Happy Anniversary to my friend the hooker

Cool thing number one: I actually remembered what I'm supposed to blog about today.




Cool thing number two (WAY cooler than thing number one): My friend CJ at Don't Lick the Ferrets and her T21 Traveling Afghan Project. Today is the one-year anniversary of the project, which has a hand-made (by CJ) afghan traveling all over the world to different families who have a family member with Down's Syndrome. The afghan travels with a journal and photographs of everyone who spends time with it.

I love everything about this project. I worked with quite a few people with Down's Syndrome in my days with the Associations for Community Living in Sudbury and Hamilton. Without wanting to romanticize or idealize their condition -- many of them have serious health problems -- they are the sweetest, funniest, most genuine people you will find on the face of the earth. CJs daughter is the cutest little button ever.

I also love the traveling aspect. All the people of this community sending on this object, made with love, along with their own experiences, hopes, joys and wishes. It's not often that you come across something so pure, something that puts a little more beauty and joy into the world, without sucking anything out. I'm happy to spread the word. Pass it along, if you're so inclined, and help keep the happy hooker hooking happily.

I'm watching bobsledding and I can't think of a good title

Pam and I hit the gym for our regular Wednesday ass-whupping (as in trying to whup them into shape, with variable results). I was still high as a kite on my failed Wonder Pills, so it must have been really fun for Pam. We were walking down the hallway to the change room and someone passed her and she said hi. Then she turned to me and said 'that's Natasha's Mom' and I said 'oh, I know her. I didn't even see her'. Must have been the keeping my eyes straight ahead so I wouldn't weave like a drunken monkey, much like asking Pam to drive in order to reduce the possibility of me killing a family of six on the way over. As we walked into the change room I said 'What's her name? Karen, right?' Pam said "uh, I think it's Kara', and I said, 'no, I'm pretty sure it's Karen. We had..oh wait, wrong Natasha. You don't even know the Natasha I'm talking about.' Pam laughed (she laughs a lot when she's around me. I like to think she's laughing with me as opposed to...actually I try not to think about it too much.)

This conversation reminded me of when I asked my friend Janet when her birthday was. She said June 15th. I looked at her across the study table very strangely and she said 'what? Is that your birthday?' I nodded incredulously, and she said 'Oh, so you're thinking "Look, I didn't ASK you MY birthday, I asked you YOUR birthday. You don't even KNOW when MY birthday is so why are you telling me MY birthday?"' And I wasn't even stoned that time. I don't think.

Later, on the treadmill, Pam was talking about being at book club the night before with this woman who's baking a pie every week. I said, what's her name? She said Lynn. I said Does she live in Kanata? Yep. Does she have three kids? Yep. Any chance she blogs? Yep.

Holy shit! Pam's in a book club with Turtlehead! (This time I had the right person). After nearly falling off the treadmill I explained the connection (whoo hoo, World Trivia Night), nearly redeeming myself for the Natasha incident.

Yo Lynn -- I'm SO crashing your next book club meeting. I probably won't be stoned. Then again, I can probably catch a ride with Pam....

You are getting very sleepy....

So, my magic bullet turned out not so magical. I think I may have mentioned that the last time I saw my doctor I was having fairly severe insomnia problems and a lot of headaches. She prescribed a mild antidepressant that was also a sleep aid and a migraine preventer. She may have also mentioned something about conferring magical Japanese-speaking abilities and the power to see through walls, I'm not sure.

I was skeptical. I waited until my husband was back in town and it was near the week-end to try it, and I was prepared to wait out a few side effects. So a few days ago I started taking it at bedtime.

The thing about sleeping pills, is that it's quite possible to find one that will, in fact, help you sleep, especially if you dial the dosage high enough. The problem is that, contrary and demanding creatures that we are, no sooner do we sleep a few hours than we're wanting to be awake, and functioning with a reasonable degree of coherence. On this count, most sleeping pills are not so good -- I guess that's why they don't call them sleeping-then-waking-and-functioning pills.

The first night I took one, I read for a while, then had that delicious, I-can-now-turn-out-the-light-and-lie-down-and-sleep feeling, that heavy-eyed nodding-over-the-book feeling that I rarely have. Most nights, I turn out the light because the time on the clock seems reasonable for a going-to-sleep time. Then I lie there in the dark, eyes closed for a while, eyes open for a while. I make grocery lists in my head. I reflect on whichever song is playing over and over in the back of my mind (once it was Put Down the Ducky by Hoots the Owl from Sesame Street. That was fun). I try to meditate, I try to self-hypnotize, I try to think about nothing. Eventually I go to sleep. Or not.

