Worn Ragged: Mommies on the Edge

Our Great Lives

2012-01-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

Every morning, it's the same thing around here.

Me (suspicious, surly): You have to be at school in 10 minutes. Ready?
Kid (beaming, positive): Yep. I just have to do one small thing. Where's that book? I'm supposed to have read up to chapter 4.

He is/we are about to break the school "times late" record, set back in 1972 by a kid who didn't know he was enrolled at that school.

It's not all that surprising, I suppose, along the lines of "the nut does not fall THREE HOURS LATE too far from the tree."

DH has his own time zone, which is 15 minutes later than whatever time it is wherever he's supposed to be. It gets complicated on some of those international dateline trips we're always taking, and it has so far kept us from visiting Newfoundland, which, as you certainly know, operates 30 minutes ahead of Atlantic time. On Newfoundland Standard Time--observed only on Newfoundland, the little islands offshore, and in Labrador south of Black Tickle. (As an aside, "South of Black Tickle" sounds like a salty maritime romance novel, doesn't it?)-- we would never know whether it was The Reckly or Bumbuy. Which cannot be a good thing. There is probably some way I could work it all to our social advantage, but it would involve moving to Newfoundland and lying to DH about what time it was for the rest of my life. I have no moral qualms about this, I simply worry that I'm not smart enough to remember what time it really was. Is. Will be. See?

I myself am an accomplished waster of time, no matter what time it is. Today, for example: today I had a day off and resolved to write fiction for a few hours, to get back into the swing of things. Except that I had to look up the etymology of "procrastinate" in our giant OED, which meant finding the magnifying glass. I researched Banff hotels and made reservations for this weekend's inaugural ski trip. I looked at maybe 3000 pairs of shoes on Zappos. Even though they no longer ship to Canada. I contemplated the purchase of clocks made in the shape of biohazard signs. I researched Newfie slang (obviously), consulted a hip-hop dictionary, and shared bad jokes on Facebook with people only too happy to play along. Most of them are writers, naturally, probably with their own deadlines to avoid. And so here it is, 11:24pm MST (2:54am NST) and I've managed maybe 150 words of "real" writing, despite having been writing all day.When this book is finally done, it will have a molecular weight of 53 words for every word visible on the page. (That's how "Science" works.)

I can't fault Kid for having observed and internalized a relationship with time that is not strictly sidereal. From now on, I'll be making it clear to everyone we know--teachers, friends, dentists, music instructors, tennis coaches, babysitters, etc.--that we move in Great Years here in the voodoo bungalow: stuff gets done but according to no calendar that any person currently alive could possibly hope to see through its cycle. 25,800 years seems about right for most of the things we aim to do, from spelunking in the laundry room to finishing The Breadwinner to nailing the step back onto the front porch. We've obviously been setting the bar waaay too high by attempting to live our Great Lives according to a cramped and insufficient schedule. Already I feel the stress simmering down.

The Suburban "Great Year" Excuse: brought to you--slowly, peripatetically, with no discernible sense of schedule--by your friends in the voodoo bungalow.

Pregnancy Diet

2012-01-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

I was the most content pregnant woman in Germany, maybe even in all of Europe. I'd just left a stressful and all-consuming job in LA that involved a lot of silly but somehow sharp office drama (it devolved to the point that at least once an hour I held scissors to my own throat and pretended to cut my jugular just because and only because it upset one of my co-workers). I was a bitch and a drudge and a scourge and my name was well on its way to becoming a byword among the nations. My unpleasantness and disaffection were Biblical.

And then a miracle happened and I was whisked off through no virtue of my own to this shiny new life in Europe: no work, no reponsibilities, no deadlines. Plus: a free car! It was that magical. And the most magical thing of all: at an advanced age and with no expectations at all, suddenly a suspected case of food poisoning turned into a baby on the way.

I had just finished a lovely 6-week vacation/language intensive on the Baltic Sea, in which I swam. I walked about 5 miles a day through hilly German vineyards, ate well and often and according to the finest of nutritional guidelines, slept when I was tired, read books, saw old friends and made new ones. I tried different things--not just odd German things like their late-night talk shows that inevitably end with someone on rollerskates wearing feathers talking about the Euro Zone, but different clothes and different music, books, speed limits, opportunities, boundaries and horizons. I did all this in the name of being a memorable parent, a deserving mother, a woman prepared and excited to help this child make his way through a strange world.

I glowed.

This is no longer the case, this glowing. And it's not because all those bouncy hormones have pulled up stakes. It's not just that I'm watching 50 creeping up on me in 15 short months, bringing with it crepe-y skin, kooky knees and adult acne. It's that I've lost my lustre. It's not depression, that black velvet comforter that keeps a girl in bed with the blinds down; this is more like a set of scratchy flannel pyjamas in an unpleasant shade of ecru. There are no raisins in my oatmeal. One of my sparkplugs has crud in it. My dog won't hunt. My tiara don't sparklie. Bleah. Just. . . bleah, is all.

Getting knocked up isn't an option this time, but I'm going to put myself on a pregnancy diet again just the same. I'm not talking just blueberries and brazil nuts (tho also blueberries and brazil nuts). I'm going to try to live this day-to-day adventure as though I were uniquely responsible for nurturing a small life inside. But this time it's mine.

There's nothing funny about stage 3 lymphoma

2011-12-16T07:38:00.001-08:00

Actually, there is.

To have her intensive biopsy, mom had to remove her dentures, as they were putting her under a general. This is a proud and elegant woman, a stunning beauty, really, even inher 80s. Just the victim of Depression-era dentistry and childhood poverty. Moving on: she didn't like the whole no-teeth thing--it meant she couldn't engage in witty repartee, she couldn't put on a brave smile. Seriously, YOU try to smile bravely while you're in a hospital gown, those ass-ugly slippers AND NO TEETH. She didn't want me looking at her, she didn't want anyone looking at her. Scared and tiny and now no sarcasm to get her through. So I did the only respectful and reassuring thing I could have done, given the circumstances.

I challenged her to a "She sells seashells by the seashore" duel.

And that's the memory I will keep of that hospital corridor: not the fear or that plashy self-pity that comes when you find yourself mothering your own mother, but of the two of us laffing our heads off over what a strange bond we've forged over the past 50 years, one that no stupid cancer could ever chew through.

Kate Moss: For JP

2011-11-07T19:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Surrey International Writers Conference, which is not the same as the Surrey Internal Writers Conference, which is what I keep typing and which sounds like something from a Catherynne Valente story and hence something that I would very much like to be part of and which also reminds me of some sort of shadowy grad-school memory of hearts autopsied to reveal gems embedded in them or little poems about Jesus. (Sometimes I sharply pine for those deeply odd Californian days, during which I would spend hours not surfing but wrestling with medieval oddities involving wombs and maps and saints and terror. Motherhood in the suburbs has, of course, only the terror to recommend it. I digress. BUT ONLY SORT OF. Read on.)

Back to Surrey.

In front of me at the Master Class led by Donald Maass was a woman who nearly made me lose control of my bladder. (Those of you under 40 or childless might not understand. The rest of you? Yeah, you know what I'm talking about.)

This woman, built like a cathedral, struck terror into my heart. Instantly. It was like love at first sight except for the part about it being a cold visceral chill. Hmmm. Maybe a lot like love at first sight. I'm actually fascinated by these "at first sight" moments, mostly because I'm pretty much always wrong. If I hate someone at first sight, I wind up marrying them (or promising to do so, another story for another time--or three) or realizing that they're the best friend a teenaged girl being threatened with boarding school could ever have. Love at first sight? That equals RUN RUN BRAVE HEART, RUN LIKE THE WIND.

Crap, I'm digressing again. It's little wonder I cannot write my way out of this novel in progress.

SO: buttress lady, terror. Why? you might ask.

It wasn't the way her chair kind of moaned "help me," not the pencils jabbed into her unkempt half-updo, not even the purple terrytowel sweatshirt that reminded me of the very late 1970s. Who doesn't have one of those?

It was because she reminded me of my homicidal grad-school stalker.

Here's the poop: UC Davis, California, 1989. I'm walking with my pal along one of the jasmine-scented pathways that make Davis its perfect hippie self when in a heartbeat I go from being a regular old just walking along minding her own business kind of person to a sprawled upon the pavement, all limbs akimbo plus also her neck, books strewn everywhere, and being looked down upon by common geese kind of person. That's quite the transition. The perp? A solidly built female, clad in a camoflage jacket, on an old-fashioned Garry bicycle. She didn't stop to see if I was okay. Val and I laughed it off and then went about our day of being very serious graduate students, scoffing at people's delusions about Foucault and grading very harshly those among our students who split their infinitives. Such were the preoccupations of the philosophically anxious.

I was to become more anxious still. Over the next five weeks, Lumpy McCycleston wiped me out four more times, all over campus. Rising groggily from the pavement, all I registered in each instance was a purposeful set of shoulders and air-fluffed hair that could have done with a foil treatment and maybe three inches off the ends.There was something about her determinedly pumping legs as seen from behind and from the ground that reminded me of animated dinosaurs--not the plant eaters, the big awful snarling rippers of bronto flesh kind. The fear I felt was cold and true--and the hilarity of the situation only intensified the sickness in my stomach; if she killed me, finally, or paralyzed me, or ruined my peaches and cream complexion with a road rash, it would be only a story sniggered in bars by beery undergrads. So much for intellectual ambition--I was marked as a campus footnote, a stain on a bike path where plastic flowers lay discarded for only a semester. I should go home now. I should buy a plane ticket home.

We never did discover who my stalker was. The beautiful blonde police girl couldn't stop laughing as I described my plight but dutifully went through the roster of my former students with me, trying to discern who among them might have gained 50 or 60 pounds and been dissatisfied with their grades. And then I got married and moved to Los Angeles, where the threats were more serious, if considerably more slender. Ever after I've wondered who she was, why she wanted me dead, and why she didn't look into some deep conditioner.

And when I sat down at that Master Class, my eyes bright with purpose but slightly unfocused as middle-aged eyes tend to be, the first thing I registered once composed was: three inches of unkept hair, square shoulders, thighs built for terror. In an instant I was back on the pavement, contemplating winkie beetle pheremone trails and asking myself and the heavens again "Why me?" Suddenly I was feeling small and forgotten--this time, by a publishing industry who had never heard of me and never would. I should go home now.

I learned a big lesson that night about story-telling. Some of it was from Mr Maass, an insightful person; most of it, though, was from re-experiencing terror, 20 years and 1500 miles later, thanks to the split ends and solid calves of a complete stranger. You might as well write for your own pleasure, because you have absolutely no way of knowing how anyone else is going to respond to what you put out there. To whom else do split ends and generous thighs spell soul-killing defeat, grazed elbows and the end of all ambition?

Apart from Kate Moss, maybe.

Curiosity Cleaned the Kid

2011-10-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

Bank lineups have never been Kid's finest milieu. He's a squirmer, a dasher, a smart-mouthed noter of other people's footwear flaws. He has made it clear that Russian accents drive him crazy; that the old lady with the long hair didn't brush her teeth that morning; that "Rufus" is a weird name; that the guy in the track suit is even fatter than Fat Albert; that what did they think he was, a midget bankrobber what with the teller's counter so high above his head? I shudder when we have to go in there together; if my bank wasn't in a kinda sketchy strip mall habituated by Timmy's devotees in pickups, I'd just lock him in the car and go in on my own. I would. I would do that. Because it has been so bad that people might be given cause to think that we haven't beent trying even a little bit--even though we have been trying very very hard, and have the livers and wrinkles to prove it. But yesterday the slate was wiped clean (literally). Suffice it to say that Kid now knows not to stick his face into the business of how automatic hand sanitizers work, and 11 people in line at the Royal Bank on a Saturday morning got a good long belly laugh. Twelve.

New Pet

2011-09-28T22:14:00.000-07:00

Haven't been around here much the last little while. We're renovating the kitchen, about which I'll never speak again because who cares, AND, AND we have a new pet. It takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of my time and energy to banish it from my thoughts. Is it because it is so very that much cute? Winsome in it ways? It is not. It is because it is this:

Meet "Slick," our mealworm.

CBE cuts must have been pretty drastic this year, because instead of a classroom hamster or duckling or even fish, each Grade 3 child at Kid's school was given a mealworm to keep in a plastic cup.

The first question I had was the most obvious one: What are they teaching kids these days? One look at Slick, and I knew she was Grace Slick...honestly-- honestly, now: have you ever seen a more feminine looking mealworm in your whle life? Me neither. It's not easy to find darling pet accessories for mealworms--not even a measly hair ribbon or a bedazzled collar. I worry about Grace Slick now, a lot. What if she wakes up one day and is gender confused? Not that it would bother me one way or another, I just want her to be in a loving relationship, but still: there might be a way to make life easier for her and I think it might be marabou. Yet, I don't think the teachers have even broached the subject of gender, which: HELLO? Is that not the first thing anyone of any age would wonder upon first laying eyes on a mealworm?

One day, sadly, Grace Slick will be turning into a beetle of some sort--or such is the nonsense with which they're filling Kid's head. I see her more as a Ramone or perhaps a Dandy Warhol. Although she would look smashing in this:

That there is a Victorian dress decorated in more than 1,000 beetle wings. It was once worn by Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth.

If you had been asked five minutes ago how to draw a logical line between Calgary Board of Education cutbacks, mealworms, Grace Slick and Lady Macbeth, you wouldn't have been able to do it, would you have?

My work here is done.

The Truth Hurts

2011-09-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

Me: Why in the name of all that is good and decent, WHY WILL YOU NOT TO GO BED?
Kid: I don't want to miss all the fun!
Me: What do you think goes on around here once you're in bed?
Kid: Well, you check your chin for whiskers--but dad watches TV til midnight!

Certainty

2011-08-02T15:55:00.000-07:00

Normally, I am not much for direct comments. I prefer a sort of sly and minky roundabout sarcasm. But I can say this, flat out: all things considered, I would have preferred to have been told about the dog eating a dead crow BEFORE I gave him his customary kiss in the face.

Boxcar Willie

2011-08-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

Because my friends are all odd, and those in Minnesota odder still, I today found myself thinking about Boxcar Willie for the first time in 40 years. Boxcar was a regular companion on our long, hot trips to Saskatchewan in the stabby August heat--mom and dad smoking fiendishly up front while the three of us kids coped as best we could with the snarling and flatulent poodle, rogue grasshoppers sproinging desperately against the station wagon windows, and egg salad sandwiches on the turn. After Boxcar wailed for his allotted 2:46 about the Wabash Cannonball, our 8-track turned evilly to a song by George Hamilton IV, about a Saskatchewan farmer who has to shoot his horses during a winter storm because they were all starving to death anyhow. So: August fug, grasshoppers and their filthy tobacco spit, flatulent dog AND three weeping children snuffling into their mayonaissed sleeves. Good times.

But back to Boxcar: did you know he's the cousin of Tommy Lee Jones? YES.

Oh, and: the thing about Boxcar, "The World's Favorite Hobo"? He was in the US Air Force and was never, NOT EVEN FOR A SECOND, a hobo. Like, not at all. Never a hobo.

My favorite hobo is Rutger Hauer.

I don't even need to see "Hobo with a Shotgun" to know how much I love it. "When life gives you razorblades you make a bat covered with razorblades," someone says to Hobo+shotgun, which is pretty much the best quote in movie history. Except, maybe, for "I have to wash this guy's ass off my face," from the same work of genius.

