Guilt & De-Guilt

Posted on 1/10/2007 by cheesefairy

No! It’s not about parenting! Well, not mostly.

When we moved to The Mizzle last year, buying our first home and expecting our first child, people said, where’s your minivan? and we said, oh no, we won’t be buying a minivan. And we won’t. But we will be buying a car.

We didn’t want to buy a car. We sold our last car, whose name was Gordo and who had tweed interior, in 2004 and had been living quite happily since as slightly-car’d people who belong to a fabulous car-sharing program called the Cooperative Auto Network. Do you have one of these in your city? Look into it, really.

Vancouver’s CAN is fantastic: it’s very affordable, after an initial outlay of $500 (refundable when you leave the co-op,) it’s very convenient and, like they say, It’s All The Car You Need. Unless you are outside Vancouver proper. If you are outside Vancouver proper, you might need more car.

OK let’s define need. A vehicle, at the moment, would be nice to have so that I could go places with the baby and have those places be actual physical places, not “the shadowy places in my head where I am slightly insane.” At the moment, no, I don’t need a vehicle. My time during the day is not so constrained that a car is so much better than public transit. As we proved last week, we can take transit to Point Grey, visit a friend and take transit home again without a major meltdown on either of our parts. But the trip took over an hour either way and when you’re with a baby who needs to sleep every 2 or 3 hours and practically has a rider explaining his terms of daytime sleep (definitely no brown m&ms) that’s really pushing the limits of tolerance.

Once every couple of weeks we go to my parents’ place, which is an hour by bus or half an hour by car. They are kind enough to pick us up and drive us home (first grandchild and all) and this works well. On weekends, when Saint Aardvark is home, we either walk, take transit or get a co-op car, which is a 2 person/one baby job that involves one of us taking transit to the co-op car, bringing it back to our house, putting the car seat & baby & baby junk in and then reversing this at the end of the outing. This is not eXtremely convenient but neither is it the end of the world and it makes us feel all nice and martyr-y and like responsible global citizens who, yes, brought another human being into the world but also, yes, are trying to reduce our footprint by using the same car as 99 other people.

But. In July I am going back to work. On Mondays and Fridays, Trombone will go to his grandparents’ house. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he will go to daycare, the location of which has not yet been determined and on Wednesdays he will stay home with his papa (yay! for flexible work schedules). I will not have the luxury of an entire week to buy a week’s worth of groceries, carrying one backpack-full home every day after a leisurely walk uptown. I do not want to double the time of my commute every morning and evening, nor do I really want to travel on public transit during rush hour with a 13 month old. (Yes, I hear the privilege in that want to. I know I could do it, but I would be such an unhappy person and so would he.)

We created this problem for ourselves, that’s the part that causes the guilt. We were small-footprint people in our old, downtown apartment. We could walk or bus anywhere.

So, says my mean brain, you bring a kid into the world only to spend a year with him, spend half that time angsting about how Not Fun it is sometimes and the other half feeling guilty about the angsting and then spend the next 17 years trying to find 10 minutes to rub together while you work and work and work to pay for all the things that never had to exist before the kid did?

Yeah, I know. Relaaaaaaax.

But, says the mean brain, who has at least been distracted from criticizing my writing, you live where? Doing what? And now you’re actually fantasizing about a car, a hunk of metal that burns toxic gas and destroys the environment? (I am. I am fantasizing about a car. I want to go to my parking garage and get in my car and put the baby in the car seat that is already in the car and drive, drive, drive out of this neighbourhood. I want to go to Cambie and 7th ave. and buy bagels at Solly’s. I want to go to Granville Island and have coffee and watch the boats. I want to go visit friends. I want to go to Value Village. Oh, Value Village.)

Well, says I to mean brain, remember that no choice is permanent. We could sell the townhouse and go back to renting. We could move into a co-op in Vancouver. We could move to Saskatoon. I could quit my job (don’t worry, co-worker A, not for at least another year) and stay home, SA could quit his job and stay home (no, he won’t, but he COULD) – there are all sorts of places we could re-jig our quality of life. The bonus of having once been poor-ish, self-supporting young adults is that we really appreciate everything we have now and we know we could survive with much less.

