Here Comes the Fun

Posted on 8/11/2009 by cheesefairy

Those of you who follow my every move on twitter or facebook (all of you, right?) know that I tried a different parenting tactic today. I tried being as crazy as fuck, just like my kids, to see how that would go.

I called her “ Sam Kinison Mom.” You laugh at the fart joke you just made? She loses her MIND laughing at the fart joke you just made. She one ups your fart joke! You scream at her that your toast isn’t ready yet? She sings, “It’s toasting / and that’s how it goes / you just have to wait / wait for your to-o-o-oast” to the tune of Crazy Train. You want to hear Crazy Train 8 times in a row? It is So Not a Problem.

As you see, Sam Kinison Mom is not so different from me in real life. It just seems that lately I have been too wrapped up in being a different kind of mom. The kind who not only sweats the small stuff but goes immediately to shower off the sweat and then applies anti-perspirant right away so that there’s no more sweating and then DAMMIT I’M SWEATING AGAIN and back to the shower and guess what.

Things I need to care about my children doing:

– running into traffic
– falling off high structures
– eating their own excrement or the excrement of others
– killing / maiming each other

That’s it. Now that’s a list specific to my children. Those are the life-threatening things they might do in a given day. Your list might look different. But everything else, all the things I would have sworn up and down were not on the above list but kept behaving as though they were? (Uh, like convoluted sentence structure?) Not caring. Laughing it off. Water off this duck’s back.

After half a day of this I have noticed I have more energy. We had a usual morning; a walk uptown to the library and a quick trip in and out to get new movies (we have lots of books at home [I feel the need to say this as loud as I can every time we go in the library, to defend myself against the totally not-even-listening people around me who I am sure think of me as some illiterate buffoon who only takes her kids to the library for the free movies but if we stay any longer than 5 minutes, Fresco’s trigger finger gets real itchy]) and then a stop at the park where there were blessedly few others.

I made dumb jokes and Trombone laughed and periodically I would have to run – no, really, RUN – after Fresco who was determined to get into the petting farm and pet him some of those damn goats but I did this real exaggerated running, like I was Prefontaine in flip flops, attracting the attention of all the grandmas and nannies and you know, I’m reading this as I type it and I’m thinking, how and when did I forget that this is who I am anyway? When did I start taking the job so seriously that I couldn’t crack a dumb joke at my kid and run after my other kid in an exaggerated way? How is it worth mentioning at all? I really don’t know. Things just build; lack of sleep leads to stress and stress leads to cranky and kids have moods and at some point in the past, I don’t know, week? I started fighting it instead of going with it. Fighting what? All of it. Everything.

Which is easy to see right now when the balance is such that I feel good.

And it could also be that the sun came out today.

Or hormones.

(Or that I just remembered that I am on a PC now, not a Mac so I have a forward delete key again. Bwa ha ha ha ha!)

But I think it’s mostly that I had forgotten how good laughing feels. And that it’s contagious. And that I am the one who makes my day. I am my own boss. Why would I act like a bitter civil servant when I don’t even have any paper to shovel or idiot higher-up to obey? Shit, guys. Life is good.

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My Maturity: Hard Won Yet Heartily Rejected

Posted on 8/9/2009 by cheesefairy

We were standing out on my parents’ front lawn this afternoon, me, the kids, the parents. Kicking around a soccer ball and trying to stop Fresco from running into the road. These people pulled over and crossed the street. It was the parents of one of my best friends in high school.

I’ve mentioned her to most people I know. She was the smartest girl on the planet when we were in school together. She is now a pediatric neurologist. Someone I used to be friends with gets to look at children’s brains. Fuck me, that’s so amazing.

I haven’t seen her parents in a long time. I am thinking it has been 10 years. But of course, parents have that underground grapevine that keeps them all in the loop so I know what my old friend is up to and her mom knows what I have been up to.

“Oh my god!” she said. “I don’t even recognize you!”
“Ha ha,” I said, “yeah, it’s been a while.”
“It’s the haircut,” offered my mother.
“No, you look SO SO DIFFERENT,” she said, staring at me like I had horns, “so … MATURE. You looked the same for so long. But now you look different.”

Is she saying I look old? I do feel old. But how old is old? Right now, right this second, I think I feel 50 but then I’ve never been 50. I don’t think I look 50.

“So, these are my kids,” I said, gesturing to the kids, who are, of course, adorable but definitely look like they might make a person more, yanno, mature.

(Well. Except when I sink to their level and start trash-talking. But let us not go there.)

“Yeah!” she said, “I’ve seen them. I’ve seen pictures. They’re great.”

And we chatted for a while. And then she saw Saint Aardvark, whom I did not know she had ever met or seen.

“Wow! Is that your husband?”
“Yes.”
“He looks different too. You both look. So different. You used to be so slim, both of you. And now, you’re…so mature.”

Aha! She doesn’t mean old, she means fat. Got it!

We are totally fatter, me and SA. When we met each other, I weighed 40 lbs less than I do now. I don’t know how much he weighed, I never asked, but he is bigger than he was.

O’course I’m pretty sure I was underweight when we met. We were in our ’20s. We lived on beer and noodles and we went dancing a lot.

And before that, in high school, well, I was skinny. Elbows and ribcage skinny. Despairing of ever filling out a bra or a pair of jeans skinny. But not anymore.

So yes, she remembers me differently. I am guessing.

