- I cut their hair myself
- until it’s too awful and then we take them to the overpriced kiddie salon where the lady cuts it in 10 seconds with clippers
- then we try to do it with clippers because how hard could it be, really?
- oh, that’s right, it’s hard. Kiddie salon.

It is somewhat easier with Fresco’s hair because it is curly and forgiving of my random sideways scissor swipes but Trombone’s hair is straight. And thick. And blond. A while back he said, “I am so hot. I would be so much less hot if I had a haircut.” So we tried to get it cut – SA took them both to the kiddie salon but it was busy so salon lady could only do Fresco, which went something like this:

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! NONONONONONONONO. Toy.

and Trombone came home with his same head of hair. Which I tried to trim while he was in the bath but then he got bored and started a waterfight with Fresco so I only did one side of his head and badly. But no one bled.

On Saturday I had a brilliant idea. I would, after “quiet time,” take Trombone to a haircutting establishment and get his hair cut. Fulfilling a double mandate of one-on-one time with your child and grooming. He doesn’t need a fancy chair and coddling from the kiddie salon because he is four years old and very reasonable about that sort of thing.

We strolled over to the nearby convenience mall, the one with the liquor store, and asked at the hair place that never has any customers but has a sign advertising kids cuts for $8.99. She apologized and said they had no booster seat but they had ordered one. So we walked around the corner to the strip mall that is gradually losing all its tenants to make way for a multi-use, new-fangled facility. Unsurprisingly, the hair salon had moved several blocks away.

Then a bus came! So we took it uptown and tried the Pirate Barber (actually called The Hub, in the little mall/business place where the London Drugs is) (so named because they have a man’s head, um, not a real one, a mannequin, in the window and it has an eyepatch) but the Pirate Barber’s sign said they closed at 4 and it was 3:53 and there were two customers in the chairs already so we went across the street to another barber shop and that is how I ended up in ManLand.

I have never been to a barber shop. I always assumed barber shops are just like hair salons. They aren’t. People just walk in and sit down and wait their turn. You don’t need an appointment – and you don’t need a sign outside that says “walk ins welcome” because everyone is a walk in.

Men take 5 minutes to get their hair cut. This I kind of assumed, based on how long it takes them to use the bathroom. It’s a polite way to do business; if everyone takes five minutes, then walking in off the street and waiting is not such a hardship. Compare this to the one ladies’ salon we walked into and out of just as quickly:

Me: Do you cut kids’ hair?
Lady: Yes…but we have all our appointments for the day
Me: Oh, OK, no problem
Lady: We really recommend that you call first
Me: Sure, no problem
Lady: We can get very busy.

Lady! Shut up! I was just asking, OK? I am moving on now! Do you realize that the Mizzle has the most haircuttery per square foot of any municipality in Canada*?
* not an actual statistic

Anyway, at the barber shop I said, do you cut kids’ hair and the barber said, yup. And I said, can we wait? And he said, yup, but there are two people ahead of you. So Trombone and I sat and he looked at magazines, of which there were 400.

Trombone: This one is full of CARS!
Me: Indeed.
Trombone: I’m gonna trade you magazines now. I want that one. That one has COWBOYS.
Me: Yup. (flipping through Equinox magazine from 1989 that says Vancouver should expect a big earthquake any minute now. Gulp.)
Trombone: Someday, I am going to learn to lasso.
Me: OK then.

After 10 minutes it was our turn. The stuffed fish and giant boar’s head watched me from the wall as I took my seat near the barber’s chair. I didn’t want to be too mom-y but you know. First barber. Who knows what’s going to happen.

Our barber, the son of the other barber, was delightful. Personable. But he kept snickering. Eventually I realized he was snickering at our attempts to cut Trombone’s hair.

“What did you DO,” he said.
“I was just trimming – with the – ”
“Don’t do it again.”

He cut Trombone’s hair perfectly and then put gel in it and gave him a sucker. I felt very like an interloper. Like I shouldn’t be in on this experience, you know, it’s a man thing. A man tells his boy about the barber. I kept wondering, are there secret doors I’m not seeing because I’m female? Would there be beer served if I wasn’t here? Is there porn under that big pile of Golf Weekly? I will never know. Do you tip the barber? I did, because he did a great job, but maybe they’re still laughing about the lady who tipped them. I don’t know – I wouldn’t laugh at money, personally, but I’m not a barber. Apparently I am about as far as you can get from a barber.

We left and went to the dollar store. See, at the kiddie salon, for $22, you get to sit in a race car or train or motorcycle, and they cut your hair AND you get a junky toy from a box. I told Trombone he could pick a toy at the dollar store, because Fresco got a toy for his haircut. All Trombone wanted was a gun. The kid almost-next-door has a gun and it makes gun noises. Dollar store full of wonders and Trombone is all, nope, nope, nope, I want this dart gun.

