In Which I Just Never Learn

I'm a helpful person. It's just how I'm built. I like to help if I can. People seem to sense it - in the grocery store, at parking machines, parked at intersections (I have given directions more than once through two open car windows, before the light turns green). It's mostly a good thing. Occasionally it's not the greatest.

Thursday afternoon I was at my group interview at Indigo. It was so much more fun than I thought it would be. It was a fun group of people and we all kind of clicked. The "team-building" exercises were silly rather than cheesy and made us all laugh and relax. The corporate schtick actually came across as fairly sincere. I thought it would all feel kind of fake and forced and it didn't.

In the second half, we were split into groups and a small group of us were out on the floor. Our first assignment was to take five minutes to grab two items, come back and describe why we liked them. On my way to the sci-fi and fantasy section, I apparently looked so much like I ALREADY worked there that an older gentleman asked me for help. 

It was a no-brainer. I was IN THE MIDDLE of a job interview. I could have easily just said "no, sorry, I don't work here". But I don't know, I spend a lot of time in that store, I know where a lot of things are, and he was older, with a nice face, and a bit of a tremor, and I'm apparently a bit of a moron. I said "sorry, I don't work here... but what are you looking for?" He was wondering if the "...for Dummies" series was all in one place or spread all over the store. 

Crap. Uh... I said "I assume they would be in different sections." There's, uh, a computer right over here". Did I then leave him to look it up in the computer? NO. I DID NOT. I typed "Cooking for Dummies" in. 

It said there was one in the store.

Double crap. Everybody who has ever worked retail knows this is the kiss of death. Six in the store? You're pretty much guaranteed to find a few on the shelf where they should be? Two in the store? Odds still in your favour. One in the store? Could be anywhere. Or nowhere.

Did I say that, and return to my assignment? NO. I DID NOT. I walked with him back to the cooking section and started looking at the shelves. 

FOUND IT. No. Wait. This is "Green Smoothies for Dummies". Probably not what he's looking for. Oh, FOUND IT. No. Wait. This is "Gluten-Free Cooking for Dummies." I look up, realize I'm in all the cooking SUB-sections. The seconds are ticking away, but what am I going to do, say "sorry, sucks to be you" and bolt? I have locked myself into the most absurd situation. And there is no Cooking for Dummies book on this shelf.

Finally, he looks up and says "well, I really appreciate you trying to help me anyway." I race over to the sci-fi and fantasy section, fail utterly to find a Neil Gaiman book, grab a copy of Ready Player One and on my way back to the group grab a pair of fuzzy reading socks. I was last, but they didn't look like they were waiting impatiently or anything.

Clearly if I don't get the job it's because I'm just TOO GOOD AT IT already. 

Getting There

So we were flying to Calgary on Thursday. There was no connecting flight, so we were flying to Toronto first. Everything was going swimmingly - we got to the airport, got a primo parking place, checked our bags, got boarding passes, went through security, hung out in the lounge for a bit and then went down to the gate. As soon as we got to the gate, they started boarding us - we didn't even have to sit down. Matt said that was like winning airport bingo.

We got on the plane. It was quick, of course. Just as we were touching down in Toronto, Eve said "this is my best flying day ever!"

We shushed her. But it was too late.

As we were boarding a flight to Calgary, we walked past a young man in a wheelchair who looked kind of out of it. After we sat down in our seats - in aisle 17 - we saw the young man being helped up the airplane aisle by a flight attendant. When I say 'helped' up the aisle, she wasn't just holding his arm - she was holding him from behind and almost carrying him. To aisle 16. I thought it was a little weird, but beyond feeling bad for him for having to fly while being unwell, I didn't think much of it. She got him into the middle seat and a woman who was presumably his mother sat in the aisle seat. She proceeded to put down her table tray and unload a buttload of prescription pill bottles onto it. When the woman who had the window seat arrived, the mother seemed annoyed that her son had to stand up to let the woman by and muttered something about him having had surgery. The kids and I were directly behind their seats and my husband was across the aisle. We exchanged glances.

Before the flight left, three separate flight attendants came to speak to the woman. They asked her what kind of surgery he had had - abdominal - and how long ago - she never said anything more precise than 'a few days ago'. They expressed surprise and concern at the fact that the reservations people had apparently not been informed about his condition and asked several times if his doctors had cleared him to fly. There was a bit of a language barrier, but she kept saying yes, yes, he was fine to fly and "he's okay, he's okay".

I did not have a good feeling about this.

Before takeoff, the woman kept dropping pill bottles and asking people around her to look under their seats for them. Shortly after takeoff, the woman at the window seat was moved to another seat to she wouldn't be blocked in by the sick man. Flight attendants kept walking up and down the aisle shooting looks at the pair which ranged from worried to angry. Finally, a male flight attendant came and told the woman that the man wasn't looking very well and that he was going to see if there was a doctor on board. She kept saying "he's okay, he's okay" and finally he said, very firmly, "I don't think he is. And we're at thirty-five-thousand feet."

There was a doctor on board. He came back and asked the woman the same questions that had already been asked, and then looked at the medication. He said "okay, Valium. How much of this did you give him?" She said "six". He said "Six milligrams? No, this is ten milligram strength. Wait, HOW many did you give him?"

She said "six."

He said "You gave him SIXTY MILLIGRAMS of Valium?"

Then he said that one of those pills was enough to keep someone asleep for twenty-four hours, and that sixty milligrams could stop someone from breathing. Then he told her to keep him awake.

Because, sure. Nothing easier than giving someone sixty milligrams of fucking Valium and then keeping them awake for a four-hour flight.

I couldn't not hear any of this. The kids were mostly watching movies or playing on their ipods, while asking me the occasional question because I looked worried. When the guy started roaring at his mother for yelling him awake, they got a little more frowny - even though we all sympathized, because geez, if someone dosed me with horse tranquillizer and then wouldn't let me sleep I'd be cranky too. When he actually DID stop breathing and they started slapping him across the face to get him to breathe again, they became fairly perturbed. Then they removed him to the back galley of the plane and shortly informed us that we would be flying back to Toronto to get medical attention for the man.

On his last trip back from California, Matt's suitcase got lost. Not delayed or misplaced - lost lost. Like, it's never getting found lost. He said that was a first for him in all his many flights. This was another one.