I think we might have been happier little girls in the long run if we had had such alternate entertainment on those long-gone trips through the parched Canadian plains. Innocent shot-dead ponies in February prairie snowstorms made us think that God was mean, but guilty shot-dead corrupt cops, anti-hobo activists and snotty rich kids? There's your sense of divine justice right there, which is something we really could have used a sense of, what with that gassy poodle, the noxious clouds of cigarette smoke, and nothing but License Plate Bingo to divert our minds from our end-of-the-road doom: BORSCHT. The thought that, one day, someone was going to have to Answer to A Divine Authority for pulling us out of our British Columbia lake and driving us 12 hours to a one-tree town that smelled of cabbage? That might have been the thought that would have sustained our now completely, irreparably sooty black souls.

Hey! Here's a good song about hobos, performed in a winery with a German name, just like Rutger's. I imagine you're amazed by how I did that, what with the multi-media pulling together of many hobo threads all blowin' in the wind. Worn Ragged, writing meaningfully of hobos since 2008.

Upon being 8

2011-07-31T22:01:00.000-07:00

So as of a few days ago, my baby is 8 years old. We celebrated by touring a Liberty Ship in the San Francisco Harbor. My Canadian child knows this much about Americans: one salutes the flag.

"Mommy, why is a salute hitting your eyebrow with the side of your hand?"

I explained to him about the whole Roman thing, demonstrating that your right hand is free of weapons, and that it's also a mark of respect. One ought to stand about three feet from the superior being addressed and maintain an upright posture.

So for the next three hours, I am tailed at three feet by a small boy in a white sailor's hat, barking orders to himself, his hand glued to his new sailor's cap, marching around as though his life depended upon the force with which his sneakers hit the ground.

The volunteers aboard the Jeremiah O'Brien were duly impressed. The man running the gift shop made hima birthday present, as did the sage 91-year-old Anglican vicar who sailed the O'Brien to Normandy and back twice, some 50 years apart. Kid was told by this wise old man to listen to his mother and not to put anything in his body that he didn't know for sure would make him healthier and stronger. The chocolate chip cookie in his hand hit the dust. The long-held dream of cotton candy did the same.

So now I'm parenting an 8-year-old Canadian health-nut who wants to be an American navy officer when he grows up, and who has already memorized the lines to "Anchors Aweigh." He also criticized my consumption of chips, beer, and guacamole, which is completely irritating.

Next year I'm taking him to a law office so he can check out the Hugo Boss suits and the BlackBerries. It's either Freedome 85 or Nudge Kid into Extremely Lucrative Line of Work. Although it will, I confess, be hard to give up the salute. I quite like the salute.

Bye, sweetie

2011-07-12T09:09:00.000-07:00

At first, they don't leave your arms. Then they're attached to your leg at the knee. Then they want to hold hands all the time. Then they're just within arm's length. And then they get bikes and learn to swim and you just stand there, watching them get a little farther away with every minute. This was an exciting week for Kid: he finally got the hang of that bike and something in his body/brain happened so that he started to swim. I stood clutching my Kindle poolside, watching his small perfect face framed by the water, as he demonstrated his new ability to float. And then he minnowed his way down to the other end of the pool in a non-too-straight line, taking all of my heart with him.

I Say Hello, You Refuse to Say Goodbye

2011-07-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

It goes like this: two boys have been playing together like short human beings for a number of hours. Sure, there are shrieks, there are arguments, there are--shall we say--differences of opinion settled through the judicious use of fruit peels and saucy verbal jousting. But in general all is civilized. One grows proud.

And then comes the moment when the parents of the other boy arrive. And you know what happens?

Oh, not much. Only complete and utter savagery.

Wedgies are inflicted. There is hair pulling. One small boy topples the other small boy into a curio cabinet. A WEAPON IS PRODUCED even though they both know that we are trying hard around here to maintain the impression that we are a stable suburban bungalow staffed by responsible, well-educated (if terminally dishevelled), pacifist grown-ups. One of the midgets cries. Someone swears--just yesterday I heard the dread phrase "by cracky." Motherly arms clutch futilely for squirmy bodies, motherly voices squeak ineffectually beneath the mayhem.

And two nice women experience that stomach-churning churning of stomachs that indicates that you've failed publicly, again, at this raising children thing. Yeah, okay, sure--the kids don't have hooks for hands (Jenny's yardstick for successful parenting)--BUT they are not a credit to the family. They're not a credit to the RACE. THE PEOPLE RACE. And then the wheels well and truly come off: you re-re-re-re-re-notice the ancient smashed corpse of the mosquito of 2005 on the wall just above the door. The dog-chewed shoe in the hall that was fashionable in 1999 and which bears the grimy marks of your very own five apparently not-so-clean toes. The one-lightbulb-short hall fixture that even your mother shudders at, it's so hideous. The guacamole on your shirt. You see the thought bubble above the other mom's head: "Oh, SHE'S the mother of that child who wore ONE PAIR OF SOCKS the entire week he was away at camp."

The threshold is supposed to be a magical and hotly contested place of ghosts and angels, vengeful gods of the forest demanding entrance and determined gods of the hearth saying "No way, not on my watch you don't, you filthy beast." Guess what? It's true.

Code for Shoot Me

2011-06-13T18:09:00.000-07:00

There are certain things that I say every single day of life. For many of them, I am grateful. Things like "Thanks, that was nice." Or "I love you, too." But there's one soul-dulling little ritual that I go through around about this time--just after dinner--365 days a year. It feels like 365 days a week. When it's happening, my mind goes to a pale stretch of beach in Belgium or The Netherlands--the Wat in Northern Germany--someplace with a vast horizon and nothing much to look at but some squirming mud fish temporarily discomfited. I can literally feel my eyes rolling back in my head as though they were suspended in a tupperware dish full of water.

It goes like this:

Me: Put on your pyjamas, please.
Kid: Why.
Me: I would prefer "Okay" to "Why." Try again.
Kid: Do I Have To.
Me: Put on your pyjamas, please.
(And here it comes:)
Kid: CAN I KEEP THIS SHIRT ON?

(Can he keep this shirt on....Sure, why not? It's only encrusted with breakfastlunchdinnersnacks, texturized by paintgluespitbloodotherpeoplesartprojects, and dusted lightly with gravelchalkdoghair. Sure, what the hell, sleep in that thing. It would only mean fumigating your bedroom and boiling your sheets for a day and a half.)

Me: No, it's filthy.Take it off.

And much complaining ensues. The words "unfair" and "revolutionary" are uttered. Furious little hand gestures and Churchillian grimaces.

This evening as my eyes were rolling back in my head and my thoughts turned to miles of empty Belgian coastlines with no obvious beauty, I had a brainwave. It goes like this:

Kid: CIKTSO?
Me: NIFTIO.

An entire 15-minute battle, reduced to four syllables. Imagine the time, the gin, the therapy that we will save. You got any short cuts to bedtime? Besides firing them out of a cannon and into their little trundle beds?

Love = poached halibut

2011-05-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

Husband was off on a boondoggle in Ottawa the last few days, leaving me to negotiate the Children's Festival, a birthday party, dinners, dog walks and school attendance. At some things I failed spectacularly (the last three things, actually). The first two weren't great either. Looking around frantically for a win here. . . I did recognize the need for Kid to have underwear that actually fits, and made that purchase. So: check! Yay me! I bought superhero gaunch.

When DH is away, I fall into a sort of fog. It's not, despite my obvious affection for the darling man, that I can't live without him, it's just that I can't seem to live well without him. Watching DH prepare the first decent meal we would eat since last Thursday, Kid and I have decided that love tastes like poached halibut.

Rocking the Norm

2011-05-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I left another woman's small boy outside the school in the rain on his birthday because I am, well, me. This morning, I slept in and so Kid is not in school. (Attention, any potential CBE employees out there: sometimes I write fiction on this blog. You just never know.) (But this is true.) ("True.") (You'll never take me alive, coppers.) The last time Kid had socks that matched was last year on his birthday when he received a pair of them from his scandalized grandmother. They've never been seen since. The dog was walked yesterday. Twice, around the back yard. That way, when Husband phones from his Ottawa Valley boondoggle, I won't have to lie about whether Elvis got some exercise. I made frozen burritos for dinner; they were stil frozen in the middle after 30 minutes in the oven, so we chipped away at the sad corn and did our best. My son greeted the pacifist mother of his friend at the front door not with a polite "hello" but with a loaded cap gun. That same kid cannot spell "Tuesday" but can spell "thermonuclear detonator" and "hydrogen fission." Also: "diarrhea."

This is what a friend calls, with affection, my "parenting style." She like how I "rock the norm."

I think I've done waaay more than rock the norm. I think I've taken the norm down to its subatomic core and applied dancing filaments of energy thereupon. What happens next is anyone's guess at this point--but tomorrow? It involves a birthday party, the military museum, the Children's Festival and a dinner date with some Hogwart's Lego and a princess.

I just glanced in the mirror I keep by the desk for detecting and eliminating chin hairs by daylight. I have crazy eyes.

Pic St-Loup

2011-05-26T16:13:00.000-07:00

So I took May off from this blog. I didn't mean to, but the life! The life got in the way!
I now know much more about Osler-Weber-Rendu than I ever expected to, purchased some custom beryl earrings from Wexford Jewelers because that's the sort of thing I do in the middle of the wide-awake night when no one's around on Facebook to play Scrabble with--I think about what jewelry I have to leave to my neices in my will and decide that none of it is good enough so I really ought to have myself fashioned some raw beryl earrings and avoid post-mortem embarrassment, I saw one of my closest friends run naked across a stage while hundreds of the blue-rinse set howled with laughter and all I could think was "Wow, she's been working out," clipped a foxhound's dewclaws, was assailed by cauliflower left too long to its own devices, put my hand in a bucket of aquatic insects while four Grade 2s squealed in horror, purchased inappropriately above-the-knee clothing for a woman of my advanced years, told a bird to fuck off, listened as the doctor diagnosed my gorgeous blue-eyed baby with some kind of serious myopia perhaps requiring the insertion of hard glass disks into his poor blind eyes, and yelled at a really mean person who phoned me up at 4.30 in the morning and then wouldn't believe that I was not, in fact, the owner of an architectural supplies firm named DAVE. And now my friends are going to Italy to join other friends already there, a friend's baby has been born and her brother has died, one of my sisters and two of my brothers-in-law are in Ottawa, as is my husband, and the woman whose birthday-boy son I just left standing in front of the school in the rain for 20 minutes brought me a bottle of wine to thank me for helping her out.

It's a huge swirling world of joy and pain and rain and Italy and medicine and airports and those green plastic perfumed dog poo bags, and sometimes there is no room for blogging about it.

BUT! So far no scrapes, no bruises, no sad undergarments making a break for it. And Pic St-Loup at the end of A Day.

Cheers.

Hi Betty and Lorna

2011-05-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Ladies, thanks for the laffs today. Elvis also enjoyed your delightful company. If wish I could use your real names, but that would mean I couldn't in good conscience allude to the stunt you pulled in the bathroom with the phone, the octogenarian and the coonhound.
Must good manners ALWAYS win?

What we cannot do

2011-04-25T21:00:00.000-07:00

Easter brought many delicious things, including the sweet sweet knowledge of what we cannot do here in the voodoo bungalow:
1. I cannot resist candy-coated chocolate eggs, even if it is 7 in the morning and I have a hangover.
2. I cannot get the image of the time the pig's head snouted me in the knee in Paris out of my head when contemplating a bagful of brisket. Lots of prepositions there, yes: but I believe my meaning is clear. 8 pounds of raw brisket = metaphysical barf.
3. Kid cannot stay out of puddles, even if he is (temporarily) in the last pair of dry footwear he owns and even if that means he is in the park in wet bunny slippers.
4. DH cannot keep from putting ancho in everything.
5. Kid cannot keep from whacking elderly people in the knees with plastic ninja swords. Nor can he stop saying "damn" if they should for once actually have their hearing aides turned on.
6. DH cannot see that the green napkins do not in fact go with the orange and blue tablecloth.
7. None of us is capable of watching the Canucks win, but that is the fault of some Nordic twins and not our own, except in sort of an ancilliary way.
8. Gramma cannot keep from asking if we have things like paper towels, water, salt. Relieved to confirm that we could identify and produce all items.
9. We cannot be trusted to drink Orangina in the basement unsupervised.
10. Most of us cannot leave the bungalow without commenting that the last step there is pretty wobbly and is perhaps right on the verge that very moment of collapsing, as it has been threatening to do for six years now.
11. And finally, many of us cannot give a damn about the dishes until the morning, at which point we all feverishly hope to outwait the others by faking illnesses of wildly various provenance. This year, I had dengue fever for three hours.

Confidence

2011-04-19T07:42:00.000-07:00

--Bye, sweetheart. Have a good morning at school--learn everything!
--You mean like ALL the secrets of the universe?
--You have to start somewhere, kid.
--Yeah, but ALL THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE? That would take me at least. . . . 7 days. Maybe even a whole month.

Just in case

2011-04-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

Spring cleaning at the voodoo bungalow is no small thing. We are all messy people with squirrel-like proclivities--there are, in fact, peanuts stuffed down the sides of the couch, just in case. Luke never met a photocopied conference programme from 1987 or a grade sheet from three years back in a different country that he didn't want to keep, just in case. Elvis hides socks all over the place, just in case. I cannot throw out anything that has the handwriting of a loved one, just in case. (Just in case it turns out to be the last thing they wrote or just in case my action starts the wheel turning and something bad happens next. I am clearly the craziest one. Yay me!)

But this year I'm getting serious about this whole down-sizing thing. That means it is time to say goodbye to some of the mommy hoard.
--plastic bag full of baby spoons, one with a tiny toothmark. I don't know if this is Lief's toothmark or one that was there when the spoon was passed down. I might have been hoarding a spoon with my 15yo niece's toothmark on it, which would cause her to roll her eyes and say "Eww, gross."
--two pieces of gravel that might have been given to me/thrown at me by my baby at the swings park. Or might have simply fallen out of one of his socks.
--one "Tiny Swimmer" disposable bathing suit in size 9mo. I kept it because "tiny swimmer" reminded me bitterly of how I got to be in the predicament of being in my bathing suit, lumpy and old and disheveled and now also wet, in public, with strangers, at 8.30 on a Wednesday morning, in the FIRST PLACE. One of the things I'd like to have less of is bitterness.
--that's not true. I love bitterness. It smells like victory. I want more.
--the earring that Lief found underneath our table at Brava, the first time he went anywhere with us. That was also the last time he went anywhere with us, for a very long time. That was the night he also found and ate someone's lipstick under the table at Brava. Well, he actually found it in someone else's purse under someone else's table at Brava. . . . It was actually a really nice shade and I kept it to try and match it against different brands at the cosmetics counter at the downtown Bay one afternoon. This is an episode in my life that I should probably try to forget. Farewell, baggie containing someone else's half-eaten lipstick from 6.5 years ago!
Scared yet?
I originally wrote "sacred yet?" And now I'm worried that there are no mistakes, Freud is 100% spot on and if I throw these things out I will be losing some holy part of my life. Something sacred and memorable, deep, religious, chthonic, powerful. I could be losing something important forever.
Good enough.
Out. The. Door.