I say, No I am not buying you a dart gun.
Why not?
Because you will injure yourself, your brother and me with it. Also, it is $8. Did I say I would buy you an eight dollar toy? No, I said a DOLLAR toy.
How about this gun? It is a shotgun!
How about this BUBBLE WAND WITH A TIGER FACE!
That’s not a gun.
Yeah, I know.

Finally I talked him down to a Masked Bandit Kit for $1.29 including a small pistol, a mask and a small plastic star badge that says “Masked Man” on it – I guess in case it isn’t clear from the mask. He happily carried it home on the bus and we opened the package at home, where there was no risk of losing any of the pieces.

He has been shooting bad guys ever since, his crunchy hair peeking above his black mask, the back of his neck all exposed, perfect skin. I don’t mind the gun business, as long as it’s not in my face.

There he is, short spiky hair, baggy jeans, pointing guns at bad guys and yelling inexplicable curses at them (OH, BELOVED! was one of them), asking me when he can have a video game. I could be forgiven for thinking I’ve got a teenager. Except that: even as I typed this, he wept bitterly from his room because a little piece of the toy gun broke and now it doesn’t click anymore.

Moral: You can put man-hair on a boy but he still won’t be a man until he goes to the barber alone.

(It sounds better in its native Czech.)
(No, not really)

Hokey pokey! Turn yourself around! That’s what it’s all about!

Can I just start by saying how much I hate the word Mommy. Blech. I am a fan of the word Mom. Mom Vices. There we go. Henceforth, I will be using the word “mom” in place of “mommy.”

What vices do I think are OK for moms? Whatever gets them through the day. As long as a mom is not hurting anyone by indulging in a vice, I don’t really consider it a vice. For that matter, are there Daddy Vices? Does anyone sit around talking about what it’s OK for dads to do and not do? Probably not, because dads are not held to the same standards as moms. We seem to still be in a global phase where whatever a dad does is more than HIS dad did and therefore, WOW what a great dad. He changed a diaper! What a guy! You know what, this baby is HALF YOURS you will change at least HALF ITS DIAPERS.

For all time.

Amen.

Anyway, when I think about vices, I think cigarettes. Liquor. Drugs. I think all of those things can be dangerous if overused but have their place when used in moderation. Go for it; know your limit. If you’re addicted, think about scaling it back or quitting outright because if you’re addicted to something, you might not be the parent your kids need. But I also know that nobody’s gonna listen to me if they’re addicted to something.

I definitely wouldn’t condone the (over)use of these vices while actually engaged in the practice of minding children. It is irresponsible to mind children and be drunk (which, for most people, is not the same as having a drink) or high (not as familiar with these limits as I don’t do drugs) at the same time. And it’s not fair to smoke around them and pollute their widdle lungs.

After cigarettes, liquor and drugs, my mind defines vices as behaviors. For me, personally, internet use can be a vice. The more unpleasant my day with the kids is, the more I hide from them. In our open plan household with no doors, the only place to hide is a) in the bathroom or b) on the Internet. And that’s mainly because they cannot read.

To me, the object of a Parenting Vice, whether consumable or behavior-related, is to get a break. As I have mentioned on this blog before about four million times, minding children is very hard, relentless work. They will not give you a break no matter how you ask. So you have to take a break and make it good for yourself. I do this by giving myself 20 minutes of internet time, to escape away and see the rest of the world. I do not often use this time to visit other mom blogs or talk about parenting. I often go looking at the photo albums of childless friends on facebook. Or surfing the feminist blogosphere to see what stupid shit is being taken to task by people who have time to think about how to take stupid shit to task. Or I read the news.

Sometimes I eat chocolate.
Sometimes I sneak candy from last Halloween, which still tastes fine.

The point is not that I am a chocoholic, or a candy freak. The point is that I am doing something the children are not involved in. When you give them everything, all day, all you want is something that’s just for you. If I have to share, it doesn’t count as a vice. Thus I cannot put any foodstuff in the vice category.

My biggest vice, therefore, is that I refuse to share certain things. Which, hey, I’m an only child! So I don’t even have to feel bad about it! Quick, let’s blame my mother!

If I smoked cigarettes, I would go out for a cigarette.
If I was a pot smoker, I might smoke some pot.
When the clock says 5:30 I might have a drink.

Those things are things the children can’t share, they are just for me. Without those things, without something just for me, I would be a much unhappier person. Which is not to say that I can’t get through the day without a drink. I can. I can also go weeks without chocolate. But I can not get through the day without something that’s just for me.

To sum up: I gave you life. I’m not sharing the chocolate.

