me down the hall to hang out with some friends. I wandered in and, within a few minutes, realized I was in a room with two people I knew and four I didn't, and that I had gotten ready for bed before leaving my room, so instead of party pajamas I was now wearing non-party pajamas, and a smear of zit cream on my chin, and no underwear. 

Yeah, I might have been a little TOO comfortable at that point. I will endeavour to restore some standards for next year. 

Thank-you, Blissdom people. If I never make a cent from blogging, I feel like meeting all of you is an embarrassment of riches. 

Meme Monday: Seven Questions

I still haven't figured out how to resolve Meme Monday with Mondays on the Margins, except yes I kind of have: if I don't have a book review post ready or Eve's birthday post, for that matter, OR the family vacation post I am assembling, then clearly I would be an idiot to pass up a free post idea, provided by the lithe and lissome Nicole, via her friend Kimberly.

1) If Jane had 3 apples and John had 78 nails, how many layers of clothing are you wearing (how is the weather in your neck of the woods?)?

Freakin' schizo, not to put too fine a point on it. First it was frigid freezing, so that Eve's first two trips with the school ski club got cancelled, which she was HIGHLY put out by. Then it snowed. Then it went back to just normal cold, which meant I walked around with just a sweater on again. Then the temperature started creeping downwards again, so that I would go out somewhere and suddenly realize that I was really cold. At home I'm still wearing my oh-so-sexy huge socks, leggings and a t-shirt, but I just got in from grocery shopping, sat down at the computer, and suddenly realized that my boobs are icy cold. And they had more layers on then everything else, so, go figure.

2. What is keeping you sane during these long winter months?

photo credit
creative commons license

Aw, bless her heart, Kimberly is making a very large, very kind assumption, isn't she? These days when I'm driving, whenever I approach a traffic light I find myself saying out loud "It's green. I can go", or, "it's red. I should stop. Stop now." I think it's safe to say my sanity is tenuous at best. As far as what's keeping me from going all the way around the bend, likely running a red light and causing a multi-vehicle pile-up in the process, I would have to say, in no particular order: meal planning, treadmilling, and binge-watching The Shield and marveling that this Michael Chiklis is also this Michael Chiklis, as well as being profoundly grateful that I don't live in Farmington, New Mexico. And cheetos. Which kind of negates the treadmilling. And hanging on Twitter with Nicole and Hannah. Which keeps the cheetos in check, more or less.

3. If you were on a boat with a box of chocolate and your Mother In Law, who would you throw overboard?

I used to think the mother-in-law cliché was just that, and only that. The experiences of several of my friends have shown that it is a stereotype for a VERY GOOD REASON. My own mother-in-law, however, HAD one of those stereotypical bitchy mothers-in-law, and she, therefore (somewhat, although I think she would have been great anyway), is beyond reproach in all our dealings. She gives me awesome presents, compliments me on my parenting, and doesn't make backhanded comments about my weight (my friend's mother-in-law gave her a coupon for a hip-slimming girdle. DO YOU EVEN WHAT THE FUCK HOLY HELL CRAPNUTS). I love her. 

4. What’s in your underwear drawer besides underwear?

Nothing. There's A-list underwear and B-list underwear. Does anyone NOT have B-list underwear? I'll know we've made it when the whole drawer is filled with A-list underwear.

5. Do you trust yourself with sharp objects near your face? (as in, do you pluck your own eyebrows? Do you have any eyebrow horror stories?)

photo credit
creative commons license

I make a half-hearted attempt at plucking my eyebrows now and then - mostly they're a disaster. And, not to sound like I'm trying to top Hannah's story, but I got my eyebrows waxed for the first time THE DAY BEFORE MY WEDDING, and THAT was when I discovered that, no matter how much they say they're using the wax for sensitive skin, I can't get my eyebrows waxed without burn marks. Happily, my wedding make-upper was skilled enough to fix things for the wedding, but I had big ammunition against my mother, who had coerced me into getting it done. A few years ago I had Angus at First Choice for a haircut, and the woman cutting his hair looked at me and said "you know we wax eyebrows here, right? I can do it today. Really. Go in the back and sit down." Hmph.

