There was a Tiny Bloom on this Rose but it’s Off Now

Posted on 7/5/2007 by cheesefairy

Everyone:

If you open the windows on the Skytrain,
the air conditioning does not work.

The breeze is nice (though hot, too)
but in the long run
we will all be hotter.

Also have you noticed the words
printed on the windows
they say
open only for emergency ventilation
Is it an emergency?
I want to ask each of you
who opens the window
Is it an emergency?
because I don’t think
it is.

We are flying through the air
in a metal tube
with no possibility of shade.

We need the air conditioning.

Short term pain
for long term gain:
are those words you understand?
Or has your brain
been dulled by the free
(toilet) papers?

Speaking of:
get your butt
out of my face,
I have carved out
this

space

for

me
and I am attached to all
four
inches
of it.

Posted in outside | 6 Comments

The Kids are All Right

Posted on 7/4/2007 by cheesefairy

We had a pretty okay first day.

Well, I had an awesome first day. Trombone’s wasn’t as good as mine. I averaged the two and come up with “okay.”

It’s a super-boring narrative so here, in point form, are the highlights.

– Going to work, I missed the bus so walked to the skytrain in shoes I have not worn before for walking distances. Then, coming home, I thought I’d be smart and take a different bus that would get me to Trombone’s daycare faster. Three guesses, internet. Did it work? So three extra blocks of walking. Blisters: 4 + 2 harsh rubby bits on soles + shin splints from walking funny so’s not to actually rub a hole in my achilles tendon.

– I had no computer access at work so I just stood there all day, gossiping. Which, if you’re going to go back to work after a year, is the absolute best re-introduction ever. I cannot emphasize this enough. Stand around while the person who’s been doing your job KEEPS DOING IT, drink peppermint tea and get reacquainted with people. Because my memory is so poor these days, there were live, flesh and blood people I had forgotten existed. You don’t know how refreshing that is for someone who usually remembers stupid details about people who sold her coffee four years ago.

– This woman on the skytrain was standing at my eye level (I was sitting) and two of her blouse buttons were open. I spent almost 20 minutes sitting on my hands, I wanted to fasten those buttons so bad.

– When I fetched Trombone, he was delighted to see me and made a full recovery into his normal, guccking self. Apparently he freaked a little every time they came back into the house and I STILL wasn’t there. But he had a

three
hour
nap
in the sleep room
where he has never been before
in a crib he has never slept in before
with a two-year-old in the next crib

so I’m thinking he’ll be fine.

– Also he was VERY SHOUTY when we got home. Damn two-year-olds, teaching my kid to shout.

And today, as promised, is summer. My blisters rejoice.

Posted in outside, trombone | 5 Comments

What’s the “O” For? O-My-God it’s Early.

Posted on 7/3/2007 by cheesefairy

Thanks to a year of parenthood preceded by 10 months of pregnancy and to “Good Morning Vietnam,” (from whence comes the title of this post) I got out of bed at 5:30 am with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.

Or it might just be that I knew I was heading towards the coffee.

My shoes are shined, our lunches are packed, our clothes are picked out. My toenails are even painted, in case the sun decides to shine again and I need to wear open-toed shoes. In three minutes I will hit the shower – but not too hard. Apparently, making terrible jokes will be part of my new life.

On the bright side, I will get to use some of my other blog-post categories, like “the elevator.” And “outside.” In fact, as I will be going outside today, far outside, I think I will put this post in that category.

I ache, a little, for the past year.

So here, watch this.

The Penguin Says: Linux! from tortured potato and Vimeo.

Posted in outside, trombone | 3 Comments

Happy Happy! Joy Joy Joy!

Posted on 7/1/2007 by cheesefairy

When I first started using the Internet as my playground, back in 1997 or so, I had so much time. I had the equivalent of a giant tanker truck full of time. Or a faucet. I had a faucet of time. I played around with email and chose alternate identities for myself and hung out on message boards and started a secret blog and forgot the password for it and then forgot its location. Then I registered torturedpotato.com and started playing with html and putting up pictures and silly stories and puttered like a 3 year old in a leafy puddle. (Hi Rowan!) It is dreadful, a lot of it, but I enjoyed doing it. Some saturday mornings I would get up at 8 am, drink three cups of coffee and spend until noon just fiddling with building the perfect nested tables for my website. Then I started the cheeseblog and I had a new focus; the rest of the site has been all but abandoned and as sad as I find it when I go to old, abandoned websites, now I don’t have the time to make it better or even to take it down.

Which, of course, didn’t stop me from registering another domain a couple of years ago and doing absolutely nothing with it.

My pattern with blogging has been the same: I take the time, I write, I rewrite, I delete, I fiddle. I read and re-read, I recover, I fiddle. Eventually, I post. But I don’t have a faucet full of time anymore. I have a stoppered sink with a finite amount of water in it and after a certain, small amount of time has passed, the stopper is pulled and I am done. That’ s it. No more fiddling, faddling, re-doing, re-writing. You would think I’d get faster. But instead I’ve become more fastidious. Look how long it just took me to tell you that I have given myself 45 minutes to write this entry. 10 minutes have already passed.

Trombone is one year old today.