My cell phone is five years old, which is 78 in cell phone years. I bought it for $50 from Virgin Mobile and it is very underused but handy in case of emergencies. It contains no new fangled hinjinkery. It phones, it texts, it tells time.

On the Greyhound bus, I looked up my account balance. I was that bored, yes. And was I shocked to see that my account balance was a credit of $140? Yes! I was shocked.

See, I am not on a “plan.” I pay as I go. $15 lasts 45 days, after 45 days, poof, your money is gone so give them another $15. For someone who doesn’t use her phone except to tweet about ninjas on the roads (but only when safely pulled over) it’s the best deal around. I used to get text messages from Virgin every 45 days saying “your balance is about to expire, please add more money.” I got bored with that so I signed up for the auto top up feature, which is supposed to top up your phone every time the balance goes below a certain number. You choose the number. I chose $5.

At $5, or at the end of the 45 days, please add $15. Right? OK. So I never check the balance because my phone works when I want it to and my credit card statement says I’m giving them $15 every 45 days, which is what I have budgeted for my cell phone use.

Hello math geniuses, how did we accrue $140? Even if I NEVER used the phone, the balance is supposed to expire at the end of the 45 days. That is why we top up, no?

When we got home, my phone needed charging so I charged it. Then it said, “No, make me be CHARGING.” And I realized that it is dead. My five (78) year old phone is dead. What a coincidence! I have $140 in my phone account and my phone is dead.

ConsPIRAcy! Wooooo.

I called Virgin today. I said, “Can I use my $140 to buy a new phone?”
Virgin said, “No. Those two kinds of money don’t talk to each other. If you want a new phone, you have to buy a new phone.”
I said, “OK, most helpful customer service clerk in Canada (hey, their website claims it, not me) how did I get to $140?”
The woman said, “Well you see, it tops up your account when the money is about to expire and then you end up with more money.”

The woman from Virgin and I had the worst phone connection of all time so I gave up trying to figure it out and switched to a $10 per month prepaid plan and canceled the auto top-up. Now I have 14 months of prepaid phone service.

Oh! But no phone!

This morning I took the children uptown on the bus. They got very excited because they like bus rides. Of course, going uptown on the bus takes about 6 minutes so we barely got seated and started discussing why we don’t kick the seat in front of us when it was time to get off. “But I thought we were going UPTOWN!” said Trombone. “This is it,” I said, gesturing grandly. The old guy with one orange sock and one bare foot stopped picking his toes long enough to snort.

Maybe Trombone is confusing uptown New Westminster with London? I don’t know. Uptown is uptown, man. The revitalization has not hit yet.

So we went into the most depressing mall in the universe (except for The Town Centre in Brandon Manitoba, which has one shining star, that of Anna’s Indulgence Dessert Bar, go there and eat desserts right now what are you waiting for.) And we rode the fishy carousel and we rode the ice cream truck and we rode the race car and no, you caught me, we didn’t really ride any of those things because I don’t have money to burn on mall rides, come on. I made the children pretend they were riding and told them their grandparents will be in town in two weeks to pay for their mall rides. And then we went to The Source, formerly known as Radio Shack, to buy a new phone.

I picked one. Truthfully, I had already picked it out on the Internet earlier this morning. I pulled the salesguy away from his – work? – watching the big screen TV while also doing something that involved having an earbud in his ear – and told him I wanted to buy that phone for $69.99. But when he rang it up, it was $129!

“No! I do not want that phone!” I said, “here, look, the price tag says $69.99 and it is the same price on the website!”
He said, “No. No, that is not the price, because Virgin is switching everyone to their SUPERTAB and now the phones cost more. And in my cash register it costs more. And my cash register is GOD. And I actually am listening to my girlfriend right now on my earbud and you are just this strange, harried woman making noises at my face and oh ps, your son is trying to steal an iPhone.”

So we got a ham and cheese croissant and went to the library.

I wasn’t going to write about my phone. I was going to write about how I never considered how difficult it is to teach children to heel.

Trombone doesn’t ride in the buggy anymore, you see, which is a mixed blessing because I don’t have to push him around anymore but he is very spacey when we go out so he is always seeing an object 40 feet away and then mowing down 18 people to get to it. Fresco does ride in the buggy but I didn’t want to take it on the bus, because the bus always has more than enough people with strollers and walkers and shopping carts on it, so we were on foot.

I consistently forget that being on foot with two children means I don’t have a hand free. If all we want to do is walk around and sniff daisies, OK. But if I want to walk around and – buy vegetables, say? Where’s that third hand coming from, smarty pants? Your belly? Nope, no hand there, just a lot of popcorn. So I drop a hand and either Fresco runs away to pet vicious dogs/jump off cliffs/steal motorcycles or Trombone goes wandering at a 45 degree angle toward train tracks. It stresses me out! I know they have to learn to heel, but I should have started training them a year ago!

