Notes From Mother’s Journal: Morning Melts Into Afternoon

Posted on 6/4/2010 by cheesefairy

There was a woman at the park today. She had two kids, one was a girl baby in a car seat and the other was a toddler boy enjoying digging in the sand.

She gave her son the two minute warning. At the time-to-go mark, he refused to go. They discussed it for a few minutes and then she walked away. He screamed. She came back and pulled him from the sandbox. She dragged him a few feet, the car seat hanging from her other arm. He got away and ran back to the sandbox. “We. Are. Going. Now,” she growled.

I wanted to hug her. To say, “I’ve been there.” Because I have. In that very park.

Instead I smiled as empathetically as I could and took my own children by their hands and led them home.

***

Sometimes I make a point of getting out of the house because I know I will be a better parent with other people around to witness. Not always. I have screamed across playgrounds. But I am much quicker to lose my temper and say things that are inappropriate if the only one around to hear them is me. Well, and the little people I am supposed to be setting a good example for.

***

I forgot until we were coming home that Fresco had immunizations yesterday. He was all tears and screams this morning, grabbing things, throwing things, bugging the heck out of his brother.

While I was showering, with the two of them gated in Trombone’s bedroom, I heard,

Trombone: “I am so angry at you!”
Fresco: “I am so angry at YOU!”
Trombone: “I am so ANGRY! AT YOU!”

(good talking about feelings, boys!)

so I got out of the shower and put Fresco in a different room. Where he continued to scream that he wanted to be in Trombone’s room.

“I don’t LIKE YOU,” Trombone said later, while they were playing with Lego.
Fresco burst into tears.
“You love me!” he argued, “you LOVE ME, Trombone.”
“No,” Trombone said, “I don’t.”

Ouch.

Eventually we got dressed and I put some tea in a mug and we walked over to Queen’s Park because it was too late to go anywhere else. There were a few minutes of inhaling and exhaling before I could walk anywhere. They both wanted to hold my hand but I had to hold my tea. I suggested they hold hands with each other. The suggestion was rejected.

In the petting farm at the park, Fresco tripped and bashed himself against the steps that lead up to the rabbit cages. He dropped his water cup in some goat poop. He wanted to pet the kitties but there were no kitties.

Trombone decided he had to pee. But then he couldn’t because there were no places to pee. It took me a minute to remember that the last time we went to the park he went to the men’s room, where there are urinals. “Maybe I could pee in the sink.” No.

It started to rain.

We walked home.

“Listen to the sound I can make, Mummy!” said Fresco. And started grinding his teeth.

“You. Wow. Um, can you make a different noise?”

Grind, grind, grind. Smiles.

“I have to sing a song now or I will go crazy! OK!” And I broke into Stone Cold Crazy. (The Metallica version.)

“What’s a fully loaded tommy gun? Would it work on ghosts?”

Grind, grind, grind.

At home we had hot chocolate with marshmallows.

Fresco: “Does your elbow go in your hot chocolate?”
Me: “No.”
Trombone: “Can I have more marshmallows?”
Me: “No.”
T: “But I ate my marshmallow.”
Me: “Drink your hot chocolate.”
T: “But it’s hot!”

And lunch.

Trombone: “Did you know Iron Man can fly?”
Me: “No, I did not know that.”
Fresco: “My spoon FLY!”
T: “My spoon can fly too!”
Me: “Don’t throw your spoons on the floor. Please.”
T: “Mummy?”
Me: “Yes.”
T: “My spoon is dirty.”

I could feel naptime getting closer. 45 minutes. 30 minutes. 15 minutes.

I have things to look forward to. We are over the colds we had this week. The sun is coming out. Tomorrow is Hats off On the Heights Day, the annual parade and street fair in my old neighbourhood. The Burnaby North High School Marching Band will play something amusing while wearing Viking hats.

I ate my own lunch, head down to read the Canadian Tire flyer and when I looked up, the children were dancing. Trombone with his bike helmet on, playing badminton racquet air guitar. Fresco shaking his behind. His jeans are always falling off. Poor kid has my butt.

“We like this song!”
“Yeah! This song!”

( “Struck Dumb” by The Futureheads.)

They danced. They bumped bellies. They laughed. They LAUGHED.

OK. Bring on the afternoon.

I hope the woman from the park laughs today.

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Are You Not Boys?

Posted on 6/2/2010 by cheesefairy

Trombone,

I know you well. I see you for your entire waking day, every day. I see you seeing things. I watch the germ take root in your brain, I see you test it out under your breath, I see you toss it at your brother.

