These Dreams

Posted on 9/27/2006 by cheesefairy

OK First I must tell you about the dream I had last week because I thought I would remember it forever but just yesterday I realized it was fading. In 20 years, the archivists need to be able to find this post and say, “Aha! That’s when it all turned around.”

My mom and I were walking up Davie St. in Vancouver and I was hungry (this is a recurring dream-theme, I suspect because in real life I am hungry all night and all day but am too lazy to get up in the night & get a snack. I know. I KNOW. But it’s two floors down! and back up again! and the baby wakes up when he smells toast!) so we went into Panago Pizza & I saw the best pizza ever: it was layered crust, meatballs, sauce, cheese, crust, it was about 5 layers of pizza. It was incredible. So I ordered a slice. The counterperson went into the back where the ovens are. She came back a few minutes later with a grey kitten.

This is not pizza, I said.
No, she said. But it’s a robot kitten!
But I ordered pizza.
Yes, but this robot kitten is programmed to work for 3 months! After 3 months, it stops working and then you have a nice kitten for your mantle! That’ll be $13, please.

I paid, took the kitten (which was very cute) and we continued on up Davie St. Still hungry.

This morning I was having a dream I was at Dairy Queen. I wanted a Peanut Buster Parfait. The surly teenage girl behind the counter was all, OK, whatEVER and then, as I waited, the entire staff of the store paraded out. Uh, where’s my PBP? I asked. Oh, we have a staff meeting, answered the teenage boy manager. OK, but I ordered a PBP, I said. HERE, said surly teenage girl. She tossed the ice cream on the counter and said, that’s $29. What? I said, It’s $2.99! Only if you buy 12, she said. If you only buy one? It’s $29.

What is up with the food and money themes? Any amateur psych out there?

Anyway, I was saved having to pay $29 for a glorified ice cream sundae because Trombone was wailing his head off and woke me up.

Here’s the thing: I agree that it can be neat to eavesdrop on the neighbours with our baby monitor. However, it would also be neat if I could eavesdrop on my own child in my own home, like I paid the (OK, not very much) money for. Turns out that’s not possible. Both channels belong to the neighbours. I guess their monitor has a stronger signal.

I don’t WANT to hear what their kids are doing. I liked being able to say, “Oh, our neighbours have 2 kids under 4 and I never hear a blessed thing.” I don’t want to hear their kid coughing for half an hour at 2 am. I don’t want to hear them disciplining their son in the evening. But above all, I don’t want to wake up to my own kid screaming his head off because I was busy dreaming about ice cream and didn’t hear his earlier I’m-sort-of-awake grunting. I have the damn monitor so I’ll hear the grunting. (our bedroom is on the 3rd floor, his on the 2nd) When he wakes up at 8 he’ll grunt & chatter for a while. And if you get there within about 15 or 20 minutes, he is the sweetest, smiliest, happiest baby ever. Not today. Today I was dreaming about ice cream.

To try next: repositioning the receiving end in his bedroom. And/or when he goes back to sleep at 7 for that last hour, rather than trying to squeeze out an extra hour of sleep for myself, I should get up & have an hour of time – when I can drink my coffee, eat some breakfast and hear the grunting when it happens. That’s what I did yesterday and things were far smoother. Smooth like Dairy Queen.

PS: Stupid monitor manufacturers who use inferior technology for their cheap ass walkie talkies? You done been smote.

Posted in food, funny, Goddessa Smites You, trombone | 3 Comments

For the Record

Posted on 9/24/2006 by cheesefairy

Since my idea of a baby book is to whine about not having a baby book until I receive two; then to pile atop it stuff I think might go nicely in a baby book until I have a pile of things perilously close to toppling height on my table and then to look over periodically and sigh, I hereby record right here and now that Trombone turned 12 weeks yesterday. To celebrate, he napped for a total of 45 minutes all day, then melted down around 7 and spent his first night in his crib (after much cajoling by the Superior Saint Aardvark, King of the Babies) and thus in his bedroom. Oh, there were tequila shots too but he is such a bad drunk I don’t want to go into detail here.

Until last night he has spent every night in a basket by our bed so last night was also the first time we used the baby monitor. The other day I tried it out from the first floor to the second; I heard baby squeaks and came back downstairs; sure enough the baby was squeaking. So I figured, you know, it works.

I positioned the “walkie” part of the monitor beside our bed. I woke up at 2 am thinking the kind of thoughts you think when you’re spending your first night in a different room from your baby (why is it so quiet? was it always this quiet? what time is it? what time did he eat last? should I go down and check on him? what if he wakes up? did I put the laundry in the dryer on Wednesday?) At about 2:30 the monitor went SQUAWK! and my brain went RELIEF! so SA went dashing down to fetch our poor, screaming, freaking-out baby. Except he wasn’t really screaming or freaking out. In fact he wasn’t even awake. But he woke when he was fetched and wasn’t opposed to the idea of eating, so I fed him & put him back to bed. We just assumed he’d squawked in his sleep. It happens. I do it all the time.

