It Rained Today so I Had Time To Write This

Posted on 8/22/2011 by cheesefairy

We had corn on the cob at supper the other night and as I scraped some off for Fresco to try (he did not try it) I remembered last summer, when I couldn’t scrape the corn off my cob fast enough to suit him. Last year, he could eat almost a whole cob of corn before I could butter the next one.

I was prepared to mourn the difference between this year and last. This year, he is a food refusal machine. (“Food refusal mach-iii-iiiine!”) You say up, he says down. You say tomato he makes a gagging noise. But then I decided not to mourn it, just to remember it. Last year he loved corn. This year he doesn’t. Who knows what next year will bring. Maybe by next year, everyone will love corn and I will actually buy 6 for a dollar instead of 2 for a fraction of a dollar.

This summer has had a theme. The theme is: active. We have kept busy. We have kept busy enough that I agree emphatically when the old ladies say “You must be keeping busy.” Usually I just nod half-heartedly. I don’t think they believe me, that I am keeping busy. Sometimes they are right, I am lying. I am not keeping busy at all. I am just turning on the television, putting crackers in a bowl and calling it lunch. But lately, I have kept us busy.

One reason for this is that 5 year olds have a lot of energy. They wake with it, maintain it, sustain it, refuse to part with it, and only if you run them ragged all day do they finally lie down and close their eyes. Our townhouse is not strong enough to stand the force of all that energy. In this way, Trombone is right. He is very powerful.

The second reason is that little brothers want to do everything their older brothers do, so whether or not Fresco has the same amount of energy as Trombone, he will fight you to do the death if you imply otherwise.

The third reason, then, is that when two small children convinced of their energy and power encounter a smallish townhouse, their mother says oh hell no, you will not punch holes in the drywall and makes them get out.

Our house, cluttered as it is with our accoutrements, er, junk, does not contain what it most needs; space. We live in a city with more parks per square foot than any other city anywhere (no cite. Just my theory) and we use those parks. Queens Park, Moody Park, Grimston Park, Hume Park, Ryall Park, The Upper School Park, The Lower School Park, The Close Park, The Sandbox Park IS IT THE WEEKEND YET? NO? OK, LET’S GO TO THE BURNABY PARKS TOO. Confederation Park, Central Park, Robert Burnaby Park.

Now rest.

I keep thinking the kids need more rest. Because I need more rest. But they’re just frolicking in the world I’ve made for them. The ‘let’s go to a park and eat snacks here are your other shoes and here is your water ok now it’s lunchtime oh did you spill something here is a wipe for that’ world. I am the one who makes that world so it makes sense that I am more tired than them. It takes a lot of energy to anticipate the next fifteen moves of two children who are of different ages and abilities. It takes a lot of energy to make a world. Look at God. On the 7th day, He rested.

Oh we are verging into Facebook status territory now. Rein it in, rein it in.

I mean I could always not anticipate those fifteen moves and just go out with a wallet but then I’d end up buying a lot of ice cream and pants.

And you know it’s hard to find both ice cream and pants in the same place so I’d be doing a lot more walking. Which can make you even more tired, especially if there is a three year old on your back shouting “I’m riding a piggy’s back! I’m riding a piggy’s back!” Not that the noise is tiring, well, actually it is. Noise is very tiring.

Let’s talk about noise.

Shhhhhhhhh. Noise is tiring.

The end.

Often, these summer days, it has been a good tired. Everyone has sore muscles and scrapes on their knees and farmer tans on their arms and freckles on their noses. We have had many playdates with many different people, and none of those people has been someone I will have to avoid for the next year! In fact, all of those people, and their kids, are entirely awesome. People: I like them. Who knew.

At the end of the day we all have hat-head and smell faintly of sweat and salt and sunscreen. We all sigh when we take off our shoes and feel the cold kitchen floor under our swollen, red feet. We gulp water.

Even if there hasn’t been time to think. Even if there are still five or ten idea-marbles rattling around in my head and I may never grab one, hold it tight in my fist and squeeze the beauty out of it. Sometimes it’s about being completely saturated with sun and grass and the prickle of heat on your neck and then, the ache of it leaving.