Hello again

2011-04-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

Been a little quiet here because I've been making Life Decisions, which seem to involve taking a lot of long silent walks, listening to mopey alt rock and buying expensive tiles for the kitchen reno.
I've been weighing this choice: take a full-time job with a nice big soul-less company and rake in the cash that everyone keeps telling me I could be making and deserve, or settle down more deeply into the life I'm already living, a life that revolves around this house and the people in it--people who are perhaps often cash-strapped but otherwise pretty happy. And maybe about to be a little more cash-strapped than before.
Because I think I'm done now. I do not much care about career trajectories and SEO, blog traffic, my personal brand, what I could be doing today if I'd made different choices a decade ago. I think I have enough. I think it's all going to be okay. I'm going to work, sure, but I'm also going to write, I'm going to read, I'm going to be there at the school when volunteers are needed to make papier mache and go on field trips. I will be there for my elderly parents. I think that's what I'm supposed to be doing right now. It's all become a huge competition: who writes the most words? who gets paid the most? whose car is nicer and who lives in a bigger house? Are those Pradas? I think if I spend any more time with problems like that, I will make myself permanently damaged. Like, eyes hanging out of my green skull damaged. In the end it comes down to this: what behavior do I want to model for my child? I want him to see a happy grownup who helps out in the community, has a good circle of friends, honours her intellectual pursuits and doesn't let money run her life. Or ruin it. . . . she says, quickly, lest anyone get the idea that the whole freelancer thing is off. It isn't. It's just slipped down a gear or two.
And now, a walk in the spring sunshine. Hope you all get to do the same, whether or not your kids are watching.

The things we do for love

2011-03-30T10:13:00.000-07:00

Have just agreed to talk like Joan Crawford in "Sunset Blvd." in the event that sister's new eyebrows force her to attend tonight's wine tasting in the guise of Groucho Marx.

Birthday round up

2011-03-28T16:56:00.000-07:00

High-thread-count luxury pyjamas from glamorous Los Angeles
5 bars of Bernard Callebaut chocolate
3 Happy 50th Birthday cards (it wasn't my 50th birthday)
4 birthday cards about bodily functions and the failure thereof
6 bottles of wine
Amazon gift certificate
Dinner and drinks at a cozy restaurant

I'm starting to understand that the people around me might not know how old I am, but they really, really understand me.

Talent Show

2011-03-24T19:21:00.000-07:00

So today, picking up Kid at 3.25, I was met by the luminous D, the woman who has saved my life consistently since 2004 with her earthmother glowy childcare. She reminded me that today was "Talent Show" day for our grade 2 class. Her daughter had threatened to play the piano while standing on one leg and wearing a clown nose. This was causing her some consternation. Not quite, you know, dignified?

Thank God, I thought, THANK GOD Kid wasn't taking part. He has no musical talent of which to speak (unless you count the ability to hit the high notes in Bohemian Rhapsody), so for once--for once, sweet Jesus--I would be spared the certain comedy revue that is my son's public life.

Except . . . D's daughter, admitting that her own showing had been unremarkable, went on to announce breathlessly that Kid had done something "Really weird."

When a 7yo pronounces the actions of another 7yo as "really weird," you're in for a treat. This is what I have learned.

Turns out, Kid did really weird karate. For his music class. And WARMED UP and DID STRETCHES while everyone watched. And then proceeded to weave and bob and whoop and holler his way around the music room, feigning little punches and kicks at shadowy and imaginary opponents. which included a zylophone and a pair of very sorry glockenspiels.

We both watched as Kid shot out the school doors, singing the theme song from Indiana Jones at the top of his lungs, his toque slung low over his eyes, his backpack weighed down with 75 pounds of books on the American Civil War.

"Thank you," said the glowy D to me. "Thank you so much."

What can I say? We aim to please.

Sigh.

Granny pants and grad school

2011-03-23T16:36:00.000-07:00

There's an outside chance I might have had some body-image issues when I started wearing my grandmother's underthings in my 20s. My dead grandmother's underthings. The least sexy woman in the long history of non-sexy women, many of whom I imagine have been members of my family, she nevertheless had these adorable little nightie sets--the kind that Doris Day would have worn, with filmy little shrugs to go with. I loved them the way I loved Doris Day: with all my heart. It was just a slippery slope from there. When I write my memoirs I will secure professional help in discovering why my undergarment life went in this direction, and I will share. For now, the simple fact is all that's important: for several years, I went around wearing my dead grandmother's underpants. Roomy, non-judgmental, free--yeah, okay, so maybe my dead grandmother had been wearing them when she was alive, but: roomy!

Reading this over it's clear that I have spent many many years, and not just the last few, as a peculiar person in need of more than chcocolate and booze. Although those too. Nobody stop with the chocolate and booze; that's not what I'm getting at.

So (and here comes the story part):

I was working downtown, right across from City Hall and the Public Library, in a medium-sized building filled with police services and public prosecutors and the American consulate. Getting there from my low-rent apartment was a snap: about 5 stops on the C-Train. I tended to leave my departure til the last minute and thus it was, that bright July morning, that I left home in my grandmother's undergarments and a cute little cinnamon coloured skirt. And everything went just fine until, for no one particular reason but perhaps for many many small reasons over the decades, Gramma's brave undergarment finally gave up the elastic ghost. As I stepped smartly from the train, It Happened. Shoof.

Not an all-the-way-step-out-of-your-underpants shoof, but a shoof that went mid-thigh. And then, as I adjusted my stance so as to keep my drawers up, just a little lower.

What does one do in such a situation? I looked for a shrubbery behind which to ditch, but alas, no such thing. The sole mailbox was surrounded by smokers. The Olympic pillars looked promising but Japanese tourists were having their pictures taken there. Plus, I would probably have fallen into the water while standing on one foot and then I would be wearing sodden vast underpants.

See? There's hardly any cover at all.

So I clamped one hand very very tightly to one leg and sort of pivoted around as though my legs were a compass, maintaining the ideal pressure on the saggy pants in terms of where they sat against the mercifully kind of snug fitting skirt. I just tried to recreate that walk for my kid and he told me I look like I wet 'em. So not saggy, but soggy. I appeared, to anyone who might have been watching from the 8th floor--as at least three people were--that I had recently been incontinent. (Gramma! It all comes full circle in the end, does it not?)

I waddled slowly across the street, up the stairs, across the lobby and into a mercifully waiting elevator. The moment the door closed, I relaxed, put my knees back together and experienced deep shoof relief.

Except that the door hadn't closed all the way and Larry (let's call him that) from the office burst into the otherwise empty elevator to find me standing next to a pair of vast and shapeless underpants.

Did I know I was standing on them? He asked.

Eek, no, said I.

And thus I became that girl in that story that they still tell at company Christmas parties, that story that no one quite believes but that has been handed down for decades as gospel truth: someone heard it from Steve, who heard it from Clare, who dated that girl who sat next to Omi, who got it from Larry.

Sometimes people ask me why I went back to grad school, in a foreign country, and then stayed abroad for 15 years. Now you know.

Complicated phone problems

2011-03-21T18:25:00.000-07:00

My phone: ring. ring. ring.
Me: Hello?
Agitated Polish Woman: Khello?
Me: Hello.
APW: Why you have called me.
Me: I'm sorry?
APW: You have called me. Why? For what?
Me: Um. Actually, you . . . .
APW: You should stop call me. Stop.
Me: I think you might have the wrong number. . . .
APW: No, YOU have wrong number. You are one with wrong number. Throw it out. Never call me.
Me: Okay then.

The thing is, caller ID has registered her phone number on my phone. It's all I can do not to call her and order a pizza or ask for Lubosh or inform her that she is to desist from her blackmarket hairdressing.

This is the sort of thing that leads inevitably to an appearance on a very special Oprah.

A Music Memoir in 12 Questions: Crazy Pants!

2011-03-18T10:57:00.000-07:00

Ironic Mom has all the best ideas. From now on I think I'm a just gonna steal all her prompts and have a shadow blog--a revenant ninja stealth site called "Moronic Mi."

Anyhoodle, here's my version of A Music Memoir in 12 Questions. Fun!

Also: kinda depressing, when one notices that all the musical highpoints of one's life occurred about 35 years ago. I must have some golden Hammer pants around somewhere to cheer up this voodoo bungalow.

First concert: The Police, XTC @ Max Bell Arena, 1980. Told mom I was going skating. She thought there were a heck of a lot of people in that parking lot for just some random free skate. Sorry Mom! Things I also regret about that evening: Darryl the Fish, and the "cigarette."
First album: Eagles, Hotel California. Never gotten over the idea of pink champagne on ice. Which reminds me: It's lunch time!
Favourite concert memory: Neil Finn @ Largo, LA
Song you love to hate: Coward of the County by Kenny Rogers. Actually anything by Kenny Rogers except for this (BONUS: Crazy pants!)
Song you hate to love: Can’t Touch This, MC Hammer. Lookit im go! I dare you to not just get right into it. (BONUS: Crazy pants!)
Song you know all the words to: Mexican Radio, Wall of Voodoo (BONUS: Crazy face!)
Song that makes you cry: Life is the Red Wagon, Jane Siberry
Song that makes you move: Burning Down the House, Talking Heads
Song you remember dancing to: junior high gym, Ballroom Blitz, The Sweet. I’ve just watched this video three times, amazed, astounded, just plain gob-smacked at the garish glam wondrousness of it all. The world seemed so fabulous when I was 14. Plus, I think I just found out where Eddie Izzard got some of his wardrobe ideas.
Favourite cover of a song: Cry Baby/Piece of My Heart, Joss Stone, Melissa Etheridge
Karaoke song: Would never, but: Take Me Home, Country Road
Last concert: Crowded House

Cheese Lady of the Apocalypse

2011-03-17T17:52:00.000-07:00

There's this woman I've been avoiding. Okay, so there are like 40 women I've been avoiding, but I've been avoiding this one in particular. She's the cheese sample lady at my local supermarket and from way across the aisle housing all the tubers you can tell that she's a lunatic. And you know what lunatics love?

They love ME.

So I've been taking the long way around, braving the horrors of the deli counter just to ensure that there is no eye contact. Today, in a hurry to find provender for Kid's lunch, I forgot the trap and blundered right into the fromagey web.

Quinoa, eggs, almonds, cereal, CHEESE LADY OF THE APOCALYPSE.

"Irish Cheddar, hon?"

I froze. Even now, recounting it, I'm shuddering.

I turned, slowly. Hairnet. Henna rinse. Two bright pink spots a bit too low down on the cheeks. Dentures, slipping out. God love her.

And so I found myself pinning into the cheese lady vortex of doom, trapped for 15 minutes that I did not really have, while other shoppers whizzed past with little thought bubbles above their heads reading "SUCKA!" and "THANK CHRIST IT WASN'T ME." One guy actually snickered audibly.

Dear guy who snickered audibly: I will find you.

Topics covered with Cheese Sample Lady:

--Her friend Joanne the celiac
--Goddamn people who eat dinner after 8pm
--Denture clinics run by people who do not themselves have dentures
--The price of cauliflower
--The goddamn government and why you can't buy rye at Safeway. Rye bread, sure, but not rye to drink. It just makes no goddamn sense.
--The fact that no one can tell the difference between Irish cheddar and cheddar from Okotoks (a bedroom community of Calgary, not known for cheese production of any kind).
--Espadrilles and why the sides of them are so goddamn ugly
--The upward trend in rental prices in the Tuscon, AZ, area
--Her boyfriend Dougie and his goddamn wife and who was going to go to tonight's hockey game

I tried. I did, I tried, I was everything my mother could have hoped I would be in such a situation. I made the right noises, I tried to reach out to her as a person, an individua with a history and feelings and loves and dreams and hopes and small sadnesses. I sampled her cheese. I spent 15 minutes with the Cheese Sample Lady and I tried to brighten her day.

When I finally mentioned that I had only 12 minutes to get to school to pick up the Kid, she let me go with the promise that I'd drop in again real soon.

About 20 feet away, a man stopped me in front of the bananas. He clutched my sleeve and gestured. Come closer, said the gesture.

AW, MAN: I thought. NOW WHAT??

Brace yourself: It's worse than I imagined. Worse than you imagined.

What he said to me was this:

"Did you eat the cheese she gave you? Because I have to tell you, my wife and I were watching her for 10 minutes and she was picking her nose the whole time. Connie's just gone to tell the manager."

There's nothing I can add to that except goodnight, thanks for reading, and feel free to barf. I did.

The Perfect Age

2011-03-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

Kid: Mommy, are you very old?
Me: Nope. I'm just the right age to be your mom.
Kid: I disagree. I think you were the perfect age last year. It's just going to get worse every year.

And he wonders why we don't take him to Disneyland.

Holidays are for the brave

2011-02-22T14:30:00.000-08:00

Just returned from a four-day mountain getaway. Four-day, you say? Indeed, FOUR-DAY.

Yes, indeed, that is one of those "adjectives of dyspeptic unrest" that you heard so much about in Latin class.

Disclaimer: if I were once again to spend four days in a chalet with 17 other people--including 7 teenagers and with the addition of three large dogs--then these would be the 17 I would pick.

Fun things we did:

Hot tub, aka "leprotic oatmeal of despair" (see page 45 of the latest Journal of Tropical and Infectious Diseases).

Sleeping triple in a double bed: tiny fists! tiny feet! bony knees! 3 am!

Beer for breakfast! Being hungover at 10.45am is a new one, even for me.

Where's Elvis? Front door? Back door? Locked in one of the 8 bedrooms? Garage? Deck? Other deck? Oh, he jumped in someone else's truck and went for a ride to town?

From a pile of roughly 65 (note the odd number) of black ski gloves of various sizes, pick those that belong to you, your son, your husband, and perhaps the kid down the street whose mom thinks maybe he left his mitts at your place.

Enter a communal living room at 9am feeling more or less okay about yourself, leave 20 seconds later feeling old and wrinkly as 7 teens with flawless skin, shiny hair and expensive shorty pajamas do the rhumba in front of the fire. "It's the dance of love!" they say.

Ah, but wait, my lithe little friends with the shiny hair and the trust funds, watch this: it's the samba of approaching decrepitude. One day when you're feeling like you used to be groovy but a long time ago, that the turkey neck is new and not welcome in your village, that everyone around you seems to speak a dialect of English oddly parallel but not ever really contiguous with your own, one day when every corpuscle of your being is crying out for a caffeinated milky beverage but you've left your lactose-intolerance medicine at the end of a long long hallway at the top of a tall tall flight of stairs--on that day, as your one good knee bends a little and your stiff back muscles give you the appearance of standing straight and tall, and your bent and twisty old feet start to shuffle a few inches at a time, then I hope you remember this sparkling winter morning in your long-haired youth and the fire and the grey-haired person whose name you never can remember and marvel at how quickly this life bounces in and out of the dance hall.

Well, that went south in a hurry, didn't it? Next year, I do believe I shall do the same. One of those single-family beach shanties of which you hear so much.

Mommy meltdown

2011-02-16T16:53:00.000-08:00

The Huffington Post's comedy writers just hit one out of Sarcasm Field: "Mommy Meltdowns: Has It Happened To You?"

Gee, not since about 8:45 this morning, around the same time that I last saw my child.