So we flew back to Toronto - and man, it feels horrible to be going backwards. But they were fairly fast and efficient at refueling the plane while the medical personnel got on and took the man off - he was semi-conscious - and they got two new flight attendants really quickly, and they kept us informed, which is the most important thing to my mind - I get stabbiest when no one will tell me what's going on. At one point the announcement said "the two new flight attendants have just arrived and are being briefed. As soon as that's done, we'll.... make another announcement."

So our travelling day was a few hours longer, but my kids were really good. ALL the kids on the plane were really good. I saw one woman who was pregnant and traveling with a toddler and felt like hugging her. Another little girl came down the aisle, whacked me happily on the leg a few times, demanded to be picked up and then tried to pull off Angus's braces. And after we got back airborne, they gave us free pretzels AND cookies, so I guess they really WERE grateful for our patience.

As we were getting off the plane in Calgary, Eve said "well I can't imagine a worse flight than THAT one."

We shushed her. I hope we were in time.

Scintilla Day 2: Instructions

Prompt 2: Tell a story about something interesting (anything!) that happened to you, but tell it in the form of an instruction manual.

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

Step 1: Find yourself living in Toronto with your husband of a few months, working for a cool little independent bookstore, finally getting treatment for depression which will surely solve all of those problems in short order and forever (insert slightly bitter snort).

Step 2: Figure things are going pretty well and it would be a good thing to find a way to give back to the community.

Step 3: See an ad for PAL-Reading Services in the paper.

Step 4: Feel struck to the core with the conviction that this was Meant To Be in every possible way - Blind People who are Tragically Denied the Joys of the Written Word (because you don't know Braille, or there aren't enough books in Braille, or something!), LET ME BE YOUR READER!

Step 5: Go in for a short test. Be accepted with alacrity and praise despite a slight quibble over the pronunciation of the word 'eschew'.

Step 6: Take the subway to that part of town a few times a month. Enjoy being ensconced in your own tiny room with a window, a counter, a tape recorder and a book. Resist the temptation to add editorial comments or introduce yourself ("Hi, I'm Allison and I'll be your reader today").

Step 7. Marvel at the range and variety of material you're asked to read. Biology textbooks. Historical treatises. Inspirational memoirs that make it necessary to remove all traces of eye-rolling from your voice.

Step 8: Encounter issues such as: How do I read the word 'deftness' without making it apt to be mistaken for 'deafness' and yet still maintain the flow of the narrative?; Should I vary my voice to indicate when different people are speaking?; Have I really been pronouncing 'detritus' wrongly my whole life?

Step 9: Show up as usual one day and enter your little room.

Step 10: Find a volume of poetry for the first time and think that this will be interesting.

Step 11: Get set up and scan the first poem.

Step 12: Realize in short order that the book is, in fact, a volume of African-American lesbian erotic poetry.

Step 13: Check the room reflexively for hidden cameras -

Step 13a: not hidden microphones because THEY DON'T HAVE TO HIDE THE MICROPHONE, IT'S RIGHT THERE ON THE COUNTER.

Step 14: Wonder if you're being punk'd, except Punk'd doesn't actually exist yet.

Step 15: Decide that perhaps you're being silly.

Step 16: But then think, are you really? It's Toronto, for crying out loud - centre of multiculturalism and diversity and difference. And if you're not the straightest, whitest straight white girl they could have given this to, you have to be close.

Step 17: Look around more carefully for hidden cameras.

Step 18: Decide that you're probably just being silly. Who knows what kind of roster of readers they have? And hey, blind African-Canadian lesbians deserve their sexy poems as much as anyone else. And you haven't been Catholic, strictly speaking, for quite a while.

Step 19: Become involved in the work at hand.

Step 20: Do a pretty damned good job, if you do say so yourself, including reading out the phrase "To the woman who makes my clit dance" without exclaiming 'okay, seriously?' afterwards.

Step 21: Turn in the book and tape recorder and give some pretty serious side-eye to the chick at the front desk on your way out. Be unable to decide whether her expression is a little TOO suspiciously deadpan.

Step 22: Spend the subway ride home alternately blushing and giggling like an idiot.

Step 23: Resolve to become less naive and easily embarrassed.

Step 24: Take a second, many years later, to be fervently grateful that you weren't doing this kind of volunteer work when Fifty Shades of Grey was published.

I will find the bright side if it kills me

Do you ever play the 'bad news, good news' game with your personality flaws? You know: Sure, you procrastinate about putting things away, but on the bright side, when Christmas rolls around again the decorations are right here! Or, yes, maybe you watch too many movies, but consequently you never miss an entertainment question in Trivial Pursuit?

I have my overnight sleep assessment at the hospital tonight. As if I'm not nervous enough about this already, I realized abruptly at around one o'clock this afternoon that my health card expired on my birthday back in June, and I still hadn't renewed it. I don't have a good excuse for this, so let me give you the pathetic one: my birthday is in the mid-June, which puts it smack in the middle of all the end-of-school craziness, and then it was summer, which, come on! Summer! Baseball! Travel! Drinking! Driving without a license! Yeah, I did manage to remedy that one, whereupon I discovered that my other excuse - that the Service Ontario office is in a really annoying-to-access area - was groundless, since a new one had opened really close to my house. If I had been more on the ball, I would have renewed my health card while I was there for my license, but I had Eve with me and I wasn't sure I had all the right documents, so I thought I'd do it when school started. Pam's birthday is in early September, and I thought we could go renew her license and my health card at the same time and then have lunch! It was a plan! It occupied prime space in my mind! I wouldn't forget, right?

Have you ever read the book Gremlins that the movie was based on? There's something about the main character telling a friend that he NEEDS to go by and tell the person who's watching the little furry things that turn into gremlins that he MUST NOT feed them after midnight. I think the friend's name was Pete. The very next chapter contains two words: Pete forgot.

I forgot.

I was, in fact, in possession of the expired health card when I went for my initial appointment at the Sleep clinic. I was planning to pretend I didn't realize it was expired, act shocked and dismayed when they pointed it out, and throw myself on their mercy. As it turns out, they didn't even mention it or seem to notice. I considered it odd but fortunate, especially since I would certainly have long renewed it before my actual overnight stay.

Yeah.