I wish I’d known. I would have resold the double stroller when it was still in pretty good shape and then I’d be able to afford an iPhone.

When I was a kid my mom used to tell me I should be a lawyer when I grew up. Because I was so argumentative. I see now that this was the equivalent of me gritting my teeth at Trombone and saying from between those gritted teeth, GOSH YOU’RE SO THOROUGH IN THE BATHROOM. Here is what I know about lawyers:

- they make a lot of money
- they argue a lot
- they have to read a shit tonne of boring stuff to become lawyers (although maybe they don’t think it’s boring because they’re interested in it)
- people hate them because they are always stepping on the Little Guy because it’s The Law because they read it in their shit tonne of boring stuff

Yes, obviously my knowledge of lawyers is based on television.

I know two lawyers in real life: Sarah’s dad and P-Man, both of whom are relatively argumentative but as for the rest of the list, not so much.

The last thing I know about lawyers is that they refer to precedent. That is something that has happened before to make The Law you are following. I am very familiar with Precedent because I have a four year old named Trombone who apparently takes after his mother. To wit:

Me: Please do the thing I asked you to do.
Trombone: But one time you said I could do it this way.
Me: I am sure I did not.
Trombone: That time when I had red pants on and my hair was short and I had just eaten a jelly bean, a yellow jelly bean, you SAID I could do it this way.
Me: What? That was TWO YEARS AGO. You don’t remember that!
Trombone: I do! And also, Fresco was a baby and he couldn’t roll over yet but he sure did shout a lot and also I wanted noodles for dinner but you made me eat corn and that hurt my feelings. That time. You said I could do it this way.

Anyone else would probably say, wow kid, you’re fantastic. You win. Go ahead and do the thing your own way. But I am stubborn and cruel and I like to win, myself, so I say through gritted teeth, that’s nice you have such a good memory for facts! Maybe you will be a lawyer someday. Now please do the thing.

As I get older and my mind starts to wander
geese!
I notice that I am less argumentative. More inclined to say, hm, I guess that’s the way you think, random person. For a few reasons: one, I am generally more tired. Two, I took some counseling courses once. Three, I don’t feel like I know enough about anything to argue about it. My opinions are less based in fact than they used to be, in part because I don’t retain as much information and in part because I see more grey in the world, now, less black and white.

On more than one occasion, Saint Aardvark and I have been talking and he will refer to something I said once and I will say, I don’t remember saying that. Or, I don’t think that way. And he will say, well, you used to say blah blah blah about that. Trust me when I say, SA is not the usual observer of precedent in our household. I used to hold very strong positions on an assortment of topics but now I am more meh about it all.

I don’t know why I used to care so much, so fiercely about things that now I don’t think matter. Is it because now I am a dead fish who cares about nothing? Or is it because I used to make my opinions Who I Was and so there was everything vested in those opinions. I had to defend them.

As a kid I argued to assert myself. As a teen and young adult I argued to establish myself. As an adult, I argue only to defend myself.

And that is why you can’t predict a child’s future based on his behavior as a child.

(Oh but hey. I can construct an argument after all.)

The End.

Have or make.

Have or make.

Have.
Or make.

The time.

Make the time.

Is five minutes enough for a moment? Here, here is five minutes. Is ten minutes enough for a moment? Is the moment bigger than this moment? Can you restrain your mind, keep it still, hand on it like a horseman’s on a flank, calm it. Stop fluttering, remember to breathe, your chest is hollow and your mind is jumping. Let the air in, let the thoughts flow, let your fingers spell those thoughts for you, set them free on the page, let your heart speak, let your soul weep, let it all out.

Don’t be fooled by the slow movement of these moments; they creep like snails, but when you come back to look for them, they will be gone. Camouflaged in the trees, up the sides of curbs, hiding as snails do. You have to take the moment and watch the snail crawl now, watch the slime trail after it, think of how it reminds you of semen, of clear glue, or the mucous on your children’s faces when they wake up from a fitful night’s sleep with colds invading their bodies, of winter, not summer, of the seasons always presenting themselves in the best light and then when you’re in them they turn into monsters; sweltering heat, oppressive snow, the dark, dark darkness of rain, chilis and soups and bouncing off the walls. Let it all go. What are you missing.

What are you missing when you miss Fall. Long pants and cardigans, duvets tucked around the knees and toes, permission to shut up in the house and simmer things. Food, thought, ideas. Summer presents ideas too quickly, all this fleeting, bright beauty and we haven’t the time to sit with it. The days don’t end until we pass out from the heat, they begin too early, we are moving, going, running to the sound of our own blood rushing in our veins, delighted to feel our bodies move, overjoyed with our brown skin, with our minuscule proofs of time well spent. We try to preserve the moments the way we preserve cucumbers and berries, for that small, sweet (or sour) reminder that summer was here. We were here, in the summer, and we enjoyed it; we have the pictures and preserves and peeling skin to prove it.