Things we have argued about in the last 48 hours:

How you spell "pretty"
Milk: just white pee or reputedly nutritious fluid coming from quite another body part?
Whether "LEGO" stands for "Let Everything Get Out"
Whether it's necessary to make sure your "boy bits" are still hanging there by squeezing them every 25 seconds
That fart song is hilarious: yes or no?
Daddy is smarter than Mommy: yes or no?
Nazi? Nasty? Indiana Jones says "Nasty." So Mommy is probably wrong.
Whether there are two "r"s in "February"--or Febooary, depending on which side you take

I've been reading books on the adolescent brain as part of the homework for a writing class I'm taking through UCLA Extension, and I'm more frightened now than I've ever been in my whole life. If dealing with a 7yo is this frustrating, what on earth will I do when, 10 years from now when I am approaching 60, I have to cope with a big hairy bad-ass 17yo?

At which point, the Baroness Schraeder appears like a silk-swaddled Great Gazoo and purrs:

"Darling, haven't you ever heard of a delightful little thing called boarding school?"

Indeed I have, Baroness, my pet. Indeed I have. Sometimes, at around 9.45pm, when Kid has finally lost his long and vocal battle with sleep, I lie quietly on the couch and chant: Ashbury, Shawnigan, St Andrews College, over and over again, whilst flipping the pages of the dog-eared brochures. That, and the gin fizz, sustains me.

Stay

2011-02-15T16:24:00.000-08:00

I was thinking that
maybe I'd get a maid
Find a place nearby
for her to stay.
Just someone
to keep my house clean,
Fix my meals and go away.
--"A Man Needs a Man," Neil Young

It's not just "a man," pal.

Anyone else ever mistaken for . . . ?

2011-02-11T16:19:00.000-08:00

I need to be clear: I am thrilled to accept a Stylish Blogger award from Ironic Mom, (who got hers from Clay Morgan of the highly diverting EduClaytion), but:

1. I accept it while wearing what I wore yesterday. And that was no screaming hell, let me tell you.

2. I find it ironic indeed that she would pass along any award having to do with style to someone whose blog is called “Worn Ragged.” It describes way more than my nerves, is all.

3. I believe she is speaking primarily of my syntax, as I can haul out an elegant sentence every once in a while. These sentences tend to be about such inelegant things as phlegm, tuna casserole, and horrifying tomatoes, but that is between me and my shrink.

4. I gave Ironic Mom a picture of a $1.50 pin, and she gave me an award. That’s style.

The rules of the game are this: First, I tell you 7 things about me. (I will understand if you just want to go and look at that tomato instead).

Here we go: 7 Things You Won’t Hear from Others

1. I was once mistaken by the LAPD for a transvestite hooker on a Hollywood street corner.

2. In college, I signed up for an entire year of medieval Welsh literature solely to escape a boy who didn’t have the pre-requisites to get into that class. I would later leave him at the altar (or “allor” in Welsh).
3. I often wear a tiara while conducting (non-video) conference calls.I feel it gives me a certain gravitas that I otherwise lack. Being, you know, in my pajamas most of the time.

4. Beluga whales fill me with horror. I wish them well but I cannot look at them.

5. All the headshots I use in my business life are taken with me wearing my pajamas. You are the first to know.

6. Ever since “What Not to Wear” first came on, I have lived in terror because I know my friend Annie would totally turn me in for a hatpin and a kitten.

7. After tapeworms, I regard Play-Do as the single most disgusting thing on earth. (PS: Under no circumstances ever, EVER Google “Tapeworm.”)

Now I get to nominate 6 other bloggers for The Stylish Blogger Award. These are 6 funny, smart and admirable people from whom you'll get a laff (mostly), a cry (once in a while, but--hey--that's life), and a little bit of you-need-to-hear-this. Here’s my list:

Alpha Monkey: The only person with whom I have exchanged several hours’ worth of IMs about badger taxidermy. Sends presents in the mail from America. Advises about lipstick. Understands about hips. Favorite person.

Unknown Mami: Rocks a paper bag. Her "Sundays in my City" is one of my favorite Web habits.

Copenhagen Follies: Jennie is smart, funny and can be counted on to travel to exotic locations—and post photos. Finland! Marrakesh! Also: nice hair.

Baking Vintage: Smart, pretty, fun—and now also a professional baker. You want to be friends with Katie.

Saturday Jane: Not only, but partly, because she appreciates scrub jays.

BrainyJane/BrandyIsMagic: Because of this sentence, if because of nothing else (but not because of nothing else): “I will never understand: why people wear full linen jumpsuits. All that ironing? Why do that to yourself?”

In order to accept The Stylish Blogger Award, these nominees must do the following:

Write seven things about yourself.
Present the award to six bloggers.
Contact those people.
Create a link back to the person who did this for (or to) you.

If these nominees do not wish to accept the nomination, they can donate money to Kiva or totally ignore this post. I will continue to love them no matter what.

Click if you dare

2011-02-06T13:16:00.000-08:00

I just saw the most awful thing. I'm warning you. Not awful, awful--like bleeding people or animals treated cruelly. Just. Awful.

Seriously, have you ever seen anything so disturbing in your whole life? The thing that upsets me the most is that seed. I want to floss it.

I need to floss it.

This is where my life's choices have taken me.

This is your emergency menopause station

2011-01-26T16:57:00.000-08:00

Does this make you weep uncontrollably at your keyboard? If so, proceed to your liquor cabinet and make yourself whatever seems best.

This is getting completely out of control. Yesterday I was blubbering at a McCain's fries commercial. "The . . . the . . .boy, he's so. . . . hungry and. . . and. . . his shirt is all stripey and. . . . and . . . . ADORABLE. . . . and her kitchen . . . IS SO CLEAN. WAAAAAAHHHH!"

And GOD, it's hot in here.

My life would certainly change...

2011-01-26T13:52:00.000-08:00

...if I had more clothes like this:

Please give generously.

Car Snacks

2011-01-21T14:34:00.000-08:00

When we used to head out to our Windermere cabin, back when Lake Windermere had something like 10 cabins on it in total and not ten condos per square meter, we observed certain niceties. Barfers at the window seats. Long-suffering but uncomplaining and very awesome sister in the middle even though as the eldest she should have punched someone in the head until the window seat was hers but ahem moving right along. Flatulent poodle (version 1.1 of which had three legs and was full of hate as well as noxious gasses) on the arm rest of the front seat--and wedged in somewhere would be Gramma with her tin tartan picnic basket. Which all comes back to the barfers, because MAN would they have something to work with.

We were allowed to commence dining once we reached the Cochrane turn-off. Something like 20 minutes into the 3-hour trip. And then the tin would open and inside would be egg salad sandwiches, tuna salad sandwiches, sweet pickle and butter sandwiches, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, Wink or Tahiti Treat, celery sticks with Cheez-Whiz, Bugles, ju-jubes, coconut marshmallow cookies, popcorn twists, salt and vinegar potato chips and red Twizzlers. That was when she didn't really have enough time to pack a "proper lunch." I remember rolling out of the car at the cabin, easily 5 pounds heavier, redolent of many chemicals and dyes and sugars and processed flours, having said very little to anyone else, all of whom were rubbing their jaws and bellies and looking like little bubbles were floating above their heads. We were well on the way to porkitude and ill health including, probably, significant brain damage, but damn it we were happy and we felt the love. The pink coconut marshmallow love.

These days, now that I am Queen, we go to Banff on the weekends. It's an hour-long drive, door to door. Last week, so that he would feel the love, Kid got pretzels, some juice, an apple, a banana, almonds, and two squares of organic dark chocolate. I figured that would get him through the ordeal of being driven to a nice condo with a pool, something to help him concentrate on blasting battledroids and resisting pleas to for God's sake look at the scenery you are so lucky to live here. I imagined him thinking fondly back through the years to the thoughtful little snacks his mom would make for him on skiing weekends.

Look upon me, the standard bearer of exceptional parenting. Look upon me, you mothers in the McDonald's drive through lane, and WEEP!

Ahem.

Kid's babysitter has just informed me that he's pleaded with her to pack him a proper snack for this afternoon's excruciating drive. "You know Laur," he says, "She's not too great with the snacks. Mostly leftovers." He did not feel the pink coconut marshmallow love.

I'll be spending the next 45 minutes picking and choosing from our wide assortment of leftovers, which include cold green beans, a rind of Some Smelly Cheese, 2 inches of cranberry cocktail and what looks like tuna salad. I bet he'll be feeling the pink coconut marshmallow love next weekend, all righty.

The dark side

2011-01-20T20:34:00.000-08:00

Time for a confession here: when I was a kid, sharing a bunk bed with my younger sister, I used to hang down from the top bunk in the middle of the night and growl her name in a demon voice. Then she'd wake up yelling and I'd pretend that I was just sleeping along, minding my own business, when this stupid shrieking nightmare-ridden sister woke me from the dreams of innocence.

I've told this story to a couple of people over the years and their response has been the same: That Is So Awful.

Oh, the shame. Oh, the hand-wringing. Oh, the kind of sort of thinking about maybe kicking in for some of the therapy bills.

Tonight I'm sitting here in the kitchen trying not to put on the glow-in-the-dark monster makeup that Santa brought for Kid and scaring the bejeezus out of him.

I might not always be a good mother, but I bet I'll be a memorable one.

The mouth department

2011-01-19T13:52:00.000-08:00

Periodically, in the midst of writing lies about software, sweeping foxhound hair out of every freaking nook in the voodoo bungalow, bandaging bleeding Lego-wounded toes, or chanting "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" some 300 times--I take a break from all the glamour and indulge in the Etsy Taste Test. You cannot find better free entertainment, people.

Today I got a poem AND an "embroidered patch long shirt":

Review
That withering loneliness
Under the clear sky, it is turbulent Undercurrent
Lonely, pale，there has a litter smile In the mouth Department，
Evening, winding, or it may be some Indulge.
New style of clothing on autumn

If anyone gets an Etsy Taste of a litter smile better than this in the mouth department, I hope you'll let me know all about it.
And there, yet again, is a sentence that has never before been written in the history of sentences.
You're welcome.

Free range chicken chicken

2011-01-13T18:21:00.000-08:00

My darling TF recommended a farmer of chickens to me, a farmer who raises his birds ethically, treats them well, feeds them properly and charges a fair price for them. You go once a month or so and pick them up from his truck at a local shopping centre. It's enough to make you giddy, what with all the farm love going on. Locavores: REJOICE!

But I can't eat them.

They showed up last night courtesy of TF's DH, in their plastic bags. Their plastic bags of blood.

Their freshly killed, freshly plucked little bodies in their plastic bags of blood.

I contacted a farmer and he killed some chickens for me.

We cooked one--parts of one--this evening for dinner and I feel biblically guilty. Luke and Kid chowed down and declared it all delicious. I pushed a little piece of breast hither and thither on my plate and thought about responsibility. I thought about George Orwell, "Babe," and that episode of WKRP in Cincinnati where Les Nessman witnesses live turkeys bombing out of a helicopter onto an unsuspecting shopping mall. ("It should have worked.")

I think I might now be a Vegetarian For Real.

I know. I know.

The turkeys are mounting a counter-attack.

Informed consent

2011-01-10T17:47:00.000-08:00

Received the second copy of a consent form from the school today. Apparently a Grade 6 wants to do a science fair project on how well Grade 2s recall music.

There's a consent form for it.

I didn't sign it the first time it came around, so it came back.

Really?

If the Grade 6 wanted to take Kid's blood or urine, or subject him to electric shocks, or deprive him of light and oxygen for several minutes at a time, then I would want to be informed and sign away my rights to complain later if I saw fit.

But -- REALLY?

DH, playing devil's advocate (I know, shocker) says that any time a Grade 6 wants to experiment on a GRade 2, parental consent must be obtained. And what of the results of this observation? What if kid is determined to be sub-par in his ability to retain musical memory? Will this lead to persecution, a failed grade, deportation to an ice gulag?

Honestly. We can really go overboard on these kinds of things. Think think think, what could go wrong? What, in a science fiction universe ruled by gelatinous meany-brain mutant creatures, could go wrong?

Then invent a consent form for that.

I wish kids could just go to the zoo with their class without moms having to sign that they recognize their kid could be eaten by a leopard, be killed in a bus crash, break a leg on an icy walkway, hear a grown-up using a cuss word, etc.

Not that I would want to swap places or anything like that, but children do grow up on the Gaza Strip. In Delhi. Sudan. Tchad. They grow up. They live. They are not eaten by caged tigers, nor exposed to the depravities of Grade 6 science projects gone horribly wrong. If those vulnerable children can live and survive, then my pampered, well-fed and privileged child shall certainly survive a trip to the zoo. Or a music recall experiment performed by an 11 year old.

Lighten up, for the love of all that is good in this world. Just relax, breathe, and take it easy. We will live through this leafy suburban fat and waxy hellhouse, and so will our kids.

Just sign here, will you?

The Late Night Crowd

2010-12-19T15:15:00.000-08:00

When I lived in Los Angeles, one of my favorite things to do was to get into the Honda and drive late at night to our neighborhood Von's grocery store on Santa Monica Blvd. One could always find some sort of oddity by which to be entertained.

Once I witnessed two teenaged Asian boys transform themselves into girls while waiting in the checkout line.

Once I saw a large man with a shopping cart full of Double Stuff Oreos. "They're highly addictive," he said.

Once I watched a young Russian fellow try to pass himself off as the middle-aged Latino woman on the driver's license he was trying to use to procure alcohol with. "Iss me," he insisted. "I yam Lopez."

Once I saw twin women fighting over the last tube of a particular shade of lipstick. They were slapping each other, one was in tears, and the other was hissing "You know this shade doesn't look good on you."

Once I stood in line behind an elderly woman who had nothing but 8 jars of Helman's Light mayonnaise in her cart.

Once I watched a security guard tell a woman that she couldn't come into the store dressed like that. She was in a bra and panties that had "Wednesday" stitched across them; she insisted it was her bathing suit and that she'd just been swimming at the YMCA around the corner.

Once I saw a man weeping in the diapers section. His head was resting gently on a package of Huggies.

Once I encountered a person--man or woman, I'm not sure--inside a tuba, trying to buy chocolate covered sunflower seeds from one of those press-here bins. S/he couldn't get close enough to the mechanism on account of, you know, being inside a tuba, and asked if I could help. And then chewed me out because I gave him/her more than s/he wanted.

Tonight, at midnight, I'm staring out my living room windows at the deserted pathway that leads to the swings park. The neighbors have a blue-lit Christmas tree in their front yard, and it looks really nice against the snow that has been falling steadily for the last 10 hours. A rabbit just bounced past.

Lego My Christmas

2010-12-13T19:47:00.000-08:00

This year, I finished my Christmas shopping by around the middle of November. Fin-ished. I did it all online. Little parcels have been arriving, like packages from Dale in TLOTR, for weeks now. I've been walking around with a swollen head, full of pious self-congratulation.

And then the people at Lego did something to illuminate why they are rolling-in-it Danes driving shiny red sportscars to their villas on woodsy islands in the Baltic and I am in a very messy home office in a suburban bungalow: they sent a holiday catalogue full of brand new kits.

So now Christmas morning will be a time of great mourning if Someone Short should awake to find that there is no Pharaoh Visits the Turkish Baths or whatever it is. No Ninjago. No freaking freaking HOGWARTS.

Darn you, you Danes, you. I am very cross with you. I think you owe me and many other semi-organized people an apology. And maybe a gift certificate to the Lego store. That would go a long way.