So the nights were great. The days, not so much. If you feel like it, blink rapidly ten or twenty times. That's what I felt like -- like everything was this stop-action film coming at me in jerky fits and starts, and I couldn't get properly braced for it. I kept feeling like things were flying at my head, or like I was just missing something important out of the corner of my eye. I felt untethered from reality and vaguely paranoid. It was wretched. I didn't have a headache, but I felt constantly on the verge of collapsing in tears or erupting in a white-hot rage. Eve's sweet little voice was unbelievably grating, and even Angus asking if I was okay seemed irritating beyond measure.

I decided to stop taking it. This is a great thing on a couple of levels. The last time I had side effects like this, I lived with them for months. I was in such a horrible place before taking it that I actually wasn't sure that the cure was worse than the disease. I needed it to work so much that I kept trying to convince myself that it wasn't that bad. This wasn't true, and eventually I figured that out, but I think it stole a lot of time with my kids that would have been much better otherwise. Now? Sure, it would be nice if I could be sure I was going to sleep every night, and if I didn't have so many headaches. But there are other ways I can manage. Also, the thing with medications like this is that, like any mind-altering substance, they impair your judgement -- sometimes to the point where, very quickly, you forget that what you're experiencing isn't normal. So yeah, doesn't everyone see slugs disappearing into their hair when they comb it? If there's a cricket trapped in the basement, well sometimes they're trying to communicate with you and sometimes they're just your garden variety insect, right? Doesn't everyone have little baby naps between blinking and opening their eyes?

This time I was clear-minded and on the ball enough to realize that nothing like this is normal, and that I don't need to live like that. I've actually... made progress.

I believe this calls for chocolate. Chocolate helps you sleep, right?

Wordless Wednesdays: hockey redux

Regarding yesterday's post: yeah, the benches are uncomfortable and the 6 a.m. practices are a real drag...



Hard to argue with that smile, though, am I right?

Balance. On skates. While swinging a bat. And eating McDonald's.

I just read this article in today's Ottawa Citizen. It touches on something that I can see becoming an issue in my family, and something to which I've given quite a bit of thought (yes, I did have to erase 'something I've given quite a bit of thought to'; I can't help it, my infinitives just WANT to be split. Occasionally I dangle a participle just for fun too - clearly I'm just no damned good).

My husband played hockey. He was short, but fast, and played on competitive teams, which meant a lot of practices and a lot of tournaments away from home. His youngest brother was a really good figure skater, which meant thousands of dollars in equipment and coaching fees, and again, a lot of time at the rink. My middle brother-in-law? I'm not sure what he did besides being a quick-witted pain in the ass (sorry Eric) -- note to self, research posts before writing.

My husband, obviously, married me. I had a sister. My sister played soccer for a few years when she was young. Other than that, we took piano lessons. I read books. In high school, we were on the debating team (I sucked. She rocked. she was also a quick-witted pain in the ass. Must be a second kid thing). We got really good marks.

So now we have this kid. This enormous towering hunk of male child. We signed him up for hockey, a little later than most parents, because he wasn't chomping at the bit and my husband wanted to make sure he could really skate well first. He did not take the Minor Hockey League by storm. I figured we were safe -- he could play in house league for a few years, and I would only have to be dimly aware of the whole tedious, early, smelly-equipment business.

Then he started playing baseball. Holy crap, can this kid swing a baseball bat. Watching him catch a line-drive is a thing of beauty. He's really, really good. That's fine. I like baseball. I much prefer sitting in a lawnchair in the grass over sitting on a hard bench in an arena, my heat intolerance notwithstanding. I figured we could shove hockey back into the damp, sour locker room and forget about it. Baseball only happens in spring (May-June) and summer (July-August). We were laughing!

Ha. He's still playing hockey. And now he's in baseball winter training. Which means that from September to December he plays hockey, from January to April he plays hockey AND baseball and then in summer he plays just baseball. I keep telling my husband that at some point he's going to have to choose, but my husband is living in some happy little dreamland that says no, we can do it ALL. He mentioned at one point that he thought maybe he'd sign Angus up for speed-skating too. I started to marshall all my careful arguments, and then I decided to just hit him really hard in the stomach and assume he'd get the message.

