The Not Raincoat

Posted on 1/17/2011 by cheesefairy

A few weeks ago I was near downtown New Westminster, alone, and decided to go into the Grand Central Consignment store. It is a store that stocks clothing in sizes 10 and up and its selection of giant shoes is spectacular. I don’t really need shoes. No. But I went in anyway.

Having found no shoes I browsed the coat rack. I don’t need a coat, either, but someday my beloved corduroy coat will die and I will need a replacement. I tried on a few. Mostly they sucked. And then, I tried on The Not Raincoat.

If I were to need a coat, it would be a raincoat. I have a green, waterproof jacket, which has served me well these many years with kids and walking in the rain, but I often wish it was longer (wet, jean-clad thighs are unpleasant) and maybe not quite so bulky-jackety. More like a coat. More streamlined.

A few years ago I saw a woman wearing the perfect coat but I was driving so I never got to find out what sort it was.

No fewer than four moms at preschool have the same Lululemon raincoat, and it is pretty much what I want, (I would love it in red) but not for $178 and also, then how will my kid know it’s me? (By the ugly men’s rainboots, probably. The other mothers have pretty, decorated rainboots.)

The coat at Grand Central was the right length. It even was longer at the back. It was fitted and it fit me perfectly. It had a huge hood, which is important because I have a huge head. It had two sets of zippered pockets, it had *inside* pockets, it had cuffs under its sleeves to keep rain from going up your sleeves, it was ELEVEN DOLLARS…

…and it was not waterproof.

It was made of cotton. Untreated cotton.

I just stood there, staring at it. Because what good is a perfect raincoat if it is not, in fact, a raincoat? Why would someone go to the trouble of designing a perfect raincoat (pockets, sleeves, hood, etc) and then make it ABSORBANT instead of repellent?

Would you design a giant umbrella and poke it full of holes? Would you design a pillow and stuff it with rocks? Form is important, or I’d wear a garbage bag, but function is important, too.

I walked away, but I was very sad, because it still felt like a good deal. I walked home, thinking about ways I could buy it and love it and wear it – just not in the rain. (un)Fortunately my brain was having none of it. Eleven dollars is not a good deal for something that is useless.

Do you own anything perfect – and perfectly useless? Or do you have no patience for non-functional designs? Would you have bought the eleven dollar raincoat made of cotton and then sprayed it with shellac?

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A Story

Posted on 1/16/2011 by cheesefairy

On Friday, Trombone decided that a fun thing we could do after nap/quiet time would be to write a book. It would be about Iron Man. Friday afternoon after nap/quiet time, the boys went immediately into their afternoon routine of jumping off the couch and pretending the floor was a swimming pool and hitting each other with pillows and running screaming across the house while I tried to make pizza. Such serene tasks as book-writing were forgotten.

Yesterday when he got up from nap/quiet time, Trombone said, “We still haven’t written my book.”

I said, “True.”
He said, “We can do it now.”
I said, “Let me get some tea. And I will help you.”

While I was getting my tea, he stood in the living room and stared at me.

“I’m still waiting” he said.

I’m afraid I was less than kind to him at that point, but I apologized.

Once I had my tea, I cut a stack of 8.5 / 11 paper in half and stapled each stack into a book. Of course, Fresco needed a book too, even though he was more interested in singing endless loops of whatever the hell that song is that he sings.

“The title is Iron Man’s Adventures,” said Trombone.
I wrote that down.
“Now we should draw Iron Man,” said Trombone.
I traced our little one-armed Iron Man figurine. He looked very muscular.

Trombone told me the story and I wrote it down. We shared the work of illustrating. There are things he can draw – like exploding planets and rocketships and bad guys, he’s very good at bad guys. And then there are things he thinks I can draw (but actually I cannot) like superheroes; Iron Man and Superman in this case.

I wrote “The.” He wrote “End.”

“I wrote a book!” he exclaimed, “let’s read it! Right now!”

So we read it. He smiled the whole way through.
“I wrote a book!”
“You sure did!”