6. I am terrified of dead bodies, spiders, and the dentist. What are you scared of?

Dead bodies? Pfft. Spiders? Whatever. The dentist? WELL OBVIOUSLY, dentists are TERRIFYING. Alphabetically? Answering the phone. Bats. Cantaloupe. Dancing. Earwigs. Flying squirrels. Germs. Helmets (lice). Public speaking. Spin class. 

7. Does your husband cut up the back of your legs with his long toenails when you sleep?

No. But the other night he had a Guinness at my parents' house in the evening, forgetting that drinking beer in the evenings is generally inadvisable at this point in his life. At one point he farted so loudly he woke HIMSELF up. He turned over, looked at me reading beside him, wearing a less-than-impressed expression, and said "I'm bringing sexy back?"

8. Are you wearing nail polish? 

Before our trip to the Dominican, my mom took Eve and me for manicures and pedicures. It was my first manicure ever - a French gel manicure. It was nice, but then two of the nails on my right hand tore further down than the ever have, way below the quick, which was incredibly painful. I know correlation does not equal causation, and I probably wasn't going to get another manicure anyway, as a neurotic hand-washer and improper fingernail-user, but this makes me doubly disinclined. My toenails are a lovely lavender with swirly designs. 

One thing at a Time

I'm practicing that thing where you treat yourself like you're somebody else instead of yourself.

Wait, that's not exactly it.

Where you treat yourself like you would treat someone you actually like.

Not good either.

Where you tell yourself what you would tell one of your friends in the same situation - yeah, THAT'S it.

So I either get up very early or very late, in general. That's how it goes - either I get up with the kids, when Matt's away or I have stuff to do, or I let myself sleep until I feel rested, which is never, so I force myself to get up when I'm too embarrassed to actually stay in bed any more, and that's late. The CPAP machine hasn't been the miracle cure I hoped for, but I don't snore any more and theoretically at least I'm getting more deep sleep, so that's good.

But for the last two days I haven't had to get up for anything, and I've gotten up earlier than usual. Just been awake, and felt able to get out of bed without throwing up or feeling dizzy and heavy-limbed and weepy.

So maybe, after a year, the CPAP is actually doing its work, and maybe I will gradually improve until I am able to experience waking up at a normal time as a normal human activity, rather than a hellish, screaming ejection into agony and harm.

OR...

maybe I won't, maybe I'll stay the same. That's okay, because this week I had a couple of good days.

My husband's been away about three weeks out of the last eight. I found it more difficult than I have recently. I'm not sure why - Eve got sick both times, and it coincided with the craziness of school and fall activities starting up, and I just felt a little not-right mentally. For whichever reason, I felt like I was surviving, not thriving, and things in the house and in my course were a little bit neglected. A couple of days ago I picked up a book on hold from the library that I really wanted to read, and bought a couple of books because I was in Indigo to buy a birthday gift and, well, books. I gave myself a stern talking to, though, and said no reading the books until I got the basement storage room in order, even though the very thought of tackling that briar patch makes me go fetal.

OR...

I could realize that sometimes it's just hard being a solo parent for a week and a half, even when your kids are spectacular human beings, and that spending an afternoon or two with Fred Vargas BEFORE attacking a hideous chore might put me in a better frame of mind FOR that chore. Or even if it doesn't, maybe I could do it anyway, just to be kind to myself, because my course assignments have to get done (they have), but fixing the basement storage area doesn't, not right away. 

If I was a better blogger, I'd probably rack my brain now for a third thing to place in this pattern, because three things is a nice balance for anything like this, isn't it?

OR...

I could stop now and go read my book.

Be kind to yourselves, people. It can be done. 

If only bedbugs were the major problem

So I'm feeling heavy and sad at the moment, so naturally I'm making a huge negative out of something that promises to be largely positive, by which I mean a tentative-yet-almost-certainly-correct diagnosis of severe sleep apnea.

I waited months for an appointment at the sleep clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital. And of course I almost didn't go because why NOT get incredibly pessimistic and assume that it won't help at the last minute? The psychiatrist/sleep specialist guy was AWESOME. Not dismissive, not supercilious, not humourless (all things I've come to expect from medical specialists). There was a long set of forms to fill out and an exhaustive interview about family medical history, my history of depression and anxiety, the fact that I display allergy symptoms but the allergist says I'm not allergic to anything (this doctor said: "just because you're not allergic to anything in his little needles doesn't mean you're not allergic to anything" - HA!). Then at the end of this he spent thirty seconds looking in my mouth and said, "Huh. Your palate is the size of the average eight-year-old's. And your tongue is actually fairly small, but enormous in comparison. I'll eat my stethoscope if you don't have severe sleep-breathing issues."

