Daughter-ish Stuff

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

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

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She gave me this card for Mother's Day:

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

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

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

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

Having a daughter is fun. 

I Don't FEEL Like Writing

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

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

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

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

Slightly Thawed

So after begging the Ottawa Public Library to let me work for them for free since September, I finally got the go-ahead to start my placement hours. On a Monday. In February. When Matt had just left for Asia for two weeks. And it was about to snow continuously for three days. And I had my period.

But that's okay.

It's fun. Most of my shifts are at the super-busy nearby branch where I run around like a headless chicken all day from project to project and feel desperately needed. I sat in on baby time. I wrangled kindergartners during classroom visits. I cut out ten felt umbrellas and six big ducks and one baby. I catalogued a filing cabinet full of creepy nursery-rhyme shapes. I had "Five Green Speckled Frogs" running through my head for four days straight.

Remember when I complained about having to learn Excel in my coursework? Guess what I had to use on my VERY FIRST DAY? and remembered nothing about and had to fake until I figured it out?

My other shifts are at tiny little further-away branches and I feel appreciated but not exactly needed. There's something very Zen about shelving holds in alphabetical order in a practically-silent library while the fireplace crackles, though.

I'm tired. My iron keeps bottoming out and even though I'm taking Feramax every day I'm still so exhausted I could cry by the end of a work day and I still want to eat baby powder and drywall dust. I keep trying to decide if I should try to switch myself to the closer medical practice I signed the kids up with. It's so easy getting them to the doctor now, whereas I'm not going to the doctor even though I should, just because it's such a monumental pain in the ass in terms of time and stress and logistics. But I love my doctor. But she's probably going to retire soon. Ack, I don't know.

Funny things the kids have said lately: At dinner the other night, Matt asked Angus "so how was school?" Angus said "Hell! It was absolute hell!" Matt looked at him questioningly and Angus said "well you always get mad when I just say 'good', so I thought I'd switch it up a little."; last week Eve said "this was the first time I've left a project until the very last day even though I had a week and a half to do it. I'm very stressed. One out of ten, would not recommend."

There. I blogged a little. Mostly because I was in front of the computer, had read everybody's timelines for the last four days on Facebook and didn't feel like getting up yet. But still.

Some Witty Banter With Your Curry?

So I should totally be throwing up a new Newbery Medal Post, or blogging about Blissdom, but my cold sort of suspended itself for the week-end and then came rushing back full force when I got home (not complaining, really it was the best I could hope for) and I've read more Newbery books but I don't feel equipped to post much more than "um, good" or "meh", or "my physiotherapist thinks it's taken me a month to read The Cricket in Times Square because I only read it at Physio because it's light enough to hold in one hand - I think she suspects that I'm simple". And tonight we had one of those great family dinners that made me remember why I force us to have family dinners so I'm going to take the easy way out.

Matt: "I registered you for Take Your Kid to Work Day on November 5th"
Angus: "Why did you have to register me?"

Photo by Didriks

Matt: "I don't know. Something about safety concerns."
Angus: "What - they're afraid I might die of boredom?"

Eve: "Was it a convention you were at?"
Me: "A conference."
Eve: "That makes it sound like you were sitting around at a table with people in suits saying (in stodgy half-British accent): 'We do blogs. It's going very well. We should keep doing blogs'"
Me: "It was nothing like that. Okay, it was a tiny bit like that."

Matt: "Have you heard of this new game called Bubble Soccer?"
Angus: "Yeah! We saw some people playing it on the way to lunch."
Me and Eve: "Huh?"
Angus: "You have this giant plastic ball around your legs and body so you can run into people and not get hurt."
Me: "OMG, I want to play Bubble Soccer!'
Eve: "Never mind soccer, you should only ever play Bubble Anything."
Me: "Hey!"
Eve: "Weren't you just at physio for a gardening injury?"
Me: "Okay, fair enough."

Angus: "Can we go do a baseball workout after supper?"
Matt: "Sure."
Me: "They seem to really be working, you've been playing really well."
Angus: "Yep."
Matt: "I'm going to get you a t-shirt that says My Dad's Not Actually a Moron."
Angus: "Then I'll dislocate my shoulders from having to whip it off so many times." (The catchphrase for whenever Matt says something dumb is now "Take off the shirt". That's right, we've evolved a new family catchphrase SINCE DINNER.)

Me: "So you saw Annabel while I was away? How was it?"
Angus "SCARY AS F....UDGE!"
Matt: "Did you hold David's hand?"
Angus: "He wouldn't let go of my arm! It was scary because you could relate to it! It wasn't about demons or ghosts - there are dolls IN THIS HOUSE! I slept with all my lights on!"

I shouldn't position a doll so it's staring at Angus when he wakes up tomorrow, right? That would be mean, right?

Summertime, and the Grocery Shopping is Funny

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Tony Alter

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

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

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

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

Oh thank goodness, whole grain!
Photo by Mike Mozart

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

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

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


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

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

Pressure - I can HEAR the oldness in this song.