I was always a Jingle Bell

2010-12-08T21:38:00.000-08:00

I was raised Catholic. Here in the lovely city of Calgary, that means you can be educated in the Separate School System (aka: Cat Lick School). The Proddy Dogs were usually at the other end of a shared playing field, whereupon we would re-enact with snowballs, basketballs, the hurling of outrageous invective, the Battle of White Mountain, the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, and the Massacre of Merindol nearly every recess. Essentially, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. We Catholics nearly always won. We were the noodle-fed sons and daughters of Russians, Ukrainians, Italians, Poles. They? HA! We laughed at their weeny Kentish shanks.

Come Christmas, though, there was one thing that united all of kid-dom, no matter at what end of the field you happened to be.

Every year, we would be forced to dress up in our mom's terrycloth bathrobes if we were shepherds, our too-short or too-long nightgowns or communion dresses if we were angels, our grandmother's finest chenille throws if we were Magi.

Or--much worse: We were Jingle Bells.

(Best not go down that road. That way lies madness.)

***

Last night we attended Kid's Holiday Concert. The children sang beautifully. They expertly played the xylophone and the glockenspiel. They confidently chanted odd modern lyrics to The Blue Danube ("Strauss, he was the best/He was better than the rest") and The Entertainer ("If it's ragtime, it's got to be slow"). Four of them (bless their hearts) gallumphed with dignity across the stage in a sort of Clydesdale-inspired homage to waltzing. They proved to us all that they were special treasures, talented beyond all expectation and compare.

It drove me freaking nuts.

No humiliation. No ill-disguised parental glee at the discomfiture of shepherds in pink floral bathrobes. No flubbing of lines. No pants-wetting Magi. No weeping Joseph. No general laughter when everyone realizes that the girl playing The Blessed Virgin is perhaps the least suitable 12-year-old to ever have been considered for the role. No audible gasp as Ulli Pentarizzo thunders out in green tights as the (mustachioed) First Christmas Tree. No looks of commiseration for the moms of the Jingle Bells.

Think about it: the 30-minute sweat-soaked melee that represents getting them to school every morning; replacing every single freaking mitten at least 12 times; the leftover meatloaf sandwich that lurks at the bottom of the backpack for 7 days before crawling out and begging for water; feet that grow a size every three weeks; their chuckle-headed inability to wipe their own noses in this forsaken land of the 7-month winter; the endless fart songs; the knock-knock jokes that end "and then the car went into the pool. Get it? GET IT?", being volunteered to bring two dozen cupcakes that represent the provincial and territorial flags, finding 100 pieces of pasta to put in a clean jar so they can all see what 100 of different things looks like--with a five minute warning.

Is it too much to ask that the school give us ONE LOUSY NIGHT when we get to turn the tables on our offspring? A little pointing and laughing would go a long long way, is all I'm saying.

HEY SCHOOL: You want me to chaperone a field trip to the frozen tundra?

That will be one Jingle Bell Holiday revue, please.

Typical Morning

2010-12-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

Things spoken/overheard at the voodoo bungalow this morning:

There is so much dog hair on my socks that I can't eat my breakfast.

If these were called MOON Sized Shredded Wheat, wouldn't that be so cool?

Yeah, no. I'm not sure. Oh! OF COURSE!

Why are the coffee filters in the hall closet? WHY? WHY? WHY?

Oh, Elvis, gross.

Just how late are we THIS morning?

Look, if you actually were Han Solo we still wouldn't make it to school on time.

Bats in the cave! Bats in the cave!

We typically brush our teeth with toothpaste, not corn syrup. You can tell the difference because one is white and tastes like peppermint and comes in a squeezable tube that you'll find beside the bathroom sink.

Do I have time to do my math homework?

When someone hits a girl in the nuts, what do you call it?

There is so much dog hair on my socks that I can't get my boots on.

It would be so cool if your head really did explode. No offense.

Yeah, there's no bread.

Is this hyperspeed?

When it says "No Parking/No Stopping" why doesn't that mean us again?

Can I have chocolate fondu for lunch with marshmallows and can Jake and Madeline and Paige and Andrew and Alex and Jasper and Ian and Sam come over too?

And the most awful one of all:

See you at noon!

Thanksgiving Foot

2010-11-25T08:35:00.000-08:00

In memory of American Thanksgiving, 1998. Culver City, CA:

Family gathering at home of dearest possible friends.
It's possible I might have had a drink or two.
A man enters the house and is introduced as Thurlow.
I place my hand on the knee of the older woman sitting next to me, the mother in law of my hostess.
"Oh my GOD, who looks down at a newborn boy and says 'Thurlow.' Your name will be 'THURLOW'??

She looks at me and says--of course, because this is my life we're talking about here:

"I DID."

Thank you very much, I'll be here for the rest of this excruciating evening.

For when you're bored

2010-11-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

Sometime, go ahead and ask me for the story about how I wound up face-first in pee-soaked sheets at the bottom of the stairs at 2 am.

Actually, please don't. Just keep the Manhattans coming.

Gift Ideas

2010-11-08T17:40:00.000-08:00

I'm not a rich woman. Well, yes I am, "in all the ways that really matter," etc., etc., --BUT I don't have so much money that I can spend it on gifts for people I've never met but still really like. Kid keeps asking for "food," which is totally annoying.

But here are things I would buy the people in my life, whom I have never met, if I could:

Ironic_Mom:

There are many things ironic about this button. One: its price--isn't it ironic that. . . . . nope, not going to do that. That leads to Alannis and April Wine and nothing else good. Leave it at this: I would buy it in platinum and diamonds for you if I could, if only for Whiteboard Wednesdays, which have let me know that I am not alone.

For Jenny, The Bloggess:

I would like to see where these would end up: inside an alligator vagina? I'm not Neil Gaiman but one day I hope to meet you, put on some wigs, take some Xanax, and talk about taxidermy.

To Unknown Mami, I would like to present this:

Unknown maybe, Mami, but not in a brown paper bag. You. Are Fabulous.

SubWow, thanks for visiting, thanks for the comments, thanks for the laffs. You really do have a heart of gold:

Also black, crimson and looks like some pewter. All those things.

Emi, I want you to have sunshine and fruity cocktails at some point this long Swedish winter, so if I could, I would send you here for two weeks--with a nanny:

It's in Belize.

It's a big world out there; some of you are in my neighborhood, or at least on my continent, and some of you aren't. But almost every day you make me feel like we're sharing a coffee over the fence. Thanks for the gifts.

Love,
Worn Ragged

2017

2010-11-07T17:45:00.000-08:00

So I was snuggling my darling son, recounting the many triumphs and adventures of the day (Lego! Hide and seek! Swimming!); his head was on my breast, I was ruffling his golden hair and inhaling that funky/heady/goaty little boy smell; I was remembering countless moments just like this one; I was a little blissed out. Maybe a lot blissed out. Fine. I was really blissed out.

And then Luke yelled from the kitchen.

"Sausages!"

There are burn marks on my neck and hip, Kid got up so fast. Not even a "Bye Mom."

I suppose this should prepare me for the ultimate betrayal, when he gets a girlfriend. Or the smaller betrayals of a sports team, a rock band (please please please don't let him like reggae, please God, Mon, not the reggae), some dumb TV show, the older boy up the street who has an Xbox. It's natural--it means my boy is growing up. All is as it should be.

Maybe that's the lesson I should have drawn from this delightful experience.

But mostly I am fixated on this basic equation:

Sausage 1 / Mom 0

I can imagine myself purchasing sausages again for my two carnivores sometime around 2017.

And, in summary: little brunette girl up the hill with the sausage curls and the sparkling blue eyes and the excellent collection of leggings: BACK OFF.

You still here?

2010-10-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

Turns out that writing poor excuses for three paragraphs of science fiction takes rather a lot of time.

Developments:

1. Girl at Shopper's took me aside gently and suggested I take advantage of sale prices on a 14-day treatment for "mature, fatigued" skin. I explained that my go-to remedy for that has always been gin, but she persisted. I'll keep you posted.
2. Fingernails are chipping. Yep, it's been so exciting around here that that makes number two on the list.
3. Christmas shopping nearly done. Thank you, Etsy. And thank you in particular, lizix26.
4. Have perfected killing regime for fruit flies involving balsamic vinegar. If you piss me off I have a salad of doom to give you for dinner. Consider yourself warned.
5. Brought home someone else's shopping bag from Winners, and that person took one of mine. In return for a pair of size 13 boy's winter boots and a three-pack of Fruit of the Loom boxers, I got an olive oil spray can, a headscarf and two candle holders in the fashion of fat flying babies. It's like Secret Santa although perhaps not as practical in the long run. Kid isn't excited about wrapping feet in acrylic scarf decorated with bears on skates. Honestly, it's like I don't even know him any more.
6. Learned much about the relative popularity of marbled cheese, aged cheddar, those little wrapped up squishy cubes with a cow on them, and Baby Bel, thanks to attending the Grade 2 Halloween party yesterday. Also learned that skunk monkeys like smelly bananas and that Marvin T's banana is always smelly. Also also learned that Marvin's mom is quick with the slappiness. I think I like her very much.
7. Mounties are cool, but Zombie Mounties are cooler. Kid doesn't care. See #5, above. Whose kid IS this?
8. Father's return to the pink of health seems complete, although mom still won't let him take me and sister 2 on whirl-wind (all-expenses-paid, I trust) jaunt to NYC. Mother is a pill. Perhaps it skips a generation and that explains Kid.
9. You pretty much can't win any debate when you're defending the premise that Idaho is as good as Italy. Even if the B-52s have written a song about Idaho and not about, say, Rome. That still doesn't work. Even if you sing that B-52s song to your extended family after a good dinner and over a couple of glasses of wine. It still doesn't work.
10. The Clone Wars, Season 2 is apparently so good that one could, actually, lose a all sense of time as well as bladder control, if one were a genetically pre-disposed killjoy child.

Bye now.

Perfect Mommy

2010-10-14T19:53:00.001-07:00

Kid just snuggled into his duvet and whispered: "You're the perfect mom for me. I'm not saying that there aren't better moms out there somewhere, probably moms that aren't lazy and can make cookies, but for me, you're just right."

Sci Fi all over again

2010-10-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

I'm in the midst of an online writing class on speculative fiction through UCLA extension. I love those classes--they draw people from all walks of life, at all stages of dreaming and working and getting things done. I'm at the slow end of the "getting things done" part--honestly, some days it's all I can do to make sure my teeth are brushed and I've eaten something before 5.30. I'm having a hard time coming up with a story idea. Which I think I can explain thusly.

My life is a little like a science fiction novel: when I think of what I was doing not a decade ago, compared to now?

Whoa (as Keanu would say).

There is eerie goo on my floor and sometimes on my clothes.
A creature leapt from my belly and then began to feed on me.
I often cannot remember my name or my birthday. Forget about the serial number.
The appliances in my kitchen are conspiring against me. Those fires do in fact start themselves.
There is a smaller person in my house who looks like me and says many of the things I say and yet when I speak seems not to be able to hear or see me.
Most of my interactions are with ghostly presences that I conjure on a screen.
I was recently informed that my cauliflower soup, while not poison according to the scientifically postulated laws of nature, was disgusting enough to be categorized as "wildly imaginative in a bad way."
I have eyes in the back of my head.

Seems clear enough to me that the reason I'm having trouble writing science fiction is that none of it is fiction any more. Perhaps if I approach it as a class in realism I'll have an easier time of it.

The garbage men of the apocalypse

2010-10-07T08:32:00.000-07:00

I love Thursdays in the leafy suburbs. Early (like, 9am) (I love working from home), the recyclers and the garbage guys come down the hill in their trucks. I love the apocalyptic whirring and crunching that heralds their arrival. I love the feeling of relief as my detritus--outdated prescriptions, doodles, fevered tallying of taxes, magazines that did not bring me the lasting happiness and immediate shedding of 5 pounds that I'd been promised, coupons for crappy fast food, the latest Child Safe fear mongering classes, failed art experiments (the day the decoupage died was particularly wonderful)--sails off down the street to its new life as a community newsletter or confetti for the wedding of people long separated by circumstance or, perhaps, the scratch pad belonging to the world's most brilliant writer. The guys riding the back of the trucks must wonder about me, standing in my blue starry pajamas, smiling beatifically upon them from the living room as they swoop like seraphim for the trash bags. Desperate housewife? Cougar on the poorly coifed prowl? Recent escapee from the sanatarium? Staunch believer in second chances.

The birds and the beansprout

2010-09-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

I know it, my momma knows it, the surgeon knows it, and now you're gonna know it too: I AM A PRUDE.

In our house, we don't have what you all have. We have little generals, gladys knight and the pips, yoo-hoos, and BTMs. I cannot even say "belly" without blushing. I blame the Pope. Also those little mauve handbooks they gave us, secretly, in grade 5. Handbooks that, having fallen into the hands of one PK, who I'm sure grew up to be a very nice man and a pillar of his community, were a source of shame and consternation for easily 7 months. Every morning he greeted me with "Isn't it wonderful being a girl? Are you MEN-STROO-ATING today?" And then punched me in the head or twisted the skin on one of my forearms so tightly that I got blisters. I think he liked me. Or he hated me. With boys it's hard to tell.

So tonight Lief wants to know about babies. He's 7, it's time. Right? I had always envisioned having a good friend who is a mid-wife come and give him the talk. I've put it off now for ever, with talk of baby catalogues, molehills, sub-porch dumpings of infants, the bee balm thing, etc. Tonight, though, I took a deep breath, and, inspired by dinner, also a cooked shrimp and a bean sprout. And put on sort of a puppet show, with the bean sprout swimming through the air toward the unsuspecting pink crustacean.

Writing "pink crustacean" has made me kind of uncomfortable. You see how bad it is?

I can imagine Kid in 20 years, lying on his shrink's couch and speaking of bad dreams involving Thai food. Going now to put another $20 in the online therapy fund. He's going to need it.

What colour is your menopause?

2010-09-25T17:34:00.000-07:00

Mine? Orange.

Yep, got home from Banff, painted the office orange.

(Note crazed, saggy-eyed expression. If you see any of your friends looking like this, ladies, keep them AWAY from the PAINT STORE.)

(Also don't let them buy a pony. They won't take care of it.)

(OMG: Are those AGE SPOTS on my hand? I have age spots on my hand.)

(What colour helps you cope with age spots? Besides the colour gin?)

Strokes aren't funny

2010-09-22T10:48:00.000-07:00

Working from home, lounging in jammies at 10.45am. Pizza and coffee for breakfast. I would be the first (OK: maybe the second or third--my family is all judgey these days) to admit that I wasn't looking like anyone you would want to rub up against or call "mommy." So, while husband is walking dog and child is at school, I resolve to shower, dry my hair, maybe put on a little make-up. It would be like our voodoo bungalow version of that show where deserving families open their eyes and OHMYGOD the shotgun shack has been torn down and in its place is a Tudor-style coach house complete with trampoline and trout stream.

So I get through the shower without so much as a glance at the knee dimples and am drying my long silver locks. I read in a magazine at the dog groomer's that a good way to give your roots a little lift--JUST LIKE KATE BOSWORTH IN THIS STOCK PHOTO!--is to dry your hair upside down. I can do that--today is a day of MIRACLES, my friend! Whole-hearted renovation of the self!

So I flip my hair down and. . . .

Whack my head on the bathroom counter so hard that, apparently, one of my contacts pops out. When I stand back up and look in the mirror to see if I can discern any part of my skull shining through, I believe myself to be having a stroke because I cannot focus properly. (And this is not the first time that's happened to me, either, which just reinforces the idea that this time it's a real stroke because, honestly, to whom would this happen TWICE??) I back into the wall, knocking down the ugly metal wall hanging sculpture thing that I hate almost as much as husband does, something I won't admit to because that would mean handing back a hard-won decorating victory. As it falls, it takes out a sizable track of skin all down my back. There is blood. Quite a lot of blood.

