First Visit to ManLand

Posted on 9/1/2010 by cheesefairy

I have recorded at length my own experiences with haircuttery. I have not really said much about the kids’ hair. Here’s the lowdown:

– I cut their hair myself
– until it’s too awful and then we take them to the overpriced kiddie salon where the lady cuts it in 10 seconds with clippers
– then we try to do it with clippers because how hard could it be, really?
– oh, that’s right, it’s hard. Kiddie salon.

It is somewhat easier with Fresco’s hair because it is curly and forgiving of my random sideways scissor swipes but Trombone’s hair is straight. And thick. And blond. A while back he said, “I am so hot. I would be so much less hot if I had a haircut.” So we tried to get it cut – SA took them both to the kiddie salon but it was busy so salon lady could only do Fresco, which went something like this:

AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! NONONONONONONONO. Toy.

and Trombone came home with his same head of hair. Which I tried to trim while he was in the bath but then he got bored and started a waterfight with Fresco so I only did one side of his head and badly. But no one bled.

On Saturday I had a brilliant idea. I would, after “quiet time,” take Trombone to a haircutting establishment and get his hair cut. Fulfilling a double mandate of one-on-one time with your child and grooming. He doesn’t need a fancy chair and coddling from the kiddie salon because he is four years old and very reasonable about that sort of thing.

We strolled over to the nearby convenience mall, the one with the liquor store, and asked at the hair place that never has any customers but has a sign advertising kids cuts for $8.99. She apologized and said they had no booster seat but they had ordered one. So we walked around the corner to the strip mall that is gradually losing all its tenants to make way for a multi-use, new-fangled facility. Unsurprisingly, the hair salon had moved several blocks away.

Then a bus came! So we took it uptown and tried the Pirate Barber (actually called The Hub, in the little mall/business place where the London Drugs is) (so named because they have a man’s head, um, not a real one, a mannequin, in the window and it has an eyepatch) but the Pirate Barber’s sign said they closed at 4 and it was 3:53 and there were two customers in the chairs already so we went across the street to another barber shop and that is how I ended up in ManLand.

I have never been to a barber shop. I always assumed barber shops are just like hair salons. They aren’t. People just walk in and sit down and wait their turn. You don’t need an appointment – and you don’t need a sign outside that says “walk ins welcome” because everyone is a walk in.

Men take 5 minutes to get their hair cut. This I kind of assumed, based on how long it takes them to use the bathroom. It’s a polite way to do business; if everyone takes five minutes, then walking in off the street and waiting is not such a hardship. Compare this to the one ladies’ salon we walked into and out of just as quickly:

Me: Do you cut kids’ hair?
Lady: Yes…but we have all our appointments for the day
Me: Oh, OK, no problem
Lady: We really recommend that you call first
Me: Sure, no problem
Lady: We can get very busy.

Lady! Shut up! I was just asking, OK? I am moving on now! Do you realize that the Mizzle has the most haircuttery per square foot of any municipality in Canada*?
* not an actual statistic

Anyway, at the barber shop I said, do you cut kids’ hair and the barber said, yup. And I said, can we wait? And he said, yup, but there are two people ahead of you. So Trombone and I sat and he looked at magazines, of which there were 400.

Trombone: This one is full of CARS!
Me: Indeed.
Trombone: I’m gonna trade you magazines now. I want that one. That one has COWBOYS.
Me: Yup. (flipping through Equinox magazine from 1989 that says Vancouver should expect a big earthquake any minute now. Gulp.)
Trombone: Someday, I am going to learn to lasso.
Me: OK then.

After 10 minutes it was our turn. The stuffed fish and giant boar’s head watched me from the wall as I took my seat near the barber’s chair. I didn’t want to be too mom-y but you know. First barber. Who knows what’s going to happen.

Our barber, the son of the other barber, was delightful. Personable. But he kept snickering. Eventually I realized he was snickering at our attempts to cut Trombone’s hair.

“What did you DO,” he said.
“I was just trimming – with the – ”
“Don’t do it again.”

He cut Trombone’s hair perfectly and then put gel in it and gave him a sucker. I felt very like an interloper. Like I shouldn’t be in on this experience, you know, it’s a man thing. A man tells his boy about the barber. I kept wondering, are there secret doors I’m not seeing because I’m female? Would there be beer served if I wasn’t here? Is there porn under that big pile of Golf Weekly? I will never know. Do you tip the barber? I did, because he did a great job, but maybe they’re still laughing about the lady who tipped them. I don’t know – I wouldn’t laugh at money, personally, but I’m not a barber. Apparently I am about as far as you can get from a barber.