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

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

Family - Take Daily, as Needed

I haven't had the best week, physically or emotionally. It's the kind of thing where nothing is terribly wrong, but enough things are not quite right that it adds up to a medium-high degree of suckage. I've upped my exercise, which is great, but I need new orthotics, so the easiest exercise - walking on the treadmill - leads to pain and inflammation of my right sciatic nerve, knee, shin and ankle. My chiropractor, who orders my orthotics, is nice and close and easy to get to, but our insurance company demands a prescription every time I get orthotics - which is really stupid, my feet are fucked up and I'm never NOT going to need them, so clearly this is just the insurance company's way of making it more of a pain in the ass to file a proper claim. My doctor, who can give me the prescription, is downtown, which means I have to call the office to make the appointment (on the phone, which I don't like) and then drive downtown (which I also don't like). So I keep putting it off, and I keep being in pain, which is dumb. Also, a lot of days I just hurt all over, and I"m not sure if it IS an orthotics thing, or if I need to be changing my diet, or if I'm just getting old.

Then I had some stomach and probably gall-bladder stuff Thursday and Friday - I didn't have big plans anyway, but I definitely planned to do something a little more productive than feeling barfy and pain-stricken, sitting in my chair crying and then sleeping most of Friday. Although as sick naps go, it was actually a stellar example.

Photo by Gwendal Uguen

Yesterday we had a quiet day and I read two whole books, one of which was perfectly charming and the other of which was exactly what it was advertised to be, which normally I would love, but this time it left me feeling sort of sick and upset and wondering if I'd lost my taste for horror. The kind of mood I've been in, though, probably makes it unfair to blame the book. I went to bed and had one of the worst nights I can recall - too hot, too cold, enjoying the sound of the rain and then being annoyed by the sounds of cars throwing up hissing water with their tires, just awake, and then as I was finally drifting off, I started coughing - this cough, this goddamned motherfucker of a cough that is just AROUND all the time, lurking or making a BIG FUN SURPRISE appearance, with no apparent reason - idiopathic, isn't that sort of a wacky fun word for an absolutely enraging phenomenon? I coughed until I finally pulled off my CPAP mask in despair at around 5 a.m and flopped back on the pillow, utterly defeated.

Eve came in and cuddled with me this morning while we listened to The Vinyl Cafe, but it wasn't funny enough for her, so she kept talking, while I was trying to bask in the heartwarming whimsicality of Dave and his friend Henry. But was nice to talk with her anyway, and she told me a joke: "Why did the chicken cross the road?" "Why?" "To see the nice mother. Knock knock." "Who's there?" "The chicken! Get it?"

I got up and showered and went to fold the laundry and found another empty Blistex in the basket, which meant Angus had thrown in his pants with chapstick in the pockets AGAIN, and it was pouring rain, and everything hurt, and the day just felt like sandpaper on dry skin. Matt told me I should just relax and read, but I did that yesterday, so I took some Advil and decided to go grocery shopping, and then even if I was still in a bitchy mood at least we'd have milk and bread and lunch stuff. On a whim, I asked Eve if she wanted to come, and she said yes.

We took the golf umbrella. We splashed in puddles. She took advantage of the Associated Privileges of Accompanying the Grocery Shopping Parent (got to buy cookies and pick out her favourite shampoo). I saw yet another person that I knew I knew, and we said hi, how are you, doesn't this weather suck donkey balls, and then the woman walked away and Eve said "who was that?" and I said "I have NO idea" - this is happening with distressing frequency lately. I said we needed coconut milk and she asked if that meant coconuts were mammals. It was more fun than grocery shopping alone. I told her, no matter what, not to let me go through the self checkout station. She said she would push the cart back to the truck while I held the umbrella, and then sang the Wonder Pets "teamwork" song.

Photo by pcutler

We came home and made Matt unload the groceries so our hair wouldn't get wet. Then we all went to Boston Pizza for dinner - Matt's idea, since Angus's birthday is on Tuesday and we're having my parents over for chicken curry (and therefore not going out that night). We took the Rav 4, in which we have Sirius Satellite Radio for a month or something. Eve and I always put it on the Billy Joel channel. On the way home, as we were walking to the truck, Angus asked if we could listen to something else, so I told him to sit in the front seat and find something. I got in the back seat with Eve, and Matt said to Angus "women in the back seat where they belong!". Angus gave him a "are you on glue?" look and said "you're on your own, bro, I'm just here for the music". He switched around stations while Eve and I sang "Honesty" and "Movin' Out" loudly in the back seat. He finally settled on Metallica and said "oh yeah. This is my jam." Matt said "no one who listens to this would EVER say that", which was funny, and he would have been golden if he'd stopped there, but instead he continued "you wanna get beaten on, just go to a Metallica concert and say 'I'm gonna get me some jam on'", whereupon we all howled with laughter.

So yeah. I really need to make a doctor's appointment. But in the meantime, my family is a pretty decent placebo.

I Forgot to Bring the Camera to Easter Dinner

I was raised Catholic. Easter week-end was basically one really long Church service after another. From the time I was twelve or so, I was in the choir or playing the organ, so there was also a bunch of rehearsals and getting their extra early for Easter Sunday mass, which was often the day after the spring time change, making it even earlier. Once when I was in university, my parents were visiting and my mother and I were going to Good Friday mass, and a guy in our residence said he'd come with us. As we left the church three hours later, he exclaimed, with several expletives, that he was trying to expiate his Irish Catholic guilt by going to one service for Easter and had figured this would be the short one. My mother almost died laughing.