So the upshot is that beauty totally isn't worth it and, if you think you're having a stroke, don't stop to wonder if maybe just one of your contacts popped out because that would be the wrong lesson to derive from this tale. GET HELP. Right away.

For me, there is no help. There is, however, gin--it must be the arsenic hour somewhere.

Science Fiction Kitchen

2010-09-21T22:05:00.000-07:00

In two weeks I start a new writing class through UCLA Extension. This one's on writing short speculative fiction. I'm doing this as a double-dog dare to myself, and it's bound up with all kinds of panic, anxiety and self-doubt.

Kind of like cooking.

You wanna talk about alien worlds, alternative timelines, horror and urban fantasy--well, then, that's pretty much talking about what's cooking in my kitchen.

If you stand quietly before the scorching peas and pause for thought while reaching for the flame retardant, one could not fault you for wondering whether Something Strange were going on: has this not just happened? Again?

Kneeling to lift the raw bird from the oven at 6pm on Christmas Day, it would not be unjustified to speculate that, whatever world I was in when I turned the oven to 350 and then went skating with the 12 members of my dinner party for four hours, it was perhaps not THIS world.

Perhaps the door between this world and that, or those, is the same door that leads to the pantry, wherein, mysteriously, live 7 bags of organic quinoa but not a single grain of sugar. Wherein may be found a child's size 3 shoe and two box of Baby NumNums--although the only child in this house is a 7yo boy--but no cereal of any description. Whose shoe is that? It looks familiar, but.....No. Impossible. For 5 years? In the pantry for 5 EARTH YEARS?

Many dozens of identical squares of baking chocolate--unsweetened, semi-sweet, sweet, bitter--none of which are in boxes, leaving the sugar content of all desserts a matter of scientific fascination.

Cinnamon eerily transformed into curry leads to an odd prickling feeling at the back of the neck over "breakfast."

And through all of this I stumble like a dim-witted Star Trek extra who doesn't know what it means (DEATH DEATH DEATH) that her tunic does not match the others'.

I would call the genre "suburban fantasy," but that gives entirely the wrong impression. No ripped milkmen here. (Although vomiting can really give those abs a workout.) (Trust me.)

This is about horror, people, and the uncanny, the undead (that chicken divan just would not stay down), revenants that walk among us reeking of tuna casserole. Burnt tuna casserole.

I best I could pass this course just by submitting menus and including tasting notes.

Close Encounters of the Parent-Teacher Kind

2010-09-17T11:18:00.000-07:00

Off to meet the new teacher in half an hour. Going through my list of reminders to self:

--Don't mention that thing about the badger
--Don't try to make all adjectives five syllables
--Jokes about headlice aren't funny to a Grade 2 teacher
--Don't talk about underpants
--Don't call Kid a "little weirdo" or a "varmint"
--Probably shouldn't refer to him as "Smoochy" either
--Or "stupid pants"
--Avoid referring to you-know-what
--Steer clear of talk about medieval catapults
--Practice these words: normal, calm, well-adjusted, delightful
--Don't eat mints to cover the smell of gin
--Best not to chew gum either
--Not that I've been drinking
--Why am I always talking about gin? I hardly ever drink gin
--Remember: not everyone thinks the word "gin" is as funny as you do
--Best not to talk about drinking at all
--Also medications are out
--Say something nice about her lipstick but in a non-creepy way (like, not "I bet that shade looks great on vinyl")
--Never mention to anyone you know that you keep a blog
--Maybe stop blogging altogether
--Wear shoes this time

Searching

2010-09-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

I'm on the phone with my aged inlaws. I love my inlaws. She's your typical no-nonsense Yankee with a Middlebury degree in American lit. He's an eccentric Czech French professor emeritus. Despite wildly different upbringings, they have many things in common.

DEAFNESS, in particular.

One entire page of FIL's Czech-language skiing article has gone missing overnight. Mysteriously. Poof, it has disappeared from the document, which is now only 3 paragraphs long. I am trying to help them through the "Find" process.

They are each on a phone. As we open, she's in the upstairs study, he's in the kitchen downstairs. The computer is upstairs. The computer is ca. 1886.

To try to locate the missing file, I ask FIL for a word that would appear in the article and not too many other places. He comes up with the word "vemenek"(which seems to mean "udders," and what in the world that has to do with Alpine skiing is currently and I hope always will be mysterious to me) (it's also possible that I have misheard the Czech word) (which is not unheard of, as you will see).

So what MIL hears is vemek.
Then vememek.
Then vefememek.
Then--and at this point the two of them are shouting at each other on the phone while standing about 18 inches apart--benemek.

They are both breathing hard and a sharp tone has possibly a little bit crept into their loving back-and-forth.

Try Kanada, FIL suggests, when the vemenek/bemenek/shmemenek routine has proven fruitless.

I try to interject something about how the computer isn't simply refusing to tell them about a word that is in fact in its hard drive somewhere, and that it's not a matter of taste. (No one's listening.)

Kanada, with a K, he says.

I know how to spell Kanada, she says.

With a K.

Yes, in Czech it's with a K. I KNOW.

Maybe I would have written KanadU. Czech is an inflected language.

REALLY.

Or JD Southam. Try that. You left out the JD.

I think Southam will be enough.

Oh, certainly, I interject. (No one's listening.)

Southam's not in there either. You must have deleted your work somehow.

Why would I have done that? This machine has deleted my work before. I am going to go back to writing on a piece of paper with a pen, which has served me well for nearly 90 years. I remember when I wrote my novel in 1933....

I'm not saying you did it on purpose, just that by mistake you might have.....

Try Belgika. Or Belgiku, or (I'm just riffing here) Belgi-roni. Czech is an inflected language, and this would have been the dative of absolute derision.

At some point, MIL's phone is turned off, but I can hear her asking me questions because FIL's phone is still on and he's standing beside her. I try to get him to tell her that her phone isn't on but he mistakes this for a request to turn his phone off.

And abruptly there is silence. As though 11 tons of snow fell on the small town of my life and there would be no snow plough for at least a week.

And at this point, I burst--unexpectedly--into tears. Isn't this just the way it will happen, and every day it's coming closer to happening: raucous familiar life in all its loud and confusing--even annoying--small details, and then: nothing.

I tried to call them back but they were trying to call me back and for 10 minutes there was only busy signals and answering machines.

When I finally got through, we were quiet and calm, maybe a little embarrassed. At least I was: I wondered if my desperation was obvious.

Don't hang up. Don't go.

Sundays in my city

2010-09-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

Technically, it's Monday, Unknown Mami. But it's a holiday Monday, which is sort of like a Sunday, and I just now found out about your Sunday city project, so here goes. Here's Calgary on "Sunday" evening.

This is the view out my back door at dusk. This is a city filled with gleaming glass skyscrapers as well as skyscrapers of a more organic nature, such as these lovely spruce trees. They're about 40 years old at this point. They're home to squirrels grey and black and red, crows, jays, occasionally an ill-tempered osprey. Also, as of last Halloween, a long strip of slowly decomposing toilet paper (which I have cleverly hidden from view in this shot).

Things neither you nor I knew about me

2010-09-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

Upon visit to lovely physician, I have been informed that I have more than my fair share of large intestine. Like, MUCH more than my share.

If anyone knows what to do with that information, I would like to hear about it.

Try to Remember

2010-09-01T21:56:00.000-07:00

We had a stentorious stereo when I was a child--wickery front, gleaming mahogany casing that showed small sticky fingerprints, a shelf for storing your martini supplies. A real piece of furniture, stalwart, massive, serious. That's where I heard all the music that turned me into such a lover of music, although some of the things I loved then I'm utterly embarrassed to admit now. (Maybe after another glass of this impertinent Grauburgunder). One could imagine listening to Winston Churchill on it.

When I was first read Cinderella, I imagined Patti Page as my fairy godmother--her butterscotch voice instantly soothed bee stings, sunburn, Donny Bowhay's wandering six-year-old eye. Moms spoke like that on television but rarely on Glenview Crescent, where "I'll skin you alive" and "who do you think you are?"were the most common things I remember hearing, and not just in my house, either. I recall sitting quietly behind the green brocade curtains in the living room, listening to "Try to Remember" at about age 7 and already feeling nostalgic for something I wouldn't experience for another 20 years. (I just found out that Tom Jones wrote the lyrics. That's mad.) You can email Miss Patti at Patti@MissPattiPage.com, if you'd care to. I believe I will. It will be like emailing the Pope, but the Pope in a champagne gown.

I'd be a regular church goer again if we got to wear stuff like that. You Cardinals in the audience, listen up. I don't need to be ordained (although that would be nice), I just want to dress up in something at least as fancy as the stuff you all get to wear. When I'm Pope, I'm turning all of you into Bluebirds. You are on notice.

Anyhow, back to matters at hand. I was just trying out Ping, the new iTunes feature, and it wanted to know what my favorite 10 songs were. I entered 10, but, truth be told, they're not the ten that, in moments of pain or fear or panic--when I require the comfort of music--leap into my mind. Those would include "Song Sung Blue," "I Wanna Sing You a Love Song," "Mockingbird Hill," "Hang down your head, Tom Dooley," "Lemon Tree," "Yellow Bird," and "Let it Be." And just for the sake of adding two more, I'll go with this song we sang in church, the name of which I don't know, but was about there being a long long road to freedom; and "Silent Night."

I think about things like this when Lief is in the station wagon with me, listening to such things as Franz Ferdinand's "Do You Want To." Will he, at the unimaginable age of 47, feel sorrow or regret or nostalgia and immediately hear "your famous friend, well I blew him before you, yeah" running through his mind?

See ya, summer

2010-08-31T17:23:00.000-07:00

So many good things about today!

The angry fish are gone (turns out they weren't angry, they were just beautiful and very, very vain)
I was actually productive today (I wrote AND shopped)
I may or may not have purchased a ravishing purple dress
Okay, I did actually purchase a ravishing purple dress
Cooling weather means I don't have to worry about wearing shorts any more
Ditto bike ride for undue lengths of time
Ditto climbing up big mountains
A babysitter (free!) was here all day long
My car once again works, after having been drained of its vital juices by a Nintendo DSi left charging in it all night some two weeks ago by someone who shall remain Luke
Dog smells not too bad
Nice manicure (Opi Glitzerland)
Banking scare turned out to be a clerical error

The best thing of all, though:

TWO MORE SLEEPS TIL SCHOOL STARTS!
(doing a little dance)

Meet Elvis

2010-08-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

This is Elvis:

He's a mixed hound, mostly coonhound, although with a little bloodhound or foxhound thrown in for good measure. He has many virtues.

He dances.

He accessorizes rather well.

He performs high-diving feats of derring-do.

He has a dignified bearing.

He was once a Hurricane Katrina refugee from New Orleans. He was found under a truck near the intersection of Paris Road and Maria Drive. This is what it looks like from space:

He had a broken back leg, a broken jaw, heartworm, scars from where he'd been attacked by other dogs, and was starving to death. I won't show you the picture of him at the St Bernard Animal Shelter when those good people first took him in because it would make you cry. (If you have spare cash lying around, they would be glad of it--apparently the BP oil spill has forced lots of people to surrender pets they can no longer afford.)

Needless to say, we're not stingy with the gravy around here as far as he's concerned.

A nice American woman who lives around here rescued Elvie and three other large dogs, flying them to the Banff area and finding homes for them all. That first winter, Elvis was one perturbed coonhound--not just the ice and snow, but also the boots and ski sweaters.

It's been 5 years since Katrina. Up here in the voodoo bungalow, we cheer you New Orleansianites on, we wish hard for your recovery, and we're sorry that one of your finest citizens was forced to emigrate. We're taking pretty good care of him though, so don't worry about him in the slightest.

We're sure you'd do the same for us.

Falling Asleep

2010-08-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

I once fell asleep while teaching an English class at UCDavis in the spring quarter of 1990. It was 8 in the morning, a muggy bathtub of a morning, with jasmine or something else heavy and soporific in the air, but still: I was sitting at a desk, teaching people about some thrilling point of rhetoric or another, when I suddenly got droopy, drooly, and then shut my eyes and fell asleep. While talking.

That was the morning I knew I wasn't cut out for that professoring thing. I fell asleep and when they woke me up I was mad at them. Not embarrassed, not apologetic. Peeved. I just wanted them all to go away and let me be.

Now I'm a stay-at-home writer. I lie about software, mostly. Sometimes I tell Oriental tales about agile teams or spin a salty yarn about quality control. One memorable day I wrote a series of haiku about travel expense forms. I might have been the only person who realized that the structure was actually a very intricate meshwork of image and internal rhyme derived from a medieval Japanese handbook about haiku. I might have been.

Today, though, it was all earnestness. Earnestness about activating responsive tactical teams and leveraging things and people (should people ever be "leveraged"? It sounds so. . . cold. . . . ).

Anyhow: earnestness + conference call + time zone shift + looming realization that another weekend is about to be sacrificed to gods I do not worship = nap time. When I snapped awake, I was once again peevish with those "around" me and wanted them all to go away and leave me alone.

If I'm not cut out for this writer thing, what next?

Sister 1 is MBA. Sister 2 is lawyer with an eye on higher things yet. Father is millionaire oilman. Dog has press-worthy survivor story and is much sought after as example of how the spirit of New Orleans endures even here in the frozen north. Husband is tenured professor with massive brain and elegant vocabulary--and speaks many languages fluently. There is some pressure here to keep up.

Or--maybe--give up?

If I had a number of diamond bracelets and perhaps an abalone cigarette holder, I could probably pull off the stay at home mom thing with elan, but I've discovered I require a fair amount of mad money. Like a LOT of mad money. Would not working make me less angry, but madder still? Could I really do this thing, this quitting work thing?

One thing's for sure: if quitting my job means feeling compelled to go on Grade 2 field trips, you can just forget about it right now. I'm in for the gold watch.

Shades of grey

2010-08-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

Or: all cats look grey at night.

There are good things about letting the grey grow in. The savings, for one thing. Those little foil thingies are fun and make a girl all stripey and rocking, but I can fund a greatly accelerated M&Ms habit for an entire year on what I used to spend per month in roots maintenance.

But, as with most of the choices I've made on this earth, the decision had nothing to do with money. No, they had to do with:

Gravitas. People might take me more seriously if I bear the real signs of wisdom and maturity. Serious people don't have to deal with compost. Ever.
Fear. Certain other people (I'm talking to YOU, Kid) might learn to obey me because of my growing resemblance to the witches they're always on about in children's books.
Surprise! I have grey hair! And I'm so frigging youthful! I KNOW. How do I do it?
Community spirit. Scouts love to help old ladies across the street.
Safety. No one is going to challenge me to a fight because I looked the wrong way at them. No one beats up old ladies.
Grey is the new black. My hair goes with everything. Like that Mercedes CLK. . . .
Victorian hair pieces. Silver hair works beautifully with my recent steampunk hairpiece obsession. (So recent as to be about 5 minutes old at this point.)
School field trips. No one expects the elderly to traipse around frozen wastelands looking for small-animal scat in the middle of deepest February.
Movies. I can speak loudly in theatres now and no one will think it's because I'm hyper and rude, they'll think it's because I'm hyper and old.
There must be a tenth thing but I can't think of it right now. If you can, let me know. Where did I put my glasses? Why am I clutching this? I came here for a reason and now I cannot remember what it is. IS THIS THING ON?