We left and went to the dollar store. See, at the kiddie salon, for $22, you get to sit in a race car or train or motorcycle, and they cut your hair AND you get a junky toy from a box. I told Trombone he could pick a toy at the dollar store, because Fresco got a toy for his haircut. All Trombone wanted was a gun. The kid almost-next-door has a gun and it makes gun noises. Dollar store full of wonders and Trombone is all, nope, nope, nope, I want this dart gun.

I say, No I am not buying you a dart gun.
Why not?
Because you will injure yourself, your brother and me with it. Also, it is $8. Did I say I would buy you an eight dollar toy? No, I said a DOLLAR toy.
How about this gun? It is a shotgun!
How about this BUBBLE WAND WITH A TIGER FACE!
That’s not a gun.
Yeah, I know.

Finally I talked him down to a Masked Bandit Kit for $1.29 including a small pistol, a mask and a small plastic star badge that says “Masked Man” on it – I guess in case it isn’t clear from the mask. He happily carried it home on the bus and we opened the package at home, where there was no risk of losing any of the pieces.

He has been shooting bad guys ever since, his crunchy hair peeking above his black mask, the back of his neck all exposed, perfect skin. I don’t mind the gun business, as long as it’s not in my face.

There he is, short spiky hair, baggy jeans, pointing guns at bad guys and yelling inexplicable curses at them (OH, BELOVED! was one of them), asking me when he can have a video game. I could be forgiven for thinking I’ve got a teenager. Except that: even as I typed this, he wept bitterly from his room because a little piece of the toy gun broke and now it doesn’t click anymore.

Moral: You can put man-hair on a boy but he still won’t be a man until he goes to the barber alone.

(It sounds better in its native Czech.)
(No, not really)

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ControverSunday: Mom(my) Vices

Posted on 8/30/2010 by cheesefairy

Welcome to ControverSunday on a Monday! If you want to play, write a post, get a badge from Accidents, say howdy to Perpetua and go let amoment2think know that you participated by leaving her a comment.

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Hokey pokey! Turn yourself around! That’s what it’s all about!

Can I just start by saying how much I hate the word Mommy. Blech. I am a fan of the word Mom. Mom Vices. There we go. Henceforth, I will be using the word “mom” in place of “mommy.”

What vices do I think are OK for moms? Whatever gets them through the day. As long as a mom is not hurting anyone by indulging in a vice, I don’t really consider it a vice. For that matter, are there Daddy Vices? Does anyone sit around talking about what it’s OK for dads to do and not do? Probably not, because dads are not held to the same standards as moms. We seem to still be in a global phase where whatever a dad does is more than HIS dad did and therefore, WOW what a great dad. He changed a diaper! What a guy! You know what, this baby is HALF YOURS you will change at least HALF ITS DIAPERS.

For all time.

Amen.

Anyway, when I think about vices, I think cigarettes. Liquor. Drugs. I think all of those things can be dangerous if overused but have their place when used in moderation. Go for it; know your limit. If you’re addicted, think about scaling it back or quitting outright because if you’re addicted to something, you might not be the parent your kids need. But I also know that nobody’s gonna listen to me if they’re addicted to something.

I definitely wouldn’t condone the (over)use of these vices while actually engaged in the practice of minding children. It is irresponsible to mind children and be drunk (which, for most people, is not the same as having a drink) or high (not as familiar with these limits as I don’t do drugs) at the same time. And it’s not fair to smoke around them and pollute their widdle lungs.

After cigarettes, liquor and drugs, my mind defines vices as behaviors. For me, personally, internet use can be a vice. The more unpleasant my day with the kids is, the more I hide from them. In our open plan household with no doors, the only place to hide is a) in the bathroom or b) on the Internet. And that’s mainly because they cannot read.

To me, the object of a Parenting Vice, whether consumable or behavior-related, is to get a break. As I have mentioned on this blog before about four million times, minding children is very hard, relentless work. They will not give you a break no matter how you ask. So you have to take a break and make it good for yourself. I do this by giving myself 20 minutes of internet time, to escape away and see the rest of the world. I do not often use this time to visit other mom blogs or talk about parenting. I often go looking at the photo albums of childless friends on facebook. Or surfing the feminist blogosphere to see what stupid shit is being taken to task by people who have time to think about how to take stupid shit to task. Or I read the news.