“Poo!”
“Don’t call me poo!”
“You’re a poo!”
“Don’t call me poo!”

and then you look at me slyly.

“Mummy, you’re a poo!”

I know you are calling everyone poo because the girl in your preschool class did it. You told me, the day it happened. You told your grandmother. You were thrilled. One of my peers did a naughty thing. I know it was naughty because everyone laughed and she was asked to stop doing it. Twirling in ecstasy, you were.

In a month, you will be Four and your Four is assertive. “I will do this thing. You will not tell me not to.” Your Four is bossy. He is flexible and reasonable when he wants to be and totally hurt that I don’t understand, the rest of the time. Your Four is suddenly aware that I might not be the boss of him. What to do with that delicious knowledge?

Out of context, you – and your brother – sometimes sound barbaric. Walking down the street, flinging “poo!” back and forth at each other like monkeys having a verbal war. If, god forbid, the neighbours hear you (and how could they not?) they will think you are terrible children indeed. Or, they will shrug – because you are boys. And then you will become one of their anecdotes, where they tell some other person how these boys they know, whooee! are they wild! All they do is shout and scream all day long! Boys. Man. Can’t live with ’em, can’t send ’em to the corner store anymore. They’ll just go out for smokes and never come back!

Since I have become a mother of boy(s) I have learned what Boys Are Like from countless strangers, acquaintances, and media who have taken chance encounters with boys and spun them into myth. You Can’t Stop A Boy From (yelling / fighting / making fart jokes / digging holes with shovels / playing with trucks / being obsessed with poo). Boys are (messier / slower / less affectionate / more violent.) And while all those things might be true for individual boys that somebody knew once, that doesn’t make it true for everyone.

I am tired already of listening to people of all ages and sexes tell me what boys are like. I may become a Boy Activist. I get so frustrated when people tell me what you are like, based on their anecdotal evidence and 5 seconds observing you. They know what life will be like for you. They know that someday you will abandon me to go fishing, you’ll never call, I’ll sniff your baby hats, alone and maudlin. This, from people who have their own children, from people whose own children are standing right there, listening, absorbing. You hear it too, because you are listening and absorbing. Standing right there.

I am glad, in many ways, that neither you nor Fresco is a girl.

(I like girls. Girls are awesome. I used to be one.)

But because you are both boys and because you are as different from each other as night and day, you are my Living Proof that all children are different. That often, genitalia has not much to do with it.

You like baking and making beer and dancing and singing songs.

You are obsessed with changing your clothes, particularly since you got new underpants. You sometimes go through 15 outfits a day – not because you’re messy but because you like dressing up.

You like playing ball and playing tag and blowing bubbles and pretending you are a Ghostbuster, even though you have not seen Ghostbusters. You shoot things with your Ghost Guns. Fresco does it because you do it. I do not think this makes you BOYS. I think this makes you a kid and his younger sibling.

I don’t want to neutralize you. You are boys. But at 4 and 2 years old I will not limit your interests and activities based on what other people say “boys are like.”

I want you, not society, to define who you are.

If you want, I would love to help you design a t-shirt that says “This is what a boy looks like.” And then we’ll get one made every year of your life, in every colour of the rainbow and you can rotate shirts 15 times a day. If you want.

love,
yr mother.
(who is not poo)

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Happy Time For Your Armpit

Posted on 5/27/2010 by cheesefairy

I had illustrious plans for today’s naptime. First I was going to cut my own hair, using twelve combs I got at the dollar store and the scissors I bought years ago. Why twelve combs? Would you buy ONE comb for a dollar or a pack of twelve? I bought twelve. That way the children can lose eleven of them and I can still have a comb.

People with curly hair don’t keep a lot of combs around, you see. Combs and curly hair are like carbs and Dr. Atkins. They just don’t get along.

And I was going to write, and clean the kitchen, and do some yoga. Oh and nap! Because I am so tired because I stayed up late two nights in a row. But then I had to take some ibuprofen and wait for it to work because when I get tired (or hot? or sit in the wrong position? I don’t know) I get this headache. I think in another five years it will be a migraine. Right now it is just a headache.

It took so long for the ibuprofen to kick in that by the time I could lie down for a little snooze it was already 2:10 pm. Naptime starts at 1:30. Trombone, if he is not napping, which he usually is not these days, has to stay in his room till 2:30. So I had 20 minutes to nap. Except then Trombone, who is not napping today, started opening his door and sighing.

