First Week of School and I Am Thinking About Pants

Posted on 9/16/2011 by cheesefairy

When I was a kid I wanted to wear sweatpants to school. Everyone ELTSE (that’s for you, Phil) got to wear sweatpants to school. Why couldn’t I?

My parents’ answer was:

“Because it isn’t appropriate clothing for school.”

The End.

My dad also had a rule about wearing pyjamas to the breakfast table. The rule was: Get dressed before breakfast.

He is a nice man, I swear.

Anyway because of these two “These are the clothes that people should see you wearing, otherwise you might as well subscribe to Shame Weekly and go read it while you sit in a Shame Hut,” rules, I don’t sit at the table eating cereal in my bathrobe and I can’t wear sweatpants outside unless I am running.

(I have no such compulsion about my children. They can wear pyjamas, yesterday’s pyjamas, next year’s soccer jersey, whatever, as long as it doesn’t smell. I will not have smelly children. Hahahahaha as if.)

Before my morning shower, I wear my House Pants. They are yoga pants. I do not do (much) yoga in them, or much exercise. They do not need to Wick much Sweat because I don’t tend to work up much of a sweat using my yell-muscle.

After my shower, I get dressed. This does not mean I put on my elegant, locally designed, fashion-forward outfit. It means I put on jeans and place my House Pants on my bed where I will retrieve them, fondly, when my day of working is over, that I might bloat and belch in peace on my couch.

Too much? Too bad!

I do not judge those who wear their yoga/sweat/house pants OUT of the house. I can’t do it (unless I am pregnant or sick enough to not notice) but I don’t care if you do. I love you, yoga pants wearing people! Your bums are supreme!

Yesterday I did several school trips: to Trombone’s school to drop him off, then to Fresco’s preschool to wait for an hour while he got used to being around people his own height, then back to Trombone’s school at 2 pm to pick him up.

And for whatever reason, at all these drop-offs and pick-ups and stand-arounds, I noticed a lot of peoples’ pants. There are 10 parents at the preschool I don’t know and 77 parents at the kindergarten I don’t know and I guess that rather than make pleasant conversation about dogs and children and the weather, I would prefer to stare at their pants.

Importantly, I noticed that everyone except me, the dads, and maybe two or three women were wearing yoga pants.

Which, of course, is ‘a thing’ people say about stay-at-home parents. That they just wear their yoga pants all day. Wherever they go. I hadn’t noticed it at Trombone’s old preschool — probably because of the variation in caregivers. Moms and dads on their way to work, and nannies, and grandmas. Even the stay-at-home dads wore jeans. Because dudes don’t wear yoga pants, right?

“Huh.” I thought. “It’s true what they say. About the people wearing the yoga pants in the schoolyard. I never noticed it before!”

When I got home, my computer told me that Vancouver had won 3rd prize in a “Who is the Worst Dressed City in Canada?” contest. (Why did we even enter, I wonder?) Accordingly, my tweet stream was filled with both vitriol and passionate love for yoga pants. (and fleece. And Goretex [a waterproof fabric that makes a good jacket in a RAIN FOREST like Vancouver.]) But mostly yoga pants.

People get very upset about yoga pants! They really do. There is a time and a place and etc. I always figured people wore their yoga pants all the time because those Lululemon pants cost $100! If you only wore them once a week for yoga there would be no value!

But no. I realized something this morning, when I found myself thinking, Why in god’s name should I change my pants when I will be home again in 10 minutes?

Obviously, people wear their yoga pants to school because they are going right back home again.

I have never done this. It is weird to do this.

Trombone’s old preschool was a short drive away, but I never went home after dropping him off. After getting the three of us out of the house by 9 am, I was UP and AT ‘EM. We would run errands, go to coffee shops, go to the library, go back and get him and go home.

But now, we walk three blocks and he is at school. Which is awesome. I love it. But there it is, 9 AM and we are three blocks from home and we don’t have to be back at school for six hours. There isn’t much to do but talk to the other moms about why they look so familiar to me. Fresco doesn’t want to stick around because there are no dogs allowed on school property. So we’re back home by 9:08.