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Several Ways of Seeing The Guitar Player

Posted on 8/16/2011 by cheesefairy

It must have been the first summer we lived here, all hot and damp, keeping our curtains and doors closed so that we could stare at our infant until he made sense. Oh, how we sweated, all of us.

I was upstairs in our bedroom with the bathroom window open and over the sound of our fan I heard music. It danced through the night like fireflies. A spark here and there, a surge, then a coast of sweet, amplified acoustic guitar noodling.

“What’s that?” I probably said to SA. He probably shrugged.

It happened over several more nights, and we finally figured out it was one of our neighbours in the apartment building across from us, on his second floor balcony, or in a room with an open window. Who could tell — there were no lights, he never stood to take a bow. How did we even know it was a man? We assumed.

He doesn’t play every night, but most of them. My neighbour friend lives below his apartment and says he plays her to sleep. She told me there had been a complaint to the Strata Council about his guitar playing. I am hoping nothing will come of that.

Sitting in my living room between the open front door and the living room window, I am surrounded by sound; flies buzzing against the screen, the hum of our computers, the shush of cars outside. In the lulls between those noises come the high strings of his guitar and then the low, full call of it across the evening air.

It saturates the night. It makes the black more inky. Over five years, it has come to define summer, for me.

I was chatting with my neighbour on the sidewalk one day a couple of weeks ago and we finally saw the guitar player. He was a small, thin, white man with a few days worth of stubble across his cheeks and chin, and a receding hairline. He had on a nice pair of pants and a short sleeved, checkered shirt and he carried a briefcase. He looked like a guidance counselor, or an accountant with a heart of gold.

He passed us and said hello, then went in the front door of the apartment building.

“Is that him?” said my neighbour.
“Who,” I said.
“HIM!” she said, nodding at the second floor balcony.

Seconds later we saw the flicker of blinds inside that apartment and the schwick-hiss of the French doors opening to the balcony.

“It IS him,” she whispered loudly.
“I guess so,” I said.

Here are some of the ways I have pictured the guitar player: as a thick, swarthy man with long, wavy hair, perched on a wooden stool, hunched over a 12-string guitar.

As an old hippy with brown, bare feet and leather anklets, whose toes spread wide in completely different directions, simultaneously, while he played.

As a 40-something guy with a long, shaggy beard, short hair, eyeglasses perched halfway down his nose, old rock show t-shirts and faded jeans, a thin, grey cat sitting at his feet, staring at moths.

Not as a regular guy in a button-down shirt who takes the bus to work, though. Never have I pictured him as that.

It reminded me to appreciate that we are all extraordinary, whether or not we recognize each other. There is some wonderful gift you’re imparting. Even if I don’t know you’re the one imparting it.

It is so very Wizard of Oz, sometimes.

Thank you, guitar guy, for your gift. And for never playing Stairway to Heaven.

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Near Death, Always

Posted on 8/11/2011 by cheesefairy

I was out for a run the other day. As I came up a hill and it felt like my heart was going to pound out of my ribcage, I thought, “What if I dropped dead here.”

I don’t carry any ID when I run, you see; just a music player and a key and a tissue. What if I had a heart attack on the road at 8 am and no one could identify me? How do they identify people who drop dead in the street? I guess it doesn’t happen that often. Or maybe I’m just never around when it does. Maybe it’s like suicide; no one writes about it in the paper unless you’re famous.

Am I famous enough? I guess I would have to die to find out.

Before my next run, I remembered to put the piece of paper in my pocket. I wrote: “[my name.] [Phone number.] Penicillin allergy.” I felt better for about five minutes and then I started thinking, “I bet today is the day I drop dead on the road, just because I finally put the piece of paper in my pocket. That would suck.”

I didn’t die.

Yesterday we went up Grouse Mountain with the children and SA, who is on holiday right now, and my parents, whose 42nd wedding anniversary we were celebrating. To celebrate their marital longevity, they took us up the mountain and bought us lunch. Fantastic!

