Notes from the Road

Posted on 10/24/2006 by cheesefairy

The Couch says: Lady! Get Outside!
Growth spurt, teething, who knows; what it means to me is I’m on the couch all day with a kid attached to my hooter. Hooty! So if you see my IP address visiting your site 7 times a day and it makes you all “What?? What is she looking at? I’ll update when I’m good and ready! Damn!” just know that a) I am living my life vicariously through you, so help a sister out and b) I probably forgot I visited your site the first 6 times. Here’s where it would make sense for me to subscribe to those new fangled feed thing-ma-bobs but honestly I enjoy making my way daily through my long (and getting longer) list of bookmarked sites. It’s the anticipation, the little thrill I feel while the page loads. Like my birthday over and over and over again!

Evidence that I am Spending Too Much Time with my Sweet Friend, The Internet
I keep bumping into the story (and discussions about it) about females dressing sluttily at Halloween. According to The Internet, women have abandoned costumes like “postal worker” in favour of costumes like “sexy postal worker.” According to many of The Internet’s esteemed commentators, the costume isle at the local megamart is stocked high with sexist, sexy, oversexed sex costumes. (which are probably also flammable) This is news, I guess, in that the sexualization of things child-like is happening around us at an arguably greater rate than it used to. (I say arguably because I have no data on this – neither the “greater” aspect nor the “used to.”)

Blah blah blah padded bra. To my mind, the bigger problem here is that the majority of The Internet’s esteemed commentators seem to be buying costumes ready-made from stores that have costume isles. Don’t people make up their own costumes from the stuff in their closets anymore? Don’t you all go to thrift stores? Because back when, when I used to enjoy a party, I always just made up my own costume. (Actually I suck at costumes – left to my own devices, I’m one of those people you hate who throws on a straw hat and two-fists Corona all night. “What are you?” you ask. “A tourist,” I reply – so Sarah would help me come up with one. She was good. One year, she, Michael and I went as JFK (him,) Jackie O (her) and Lee Harvey Oswald (me). We each participated to our own level of comfort [she a flawless Jackie, he in a suit? I think with some fake blood on his head? and me in a plaid flannel shirt & ball cap, carrying a plastic rifle from the dollar store.])

I’m just surprised so many people say “Oh Halloween. I guess I have to dress up like a Playboy bunny – that’s all that’s available in the womens’ section of the costume store.” That’s like saying, “Oh my god I’m so nauseous and constipated from all the cheese I eat. But it’s all that’s available in the cheese isle. Damn dairy lobby.”

It makes me kind of wish I had a fairy princess costume to dress Trombone in. As it stands, he will be following in his dumb mother’s footsteps and dressing up as “a baby” for Halloween.

Lesson Learned
Three Stroopwafels is one too many Stroopwafels.

Hindsight, You Fickle Bitch
Trombone & I were out walking. He was half asleep – another turn around the block would have done it but I decided to go into the mall and get vegetables. Two women of about 40 years each sat at the picnic table outside the mall, having their smoke break. One had short, airy, frosted-tip hair and lots of makeup. The other one had a black bob, red lipstick and cat’s eye glasses. They eyed me as I approached the mall door.

“Worst thing you can do,” said the blonde one. I realized she was talking to me so I stopped walking.
“Hmm,” I said, “well I want to get vegetables.” I assumed she meant that the worst thing I could do was go into the mall and while that is A Bad Thing I wouldn’t say it was The Worst Thing. But then I don’t work there.
She gestured to the stroller.
“He’ll get used to it and then you’ll have to do it all the time.”
I realized she meant that The Worst Thing was to “walk the baby to sleep in the stroller.”
“Ah, well,” I said, “he’s not asleep yet anyway so no bad habit formed ha ha – ”
“HI BABY!” she squealed. Trombone’s heavy lids flew open.
“HI HI HI HI HI! LOOK AT YOUR BIG BLUE EYES!!”
Trombone stared. The dark haired woman lit another cigarette.
“WHAT A BIG BOY!” said the blonde and to me, “Was he big when he was born?”
“Yeah, 9.2,” I said.
“My son was 9.11,” she said, “they grow so fast.”
“Mmm,” I said.
“HI BEAUTIFUL BOY!” she tried again. Trombone was having none of it. He turned his head away.
“My boy is five now,” she said, “they grow so fast.”

Ten minutes later, in my own head, I retorted, “Wow! You must be exhausted from all that pushing him in the stroller to get him to sleep. You know, I must have missed that chapter in Baby’s Best Chance, the one about how the Worst Thing You Can Do is push your kid in a stroller till he’s sleeping. Actually, know what’s worse, blonde lady? Screaming at a kid (a kid you don’t know!) who is almost asleep and waking him up so that now his mom has to listen to him go “Uh uh uh uh uh uh uHHHHHHH!!!” (loose translation: where is my THUMB where is my THERE IT IS hey who took my THUMB) while she buys vegetables. And smoking! Smoking is worse! Damn it! Damn you!”