OK yes, I will brush my teeth, but change my pants? Hmm.

I get it, now, yoga pants people. I am not yet one of you, but I get it.

(I fear it is a slippery slope, though. I will be ordering bonbons from the discount online bonbon store * any day now.)

* discount online bonbon store may not actually exist **

** but if it does, I will share the coupon codes with you.

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Five Good and Five Bad

Posted on 9/8/2011 by cheesefairy

OH the children, right now. The children.

I can see and understand that my kids are testing me and acting out because: they are starting school and change is scary and life is flux. The weather is hot and it is the age they are and they are sick of each other and asserting their independence and testing their attachment to me. The moon is almost full. They trust me not to sell them to the highest bidder, so I get all the crap. That’s a big one.

Anyway I know all the reasons but I don’t care anymore. Remember when I used to care? Those were the days. Let us take a moment and think of those days fondly. Hahahaha. “Post number 653”. n00b.

Testing behavior. I do not like it.

1. I do not like baby talk unless it comes from babies. I really don’t like it when it comes from children who have been talking in sentences for YEARS. “Me drink juice? Me eat applesauce?” No. I’m afraid that simply doesn’t cut it. I am famous * for having children who speak in essay format. I will not relinquish this dubious honour so early in my career.

* among several

Don’t fret; I am gritting my teeth and not reacting because the more you react the more they do it and my mother is fond of telling me about a kid I went to kindergarten with who gave his mother a nervous breakdown by talking in baby talk for an entire year.

No no no no no. I wanna be sedated just thinking about it.

2. I do not like potty humour. PERIOD.

Unless it is girl potty humour about periods. Even then, you must be a girl to engage in it, preferably one who bleeds blood (not blue water) so no. No no no no no. Also, if you refuse to put your excrement in anything but a diaper you are NOT ALLOWED to make jokes about said excrement. It is a privilege that comes with toilet use, Fresco, just saying, no reason. #nottalkingaboutit

3. I do not like red-faced bawling when a simple no-thank-you-I-don’t-care-for-carrots would do.

4. I do not like tantrums. Why must you do that? And hi, top tip, screaming at me that I should fall on the floor and hit my head and DIE is not the way to make me change my mind about you having a bath.

But thank you for your creative use of language and imagery, it is much preferred over the baby talk.

5. I do not like it when you change your mind about food that is awesome and eat only one thing for weeks. Trombone, you are down to Starch. That is your food group. Did you know there are several food groups? I know you know because I tell you every day.

It’s not like a totem thing. You can have MORE THAN ONE at a time.

Fresco. Seriously, dude. ITALIANS LIKE NOODLES. What is your problem?

But no, they’re not all bad.

1. I like that they are learning to bargain with each other (not always choosing to do it, but knowing how, nonetheless) and get what they want and need without screaming. And usually when I ask them to not scream, they stop.

2. I like that they are unfailingly polite and respectful with other adults and children to whom they are not blood-related. Also, they always speak in full sentences to people who are not me, so nice job on the gaslighting, kids.

3. I like that they make each other laugh nearly as much as they drive each other crazy. And that each has his own way of making the other laugh. Fresco, unsurprisingly, makes hilarious faces and Trombone, well, he makes jokes. Kid jokes. “What grade was the snail in at school? Grade SLIME!”

4. I like that I am their favourite girl. Their words, not mine.

5. I like that Trombone watched an entire episode of My Little Pony on TV the other day, and loved it, and told me that it was a great show and there was a bad guy and everything. I worried, a bit, when he told his best friend (who is a year older and who says “EWW GIRLS” whenever he sees one, except me since that time I took exception to it, which might explain how number 4 came about) how much he loved it, but his friend just said, oh yeah? Cool.