Enjoy the light while you can, bottle it for when it is hard to come by.

The full, green trees outside my window, the yellow light behind them, all reminding me that now is a summer afternoon, the middle of August, the sweetest, ripest time of year. I have fresh corn and fresh berries and plums that are swollen and purple like broken ankles, bursting their skins with juice and summer and sunshine stored for me to enjoy, let drip down my chin, lick up later. Too soon I will have more time to ponder than I will have ideas. I should be writing now, even in spurts, that I might reflect in the short dark days of November and spend an hour uncorking, reworking, reflecting and revising.

So it is all right that I am jealous of peoples’ careful words placed just so around ideas that are fresh and delicious while I can only produce the writerly equivalent of popsicles; watery and sweet, gone in a second with only a soggy stick to discard. You can’t go back to a popsicle. You eat it and you enjoy it and it’s gone. It is all right. That’s summer.

The main problem with our ambitious (that’s code for stupid) (as in, ignorant because now we know better) itinerary was one thing: Fresco.

Fresco is almost 2.5 years old. Fresco likes:

- unlimited fruit
- jumping
- anything Trombone is playing with
- talking
- Laughing Cow cheese, right up till when he takes it out of the package, then he doesn’t like it anymore
- our cat
- pinching, biting and hitting when he’s mad
- threatening to pinch, bite and hit when he’s mad
- throwing things when he’s hungry
- howling like a stuck monkey when he’s the slightest bit frustrated
- popsicles
- dinosaurs
- NO NOT DINOSAURS. ONLY CATS.
- swimming
- NO NOT SWIMMING WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT?

You see. Capricious, tempermental, short attention span, confined spaces. Which of these things just doesn’t belong.

Trombone spent hours in the car – not in a row, but totaled up – examining Where’s Waldo books. Lucky we bought 8 at Value Village before we left. When he dozed in the car, which was not often, he would often wake up cranky and crying but he would just as often wake up quiet and contemplative and say things like, “That cloud looks like a dinosaur head. And I would like some crackers, please.”

Fresco spent five minutes looking at a book and then threw it to the floor of the car and then cried because he had no book anymore and then snatched the book out of Trombone’s hand and then threw it at my head and then cried because I wouldn’t give it back and then slumped down in his seat and started howling and then started undoing his seatbelt. Oh good. We’re going 120 km/hr and you’re undoing your seatbelt.

There were three times it was good to travel with Fresco:

- while he was sleeping
- while he was watching his favourite movie, Baby McDonald, which, at 30 minutes in length, is about 400 minutes too short
- while he sang his peculiar mashups of the songs in his head. IE: Bob the builder / little star / how I wonder / can we build it / yes we can / and his bucket full of / dinosaurs!

Other than that, he acted his age. If you have ever met a 2.5 year old, you know what I mean and I am sorry, here’s a tissue. You also know that trapping one and restraining it in a moving vehicle is a dumb ass thing to do.

Fear not, in other words; if you have a Trombone-style child or your children are older than 3, your vacation should go fine. I mean, it won’t be much like a vacation in the sense that you are taking your work with you, but neither will you find yourself considering duct tape for purposes not on the label. Probably.

Here, random dinosaur picture!

“Mommy!” said Trombone, “Look, the ICE CREAM is open!”
“Oh I would like some ice cream,” said Fresco.
“No, no ice cream today,” I said.
They wept bitterly.
“But why?” Trombone wailed, “we had lots of ice cream on our vacation!”
“I want our vacation!” said Fresco.

It is strange to be back, to have been gone so long, to have had such a different experience than I expected. It was not all bad or all good; it was 40% bad and 50% good and 10% ice cream.

***

While knowing that one cannot plan something one has never done before, I still planned a lot. I booked campsites in advance (that I later canceled) and I packed garlic (that we never used) and I took extra trinket bags so I could put together more trinket bags for the drive home (HA HA HA – here, kids, fetch this pamphlet from the visitor centre and like it).

I could not plan, re: camping:

- the kids have no idea how to sleep in a tent. All they wanted to do was run around it, head butt each other and escape.
- the sun doesn’t set till 10 but it rises at 5. That is not enough sleep for anyone.
- there are no black tents to block out the sun. Dastardly sun.