PS

My new shoes are a men’s size 9, thank you and get out of my road. If there were not already 17 plenty good reasons not to have more children, the fact that my feet cannot reasonably grow any larger and still be classified as “feet” would surely top any list I felt compelled to start.

Posted in food, idiots, shoes, trombone | 8 Comments

Sweet Baby – Week 16

Posted on 10/21/2006 by cheesefairy

Trombone likes it when I whistle. I believe this is because he enjoys both the breeze and the noise, as well as the scent of whatever I last ate or drank. He gulps the air and closes his eyes and then he smiles.

He’s still working on that whole “thumb in mouth” issue. I’m not convinced this will be resolved before it’s time to get him to take it out of his mouth and go to kindergarten so let’s just wait and see. He rejects every type of chewable object except human flesh, even if the flesh is cleverly disguised by pants.

A lot of this parenting business is wait and see. I’ve taken to doing it when he cries because as often as he is genuinely distraught, he’s just trying out a new sound. There was a particular “OMIGOD!!!” shriek that he did for a whole day and it took me several go-rounds to realize he was just making sure I was paying attention.

Yesterday I noticed his eyebrows are growing in. We have been able to see the brow bones, of course, and I have noted that he, like me, can raise one eyebrow without the other. However the brows themselves have been absent. Until now.

He is a watchful baby. When we go to the weekly mom & baby group at the local community centre, he stays awake the whole time and just stares at the babies around us. The other babies get distracted, will follow a toy, struggle to be put down or picked up. Trombone just stares, because it is all SO FASCINATING.

There is a lot to see, after all. And our neighbourhood is well-suited to walks. We live across the street from Queen’s Park, which has a 2.5 km paved trail woven through. Our neighbourhood is very nice; there is a school and a Safeway and lots of families and dogs, but the side of the street with Queen’s Park is Very Nice. The houses are almost all from the early 1900s and even the newer houses are built in a heritage style. There are lots of trees; old, tall trees. Trees you climb and hide in and have to rake up after.

When we walk up to the shops at 6th Ave and 6th St. we usually walk on the Queen’s Park side to take advantage of the shade. I’ve continued doing it though it’s not the hot, hot summer anymore because I love looking at the houses and the yards and petting the dogs and cats and being under the trees, Stephen Joseph Harper, the trees!

One day last week we were walking uptown in the late afternoon. Trombone had been napping well that day and I didn’t want to disturb The Order of Things by taking him out earlier. The light was starting to fade in and around the houses. Kids walked home from school; teenage boys wearing camo jackets and iPods, teenage girls in tight jeans, carrying purses and looking over their shoulders to see if anybody was noticing them. I passed two pre-teen boys; one pulling the other in a plastic wagon meant for kids half their age. Their voices carried and cracked as they shouted insults at each other.

I forgot I was in a city. I felt, suddenly, like I was in a small town; one with big houses, narrow streets, families that knew each other. Actually I felt like I was in an Autumn Scene from a movie about a small town. (The soundtrack was by the Be Good Tanyas.)

I have had that feeling a lot in this neighbourhood, I guess because it used to be the Big City in southern BC and it is like a small town unto itself. Fear not, though, the really nice houses may look friendly and small-towny but the ugliest one on the block will still set you back $700K. Saskatoon this ain’t.

We walk every day and some days I get a pumpkin spice latte (my only Starbucks weakness) and some days I buy chocolate and some days we just get outside and try to coax Trombone into a nap. He will sleep in the stroller but not for longer than 30 minutes. The rest of the time he is quite happy to watch the sunbeams. Pretty soon he’ll be perched at the edge of the stroller hollering at the squirrels like the older babies we see when we walk. Not to rush things.

Across the cul de sac from our house is a middle school. I think this means grades 6 – 9, judging by the kids I see running around. The girls are dressed like young adults but their bodies are still childlike. The boys are all legs and arms and floppy hair and skateboards. I can move through throngs of them and remain completely invisible. Even so, I am fascinated by them, the boys in particular. I have no trouble appreciating Trombone at the age he is now – at almost 4 months old he is difficult not to appreciate. But when I see 13 year old boys I marvel at the obvious: someday my son will be a 13 year old boy. He will want to wear his shoes with the laces undone, he will ignore me when his friends are around, he will put his helmet on when he leaves the house on his skateboard and then, when he is out of my sight, he will toss the helmet to the ground and practise foolish stunts on flights of stairs. If I’m very lucky he won’t break his head like a watermelon.

I stare at these boys, swearing at each other, (did I ever swear like that at their age?) tossing footballs (badly – so badly!) as they walk up the street, carrying their backpacks slung over one shoulder (when did I start wearing my backpack on both shoulders? Will kids even carry backpacks in 13 years?) They trudge along, sharing their iPods the way I used to share my Walkman with friends; walking two-by-two with one speaker in each kid’s ear.