Photo by Matthew Sabo

When I went to McMaster and belonged to the university choir, the choir director asked me to join his church choir and picked me up for rehearsals and mass for a few months. I remember singing a version of "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord" that gave me the shivers one Good Friday, and made my visiting-again mother cry.

Sometimes I do miss the ceremony and sense of solemnity and order of being a churchgoer. I definitely miss the music. But mostly I'm comfortable with the path I've chosen. Today I felt a tiny sense of melancholy, mostly because my kids are at the point where, if we're not visiting younger cousins for Easter, colouring eggs and searching for chocolate isn't a big priority any more. We went out to Brockville to take Matt's grandmother out for lunch yesterday, and I was planning to drive out and bring her back to my mom and dad's for Easter dinner today, but she woke up today with a stomach bug. And then I forgot to bring my camera to Easter dinner.

But that's okay, because most of the best moments were auditory anyway.

My mother: "Should I say grace?" Eve: "I don't even know what that is!" My mother: "Bless us oh Lord and these, thy gifts, which we are about to receive, from your goodness, through Christ our Lord, Amen." My father: "And Jesus Christ, why don't I have a napkin?"

My mother: "Allison, don't you like stuffing?" Me: "I took some stuffing!" My mother: "Hardly any." Eve: "Look, she doesn't need a buttload, okay?" Me: "I raise 'em classy."

My mother: "This is really good, even if I have to say so myself." Matt: "You're only supposed to say it yourself if no one else said it, and everyone else has already said it." My mother: "I know, and yet I still feel like I have to say it myself."

Eve, eating her chocolate bird's nest: "I don't believe you that you made these last year." Matt: "She didn't make THOSE ones last year, she just made the same ones this year." Eve: "I MEANT that I don't remember them from last year. No one's dumb enough to think these ones are a year old." Matt: "Why am I getting all the abuse?" Angus: "These pitches aren't coming from nowhere, Dad. They're right down the middle. It's too easy."

Matt: "Eve and Victoria weren't at the park anymore when I went to get them, they were back at Victoria's. I looked like a predator sitting there in my truck scanning the park. Tomorrow there'll be a note in Moms From Barrhaven saying...." My father: "Balding man in dark glasses seen lurking near neighbourhood park." Matt: "....." Angus: "...right down the middle." My mother: "It's not funny. Things like that really happen." Matt: "Yes. Men go bald every day and it's tragic."

My father, as we stand up to leave the table: "Oh, here's my napkin. I was sitting on it." Angus: "I guess the phrase 'not up your butt or you'd know it' doesn't apply in this case?" Me: "I raise 'em classy." (But funny).

And our Easter was happy. Hope yours, faith-filled or family-centered or both, was too.

And here's a picture from yesterday:

Kill the Wabbit (has nothing to do with this post, but it's on TV as I'm writing it)

This week has been - not bad, exactly, but wonky. After the book fair, which wasn't overly onerous but did deplete my introvert tank a little, and then having the kids home and extra kids here for project-completing and babysitting here on Friday, and then the dinner party on Saturday, I was feeling depleted. Then I felt more sick (when I'd been sick but feeling better) or sick again. Then the weather got blustery and my head went all thumpy. I'm out of sorts. I drop stuff. I bump into stuff. Solid glasses seem to leak when I try to drink out of them. This morning in the shower I punched myself in the face. I think maybe I was reaching for something and my face got in the way, but I'm not sure - I probably knew before I got punched in the face, but then I experienced some short-term memory loss. I'm feeling like I've provided a less-than-stellar showing in NaBloPoMo and wishing I'd done some more preparation, so I had a hook, or a theme, or at least some weightier, more insightful posts prepared, because just posting every day is a thing, but I'm not sure it's a particularly valuable thing.

But it's okay. I have shelter. My husband is in the country (until Saturday). I didn't have any urgent volunteer commitments. I have a few days before my next Computer Course assignment is due. I shopped for Maple Gingerbread Cake ingredients on Friday and got a few other things, so there was stuff in the fridge to make dinner.

Plus my family is abundant with the comfort and entertainment.

Eve came home after school and told me various things about her day, while sitting in my lap in the rocking chair - and by sitting in my lap I mean stretched across me with her feet hanging off the end of the ottoman, but it works for us. She said "If I ever have a boy I'm going to name him Shaun, but I'm going to spell it the S-E-A-N way so he can be a smartass and say "No, my name isn't SEEN, it's SHAUN." I said "I'd call you weird, but I punched myself in the face in the shower this morning, so I'm not sure I'm qualified." A few minutes later, she said to Angus "you're a smartass. Just like my kid." Angus looked confused, so I clarified "her imaginary son named Sean."

After supper, I was working on my assignment and Eve asked Matt to get her some ice cream. He got her some, then asked if I wanted some and got some for me and himself. Then he yelled downstairs to Angus to ask if he wanted some, and when Angus said no thanks he said "fine, then screw you and the horse you rode in on." He asked Eve if she wanted sprinkles. She said "if I say no, I suppose you're going to screw me and my horse too?"