6. They’re good kids. They’re great kids, in fact. Here is some video evidence that I took last week, lying on the couch with my vapours. (The Rocky-playing card was a father’s day gift for Saint Aardvark)(neither child is a trained boxer)

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Performance Anxiety

Posted on 9/7/2011 by cheesefairy

My left eye is twitching. It has been twitching for days. I woke up this morning with a headache that felt like a hangover; connected somehow to my stomach, making me feel nauseated at both the thought of food and the thought of no food. I am not pregnant. And I didn’t get drunk last night. I haven’t been drunk in a long time, mostly because I have felt like utter, thieving crap for the past three weeks. Three weeks! On August 23rd I wrote that post about how I felt like crap for five days, and that was two weeks ago.

On Thursday after our trip to the PNE I finally got a cold. After two weeks of exciting almost-cold foreshadowing. Seriously, my life does not need to be like a bad mystery novel. It could be like either a good mystery novel or a bad romance. Ba ba ba bad romance. I would not mind it if my life was like a Lady Gaga video. But this other stuff. This ongoing malaise. Oh. The vapours have consumed me again. Please make your own peanut butter sandwich, dude.

I stare at the computer and have nothing to say. My child is starting kindergarten. My other child will be starting preschool. I am fine with this, with all of it. I have lists. Things are getting done. Things are written down, crossed off. Hoorah. I am meeting people and forgetting their names and hoping their children don’t bite, while my eye twitches and I look deranged and sort of like a zombie.

I am reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I have been looking for it — halfheartedly, yes, because I tend to forget things I am looking for — in the library for a while, and all the while it was at the Cameron branch of the Burnaby Library. Exactly. You didn’t know it was there — okay, most of you probably did because I have a disproportionate amount of readers who are local librarians but come on, let me have the joke — and neither does anyone else, which is why they have all the hipster lit. I got two other books, names of which escape me because they are upstairs and I am downstairs and the children are in the middle, playing with their toys and best friend, both of which books are hipster books. McSweeney’s artful book jacket. Etc.

It’s a great book. I am really enjoying it. That is my review.

I have been getting more sleep, eating healthily, taking all my vitamins. Why am I so sick? Why can’t I get it together? Is it transfered stress? Am I really stressed and not seeing it? All the things — the canker sores, did I mention the canker sores? — and the twitching and the broken immune system, all of this is stress related maybe? I am just so good at hiding stress from the world I can also hide it from myself? Is this a marketable skill?

I don’t know. I have been keeping a journal a long time. I am very fucking introspective. I have been writing in this stupid blog for 8 years. EIGHT YEARS. What’s left to explore. What deep crevice of my psyche is waiting patiently for the Q-tip of analysis?

I haven’t been writing. I could have written all this stuff, the stuff up there, days ago. Weeks ago. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to wait until something better came along to write about. I wrote some fiction in my private fiction places. It was all dumb. I wrote in my journal in a pink ball point pen because it was the only colour I could find. But the longer I go without writing, the worse I feel about the not-writing. So here, I’m writing. UNIVERSE. I’M WRITING. Maybe tomorrow I will feel better.

I am going to read my book now. Oh wait, hit publish. Then go read my book.

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My Grand Annual Tradition of Money-Wastery

Posted on 9/2/2011 by cheesefairy

I sure wish I had it in me to write something meaningful and profound today. But I don’t.

We went to the PNE (a local, annual fair and amusement park) yesterday.

While at the PNE I realized that going to the PNE with children is a lot like going to Chuck E. Cheese: Varying amounts of fun are had for astronomical amounts of money and the minute they leave, they want to go back. Since I have been going to the PNE since donuts cost a quarter and the carnies were old men instead of teenagers, including a several-year stint when I worked there and several-more when SA and I went and watched the live music and drank expensive beer, I guess it’s one of my traditions. I can’t fight it.

(And at least, unlike Chuck E. Cheese, you get exercise. My mother accompanied us with her pedometer and informed us afterward that we walked 7.3 kms. Which, given that I am still fighting the half cold/half sinus infection/all evil illness that I was fighting last week, wasn’t the brightest thing to do, but hey it forced me to bed before 9 pm.)

