Big Plans

Eve started grade one last week, which means both of my kids are hereby in school for the full day.
(Pause to start soundtrack -- slow, mournful dirge or the Hallelujah Chorus, it goes back and forth).

I have big plans for the future. Eventually I'm planning to get my library technician diploma, put the pesky graduate school nonsense behind me and do what I've really wanted to do since I was four, which is work in a library, given that it seems I can't actually live in one. Yet. However, my husband has informed me that his travel schedule for the next six months or so is going to be miserable, so I'm holding off on starting courses. Instead, my 'job' is supposed to be a radical de-cluttering and re-organizing initiative as regards the house, and a radical whipping-into-shape regimen as regards my big fat ass.
So far I've thrown a party for twenty-five of my closest friends, applied a liberal coating of sticky lime juice, refried bean and popcorn to the entire house, and eaten my weight in corn chips. Auspicious beginning, no?
I did walk over to the drugstore for my hangover assuagement supplies, at least. Mostly because I was afraid driving might make me hurl, but still...

Is Sarcasm a Heritable Trait?

So today, after a spirited Mexican party in honour of friends who are moving to Australia (not to be confused with an Australian party in honour of friends who are moving to Mexico, except I did keep confusing it, and wondering if I should buy them sombreros as farewell gifts or look up recipes for kangaroo meat, but that's a different post) I was wandering around sweeping up corn chips and popcorn and nerf darts (and the kids were really messy too) and throwing out empty margarita-mix containers. I went into the laundry room to put something in the freezer and there was a clean load of clothes in the dryer but no basket. So I gathered the clothes in my arms and went upstairs. I looked into the family room, where Eve was on the floor in her mermaid nightgown, playing with her barbies and her little barbie swimming pool. She looked around and saw me and got up, making little "I'm stiff from sitting for so long" noises. I didn't know what she was doing, but I was afraid I was going to start dropping socks and dish cloths, so I turned to go up to the next floor...
"Give me a hug I said!" she bellowed.
"No you didn't" I said (quite reasonably, I thought). And she said...
"Well what did you think?! I was running after you to shake your hand?"

Blood is thicker, but who cares when there's alcohol?

We went to a wedding in New Hampshire this past week-end. Whenever anyone said "oh, whose wedding?", I'd have to take a breath and think for a moment, then say "my husband's aunt's second husband's daughter". Which might make you think it was one of those weddings where we hardly know anyone and we were really just going for a week-end in New Hampshire. But you'd be wrong (not that the New Hampshire part wasn't a big draw. I had lobster rolls for breakfast, lunch and dinner.)

My husband has an aunt who is about ten years younger than his Mom, and he was born when his Mom was only twenty-one (I think) so Kate was more like a big sister than an aunt. She let him hang around with her and her boyfriends, she fed him junk food and took him to see Poltergeist when he was way too young and it scarred him for years. I met her quite early in our relationship and loved her -- she's a banker, so she's analytical and organized and A-type, which I admire because I'm so not, but she's also sweet and funny and very generous with her time and friendship. She was divorced (she worked with the Royal Bank out west and had a brief cowboy episode), but the same year we got married she married Fraser, who, although it's almost beyond belief, totally matches her awesomeness. You know how some people seem to try to make you feel like, when they're talking to you you're the most important, fascinating, engaging person ever? But the whole time you're with them, you can tell that they're trying? Fraser does that for real (or hides the trying part so well that, frankly, who cares?)

Fraser has two grown children from his first marriage, who are very close to him, and Kate since they got married. We always have a big Canada Day party out at my husband's grandparents' place in July, and Fraser's kids would often join us. I have pictures of his daughter Hayley holding my daughter at pretty much every age. Gregory, his son, has a son who is three, so he comes too. Matt also has an uncle who married and had a kid at forty-seven, so his little boy is in there -- a bunch of kids who look like grandchildren of the same generation, but are either related very unconventionally or not at all. I love this. I've heard the term 'blended family'. I prefer to call our family 'smushed together'.

