The Endings Are Not Always Happy

Posted on 4/6/2009 by cheesefairy

I have had excellent luck so far with my adventures in hair-cuttery. Rather than make an appointment that I might not be able to keep due to children, random illness, acts of god, etc, I have been wandering forth when I have an hour on a weekend during naptime, leaving SA at home to make beer or think about making beer or read books by people who think about making beer oh! and! mind the sleeping children.

Random haircut 1: back last July when I had acres of hair and buckets of sweat. I walked uptown and the only place that had a free stylist was at the Most Depressing Mall, which was actually OK because it was air conditioned. She took off swathes of hair and told me I had a dry scalp and she didn’t know about post-partum hair loss. As in, she kept exclaiming at how much hair was coming out of my head, even though I told her several times I had a three-month-old at home. She was a bonehead. But I liked the cut.

Random haircut 2: January. Uptown Mizzle, right on Salon Row. Janet was the only person in her establishment on a Sunday afternoon so I paid her a bunch of money to take off even more acres of hair and give me a funny new ‘do that I loved. Short at the back, long at the front, looked just like my hair was up in a clip except NO MORE CLIPS and a good 10 minute savings on my ablutions.

Random haircut 3: March. So soon after the last one because short hair looks bad when it grows just a little. This is why I have worn it long for the past 20 years. Went to the walk-in place at Metrotown, said to the woman, I want a trim and the same style as I have now and she did it. Amazing. Love.

For random haircut 4, this past Saturday afternoon, sure I could have gone back to Janet. Or to Metrotown. I did, after all, want the same style again, just shorter, again, because my hair grows faster than Prefontaine runs. However, in the interest of pushing my damn luck, I wandered up to Salon Row, Uptown The Mizzle and looked for a NEW (as in, new to me) empty salon to grace with my presence. Weren’t none. I headed to Lougheed Mall, which is closer to us and more sparsely attended than Metrotown. Within, I passed a “Chatters” which had too much neon on its signage and then I saw a “Magicuts” which had no lineup so I went in.

Magicuts is one of those places where you put your name down on a list and they call you in order, very much exactly like the place at Metrotown so I was feeling positive about the experience. When you write down your name, you can specify which stylist you want. Everyone above me on the list specified “Celeste” but I don’t know her from Adam so I left that spot blank.

Not-Celeste cut very quickly. Complimented me on my lovely curl. I asked for the same style, but shorter and she made it shorter. And when she was done, it felt like the same style as when I had come in. The thing I like best about my hair style, the one I got back in January, is that it might get flat when I sleep but then I just ruffle it and it gets all adorable again. Or it might get flattened by a hat. I ruffle. Adorable. I paid Not-Celeste and left Magicuts and ruffled my hair because that is what I do, these days, I ruffle. It didn’t feel adorable. I found a shop window to look at myself in. Not so adorable. I ruffled some more. Closer. I went about my business, which included buying some cute new sneakers.

But now it is two days later and the more I ruffle the more I realize. This is a bad hair cut. (And sure, you should go back and say “fix it” but that is not going to happen.)

Not-Celeste did not follow the path of the previous stylists. She cut her own path. It is a bad path. My hair looks like I cut it myself. It looks like a mushroom that ends, most unattractively, at my chin.

Luckily, it grows fast. And I have learned my lesson. Next month I will make an appointment either somewhere GOOD (yes, I hear you yelling at me, Shelley) or somewhere I have been before. Or at the very least, ask for Celeste.

And here, in closing, is a photo of my new shoes instead of my new hair. Trust me, it’s better this way.

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The Laws Have Changed

Posted on 4/4/2009 by cheesefairy

New rule: if my hair can be drawn into a ponytail? It is too long. Spring has apparently arrived and soon it is going to be hot like spicy nuggets out there.

Stay tuned for another thrilling installment of The Haircuttery Establishments of The Mizzle.

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Why I Made Cupcakes Yesterday

Posted on 4/1/2009 by cheesefairy

I went back and looked to see what I was doing at this time last year and behold I was eating cupcakes, newly on maternity leave, hauling around my extra girth and begging my toddler to not want to swing at the playground because I couldn’t lift him in.

That started me thinking about the best advice I was given in those weeks before Fresco was born. I got lots of good advice and lots of no advice at all, just sympathy, and it was all appreciated. But my wise friend mo-wo said to me something like, stop thinking about labour already and just enjoy the last two weeks with your first born because they won’t come again.

So I did.