So there. Years and years and years of never waking up feeling rested, of not being able to drag myself out of bed unless I absolutely have to, and feeling like a zombie when I did. I have my overnight assessment at the end of September and then likely will be provided with a CPAP machine. And it could all get better. The doctor said this probably developed when I hit puberty. I said "cripes, I could have been a brain surgeon". I was joking.

But today my thinking is a jumble of stuff like this: how stupid am I that I didn't do this years earlier; what if it doesn't work and things stay the same; I've always suspected that the sleep stuff is all tied up with my depression and weight stuff, but what if it's not; how much of my life have I wasted sleeping. I could have been a better mother, a better student, a better worker, a better person.

In other words, it's an ugly knotted tangle of being afraid that the treatment won't work and being afraid that it will work.

Let me approach these concerns rationally. None of my doctors suspected this condition or suggested the sleep clinic despite years of hearing about how I never felt rested when I woke up - they just gave me sleeping pills. Sleep clinics weren't even on my radar until recent years, and if they were then they were for people who had REAL problems (whatever those were). There is every chance that things could improve, but it won't be a magic bullet, so I shouldn't expect to suddenly be Suzie Sunshine or lose thirty pounds, and THAT'S OKAY.

I've been joking since my appointment that when anyone bugs me about sleeping late I can just say "I have a medical condition" now, but the truth is no one really does. My husband is sweet and understanding about it and my kids have never known me to be any other way - they just know that I'm going to be not much use to them in the early morning, and we figure out how to mange that. I did realize shortly after describing the condition to Angus as a breathing obstruction and then said I wasn't going for the overnight assessment for a couple of months that I had just intimated to my anxious child that I don't get oxygen at night, so I assured him that I wouldn't die before then, which was good because I'm pretty sure he would have been parked beside my bed to make sure I was breathing otherwise.

So I need to settle the fuck down. My life hasn't been a waste because of this, and treatment is just a good thing.

Besides, I'm pretty great even at half-speed. Maybe I would have been just Too Much Awesome for the world without this.

What Day Is It - Extreme Edition

So here I am, in mild panic-mode, because Zarah and the kids left on Saturday and I only have three days to do all the laundry, finish my 40% assignment for my course and pack before leaving for New York on Wednesday - in addition to provisioning my baseball-preoccupied menfolk and making sure Eve has rides to and from drama camp and my Mom will help her with a costume for Friday if necessary. And my father-in-law showed up tonight for a spur-of-the-moment visit from Thunder Bay to see Angus's team play in Provincials.

So I'm making curried chicken, way too late because I decided to work out as well as getting groceries and by the time I put away the groceries and unloaded the dishwasher it was too late for regular supper. The chicken smells a bit weird. I can't decide if it's off or just needs a rinse and will be fine with lime juice and curry powder in the mix. I look at the date on the package. It seems like we're a couple of days before the best before date, but then I start to get confused, because how can I be leaving on July 25th and coming back on August 5th and only be there for four nights? So now I'm thinking the chicken is WAY past its best-by date, and I'm also feeling deeply disoriented about where in July we actually are. So I ask my father-in-law and the kids what date it is and get three different answers. I look at the calendar, but that doesn't help because I know what DAY it is, just not what WEEK. I look at the phone.

I realize I'm not actually leaving for New York until a week from Wednesday.

I feel like a total and complete jackass.

I'm also giddy with the unlooked-for joys of SEVEN WHOLE EXTRA DAYS.

Then I go back to feeling like a jackass.

I call my Mom to confess my jackassery. She says "so it's after the long weekend?". I say "no, it's ON the long week-end". She says "Well that's this week-end!". I start to see where I might get this from.

My husband was also totally on board with me leaving this Wednesday, even though he booked my flights for me.

It's not really working. Still feeling really dumb.

Oh well. My assignment's done early, and I didn't actually iron anything. So it's all good.

Wait - BlogHer isn't actually until next week-end, right?

Weeknesses

Oh look, one pitiful post this week - possibly a new low?