So I think, no problem. There's still time to go this afternoon. Which is good, considering it's me, because I have a thing about having to plan whether I'm leaving the house or not the day before, so the fact that I could contemplate a totally unplanned excursion and not immediately withdraw to under a table or inside a Buffy marathon shows huge growth.

I was trying to proceed quickly now, to make sure I was home by the time the kids got home from school. So naturally every computer in the house immediately became hideously, gleefully uncooperative. I couldn't find the list of required documents. I couldn't print the renewal form. I couldn't find my passport (fuck off, it is SO the computer's fault). I checked my husband's rolltop desk where we always keep them and it wasn't there. I had the fleeting thought that I had had it in my purse for New York, but surely, SURELY I would never be so irresponsible and careless as to still be carrying it around in my purse when I am fully aware that I am a person who frequently, ceaselessly, LOSES STUFF. I checked my purse anyway. It wasn't there.

I grabbed a hydro bill and I knew I had my driver's license and a credit card, and I still couldn't find the list of documents, so I decided to go, on the chance that I didn't actually need my passport.

I got there and looked at the pamphlet and realized that, of course, I DID need the fucking passport. My shoulders sagged in defeat and I was about to turn around and go back home. Then I thought, well how much MORE stupid will I feel if I realize that I was here WITH my passport in my purse and didn't realize it. Not to mention that, on the chance that the clinic wouldn't let me do my overnight with an expired health card, after years of waiting and months of nervous anticipation, I would probably injure myself severely.

So I emptied my entire purse on the counter in the Service Ontario Office. And I found my passport.

Bad news: I'm a careless, forgetful, disorganized moron. Good news: I have a renewed health card.

Evie At the Bat

Anyone who comes here regularly knows about my love-hate relationship with baseball. Well, Eve's relationship with it is possibly even more tangled and conflicted. Admittedly, we stuck her in it the first year because Angus had been in it for a few years, he loved it, Matt was a coach and by this point we knew how it worked.

I don't know that I can assess her ability with any kind of accuracy, considering my own ignorance, but I would say that, as far as skills go, she's a bit above average. There were girls on some of the teams that didn't get a hit the entire season, and she usually got a couple hits a game, except for the year that her coaches couldn't pitch for shit. She's not great at staying focused in the field, but when she gets the ball she generally knows what to do with it. She's by far never been the worst kid on the team.

I do sort of admire that she's as enthusiastic as she is about the game despite the furor and public adulation and newspaper article whirlwind that surrounds her older brother. I think if that was me as a kid I would look for something he sucked at and then make myself an expert at it.

So this year is her first in minor, which means it's the first year that the kids pitch. In indoor training all winter, she was a pitching star. She could balance on one leg while bringing the other one up while all the boys kept falling on their butts. The coach asked her why she could do this so well and she said 'duh, you pick a fixed point in the distance to look at - you learn that on the first day of dance'. Then all the boys looked really scared.

Unfortunately, there's a big difference between pitching in a controlled clinic setting and pitching in a game. And if you throw a perfect strike in a game and the kid hits it, and the bases are loaded and the other team gets a bunch of runs off of it, you feel like crap even though it was a perfect strike. So she's been struggling with that.

Then there's the fact that when kids start pitching, batters get hit. Quite often. According to Matt, who's coaching her right now, the girls get hit even more often - they don't seem to have the body-consciousness that the boys have that allows them to flinch in the proper manner to get the ball to miss them. When he first said this, I wondered if it was sexist or inaccurate, but I have seen a lot of the boys contort themselves in a mysterious, Matrix-like manner while the ball skims by missing them by millimetres, so maybe he's right. THEN there's the fact that she bats left, and lefty batters also get hit with the ball more often.

It all adds up to guarantee that, all season, she's been a ball magnet. Bruises everywhere. In fact, when the Big Exciting Event happened the week before last, she'd already been hit once that game, on the outer thigh. So she was a bit reluctant to go up to bat again, but when you get hit by the ball you get to go to first base, and she was their only run so far from her last at-bat, so Matt, to his eternal subsequent regret, prodded her out to the plate.

She took a ball just below the sternum. She got winded. She started crying and hyperventilated. She said "I can't see" and passed out. They called an ambulance (I'm kind of surprised they didn't need another one for my husband). Someone called her name and she opened her eyes and said "did I fall down?" They put her in the ambulance and checked her over and then the paramedic said to Matt "I am now obligated to tell you that you should go to the hospital" and then mouthed "DON'T GO TO THE HOSPITAL". Then he said "I am going to give you these forms and you are going to sign them saying you are not going to the hospital against medical advice (DON'T GO TO THE HOSPITAL)".

When she got a home she was demonstrably done with all the fuss ("I'm going to go upstairs and try to go to sleep now so if you come up and my eyes are closed I DIDN'T PASS OUT AGAIN"), and yet she couldn't stop talking about it for days ("Oh great. Someone fainted in this show. THAT brings back memories."). At the next game, Matt told her she didn't have to bat and she decided not to. The game after that we really encouraged her to try so it didn't become an insurmountable fear. She did bat, and she got one foul ball and struck out, and the team applauded her when she came off.

Angus has been incredibly, clumsily sweet with her. He fixes her socks before her games. He makes her try on his fancy new catching equipment. He gives her very helpful advice like "you know you're supposed to turn away so the ball hits you in the back right?", to which she replied drily, "yeah, I need to work on that."

After their game on Thursday we were all sitting in the family room and the Jays game was on. Eve asked "do Major League players ever get hit by the ball?" and Angus said "ALL THE TIME. Well no, that's a lie.  But it happens sometimes" and at that very moment, the batter who was up, who was batting left, got hit in the EXACT SAME SPOT on the leg that she had.

She still says she'll probably play next year. Matt sings "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger" to her at every opportunity. There was also the great conversation when they got home that went: "It was the first game we've won in forever too." "We won?" "Yeah, after you passed out we got a bunch of runs." "While I was in the ambulance?" "Yep." Is distracting the other team with an unconscious player unethical?

At least she's not playing summer ball. I'd probably need a much stronger prescription.

Stuff I was Thinking While Driving Around

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

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

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

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

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

There Goes the Palace

There was an article in the Ottawa Citizen today about Kate the Duchess of Cambridge revealing the heretofore secret name of the royal couple's new dog to a child at a primary school she was visiting.