At 6:30 I heard him cry. But not on the monitor – through his open door. I fetched and fed and while he was eating, I heard a baby cry on the monitor.

Um.

Then I heard someone coughing. And realized that our walkie was picking up a) ghosts b) aliens or c) the people next door.

Today SA read the instructions and it turns out there are two channels for the monitor: ours and the people next door.

In the past 12 weeks, Trombone has learned:

to eat
to sleep
to pee on things
to wait until my back is turned before peeing on things
ditto pooping
the difference between night and day
the difference between me and Saint Aardvark (me: food! SA: beard!)
to smile
to laugh, especially when I sing, the higher the notes the better
to grab things if they are offered to him
to shake said things if they are rattle-like
to kick while lying on his back so that he can get out from under the clean diaper that’s being applied
to heave his weight so hard to his right that he almost flips over
to hold his head up when I help him flip over
to grab his knees
to almost grab his toes. He has seen them now and he totally has their number.

He no longer shrieks like a mad banshee when you change his diaper. (Unless it’s his first meal after a long sleep) He has almost but not quite figured out how to suck his thumb. This is frustrating for both of us because he wants to practise sucking his thumb when he is eating and though I have explained this a m i l l i o n times, he doesn’t really get that he can’t put his hand AND my boob in his mouth at the same time. He eats, he looks up at me and smiles, (just the other day he discovered that my face is in some way attached to his food) I smile back, he sticks his thumb in his mouth and then he cries because hey! there’s no milk in his thumb.

Rinse. Repeat. Sigh.

And I can’t quite believe that in only 12 weeks he’s gone from this:

to this:

which is why I record it here.

Posted in trombone | 7 Comments

Contains Overpunctuation, Overdiscussion of Television and Mention of Unmentionables

Posted on 9/22/2006 by cheesefairy

The 7th cycle of America’s Next Top Model started the other night. No, I wasn’t g – oh, of course I was going to watch it. Especially because on the Tyra Banks show that day, she had a Cycle 6 reunion (like anyone needed to see that monster Jade again?) and showed a preview of the Cycle 7 house, a house which is modelled (ha ha!) after a Tyra Banks Magazine. Further proof that Tyra is hoping to carve off a piece of Oprah for her very own? Not needed.

But wait, there is more; Tyra shared her beauty secrets I think last week? And at the end of the show – oh did she keep us guessing the whole time? yes! – she gave everyone in the audience a small silver box, the contents of which were Her Best Secretest Beauty Secret!! And they all opened their boxes at the same time and lo it was Vaseline! But the containers were all BeDazzled and shiny with the Swarovski crystals. And Tyra ran up and down the isle of her audience (all of whom standing, shrieking – albeit confusedly – for the cameras about WOW! VASELINE!) waving her Vaseline jar in the air, screaming “Everybody gets Vaseline! EVERYBODY GETS VASELINE!” and then she lay on the floor of the isle and waved her arms and legs in the air like a flipped beetle, laughing madly and continuing to scream, “MY BEST BEAUTY SECRET! EVERYONE GETS VASELINE!” and it was then that I thought: Tyra is mocking someone. I wonder who.

ANTM started this week and I watched all two hours of the premiere. Good gravy, was my brain sloshy after that. So it’s a white girl’s turn to win (alternate – black girl, white girl) and I think Megan or A.J. What do you think?

Every cycle I ask: will this be the cycle the prospective models have a tampon commercial challenge? Don’t make me write you, Tyra. I’ll do it.

Here’s my idea for a tampon/pad commercial. It’s like the Dove commercial using the real women (you know, the one where they’re real women but they’re still selling tightening cream?) – a bunch of fresh-faced young lovelies. Each one gets a closeup and says:

“Blue water? Nuh uh.”
“Blue water? Nope.”
“Blue water? Never.”
“Blue water? I wish!”

and the last one, the spokeswoman, leans into the camera and says confidentially,

“I don’t know about you. But when I have my period? I bleed. And it’s not blue.”

Voiceover:

“XYZ Product: For women who bleed blood.”

I think that’s the best way to demystify the whole process, no?

The other day was September 18th. All day I kept thinking: what is this day? It is such a familiar date to me. Like a birthday – or someone’s wedding? Then I remembered: it is the first day of my last period. (hello family and friends who came for baby updates! there is a photo at the bottom of this page) Whether you’re pregnant, getting an annual exam or asking a question about the bump on your toe, one thing the health care practitioner always asks women of a certain age is “What was the first day of your last period?” So I’ve mentioned September 18th quite a few times throughout the past year. And now I’ve told the Internet so I’m done.

