Notes From Mother’s Journal: 1,000 Words

Dear Fresco: Are you trying to kill us? Because if you kill us, there will be no one around to get you blueberries from the freezer. Trombone is not tall enough. Also, he can’t read so who will read you stories if you kill us? Please stop trying to kill us.

Dear Fresco’s bowels: 5:20 am is not the right time to move.

Dear Trombone: Nothing. We’re cool right now, kid.

***

Trombone went to a birthday party on the weekend and he got a goody bag with a clown nose. The kind with an elastic that goes over your head. Happily, this solved the problem of what to take for show and tell on Tuesday’s “Everyone Gets Show And Tell? OMG! We’re Freaking OUT!” preschool class. He took the clown nose.

“When he put it on, everyone laughed,” said his teacher.
“Yeah, that’s good,” I said. I am sucking ass at small talk lately.

It’s because of the time thing. Summertime means FUNTIME which means lots of time with the kids. Festivals. Parades. Street Fairs. If I worked outside the home full time I would be very excited about spending lots more time with the kids but as I see them every day for 12 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, mostly Summertime means “re-evaluate your priorities and make sure you get some time to yourself because when you don’t you are not a very nice person.”

I get miserly with 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there. I will not get up a second before 6:30. I will not go to bed a second before 9:40. I cancel engagements, cite vapours. I hide from the world because I fear I will be short, say something regretful.

On our way home from school on Tuesday I said, “So everyone laughed when you put on your clown nose?”
“Yep,” said Trombone.
“And how did that make you feel,” I said, sounding even to my own accustomed ears, very psychologist-y.
“Good!” said Trombone, “I feel happy when I make my friends laugh.”

I’ve got to write that down, I thought. So that someday when he is filled with angst, between jobs, he can say to me, “What did I want to be when I was almost four years old?” And I can say, “SupermanSpidermanBatmanIronman and a Monster Truck. And you liked to make your friends laugh.”

***

I should smile more. All those jerks on the street who implore me to smile, they’re right! Sorry jerks! I’m still going to call you that because no one should tell strangers on the street what to do, but you’re right. I should smile more. I saw myself on TV, and I look serious. Far more serious than I feel at any given moment.

***

I think we are going to get Trombone a camera for his birthday. He is only turning four – I KNOW! FOUR! – so it’s not going to be a Supafly Hipsterama Digital SLR or anything but still, it needs to be something that doesn’t say “Elmo loves cameras!” when you press the button.

There are some wild toys out there. There are electronic toys more sophisticated than my 5 year old cell phone. Yesterday I saw a toy blowdryer. It didn’t make wind, it just made noise. There are some toys that I just don’t understand.

Lately while Trombone is at preschool, I am the person who runs errands and neglects her younger child’s development, so Fresco and I have been looking at toys and getting groceries and going to coffee shops.

OK, the coffee shop thing is good for his development; it teaches him how to sit at a table and eat a muffin and he is very skilled at this. But one time a couple weeks ago it wasn’t even a coffee shop, it was a McDonald’s. How disgusting! The muffin tasted like a Strawberry Shortcake doll. Remember the scented ones? Do they still have those scented dolls or is that against the law now? There is a girl in Trombone’s preschool class who loves Strawberry Shortcake so I asked her about the smelly dolls thing but she just looked at me like I was unhinged.

I still have mine – not Strawberry Shortcake, though, I have Raspberry Tart – and it’s (she’s) 30 years old and it (she) still smells. Just like a McDonald’s muffin.

At the McDonald’s in question, one of those ones in an outside mall where you drive from store to store (I know, but I was at Canadian Tire buying a tent and I really had to pee and the McDonald’s was closest and we did walk across the parking lot) the cashier was the friendliest McDonald’s cashier of all time. She talked to Fresco and asked him if he wanted his muffin heated up and told me to sit down and brought our food to us. It was a new McDonald’s so it was all done up like a real restaurant. But the coffee still tasted like McDonald’s coffee, which is to say, slightly better than American truck stop coffee but just slightly.

***

When we go away, with our new tent and roof racks and noise canceling headphones, we will have to board our cat.

Yes! We have a cat! We have had him for 7 years. I know this only because I dug up his file (Yes! I keep a file on my cat!) to see if he had vaccinations because the kennel requires them.

Cat kennels have made some progress since the last time we boarded our cat (2005, says the file). Now the cat kennels feature luxury rooms and in-room movies (called “The Cat Sitter” and I am dying to see it) and wet treats after 9 pm. Our cat, who is sadly neglected because we are bad people and have two small children, will think he has died and gone to heaven. We never let him watch movies.

***

As Fresco says at the end of his stories, “And that’s IT.”