They named the dog Lupo, which is the Italian word for wolf.

I quote: "By choosing the Italian for wolf for a cocker spaniel -- not a large or particularly fierce breed -- the royal couple may be showing evidence of a sense of irony."

Holy shit! Has anyone told the Queen?

I can't blog right now...

because I'm trying not to eat too much.  I find that if I sit quietly on the couch and watch TV, or sit at the computer and don't get up, I don't eat too much.  If I move around the house at all, food starts jumping into my mouth.  It's true!  I'm helpless!  Carbalicious stuff and chocolate hurls itself right at my head and if I don't want to end up seriously injured I have to open my mouth in self-defense.  It's rough.

January hasn't gotten me too far down yet.  I started a new library tech course called Subject Analysis and Classification.  My instructor immediately informed us that this was one of the most challenging courses in the curriculum, and the most difficult to learn online, and we were all absolutely going to feel VERY CONFUSED AND FRUSTRATED at the beginning, if not for the entire duration.  She stopped just short of saying, you might as well just go eat ice cream and watch Luther and flush any thoughts of having a marketable skill again right down the crapper.  Somewhat surprisingly, I didn't flip out and go OH MY GOD I'M TOTALLY GOING TO FAIL and drown my sorrows with ice cream and Luther.  Well, not immediately anyway.  I didn't get out much this week, but most of the neighbourhood is a glittery smooth ice sheet of death so it was a good excuse.  I do need to get some exercise this week, though.  If only to keep up my strength for fending off the food that keeps flying at my face (hey, alliteration!).

I will conclude with one final St. Lucia-related anecdote that didn't fit in any of the other posts.  We flew home with the family we had met, and we were standing in Toronto waiting for our bags to arrive on the baggage carousel -- they were staying the night in Toronto before driving home to Peterborough, we were trying to catch our flight home to Ottawa, and the time was tight, and the bags were taking a really long time to get there.  When the carousel finally ground into motion, we started hugging each other so our family could grab our bags and run (thereby becoming those people I always feel like laughing at, tearing through the airport with desperate eyes and flailing briefcases).  As we disentangled from each other and started to move away, Eve announced, "Eric and I just had an awkward hug!"

Won't be your last, sweetie.  Not by a long shot.

Do we all look the same to them?

We met a really nice family from Peterborough a few days into our trip.  They had a boy and a girl, in reverse order from ours, but Eric was only two years younger than Angus which was fine for water sliding and getting cheeseburgers and playing ball in the pool, and we all know how Eve feels about "people who are older than me that aren't my brother".  Mike -- the dad --  was funny and friendly and has a job similar to Matt's, and  Ashley -- the Mom --  was forty and had a perfect bikini body and I STILL liked her - that's how nice she was.

We still had a lot of  family time, but we'd usually meet up with these people for a beach walk in the afternoon, the kids would run off to get cotton candy or go on the water slide or the lazy river, and we'd hang out and play pool and challenge the bar staff to come up with new and exciting drink combinations in the evenings.

There were two poolside barbecue nights - one was a Caribbean night and one was Western night.  Both had live music and entertainment, which was definitely....entertaining.  On Caribbean night, resort staff dressed in red satin and limboed under a flaming pole:

For Western night, they had to dress Western - I wonder if there was a choice between that and the flaming pole because I'm pretty sure the fiery stick would be looking fairly good to me at that point.  Not only that, but the MC's accent made 'cowboys and cowgirls' sound like 'callboys and...' well, you get the picture.  Until then, I was thinking this looked like a pretty good place to work.

There was a St. Lucian country singer who was actually really good.  The staff was always walking around singing all the time anyway, but usually it was reggae stuff - then as I was at the buffet I heard them all singing along with the entertainment and I was thinking "geez, they know all THESE songs too?"  Then I thought maybe it was just because there was a Western night every week or two.  But apparently the story is that a lot of the young people from the island go to the southern United States and work as migrant workers.  Then they come back, bringing tales of wonder and adventure and also the musical stylings of Toby Keith, Alan Jackson et. al.

 In the course of trying to get people up dancing, the guy to the far right of this picture in the white pants was dancing by himself, wrapping his arms around himself and then opening them imploringly to the crowd.  Ashley loves country music and was outfitted in Western style, and said she was going to go dance with him.  Her husband was cool with this, since he doesn't like dancing.  I tried to get a picture, but it didn't really turn out.  Anyway, when she came back to the table, she said he asked who her husband was and if he minded her dancing with a stranger and she pointed him out - 'dark hair, plaid shirt'.  The guy said he'd bring her husband a rum and coke.  We started talking, and in a few minutes we saw the guy approach our table.... then walk right by it and deliver a drink to a gray-haired man wearing a t-shirt, whose wife (or date) was wearing a cowboy hat, but there the resemblance ended - she was a good fifteen years older and much less good-looking than Ashley.

AWKWARD!

I told Ashley she should go up to him, grab his shirt and yell, "Did I mean so little to you?"  Then we went to dance and the other couple came up and every time I saw them I would almost fall on the ground giggling.  This was me and Matt imitating their theoretical discussion: "Why the hell are you giving me a rum and coke?" "Because I danced with your wife!" "WHAT?! WHEN?! -- You said you weren't going to do that any more!" "I've never seen this man before!"

Ashley took it pretty well.  The drinks were free, after all.  But she did say philosophically, "I was just another white chick in a cowboy hat to him".

Conflicted

It's December twelfth and today I went out wearing a t-shirt. First I was wearing a sweater, but then I got too hot. This is not right. It's December. We need snow. We have a Christmas tree and decorations up and it's dark at four-thirty ANYWAY, so I'm with the kids on this one -- we want snow.

Of course, the likelihood is that if it was gray and snowy I would be headachy and miserable, and if I had to shovel out the driveway to get the kids to school every day this week while I'm solo parenting, I would not be impressed. While instead, I got multiple Christmas and household errands done today and felt happy.

But it's almost Christmas and it's kind of sad to think we won't have a white one.

So I guess you could say I'm a little sad that I'm happy, but also a little happy that I'm sad.

And people wonder why I'm always so tired.

To Neti Pot or Not

Warning: there will be ickiness in this post.

