The Kids

Posted on 2/2/2011 by cheesefairy

Somewhere recently I read something about a woman being offended that people refer to their children as kids. It was a Christian argument as I recall, something about cloven hooves and children being two things that don’t go together. I guess that’s fair.

I will never be offended if someone refers to my children as kids. On a given day, they exhibit perhaps five human qualities for every, oh, let’s say 25 goat-like qualities. (Even more, if someone can confirm that goats whine?)

Take preschool pickup for example. Fresco runs in the classroom, beans his brother on the head as a greeting and goes immediately to the toy shelf and starts removing toys that were recently placed there during clean-up time. Trombone gets up from his place in the circle, starts bouncing straight up and down like a pogo stick, puts his face in his friend’s face and says, “URGLEBLURGLE HAHAHAHAHA.” They both laugh and then one of them tries to lift the other off the ground.

I herd them – yes HERD – out of the classroom, which can take anywhere from three to forty-five minutes, while the teachers smile and wave at us like cruise ship directors after a week at sea. Just get off the boat. GET OFF THE BOAT.

From the classroom we move to the cloakroom, where my repeated pleas for application of vest and hat are ignored in favour of getting all up in another friend’s face and saying “It’s TIME FOR WAR.” If it were me, Trombone would not be my friend anymore, but this little girl doesn’t seem to mind, in fact she bleats back, “LET’S GO TO WAR” and then they jump up and down some more.

Meanwhile, Fresco is climbing onto the bench so that he can steal a pen from the shelf and scribble in the sign-in / sign-out book. True, if he was a real goat he would eat the pen and the book. Fair point.

Outside, there are four hundred, I mean, TEN children running around like the devil himself is at their heels. And they are screaming. And it is all happy screaming.

“WHY ARE THEY SO BATSHIT,” I shout at another mother.
“I DON’T KNOW,” she shouts back.

At the end of last year, when they were 3.5 going on 4, the preschool children invented a game called rescue. It goes like this:

– one child stands at a pole and screams “help!”
– the other children run to him / her and “free” him / her.

Now the children are 4.5 going on 5. The game is called BAD GUYS GO TO JAIL. It goes like this:

– one child says “I’m the bad guy!”
– the other children try to kill him
– I interrupt to make sure it’s consensual killing
– they look at me scornfully
– and continue to tear their friend to pieces
– and drag him / her to the other side of the playground
– and declare YOU ARE A BAD GUY.

I am sorry for all the all caps but they are shouting the whole time and my brain is having seizures right now, reliving it.

They scamper and cavort and hip check each other. They don’t walk. They don’t respond when you call them. They throw themselves in mud puddles and eat food from the ground – food that they didn’t drop there. And today I actually saw one put his head down and run at another. Good thing no one has horns. Yet.

I check every night, and their feet are not cloven / But sometimes, they truly are more goat than human.

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Two Poems About A Stuffed Eeyore Watching the Fireplace

Posted on 2/1/2011 by cheesefairy

Today’s prompt thanks to Arwen: Write a sonnet about an object you can see from where you’re sitting.

I call this style of sonnet The Tortured Style ’cause it sure ain’t Italian, Shakespearean or AnyRealPoet-ian.

Ahem.

Eeyore One

You grey, sloping beast, you dreary old thing
staring at the dark, cold glass, the artful
logs behind it. Any promises of spring
are long gone now. This freezing day will pull
the bones from under my skin, my eyes will
water like taps when I emerge, better
to keep the fireplace dull and quiet and still
while I rip and curl sentence and letter.
Eeyore, your sad demeanor reminds me
of myself, too many times to count. I
droop and wilt and frown so easily.
It is easier to laugh than to cry.
Writing about watching a thing unreal;
I’m glad this sonnet won’t earn my next meal.

And one in Good Old Free Verse because concentrating on writing rhyming poetry gave me a headache.

Eeyore Two

Eeyore has a black strip of hair along his head,
a wide bottom – he is pear shaped –
and of course, a detachable tail.

Eeyore is the grey of a slow raincloud.

He is the fat drop about to spatter.

He is November, in a stuffed animal form,
dreary.

His fuzzed back faces me. If I could see his eyes, oval and downcast,
I would clutch him by his long ears
and throw him across the room.

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Three Things I Don’t Want

Posted on 1/31/2011 by cheesefairy

I used my phone’s camera to take a photo today. I don’t do this very often because I am still in the “oh, I have a phone in my purse?” camp. Late, but dedicated adopter, right? Anyway, I was in a store, and I won’t say what store because I fear they would arrest me for taking a picture in their store – I remember being in the same store, many many years ago, in Kentucky, and we were so thrilled to finally be in a 24-hour version of this store, in the middle of the night, enjoying the air conditioning, that we took pictures and then some staff person came over and told us it was illegal. Store-illegal, not law-illegal. Still, we were in Kentucky so we obeyed. It was a dry county! That meant you had to drive to nearby Virginia for a beer! Who knows what they would do to store-rule-breakers.