We did our first two nights of camping (Sweaty and Buggy as I have affectionately named them) in BC and Alberta and then spent a night in Kindersley, SK, home of the place that has the thing with the – I don’t know. I don’t know anything about Kindersley except the Wal-Mart parking lot was the size of North Burnaby and the Humpty’s restaurant thoroughly charmed our children. Mostly because they have only been in one other restaurant, ever, and it was Denny’s.

The fourth night we spent in Saskatoon, at the home of Sarah, Michael, Rowan (6), Lilah (4.5), Audra (1 week now, but was at the time still fetal), Pat-The-Mum (age undisclosed) and Terry (ditto). They have a beautiful house that includes air conditioning.

We put our boys in the bedroom with their girls, hoping they’d just, you know, go to sleep. It went like this:

Fresco: WHERE IS MY MOMMY!
Lilah, age 4.5, who enjoys any excuse to not sleep: Mummy, he wants his mommy!
Trombone (crying): Everyone is crying!
Rowan, age 6, who could sleep through a nuclear war: I am trying to sleep. It is too loud.
Sarah, very pregnant: I wish I could drink.
Me: I am drinking!
Michael: Me too!
SA: Me too!
Fresco: WHERE IS MY MOMMY!

The boys slept in the living room, the girls slept in their room, I slept under a piano with my head wedged up my own ass, because Trombone is a mat-hog, and we all woke up overjoyed and looking for coffee, which was thankfully in good supply.

Then SA and the kids drove on to Regina where they stayed at a Holiday Inn Express that featured a BACON BUFFET – damnit! – while I stayed in Saskatoon for a couple of days, without my own kids and talking to grown ups. OK, I guess that’s worth trading for the bacon buffet.

And! I got to take a Greyhound bus across Saskatchewan and Manitoba, all by myself. The Greyhound bus was awesome. I could nap, read, write, snack, look out the window, all without explaining myself to anyone or sharing my snacks. I ate a very good BLT in Dauphin, Manitoba.

We spent a week in Brandon, seeing the sights and eating our weights in treats from (Aunt) Anna’s Indulgence Dessert Bar in The Town Centre Mall, get your ass there and eat some desserts, people. Your ass isn’t going to grow all by itself, you know.

Then we left for home, with a revised itinerary to account for the facts we had gleaned from our trip there, namely:

- we could not drive more than 450 kms per day without dire consequences (ie: trinkets from former trinket bags tossed at driver’s head by unruly 2.5 year old)
- it was pissing rain and stormy in our second and third nights’ planned accommodation (Dinosaur Provincial Park)
- we had already tossed our first tent due to creeping mould due to improper storage after the thunderstorm on our second night of camping (top tip: AIR OUT YOUR WET TENT BEFORE STORING IN HOT TRUNK FOR ONE WEEK [IDIOTS])
- we were not especially interested in proving how hardcore we were after 2 weeks on the road with children who were by then
- – well out of their routine and nowhere near anything resembling civilized
- – completely uninterested in playing “I Spy,” “count the cows” or “name the wheat field” (cretins!)
- – growing rapidly uninterested in our meagre collection of DVDs, aiieeee! When the DVDs run out, we are SCREWED!

…so instead of insisting on camping and making a hard trip even harder, we returned our replacement (as yet unused) tent for a full refund and did The Armpit Motel Tour of Western Canada: Moose Jaw, Medicine Hat, Drumheller, Canmore and Enderby.

Things to remember about long car trips with children under 5:

1. Don’t do it.

2. Camping is good, but motels have clock radios and the children will be just as excited about the clock radios. Mostly, what they are excited about is getting out of the hot car, so make that happen as soon as possible, toss in a pool and you’re golden.

3. Kids love routine. We had no routine. The routine we tried building for them was wrong, terrible and wholeheartedly rejected. Without routine, they start to unravel. They weep, trip, pinch and bite. They cling, whine, scowl. We start to want to leave them by the side of the road with their Where’s Waldo books for shade.

3 a. Riding for hours in a car every day does not count as a routine.

4. The kids will love chicken fingers the first time they eat them. They will be transfixed by the chicken fingers. The restaurant was making them crazy with love. The second time? Maybe they eat half the plate and then start angling for dessert. The third time? They are done with restaurants, chicken fingers and YOU.

Chicken fingers = heroin? Maybe.

Seriously, by the time we ordered our final meal of chicken fingers in a restaurant (that would be Saturday, in Merritt, OH MY GOD Bonus Tip: never go to Merritt if you can help it) the kids were like, yeah, whatever, chicken fingers, here, I’m sucking ketchup out of the container, that’s how much I care about chicken fingers.

And you, the parent? You the parent are saying, I give up, suck the ketchup if you must, as long as you just SHUT IT for five minutes so I can enjoy my sub-par pasta dish and the Lager that the waitress brought me when I asked for a dark beer.