When we were halfway to New Hampshire, our kids safely tucked away back home (although we had, unbeknownst to us, not unloaded Angus's suitcase, so we'd basically left him with only the clothes on his back, but that's another story), I sighed and said "this is nice. It was nice of them to invite us. Oh crap, do you think they really wanted us to come? What if we were one of those courtesy invitations just to be polite? What if they got our reply and thought 'ah Christ, two more for dinner'. Agh, turn around, we have to go home!". Everyone assures me this wasn't the case (I guess I'll never know for sure). I often tend to stay on the prickly, cynical side of things (mostly to protect my fragile, mushy interior), but Kate called me her niece all week-end instead of her nephew's husband, and, the incestuous implications aside, this made me feel extremely warm and fuzzy (admittedly travelling everywhere on a trolley with a big cooler of beer at the front added to the general glowiness).

I'm a big believer that you start with the family you're stuck with, and stick on anyone who comes along who shares your sense of humour. I could not have been luckier to be given the parents and the sister I already have. All the other smushed-together people just add to the fun.

photo credit
creative commons license

(When we got to the border crossing, the guy took our passports, asked us where we were going and why, and then said "who's getting married?". We exchanged glances, Matt took a deep breath and said "my cousin". I don't think the U.S. border guards are ready for the intricacies of smushed-togetherness yet.)

How's this for a 'hmmph' moment?

You go to New Hampshire for a long week-end, and when you get back there are five messages, and they're all for your nine-year-old son.

I'm Definitely NOT Without Sin, BUT....

I try really hard not to judge other parents. I know full well that parenting can be like a box of chocolates mixed with rabbit poop -- you REALLY never know what you're gonna get. So go ahead, feed your toddler chocolate in front of me, leave them wailing and beating their fists on the floor of the mall for as long as you like, use whatever bribery or blackmail seems required... whatever gets you through.
My kids are fairly timid and clumsy, so they're not big climbers or clamberers or daredevils. A lot of kids are, and their parents let them climb things or jump off things that I don't have to debate letting my kids climb or jump off because it just doesn't come up.
However, today we were at this great park we go to quite often. There are a bunch of different areas with different play structures, and a splash pad. My friends and our eight kids and one baby were pretty much the only ones there for a bit, and then a summer camp of twenty kids showed up. It got a little crazy, nothing major. Then one boy climbed up on the top of the play structure where our kids were playing. Now, I've seen kids get on top of a play structure with a flat roof. It doesn't thrill me, but really, it's the same surface they would be on inside the play structure, just a little higher. This was not a flat roof. This was a curved piece of slippery plastic that was barely as wide as his body, which was over three slides so there were kids rushing by under him and bumping him. If he fell, it was far enough to do real damage.
In short, this seemed to be like the classic 'real bad idea'.

photo credit
creative commons license

We didn't really know what to do. His sister kept yelling at him to come down, but no parent appeared. I was on the verge of going over and asking him where his Mom or Dad was just so I could go ask them if they were okay with this, because (this does not show me in the best light) if he fell, then at least I could say I drew someone's attention to it. As I was about to go over, one of the camp counsellors seemed to be approaching him, so I thought maybe he was with the camp. But the counsellor just looked at him as if he was having the same 'real bad idea' thought, but he didn't actually say anything.
Just as one of us was about to go over again, we see this woman running over from another play area. We breathe a sigh of relief. We wait for her to say "are you crazy? Get down from there this minute! You'll break your neck!"
Instead, she pulls out a camera and takes a picture.
So I'm at a total loss. I have no idea if I should have said something. Why is it so hard to say something? Instead I just thought "well, at least she'll have a good shot to show them when the emergency room doctor asks 'and how exactly did this happen?'" Bitchy, I know. I wonder what I've done to make people feel about me the way I felt about that woman.

Summertime, and the Blogging is Breezy.