All of which is to say, I've been reminded that ninety percent of parenting is just showing up. And in this house, ninety percent of hearing your kids say hilarious and fairly inappropriate things is just showing up (and hanging around the kitchen, apparently). And maybe, when you feel like you're hanging on to everything in your life by the ends of your fingernails (one of which gave you a tiny, humiliating cut on your chin when you punched your own self in the face in the shower one morning) ninety percent of blogging is just showing up. And now that I know I can show up every day for a month if I force myself to,then when I'm ready to do something with a little more substance, I won't have lost the habit.

That's what I'm going with. If you have a dissenting opinion, just stow it and eat your ice cream, will you?

I guess I asked for it when I bought a minivan

My dad used to drive me and my sister and our friends all over the place. My friends were bad enough, but my sister had some who raised even my sanguine father's eyebrows with what they were willing to discuss with him sitting there, from their crummy marks to boy problems to their "red friend" (he tells about that one repeatedly). This morning I drove over to Angus's school with him at seven to pick up five other volleyball players and drive them to another school for a tournament. At the end of the day, I went back to watch them play the final (they won) and then drove them all home. My experience with driving Angus and teammates has been mostly confined to a couple of baseball players or a basketball guy who gets in, sticks in his earbuds, says nothing for the entire drive and grunts in a faintly grateful manner on his way out. So I wasn't sure what to expect.

Turns out a bunch of thirteen-year-old boys are not appreciably different from my sister and her friends.

"Gabby texted me!" "What did she say?" "Hi. It's Gabby."

"Angus, can you put some music on?" (I reach for the CD button. He jabs the radio button. I jab the CD button. He jabs the radio button again. Wow, he is REALLY afraid I'm going to play Taylor Swift or the Glee soundtrack).

"I am Titayyyyyyyneeeeeummmmm" "Are you actually trying?" "No, I'm really a good singer, I'm in my church choir."

"She asked if we're on a bus back to school and I said no, we're with a parent driver, and she said what's that." "You have to break up with her. She's dumb."

"Shhhh! Angus is calling his parents. Uh, I mean his.....thingy." "Who's Eve?" "Angus's sister. Is Eve his sister?"

Kid who also plays on competitive city team:""I have volleyball practice tonight." "Tonight?!" "I'm going to tell my dad I'm tired and sore and ask if I still have to go." Me to Angus: "If his dad is anything like your dad, he's screwed." Angus: "Yep." (He was).

"She says you can't have her." "Who said I wanted her? Tell her I am a good boy who likes staying home."

"Thank-you for the Timbits! Uhhhhh, my hands are sticky." "Just lick them." "Okay." "Ohhhh, remember how we rubbed the bottoms of our shoes with our hands because the floor was slippery?" "Yep. And I just licked my whole palm. Oh well."

They all thanked me very politely for the ride. Then on the way home I asked Angus a question about the game in a slightly apologetic tone and he told me consolingly that it's very confusing and explained everything carefully.

I am currently feeling bemused but largely optimistic about the state of today's youth.

Fear and Loathing at the National Gallery

Kim was in town for the week, it was a beautiful day and I had been away for the week-end and missing my kids. Angus had to go to a track meet, so I kept Eve out of school and we went downtown to meet Kim at the National Gallery. Kim is one of those people who doesn't have or want children, but has a gift for talking to them without sounding fake or forced or like she'd rather be doing something else. Eve always enjoyed hanging out with Kim, and she loves art. And you know, there are many times when Eve displays a maturity and perceptivity far beyond her years.

This was not one of those times.

Kim said she really wanted to see the Drawings and Photographs because she always leaves them for the end and then doesn't have time for them, so we started there. There was a lot of contemporary aboriginal art, including pieces by Annie Pootoogook, which makes me sad because she's been in the Ottawa newspaper several times and I know that her living situation is heartrendingly bad - addiction, homelessness while pregnant, having her baby removed by social services, just a long, sad list.

Some of the other artists featured were Jessie Oonark and Pitseolak Ashoona. Eve said "everyone in this room has a lot of Os in their name." She wandered off on her own and then came back and said there were scary pictures over there. One of them was called Angry Face (by Jutai Toonoo - more Os) and it was kind of scary. Then she showed us an oversized carved mask by Beau Dick and said "if this was a tv show, everyone would look at this mask and then go bonkers". Then she observed that the artist's name basically meant Pretty Dick and skipped away giggling.

She returned in a couple of minutes looking faintly disgruntled, saying "Why can't they just take pictures of people with their clothes ON?" I explained that when people are learning to draw anatomy properly, it's easier to learn by drawing people without clothes on. She wasn't impressed. I had to up my game when we came across three photographs by Shigeyuki Kihara, a transgender Samoan photographer - one where she looks like a beautiful woman reclining on a couch in a grass skirt, then without the skirt still looking like a woman, then without the skirt and a penis showing. I explained about transgender people, and how some cultures are more accepting of them than others, and how when cultures were first meeting the photographers were usually men who sometimes objectified women, and this was the photographer's way of presenting herself in her way instead of in a male photographer's way. Kim said I did okay. I told Eve maybe we should go look at some old European paintings of pretty buildings, since she'd probably had her fill of contemporary art. She said "does 'contemporary' mean 'naked and scary?'" On the way out we ran across a video of a naked woman writhing in the dirt. Eve said she wished artists could subvert the male gaze less nakedly and without slithering being involved.