Bye.

Oh wait, speaking of blue water. I’m confounded by this commercial that I see during the day. It’s a diaper commercial for something like the “cool alert” diaper or something. The kid is toilet training and he’s got a diaper on that goes cold when he pees in it? So how does this help him? Isn’t it too late once he’s already started peeing? Shouldn’t there be a pre-pee-alert system? I’d buy that. Trombone pees on me all the time. I’m thinking of something that goes “ah-OOGA! ah-OOGA!”

Also, the same company (I think it’s Huggies) has a line of “easy” bathroom products for toilet training children. One of the products is a box of wipes, which is “so much easier than tangling with toilet paper.” Now granted I’ve been using toilet paper for 30 years or so and I might just be used to it. Is it really that hard for small children to figure out a roll of toilet paper?

No I’m serious. Is it? Cause my kid’s a freaking genius, yo.

(that’s a Tandy 102 laptop, for those of you who care)

Posted in television, trombone | 10 Comments

Just Saying

Posted on 9/20/2006 by cheesefairy

The next 5 people I know who have babies will receive a copy of that DVD/video tape that plays a fireplace. (Only because I cannot afford to give you all gas fireplaces.)

My baby has been transfixed by the flicker of our gas fireplace for the last 20 minutes. That’s long enough to: brush my teeth, change my clothes, throw out accumulated living room garbage, put the wet diapers in the diaper pail, get more water, take my vitamins and spend 5 minutes wondering what, exactly, to do about my hair.

Posted in trombone | 4 Comments

I Love That Sound

Posted on 9/18/2006 by cheesefairy

The ticking of rain against the window, cars on slick cement, the slow drip of drops from tree-leaves. Outside our living room window, the trees are turning red from green; an effect like a box of crayons melting together. The catt snuffles occasionally from his window seat. Now and then he’ll stretch, survey the room to make sure we’re still here.

The living room is silent this morning for the first time in months. The radio – the CBC, Radio One – has been my constant companion since I have been home on maternity leave. Everything just seemed more tolerable with a little background noise. Maybe it’s the frenzy of summer – heat creating urgency; sweat fueling panic.

Aside: I have always felt more pressure in the summertime. Where summer is supposed, by most, to be a time of relaxation, fun, vacation, I have found that the impetus to do these things has the opposite effect on me. I prefer to relax, have fun and vacation all year ’round and I resent the implication that I can only do it between June and September 21st. It is as though through the increased hours of daylight I am offered the opportunity to do more and be more and if I squander that time, oh precious time, then I am a fool who deserves mediocrity. Fie, summer pressure! (I suppose this is a result of my being a west-coaster, in a way. We are not crippled by our winters the way others are [aside from Annual Snow Panic]; therefore our summers need not contain as much activity. I can walk to the store all year long. People in Northern Alberta can not.)

The radio has given consistency to my days. The national time signal at 10:00 am; the news theme music; “Sounds Like Canada” as hosted by Jian Gomeshi (to whose special gorgeousity I composed a loving entry several weeks ago but never posted because I edited too long and then it was no longer timely because Shelagh Rogers was back and besides, it makes Saint Aardvark squirmy when I mention how much I love Jian Gomeshi [but never liked Moxy Fruvous much, so]); even the terrible stylings of Priya Ramu on the afternoon show (full disclosure: some days she lost out to Oprah and other days she lost out to Tyra); all of these things were appreciated by me because they were The Same and when one is spending 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with a newborn baby, anything that is The Same is greatly appreciated.

After the shootings in Montreal last week, when the constant discussion & dissection became too much, (I would just like to mention that it drives me absolutely batshit bananas that in the wake of an incident like this, all talk goes to gun control instead of mental health) I switched to Radio Canada, the French CBC on FM. They play music all day – Spanish, Italian, African, French, Canadian music – and the news breaks are in French so I could continue to be blissfully ignorant of world events for a while.

Today I opted for no radio at all. I have been listening to the near-silence of our house – clock ticking, catt grunting, muted traffic through closed windows. The baby has had a very long nap and, as a result, I have enjoyed both breakfast AND a cup of hot coffee (hot at the beginning AND the end).

We have built our own rhythm, he and I, in the foreground of a noisy, chaotic summer, reaching a point in our relationship where we can sit for moments in comfortable silence, listening to each other breathe. It is remarkable timing that brings Fall to the door, with her bags of comfort food and corduroy pants. I am ready to sit still, honing our rhythm, blanketed by the white noise of the clouds.

Posted in serious, trombone | 8 Comments