We were crammed tightly in the “Skyride” gondola — my parents, my husband, my kids, a bunch of hikers, and fifty to a hundred tourists. I have been on the Skyride quite a few times in my life but it was my kids’ first time. Just as it started up with its usual lurch I thought, “If today was the day the gondola broke, we would all die. My emergency contacts one and two are right next to me, my next of kin and the people I am next of kin to. SA’s parents would have to plan our funeral. And just this morning, SA mentioned that we should write our wills. If this were an action/adventure movie, the gondola would fall out of the sky right now. Or there would be a terrorist on the gondola.”

Note: There were no terrorists on the gondola.

There is a bear habitat at the top of the mountain. Part of the mountain is fenced — several acres, I think someone said — and these two bears live there. They were rescued as cubs and grew up together and now hang out for tourists to look at. I wasn’t worried about being eaten by bears, because there is an electric fence and a barbed wire fence, and also I think the bears are pretty happy and well fed. One of them sniffed at me but I think that’s because I smell fantastic, all the time.

We had lunch and walked around a lot and the kids took pictures with our digital camera, many of which were of the always-hilarious BUTTS. I deleted most of those. Kept some others. Trombone took this one:

Yes, it was foggy the whole time. Because it is August in Vancouver, that’s why.

This morning, Trombone found a t-shirt in his drawer with a picture of a bear on it and the word “BEAR” printed underneath. Kids’ clothes are kind of random sometimes. He wore it to the park for a huge playdate with a selection of his preschool friends and their siblings and one dog and several parents.

While the kids were playing and the moms were standing around a picnic table covered with snacks, a park employee came over and said, “Sorry to interrupt you ladies but,” and held up a sign that said BEAR SIGHTED IN AREA. I don’t know why he couldn’t say the words. Why did he hold up the sign? We all gasped, as was appropriate. He said, very importantly, “Yes, we had a report yesterday. And they go for the garbage cans..and you are near that one…”

It seemed like he enjoyed the gasps. I saw him go over to some other people and hold up the sign to them, too. I noticed later that the garbage can was pretty full. I wondered if maybe he should have emptied it instead of walking around with his scary bear sign.

“If this were a short story,” I thought, “the bears yesterday plus the bear shirt today plus the bear sighting would probably mean in the next scene we get swarmed by bees.”

But it’s not a short story. We came home and had lunch. We’re still alive, despite it all.

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Honk If —

Posted on 8/5/2011 by cheesefairy

My parents’ neighbourhood in North Burnaby is plagued by intersections controlled by four-way stops. Four way stops are hard, I guess, because almost every time I drive to their house, I end up having a conversation with the other drivers that goes like this:

Me: Your turn. YOUR TURN BUDDY. YOU WERE THERE FIRST JUST GO ALREAD —
Buddy: Screeeeech…bye! Oh PS yeah I’m turning here!
Me: Next time you could use a signal. Ok, now it’s — hey, it’s MY TURN OTHER BUDDY!
Other Buddy: Whatever, I’m going. Every man for himself, here in North Burnaby.
Me: You, sir, are lame. HONK! HONK!
Kids: Why are you honking, mommy?
Me: Because it’s better than swearing.
Kids: What’s swearing, mommy?
Me: OMIGOD IT’S MY GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING TURN!
Kids: Oh. We see.

I realized the other day that the reason mothers are terrible drivers is because they have people talking to them ALL THE TIME. Your mother is a terrible driver, right? If you aren’t a mother, you had one. And the way she drove made you crazy. You know why? Because you were talking to her all the time.

I think I am a pretty good driver. Most people think they are pretty good drivers. I bet there aren’t a lot of people who drive who, the whole time, are thinking, Man I suck at this. I should take a cab. But even I, the self-described good driver, have lately been second-guessing myself. Because I am driving, listening to the radio, eating trail mix, getting the kids a drink, and participating in a conversation about Superman. All at the same time! I am the true distracted driver. This is why when I arrive at my destination, I am not relaxed and smiling. I am all bent like a hunchback and my head hurts and my brow-furrow is storing cracker crumbs.

At least I drive a standard, which means I have to pay attention to my driving a little bit. If I drove an automatic, I would just
1. put foot on pedal
2. go.

You’d be lucky if I stopped, at a four-way or anywhere.