It's been a strange week. Matt was in China (that was not the strange part. That was fairly normal, which suddenly seems a little strange, but whatever). Monday was beautiful and sunny. Pam and I went down to Dow's Lake to walk around looking at tulips and saying things like 'ooh, nice tulips'. Then Pam took a picture of me that made it obvious that 1) I've gained some weight over the past year or so and 2) When I try to suck in my gut it makes it look like I'm trying to stick out my boobs, possibly in two different directions. On the up side, my hair wasn't bad.

Monday night Eve had baseball (they won) but she was already starting to get sniffly and Tuesday she stayed home from school with a bad cold. Her nose was running, but the worst cold symptom she gets is that her eyes tear up horribly. When she was young this was terrible, because she didn't understand that it was just happening because she was sick - she thought that if tears were coming out of her eyes she must be sad. Now she just finds it annoying.

The week was going to be a welter of tortuous logistics, with Matt away, Eve's Tuesday dance class and Thursday dance performance (at school for the art display night), four baseball games between the two kids and Angus getting braces. But Eve was sick, which meant she didn't go to dance class on Tuesday night, and Angus's first baseball game got rained out. This should have made me more relaxed. But Tuesday, I felt so exhausted and crappy that after Angus left for school, I got Eve breakfast and went back to bed, I let Angus play video games for too long in the evening, and by Wednesday morning I felt like I was lying at the bottom of a deep, dark hole with something heavy and immovable on top of me.

I sat at the computer while Eve lay on the couch all morning. I tapped keys aimlessly. I tried to breathe. Breathing felt really hard. I tried not to cry because I didn't want Eve to worry. I was kind of glad she was here because it felt like being alone would have been worse. I thought about asking Twitter for help, but then I felt like I'd been doing too much of that lately and it didn't see possible that it would help, which means I was further down than I've been for a long time. I felt the future disappearing.

But I had to take Angus to get his braces on. So I dropped Eve off at my Mom's and picked up Angus and acted normal. And Angus was funny and goofy and sweet and it wasn't morning any more (I'm starting to think that I'm 'not a morning person' in a slightly more intense and unfortunate sense than the usual one). And I started to feel better.

Thursday I got up and went to the gym and got on the treadmill, where I always listen to my ipod but still look up at the bank of televisions. I was hoping for I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant, because we all know how an unearned sense of superiority crushes the last of a depressive episode, but all I saw were sappy shows about children getting home makeover experts to built a garden for their recovering-from-cancer single Mom. I am not a sentimental person. Well, I am, but I have an overactive snark gland that always takes over before I can get too far down any sentimental path. So I was confused when water started dripping off my face when I didn't think I was sweating that much, and then I realized with utter horror that I WAS CRYING. ON THE TREADMILL. AT A SHOW ON THE LEARNING CHANNEL.

I took a deep breath and looked away from the offending show. Directly at a clip of a soldier returning from Afghanistan, who was crouched down while his six-year-old son with cerebral palsy who doctors had said would never walk WALKED ACROSS THE ROOM TO HIS FATHER, JESUS CHRIST THEY'RE TRYING TO KILL ME. I looked away from the televisions and tried to concentrate on the music.

This song.

This song.

Oh for fuck's sake. I probably would have cried if it was this song. I started laughing, which just made me feel even more like I was completely losing my shit. I took deep breaths and stared directly ahead of me. At the defibrillator.

Today was sunny again, and I was fine. I never used to be that big a fan of the sun - it was, I don't know, too bright. Too obvious. Now I practically need a goddamned prescription for it. Pam and I tracked down Suzy Q. Holy mother of fuck, Suzy Q makes a MAPLE BACON doughnut. And one with FROOT LOOPS on it. And they all taste exactly like a sunny Friday when you've been Horribly Depressed and aren't any more - no, really, that's objective, I'm almost sure of it. And then we went bathing suit shopping and even THAT didn't bring me down. Plus, Pam was in a total badass mood. My overly polite and deferential BFF, the woman who watches people not scoop up their dog's crap and then says good morning to them anyway, DID NOT let people merge several times - it's true, I witnessed it personally. Also, there was a group of teenagers, some of whom butted obnoxiously in front of us to get on the escalator, so while I stood demurely to the right as we rode up, she parked herself solidly on the left so none of the others could get around us. Also, she drove my van so I didn't have to because sometimes I'm too anxious to drive.

It's stuff like this that makes me happy to pay for her doughnuts every now and then.