I have allergies. Hardcore, nasty, year-round allergies. This started around the time I turned thirty and started having babies (which is kind of cool, because as with so many other things, I can blame the children). I use Nasonex daily, but I frequently also have to take an allergy pill. My doctor suggested a couple of years ago that I also use Hydrasense to flush out my sinuses. I did use it for a while, and then a friend told me that I should get a neti pot instead for nasal irrigation (or nasal douche, as the Wikipedia article says - join me in an adolescent giggle at the word douche, won't you?), because it's a lot cheaper than buying Hydrasense, which is really freaking expensive. So I did.

I suck at the neti pot.

Hydrasense, while being really freaking expensive, has a fairly long, skinny nozzle that you can jack right up into your nostril to fire that stream of salty water into your sinuses. My neti pot has a roundish nozzle that you have to position just right against the opening of your nostril. Then you have to angle your head just right to get the stream of water aimed properly. For me, this works about 30% of the time. The rest of the time I either almost drown myself or just end up pouring water all over my face and feeling like an extreme dork.

Because I'm almost always so stuffed up, it almost never works like the (faintly disturbing) demonstration pictures or videos, where you pour it in one nostril and it flows steadily out the other one. I'm happy if at least some of the water goes in part way and .... well, that's actually enough said about that.


The thing is, when it does work, sometimes it's great - I feel immediately clearer and I can breathe easier. But sometimes it seems to be sort of like squirting water into one of those hollow plastic doll's heads, and if it doesn't come out immediately, then a half hour or so later when I roll over in bed and turn my head... yeah.

In related news, maybe don't go out and get really drunk, decide you're too drunk to have sex with your husband, perform your usual night time ablutions including neti pot use, and then decide that you're not too drunk to have sex with your husband after all, because you might find an ill-timed stream of salty water - well, I was going to say ruins the mood, but the fact is he thought he wasn't getting sex and then found out he was, so really it had no effect whatsoever, so never mind.

Overall, I think the neti pot helps. But every now and then I indulge in a bottle of Hydrasense, because sometimes I just don't need another reason in the day to feel awkward.

In sickness and self-righteousness

My husband and I are about as far apart on the spectrum of believing our kids when they say or think they are sick as you can get. My instinct is always to believe them without question, keep them home from school, tuck them in bed and worry that they're suffering from bubonic plague or the like. His instinct is to declare that they're - maybe not faking, but certainly exaggerating, or just psyching themselves out, because Angus in particular has a very nervous stomach - and send them to school or make them play baseball or hockey and hope for the best. 

The general perversity of things being what they are, both of us turn out to be wrong at least half the time. I still maintain that my way is better, because would you rather feel like a bit of an ass when you keep the kid home and within two hours s/he is running circles around you, pulling down the curtains, demanding video game time and a tenth cookie, or LOOK like a giant ass when your kid barfs in the middle of the classroom/cruise ship dining room/bowling alley/birthday cake? 

Eve's been home from school for most of the week with my stomach bug, and I kept her home one last day yesterday because she was still pale and tired, but she hadn't thrown up for 48 hours so I said she could still go to her friend's house after school because the friend (and her mother) were desperate for her to come over and I was pretty sure she was no longer shedding virus (you're welcome Clara). 

Angus was supposed to go to an Ottawa 67s hockey game for a friend's party last night, and he stayed home from school because he was achy and wanted to go back to bed, which he did, which is not normal for him, but he thought he'd be able to go to the party and I was okay with that because I didn't want the friend to be disappointed and again, no vomit was forthcoming - I thought maybe he just needed a day of rest. 

So of course, twenty minutes before they're both supposed to leave, they both get all weepy and think they feel nauseous and things head rapidly down hill. I was utterly unable to decide what the right course of action was, and if I had still been solo parenting all three of us might have remained frozen in this miserable tableau for the next five to seven hours. 

Fortunately, Matt got home from the airport just in time to pronounce them neurotic and ridiculous, stomp on their objections, harass them into the truck and drop them off at their various destinations. Eve had a great time at Marianna's, Angus had a great time at the hockey game (at which he consumed two pieces of pizza, two Pepsis and two pieces of cake), and Matt and I caught up on a huge backlog of Modern Family.

Sometimes it's good to be wrong.

It Was Monday....

...and just like that it turned into a bad blogging week. I've heard that some bloggers schedule their posts. Or have days when they post and days they take off. Pshaw, I say when I hear that. I don't need schedules. I don't need deadlines. Of course, I always say the same thing about weight-loss centres and creative writing groups -- who needs 'em? I know what I need to do. I don't need a group - groups are for pussies!. I just need to harness the fearsome power of my mind and will and it shall be done! And have I published a novel or lost thirty pounds?

Shut up.

Angus's baseball team got to play two games this week. Eve's played one and then her Thursday game was cancelled the very moment they were walking out the door (as Eve tells it "I got my stuff on, but then my tights under my baseball pants were too hot, so I took them off, got my bat, and my helmet, and we were going out the door, and Daddy pulled out his phone and looked at it and said 'oh come ON!'"). The diamonds are closed again, until Tuesday. I've suggested we substitute checkers for baseball just for this season, but no one's gone for it so far. We'll see who's laughing when it's the last day of the season and we're all out trying to play eight make-up games before dark. King me! 

More on my fabulous day in Montreal with Julie later. Right now I'm tired and it feels like someone is intermittently poking a sewing needle into the soft place behind my left ear, and I've read too much about great achievements by people I know on Facebook today.

TMI Wednesdays - don't say you weren't warned.

My kids made an adorable video of them singing happy birthday to my husband on Angus's ipod touch, since he's in California this week and his birthday was on Monday. I can't figure out how to get it on here, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it's adorable. You likely wouldn't find it as adorable as a video of your own kids singing happy birthday to your own husband in California, because apparently everyone else with kids is deluded by DNA and years of evolution into thinking that their kids are cuter than mine.

After he called home the first time, I told the kids that Daddy had used a bad word when talking about the hotel he was staying in. They giggled. I asked them if they wanted to hear what it was. They beamed happily and nodded. I said it quietly. A little later, Eve was talking about rockets and suddenly she said "but I probably shouldn't say it". I asked her what the heck she was talking about and she said "you know, like you said before about Daddy's hotel room... (whispering) it was a shuttle?" I said "I didn't say shuttle, I said shithole".