Though it seems counter-intuitive to add more responsibility to the mix as a way of simplifying our lives, it is, in fact, the best way. Two years ago, when it was just us in our downtown apartment with no parking spot, when we could walk to work and anywhere else, when we lived 2 blocks away from most of our friends and were surrounded (like, 7 within a 3-block radius) by co-op cars, it made complete sense to sell our car. Now that there are three of us, when we have to travel by transit an hour or more each to get to work, when we have 2 parking spots (I know! 2!) and limited time together, it makes complete sense to buy our own car. Especially because: my dad is finally going to buy a hybrid vehicle, something he has been wanting to do for a couple of years. He agreed to sell us their car in the spring; it’s a sensible, 4-door, silver Honda Civic (WITH A STICK SHIFT YAY!) We’ll go to the beach, we’ll go to the airport, we’ll go to the valley, we’ll go to the mountains. Oh! The places we’ll go.

What we need is time together as a family. What will facilitate that is a vehicle. If I get 4 dozen bagels as a side-effect of this, so be it.

I find that a gratuitous kid picture always caps things off nicely.

Posted in outside, serious, trombone | 8 Comments

Little Mosque on the Prairie – Kill Me Now

Posted on 1/9/2007 by cheesefairy

A modern Muslim man is telling his mother, via cell phone in an airline check-in lineup, that he doesn’t care if his father thinks his new plan will “bomb” or that leaving the law practise is “suicide.” He is overheard by a older, white female who gasps, “Oh my!” Next thing you know he’s being pulled aside by the authorities and questioned about his possible connections to terrorism. When he raises his hand above his head to indicate that the cop interviewing him has missed a joke he made about Muslims having great senses of humour, the cop assumes he’s going for a weapon. Oh the hilarity! Because, you see, white people are SCARED of MUSLIM people. Especially at AIRPORTS. Get it? GET IT?

I mean, it could be hilarious. If there was even the slightest inkling of comedic timing and if the writing had left 2003 for ten minutes or so, bought itself a cup of coffee and thought about how to be current and sharp.

Unfortunately, the CBC has struck AGAIN with another shitty comedy. I cannot think of other words to describe it. I am slightly amazed, actually. How do they do it? With all the talented writers and actors in this country, how do they make shitty, overacted, overwraught, cliche-ridden shows again and again and again? I see what they were going for – a goddamn blind donkey drunk on plum brandy could see what they’re going for – it’s a fish-out-of-water-meets-a-fish-out-of-water-within-a-fishbowl-of-racism-in-a-post-9-11-canada. So, you know, keep the humour like dill Havarti. No, like a HAMMER made of dill Havarti. Creamy, boring cheese that keeps HITTING YOU and HITTING YOU. Stop it you damn cheese hammer!

Saint Aardvark said, “Like they sort of waved a bag of humour over the script and then put it back in the closet for when Chris Haddock needs it next.”

But come on. Does he HAVE to ask the Muslim woman who runs the cafe if there’s anywhere to get a good cappuccino in this town? Were all the Toronto jokes really necessary? “Why don’t we observe Ramadan in December – the month is shorter and there’s better shopping?” (from the white woman married to the Muslim man. A clash! Of cultures!)

Just wait until winter, when it snows in “Mercy, The Prairies” and the new, Torontonian imam has to drive somewhere! Hilarity will ensue but I will not be there because I will be riding my drunk, blind donkey to someplace funny.

Posted in idiots, television | 1 Comment

My Family: Now With More Crazy!

Posted on 1/9/2007 by cheesefairy

A few years ago I began practicing yoga in my bedroom. I was feeling sort of sedentary and poofy around the edges, having just started my first office job, one which required me to commute in a vehicle and then sit on my butt all day. Because I wanted to keep eating as many chips as possible I thought I would do some yoga, just to tone up my muscles.

I had taken one group class a few months before but I preferred to practice at home, with a book from the library to guide me. I enjoyed the breathing and the stretching and the feeling of having taken some time to pay attention to all the parts of my body that usually got squished or contorted or just plain used without much fanfare.

When I mentioned to my mom that I was doing yoga she was interested and pleased. She mentioned in a conversation with my aunt (her sister) that I was doing yoga (because that’s the kind of family we have, where relatively inconsequential details are shared in lengthy telephone conversations) and was very surprised when my aunt was shocked and appalled.