Now it's Friday night. My husband is home. My son is at a sleepover. My daughter is asleep, having first explained to me in vivid detail this fabulous new movie she's just discovered called The Parent Trap which is Sick And Awesome. And did I mention I got to watch my daughter dance to Kung Fu Fighting while wearing a duct tape belt? Here's a blurry photo or two as proof.

I'm happy.

It's been a strange week.

Blood, Caste, Clan, Class, Division

Scintilla Day 7 prompt: List the tribes you belong to: cultural, personal, literary, you get

the drift. Talk about the experience of being in your element with your
tribes.

There were times growing up when I felt like my cultural tribe wasn't much to get excited about, and envied those with  seemingly richer and more vibrant traditions and beliefs. My mother's family was Polish, so when we visited (usually once a year or less) there were perogies (yum) and cabbage rolls (blech) and unintelligible speech and the fact that we didn't like Ukrainians much even though they sounded EXACTLY the same. My father's parents were Scottish and English but didn't communicate much of that to us. Even the fact that all of my relatives lived in Saskatchewan gave them that 'western Canadian' tag, and the ones that were farmers had that in common - I spent years joking that whenever they didn't want to go on vacation with us they would just use 'the harvest' as a lame excuse.

My family lived in Ontario - average people living in the middle of Canada. On days in school when we were supposed to bring in things representing our heritage, I never really felt like I could compete with the Croatians or the Finnish kids, or the lone, impossibly exotic boy from the Philippines. 

I started to realize, at some point, that a deeply held feeling for one's culture carried some fairly heavy baggage with it, such as a bone-deep hatred for certain other cultures, or a long history of war. I thought maybe it was okay for me not to have a cool ethnic costume or a national dance if it also meant that I didn't automatically spit on the ground every time a certain country was mentioned. 

My friend Zarah has remarked, when I talk about growing up, that it sounds like my mother loved me but didn't really get me. That remark probably still holds true today.

I had friends in elementary school and high school - good friends. I wasn't exactly popular or exactly shunned. I was somewhere in the middle again. I always got high marks, and I always sucked at gym, so teachers liked me and cool kids mocked me with varying levels of affection and derision. 

In my first two years of university I lived in a residence where I was in a tiny minority - arts majors - in a sea of students of a decidedly more science-like bent. It was a fabulous time, living away from home, testing a variety of boundaries, finally learning to read and write with an underpinning of critical thought rather than a rote sucking-up and regurgitating method (which had admittedly worked quite nicely for me thus far). But again, most of the people I spent most of my time with were different enough that we regarded each other with a certain bemusement. One of my friends from the arts programs, a guy who loved Romanticism and actually read poetry out loud to girls, asked me why it seemed difficult for me to have a discussion about literature or philosophy without, at some point, needing to puncture the seriousness with a joke. I told him it was a self-defense mechanism borne of living among mathematicians and engineers, who would lynch me if they ever caught me going on about the noble savage or emotion recollected in tranquillity (hey - I might have just pinpointed the origin of my incorrigible smart-assery). 

I got married. I could say my husband loves me but doesn't really get me, but that's probably giving myself more credit for an alluring mysteriousness than I really deserve. He has my number in more ways than I care to admit.

We had children. There is absolutely something to be said for making your own tribe. My children get my wacky jokes, and not just because I've taught them how. From my husband they've gotten useful stuff like athletic prowess and mathematical ability. From me, they get a love of reading and the ability not to find their mother completely baffling. I'm calling it a win. 

I met three other women, two of whom worked with my husband along with their husbands, one whose husband worked at the same place. None of them still work there now, but we all had kids around the same time, and anyone with kids probably recognizes that this is a glue stronger than almost any other. All four of us have some significant differences in upbringing, sensibility and taste in movies (can you believe I'm friends with someone who loved Passchendaele?) But it doesn't matter. We've been through job loss, childbirth, teething, sleep deprivation, hitting, biting, wood slivers lodged in eyes, swallowed marbles and oceans of puke together. And we've confessed our darkest and pettiest secrets to each other, while drunk enough to overcome our shame and not drunk enough to forget. These women get me AND love me, even if the things they get about me are not things they have experienced. This is a gift whose value is beyond measure.

I started blogging. I met other bloggers. I confessed a lot of my darkest secrets again. I met people who felt the EXACT SAME WAY. Another gift, unexpected and welcomed with a dazed sort of joy.