We're nowhere near as taxed as some families yet, but this summer Angus wants to try out for the competitive baseball team, which he barely missed making last summer, mostly because he was technically still too young (my husband's face and my face when he was asked to try out must have looked something like this. If he makes it, this means we can't go away anywhere this summer. That's fine, if it's just for one summer. But how do you keep it from becoming your whole life? Or how do you decide that you don't mind if it IS your whole life? How do you maintain a marriage when you're basically two single parents, each hauling one kid to hockey and the other to dance, or swimming, or gymnastics? Or when one of you moves away from home with one child so they can be near their trainer, or a better facility? My family had dinner together almost every night. My husband's family had McDonald's twice a week while rushing around between skating rinks. He thinks this is normal. I try not to mention that his parents are now married to two other people (which, to be fair, is due to many many factors. Really).

I can't deny that sports has done great things for my son. He was a timid, anxious child who reminded me of myself as a child, and I probably did subconsciously beg the fates to do something to make him not be like me. Maybe this is just a case of be careful what you wish for. Ever since he started playing baseball, he has a confidence that I never had. Other kids look up to him and coaches respect his ability. I'm grateful for all that. But he started playing the piano this year, and he really likes that too -- he plays every morning before school without even being asked. I loved playing the piano, and I NEVER practiced without various threats and blandishments. I accept that sports will be an important part of his identity. I just don't want it to be the only part.

Thank goodness I only have one boy. Thankfully, Eve's not that good at anything yet. Oh relax, I'm kidding. We've been observing a strict one-year policy for each type of dance (ballet, tap, Irish), partly because none has really held her interest and partly because the flaky dance school managers keep pissing me off. If she discovers something she really loves, I'm screwed.

All this is to say that I really respect Alexandre Bilodeau's mother's decision to pull all three kids out of skating and spend time on the ski hills together, although 'so he can win a gold medal in something else' probably wasn't top on her list of reasons. But the thing about the Mom in The Hockey Sweater? I totally disagree. Making her kid wear a Leafs' sweater was just cruel.

Head in the Clouds

I stayed up way too late reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell -- holy crap. I spent the first few pages thinking I will never be able to finish reading this; the first section is one of those English-man-on-savage-Pacific-Island-in-late-eighteen-hundreds or anyway a long long time ago (I suck at history) and the dialect was nearly impenetrable. I pushed through and that section ends abruptly (mid-sentence, in fact) and a new section begins, years later before World War II. The book is made up of sections that are separate but linked by strange resonances, and it's utterly, utterly brilliant in a bleak, mournful, 'this is the way the world ends' kind of way. And I stayed up way too late reading it. Then I woke up at five a.m. with a screaming migraine. My husband gave me some Tylenol 1s before he left for Angus's obscenely early hockey game and told me to sleep in. A couple hours later I half woke up and heard the kids playing their new favourite game at the bottom of the stairs. There were a few meatball balloons left over from Eve's birthday party two Saturdays ago, and Angus recently had the head-swelling honour of being one of the only two grade four students chosen for the grade five volleyball team, which won first place at the tournament last Wednesday.

So the game? You guessed it. Balloon volleyball. He's rarely in the house these days without batting a balloon around trying desperately not to let it touch the floor, and importuning his poor sister to play with him at neverending length. Variations include lying on their backs and batting it to each other with their feet. Yep -- our very own Balloon Boy.

Anyway, my headache was still in full force, and the hollow balloon-thudding and accompanying smack-talk was slightly irritating, but I liked the fact that they were playing something with each other that didn't involve the television or related electronics, so I stuck my head under the pillow and went back to sleep.

When I was eventually up and showered and sat down to check my email, I found this one from Angus in my inbox:



"sorry that we made so much noise if you heared all the noise when you were in bed.

Angus/eve,"



Say it with me... awwwwww.

Head still hurts. But feeling pretty happy regardless. And put Cloud Atlas on your to-read list.