Sometimes I eat chocolate.
Sometimes I sneak candy from last Halloween, which still tastes fine.

The point is not that I am a chocoholic, or a candy freak. The point is that I am doing something the children are not involved in. When you give them everything, all day, all you want is something that’s just for you. If I have to share, it doesn’t count as a vice. Thus I cannot put any foodstuff in the vice category.

My biggest vice, therefore, is that I refuse to share certain things. Which, hey, I’m an only child! So I don’t even have to feel bad about it! Quick, let’s blame my mother!

If I smoked cigarettes, I would go out for a cigarette.
If I was a pot smoker, I might smoke some pot.
When the clock says 5:30 I might have a drink.

Those things are things the children can’t share, they are just for me. Without those things, without something just for me, I would be a much unhappier person. Which is not to say that I can’t get through the day without a drink. I can. I can also go weeks without chocolate. But I can not get through the day without something that’s just for me.

To sum up: I gave you life. I’m not sharing the chocolate.

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Notes From Mother’s Journal: Tether That Child! edition

Posted on 8/26/2010 by cheesefairy

I was on the Greyhound Tour of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I had finished reading Vogue, taking a break from my book, had napped and snacked and written seventeen pages about myself in my journal. Without a laptop to entertain me, I turned to my cell phone for some kind of distracting hijinkery.

My cell phone is five years old, which is 78 in cell phone years. I bought it for $50 from Virgin Mobile and it is very underused but handy in case of emergencies. It contains no new fangled hinjinkery. It phones, it texts, it tells time.

On the Greyhound bus, I looked up my account balance. I was that bored, yes. And was I shocked to see that my account balance was a credit of $140? Yes! I was shocked.

See, I am not on a “plan.” I pay as I go. $15 lasts 45 days, after 45 days, poof, your money is gone so give them another $15. For someone who doesn’t use her phone except to tweet about ninjas on the roads (but only when safely pulled over) it’s the best deal around. I used to get text messages from Virgin every 45 days saying “your balance is about to expire, please add more money.” I got bored with that so I signed up for the auto top up feature, which is supposed to top up your phone every time the balance goes below a certain number. You choose the number. I chose $5.

At $5, or at the end of the 45 days, please add $15. Right? OK. So I never check the balance because my phone works when I want it to and my credit card statement says I’m giving them $15 every 45 days, which is what I have budgeted for my cell phone use.

Hello math geniuses, how did we accrue $140? Even if I NEVER used the phone, the balance is supposed to expire at the end of the 45 days. That is why we top up, no?

When we got home, my phone needed charging so I charged it. Then it said, “No, make me be CHARGING.” And I realized that it is dead. My five (78) year old phone is dead. What a coincidence! I have $140 in my phone account and my phone is dead.

ConsPIRAcy! Wooooo.

I called Virgin today. I said, “Can I use my $140 to buy a new phone?”
Virgin said, “No. Those two kinds of money don’t talk to each other. If you want a new phone, you have to buy a new phone.”
I said, “OK, most helpful customer service clerk in Canada (hey, their website claims it, not me) how did I get to $140?”
The woman said, “Well you see, it tops up your account when the money is about to expire and then you end up with more money.”

The woman from Virgin and I had the worst phone connection of all time so I gave up trying to figure it out and switched to a $10 per month prepaid plan and canceled the auto top-up. Now I have 14 months of prepaid phone service.

Oh! But no phone!

This morning I took the children uptown on the bus. They got very excited because they like bus rides. Of course, going uptown on the bus takes about 6 minutes so we barely got seated and started discussing why we don’t kick the seat in front of us when it was time to get off. “But I thought we were going UPTOWN!” said Trombone. “This is it,” I said, gesturing grandly. The old guy with one orange sock and one bare foot stopped picking his toes long enough to snort.

Maybe Trombone is confusing uptown New Westminster with London? I don’t know. Uptown is uptown, man. The revitalization has not hit yet.

So we went into the most depressing mall in the universe (except for The Town Centre in Brandon Manitoba, which has one shining star, that of Anna’s Indulgence Dessert Bar, go there and eat desserts right now what are you waiting for.) And we rode the fishy carousel and we rode the ice cream truck and we rode the race car and no, you caught me, we didn’t really ride any of those things because I don’t have money to burn on mall rides, come on. I made the children pretend they were riding and told them their grandparents will be in town in two weeks to pay for their mall rides. And then we went to The Source, formerly known as Radio Shack, to buy a new phone.