The European thing went fine until we ran across some naked Greek goddess painting and Eve deadpanned "yay, more boobs". The Abstract gallery was better - she loves Picasso. I was trying to figure out how many people were in one statue and she said "it's abstract, Mom, there might not BE an even number of arms" which made another guard snicker. She then asked, before flopping down on a bench, "is this art, or can I sit on it?"

As part of the Indigenous art Exhibit on right now, there is a truly impressive stack of blankets that spans the two floors of the gallery. We saw it from the top floor and we went to read the explanation before we left. There was an older man on a scooter sitting in front of it. As we approached, he said "need a blanket?", in a way that showed that he was really cracking himself up. He then motored away on his little scooter, which made us realize that he had been sitting there just waiting for someone to come along so he could make his joke. We found this inexpressibly heartwarming.

We then wandered around the market for a while and went for gelato at our favourite gelato place. It was a great day, especially once we got to a place where everyone kept their clothes on.

Today the grade fours from Eve's class got to go to her friend's class because the grade fives were learning about puberty. When she came back and asked one of the boys how it was he said he wasn't going to be able to sleep tonight. She said she knew how he felt.

Birds do it, Bees do it, Fleas are more educated than my kids about it

Remember when Eve and I talked a little about the facts of life and then she didn't want to talk about it any more? Turns out we should have talked about it a little more. Yesterday she was telling me about school. She said that they knew they were having health class and the grade fives in her class (she's in a four-five split) were afraid they were going to talk about where babies come from. (Let me interject that I felt the slightest bit smug about the fact that I thought Eve knew where babies come from, in a gigantic pride-goeth-before-a-fall douchebag moment). It turned out they were actually studying germs. But Eve said one of her classmates said "I know where babies come from. A man and a woman make them." Then EVE said "two women can make a baby".

What now?

I looked up from whatever I was chopping. She said her friend disagreed, but she got someone else to corroborate. I said "were you joking?" (please god, say you were joking). She looked confused.

Shit.

I said "two women can't make a baby."

She looked at me and said "I'm pretty sure they can."

Jesus.

I said "we talked about this. Remember? Sperm comes from him, egg comes from her, you need both?"

She said "but remember those people we met at the New Year's party, and they were lesbians, and they were getting married and they wanted to have the same last name in case they have kids because then they would all have the same last name?"

Ah.

So I said, leaving out the fact that I was probably too drunk to explain effectively at the time, "two women can HAVE a baby, and one of them can carry it and give birth to it, but they need sperm from a man to make it. They need what's called a sperm donor."

She said "THAT must be awkward."

And now I have to write a letter of apology to Eve's teacher and possibly a few parents. Sigh.

Birthdays, balls and me not having my shit together. So, business as usual.

Why do I even bother putting stuff in draft form? Every time I'm stuck for a blog post I look at the drafts folder and everything there is as useful as tits on a bull. Once I saw Teri Garr on Letterman and she said she always writes things down on cue cards so when she goes on talk shows she'll have witty comments ready, and then right before she goes on she looks at them and they say things like "Khadafi goes to Moscow. Chicken on a stick". That's how it goes with me and draft posts.

Both my kids have birthdays at the beginning of a month. Since they were actually born on those days, at the beginning of those months, one could argue that it's been happening this way for as long as I've known them, and one would be indisputably correct. One might wonder why, then, I never realize that I have to get my ass in gear for birthday-party-type preparations not too late in the month BEFORE the aforementioned birthday months, if we don't want to be scrambling around at the last minute. But no. Every year the end of January or April rolls around and I'm going "Shit! Where are we having your birthday party? Who's coming? What do you mean you don't hang out with him any more? What are we going to do? No, we can't have an actual fire. What do I tell people to get you? What do you mean you don't want anything? Fine, I'll tell them to donate to charity instead and they'll think I'm a douchebag, NO PROBLEM."

We spent a few minutes looking for the phone number of one boy Angus wanted to invite, couldn't find it, so I went to the computer and typed out Canada.411.com, and then the three of us suddenly all looked up at each other from various points in the room and realized we were being morons since they're on the same spring baseball team. The mother had emailed us saying it was her son's dream come true - my husband as a coach (he's an awesome coach) and no chance of going up to bat and having to face Angus as a pitcher. Last year one small kid actually refused to stay at the plate for his third strike - it was like "he hasn't hit me yet, and I LOVE LIFE MORE, you bastards!"

Eve is playing softball this year, having gotten weary of the Minor boys with their abundance of strength and their dearth of accuracy using her for a ball target. She says she felt the softball and "I thought it would be more of a hence-the-name thing", meaning it didn't feel all that soft, but we've managed to convince her that the likelihood of being hit as often or having it hurt as much in softball is small. On the plus side for me, now Angus will still be playing two games a week but softball is ONLY ONE.