It took a long time to feel like I had a tribe or three to which I solidly belonged, one that I am not afraid will cast me out if I make mistakes or show weakness. The chief image that springs to mind when I think of my tribes is laughter - not only because we all rely on humour to salve the occasional bitterness of life, even though we do, but because when I am with these people I frequently feel so all-encompassingly grateful and jubilant that I just have to laugh. 

Loving people because you understand them so well you're nearly the same person, and loving people you can't quite understand and probably never will. What else is there to strive for, really?

Moon Madness - brought to you by Surly Thursdays

Someone said it was a full moon yesterday, and although it's not on my calendar until Saturday, I believe her. I couldn't wake up in the morning. I got presents wrapped, got to the chiropractor and got a few key presents bought yesterday and I should have felt great but I didn't - I felt anxious even though everything was going fine, and exhausted even though I had plenty of time to get everything done. The kids have been waiting since Sunday to decorate the tree, and when Matt finally got the lights on and they could start, they -- who haven't fought in weeks -- were suddenly at each other's throats. They both put themselves to bed VOLUNTARILY a good fifty minutes earlier than usual. Matt had a conference call at ten and went to the bed at eight-thirty and slept until nine-fifty (he's sandwiched between a trip to China and a trip to Japan, so that was maybe less full moonish than an understandable confusion about which fucking time zone he should be adhering to. Before I put Eve to bed I read her this book before wrapping it up for my one-year-old nephew - we both cried.

We were ALL OUT OF SORTS.

Great. Just in time for my extensive volunteering stint at the school Christmas bazaar.



On the funny side: a couple of nights ago I poured myself a drink, then came and sat down at the computer, forgetting my drink on the counter. I asked Eve to bring it over since she was already up. She said "where is it?" and I said "it's right there beside you". She looked at it and said "Oh sorry -- I was looking with my man eyes."

She didn't get it from me - she got it from her teacher. I guess if I had a boy I might be bothered by that. But then I think about Angus when he's 'looking' for something and think - nah, probably not even then.

George.

Yes. I have named this post George because this post has proven otherwise unnameable. I considered 'Spinning my Wheels' or "Blurry and lacking in focus" and "little nuggets of pure crazy" and nothing worked. I will call it George.

So apparently I should put a honking big slash between the Biblio and the Mama because (and I really should have known this), I can only do ONE THING at a time. I can blog regularly, or I can do book reviews. So not surprising. Whenever people talk about working out at lunch hour or stopping at the gym on the way home from work I try not to stare at them with my mouth gaping unattractively, but I'm always thinking "huh. So not everyone has Exercise Day, where they exercise first thing in the morning and then spend the rest of the day recovering from said exercise?"

I've been on this baking-for-the-lunch-boxes kick because it's the beginning of the year and I'm still optimistic and energetic (well anyway, I'm marginally less beaten down and demoralized than I will be come February). The kids love those chocolate-covered-coconut bars, so I've turned out batch after batch of chocolate-dipped coconut macaroons, because they're fresh and homemade! and I know all the ingredients! Of course, the fact that those ingredients include sweetened condensed milk and chocolate detracts from the virtuousness somewhat, but still.... Tonight I realized two things. 1. I don't have to look at the recipe any more. 2. We're all so sick of chocolate-covered coconut things we never want to see another one. Naturally I have NO IDEA where to go from here.

I couldn't sleep last night. Then the back of my head got itchy and I scratched it and then spent the next two hours obsessing over the weirdness of back of my skull. Does everyone have this odd shelf of bone halfway up, or have I been walking around with a permanent depressed skull fracture? God help me if I ever go bald.

Remember when I took the kids to Laflèche and we did the kids' obstacle course? My friend Collette has decided that the adults of our four families need to do the adult course. The three-and-a-half-hour really-high-up I'll-make-a-man-out-of-you adult course. Except Matt's going to be away. I said I couldn't go without someone to encourage and support me and tolerate being cursed at without holding a grudge and everyone else said I could use their husbands for that. So I'm going. Even though I'm afraid of heights and those harnesses are really unflattering. What does it say about me that I'm slightly more afraid of humiliation than I am of death?

Wow. This post may have reached a new pinnacle of frivolous lunacy (lunatic frivolity?) Of course, I went to the gym this morning, so really, what did you expect?