After my chiropractor appointment today I stopped at the drug store that's right on the way home, which is a Shopper's Drug Mart but not my usual one. The usual one is closer but I was going to the community centre to register Eve for swimming lessons and I would be going home a different way. Don't you hate going to a store that's the same but different from your regular one? Nothing's in the right place, but it all looks basically the same so it keeps fooling you into thinking it should be. I needed advil and kleenex and HEMORRHOIDAL OINTMENT (for which I blame the children). Once I almost stabbed a guy because he stood there for like twenty minutes lingering right in front of the HEMORRHOIDAL OINTMENT and I didn't really want to say "excuse me, I just need to reach past you to grab this HEMORRHOIDAL OINTMENT". Anyway, this Shoppers Drug Mart was stupid. I found laxatives and gas suppressants and all manner of stuff related to the ass, and no HEMORRHOIDAL OINTMENT. Shouldn't they logically keep all the ass stuff together?

And on that note, you should really read my friend Patti's very important post on a very important medical test, which I totally meant to segue into at this point because obviously I wouldn't go on and on about HEMORRHOIDAL OINTMENT just for cheap laughs. Although I did feel an explicable urge to giggle like an idiot when someone used the word 'rectify' the other day.

Stream of Unconsciousness

I'm cranky. Not in general. Today was a pretty good day. The kids had dentist appointments first thing. I was going to cancel them because the kids have only been back at school a week since missing a week, and Eve was sick half of last week, but then I was thinking about what I was going to say to the receptionist when I called -- should I go into the whole 'they just missed a week of school right after Christmas, and I don't know if I want them to miss another couple of hours right now', or should I say my daughter was sick and my husband was in France so there wasn't anyone to take Angus if Eve stayed home from school, or should I make up a field trip... it got so complicated I decided it would be simpler to just go to the fucking appointment. Then I dropped the kids off at school. Well, Angus I dropped off. Eve I walked through the school out the back to the portable, then realized there was no one in the portable, then went back to the office where we'd just signed in, except the back door we'd come out locked on us so we had to walk all the way around to the front (did I mention it was -27?), to be told that her class had squished into an empty computer lab because the portable was too cold. Then I went to the gym. Well, I was going to go straight to the gym but then I realized my back was really sore and remembered I could hardly read in bed last night because my tailbone hurt so much. So first I called my chiropractor and went there, then I went to the gym. I haven't done weights in a few weeks, and when I went to do weights all the weight machines were moved around, so I had to stand there like an idiot figuring out the new configuration and then figuring out which machines I usually did, since turning them around made them completely unrecognizable in some cases.




I came home, had lunch, went to pick up the kids. We came home, they rested for half an hour, then we started piano practice, which has been badly neglected lately what with vacations and post-vacation homework and Eve being sick. It was a little painful, but we got through it. Then Eve and I experimented with splatter-painting invitations for her splatter-painting birthday party while Angus did research for his speech. Then I realized I was late starting dinner and started dinner. Then I cleaned up and gave Eve a bath.




I'm cranky just now, because I can't think of anything else to blog about. Plus someone else had a blog post up that was a letter to their kid on her birthday. I hate when people do this. Not because I don't think it's a great thing to do. Just because I've never gotten my act together in order to do it, and my first kid is TEN.

I'm cranky because I feel the exact opposite of witty and insightful. I WANT TO BE WITTY AND INSIGHTFUL. I consider them my consolation for not being thin. Oh well. I showed up. Hey there. How're y'all doing?

The Story of my Sunday

On Sunday I woke up in the Hotel Indigo. No, this isn't the story of how I downed a bottle of quaaludes and a fifth of Jack Daniels and had a little desperate fifties housewife interlude (what the hell are quaaludes when they're in my medicine cabinet?). I was at the tail end of a smashing girls' week-end with four of my amazing friends from high school (should have been five but Sheila was having pregnancy complications and couldn't travel, which SUCKS beyond belief, not least because she is the driest of dry wits and she would have complimented the sweet lychee liqueur beautifully). The forecast had been dire, but my friend Anne Marie assured me that outside was just a little cloudy and threatening rain. Then Patti came back from her run and after we chipped the ice off of her she said 'it's freezing rain'.

Fuck.

So then we had breakfast because if you're going to subsequently risk your life and your academic future you might as well be full of the best eggs benedict a downtown Ottawa hotel can offer, right? (Actually I had a strawberry smoothie, but I thought the eggs benedict sounded better). Then Bonnie and Patti left to drive Rachelle to the airport and Anne Marie and I went and packed up and left to get her to the airport. Halfway to the airport they called and said Rachelle's flight was cancelled so they were going to hang out at Patti's, which pissed me off because if I'd known there was going to be flight cancelling and further hanging-out going on I never would have booked my stupid exam for stupid Sunday at stupid one-thirty in the afternoon (which, upon reflection and hangover assessment, did not seem like such a great idea even before the cancelling and hanging-out occurred). But Anne Marie's flight was leaving, and we realized Rachelle's was only cancelled because she was flying Bearskin. (Let the bear take you there. In a tiny little toy plane that can't withstand the weather. Okay, enough mocking my home town's airline. But seriously -- let the bear take you there? What the hell were they thinking?)

So I dropped Anne Marie off, very chivalrously (parked at departures and let her drag her own suitcases in -- I didn't want to be dripping wet for my three-hour exam. Lifelong friendship only extends so far). I drove slowly and carefully to Algonquin College, where I parked in the free parking lot and only after inching bit by painful bit over roughly a kilometre and a half of glare ice did I think that maybe I just should have sprung for the goddamned parking metre right in front of building C. I spent a few minutes sitting in my van because I was an hour and a half early, and I was just thinking that it was surprisingly pleasant just sitting there watching the windshield slowly ice over before realizing that I was in very real danger of waking up drooling in three hours and realizing that my exam was half over, so I better start my icy trek.