Yesterday I was headachy and hormonal and we had barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers on Sunday night so I decided we would just have leftovers after we got home from music lessons. Then Angus told me that he would like some San Francisco Giants clothing for his birthday so I stopped pulling stuff out of the refrigerator to look up where we could get San Francisco Giants clothing. Matt came home in the middle of this and then Eve wandered down because dinner was late and she was hungry, so I started just shoving food at people while Angus and Matt looked up fantasy baseball stuff and Eve helped out by making fun of players' names and they were talking about some guy who was a janitor before he played for the MLB and I said "does he bat clean-up?" and Angus said "HE TOTALLY DOES" and then after Angus said he wished all our dinners were like this, and I thought he meant the heartwarming and witty family banter, but when I said "what do you mean" he said "I mean I eat a hot dog and Kraft Dinner while Dad reads me stuff about Fantasty Baseball". But I was pretty happy anyway.

The Post-Plague Diaries

I went out to get some groceries tonight since Matt's leaving for Asia early on Saturday and the kids don't have piano/guitar on Monday afternoon, which is when I usually get groceries for the week. I also went to the public library. This means I did my Monday errands on Thursday. I can't figure out if this puts me ahead or behind.

Eve came and hung out with me and the librarian while I was shelving books in the school library. She found a Roald Dahl book that she hadn't read yet and the librarian checked it out for her even though she already has her two books checked out for the week. She then danced around the library singing "I'm so happy, I have so many books", confirming that she is indeed my child. On the way home someone on the radio referred to someone (from Liberia) as Liberian and she sighed dramatically and said "I can't STAND when they don't speak properly - is it so hard to say LIBRARIAN?" And you must never, ever tell her that I told you about that, but it fits with my general conviction about blogging about my kids, which is that I MIGHT write something here that they would be embarrassed about if they read it tomorrow, but I will never post anything that they would be embarrassed about if they read it in ten years.

I got stuck in the public library parking lot. I waited until everyone went around me and then backed up very slowly until I could go forward again. Our neighbour's lawn is stacked with snow higher than I thought snow could be stacked. The friend who drove us home from school had to drop us off at the end of our street because anything that's not a four wheel drive can't make it through the sidestreet mess. Go home winter, you're drunk.

Have you ever heard of Capgras Syndrome? It's a neurological condition that makes you think your family and/or friends have been replaced by impostor look-alikes. I read a book about it that was pretty bad, and there was a Scrubs episode about it that was pretty good. Lately I've been wondering if there's a similar syndrome that applies to toothbrushes instead of people. And that's all I want to say about that.

While I was driving home from the grocery store I was listening to a program on CBC about families who have to discuss taking a driver's license away from an elderly relative who can no longer drive. Some people tried to argue that most people know when they're not driving well any more, but most agreed that when people are in the early stages of Alzheimer's or dementia, they're under the impression that they're still driving well when it's obvious to everyone else that they're not. Whereas I am almost constantly terrified while I'm driving that I'm going to do something catastrophic, and when I have to park between two vehicles (rather than beside at least one empty spot) I'm nearly paralyzed with fear. Therefore, I have made a mental note that if I ever start feeling like I'm rocking the driving thing, I should definitely start to worry.

That should work, right?

Communication Fail 2.0

Eve is fairly mature for an almost-ten-year-old. She expresses herself pretty well and has a reasonably extensive vocabulary. For this reason, I sometimes forget that she is, in fact, only nine years old and sometimes she doesn't catch all the nuances of a given situation. Usually it's not hard to figure out when she gets confused, because she huffs out "This is too confusing!" and flounces away, but sometimes she doesn't say anything and it's only much later that it becomes clear that she was completely in the dark.

Case in point: The final Harry Potter movie. Angus was going to the premiere with a friend and the friend's little brother was going so she begged us to take her too even though she hadn't read all the books or had them read to her. So we did. She said she liked it. Then later she was talking about the scene where Snape is watching his memories in the pensieve and he remembers finding Harry's mother dead after Voldemort kills her. It turns out that Eve thought that was Snape remembering KILLING Harry's mother.

Yesterday we were baking cookies and listening to Christmas music. Sarah McLachlan's version of River was on the playlist and we had listened to it a few times in the last few days (Eve can really belt out that high note thanks to the singing lessons but then she gasps theatrically and says "how does she hold her BREATH for that long?").

So the song starts playing again. She listens for a bit, playing with a bowl of flour, then says "I don't really understand this song, but it seems sad." Pause. "Did she kill her son?" I drop my rolling pin and say "NO! What the hell? No! It's not that kind of baby! Do you think Justin Bieber means a real baby when he sings baby baby baby?" She says "No, but", and Sarah sings "I made my baby cry". I say "okay, fair enough. But do you really think I would put a song about infanticide on our Christmas playlist?" Eve laughs. Sarah sings "I made my baby say good-bye." I say "SEE? How would he say good-bye if he was dead?" Eve says "Well I thought it meant goodbye in a different sense. As in, say goodbye to the world. Because I'm gonna kill you."

She's now learning I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus in singing lessons. And she still believes in  Santa. Can just imagine where we're going to end up with that one.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

It's been a while since we had a good Esso episode around here. But last night I took Angus to the chiropractor and on the way home he asked what we were having for dinner. I had been out all day and I was feeling lazy, so I didn't actually want to make the pizza that I had bought the pizza toppings for, but I knew we had naan bread in the freezer that I could use for pizza crust. So I said "naan pizzas". He said "so what are we having?" I looked at him quizzically and said "what did I just say?" and he said "well if it's not pizza, what is it?" Then we picked up Eve at my Mom's and had the same conversation, until I finally spelled it out: "NOT n-o-n pizzas, n-a-a-n pizzas!"