Add to that five years of sleep deprivation and the fact that sometimes I drive in flip flops (which I shouldn’t, because then I get electric shocks) and I guess I should probably give you my license plate number right now so you can call it in and get me arrested.

People don’t know how to make left turns anymore. They barely pull out into the intersection. You have to pull out far enough so that you are turning into the correct lane — not into the oncoming traffic lane. I have been on both sides of this; the person who wants to get through the light turning left, like, today, and the person who is sitting in the other lane, hoping that person making a left turn doesn’t turn right into me.

It makes me think things like: What are they teaching these kids today about driving?

And since apparently I’m going for the Andy Rooney / “humour column in a free paper” style of writing, here’s another thing. It’s been years and no one has yet given me a good reason for a Baby on Board sign. Are you bragging about your baby? Congratulations on your baby. Is it some kind of code? Do you want me to hit you because you need the insurance money to pay for diapers? What?

I think I will walk more places. I think that would be good.

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I Have Seen the Gates of Hell

Posted on 8/1/2011 by cheesefairy

Yesterday, Trombone and I attended a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese.

I wish to insert here that the birthday party was fun and I appreciate the invitation / pizza / cake / goody bag. I paid nothing for the experience, so I can’t even imagine how people who pay to play must feel. This is in no way a criticism of any particular parent’s desire to host a birthday party at any particular establishment. I ain’t judging.

Going in, I thought Chuck’s was an indoor playcentre. I like indoor playcentres. My experience with them is that a) they are a great way to tire out your children on a rainy / cold day and b) Wash your hands thoroughly afterward. I read on the website that Chuck’s sells beer, even. I could think of worse things than sipping a cold beer while my child plays in a playcentre with his much cherished preschool friends.

However, as you probably all know, Chuck E. Cheese, the establishment, is not a playcentre. It is Baby Vegas. It is Playland (cheap crap disguised as ‘prizes!’), plus Air Miles (you need 8,000,000 points to fly to Calgary!), times hell (read on!)

We were greeted by the friend’s mother, who handed us a container of 50 tokens. “The tokens get you tickets and the tickets get you prizes! Go play!” she said, gesturing to a room full of arcade and midway games, all blinking and squawking at us.

Every game cost one token and you could win anywhere from one to six tickets. We played some basketball (3 tickets) and some whack-a-shark (5 tickets) and some hit-an-egg-off-a-spoon-with-a-controller-doohickey (1 ticket). Then it was time for birthday party pizza.

The children gathered, as instructed, but couldn’t eat their pizza. They were vibrating with ticket lust. They needed to get back out there and get more tickets. More tickets! MORE TICKETS!

Meanwhile, on top of the background noise, which was not insignificant, given the three concurrent birthday parties, there were several large TV screens that were playing videos of mascots singing and dancing along to Greatest Hits like “Word Up” by Cameo.

Also, there was a giant, robot Chuck E. Cheese on a stage who sang and danced along with the singing, dancing mascot videos.

Also, there was a giant “live” mascot Chuck E. Cheese who was roaming the room like a drunk bride at her wedding reception, high-fiving and hugging everyone who came near him.

It was horrifying.

After cake and pinata-opening (yield: 4,000 more tickets and a shit-tonne of candy), Trombone discovered the climbing structure. The climbing structure doesn’t require any tokens. He went in once. He went in twice. I jingled our cup of approximately 30 remaining tokens. He went in again. He made two friends; boys about his age who like to climb things. He went in a fourth time and didn’t come back for half an hour.

I should have given our tokens to a small child or adult or homeless person and curled up in the corner for a nap, but I didn’t. I played more games, to see how many tokens I could spend / tickets I could get. Answer: a lot. And: not very many.

I saved Trombone three tokens and convinced him to come out of the climbing structure. He was a wreck. You know when a kid is tired to start with, doesn’t eat much, has a bunch of sugar, and is in an environment that beeps and buzzes and blinks and there are people running everywhere, so his brain goes into hyper-alert crisis mode but then it realizes it should be saving energy to eat more candy so it shuts down entirely? That was my son.

“Go and get your shoes on,” I said. “Then we’ll spend your last three tokens and go.”