Apple Picker?

2010-08-26T12:44:00.000-07:00

Or DEMENTOR?

Before you answer, get up at 2 in the morning for a glass of water and just happen to glance out the kitchen window.

Apropos of nothing. . . .

2010-08-25T22:48:00.001-07:00

. . . 7yo says over dinner with my parents (his father being absent on account of weekly lawnbowling commitment):

"Laur, I don't mean to be cruel, but I think Daddy is the most enslaved man in this house."

Gleimous

2010-08-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

I just adopted this word at savethewords.com. I believe I was inevitably drawn to "gleimous" because of what I found in my son's bedroom this morning. And that is the last I will say about that.

I used to enter his room slowly, gently, savoring the way the nursery smelled. Everything like caramel and baby powder (fine, it's toxic, fine, I used it and he lived and neither of us have lung cancer) and clean laundry. Sometimes I would just stand there, in the middle of the room, eyes closed, inhaling in rapture.

This morning, I wrenched the door to his room open, holding my breath, quickly tore the sheets off his bed, gathered the socks and boy panties and t-shirts and shorts and jedi outfits and Mountie costumes into one reeking armful and didn't exhale again until I was safely past the open door in the kitchen, which marks the half-way point to the laundry room. I gulped in another lungful of fresh air and tore down the stairs and threw the whole pile into the washing machine, which I had readied with its door open. Slam! Start! Relief drenched me in grateful sweat. Life--ah, it is sweet to be alive.

In all the books they write about parenting--even about parenting boys, specifically--why is there no chapter on "Your Angel: Soon Enough He Will Smell Like a Goat"?

Hi you guys

2010-08-19T00:02:00.000-07:00

I just got home from a funeral for one of my in-laws' closest friends. They all met when they were in their 40s and were all up in each other's lives and families, jobs, sorrows, celebrations, ski disasters and irrational car purchases for the next 50 years or so. I kept thinking the whole time of you (yep, you) and how lucky I am to have you here with me as we all try to get from point A to point B here on planet earth. Thanks for everything. I will cry at your funeral when you die at 90 if you'll cry at mine.

Actually, no funeral for this girl. Please have a party, wear nice dresses and tiaras, and drink all Luke's wine. The good stuff is on the left, hidden behind the panini maker and the blender and the chutney from 1997. And have a cat fight over the paste jewelry.

That is all. Thank you and good night.

10 reasons why today is okay by me

2010-08-18T15:24:00.000-07:00

Hot, sticky afternoon, with bored kids sulking that we didn't make it to the movies. Work not fulfilling me as a human being at the moment. Pouty husband struggling to complete 4 months of work in the remaining two weeks before Fall semester 2010 begins. Three insanely angry guest fish. And a funeral, for an old (very old) friend, who has gone on to the next adventure. To make myself feel better about basically living in the American Deep South but without the benefit of pie, juleps, those marvelous accents or local music that isn't sung by a white guy in a straw cowboy hat, I shall compile the following list of why today is better than at least ten other days I have already lived.

I did not appear topless in a doctor's examining room that was already occupied by an Azerbaijani man, causing him to whoop and holler.
I did not step right in front of a Belgian bus because a chocolate covered cherry caused me to temporarily lose the use of my eyes and brain.
No child has simultaneously pooed and barfed on me and then bitten my nipple with sharp little teeth.
My water did not just break all over my aged father.
My sister did not tell everyone I know where I have a secret mole.
I was not forced to eat squid in a Vancouver restaurant and I did not fail to make it to the ladies' room before projectile vomiting a five-course meal in the lobby, ruining the establishment's bowl of mints.
I was not forced to express the anal glands of an angry poodle because I had just taken the worst summer job in the history of the world.
I was not prevented from re-entering my vehicle in a hailstorm by the potent combination of a big tree in front and a moose in back.
I did not just ask my mommy to explain what this business of a meat pole was all about in the opening pages of The Godfather.
No Girl Guide leader forced my reluctant hands into a large bowl of raw hamburger, causing me to faint and land on the floor with uncooked meat all over my face.

I feel better already.

Really?

2010-08-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Over on The Book Depository, the fastest moving book as of right now is.... wait for it . . . . THIS:

Oprostite, ali čini mi se da ovdje nešto nije u redu.

More about fun

2010-08-17T10:36:00.000-07:00

So the fun project. It continues. It has its ups and its downs. The downs: I rarely get to have fun with the people with whom I would like to be having all this fun. It's all part of the modern world--my people are a far-flung, rag-tag fugitive fleet, spread across continents, cities and small parks that can sometimes seem as vast as the Gobi. They work. They have families of their own--I know, right? THE NERVE. They have moods and desires of their own. Some of which gets in the way of, say, neon bowling with me at the drop of a hat.

But on Saturday night it all came together. Even the weather cooperated. There was fun dinner. A walk through a downtown so gleaming and new that it was like being in a different city altogether. There were fireworks, Chinese fireworks, that went on forever. There was a closed off river bridge for strolling and, if you like that sort of thing, for enjoying Chinese music. There was a grown-up nightcap under the stars by the river, as the last of the Afrika-Dey celebrants straggled home. There were lovely friends to share it all with.

And you know why I think it was such a huge success? Because I was not involved in the planning of any of it.

So please bring me your fun, people. Save me from neon bowling.

Although, if you want to go neon bowling, just say the word.

I Need a Shower

2010-08-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

So here's the thing: I have been asked to throw a baby shower for someone. Someone I don't really know, but who seems nice enough. I would like to know her well enough to say that she was just splendid. Perhaps time will take care of this. Or a warm scone with an excellent crumb.

Here's the thing though: we have a mutual acquaintance. A person that I DISLIKE.

It's not a mild, meh, sort of dislike, either: I do not want this person in my home ever again.

And yet I am all about being nice lest someone stab me (something I learned to fear from Jenny at The Bloggess, whom I worship) (I mean, I think she might actually have replaced one of The Trinity)--and not just because I am afraid Jenny will stab me (which she might, and then infect me with some kind of taxidermy plague), but because I genuinely think that every single one of us being good is key to having the world work out okay.

Dilemma.

How to solve this thing?

Is it possible to poison only one teacup? Could I "forget" to send the invitation? Should I stage some kind of mock disaster on my corner so that she cannot drive here?

Anyone have a creative idea?

I know that you are out there, lurking, and that you've never written to me before. Let today be the ay that you do.

Love,
WR

Fun is expensive

2010-08-10T10:43:00.000-07:00

In pursuit of fun, I was persuaded to go to Heritage Park with sister and three kids, including mine. Whee! This is more like it, I t congratulated myself. This Fun Project is going to be super simple. I am so great.

As it turns out, historical fun is PRICE-Y. Admission, rides bracelet, lemonade slushies, bags of (historically inaccurate) candy, lunch (crab cakes are somehow connected to Calgary's rich past?). . . .

RCMP outfits.

I got out of there nearly $200 later. I think I could pretty easily have $200 of fun that did not involve watching a draft horse pee for 36 seconds (timed it--we were waiting for the kids to get back from their fifth ride on The Caterpillar). Fun that, for example, included gin or shoes (these Helle Comfort Winonas, for example, would make me very happy, for only an additional $9USD):

It would also be fun to get rid of those vertical lines up there, but not that much fun.

Anyone need some copywriting done? Will work for shoes--as long as I don't have to wear them anywhere "fun."

Idaho and its Discontents

2010-08-08T13:00:00.000-07:00

When you see this sign, know that you are well and truly in the middle of nowhere:

The helpful websites that I consulted about where to hike near Sandpoint Idaho with a dog did not mention that the 16 miles of Trestle Creek Road are unpaved, cling precariously to a sheer drop off for much of the time, are approximately 1.25 Subarus wide, and, while incredibly beautiful (wildflowers, trees, blahblahblah), are also so desperately remote that were there to be trouble of any sort (like running out of secret glove-compartment gin), you would disappear like the Donner Party. No head pills. Aunt Flo. And everywhere warnings about bears. I felt like a dripping roast on legs as I began the hike up on quavering legs. In the end it turned out all right. The lake was stupid but it was there, which meant that the hike was officially over. No moose. No bear. Yay.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? (Here's where I think this post is veering off course.....Yep.) This was my much-longed-for vacation and all I could do was sigh and trudge. I'm surprised that the boys didn't just abandon me by the side of the road, what with all the clutching, the bitching, the endless fussing with the air-conditioning and the stereo and the windows and the rules regarding the use of a backseat DS.

Am I too old to have fun? Has fun changed in the last ten years? Do I need to start shopping around for my retirement villa already? Or hook up with a group of similarly dumpy and morose middle-aged people who play whist? Must I learn to play whist, for the love of GOD? Will I ever again do more than wade thigh-high in mountain lakes while everyone else (including the dog) swims?

I've never been one of those very fun people: too shy, too self-conscious, too in love with books. Dancing is fun--as long as I'm doing it alone in my office. But I think I used to be in better practice: I knew what fun looked like, knew the appropriate dosage for my height and weight, etc. I think I am just not in the habit of having fun anymore. I feel stupid having fun.

Uh-oh, I feel one of those awful inspiring moments coming on. Dear God, am I about to embark on a Fun Project?

I think I am.

Pinch me.

That'll be fun.

Off to, I don't know, braid some flowers in my hair or something.

(Every time I try to type "fun" into the Labels box, I keep getting "dream funeral." I think this project might be doomed. Or very weird.)

Someone having one of those days?

2010-07-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

From the site of our media services provider up here in Calgary.

Ignorant bliss

2010-07-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

I found a poem, written by my grandmother (unless she plagiarized, which wouldn't entirely shock me), among some dusty old things the other day. Gramma was a fierce Baptist, president of the Christian Women's Temperance Union in Montreal during the war years, a lover of KitKats, an habitual returner of purchased merchandise, and a truly difficult person to be related to much of the time. She was a great gramma, though: always with the marshmallow bananas and the Wink and home-made fries during sleepovers. She wrote fan mail to products--and in return was sent new Hush Puppies, boxes of chocolate bars, hand cream, and dish soap. To her, the word "Christian" was the opposite of the following:
--Catholic
--divorced
--drinker
--unkempt
--hatless
--reader
--dancer
--French
--Liberal
--New Brunswick (long story)
--doing what you want
--sleeping in on Sunday

Just by way of explaining this work of art, is all (click on the image so you can read it):

I have so many reactions to this thing. Pity, pique, amusement, jealousy. I think it's an interesting glimpse of the fear that lots of women--then and now--encounter(ed) when even thinking about how to balance work and family. Will I lose everything that makes me happy? Will I be useful? Will I have half of a career and half of a home life? I'm looking at my desk right now, covered as it is with fish crackers, Lego, a kid's asthma inhaler, WALL-E and handwritten pleas for escape/pardon from the penitent convict in the bedroom next door--as well as invoices, a printer, dictionaries, inspiration decks, three phones, Adobe InDesign CS4 for Dummies. Sometimes when I worry about having it all, I just look at my work space to see that the problem might be having it all in one smallish place.

My office makes me crazy and frustrated--who on EARTH could find anything in here, who could concentrate on a client call with a flatulent coonhound and a snotty-nosed kid standing three feet away the whole time, who could somehow put in an 8-hour day when parents and in-laws think that working at home means "working" at home?

And yet. And yet: what could I give up? None of it. I could no more unplug from this house and its rhythms for a job downtown than I could stop working altogether and retreat to my "sunny kitchen." My gramma wouldn't recognize this woman's life. "Women's lib" has brought us so much that we couldn't have dreamed of, both good and not-so-good. My gramma didn't want to be free of her predetermined role in the world--it scared the bejeezus out of her, although she wouldn't have put it like that. My freedom is a total mess, it falls off bookshelves, stays dirty in the kitchen sink for two days, lurks underfoot, has a Club Penguin screensaver, uses scenarios derived from The Clone Wars in client meetings, stays up late almost every night to meet work deadlines, dresses primarily in soft cotton sweatshirts ad drives a station wagon to meetings that on a hot day reeks of wet dog and melted oreo Blizzard. It's not exactly ignorant, but, you know, it's not far from bliss.

Chain Lakes Is For Lovers

2010-07-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

Oh, took just the loveliest drive to Chain Lakes on our way to Hailstone Butte (which richly deserves its name, btw). Big sun, big sky, big storm a-brewin'. Very dramatic. Paradise.

And doesn't every Paradise have its resident bad girl? This one did.

While munching on a peanut butter sandwich, the national lunch of Childhood, Kid slowly read aloud the following epigraph etched into the wood right beside where his Superman lunch box was sitting: "Megan Ann was screwed on this table."

And then the questions began. And no answers were forthcoming--I was just so unprepared. I thought I would do the whole "when a mommy loves a daddy" or some such nonsense, or, much more likely, just leave the whole thing to the schools and the Man. So when my angelic child with his pink cheeks and bright eyes wanted to know what had happened to Megan Ann on that table, I was all dry-mouthed and panicky. I actually got up and left, pretending that I just HAD to photograph those wildflowers right that minute, leaving Husband to deal. I am just hung-up enough to have actually cried a little bit.

Sigh. Thanks a LOT, Megan Ann and paramour, for the shards of my baby's babyhood, 7 years on (What? Too soon? Not soon enough? I AM NOT READY FOR THIS!!), that are lying all over the parking lot at the Chain Lakes campground.

I think today is actually the day on which I became fully middle-aged.

Twinkle Twinkle

2010-07-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

In response to Ironic Mom's post on makeup at 40 (and beyond. . . .)

I’m 47. This year, I decided that I am now old enough to do what I want, and have begun wearing glittery eyeshadow from Lit (a nice Calgary company). It’s bright and sparkly and sparkly (did I mention sparkly?) and comes in colors like “Farrah.” Its little glowy particles nestle in my eye bags, in my crows’ feet, and sometimes in those puppet-mouth thingies that happen around this time of life. It’s difficult to wash off. It draws attention to my droopy eyelids. It makes me look a bit like Bea Arthur. It is in fact the radical opposite of concealer. And it’s a hoot–it adds a little spring to my step, a little pizzazz to my frumpitudinous work-at-home life, and at the very least it’s a conversation piece. My mom thinks I’m insane, my sisters think I’m having a crisis, and I’ve heard the word “brave’ whispered more than once. But here’s the thing: I was never confident enough as a young woman to wear such warpaint. Now I am. And I shall wear glitter eyeshadow to the library and the foundation garment department of Sears because, as it turns out, that’s the way the nearly 50-year-old me rolls. Waddles. Whatever.

These guys break my heart

2010-07-12T23:19:00.001-07:00

So hopeful. So brave. So. . . armed with a giant tooth.

For me, they capture the spirit and intent of boyhood--so much so that I'm going to disappear them from the playroom and into the memory trunk. And THAT captures the spirit and intent of motherhood as I live it.

What kind of mother?

2010-07-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

Checked in on Kid last night about 20 minutes after I heard the last disgruntled kvetching from his room. I discovered him fast asleep, but with his eyes open about a quarter of an inch. That always creeps me out--right?--so I leaned over him to gently, tenderly, maternally, slide the lids down over those huge blue eyes.

Guess I bobbled a little because I actually woke my sleeping child up by poking him in the eye.

He sat bolt upright in bed, pointed his little finger at me and yelled: "WHAT kind of mother does such a thing?"