I had a good book, so the time passed pretty quickly. Actually it's a really good book, and I was faintly annoyed when they opened the doors of the auditorium. I took a seat in the front because you have to leave your coat and purse at the front of the room and I harbour a constant expectation that people are going to steal my stuff. These exams are for anyone that has to write an exam for an online course, so two women come in with boxes, you flash them your I.D. and they find your exam and read which course it is so you can confirm it's the right thing. Mine was called "Information Work II", which almost caused the poor woman to die of boredom in mid-phrase. I felt a fairly deep stab of envy for the person writing the infinitely more glamorous "Money Laundering and Asset Tracing" and briefly considered changing diplomas right then and there.

It was a three-hour exam. I finished in fifty minutes. I like to think this was because I had absorbed the course work so well, but it's entirely possible I missed a page or four. It was only worth twenty percent and I got almost perfect on all the assignments, so I think I'd still pass the course. But I don't think I'll make a habit of scheduling my exams after two consecutive nights of extreme merriment.

Also: I had taken great pride in memorizing the definition of percentage increase (the variation between two variables, measured between two fixed points in time, expressed as a percentage of the earlier number), mostly because it just kept sliding off my mind as if my mind was buttered. I sort of took it as a personal affront that, in the definitions section, she used this as an example, with the definition ALREADY PROVIDED. Humph.

Merry Foot-Rot To You: The Story of My Monday and Tuesday

So Monday night we went to a Christmas party. I was really freakin' tired from the week-end (more on that later. Yes, we're going to work backwards because then maybe I will get back to the first part of the week-end, which was magical), but the party was fun. My friend Collette usually hosts now, since we all had so many damned kids and they all got so damned big, and she has the biggest house so we don't have to be reminded of how many damnably large children we've all produced the whole time we're there. We all had a great time at the party and then we came home. Then the kids got their pajamas on and they were reading in my room for a few minutes before going to bed. I went into my room and Angus was lying on my bed with no socks on so I decided to take a look at this wart he's had on the bottom of his foot for a while because Matt had mentioned that he thought it was starting to bother him. So I lifted up his foot and looked at the bottom of it. Then I barfed for four hours and tried to rinse out my brain, then I googled wet gangrene and fatal foot fungi on the internet and then I called my doctor's office and said please call me in the morning and give my son an appointment so he can continue to enjoy the many benefits of having two feet. Then we went to bed. 

The next day (Tuesday) the doctor's office finally called but they couldn't see him until Wednesday. Then he got to my Mom's after school with a fever and then we basically traded phone calls between me, my Mom and my husband for a couple of hours wherein my mother tried to diplomatically suggest that I was guilty of child abuse and neglect if I didn't come get him right this instant and take him somewhere to have his foot examined and/or operated on/cauterized and cryogenically preserved, I tried to figure out how I was going to do this and get Eve to her last dance class of the year where she was supposed to dance IN HER PAJAMAS using her TEDDY BEAR as a PARTNER (translation being no friggin' way was this class suitable for being missed) and my husband wandered around in various cell-phone-deadening parts of his building and surfaced occasionally to be yelled at. One of these conversations went something like this"

My Mom: "that's not a wart." 

Me: "well I know it doesn't look like one now but it did until yesterday."

 My Mom: "warts don't have blood blisters and pus in them."

 Me: "I KNOW that. Those weren't there before. It just looked like a wart." 

My Mom: "You should have taken him before now." 

Me: "For a wart?" 

My Mom: "It's not a wart." 

Me (grit grit grit) "I KNOW that but until yesterday we thought it WAS a wart and I couldn't exactly take him to the doctor and say we have a feeling this might turn out not to be a wart, so what should we do when that happens?" 

My Mom: "I've never liked your hair that way."

 So my husband went and got him at my Mom's house and took him to the clinic and I took Eve to dance. The verdict: It's a wart. His body just isn't as down with warts as many bodies are and this is its little way of not making the wart welcome. She suggested Compound W. Oh, and he has a virus. By way of comfort, at dance class my friend Patti told me she totally would have assumed necrotizing fasciitis too. 

I talked to my sister last night and she reminded me that I should probably just not talk to my Mom about this again, since there is every probability that she will say "I knew it was just a wart. It's too bad you all overreacted so badly", and then my head would be in actual danger of exploding. 

Happy Wednesday, and may all your feet be shiny as Christmas bells and HPV-free for the holidays.

Ack

Things are bad. Things are really bad. Oh, that's inaccurate. Things are fine. Things are great. I'm bad though. I feel like I've slipped sideways just enough to not fit properly in my life. I can look down on it from the outside and see that it's a good life, but when I'm back inside it I can't feel it on my skin. I went for a great walk today. Eve was home sick but Matt was working from home so I walked over to the drug store and grocery store for inhalers and lettuce and salad dressing and berries and kleenex. It was warm but not sweltering, I didn't think of it as manadatory exercise so I walked at a comfortable pace and looked at people's flowers. I left my ipod behind and looked around at stuff (there are stores in that plaza I never knew were there). I came home and looked over the first part of my new course, which is another point I'm not terribly impressed with myself on. I always thought if I went back to school I would just purely enjoy the learning, and not worry about the marks, not get that twisty achy worry that I won't be a star pupil every time, not worry four years before I'm even close to getting the goddamned diploma that I won't be good enough to get a job. Low self-esteem is, like, so twenty years ago.

It's not self-loathing. I don't loathe myself. I'm not a horrible person. I have some nice qualities. I just need a little tweaking. And goddamn if I don't turn out to be stubbornly tweak-resistant at every damn turn. And I'm tired of all the fruitless tweak attempts. On the upside, the word 'tweak' is provoking some faint amusement at the moment.

This is where I wish strange things, like that I was an alcoholic or drug addict, because then I would have a clear problem set to work with. Also, since I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic, it seems like it wouldn't be all that hard to kick drugs or alcohol. This wouldn't be the case if I was, in fact, a drug addict or alcoholic. I'm sure you see that the general tenor of my current musing is unproductive at best. But they don't seem to have twelve-step groups for vagely disaffected existentially displaced compulsive readers -- at least none that are well-advertised.

Whatever. For lack of any tested therapy, I'm going to go with a liberal application of cashews and zombie stories.

Feverish random thoughts

It would be somewhat inaccurate to say that today doesn't suck. Angus went back to school, still hacking up a lung periodically, but declaring that he feels fine. Eve has been an unhappy, warm-ish, snotty little heap on the couch all day (except when I asked her if she wanted me to put in Planet 51 or Fantastic Mr. Fox for her, and she stuck her head up and declared "Avatar!") and my throat feels like someone has flaming-arrowed a proclamation of doom to it. On the upside, I did manage to narrowly avoid spraying a bunch of Fantastik with Bleach into my load of darks, after I grabbed it thinking it was Spray Shout.