He wandered away from me and I waited for a few minutes before going after him. He was on a merry-go-round. Just sitting there. No shoes.

“OK, which game,” I said, holding him firmly by the shoulder. “Bowling? Water-shooting? Last three tokens!”

The birthday host popped up from behind me. “Oh we have LOTS MORE tokens! Here, here’s a handful!”

I just wanted to leave the casino and get back to my hotel room so I could watch CNN in my underwear. Metaphorically speaking.

“Oh, no no no. Thanks,” I said. Trombone was so stoned he didn’t even notice I turned down more tokens. We played our last three tokens and took our handful of tickets to the ticket machines.

There were four ticket machines, all of which were occupied by people who had three, or four, or five hundred tickets. You feed the tickets into a slot and the machine tallies them for you. The family in front of us had six hundred tickets. It took them fifteen minutes to feed them into the machine.

When it was finally our turn, we fed our tickets. It took two minutes. The machine spat a receipt at us; a small slip of paper with “95” printed on it.

“OK!” I said brightly, steering Trombone by the shoulders, “Let’s cash in those 95 tickets!”

The prize counter was a mob scene. A glass case was filled with cheap trinkets for various small values: 15 tickets. 40 tickets. 100 tickets. The exciting prizes were tacked to the wall. Chuck E. Cheese goody bag: 300 tickets. Spiderman bouncy ball: 400 tickets. Toy Story Operation game that I saw at London Drugs for $18.99: 6,000 tickets. SIX THOUSAND. You heard me.

15 minutes later, the family of three leaning on the glass had settled on a bunch of candy, a slinky toy and some rubber cockroaches for their 600 tickets.

20 minutes later, the boys in front of us settled on a bunch of candy, a rubber bracelet, and some rubber manta rays the size of a thumbnail, for their 400 tickets.

The woman with the three year old girl CUT IN FRONT OF ME for some Tinkerbell playing cards. Cost: 150 tickets.

“Trombone!” I said, “It’s our turn!”

Trombone was afflicted, then, with classic lineup anxiety. We had waited so long and discussed every item and its value for SO LONG that did he want the rubber ring? The candy. No the ring. No the candy.

Trombone’s classmate’s mom said, “Do you want some of our tickets?”

“No, thank you,” I said, through gritted teeth. “I think that would just make it harder.”

Trombone picked candy. For 95 tickets he got one roll of Rockets, a tiny box of strawberry Nerds, and some taffy. About fifty cents worth of candy.

“That was soooooo funnnnn,” he slurred as I dragged him to the exit.
“Yeah?” I said, “was it?”
“Omigosh yes. Soooo fun. We have to come back here. We have to bring Fresco.”

Epilogue:

Chuck E. Cheese has a “child safe” program in place. When you enter, they stamp you and your child with matching stamps that only show up under UV light. When you leave, they scan your stamps to make sure they match.

The girl at the door scanned my hand. No stamp.
“Huh,” she said. “Maybe it washed off?”
“Yeah, I went to the bathroom,” I said. “A couple of times.”

She scanned Trombone’s hand.

“Well his is there,” she said. “Sweetie,” she said to Trombone, “Can you tell me who this is?”

Trombone stared past me, at the giant dancing mouse.

“Hmmmm?” he said. “Who?”

She pointed right at me.

“That lady. Who is she?”

After a nerve wracking, five second pause during which I considered that I might never get to leave this place, but on the bright side I would get to have a beer after all, Trombone’s face registered brain activity again. He looked at me.

“Oh that? That’s my mom.”

“OK, have a nice day,” she said, and let us go.

Some cost-effective yet still game-like alternatives to a trip to Chuck E. Cheese:

– Throw a handful of change down a storm sewer and then tell your child to fish it out with a paperclip attached to a twig. Whatever he fishes out, spend on candy at the corner store.

– Take your child to a dollar store and set a timer. Tell him to grab as much as he can in five minutes. Pay. Leave.

– Donate twenty dollars to charity and buy a frozen pizza for dinner.

– Paint your face like a mouse’s face and sing Cameo’s “Word Up” while dancing jerkily, like a robot. Don’t blink. Never blink.

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