This morning, he got out of bed and grabbed his Iron Man’s Adventures book from his pillow.

“I remembered my book” he said.
“That’s good,” I said.
“Maybe now we can write another one.”

I’m going to get on the trite bus for a minute. Here, I saved you a seat. Imagine if all of us created that way? We have an idea. We get right on acting on the idea. We ask for help with the parts we can’t do. We look our creations over and love them. We show them to anyone who will look. We sleep with them next to us. And the next day, we don’t regret, or feel silly, or think “I wish it was better.” We just want to do it again because it was so much fun and it felt so good.

Something to work on.

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My Body – My Self – My One Pair of Pants

Posted on 1/14/2011 by cheesefairy

Sheila, way back in the way back of late 2010, suggested a post topic, “How did your body change after child birth? What surprised you? What didn’t?” Since I just got done digging out a stack of clothes I am never going to wear again, in preparation for a clothing exchange party tonight, it seems apropos.

(I am going to assume Sheila means not the changes that happen to one’s body directly after child birth because:

1. blood
2. that’s about it. Lots of blood.
3. milk. Usually.)

First, here is a post I wrote when Trombone was still a baby about pants and post-partum body image and whatnot. There is a cute picture at the end, go look.

When Trombone was 12 months old I went back to work. I needed clothes. I went out and bought new pants, shirts, bras. A month later I got pregnant again and went back to the maternity clothes for another year. I wore my awesome new clothes for one month only. And I have had them in the closet because it is ridiculous and fiscally irresponsible to buy new clothes and wear them for one month, surely someday SOMEDAY I will wear them, but no. No I will not. This is not a case of “if my abs were tighter, those pants would fit.” This is a case of “giant babies spent a total of 18 months inside that pelvis and those hips are not going back to their original size.”

I think if I had stopped after one child, my body might have had a chance to “bounce back” to within a size of its former self. With my first pregnancy, my body had to really work at stretching and stretchingggg and streeeeeetching itself. That’s why I was so itchy. The second time, not so much stretching needed. Not so much bouncing back happening once the stretch is gone.

We play a fun game at our house, where you blow up a balloon and then let it go. Wheeeee! All over the house. Then you blow it up again. The balloon is much easier to blow up the second (and consecutive) time(s). You see?

So now, my childbearing years complete, I find myself with hips that have permanently spread to their current width, breasts that are done, empty, flat, kaput, and a belly button that is more out than in. And giant feet, which I have written about at length (and width! ahahahahaha *sigh*) and will not again, save to say that my feet growing a full size were the thing that surprised me the most.

I still – STILL – insist on trying on size 10 shoes. Just in case. They never fit.

Honestly, pants are easy come easy go. But the loss of all my pretty size 10 shoes really burns me up. I guess I should go get them out of the closet and take them to the clothing exchange party too. And a bottle of wine for the sorrow-drowning.

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Spiders and Street Harassment

Posted on 1/13/2011 by cheesefairy

Note: There is some swearing and nasty talk in this post.

Prompt: Spiders

When I was a kid, one night there was a spider on the ceiling above my bed when I went to sleep. When I woke up it was gone. I have thought, since that day, against all logic, that the spider dropped on me while I was sleeping and infiltrated one of my facial cavities.

Note: It is possible that this didn’t actually happen.

I am not a spider person. Slow moving bugs I can handle. Wasps make me nervous but I will chase the stunned ones, fat with heat, out of my house. But spiders! Those two extra legs make them move three times as fast as the six-legged insects. A blatant flagrancy for the rules of nature like that makes me nervous.

– Tiny, non-threatening spiders are still threatening because where is their mother?
– Big, hairy spiders are terrifying. Just look at those words: “Big. Hairy.” Awful!
– Medium sized, long legged spiders are my favourite, of the breed. You can trap them more easily because of their long legs.
– Small, short-legged, fat bodied spiders are the worst. They’re fast, they might be biters, they could scoot up your pant leg without you noticing.