I wonder if my high school friend looks the same as she did. I wonder if 10 years of post-secondary education can compare to marriage and motherhood in terms of making you look more mature. Of course her mother sees her all the time.

It was an interesting choice of words. I think of myself as many things, among them, “tired,” “responsible for two nap schedules,” and “definitely fatter than I used to be, so what.” But to hear all of me, all of what I look like standing in front of someone summed up as “mature” was a bit jarring. I totally don’t feel mature. Fooey on you, lady! Next time, you mean fat, say fat. You mean old, say old. You mean awesome with reproductive power, say that.

I suppose she could have said matronly. That would have been worse.

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The Other Side

Posted on 8/8/2009 by cheesefairy

I picked up a book today at Value Village, the Sears and Sears guide to discipline. Put it back down when I read the sentence, “the three year old is far more reasonable than he was at two.” Obviously the wrong manual for our household.

The lovely side of three years old plays for 20 minutes with the doctor kit I picked up at Value Village. Listens to my heart. Takes my blood pressure. Knocks my knee heartily with the reflex hammer. Gives me three doses of medicine, two by mouth and one a jab in the thigh and tells me next time? I should cut my chocolate cake into smaller pieces and I won’t get a stomach ache.

The lovely side of three years old jumps into my arms for a goodnight hug and says, “I could sleep right here all night.”

The lovely side of three years old giggles uncontrollably while listening to Flatt and Scruggs and, as he heads to bed, says, “I don’t know if I CAN sleep tonight! I just want to stomp and stomp and listen to bluegrass!”

The lovely side of three years old.

Today was the lovely side of yesterday, the kind of Saturday I want and rarely get. A trip to the farmer’s market in Burnaby. An impromptu (what? does that word even exist in parental vocabulary?) trip to the Central City Brewing liquor store in Surrey. Lunch and naps and no injuries and hardly any tears and hell, Saint Aardvark is even making a cheesecake for tomorrow.

(What is tomorrow? Tomorrow we are going to my parents’ house. On Tuesday it is their 40th wedding anniversary. Tomorrow we eat cheesecake.)

I have not had Saint Aardvark’s cheesecake since Sarah and Michael’s wedding shower, 6 years ago. It is damn fine cheesecake, that is how I remember the date. He used to bring it to pot-luck parties because it impressed the ladies (you have to read that with a slimy kinda, laydeeeez, or it doesn’t work) but then after we hooked up, no more cheesecake.

But – I’ve got kids, so. Kids: Better than Cheesecake or Your Money Back!

I don’t know why today was so much better than yesterday. I would say it’s because there were two adults in the house, but that isn’t always a guarantee. I could say it’s because Trombone slept in until almost 8 o clock or because I had three cups of coffee or because the moon is in Whatever planet. But none of those things matters, really.

Some days are just like that.

And others are just like this.

And so.

Random question:

Am I the only one who calls the Dell Inspiron “In-SPIRE-on”? Or do most people say “IN-spih-ron”?

Thanks in advance.

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TGIFF

Posted on 8/7/2009 by cheesefairy

I sure would love to post some happy, feel-good stuff about fluffy bunnies and motherhood and how they intersect at regular intervals, I mean, I don’t know who YOU’RE talking to but ’round these parts we’ re all hugs and warm cookies, all the time, but unfortunately a certain 3-year-old and 15-month-old have spent the day kicking my ass and all I want to do is shout, “shut the fuck up Donny!” over and over.

So if you’re in a similar mood, picture me doing that.

Or if you’d rather something amusing, (not that the link above is not amusing, for it is, it is) there’s this story of a name, a woman and a series of emails gone terribly wrong.

Well. I found it amusing. That might be because of my previous work in the government with people just that fucking unhinged.

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And Circus Clowns

Posted on 8/5/2009 by cheesefairy

Earlier this summer, oh did I say summer, I meant Season of Many Street Fairs, we went to the Sapperton Days Street Festival in Historic Sapperton, New Westminster, BC and there we did see many things that peaked our interest.

SA and I saw:

– city councillors racing on tiny tricycles
– a smooth-voiced radio DJ as MC
– real estate agents
– free lollipops at the barber shop!

Fresco saw:

– a train!
– hot dogs!

and for Trombone:

– BMX bikes doing tricks
– a train
– a clown doing balloon art
– hot dogs, hold the mustard
– a woman doing face painting!

He had his face painted as a cat. He was adorable. He is a fair child so the dark eyebrows really gave him a lot of definition. He slept in the face paint and the next day looked more like Liza Minnelli but no matter. He loved it, preening in front of all reflective surfaces.

It occurs to me that Fresco had hardly any reaction at all. Was just, oh, hey, it’s my brother with his face painted like a cat. Cool. Does this say something about Fresco as a person or 13 month olds (as he was, then) in general?

For this instant love of face paint, I purchased a package of paints for Trombone’s birthday party. Saint Aardvark did his best to replicate the “tiger” look illustrated on the box of paints and he made three little boys into some pretty fierce tigers.

A couple of weeks ago, we were about to go somewhere and Trombone said, “Can you paint my face?” My first thought was no. After all there was no festivity that day, no fair, no occasion. And after all, I love to say no. Ask either of my children. But then I thought about lipstick. Who needs an occasion for a painted face, I thought. So I said sure. Let’s paint your face.

Why not. It’s like carrying balloons around just because. Everything feels a bit more festive. (but I have to practice, I think, because clowns can be very scary if done sloppily)

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