I picked one. Truthfully, I had already picked it out on the Internet earlier this morning. I pulled the salesguy away from his – work? – watching the big screen TV while also doing something that involved having an earbud in his ear – and told him I wanted to buy that phone for $69.99. But when he rang it up, it was $129!

“No! I do not want that phone!” I said, “here, look, the price tag says $69.99 and it is the same price on the website!”
He said, “No. No, that is not the price, because Virgin is switching everyone to their SUPERTAB and now the phones cost more. And in my cash register it costs more. And my cash register is GOD. And I actually am listening to my girlfriend right now on my earbud and you are just this strange, harried woman making noises at my face and oh ps, your son is trying to steal an iPhone.”

So we got a ham and cheese croissant and went to the library.

I wasn’t going to write about my phone. I was going to write about how I never considered how difficult it is to teach children to heel.

Trombone doesn’t ride in the buggy anymore, you see, which is a mixed blessing because I don’t have to push him around anymore but he is very spacey when we go out so he is always seeing an object 40 feet away and then mowing down 18 people to get to it. Fresco does ride in the buggy but I didn’t want to take it on the bus, because the bus always has more than enough people with strollers and walkers and shopping carts on it, so we were on foot.

I consistently forget that being on foot with two children means I don’t have a hand free. If all we want to do is walk around and sniff daisies, OK. But if I want to walk around and – buy vegetables, say? Where’s that third hand coming from, smarty pants? Your belly? Nope, no hand there, just a lot of popcorn. So I drop a hand and either Fresco runs away to pet vicious dogs/jump off cliffs/steal motorcycles or Trombone goes wandering at a 45 degree angle toward train tracks. It stresses me out! I know they have to learn to heel, but I should have started training them a year ago!

I wish I’d known. I would have resold the double stroller when it was still in pretty good shape and then I’d be able to afford an iPhone.

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7 Things About Lawyers that The Occult Can’t Explain

Posted on 8/24/2010 by cheesefairy

Title courtesy of the truly awesome linkbait title generator, which, though tongue in cheek and hilarious and not meant to be really used but will be used and is already overused and everyone will hate it in a week, is still in real life something I could use. Something to think up my titles for me. SEO THAT.

When I was a kid my mom used to tell me I should be a lawyer when I grew up. Because I was so argumentative. I see now that this was the equivalent of me gritting my teeth at Trombone and saying from between those gritted teeth, GOSH YOU’RE SO THOROUGH IN THE BATHROOM. Here is what I know about lawyers:

– they make a lot of money
– they argue a lot
– they have to read a shit tonne of boring stuff to become lawyers (although maybe they don’t think it’s boring because they’re interested in it)
– people hate them because they are always stepping on the Little Guy because it’s The Law because they read it in their shit tonne of boring stuff

Yes, obviously my knowledge of lawyers is based on television.

I know two lawyers in real life: Sarah’s dad and P-Man, both of whom are relatively argumentative but as for the rest of the list, not so much.

The last thing I know about lawyers is that they refer to precedent. That is something that has happened before to make The Law you are following. I am very familiar with Precedent because I have a four year old named Trombone who apparently takes after his mother. To wit:

Me: Please do the thing I asked you to do.
Trombone: But one time you said I could do it this way.
Me: I am sure I did not.
Trombone: That time when I had red pants on and my hair was short and I had just eaten a jelly bean, a yellow jelly bean, you SAID I could do it this way.
Me: What? That was TWO YEARS AGO. You don’t remember that!
Trombone: I do! And also, Fresco was a baby and he couldn’t roll over yet but he sure did shout a lot and also I wanted noodles for dinner but you made me eat corn and that hurt my feelings. That time. You said I could do it this way.

Anyone else would probably say, wow kid, you’re fantastic. You win. Go ahead and do the thing your own way. But I am stubborn and cruel and I like to win, myself, so I say through gritted teeth, that’s nice you have such a good memory for facts! Maybe you will be a lawyer someday. Now please do the thing.

As I get older and my mind starts to wander
geese!
I notice that I am less argumentative. More inclined to say, hm, I guess that’s the way you think, random person. For a few reasons: one, I am generally more tired. Two, I took some counseling courses once. Three, I don’t feel like I know enough about anything to argue about it. My opinions are less based in fact than they used to be, in part because I don’t retain as much information and in part because I see more grey in the world, now, less black and white.