I have thought many times in the past year about the last day that Trombone and I spent together, just us. It was the Thursday before Fresco was born. That Friday I had my last doctor’s appointment and Trombone spent the day at his grandparents. Saturday Saint Aardvark was home and Saturday night I went into labour.

The Thursday before Fresco was born, I took Trombone to Wal-Mart and bought a big box of baby wipes, the last thing on my list of things to buy. I bought a box of vegetable crackers and us each a pair of sunglasses because the sun was out that day. Mine were my usual big, black, bee-woman style. His were Go Diego Go! and he wore them faithfully all summer. I also bought him a two-pack of Winnie the Pooh sippy cups because he seemed to love them. And it felt good to see that look of brief glee on his face at getting something he wanted.

Then we went on to a park I thought he would like. It had ducks. He didn’t care too much about the ducks. He was sort of into climbing on playground equipment at the time. There was a small climbing structure and he tried to climb it but it was slippery with dew so he fell and bumped himself and he cried. He was tired that day. We came home and had lunch and naps. Then he watched some tv and I let him watch an extra half hour or so. We ate cookies with chocolate.

I felt, all day, what if this is our last day. What if I have the baby this weekend? Of course I was really hoping I would and I knew I was going to have my membranes swept the next day so there was a good chance, but mostly I was just torturing myself with the delicious knowledge that this was it. Our lives together were going to change soon and I wanted to have the time to just stare at him, watching him eat a chocolate cookie. It was his first chocolate cookie. It took him a full half hour to eat. An entire episode of “In the Night Garden.”

I don’t remember how I felt, physically. I was big and heavy and cumbersome and tired and cranky; I only know this because it is well documented. But I remember how I felt watching my Trombone frolic in the park, still figuring out his feet beneath him, poking in and out of bushes, stomping in puddles. Blond hair shining in the sunlight, orange sweater hanging from his shoulders. He was exquisite.

It feels like the time since then has passed in an instant, though, again, the documentation suggests otherwise. Over the year, Trombone has learned to be himself, to be a brother, to be a sibling, to be someone apart from me. He does not always cry when he falls. It takes him considerably less time to eat a chocolate cookie. I remember that day as the last slow, lazy day we shared; our expectations of each other low, our love for each other unquestioned. I am sad that I have not felt exactly like that again since.

But I also do not feel sad. Our relationship has deepened, widened. He is not a baby anymore, he is a boy, running away from me, looking over his shoulder. It is as it should be. That day feels like our goodbye hug; goodbye before we walk through this gate together to become a different kind of family.

So I repeat my best advice to any of you expecting a second child. Drink in those moments with your first. Labour will last one or two days and then it will be over. The rest of your life will start again when that baby is born and it will not stop, will not slow, even as you beg it to. Now is the slow time, now when your body forces you to sit on the couch and eat chocolate cookies. Might as well.

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Beer: A History

Posted on 3/28/2009 by cheesefairy

According to legend my father gave me sips of his beer when I was a small child. When my grandmother saw this, she of the old Scottish Baptist tradition, she scoffed and gave me some of her tea. “If the girl can have beer, she can have some of my tea.”

I went a long time between those first sips of beer and the ones that came next. The next beer I remember drinking was Molson Dry from the bottle, on Sarah’s recommendation. On our porch, at the Blarney Stone (only on Wednesdays, please; we were not of the weekend lineup & cover charge crowd); anywhere we went, Molson Dry was our choice.

I blank at the next part; we were light drinkers for a long time, until the Terrible Roommate and then we began going out every night because the Terrible Roommate was at our house, being Terrible. We moved in to Murphy’s Pub, a dark, homey place at the corner of Pender and Seymour Streets and there we began drinking dark beer, unless drunk Americans were buying and then we drank Molson Canadian and had headaches the next day. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.

The dark beers they had on tap were delicious ales. We drank them by the pitcher. The bartender would have a pitcher drawn up by the time we had our coats off and were fishing in our pockets for money to make the jukebox play Eurythmics and Patsy Cline.

When Murphy’s closed, as all great bars must, to make way for the giant televisions that make great bars into Sports Bars, we went to the Nelson, at the corner of Nelson and Granville. There we had two choices of draught: Dark or Light for $2.50 a pint. At those prices, the choice was obvious.

I hasten to add this was not 50 years ago as you might think but only in 1997.

When the Nelson closed to make way for Babalu, the cigar bar that burned down to make way for a faux Irish pub, we moved on to Rumrunners Saloon in the Century Plaza Hotel on Burrard St. There, for years, we drank Rickards Red that tasted vaguely of soap. Now that Saint Aardvark is a craft brewer I am sure he could tell us why the beer tasted like soap or maybe it was just an inefficient rinse cycle on the dishwasher.