*Sigh.*

“What is the matter,” I said. It was rhetorical. A) There is nothing wrong and B) I don’t care.
“Well my throat hurts,” he said.
“Have a drink of water,” I suggested.

OK, I am not as callous as you think; he and I had already had this conversation at 2 AM. He woke me up to tell me his throat hurt and he couldn’t yawn. He really needed to yawn! So I told him to go back to sleep and then all his problems would be solved.

But this morning he did some more Experimenting With Hulk Rage Shrieking and so his throat is sore, still, some more. Wow, 4 year olds are angry people! He sure does some shrieking lately.

“Close your door,” I said. He cried. I closed the door anyway.

That exchange took five minutes so now I am not napping but my headache is gone and I remembered that this morning I found The Best PitStick in the Whole World. You might (or might not) remember a few years ago (ed note: though it feels like years, it is only 18 months ago, actually) when I bought the Happy Time With Caring Bamboo Body Cream? (You can read about it here) Well hold on to your hats, now, there is Happy Time deodorant! OMG! BBQ! It lasts 24 hours which means I will be Happy 24 Hours.

It’s working already. See?

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Where It’s At

Posted on 5/24/2010 by cheesefairy

I have been writing.

Not here.

I joined this local, fledgling writers group back in January. At first I was sharing short stories, just trying to get my fiction muscles back. The stories were okay but honestly I don’t have it in me to write a new short story every two weeks. Maybe it should be in me, maybe if I practised more, but no. Seeeriously, no. I have 45 minutes a day and sometimes I have to nap.

I needed something to bring to the group and I hadn’t written anything new and I didn’t have any ideas for anything new. Wahh!

Then I remembered my novel. I wrote this novel in 2004. I was laid off at the time so I started a novel. Then I got a job but I kept writing the novel in my spare time. I finished it in October of 2004. It was a Saturday.

A few months later, in 2005, I took the novel out of the drawer and read it. I made notes in the margins and fully intended to go back and edit it. But we went to Mexico. And then we went to Ontario, twice. And Penticton, I think. And Saskatoon. God we traveled a lot that year, why was that? OH YES because my body was secretly planning to overtake me with pregnancy in October.

Novel’s in the drawer. Novel’s in the drawer.

I did not think about it very much. Except sometimes I would think, holy shit, I wrote a novel. Actually, two, since I wrote the November Novel Writing Month novel later that year in – duh! – November. (2005: Get It All Done Now Year.)

Sooooo. A few weeks ago I took the novel out of the drawer. I started at the beginning and rewrote the first 8 pages for my writerly pals to look at. I called it Chapter One, even though I did not write the novel in chapters and I don’t know what chapters are supposed to look like, except I’ve read a million novels so really you’d think I would have paid attention to this at some point? No, actually. I have not been paying any attention to any novel I have ever read.

The group gave me some good feedback. Enough to decide I would move on to the next 8 pages and call that Chapter Two.

Why 8 pages? Why not.

For two weeks I had Chapter Two open in front of me for rewriting. And it was awful. It’s awful. I wrote this novel the only way I could: by saying “you can edit it later, just Get It Done Now.” I believe this is the right way to go but somehow I thought that when I went back and edited it, there would be more genius! And less shit! Ha ha!

As I told my son this morning, everybody’s poop stinks.

I gritted my teeth and rewrote Chapter Two. I ruthlessly took out big bags of garbage. I cleaned out those 8 pages like you clean out your closet after birthing two kids and living through 4 changes in pant size. And I realized something. I never went back and revised this novel because a) I am lazy but mostly b) I have NO IDEA how to revise a novel. No clue. I have written and revised short fiction. I have written and revised creative non-fiction. I have written and revised poetry.

I have never done a second draft of a novel. Revising a novel so that it makes sense? Is like. Um.

Being blindfolded and lying on your back and throwing rubber darts up in the air, trying to hit the stars.

I have resources. I have a group, who will hopefully not get sick of my chapters. I took a sneak peek at the middle of the novel, which is much better than the beginning, so there is hope. I have 45 minutes a day; more if I organize myself better. This is the thing I am going to be doing, until it’s done. I am going to work at it.

So! I might not be here, bloggity-ing. As much.

It is difficult, being away from the blog and away from the Internet, while I work other creative muscles. The instant gratification of the Internet is totally addicting. If I can choose between writing 700 words that people will read immediately and at least one person will have something to say about, or writing 1,000 words that no one will see for two weeks, and then possibly never again, well, it is tricky to convince my brain that the latter is a better option. But it is.