You know those laundry labels that say 'remove promptly from dryer?' Don't they just make you laugh with quiet indulgent affection? Oh yes, you dear little sweater/skirt/delicate lacy slip, I leave everything else crumpled and forlorn in the dryer all night or all day or all the whenever-the-hell-I-feel-like-it because I tend to throw laundry in right before I go to bed and then not think of it again until everyone's out of underwear and the pile of dirty clothes in the hall starts to heave itself around in search of water and soap, but YOU I will remember to fetch freshly heated and wrinkle-free the minute, nay, the very SECOND that indescribably annoying buzzer blats. Trust me.

You know what I hate? People who 'work tirelessly' at things. Especially because they're mostly noble, philanthropic, admirable things, which is a metric f*ckton of annoying, isn't it? Nobody really 'works tirelessly' at serving people sullenly at a drive-thru, or developing an untoward fondness for prescription painkillers, or letting their laundry sit in the dryer for three days until it looks like this only less cute. No, they're working tirelessly at curing porphyria, or repairing homes for senile talk-show hosts, or draping the naked in fresh and unwrinkled clothing (yeah, I know, it's getting old). I only ever work tirefully. Just thinking of working at things makes me tired. Just thinking of those people working tirelessly makes me unspeakably tired.

Angus just gave Eve a hug and she turned her head so she wouldn't cough directly into his face. Isn't that sweet?

So the Tylenol kicked in a couple of hours ago and Eve is now singing and trying to break her record for continuous ball bounces without fumbling. My Tylenol has not yet kicked in, and I sort of hate Eve right now. My mother said I should still keep her home tomorrow. My mother has clearly forgotten that kids can be sporting all the symptoms of cholera one second and dancing on your head and juggling kiwi fruit the next.

Pam and I usually walk on Wednesday mornings. If I was a working tirelessly sort of person, I would drag my diseased, phlegmy, migrainey ass out of bed in the morning. But we've covered that already. We've started walking on this really nice trail, where we run into a lot of people walking dogs, many off-leash, which isn't technically allowed, but they've all been remarkably well behaved. Can't say the same for that woman who blatantly let her dog take an unscooped poop in blatant view of our approaching selves. So we fixed our implacable gazes on her, bore down on her like a couple of avenging angels and VERY sternly WISHED HER A GOOD MORNING in a slightly less friendly tone than we customarily employ. Why? Well, obviously because Pam and I are a couple of GUTLESS PUSSIES!

I'm finding myself a little creepy at the moment, so I'm going to pop a few more pills and put my plague-ridden self to bed. Working tirelessly in the pursuit of mediocrity. That's how I roll.

Seven Stupid Things Before Breakfast

Okay, I did bolt my oatmeal down before dashing out of the house this morning, so they weren't strictly speaking all before breakfast.

Midway through the second term of school, my kids' school does something called student-led conferences instead of parent teacher interviews (well I dunno, maybe the parents with really bad kids still have to have an interview. Kidding, just kidding!) You go in and they present a portfolio of their work and talk about what things they could have done better on and what things they're particularly proud of. If the kid is nine and a boy, he probably does most of it in a rapid, barely audible monotone and if the kid is seven and a girl she probably does it in a very loud and animated fashion, with frequent punctuating bursts of laughter. It's all very enjoyable.

Stupid thing number one: I was in a hurry this morning, but I'm trying to eat well right now so I was determined to have my oatmeal and blueberries at eight-ish rather than eleven-ish which is when I was probably going to get back. But I was hurrying, so I opened the big-hole cap on the cinnamon instead of the little-sprinkle cap. Wow, that oatmeal was full of cinnamony goodness.

Stupid thing number two: I got into the driver's seat of the truck and immediately felt an agonizing pain around my tailbone. I haven't been to the chiropractor for a few weeks and my back hasn't been great, but this was seriously painful. I thought crap, now I'm going to have to sit in uncomfortable school chairs for an hour and then drive straight to Joanne and hope she can fit me in. When I got to the school, finally found a parking place and got to the classroom and sat down, I immediately felt the same stabbing pain. I thought what the hell? And reached back and found that my belt was twisted around into a big lump right at my tailbone. Sometimes a stabbing pain is actually the result of ....something stabbing you.

Stupid thing number three: Angus was walking me down the hall to Eve's classroom and his friend Fletcher was saying goodbye to his Dad, who we know quite well because our families hang out together all the time. The Dad asked Fletcher if he wanted a kiss good-bye like he'd given his sister, and I put my arm around Fletcher and said 'what about me? Do you want me to kiss you? Have a good day, Fletcher' and he looked suitable embarrassed and amused, and as I turned away the Dad said 'I thought you meant you wanted me to give you a kiss', which made me think no, because that would have been shockingly inappropriate behaviour. At school. Holy crap, does he think of me as someone who would behave shockingly inappropriately at school? Note to self: email his wife and figure out exactly how big a sexually harassing flake he thinks I am.

Stupid thing number four: I was sitting at Eve's desk and she was at the next desk showing me her work. I saw something on my jeans leg and reached down to flick it off. I ended up with something blue and sticky on my finger. I think I looked sort of horrified, and Eve said "yeah. Benjamin's not a very tidy eater." Right. It's food? "But this is blue" I whimpered. "Um, I think it's jello" she said. Note to self: wash clothes worn to school in very hot water.

Stupid thing number five: I had to go buy a birthday gift for a party Eve's going to on Saturday and Angus has outgrown most of his shorts, so I picked up a couple pairs for him to try on. He's only nine but quite big, and he doesn't like anything tight (and me neither, so no problem). I don't find sizes in any clothes terribly consistent, but one pair I picked up was a size 12 or 14 pair of dark blue denim shorts, and the legs are big and floppy, and of course he adores them. As he walks away in them it occurs to me that, after years of mocking them, I have bought and bestowed upon my son his very own pair of enormous pants. At least they cover his underwear. So far.

Stupid thing number six: hey, I'm out of stupid stuff. For the moment. Check back in five minutes.