Will he even be friends with those boys? Or will he be more like the two I passed a block earlier, on their way home – straight home – discussing reactions from chemistry class. Will he read volumes under his covers by flashlight after Saint Aardvark and I have gone to bed? Will he re-program our computers for fun?

I’d say I can’t wait to see – but I can. I can wait.

Posted in trombone | 3 Comments

A Challenge I Can Almost Hope To Meet

Posted on 10/19/2006 by cheesefairy

Last November I wrote a short novel as part of National Novel Writing Month. It was extremely difficult. November, though I love it dearly, is a dark, wet, maudlin month and I was in weeks 6 – 10 of pregnancy so I was tired, belchy and unable to go longer than 20 minutes without eating a Mandarin orange. Two things helped me make myself finish the novel:
1) Monkeypants was doing it too and
2) The story needed to be written. I didn’t realize this until just a few weeks ago when I was walking with Trombone. I was considering how I had come to be comfortable with the idea of becoming a parent, trying to remember how I had moved past the fear of failure and the unknown to think that making a copy of myself was a good idea.

As I walked and considered, I suddenly remembered my novel’s hero – and, more relevantly, his mother.

It had taken a few days to write the background of the mother & father’s relationship and the early childhood of our hero. It was that easy writing where the story flows like juice from a fruit and you believe in the characters as people with their own lives, histories, motivations. But then, as I typed, things started turning. The mother became angry and resentful, mean to her husband and indifferent to her child. She decided to leave them both in a terrible, calculated way: when our hero is 6 or 7 years old, mom gets a job, keeps it a secret for a year, saves her money and then she tells her husband and son she’s leaving by getting a cake made at Safeway and having the bakery ice it with “I’m Leaving: Goodbye.” (yes, I believe there was actually an icing colon on the cake.)

I reached the end of my word quota for that day. All I could do was push my chair back from the desk and be appalled. Where the hell did that come from? How did she turn out so nasty? Who DOES that to her family? It really was, like all those people say, the character doing what the character wants, despite my best efforts to steer her in a different direction.

My subconscious fears about parenthood manifesting themselves? Aye aye and goodbye.

The novel may never see the light of day again, but if I had not written it, I think my pregnancy, birth experience, experience as a parent, all of it would have been different. Probably I would not have fostered a silent resentment for 7 years and then left (with a SAFEWAY CAKE my parting shot, I mean, The Fuck?) But things would have been – would be, now – different.

That being said, I don’t think there’s a novel in me this year. Plus I could not, I don’t think, type 3,000 words a day with just one hand at my disposal.

However, I came across a compromise thanks to Fussy.

National Blog Posting Month!

My Regional motto: A Post A Day or Black, Slimy Shame Will Follow.

Posted in serious, trombone | 1 Comment

Rockin’ the Fields, Just like Prism Did

Posted on 10/18/2006 by cheesefairy

Is it the drunk dudes punching air and the liberal flashing of hand-horns? Is it the tha-rrrrrilling windmill guitar right at the end? Is it the guy with the Canadian flag t-shirt, imploring those around him to ROCK OUT?

It’s all of this and more! It’s ARMAGEDDON and it’s the August long weekend and it’s the prairies! Next year, meet me in Minnedosa!

Posted in funny, music | 3 Comments

PS: Stop Peeing on Me

Posted on 10/17/2006 by cheesefairy

Dear Son,

There is good reason generations of babies have chosen their thumbs, specifically, for sucking (until they are agile enough to reach their feet and/or old enough for lollipops and cigarettes).

Please, take a moment to examine your own thumb now. See how plump it is, compared to your other fingers? This makes it the most satisfying digit to suck; the one with the best “mouth-feel” if you like. It is also the most like your source of both food and comfort, the nipple. MY nipple. The one that is attached to my body and I swear to god shall remain attached no matter what fabulous hheadbanging moves you learned on “Behind the Music: Slayer.” (Who gave you the remote control anyway? The catt?)

Now, look at the other fingers on your hand. (no, it doesn’t matter which hand, they are the same) They are thinner, are they not? They are thinner and longer than your perfectly engineered thumb. Thus, when you attempt to suck your fingers instead of your thumb, not only do you require the insertion of more than one finger in order to make your soother satisfactorily thick, but you WILL, and I cannot emphasize this enough, apparently, trigger your gag reflex and choke and then cry.

Yes, your fist is breathtaking. I adore it. However, with your whole fist in your mouth, all you are doing is forming a seal. I appreciate that the drool then stays in your mouth but I am less keen on the ocean which then flows out once you have removed your fist and begun, again, to cry from frustration.

I know. It’s hard.

To recap:

Your fingers are too long for soothing suckling.

Your fist is too big.

Your thumb is perfect.

love,
yr mother
who is just trying to help.

Posted in trombone | 6 Comments