I'm happy. We're having a great week. For once I didn't overplan, and we had a nice quiet Monday and Tuesday, ran a couple errands and got school supplies and lazed around and the kids acted like they liked each other. Yesterday we went to the beach with friends and it was hot but cloudy enough to shield us from the blazing sun, and the kids frolicked in the water and played in the sand and my friend and I went in and out of the water and talked and then we went over to her house and the kids disappeared upstairs, and when I had to take Angus home for baseball practice Eve refused to leave, so I left her there until bedtime. Today we went over to another friend's house and the kids were great and I made lunch for everyone (to make up for the fact that I had basically invited myself and my kids over to her house). I'm happy.
It's hard to blog when you're happy. Well, it's hard to blog and not feel like you're being really cheesy and boring. So I will not blog any further about myself. I went to see the movie Julie and Julia last week (well yes, I saw the movie, but... well, just listen). I enjoyed the whole movie, but the parts with Meryl Streep as Julia Child were so amazing, so magical, that I sort of felt like they couldn't help but overshadow the parts with Amy Adams playing Julie Powell, even though I love Amy Adams.
I read the book a few years ago, not long after it came out. It's Julie Powell's autobiographical account of how she decided, in a period of job-hating and self-loathing depression, she decided to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blog about it. Her blog caught on and resulted in her getting a book deal. She currently has another book coming out about butchery and her extra-marital affair.
Last week there was a column in the Ottawa Citizen which ridiculed Julie Powell's original project and characterized her as frivolous and self-involved. It would have been good if I had kept the column so I could quote from it and capture its acid tone. But I didn't. Suffice it to say that it was mean enough that it struck me, and made me think -- really, what's your issue? Julie Powell wanted to be a writer, was stuck in a job she didn't love and couldn't figure out a way to be a writer. She figured out a way to be a writer, which succeeded in a very public, fairy-tale kind of way. For some reason, her writing struck a chord in enough people to make her successful. Okay, it was a rather obvious gimmick, but how exactly do you break into publishing these days without a rather obvious gimmick, if you don't have powerful connections or a stupid amount of dumb luck?
I'm not saying this columnist was just jealous. I'm saying that I'm curious about how she thought she could write a column like this and come off as anything but jealous. Maybe the whole "if you have nothing nice to say, it's better not to say anything at all" should be revised to include "because it just makes you look jealous". Unless it's really really funny. Somehow it's okay to be bitchy when you're really really funny. So maybe it just wasn't funny enough.
It's true that Julie Powell sort of climbed to fame on the sturdy back of Julia Child. So what? There are very few works of art, literature or music that can't be called in some way derivative. Everybody's on everybody else's back (ooh, did that sound dirty? See? Julie Powell would have made that sound dirty).
If I was in a midwinter funk I'm sure I could work this up into a more rigorous thesis of something or other. I don't really know where I'm going with this at all. In fact, I hate it when other writers only ever say positive, glowing, fake-sounding things, so I'm not sure why I felt so prickly about this. I guess there are some things I think it's fair to attack someone else's writing on, and some things that there are not. I mean, if someone wasn't self-involved to a fairly high degree, how would they be a writer at all? Julie Powell isn't always likable -- maybe she's a little too honest. Julia Child probably wasn't always likable either (oh, but she was so full of life and joy, she was so boisterous and spirited, she was so...tall!), but she didn't keep a blog.
Go Julie. Get over yourself, columnist whose name I can't remember. Go blog friends. Maybe someday someone will call us frivolous and self-involved. I'm certainly in there trying.

Getting Out of my Own Way

Yesterday was supposed to be my day off. Eve had slept over at my Mom and Dad's on Friday night and was happily ensconced in Grandma-and-Poppa-land ("I had pancakes for breakfast and macaroni and cheese for lunch, and then I told Poppa that I had all my favourites except nachos. So he went to the grocery store."). Matt and Angus were at a baseball tournament. The weather was perfect -- sunny and breezy, not too hot.

photo credit
creative commons license

I slept in, had a shower, cleaned up the kitchen, did some laundry, read a bit. Then I tried to figure out what The Thing should be. The Thing that I did to make my day off count. So I wouldn't just fritter it away without due consideration. My husband accuses me of being terrible at Days Off; apparently I obsess and brood and overthink until nothing I do can possibly be good enough and I end up depressed and irritable instead of relaxed and refreshed. And to that I say -- well, nothing, he's totally right. So yesterday: I could have read more but I wanted to do something outside. I could have read in the backyard, but it's south-facing and fenced so it was pretty hot back there. I thought about going for a walk, but I was kind of lonely.
It would have been a perfect day for sitting in someone's backyard or at a cottage -- you know, lawn chairs, drinks, talking, laughing, kids running around yelling happily. That particular scenario wasn't available.
So I thought. And thought. And fiddled with my hair a little, then thought some more. Half an hour later, I was at the baseball tournament. Sun, breeze, lawn chair, fun baseball moms, drinks (diet pepsi instead of margaritas, but still), laughing, talking, kids running around happily, and my son smacking a monster triple and snagging four line-drives out of the air effortlessly. And I ran into my friend and we ended up going to see a movie in the evening.
It was a perfect summer day. Happily, I didn't overthink my way out of it.
(Yeah, I have no idea what that really means either. This post lacks weight. Oh, the irony.)