My aunt is a Fundamentalist Christian. Most of the time, she is quite reasonable and fun to be around. (We put the “fun” in “fundamentalist” – a bumper sticker I think she’d appreciate) If you don’t bring up homosexuality, abortion, the federal or provincial governments and their respective priorities – the usual stuff one wouldn’t think to discuss with an FC unless one was looking for a futile discussion to bash one’s brains against – she is just like any other aunt. And you would have thought, as my mother did, that exercise, regardless of its origin, was a safe topic.

But Oh dear, said my aunt, aren’t you worried that Cheesefairy will be corrupted by the evil influences of meditation? And incense?
Er, said my mother, No…I believe she will develop some muscle, maybe some grace and dexterity and perhaps relax a little. Which would be good, I think.
Well, it starts with exercise, intoned my aunt, but it ends with HEATHEN DEVIL WORSHIP! (perhaps not verbatim)

And we added “yoga” to the list of things we don’t discuss with auntie. (Pilates is OK. So is Tai Chi.)

I tell you this story because this morning’s news, once it finished its 25 minute coverage respecting the wishes of the sextuplet family to not be harrassed by the media (seriously, journalists, stop filming the admitting department of the hospital and MOVE ON), told me about some parents in BC’s interior who wish to have yoga removed from a physical education curriculum for some reasons reminiscent of my aunt’s. And here I thought she was supa-crazy, even within the context of Fundamentalist Christianity. But no. Right on target.

Just wait till she hears about Goddessa and her Pits of Unstoppable Power! My word!

Dear FCs:
You have nothing to fear from the stretching exercises. Meditation (which I doubt they are doing in school anyway because can you imagine?) does not have to be prayer. To foster connection to your self, the self your God gave you to use, understand and respect, is not necessarily a religious act. Incense makes the room smell nicer (unless you’re allergic). And I bet Jesus would do yoga. There’s a man who needed to relax now and then.

Posted in outside | 1 Comment

Soon I Discovered that this Rock Thing Was True

Posted on 1/5/2007 by cheesefairy

Hey you guys know that song “Jesus Built my Hotrod” by Ministry? Of course you do, you cool kids. And you know the part (possibly in the extended remix – dammit where IS that mixed tape?) where they shout, “Drag racing! Drag racing!”? Well, sometimes when I’m at home, sharing a peaceful moment with Trombone, watching him plant his face in the carpet and then kick his feet madly and then look up, hoping to have moved a few feet closer to the catt, I think, “Childproofing! Childproofing!” and then I laugh a little to myself and then I weep a little, too and have another martini and wrap my silk robe a little tighter in case I should have to answer the door.

Posted in music, trombone | 3 Comments

Get Decent

Posted on 1/4/2007 by cheesefairy

I am on the bus.

The cell phone of the man sitting next to me plays a polyphonic version of the A-Team Theme song.

I look over to see if the phone-owner is the Captain of my Dream Team. Sadly, it appears not.

Guy: ‘lo?
Guy: Yeah, it’s the one with the white picket fence…go around the corner and through the back gate and then down the walk…and it’s the basement door. My wife will let you in.
Guy: Yeah, okay.
Guy: Okay, bye.

He punches numbers into his phone, waits, hangs up. continues reading copy of free, shitty paper. I try not to read over his shoulder, as free, shitty paper makes me feel dirty.

The A-Team Theme song plays again. My butt twitches in the seat. Damn, I love the A-Team Theme song.

Guy: ‘lo?
Guy: Hey, yeah, I called you twice. Once to tell you I bought [muffled]; the second time, just now to tell you that [muffled] is on his way over. So get decent.
Guy: What? I just thought you might not be decent.
Guy: Yeah, he just called me, wondering where our house is. So I told him and then I thought I’d give you a head’s up, so you could get decent.
Guy: Allright. See you later.

He puts his phone away and continues reading, (how do people stretch out the reading of the shitty paper so long? Are they really reading? Are they asleep? Are there secret messages in between the lines?) leaving me to wonder what constitutes “decent” these days. I mean, I know in the ’50s, when a man called his wife from the bus to tell her to get decent, he probably meant put on a clean apron and make sure there’s a fresh pot of coffee. But in the ’00s? Are there people who sit around their apartments who might not think to put some pants on before answering the doorbell?

I just don’t know, Wally. I just don’t know.

Posted in outside | 4 Comments