I guess I could have easily broken the tradition. The first, second, and third years that we took them were completely not memorable for the kids.

Year one:

Year three: See Trombone below with his hands clapped over his ears? Fresco cried through the entire train ride. Awesome time. So glad we spent the money.

Last year, they did this Farmyard Experience where you learn about where your food comes from and at the end get a snack. The Farmyard Experience yielded two precious memories for Trombone:

1. He got to practice roping a (pretend) sheep with a lasso

2. At the end, there was chocolate milk.

So this year as we approached the gates, I said, “What are you looking forward to?” And he said, “Chocolate milk!” Three guesses what was different about the farmyard experience this year!

I bought him a chocolate milk to make up for it. $2.50!

Also, this year there was no sheep roping, which is too bad. Trombone has been practicing all year on his brother.

Turns out five year olds are brave. Trombone waited for 30 minutes to go on the kids’ roller coaster. And he didn’t even puke!

They fished in a pool of murky water and for $5 each “won” a piece of crap plush toy. On the bright side, the piece of crap plush toys they won last year for, I swear, only $2 each, are still much loved. SA had to convince me to give the guy $10 for two pieces of crap plush toys. I really didn’t want to do it.

Similarly, I hemmed and hawed over what to eat. Some people make a big show of packing a giant amount of food and eating it on a blanket and not spending any money on food, but I am not those people. For one thing, it takes TIME to pack all that food, and then you have to carry it around with you, and then the children see other people eating french fries and start seagulling over to their tables. Or you, the adult, smell the french fries and say fuck it, I’m not eating this clammy ham sandwich, I want french fries!

Anyway. The PNE is a giant money pit. You take your money, you throw it in the pit.

I ate a Crazydog. That is a hot dog buried in a side dish. It was called the Unroutine Poutine and it was a hot dog underneath fries, gravy, cheese and bacon. Oh and green onions for the vegetable. It cost $11 and in PNE-dollars, it was actually worth it.

And yes, I got it in my mouth.

And no, I did not get sick afterward. But then, I don’t go on the rides that make you sick. Now THAT would be a waste of money.

I saw two pre-teen boys waiting with their mother for the gates to open; one with way too much blond hair and the other all legs and arms, dancing to the terrible hip-hop. I have the feeling that will be me five years from now. By then I’ll probably have to dip into the kids’ education funds to pay for their ride passes and cotton candy. But someday, they can sweep garbage like I did and earn their own money. And the tradition will continue.

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Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Posted on 8/24/2011 by cheesefairy

It seems silly to write a day in the life post when my last post was kind of a summary of all our days but hey, ginger had a good idea and I’m joining.

6:05: Wake up, after a long night of waking up. My throat hurts. I have been fighting some stupid virus for five days. Mostly my symptoms are: tired. Sore throat on waking. Diagnosis: Lame-ass-Mom-Virus.

Sneak downstairs past the kids’ bedroom door, just in case they are sleeping. Hahahahahaha. No.

7:00: SA leaves for work. The kids petition for TV. I allow it. They watch Max and Ruby (Trombone watches it, while Fresco complains that he hates this show) while I tidy the kitchen, eat cereal, and check my twitter, facebook, and blogs. I stay away from news sites because the news, she is bad.

After TV, the kids eat four bowls each of Rice Krispies. We discuss what to do today. I am keen to get us out of the house because the day before, when it pissed rain for 8 hours, the kids spent a lot of time at our neighbour’s house and our neighbour fed them a steady diet of cookies, chocolate and TV (including commercials, which we don’t see at our house), after which the kids came home spouting nonsense about ladies wearing lipstick and boys having power and speed.

We decide that since we are invited to that neighbour kid’s birthday party on Saturday, we should go find him a birthday present. We also need a couple of small grocery items and have several items to return to both the Burnaby and New Westminster libraries. We agree to a car trip to Metrotown Mall, which has a Superstore and a Toys R Us, with brief stops at the libraries.