You want salt in your hand from the salt shaker? OK. Here’s salt in your hand from the salt shaker.

5. This is not ideal. This is Wartime Parenting. You can sort out the rules and worry about the bad habits when you get home.

We had some fun. We saw dinosaurs (Drumheller) and a giant turtle statue (Boissevain, MB) and real frogs (International Peace Gardens) and we saw family and friends and ate delicious food and my father in law fed me copious amounts of gin and we swam in lots of pools and played in lots of playgrounds including one in Zealandia, SK that had equipment from the ’80s and the boys were enraptured by Guitar Hero and their Uncle playing it LIKE A ROCK STAR and despite the Very Hungry Mosquitoes, I don’t appear to have contracted West Nile Virus – so far – and we went 5,000 kilometres without a flat tire (although we did run over a small, blue cooler on our first day of driving and we thought that was the end right there) (and we also got snarled in traffic 30 minutes from home because of a highway-side brushfire [dispose of your cigarettes, people!]) or calling each other names (much) and we took 500 pictures and several videos and laughed some, at least a little every day, even if some of it was tinged with hysteria.

***

All day on Saturday, on our way home from Enderby, Fresco would cry,
“I want to go to our new motel!”
and Trombone, ever the helpful big brother, would say,
“We’re not going to a motel! We’re going home!”
and Fresco would cry and wail louder.
“But I want to go to our pool!”

I guess that’s an endorsement?

My recommendation: wait till the kids are older. But really, you could do a lot worse than we did. And there is always ice cream.

Fishing with tent poles.

PS: I went back for The Shoes and when I tried them on again, the right foot was bigger than the left.

1. WTF? Isn’t that, like, totally backwards? It is for me anyway.
2. Because of the too-loose fit, they were not so comfortable.

Not to be swayed, I went out into the mall and found other Keen sandals on sale – though not as deep a discount – and in my size and both feet fit equally well. Preliminary research indicates they fall somewhere in the low to mid-shock category so I’m keeping them. If you see sparking along Highway 1, that’s me. Or Saint Aardvark’s brain short circuiting from the noise emanating from the back seat of the car.

Have I told you about the shock thing?

I have a shock thing. When I get a shock – through overenthusiastic static, generally – I grimace and shout “motherfucker.” I can’t help it. Now, these days I have to shout “motherfucker” into my shoulder or purse or whatever is handy because I live with Laurel and Hardy but I still cannot stop myself. I am very sensitive to electricity. That thing where you shuffle your feet over the carpet and then pat me on the shoulder and go ha ha ha? I will kill you.

Playgrounds! Geezus. Plastic slides slid down by children with plastic shoes! And what if they fall at the end and they want a hug? “NO HUGGING MOMMY! I AM COMFORTING YOU VERBALLY FROM A DISTANCE!”

Driving! Wrong-soled shoes on the pedals and then the floor mat of the car and then I get out onto the floor of the underground parking and the floor is treated with some weird rubber coating stuff and I go to lock my car door and ZAP. Motherfucker.

So when I buy shoes, if the shoes do not conduct electricity through their soles, I will wear those shoes all the time. I am less fussy about this than I used to be, because I used to work in an office and that’s a lot of ‘motherfucker’ in an otherwise quiet and relatively polite environment. These days I am mostly outside. But still, this is one of those things that makes it even harder to find The Perfect Shoes.

Shoes that Shock Me:

My running shoes. Only to be worn if not driving, and not going into any stores or the library.
My flip flop crocs. Water park only. NO DRIVING IN CROCS.

Shoes that Sometimes Shock Me:

The cute plaid sneakers. Walking to the park only. Probably best not to drive in the cute sneakers.

Shoes that Do Not Shock Me:

My rubber boots.
My winter boots.
My favourite sandals, 2 years old, by Naot.
Dress shoes, generally, but I don’t get out much.

As it is summer, I am wearing the sandals every day. As a bonus, they are the most comfortable shoes on the planet and I can walk for miles x The Who and not get blisters or sore knees or bunions or anything. (yes I know bunions are not applicable in this case but I like saying bunions.)

However. This is what happened a few weeks ago and again this past weekend: I went to Superstore. I was pushing a cart around Superstore. I love Superstore! But on these two occasions, every once in a while I would be turning a corner or stopping to look at the sale cookies and ZAP.

From the floor (did they repaint it with electricity?) through my perfect sandals (is the rubber wearing out?) ZAP into my hands on the handle of the cart. ZAP. This has never happened to me before. It was most terrible.

Superstore, it made me not want to spend too much more time in your store. Ever. It made me want to leave the cart in the toilet paper isle and run for the door. And, most importantly, it made my ordinarily lovely solo shopping trip to Superstore into a battle of epic proportions, Good Vs. Evil! complete with a lot of swearing. I might have bought the wrong kind of noodles, I was so distracted by the random ZAPpery.