When we moved back to East Van, we became regulars at the Broadway Express (no longer, of course) on Commercial at 12th ave with its poet / career drunk vibe. It had a jukebox too, one of the last places. It had some of the best bathroom graffiti, too and we always made sure we had a Sharpie in our jeans when we went in to pee.

When we moved back to downtown, we started frequenting another great pub downtown called the Sidebar and it may even still be open, I don’t know. Long after the other pubs downtown went upscale and posh, the Sidebar stayed smoky and friendly and full of regulars who had nowhere else to go.

They also had a velvet painting of Monica Lewinsky on the wall.

Dark beer by the pitcher after pitcher after pitcher. More people come, each gets a glass, someone buys the next round. If it’s a party, order two pitchers at once.

Tonight I am drinking a Granville Island IPA from the can and if I close my eyes I can smell summer. The patio at the Fountainhead on Davie buzzing with the heat, voices getting louder as the sun sets and the drinks go down. The spacious, breezy Arts Club Lounge at Granville Island after a hot day of cheese slinging. The relief of the cave-like Murphy’s pub when we came in to drink beer from our long, sweaty days in retail, thighs in shorts sticking to the green vinyl seats.

I’ve decided. I am opening the Mizzle’s first Craft Brew Pub on our patio this July. Bring your friends. And possibly your own chair.

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Keeping the Economy Alive, One Dollar at a Time

Posted on 3/27/2009 by cheesefairy

We went to the Near Mall this morning to get groceries at Safeway and I desperately wanted to hit the new dollar store that takes up half the Near Mall’s square footage because who doesn’t love a dollar store? Especially a really big one?

Item 1:

A little tiny plunger. Saint Aardvark has been looking for one of these for ages, I don’t know why, maybe to plunge sinks or maybe to make beer, I don’t know. Only he knows. So I got him one. And it’s not even our anniversary!

Item 2:

Frighteningly realistic orange and banana for Trombone’s kitchen. A pleasing side effect of buying these before our trip to Safeway was that Trombone insisted on carrying them, which severely limited his ability to paw all the stuff on the shelves in the grocery store. Also he had a lovely chat with a woman who admired his orange in particular. Here you see him still holding them while exchanging loving glances with Thomas the Tank Engine.

Item 3:

Crack-addled stacking cups. All the stacking cups I have ever encountered have ranged in size from an inch in diameter to – oh, I don’t know, 5 inches? I’m bad with inches. There are usually 10 cups in a package. My mom has a set of 10; each has a number on it from 1 – 10. This is what I was expecting, although hers are pretty nice and this was the dollar store so I wasn’t expecting, y’know, art or anything. We get them open and there are four. Four cups. And they are numbered: 5, 6, 7 and 8.

What? Nothing on the package says, “Collect them all!” Now I want to go back and see if there is a package with 1,2,3 and 4.

The package does say, “Ages 3+ for small parts.”

What?

Yes, these are cheap toys. They are probably toxic to even look at. And sure, if you smashed one of the cups to pieces, your baby might choke on the pieces. But by that logic, you could take a sledgehammer to one of our baby dolls so she wouldn’t be safe either.

(yes, I did just want an excuse to post that adorable photo of Fresco)

Here is Fresco, very unsafely unstacking our four new medium-sized stacking cups.

Item 4:

Not pictured because we changed our mind at the checkout. It was a sheet of a billion smiley faced stickers that Trombone wanted. The price tag said 2/$1.00. But I did not want TWO billion smiley faced stickers so I only took one. The woman at the till said, “They are two for a dollar. You get another one.” I said, “No, I do not want another one.” She said, “You have to get another one.”

I said, “Are you my son all of a sudden with that attitude?”

No. Not really. I said, “Can’t I buy one for fifty cents?”
She said, “No.”

So I told her to keep her stickers.

Now I’m wondering, because this was a store called “Everything for a dollar,” is it a legal thing? Like, do the Dollar Store Authorities go secret shopping to make sure that Everything is Really A Dollar, no more, no less?

When we got home, Trombone went digging through everything for his stickers and I had to tell him they hadn’t made it in the bag. Like they’d been shot down or something. And he was all, “But where ARE they?” And I said, “They wanted to stay with the other stickers at the store.” And then I distracted him with a cookie.

Here is a shot of all our dollar store acquisitions in action. Everything cost one dollar. I swear.

Do I know how to set up a Friday or what?

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