Fresco was looking at the toys in Unnamed Store and I, bored, looked up and saw this, exactly as pictured:

Oh. How I laughed. Also, Lazy Baby is only $5. Also, I still don’t want one.

Taking a photo with my phone reminded me that a few weeks ago I saw something else quite befuddling, though not quite as funny, at Winners, which store has never threatened me with legal action so I will post their name freely. I was looking for a trivet, which is THE HARDEST thing to find in a store, ever, apparently, and so I was in the Housewares section of the store and I saw this:


Text reads: Low Carb. It’s not right. It’s not enough. And I am not satisfied! Low Fat.

At first I thought it meant “I ate low carb and it wasn’t satisfying so now I’m switching to low fat” but now I see that the wall-hanging (for that is what it is: a piece of stone meant to be hung on your wall, in your house) means Diets Are Dumb, which is certainly something I can get behind but do you need a plaque proclaiming it? Why not just have a bagel and cream cheese and put up a nice painting of some birds on your wall?

That brings me to my final WTF Photo, which I took before Christmas, again at Winners, and I spoke to Fresco at the time about how messed up this thing is but he didn’t care because he was pressing all the buttons on something.

Yes, that is a Barbie head Pez dispenser. It is a foot tall, its head the size of my fist or possibly bigger. Putting aside the question of Pez in general, where you are eating candy from someone’s esophagus, why the hell did anyone make one this big? It’s taller than an entire Barbie doll! With its creepy, lidded eyes staring at you, like some dolled up candy overlord.

“Barbie…I just want a candy…OK Barbie?”
“No candy for you. You’re on a low carb low fat no sugar diet, remember? Here, eat this stick of celery. Then you will be THIN LIKE BARBIE. But not as beautiful.”
“No Barbie, I know I can never be as beautiful as you! I just want some Pez!” *sob*
“Keep it up, you LAZY BABY. I can listen to you cry all day.”

Oh Barbie. Why is she so angry?

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Toot Your Own Horn Sunday

Posted on 1/30/2011 by cheesefairy

I couldn’t be farther from a focused mood right now. I’m up in my sunny, quiet bedroom while Fresco sleeps (in his crib! 3rd naptime in a row!) and Trombone is out at a birthday party with SA. I printed off the stories to review for Tuesday night’s writers group and I uploaded my own half a story. I had written it all the way to the end but then realized that I didn’t like the way it went so am going to write an alternate ending but I don’t want to do that right now. There is a paragraph I intend to cut from it that I am going to paste below, just because it made me feel so good to write it but I really don’t think it fits in the story. Are words wasted or well-spent when you get them out of your head but can’t use them on paper?

I never blame the receptionist. I have been the receptionist. It is a demoralizing, stop-gap job. It is the job you do to pad your resume and collect excellent references. Beth the receptionist never gets to go to the bathroom without telling someone else about it. She has to smile with greased teeth like a beauty queen at every sad sack that walks through the front doors. She has to unstop the toilet when a salesman clogs it with his giant, meat-eaters shit. She has to plan the company picnic and answer the phone with a smile in her voice and do everything everyone wants, whenever they want it. I do not blame the receptionist.

Later in the story I make some other crack about receptionists and it’s just as jarring; the narrator / heroine of the story is not a receptionist and hasn’t been one for a long time and really doesn’t need to hold all that bitterness, you know? There is no other indication, throughout the story, that she’s all focused on receptionists, yet these tiny, biting comments appear every now and then that make you think, when you’re reading, that there’s going to be a big receptionist massacre at the end.

Or a receptionist revolution.

Oh hey, guys, remember #reverb10?

Remember when I said my word for 2011 would be “unafraid”? I remembered that today and initially thought, oh no. I haven’t done anything unafraidedly this month. But then, I realized I have!

1. Posting fiction out here for all to see..that has been scary but I am determined to see the words as just words, not precious baby grapes that might get squished. (and I’ve been so, so spoiled by your positive, happy comments whenever I do. Thank you millions of times over.)

2. Answering the phone whenever it rings. Trust me, this is a big one. I hate answering the phone.

3. Writing here every day and taking the risk that you will hate it and then I will be all alone with my precious baby grapes, tossing them out into the void, waiting for someone to squish them and turn them into wine.