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.

Went in for a trim, came out with weird Barbie hair

I have weird hair. I talk about my weird hair here sometimes - not nearly as much as I could if I really let myself go, because I realize that not everyone cares about the agony and torment that this hair causes me daily, nay, hourly, and I'm trying to develop a sense of proportion or, failing that, the ability to fake one.

I get perms. It's embarrassing to admit that. I get one maybe once a year and then I try to show up at the next gathering acting casual, hoping nobody will notice that the last time they saw me my hair was straight and now it's curly - and, because people generally just aren't that observant (meaning they don't spend an ungodly amount of time staring at me in the mirror), it kind of works. Many people, when I confess to the perming offense, look genuinely surprised. My friend Collette now knows that I get the perms, makes fun of me for the perms but loves my hair permed, and has been denied the right to perm because her hair is too thick (yeah, cry her a river, I do). So now when I show up after the perm, she says "I love your hair, goddammit. Fucking bitch." The more she curses, the better I know it looks.

For a while after the perm, I have magic hair. Hair that can do no wrong (well, it does a lot wrong, but compared to my normal hair it's much lower maintenance, which feels like magic). Hair I don't have to obsess over. But perms, despite the cruelly deceiving name, are actually not permanent. And my hair (wretched, wretched stuff) grows fast. So then there's the other half of the year.

About a year ago, I finally succumbed to my hairdresser's entreaties to let her highlight my hair. I thought it might look unnatural. Then I realized - I'm forty. Natural at this point does not look good. SCREW natural. So we did it. It was great - blonde and stripey. I still had my weird hairline and all the other problems, but the blonde and stripey sort of took attention away from all that.

Then I took my son to get a fire engine red fauxhawk for hockey playoffs. I took him to a local place that's really close by, and they were really nice and did a great job on his hair. The place I was going is a half hour away and my hairstylist is on mat leave, and the rest of the place is kind of high-toned and snooty. So I thought I'd try this place for a while.

The first cut and highlights were fine. I liked the woman who did it. I felt like she got me. So today I went in, and school's about to be over, and BOLO is next week, and my friend Zarah's coming for a week. So I said "how about we go a tiny bit more dramatic - maybe a couple of more intense lowlights and a tiny bit of red?"

I should have knows from the gleam in her eye and the way she said "REALLY?" that I was entering into a Massive Failure to Communicate.

I meant mostly blonde, with a couple of lowlights and ONE OR TWO red highlights. Instead she seems to have done equal amounts of all three - blonde, dark brown and Texas Chainsaw Massacre Cheerleader Femoral Blood Red. I look like one of those Barbies whose hair my daughter colours with things that look like Sharpies. I look like I'm auditioning for a girl gang movie. It looks like hair that should come with a rivet-studded leather bra and super powers.

I wish I could add "...and I love it!" But I really don't. Not yet anyway. I'm trying to embrace it. I feel like I'm not cool enough to pull it off - I hate that. Because after all it's just hair, and it will grow out, and it's the summer and I don't work in a conservative office...or anywhere really...and my daughter loves it. I'm hoping that, after screaming every time I look in the mirror for the next few days, it will start making me feel like a badass. Which is a whole other kind of magic.

Juvenile humour

So today in the kids' advent calendar hat/stocking thingies I put chocolates and two of these cookie cutters, so we could make ornament cookies tonight:





I can't for the life of me decide if I should let them use this one or not. What would you do?

Strange Times

Look at me, posting because I want to not because I have to.

Angus got his Scholastic book order today. I recently read Nan's rant about Scholastic books and had yet another 'wow, sometimes I am wholly uncritical and sheep-like in my ability to just do stuff without examining its underlying potential for evil' moment. Gee whiz, man, it seems so innocent! They bring home flyers with wonderful beautiful precious BOOKS in them and I wrote a check which, come on, that's not like real money, that's like play money, and then I forget about it and wonderful beautiful precious BOOKS appear. Clearly I will have to spend some time examining the Scholastic ideology because I'm coming off a rough month and I've been migrainey that past couple of days and I'm still unclear on the exact nature of the evilness, but I'm willing to learn. But this is not about that. This is about the books I ordered before the evil was revealed in all its leering drooling evilness, and I'm not giving them back. Ignorance of the law may be no excuse but ignorance of evil is...wait...oh leave me alone, the voices told me to, you can't make me, I have hemmorhoids.