I shower while the children scream at each other outside the bathroom door. I think about how it’s hard to teach respectful communication to a five year old who just wants his younger brother out of his shit and how maybe the room sharing wasn’t the best idea and how there should be a way to modify the hitting and scratching and screaming and I wish I knew what that way was or maybe I should just get my job back and save up for boarding school.

Mental note: Almost out of Q-TIPS.

Get dressed. Kids were supposed to be getting themselves dressed but are still wearing pj shirts. Don’t care! Send them outside to play while I brush my teeth and gather snacks and library books. They beeline for the neighbour’s house. When I fetch them 10 minutes later, they are helping themselves to cookies from the counter. It is 9:30 am. I inform them that they will not be having any more treats until after supper.

I try to drive by the New Westminster library but the entirety of roads in our city are torn up for construction so I head for the Burnaby Library but that street is also torn up for construction so I say fuck it! And we go to Metrotown.

45 minutes later, after much deliberation at Toys R Us, we have purchased electronic Wolverine claws for our neighbour friend. Trombone is vibrating with excitement so I think this gift will probably be a hit. There are two adults picking through the Hot Wheels at Toys R Us whose body odour could strip the paint off a fighter jet and I wonder if this is because I spent ten minutes tweeting about my armpits this morning.

We navigate 8,000 shoppers to get from Toys R Us to Superstore. The electronic Wolverine claws are very bulky. The lineup at Superstore is long and grumpy and I remember that this is why I prefer to never shop at the Metrotown Superstore. The Coquitlam Superstore is so much better. The children argue about whether we should buy red or green grapes. Green wins. Fresco cries, even though he loves green grapes. I tell them it is time to go home. It is 12:00.

“We want a treat! We want a cheese bagel! We want ice cream!”

I drag the children, the grocery items, and the Wolverine claws home. We eat grilled cheese sandwiches, except for Fresco who only wants grapes. I make him also eat a peanut butter wrap. He picks the nuts out of the peanut butter. Never buying chunky peanut butter again, I swear to god.

We read “Mr Bump” and several pages of a Captain America comic and then I attempt to convince Fresco he should have a nap. He declines. I decide I will have a nap instead. The kids agree this is fine with them.

1:30: I go upstairs and put in earplugs and a pillow over my head. I can still hear them screaming and wrestling, from two floors away. Damn open plan. I go to the second floor and clear the floor of the playroom so I can do some yoga. If I can’t sleep I might as well stretch. I hear them outside the room, planning a sneak attack on “her” with their “death bombs.” I stretch my left foot out so it is holding the door shut. Breathe.

I make tea and talk to my mother on the phone. Fresco comes downstairs eating a chip. “Where did you get that?” I ask. “From your room,” he says. “I didn’t ask first.”

3:00: We get in the car and head to our friends’ house for a rare afternoon playdate. The library books are still in the trunk of the car. Both kids fall asleep on the 25 minute long car trip. When I stop the engine, Trombone jolts awake and says, “I remember this house!” He is looking at a different house. He insists it is our friends’ house, right up till the minute we are let in a different house, where our friends are. That, in a nutshell, is a five year old for you.

The kids play happily for 5 hours with the other kids. I talk with my friend. We eat dinner. SA joins us. It is all deeply awesome. At 8:30 we leave for home. We hear this conversation from the back seat approximately fifteen times:

“Hey there’s a star!”
“Is it moving? Because if it’s moving, it’s a plane.”
“It’s not moving. We’re moving.”
“It’s a plane.”
“No! It’s a star!”

I note that I am still not ready to take another road trip.

9:05: Kids go to bed, 90 minutes later than usual, not without complaining that they are not tired and it is too dark to read and snoooorrrre. SA goes to bed. I stay up for another half hour eating chips and hummus, reading the Internet. I find out that Lynda Barry has a tumblr. I go to bed smiling.

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