They liked them. Eve now calls them anti-pizzas.

Then in the middle of the night, my husband having wandered his restless legs off somewhere else already, Angus came in and said he'd had a really bad nightmare and crawled in with me. Matt, having heard someone up and about, came in to check and I whispered "he had a bad dream". Matt said "oh, I'm sorry" and patted him on the shoulder and said "do you have your fuzzy?" We both looked at him oddly, but it was dark so he couldn't see us, and he said "do you want me to go get your fuzzy?" and I said "are you high? it's ANGUS." And Matt looked confused and patted the rest of Angus and shook his head and wandered away again.

This family is fun.

I believe that children are our future. Sorry, future.

I was driving Angus to school on Friday. It was -18 with the windchill. We stopped at a red light out around the corner, which put us right in front of two girls he knew waiting at the bus stop. I said "should we offer them a ride?" He said "NO!" I said "why the hell not? It's freezing out." He said "It would be too weird! Stop looking at them!" I said screw you and rolled down his window and asked them if they wanted a ride. They giggled and said no thank-you. I rolled up the window and said "Great. I'm an embarrassing mother all around. My work here is done."

A few days ago I found a sheet of paper on the dining room table with Angus's name on it. It looked like a sheet of questions that he was answering in order to describe himself. I asked him if we needed to do anything with it and he said I could just recycle it, but I put it on the kitchen table beside my computer so I could look at the rest of it when I had time because I was interested in seeing how he'd described himself.

Today I looked at it. One question asked Quelles sont tes possessions les plus importantes (what are your most important possessions). I don't know what I was expecting. I know 'locket with my mother's picture' or  'log book of my charitable projects' wasn't going to happen, but really? "Mon money et mon télévision"? He failed at French AND being a decent human being.

My friend was over for tea this morning and I told her about this. As consolation, she offered that her son had to do a project about an important person, and he started thinking he might do Barack Obama, but in the end settled on Luke from Modern Family.

Oy.

Surly Thursdays Two-fer! (not really)

Pam and I went for a walk this morning on a trail we like. We were going to go to the gym but we figured we were running out of days where we could walk outside in the November sunshine. It's hard to maintain your surliness in the face of this:

Of course, the picture doesn't show the fact that the unusual warmth of the day really ramped up the essence of cow shit, but that isn't surly-making so much as slightly gag-inducing. Still, it was a good walk.

Then we went to the grocery store. The grocery store had Rold Gold Peppermint Dipped Snowflake Pretzels. Take that, surliness. Even the residual snark left over from when that woman had to pull into the parking spot right next to us so badly that she almost ran over Pam melted away, mostly. 

Then we went to Shoppers Drug Mart because Angus wasn't happy with the blackhead scrub I bought him, and insisted that he needed daily pore cleanser, because yes, I'm at that stage now, and it's a BARREL of LAUGHS, let me tell you. We ran into the woman that I volunteered with at the book fair - the one who almost got the vapours every time she had to tell me I was doing something wrong? She saw us and said "Oh hi! Pam and.... Wendy?", then became so distraught when I had to correct her that I almost said 'no, sorry, I forgot! It's totally Wendy!' She's very nice, but the field of chaos I emit constantly might just be too much for her. 

Then I went into the library to shelve books and Eve came in after school and shelved the picture books and read us Green Eggs and Ham and Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon and it was nice.

Then we came home and my goulash didn't suck. Angus said "what is this?" and I said "it's kind of like Hungarian curry", so he ate it, and pronounced it good.

Then I checked my email and told Matt that another couple wanted a ride to Yuk Yuk's on Saturday. He said sure, just tell them no funny stuff in the back seat. And Eve said "Oh GOD! DAD! I KNOW stuff now! Before I would have just thought you meant making faces and poking each other!"

Then Eve told us about her teacher talking to them about animals and having to say 'le phoque' which is seal, and then saying "yes, fine, everybody go ahead, get it out, phoque phoque phoque, ha ha ha." Which led to Matt telling us a story about going to an international sales meeting where his German friend had learned the word clusterfuck and was using it with gay abandon, not really realizing exactly what it meant, and then a very serious South American conference moderator stood up and said that this was the first conference they had put on and they had spent a lot of time and money preparing, so he wanted to make sure everyone there was prepared to focus - focus hard, focus well, focus focus focus.

Except his accent made the long 'o' sound more like a short 'u'. 

Then he told Eve that that little story had to stay in the kitchen. So she ran off to play the piano, but then pranced back in and said "BUT, since I'm still in the kitchen...." and has been playing her song and then running into the kitchen humming and then very quietly saying 'fuck us' periodically, then running away cackling like a mad fool ever since.

What's a surly girl to do?

Rusty Gears

Should blog. Don't feel like blogging. Anybody want to blog for me?