On more than one occasion, Saint Aardvark and I have been talking and he will refer to something I said once and I will say, I don’t remember saying that. Or, I don’t think that way. And he will say, well, you used to say blah blah blah about that. Trust me when I say, SA is not the usual observer of precedent in our household. I used to hold very strong positions on an assortment of topics but now I am more meh about it all.

I don’t know why I used to care so much, so fiercely about things that now I don’t think matter. Is it because now I am a dead fish who cares about nothing? Or is it because I used to make my opinions Who I Was and so there was everything vested in those opinions. I had to defend them.

As a kid I argued to assert myself. As a teen and young adult I argued to establish myself. As an adult, I argue only to defend myself.

And that is why you can’t predict a child’s future based on his behavior as a child.

(Oh but hey. I can construct an argument after all.)

The End.

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Summer, Writing, Fall

Posted on 8/23/2010 by cheesefairy

I want to take the time to savour the sentence, the paragraph, the punctuation. I want to express ideas sweet and bitter, to open a curtain to my heart and soul and mind, to allow the world to peek. I want to have the time to think while I write. I want to be able to sit, concentrate, eke out words that matter, not words that just amuse or just entertain or just inform. Words that ache. Words that strain against their confining letters and explode like fireworks against the white of the page. I want to create beauty, light, sorrow, laughter, for people to see, nod with, say YES. From fiction to non fiction to fiction again I careen like a weighted inflatable toy; watch the writer as she bobs and bobs. She never falls. She never gets anywhere. Could we just stop for a while. Could I just stay still in a moment and do it justice. I never do these moments justice because I don’t have time to do them justice, I don’t have time to immerse myself and examine and eke and savour.

Have or make.

Have or make.

Have.
Or make.

The time.

Make the time.

Is five minutes enough for a moment? Here, here is five minutes. Is ten minutes enough for a moment? Is the moment bigger than this moment? Can you restrain your mind, keep it still, hand on it like a horseman’s on a flank, calm it. Stop fluttering, remember to breathe, your chest is hollow and your mind is jumping. Let the air in, let the thoughts flow, let your fingers spell those thoughts for you, set them free on the page, let your heart speak, let your soul weep, let it all out.

Don’t be fooled by the slow movement of these moments; they creep like snails, but when you come back to look for them, they will be gone. Camouflaged in the trees, up the sides of curbs, hiding as snails do. You have to take the moment and watch the snail crawl now, watch the slime trail after it, think of how it reminds you of semen, of clear glue, or the mucous on your children’s faces when they wake up from a fitful night’s sleep with colds invading their bodies, of winter, not summer, of the seasons always presenting themselves in the best light and then when you’re in them they turn into monsters; sweltering heat, oppressive snow, the dark, dark darkness of rain, chilis and soups and bouncing off the walls. Let it all go. What are you missing.

What are you missing when you miss Fall. Long pants and cardigans, duvets tucked around the knees and toes, permission to shut up in the house and simmer things. Food, thought, ideas. Summer presents ideas too quickly, all this fleeting, bright beauty and we haven’t the time to sit with it. The days don’t end until we pass out from the heat, they begin too early, we are moving, going, running to the sound of our own blood rushing in our veins, delighted to feel our bodies move, overjoyed with our brown skin, with our minuscule proofs of time well spent. We try to preserve the moments the way we preserve cucumbers and berries, for that small, sweet (or sour) reminder that summer was here. We were here, in the summer, and we enjoyed it; we have the pictures and preserves and peeling skin to prove it.

Enjoy the light while you can, bottle it for when it is hard to come by.

The full, green trees outside my window, the yellow light behind them, all reminding me that now is a summer afternoon, the middle of August, the sweetest, ripest time of year. I have fresh corn and fresh berries and plums that are swollen and purple like broken ankles, bursting their skins with juice and summer and sunshine stored for me to enjoy, let drip down my chin, lick up later. Too soon I will have more time to ponder than I will have ideas. I should be writing now, even in spurts, that I might reflect in the short dark days of November and spend an hour uncorking, reworking, reflecting and revising.

So it is all right that I am jealous of peoples’ careful words placed just so around ideas that are fresh and delicious while I can only produce the writerly equivalent of popsicles; watery and sweet, gone in a second with only a soggy stick to discard. You can’t go back to a popsicle. You eat it and you enjoy it and it’s gone. It is all right. That’s summer.

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