Been thinking about that one for a few hours now. . . .

1000 words might be 999 too many

2010-06-24T18:24:00.000-07:00

Saw this on CNN.com. It took me a looooong time to resolve the little black profile of a lady looking up at a pink sky (as one does). Mostly I saw what seemed to be an ovarian cyst with a bite out of it. All I felt was "ewwww." Probably that's just me.

Hippy Hair

2010-06-22T09:13:00.000-07:00

At long last, Kid had his hair cut last night. Three days earlier, he was pushing his breeze-tossed locks (like that? thanks!) off his forehead on an Oregon beach, there was sand on his knees, animal tattoos on every conceivable surface, small sea stones in his pockets. This morning, he went to school looking like a tiny commodities trader: corporate hair, squeaky clean face, no tats, no breeze, sensible shoes.

Something has been lost.

And he knew it. His distress in front of the mirror had less to do with being able to see from under his bangs than what he could see from under his bangs. A long life of not living on the beach, not being sprung from school, not having rootbeer and fries for lunch three days running. A long, sensible life of eating his vegetables, doing homework, ringing the achievement test bells, and speaking politely to his parents.

I don't think I have the heart to ever take him to the barber again.

Things learned the hard way

2010-06-21T17:02:00.000-07:00

Leaving three small boys alone in a room with 75 Animal planet "temporary" tattoos means at least one trip to the drug store for baby oil and alcohol wipes. Also many tears. Also the discovery of tattoos in places that tattoos should not be discovered. Sometimes, that discovery comes several days later and is apt to shock the women folk.

Zimzum: A Confession

2010-06-13T19:21:00.000-07:00

Zimtzum or Tzimzum (Hebrew צמצום ṣimṣūm "contraction"): I feel that to set my karma 100% correct, I need to do something about this empty space in which creation was able to begin.

About a million years ago, I wrote about this zimzum in my doctoral dissertation and had no idea what it was, really. It's just that when you see it portrayed in medieval manuscripts it tends to have a wiggly conch-shell shape that fit in so beautifully with my mad dash through medieval culture and the intellectual and artistic history of the seven-celled uterus. I needed to move to Paris in six weeks and so I sat up one night and wrote crazy things. Possible up to 75% of them were also true things, but there was enough fancy and poesy in there that I have felt guilty ever since. Perhaps this is the origin of those dreams in which I never really got out of high school, and am doomed, DOOMED, to try and find a pink eraser in one of an endless maze of nasty lockers, some of them in rooms where witches live.

Kay, bye.

Yahoos

2010-06-12T21:12:00.000-07:00

Next door. Oh, next door. There used to be a nice little family there, but, as it turns out, mommy and daddy hated each other so now her relatives live there instead. And they are a motley crew, as it turns out. Tonight for example, they're out in their backyard listening to Aerosmith (who DOES that anymore??) while the women squeal OH MY GOD! and the men go YAHOO and WA HOO HOO HOO GO FOR IT and WAAAAAOOOOOOOHHHHHHYAAAAA! (I think I transcribed that correctly.) And their dogs are barking--not little dogs, as you can imagine. I've spent the last hour looking for acreages west of the city, someplace where I do not have to live in proximity to other people who are loud. It will cost us at least $900K to have only trees for neighbours, but I think I'm willing to do whatever it takes at this point.

The good news: in 48 minutes I get to call the cops and THEN we'll see who's running a grow-op and who isn't.

Expletive deleted

2010-05-31T19:03:00.000-07:00

Big blue eyes on that Kid, and he sure knows how to use them to the best effect. Just now, he looked up at me (bat bat bat) and said winsomely, "Mommy, won't you (bat bat bat) come and snuggle on the couch with me and watch Yogi Bear? You know, sit on the couch next to me, just like old times? (bat bat bat)"

Helpless to resist, I reply, "Of course, sweet potato."

Then--probably surprised that I acquiesced on his first try--he got a little flustered.

"Not yet, not yet actually. Maybe in a bit when I'm really lonely. I'll call you."

Me: "Oh don't be silly. You're more important than the laundry. I'll just sit right here and we can watch together."

Kid: "Great. Great, mom. Umm, I just need to use the washroom. Be right back!!"

And then, from the bathroom, I hear Whoosh, Whoosh, Whoosh, Whoosh, Whoosh!

It took me a moment to realize that he was in there blowing up a whoopie cushion.

WHERE'S LORRAINE???

2010-05-29T22:11:00.000-07:00

I was 7 when I got the fright of my life. I was visiting the twins across the park, which was one of my favorite things to do. There were 8 kids in that family--kinda normal in our Catholic 1970s coterie, but 5 more than we had at our place--and they had more or less been ceded the basement of the house as their territory. It was carved up into a murky warren of bedrooms with interesting lighting, secret doors, paper-thin walls, cigarette carton mandalas and record album covers on the walls. Older sisters who wore bras, brothers who listened to Cheech and Chong, other brothers who were allowed to smoke, a hippie sister who kept a pottery wheel in one of the downstairs bathrooms. Bean bag chairs.

Upstairs, there was a more concerted effort at order. I remember flowers in vases, watercolours on the walls, a sofa that had no toys or Cheerios within 15 feet of it. The floor was clean. The kitchen floor.....was waxed.

Not what I noticed first, though, when I tromped into the kitchen to get a glass of water. As it turns out, I tromped right across a freshly waxed floor that the Mrs had hired someone to do for her, and then back again on my way downstairs. I had no idea until I heard the scream.

WHERE'S LORRAINE???

I don't think there are caps big enough to convey the decibel level of that shriek. And as loud as it was, the noise of it was nothing compared to the hysterical rage it conveyed. It was as though I had ruined a kitchen floor recently polished by the Nazgul.

I fled the house, fled--as it turns out--the long-standing friendship I enjoyed with the twins, fled the freedom of walking across the crescent park that separated our two houses, fled uncomplicated Halloweening routes, fled the ability to raise the blinds in my bedroom lest She be glaring out her kitchen window at me. As a Catholic schoolgirl, Lord knows I felt watched by All Kinds of Mysterious Powers, but none more so that Mrs W across the park.

And the thing is, she never forgave me. She never called to say sorry for frightening me, sorry that I didn't feel like I could be friends with her kids anymore, sorry that I never again went to her home after having practically lived there for a few years. She didn't look at me when we were at church. She didn't stop in snowstorms to offer me a ride home from school. She didn't offer to take me to Girl Guides with her kids. I was totally, completely cut off. What bugged me most about that situation, other than the fear, was that I knew I would never listen to Cheech and Chong again as there was NO WAY my mom would put up with that kind of language.

Looking back, I guess I can see that she was pissed with me. Probably having 8 kids of her own made her a little less sensitive to anyone else's. Maybe she really felt that her floor was the most important thing in the world. I don't know. Sometimes I can't quite believe that things really went down like that, but you know what? They really did.

The moral of this story is not that I never yell at my Kid's friends. It's that I don't give a shit what my kitchen floor looks like, and whoever wants to walk on it, in whatever state they or it happen to be in, well that person has my blessing. Come on in. Don't wipe your feet.

Fine then, V is for Vendetta (and Vegetable)

2010-05-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Vendettas. I'm kinda gifted at them. This is something that I've managed to keep a secret for a long time, because I think that the funniest jokes are the private ones, and the best revenge is always, always unlooked for and mysterious. Personally, I enjoy the mail-based revenge protocol.

My favorite thus far involved sending a serious of suggestive vegetable postcards to a weasely liar man in LA over a period of years, knowing that his psychotic redheaded girlfriend--the one who threatened to shoot my husband (SHOOT. HIM.) because he shouted into what turned out to be her bathroom window about possibly getting the music turned down so that we couldn't hear it across the courtyard in our own shower--would freak. Suggestive vegetables, you say? Oh yes, I do say.

Take a look, for example, at an artichoke:

One purple lipstick kiss at the back of the card. No signature.

Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lor.

Everyday a little miracle

2010-05-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

Here is an oil slick on my driveway: courtesy the blinding rain/slush and my 1992 Toyota Camry:

And in the time it took to post that photo, the slush has turned to outright snow. Apple blossoms in the snow. Another of the universe's little miracles. This place is full of them.

With God as my witness

2010-05-27T07:33:00.001-07:00

I swear: getting that Kid out the door in the morning will be the death of me.

V is for Giving Up

2010-05-26T22:56:00.000-07:00

Haven't written for a while on this thing because I have been daunted by "V." Am officially giving up on alphabet thingy now. Since last we met, I have been on a gondola in an alpine windstorm, have been freaked out by vagina dentata face in a puppet show, have been freaked out by an inappropriate server name created by an anonymous neighbor (and have contemplated asking the police to come and raid all the bungalows on my block because there's a freak out there somewhere), have chased the coonhound out of a duckpond, have seen a moose, purchased Star Wars comic books for boys who cannot yet read, had an unpleasant conversation with a man we shall refer to as "Smelliot" (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE), experienced the heartbreak of chin hair, wept unwillingly over "Lost," and bleached my gramma's teacups. Life's rich pageant.

Underground

2010-05-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

Kid's new career ambition: platinum miner. He's been reading the beautiful D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths and playing with his Lego Power Miners and Castle sets rather a lot lately and now wishes, I think, to be a vengeful and avaricious dwarf. Which he pronounces "dorf." I kind of go out of my way to make him say that. And "big bad woof." Moving along.

So I've been noticing vengeful dorfs popping up in the strangest places around the house. One poked at me with a sword as I was doing laundry. Another jumped on me while I was sleeping the other day. It yelled "Where are my diamonds??" WHERE ARE MINE? was the obvious response.

Lor, what do dorfs eat?
Dirt.

I could see him out in the back yard an hour later, thinking about it.

Lor, do dorfs have mommies?
They do not. They are born by banging two rocks together and chanting "dorf dorf dorf."

My favorite dorf-related artifact so far:

"Dorf v. Caterpillar: Battle to the Death" is the working title.

Time (is on his side)

2010-05-10T19:49:00.000-07:00

"Time's on my side, Lor."

Thus spake my six year old just now, quite calmly, as we were engaging in a rare bedtime battle. I was trying to impress upon him the idea that my will is adamant, that there was no way he could wear me down. There was no way in the world I would be bringing him a chewy multivitamin, another strawberry, a tall glass of milk, one of his 17 thousand puffles, a new/cooler pillow, a flashlight, his water pistol, a skipping rope, the "J" volume of Encyclopedia Britannica.

I finished my rant and there was silence on the other side of the door. There still is, as I write this. I'm sitting here in silence thinking about the undeniable fact that time is, in fact, on his side and not mine.

And that one day all I will wish for is to be able to bring him a tall glass of milk and his water pistol.

Speedy Gonzalez

2010-05-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight, right here at the Voodoo Bungalow, we are holding a Seveno de Mayo celebration. As a family of Central European/British/French/German/American immigrants all living in Canada, it's refreshingly quirky of us, don't you think? We couldn't hold it on Cinco de Mayo because of soccer. Which is what I think actually happened at the Battle of Pueblo. The French were playing soccer and weren't paying the slightest bit of attention to General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín and his unlikely band of Mexicans who weren't even a little bit interested in being occupied by the French and their mustachioed Maximilian. Can't say as I blame them. The real reason for us celebrating is that Speedy Gonzalez is a special favorite of mine and my sisters.

Speedy Gonzalez eez a friend of evereebodeez seestor.

As a sidenote, I think I may just have scored straight 10s on the "British/Ukrainian making of Oaxacan mole" portion of the program.

Ole.

Really good story

2010-05-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

To switch things up this evening, Kid told me a bedtime story. I was falling asleep and was snuggling Ruffy, the well-loved stuffed terrier. If this were a story by The Bloggess, the terrier would be a real terrier, probably armed with a dictaphone or a tennis racket, but our love of taxidermy as interior decoration has dwindled recently. We're probably not getting enough Vitamin D. That seems to be behind almost every ailment you can think of these days, and I can think of a lot. For instance, the toe I broke a few months ago started inexplicably throbbing this afternoon, and I instantly realized that it was because cancer had gotten into the crack in the toe bone and that if I had only put my foot out the car window when we were driving to the mountains every weekend it would have gotten the right amount of sun and its Vitamin D level would be just fine and now I wouldn't be dying of toe bone crack cancer. And I couldn't even go out to charge it back up again because it has been snowing sideways here for two days.

So the story I was being told--and I was told in "story voice," with that look of measured authority, that this was a true story--was about the Prince of the Golden Entrance. His boat was solid gold, with silver masts and sails made of flower petals. He was not just a prince, but also a magician, the most powerful in his land, and also the man with the best heart. He was the goodest person anyone had ever known. But there was a song that pulled at his heart and he thought that the singer must be one of the mermaids he'd heard so much about, who lived on a misty pillar of granite that emerged from the sea at the edge of the world.

My son is so sensitive and poetic, I smiled happily to myself.

I must have drifted off there for a moment on that blissful thought.

I awoke because my little poet was up on his knees in his bed yelling BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! and CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP!

What on earth?!?!?

It turns out that an attack helicopter carrying a thermal detonator was overhead. The mermaids had on their gas masks and were lobbing grenades. The prince sustained a major head wound and drownded.

The end.

Questions and answers

2010-05-03T08:15:00.000-07:00

Question: WHere is the conference that I am writing about?

Answer: Germany

Question: Do I wish to struggle with German this morning before coffee, or do I wish to use the Google translate button?

Answer: Duh.

Question: So how would one get to this conference?

Answer:

Arriving by car:

Type in your navigation system following address:

Oil resistant lock on the white way

A manor

D-38 271 Baddeckenstedt

Thank you, that clears it up nicely.

(Anyone going to the 2b Ahead Conference in Baddeckenstedt, head here: Schloss Oelber am weißen Wege

Rittergut 1)

The journey time is 30 minutes from Hanover, of Brunswick, 20 minutes.

Momoir

2010-04-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

The Bad Moms Club alerted me to this challenge: motherhood in six words or less. It being laundry day here at the voodoo bungalow, I had my response ready:

So many little socks. All singles.

How is this even possible?

"Bleach could not possibly whiten these." (aside: Who told Calvin Klein to make WHITE boy panties? Seriously, what kind of numbnuts makes tighty whities for the under-8 set? I shall say no more on the subject.)

"Lips say NO. Eyes say PINOT."

Piperade

2010-04-29T16:55:00.000-07:00

Kid is a great eater. The greatest eater among Kids throughout the ages, perhaps. He is not in the slightest bit fussy, is an adventurous diner (squid, capers, duck, cauliflower, quinoa), and has a man-sized appetite that causes moms to beam. His stomach will surely land him an heiress and I don't much care whether that's because the heiress's mom has pushed her daughter into a marriage just because the potential groom can't get enough of the tuna casserole that the heiress's dad has turned his nose up at for the last 30 years.

However, he balked at this. And I cannot imagine why.

I know. Hard to believe. I explained to him that it was an ancient Spanish dish much beloved by the peasantry. That the olive oil and peppers were aromatic, that the onions were soft and melting, that there was enough garlic in there to kill 400 vampires, and that the eggs came from genuine free-range chickens from a real farm who probably ate worms.

What I heard in return: "Lor, that looks like barf and there is NO WAY ON EARTH I am going to eat it."

You know, looking at the situation honestly, I had to agree with him: it does kind of look like barf. So for the first time in his life he got a different dinner from the rest of us; although I couldn't help pointing out that peanut butter looks kind of like dog poo.