4. That last sentence. Wow. I can’t believe I typed that and yet I will not delete it.

5. Using the delete key a lot less.

6. Oh! And I entered a writing contest.

And so. Month One of Unafraid = success. Onward to my favourite month, February!

What? There’s ANOTHER day of January? *sigh* Fine.

Did you pick a word to focus on in 2011? How is that going for you? Please, share!

Everyone else: seriously, why is January so long?

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You Don’t Have to Be Hot (In Fact, it’s Better if You’re Not)

Posted on 1/29/2011 by cheesefairy

This morning, only the second time this month that free time and general physical health have coincided with the weather not snowing, I went out and ran around outside for exercise. I got out between rain showers (yay!) but it is still January (boo!). Of course it is January on the west coast so still above freezing (yay!).

I listened to the Pogues and walked up the hill to warm up and then weaved my way around the Queens Park neighbourhood before making my way to the track at Mercer Stadium to run around in circles for a while. Well, ovals I guess. The track was just introduced to me by Jen and is my new favourite place to run around in ovals. Why?

1) There are no hills. When you are a beginning / restarting / lapsed / inconsistent runner, hills are the enemy. However, when you live in the Mizzle, hills are everywhere. New Westminster is like ‘Nam in that way. Come around a perfectly flat corner, perfect stride, HILL. And then you fall down and die just like Willem Dafoe in Platoon.

Anyway. Um. Track! Yes. 2) The track is paved with nice soft asphalt, unlike the aging sidewalks of Queens Park. Did you know sidewalk cement is harder than road cement? That’s why so many runners run on the road and down alleys. Because the cement will give you more shin splints and wreck your knees. Tracks are best. But there are other tracks that are sand or dirt and they’re not as nice because you might get sand in your eye. Or a rock between your teeth if you happen to be panting. Not that I would know that.

and 3) at night there are lights on the track. This means I can run at night, alone, without fearing for my safety.

I ran around the track and it was good and then I walked home, which is the perfect distance away for a nice cool-down (and: DOWNHILL) and as I walked I passed a few other female runners, who were all dressed in, like, outfits; matching pants and jackets, some with lovely headbands holding back their jaunty ponytails. One had lipstick on! There were guys too, the guys just wear shorts and t-shirts and baseball caps.

It reminded me that I read somewhere once (vague!) that you are more likely to work out if you like your workout clothes. So you should buy cute workout clothes. And then you will want to wear them to exercise in them. I admit I take the opposite approach.

1. I am going to sweat, right? So my cute clothes (which probably would cost more money than my uncute clothes) will stink? And then I will have to wash them and they will get worn out faster. They will never look as cute again as they did in the fitting room.

2. Unless I am trying to meet the love of my life by exercising, who cares what I look like? As it turns out, I met the love of my life in a coffee shop, sixteen years ago, so suck it all you boy runners who want to chat me up.
2a. Hahahahahaha. As if.

3. I exercise by running, in part, so that I will not have to talk to anyone.

4. If you don’t want to talk to anybody, should you dress a) cute or b) crazy?

Bonus: if you buy less cute, less expensive clothes, you can save your money for beer. Or, I guess, smoothies would be more a more responsible choice.

It also comes down to this: no matter what I wear, I am going to sweat and go bright red in the face and blow my nose a lot and basically be disgusting. I am disgusting when I exercise. It is not, will never be, and cannot be made to look, pretty. Or cute. I could wear a Hello Kitty workout outfit and it would still not be cute. (Oh my god. So not cute. What is the opposite of cute times four hundred?)

Whatever is around the house, I wear it. Doesn’t even have to be clean – after all: sweat is imminent.

Today, to run, I wore:

– white long sleeved shirt
– black short sleeved shirt
– blue warm up jacket that I love very much because of its many zippered pockets
– army green toque that smelled like Trombone’s hair
– my baggy-style yoga pants that have the drawstrings at the ankle and when I run, billow in the breeze and look alarmingly like HAMMER PANTS
– mismatched mini gloves from the kids’ bin
– some socks
– dingy old runners that used to be pink and white and are now grey…and grey.

All of it perfectly functional. None of it matching anything else.

I listened to Guns N Roses and if anyone looked like they might say hi, I sang along. With the headphones still in.

No one is talking to me when I am running alone. Not even the man in the jeans and the puffy jacket who didn’t know I was racing him. (I totally won) Ignoring social cues leaves me more able to focus on not falling down on the track, gasping like a old goldfish who just got scooped. Power to the un-cute!

(this just in: the kids went with SA to Metrotown this morning, where the CBC peeps were just starting a live festival of sorts. Trombone and Fresco each got a pedometer and a real classy wrist sweatband. I think my running outfit is now complete.)

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