It’s not the spiders themselves I mind. It’s the not-knowing where the spiders are. Wondering if they’re lurking. Imagining they’re waiting until I turn out the light to curl up on my pillow with me and share my breath. No, I don’t actually spend any time lying in bed thinking about spiders. But when I think about spiders I do think about them sneaking around, letting themselves in and making themselves at home.

The other night I walked over to the grocery store to buy milk. It was 7:30 and we had just put the kids to bed. I walked quickly in the cold, clear evening, enjoying the silence and solitude. The young adults who live up the block were out jump-starting their car, like every day this week. People were walking their little dogs. I crossed the street and approached the Safeway just as a young guy on a bike was leaving. He had a puffy coat with a fur-trimmed hood. I moved to the right to let him by and as he passed me he said,

“I’d fuck your ass.”

I kept walking. He kept riding in the opposite direction. At first I snickered. Because he was not even 20 years old. As if. AS IF.

I didn’t snicker for long. Shortly after, I felt all those things you feel when someone treats you like a piece of meat. Angry. Afraid. Indignant. Angry. Mostly angry.

When I was a teenager, that would have been a compliment. I am fuckable! What a wonderful thing, at last, the affirmation I have been seeking. And some random person thinks so! It’s not even some dude who’s obliged to say it – it’s a stranger!

Nevermind why that stranger gets to consider my fuckability at all. Nevermind why that stranger feels it is OK to comment to another stranger on her fuckability, or lack thereof.

And now that I am experienced enough to consider those questions, nevermind why I can only swallow those questions and keep walking, because it is not safe to engage with a stranger on a dark street no matter how young he is, because if he thinks I am that fuckable – or even if he is being sarcastic about it – he might just try it.

One minute I am out for a walk, minding my business, enjoying the air around me and then, suddenly, I am not. Then I am wondering

– is he gone
– is he violent
– is he waiting in the park
– does he have friends
– would a 4L jug of milk to the testicles convince him that he could not, in fact, fuck me. Or my ass.

With one short sentence, that guy reduced me to an orifice, whether he is aware of it or not.

You just never know where the spiders are.

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Gather Yer Snowballs While Ye May

Posted on 1/12/2011 by cheesefairy

The bad thing about West Coast snow is: before every snowfall we get 3 days of SNOW WARNINGS. Accumulation estimates go from 5 – 20 – 75 cms. People freak out. Then it snows and buses get stuck on hills and drivers spin off into ditches and people freak out some more. Then everyone peers out their windows to see if it’s raining yet because they don’t want to shovel and why bother shoveling if it’s just going to rain. Then people get grumpy because they can’t walk down the street because no one is shoveling. Then people shovel, and it’s hard because it’s all wet and heavy. Then it pisses rain for half an hour and we’re back to square one.

Until next week. When we get another SNOW WARNING.

Meanwhile, the rest of North America (and Europe too, for all I know) is laughing their pants off at us.

I’m not dissing those people in the first paragraph. I have been all of those people. I grew up here. The snow, it will not last. Which is why this morning I got the kids in their new snowpants (“But Mommy we’re still in our pyjamas!”) and we went outside at 8:30 am to shovel the walk and stairs, shake four thousand pounds of snow off our hedges (which, according to our strata president, cost $100 each and people should know that because then they would TAKE five minutes to shake the snow off them before heading to work) (OK then), make a snowman, and have a snowball fight.

The good thing about West Coast snow is that it is, like our basements and shoes, quite moist. So you can make a pretty good snowman in 10 minutes.

And even a not-quite-3 year old can pack an effective snowball, which makes him very happy.

When you shake the hedges and the snow falls off, the branches reach for the sky most gratefully. When you add a face to a snowman, he goes from condensation to personality.


(yes, that is a plastic corn cob nose THANK YOU)

Shoveling the stairs earns you a thank you from a dude wearing tennis shoes to work. Chasing small children around in the snow for an hour tuckers the little buggers out and earns you a simultaneous naptime. And knowing it will be gone tomorrow makes you appreciate it more.

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