The Meatball-Monkey-Pajama Party

Last Sunday -- February 7th -- was Eve's seventh birthday. We had her party on Saturday. Her third birthday was at home (my husband made a castle out of a huge cardboard box that I painted, and all the girls dressed up as princesses). For the last three years we've had her birthday somewhere else -- a neighbourhood play gym, an art studio where they all painted t-shirts, and the place where Eve took gymnastics. Angus's birthday parties haven't been at home since he turned five, I think (the Space Birthday Party). I always used to say I was more comfortable in my own usual environment, but many people assured me that being off-site, with the preparation and clean-up left to someone else, was the way to go. And to an extent, this was true. Honestly, even after this party I don't think it's any less expensive to do it at home -- at least if you prove utterly ineffective at limiting the guest list, as I seem to. But there is something nice about welcoming your child's friends into your own home, and being able to collapse on the couch when the last one leaves, instead of having to load all the gifts and leftover cake and decorations into the car and get yourself home.

Eve was leaning heavily towards Build-a-Bear for her party this year, which is in a mall about twenty minutes from our house. But then she mentioned that she really wanted to have a pajama party. The idea of herding ten-plus little girls around Build-a-Bear, then to the food court for cake didn't thrill me. Having those ten-plus little girls in pajamas and slippers wasn't something that made the idea more attractive (not that I haven't taken my kids places dressed in stranger costumes). Then I read Magpie's post about the Monkey Bread birthday, which intrigued me. I floated the idea to Eve and it was an instant love match. She also wanted to have a movie, so we decided we would show Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which Eve hadn't seen yet. It turns out that one of the principal characters in the movie is, in fact, a monkey, which made me happy (I don't insist on total unity of theme, but I appreciate a connection between elements, no matter how tenuous).

I ordered the aprons from the Dharma Trading Company and stencilled the names on (in glitter, at Eve's express request:




I got Eve some new pajamas (with monkeys and cupcakes on them!):




We got straw-coloured streamers and brown balloons to make spaghetti-and-meatball decorations:




(Is anyone else surprised that they make brown balloons? I was a little surprised).

While searching online for colouring pictures from the movie to have on-hand, I came across this fantastic recipe for spaghetti-and-meatballs cupcakes. Mine came out looking more like linguine than spaghetti, but it was still a big hit. The white chocolate 'shaved Parmesan' blew my shaker-cheese-loving little girl's mind:




The morning of the party, we put on our pajamas:



We got the stencils ready to decorate the aprons:




We got our next-door neighbour to come over early to prevent Eve's head from actually exploding:



When the girls arrived, we got them to decorate the aprons with stencils and fabric markers (another great tip from Magpie -- after they were done decorating, my friend Pam took them downstairs and ironed them to set the paint, rendering them ready for service in under half an hour). The stencils were also a godsend -- for one of Angus's parties we had kids over to paint t-shirts, but we let them go freehand: the result was twelve treasured but unwearable shirts featuring vaguely Spiderman-shaped blobs and explosions of colours that should never be seen together.




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




The girls coloured and played a game involving being blindfolded and having to pick their stuffed animals out of a bin in which all of them had been placed (it was way too easy. I meant it to be way too easy. I loathe and despise party games and I can't stand to have anyone lose. It's a character flaw.) Once the table was ready, we put out bowls of melted butter and cinnamon-and-sugar, pulled out the many huge bowls of dough that looked ready to take over Ottawa and distributed judicious lumps to each kid:



After they'd each filled an 8" tinfoil pan, we had cupcakes:




Then we got them to fill the family room with a huge pile of pillows and blankets we had assembled and distributed popcorn from enormous bags of buttersalt from Kernels:




If anyone got bored watching the movie (or talked too much) we sent them back out to the dining room table to colour.

It was a great party. Everyone had a good time, there were no conflicts (because there was only one game and no one lost, I'm sure of it), everyone got to take home a pan of bread to pop in the oven and scent the house with cinnamony goodness. The last guest left at 9:30 p.m. (but it was the next-door neighbour -- everyone else was gone by four-thirty). Eve said it was the best party ever, and even though most recent things are 'the best thing ever' in her mind, I think she really liked it. My friend Pam was amazing, and we also had help from a girl who babysits for us -- Eve was thrilled that a teen-ager was going to be at her party. And I got to do it in my pajamas.

She got a lot of great presents -- mostly craft stuff, which she adores. But her very favourite? The thing she said she was most hoping for?.............



...slinkies.