I have started several entries discussing that fact and I have deleted them all. One just said, Dear Trombone: Holy shit. You’ll understand if you ever have kids. Then I was going to put a photo at the bottom.

I want everything to be perfect. Oh well.

Trombone is one year old today and as of yesterday, he can make a trombone noise. He can slap your hand when you say “high five.” He can touch his nose, in theory; actually he claps his hands over his ears. He says “duck” for ducks, “cat” for catts and “gagoo gagoo” for baby. His favourite things are, in order of preference: books, me, his father, food, telephones, remote controls.

He is not quite 3 times as big as he was a year ago. He is a red-headed, blue-eyed, fair-skinned boy who tans. Last night as I was nursing him before bed I noticed his ankles are brown. I tried to rub off the dirt but it wasn’t dirt. My red-headed, blue-eyed, fair-skinned boy tans better than me, me with the olive complexion.

I know, skin cancer. I know. But also, vitamin D.

I haven’t given him vitamin D drops in months. His ankles must be tanning as a self-protection mechanism.

I must focus! I only have 25 minutes left.

Love has grown slowly and silently in my bloodstream like vines climbing a trellis. When I first saw my son, all squally and red, a year ago at 2:24 pm today,

I knew I loved him

but I didn’t love him yet.

You see? My mind loved him. The rest of me rushed to cocoon him, protect him, nurture him, because it knew to. But – it knew to. Acted on knowledge and instinct and a little on obligation. Not, “Oh, I have to feed this baby or I’ll go to jail” obligation but deep, instinctual obligation. “This is my kid, he smells right,” wild animal obligation. And feelings and knowledge are connected, yes. There was a subtle shift, though, when I began to act from my heart centre instead of my brain centre.

The first few months of parenthood are sort of like a hybrid car. You switch back and forth between gasoline and electricity. Heart and head. One carries you when the other is exhausted. When your brain says goddamn it why won’t he sleep, your heart kicks in and you can hold him one more hour. When your heart is sick from listening to the weeping, your brain takes over and allows you to know you are doing what is best.

We blossom into our finest moments as parents when the heart and the head can work together, when both are allowed to be truthful, impulsive, free. When we are able to use our whole selves.

Four minutes.

Dear Trombone,

I promise I will always love you with my whole self.

big kisses,
yr mother

What a year it’s been.

Posted in trombone | 7 Comments

In My Day, Sports Day Didn’t Have A DJ

Posted on 6/25/2007 by cheesefairy

We took a walk to the small mall this morning. The small mall is the one just a couple blocks from us. It can be very convenient: a Safeway, Starbucks and a Subway, a liquor store, a dollar store and a vegetable store. It can also be very strange: a custom bra fitter, a sewing-machine retailer, a paint store and the smallest food fair ever made, consisting of two (2) concessions. One sells all manner of fried and baked items (rice, eggs, shepherd’s pie, lasagna) and the other sells sushi. Every time I go to the small mall – and I go there a lot – I marvel that there are people eating this food, sitting at the tables and chairs that appear to have been scattered through the mall by an angry developer who had had enough! I’m never working on suburban strip malls again! back in 1977.

On our way to the small mall we passed the middle school, which was alive with shouting preteens. It is recess, I guess. I said to Trombone, Surely this must be the last week of school.
Uccccck, he replied.

The field was full of children collected in groups by coloured t-shirt. The reds were running and the blues were kicking. And under the school’s overhang, by the basketball nets, a small group of boys was standing around a folding table upon which sat a very excited stereo.

I recognized “Sweet Home Alabama” playing as we walked by. Just as I was thinking how quaint – the principal is playing his favourite music for sports day! the two girls who were walking around the school (do you remember doing this in school? We would just walk and walk and walk; arms linked, talking about candy and boys and who liked who and who didn’t like who and who LIKE liked who) fell in behind me and one of them sang, “Sweet Home Alabama,” and the other replied, “where the skies are so blue,” and then they fell about the place giggling and I walked a little faster because 12 year old girls in 2007 know the words to “Sweet Home Alabama?” Is there an episode of America’s Next Top Model I missed where the models all do ’70s karaoke?

By the time I reached the end of the block, where the field ends, I had also heard Chumbawamba and Radiohead. Well, I must not have seen the teacher who was controlling the stereo,I said to Trombone, because there is no way those kids are playing the greatest hits of my ’20s of their own free will and volition.
Uck, said Trombone, adding, GUCK UCK CUCK for emphasis.

30 minutes later we were walking home. I could see the group of boys still clustered around the table but I couldn’t make out the tune. They were dancing, though. They were flailing like Axl Rose crossed with Alanis Morrissette in her hand-flicking days (that’s a nod to my father-in-law who actually refers to Mme. Morrissette as “The hand-flicker.”) What the hell, I said to Trombone. It must be Limp Bisquick or whatever the kids are calling it. Blue October. That band that dresses like clowns. Trombone did not reply. He was too busy staring. As we drew closer I recognized the song. It was “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

“Here we are now – entertain us – I feel stupid – and contagious – here we are now – entertain us,” they hollered in perfect unison but without a hint of tune and then continued to mosh in the pit of their own making. Floppy hair, pants sliding down around their knees, bird-like hands pounding invisible drums.

Not a teacher in sight.

Posted in music, new westminster, trombone | 7 Comments