So I bought Eve the Usborne Book of Famous Paintings. She likes to
draw, she seems interested in art, it called out to me. I gave it to her after school. After supper and her bath and Hannah Montana, I was wrapping a few presents and I saw her on the couch reading something. I walked over and she was reading it! The book I got for her to read about art! The same day we got it!

WTF?

Doesn't she know how we do things around here? I buy something because it's educational and topical and will surely give us some lovely moments of learning and sharing and discovery and revelation. Then the kid ignores it and plays video games and watches tv and loses it under a pile of crap and only reads it when I demand that they sit down and read it and have a lovely educational revelatory moment goddammit. They don't try to read it the same day and say "oh, Mrs. Goodsell showed me this Claude Monet (perfectly pronounced) painting", and "is this pronounced Van Eek?" and "WHAT? She's not really pregnant?! That's a terrible skirt then!"

Oh, now Angus has wandered over and they're reading it together. I am sore afraid, friends, sore afraid.

The Ideal Burger of Memory

"Take hamburgers. Here, hamburguesas are really bad. It's known that Americans like hamburgers, so again, we're idiots. But they have no idea how delicious hamburgers can be. It's this ideal burger of memory we crave...not the disgusting burgers you get abroad."

This is a quote from the movie Barcelona which I saw years ago. I only vaguely remember the rest of the movie, but this quote about hamburgers stuck in my mind, and struck me as appropriate for this post idea. Except when I typed it out and really thought about it, it wasn't really appropriate at all. But I liked it as a title so much that I decided I didn't give a rip.

What this post was actually supposed to be about was not an ideal hamburger of memory, but a mythic hamburger of imagination. But for me the hamburger is a book. (Bear in mind I'm still slightly feverish). I was wondering if I'd started ordering books in my sleep. Every few weeks, a book shows up in the mail, often from an obscure town in the U.S. or U.K. Sometimes I recognize the title, sometimes I don't. But I know it's some book that I've read a review of and wanted to read, and the library didn't have it, but one of the booksellers on abebooks.com did.

For the most part, the books cost under two dollars. The shipping costs are higher than the cost of the actual book. The entire transaction rarely exceeds ten dollars. But still. I go to the library every week because I'm trying NOT to spend any more money on books, and, almost more importantly, we have no more ROOM for books. The only reason I'm spending that ten dollars, and bringing another centimetre-and-a-half-width shelf-taker-upper into the house is because, once I realize the library doesn't have it, it becomes infinitely more desirable than the thousands of books the library has. Because what if it's The One? The mythical book of possibility that will change my life, unlock the doors of perception, shatter the sacred truths, and put an end to cellulite forever?

Of course, it's all usually a huge disappointment. The package arrives, and... it's just another book. Sometimes it's enjoyable enough, sometimes it's quite dreadful and you have to wonder what the hell the reviewer was thinking. Sometimes it's quite magical, most often when it involves science fiction/fantasy short stories by women, now that I think of it. I put these ones in my triple pile of books on my bedside table and read them one at a time, trying very hard to stop myself, when I reach the end of one, from rushing on to the beginning of the next (if I have to turn the page over for the next one it's easier to stop, otherwise it's a pathetic display of me trying to wrest the book out of my own hands). They are wise and splendid and occasionally they blow my doors of perception right off the hinges.

It's not that strange a phenomenon. It's always easier to imagine that the book you can't read is better than the one you have, or the one episode of Lost that you missed was the Best One Ever, or the thing you didn't order off the menu would have been ten times better than what you chose. And sometimes it's just incredibly fun and giddy-making to realize that I am a grownup with my own money (well, my husband's own money -- I'm workin' on it) and I can go ahead and order a book if I want to -- I actually do remember being incredibly frustrated as a child when I wanted a book and couldn't get my hands on it fast enough. On the other hand, I'm a grown-up and I should realize that I don't need to have every book I read about. At least not before I get to the bottom of my tripartite bedside table pile.

If you want to read the story that made me NEED the Ellen Klages book, (it's about a library!), the absolutely freaking amazing author allows that here. Of course, it makes me despair of ever writing anything one-fiftieth as good. But the Ideal Burger of Memory can't help it if it wrecks you for McDonald's.