In other news, life is often hilarious:

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There’s A Country Song in Here Somewhere

Posted on 5/18/2010 by cheesefairy

Not to be all Seinfeld about it but what is UP with people driving in the rain? We’ve had a stretch of sunny weather, feels like months, has probably been days, and today it’s raining and people are speeding! and honking! and tailgating! Do they think if they drive like jackasses they will get there sooner so their cars will get less wet? I mean, you’re driving, right? You’re commanding a giant hunk of metal that weighs thousands of pounds. Probably with your Precious Preciouses inside, right? You have that BABY ON BOARD sign so I guess that means I should just let you drive like a jerk and get some practice with my Special Swear Words?

“Oh – for the…flipping…foozeball!”
“What’s a foozeball?”
“A foozeball is someone who doesn’t signal and then parks in front of me to drop her kid off at school because god forbid Precious Preciousness should get a drop of spring rain on her brand new Adidases.”
“What’s an adidas?”
“It’s a shoe.”
“What’s a shoe?”
“Fresco, tell your brother what a shoe is.”

Call me a no-count nervous nellie but if it’s raining and the roads are slippery because of all the oil because of all the heat we’ve had, you should not gamble with your – and my! – life by driving faster in the hope that you will avoid all the accidents that are sure to happen in your wake.

In other news, I am relieved to note that we are not the only ones whose children love to look at the fish at Superstore. There were at least three other weary mothers and children there this morning. What more horrible example of the Urban Child’s Disconnect can you find than my 2 year old going, “Hi fishie! Hi fishie! Fishie no say hi!” to the upside down, gasping Tilapia in the grubby tank with 25 other gasping Tilapia. Tilapiae?

“That fishie sad!” says Fresco. “How can you tell?” I ask. “His mouth,” says Fresco.

Oh god. Get me out of the fish isle, please. Here, eat some electric orange, smiling Goldfish (whole grain!) crackers and I promise I will do better things with you the next time your brother is in preschool. Like, go to a river or something.

A few weeks ago, SA and I went to the fundraiser for Trombone’s preschool. It was at a pub so for the ticket price we got a burger and beer and then we got soaked for all our cash but it was For the Kids, so we just took it out of their education fund.

There were lots of silent auction items that we didn’t bid on and 50/50 tickets and raffle baskets and something called a Toonie Toss where you try and hit a bottle of booze with a two dollar coin. I know! Our tablemate won a big bottle of Golden Wedding, which is Albertan? Whiskey.

We won the raffle basket called “Family Fun.” It is as big as a patio table and it contains: a “Transformers” fishing rod (that does not transform, just fishes; very confusing and a teeny bit disappointing), an inflatable boat, oars (whew!), kites, bubble wands (bringing our current count to 17,443), sidewalk chalk (ditto), toboggan passes for a local mountain and lift tickets for Whistler that expire at the end of June. Oh and some Nerf balls. And a box of Pot of Gold chocolates that I suspect one of the teachers donated from her Christmas haul.

When we got home from the fundraiser, we hauled our basket upstairs to our bedroom and forgot about it. As much as you can forget about something as big as a patio table. The kids don’t know about it. We are saving its contents for – well, it depends how we feel. Sometimes we say we are saving it for a rainy day. We could also be saving it for a day when we think they deserve a new toy. The former happens a lot more frequently.

I guess I could give the whole thing to Trombone for his birthday and then I don’t have to worry about shopping for him.

Anyway, it’s up in our room, which has no door and in the past week, Fresco has started playing a game he calls “Going up inna mummy’s room!” where he casts his shifty eyes about, sees the downstairs gate to the stairs is open and runs like hell. He also giggles while he does it so I generally catch him before he makes it to the second floor, let alone the third where our bedroom is, but one of these days he’s going to go all the way and when he gets up there and sees that basket of plastic and excitement he is going to lose his mind. I live in fear of that day.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yes, fishing. No, driving. Wait: driving AND fishing!

We are now starting to firm up plans to drive (and fish) our way across Canada (as far as Manitoba, so, not across Canada really) at the end of July. This morning, SA and I made the mistake of mentioning it in front of the children and now I have two avid outdoorsies on my hands, asking me about camping and driving and fishing and swimming and All Things Canadian Summer, meanwhile I’m thinking: shit. I haven’t been camping in years. Never with kids. How do I lock the tent? Is that even legal?

(I know it’s not legal.)

Also: There is no wine in the Family Fun basket.

So, guys! Do you camp/road trip with your children? Tips? (Don’t say fly.)

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