I just spent half an hour noodling around on the internet trying to find the title and/or author of a book I read that I really liked, so I could check if the author had anything more recent. I realized, as I was googling, that all I can really remember is that the main character was an alcoholic female police detective. I can't remember what the mystery was or even what the setting was - Hawaii, maybe? So perhaps, in the event that I do remember which book it is, I should just reread that book instead of looking for a new one. In related news, I am not going to divest myself of the hundreds of books in my house and just keep a dozen or so, on the assumption that, by the time I work my way through all of them, I will have forgotten enough about the first one that it will then be new to me again.

Matt is telling us about wandering around a park in Tokyo where they have designated spots in which you are allowed to be homeless. Also, giant spiders. And baseball practices that are run like young offenders camps. Then he said something about Buddhists and Angus said "are Buddhists those people who pray?"

I keep typing sentences and erasing them, while mentally enumerating all the posts I have planned on writing that have not been written. The one about the fairy who lived in Eve's headboard. The one about the kids switching rooms, with pictures. The one about seeing the Wailin' Jennys in concert. The one about last weekend in Montreal which was AWESOME and the post should write its goddamned self, and yet it DOES NOT. The good news is, tomorrow I go to visit Zarah for the week-end, and she will indubitably give me a good talking-to, whereupon I will return to blogging refreshed and re-inspired. Or just afraid to risk the consequences.

The kids were talking about shaving the other day, and Angus said "Does Daddy shave every day?" and I said usually, but definitely when he goes to work, whereupon Eve said "well yeah, he has to shave for his report card." Then later she said she thought her junior kindergarten teacher, who was also Angus's junior kindergarten teacher, had switched classrooms. This surprised me, since Catherine has had the same room for the seven years I've had kids at the school (jesus christ, I've had kids at school for SEVEN FUCKING YEARS?) and it's an awesome room. I asked Eve why she thought that and she said "well, I saw her coming out of a different room", and I gave her a perplexed look, and she said penitently, "this is how rumours get started, isn't it?"

I hate this post. I hate being stuck. I hate that stupid fucking caramel apple bagel commercial.

Grab Bag of Bad Memory Anecdotes

So clearly my sleep machine hasn't improved my memory yet. I just realized that I've been calling and emailing my husband thinking that he's still in Baltimore (where he was last week) and thinking it's weird when he doesn't get back to me right away (because after all it's in the same time zone). I realized five minutes ago that he's actually in Japan. When people ask me where he is and I can't immediately remember if it's, say, Tokyo or Shen Zen or Germany or Italy, I usually just say "who cares, he's equally useless to me in Ohio or Okinawa", but usually I'm at least on the right continent.

Then I almost pulled one of these again, thinking I had to get my assignment done before I left to visit Zarah next Thursday and then realizing I was a whole week ahead of myself again and next Wednesday is the seventeenth, not the twenty-fourth. I'm thinking I might need to write a letter to myself every morning and put the date at the top. I've gotten so much better at writing stuff on the calendar, which helps NOT AT ALL if I keep reading the effing calendar WRONG.

The people who worked at the Tim Horton's in the On Route we stopped at on the way home from London were not great on remembering people's orders either. While we were standing there waiting for our order two other people opened theirs and complained that it was wrong. When we got ours, we checked to make sure there was the right number of sandwiches, but we neglected to unwrap them all and inspect them until we were back on the road. Fortunately, they got the kids' stuff right, but Matt and I had ordered two smoked ham and cheese panini on multigrain and, despite the fact that you'd think it was easier to make two things exactly the same, they gave us two different things - a smoked ham on white and a cheese only on multigrain. Angus said "I think if people order stuff for there they make an effort to get it right because they know they'll come back and complain, but if you order it to go they just stick a bunch of stuff in a bag."

Yeah.

Mental Snapshots from Thanksgiving Week-end (Because I Forgot the Camera)

1) A stand of sparkling silver birches behind a lower tier of red sumac on the side of the highway.

2) The flyers distributed by the kids for their nightly show in the attic: the "unvaling" of Eve and Charlotte's music video stylings, a news "brodcast", and a play about the Emperor of Japan and the Queen of England having tea together.

3) My Dad, slumped awkwardly on the futon in the attic before the show, saying "this isn't comfortable at all. I want a better seat next time".

4) My niece Charlotte in a top hat with her hair tied under her chin, being Abraham Lincoln.

5) Eve dressed in a magician's costume, trying to produce a rabbit from a hat but producing french fries instead, saying "I'm a little embarrassed now. For my next trick, I will make a little girl disappear" and running away.

6) My nephew Jonah sitting upright in a chair with a brown fuzzy blanket wrapped around him, fast asleep in front of the baseball game.

7) The Martha-Stewart-calibre turkey that my sister's brand new Electrolux produced with its 'perfect turkey' setting, even though we mocked it and distrusted it and second-guessed it with a second meat thermometer. We had to change our tune when it reached the perfect temperature and automatically switched to 'keep warm'. All we had to do was stand in the kitchen and drink wine.

8) Angus grabbing Eve's water glass and chugging it, then saying "I don't always steal water, but when I do, it's Evie's".

9) Freaky moment on the drive home when I looked over at the opposite side of the 401 and had the impression that every single car was a black or gray version of the same mid-sized model. I felt like I was in a commercial.

10) My dear-sweet-god-at-the-end-of-fourteen-hours-of-driving-in-four-days HOME.