You know there is a wrong kind of noodles, right?

Today I took the children to Metrotown. Hey, they wanted to go to Metrotown, they were specific. I needed to get Fresco a pair of shoes – but that’s another story. We found some at Winners and then I took a peek in the size 11 isle for me and wow – a pair of Keens sandals in size 11. I have looked in vain for size 11 Keens before. And they were only $50, half their usual price. I tried them on and they fit.

Incidentally, if you are a real sucker for punishment, I recommend taking two children under the age of 10 to a store where the shoes are on shelves from the floor to the ceiling.

Anyway, the Keens. They are made of squishy, rubber-like material. They make me nervous, shock-wise, so I left them there.

But I can’t stop thinking about them. I could wear them in lakes and rivers. And even though I don’t have a paying job, I still believe in “if the shoe fits and is half price, it’s a miracle and the unicorns would want you to buy the damn shoe.”

But what if they make me shout motherfucker all the time? I will have to wear them while driving.

Should I buy them and shuffle my feet all over the mall before I take the price tag off?

Should I just get my Naots resoled?

Should I train myself to say ‘unicorns’ instead of ‘motherfucker’?

What do you guys think?

(Oh and the reason I have the shock thing, I think, is because in grade 3 I plugged in the film projector and got electrocuted. Just enough to make me Magical, not enough to actually fry anything. I’m pretty sure. Although I do have a little freckle where the burn occurred.)

(Did you know I was Magical? It’s true.)

On the other hand, I also watch America’s Next Top Model from time to time. So I read it, this article in the New York Times about how Parents Hate Parenting and then I read a bazillion blog posts about the article and then it was Controversunday, which is a Sunday meme where people can write about the same topic and IT was about the article so I thought I’d run my mouth off a bit.

Look, it’s a badge. It came from here and the hostess of Controversunday is Our Lady of Perpetual Breadcrumbs and I first discovered this meme through A moment to think and is that it? Am I done crediting people? I don’t know what I”m doing here. Halp!

The New York Times Article talks to a bunch of people about their experiences parenting, reporting that parenting is not as rosy and glowy as we would believe. It sounded to me like she was saying, “What are we doing wrong, that we’re not enjoying this wonderful experience?”

Which left me wondering – Who said it was a wonderful experience? Like, a wholesale, wonderful experience without warts? I don’t expect to completely enjoy any experience, let alone something as complicated as creating, bearing, and raising another human being.

We struggle, in our house, with our happiness. Because often, the children get in the way of what we want. What we want:

1. quiet
2. time

Every time we practice expressing our disappointment, getting over it, having a good day anyway, we grow. We become better versions of ourselves. We become more patient, more kind, more knowledgeable. Every day we survive as parents makes us better people. Not better people than you. Better people than we were yesterday.

Parenthood isn’t about happiness from chocolate cake. It’s about happiness from personal growth.

The article makes it sound like there are people who decide to have a child based on whether they think that a child would…bring them this happiness? Like the waiter brings you your food? Naturally, those people are disappointed when the child brings chaos instead.

(That’s not what I ordered! Should I have had the Harvey Wallbanger instead of the Sidecar? Would I be happier?)

The thing about any external change to a situation is: it’s external. It can neither bring, nor deny you happiness. If you were happy before, you will strive for happiness despite the change.* If you were unhappy before, you will continue to be unhappy, despite the change. Much as a Big Frouffy Wedding! will not change the fact that you don’t love your partner, a Big Beautiful Baby! will not change the fact that you don’t like your life.

* with an exception made for post partum depression and other mental illnesses

Children are not a mirror. They are a magnifying glass. They make everything bigger; louder, messier, funnier, weirder, more stressful, more exciting. And so, they bring your issues into sharp relief. They make you face your shit.

Is that going to make you happier?
Is it going to make you happier, right now, to know that you have some shit you’ve not been facing?
Is it going to make you happier, right now, to look at that shit, up close and very large?

No, no, and no.

But when you’ve dealt with, faced, and moved on from your shit, you will be happier. You will understand your anger or your fear or your pain, at the root, you will have looked at these demons, at their teeth and claws and warts and you will know you have met them where they live. You will be happier for having done the work, whether or not you are a parent.

I am still doing this work. Every day. That is what sucks about parenting. It’s work. (and it’s every day) But it’s work that, if you do it right, makes you a better person. That’s what I want from my life; it might not be what everyone else in the world wants. So I would say yes, I am happy to be a parent and I am happy to work at parenting every day, and I am happy I got the kids I got, but being their parent doesn’t make me happy.

Being me makes me happy. My kids have their own jobs to do.