Rain: 1, Cheesefairy: 0

Posted on 11/3/2008 by cheesefairy

OK Rain, you win this round. I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy as to throw on my gum boots and my waterproof jacket, tuck the bairns into their wee slots in the buggy and toss a rain cover not specifically meant for that buggy over top for a quick jaunt uptown to return a DVD to the library and pick up some vegetables.

We made it to the library. We got so very wet. The rain cover is 1. ill-fitting 2. plastic and old so torn in places 3. made for a single stroller, not a double so the boys stayed pretty dry but random pockets of stroller got kind of puddly. Oh but I didn’t discover that until much later, when the puddles turned into soup because they were puddles mixed with random dropped bits of bread / cheerios / sand / in other words the most disgusting thing you have seen unless you’re me and change 45 diapers a day.

The vegetable store wasn’t open yet so I stopped at the dollar store instead and dropped a cool fiver on some poisonous Chinese junk that will probably give my children horns, including a gold plated harmonica that Trombone can’t play (burn!) and a baby rattle that says “lovely baby” on it for Fresco.

Misnomer Rattle Company is pleased to present: a very special rattle.

Then we walked home, wet, cold, Fresco by then getting agitated for some reason and screaming his head off while I tried to remember to straighten my shoulders and keep my belly sucked in that my back muscles might actually get to do something now and then and stop bitching at me. Oh and breathe. Trying to remember to breathe. It was one of those days when I forget.

“No, Fresco,” I shouted over the screaming, the wind, the rain, the cars zooming past, “I cannot take you out and carry you. You will hate that. Trust me. You will get wetter and colder and more screamy and I might drop you because it is very very wet.” I stopped shouting as we passed a guy who popped out from an alley and looked at me like I was deranged. What? I’m shouting. It’s the way we roll.

Here is why I am an idiot. Saturday morning I woke up and thought, shit or get off the pot, self. Are you going to blog every day in November, or not? I decided not. I decided that 30 days of MY LIFE SUCKS I TOTES HATES IT (except when I don’t [but my babyeez are so cute!])would be a bit excessive and I can’t seem to bring anything else out to the front of my mind so I am going to spare you all. Maybe once a week I will share MY LIFE SUCKS I TOTES HATES IT (except when I don’t [but my babyeez are so cute!]) and then one day I will be over this particular hump and will write about books or dogs or transit or fuck I don’t know. Something else.

Wait, why am I an idiot? Oh yes. Saturday morning etc. and then I thought well I could write a novel instead. And in the time it took me to take a shower, which on Saturdays is close to 15 minutes, I had decided I could TOTALLY write a 50,000 word novel in a month, after all I’ve done it before and so that morning I went out, bought a new notebook and two pens and started on a November novel. Oh, yes, by pen, because my laptop is in the living room and I will never get anything done on this computer because I will have to write during naptime and then I will be tempted to read Go Fug Yourself or something instead of write my 1750 words per day. Old school, I am kicking it, please to enjoy.

Saturday I wrote about half of what I ought to have. Sunday I went to a coffee shop (also why the pens and notebook are key, so I can go out with them) and wrote my quota and today, well today I decided my hand hurt so I was going to write on the laptop after all and I got to 1150 words before the children woke up from their (very short) naps. Really today is a success story though I was quite angry at the time. Short naps + rainy day = oh so very bad news.

Anyway, writing fiction is very different than blogging. I haven’t written fiction in so long I am horrifying myself at every paragraph break. I figure I’ll give it a week and see what shakes out by next Saturday and then I give myself permission to give up. Extenuating circumstances and all that.

But today the magical thing happened where I was writing really boring shit about these really boring people and all of a sudden a really cool character turned up. I love that. That’s partly why the interruption stung so bad.

I will see you tomorrow, Rain. I am going to kick your ass.

Posted in bloggity!, two! children!, whiny, writing | 8 Comments

This is Why No One But Me Needed Candy

Posted on 11/1/2008 by cheesefairy

(It has been brought to my attention that sometimes the photos display wonkily on this blog. If that is the case, I apologize for this photo-heavy “post”.)

one dog one duck keep dancingone dog one duck keep dancingone dog one duck keep dancingwe’ll all be happy and gayhooray!

Posted in Fresco, trombone | 6 Comments

Next Friday Is Hawaiian Shirt Day!

Posted on 10/31/2008 by cheesefairy

So, y’know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.

It is not that having children around makes you more sentimental, more craft-oriented, more likely to care about holidays (or is it “holidays”?) like Halloween. It is that having children around, as in, all day every day, makes you more desperate for something to do, anything that is different, special, exciting and does not involve a playground or the library or the mall. Holidays are handy because the decision what will we do today? is made for you. You have a theme. I can work with any theme if someone hands it to me. Is next week DUCK WEEK? I can work with that.

And that, my friends, is why preschool is a good idea. Only one year (that’s 52 themed weeks!) to go!

So today is Halloween and I am so excited to have a theme, I am treating it like Christmas. My children are not going trick or treating because one of them is 6 months old and still working his way through the vegetables, one puree at a time and the other one, when he eats too much sugar it makes me want to lock him in a closet, so it’s extra double hazardous to his health. But I made Trombone put on his dog costume first thing this morning. I dug up last year’s duck bathrobe for Fresco. I took pictures. Earlier this week we went to the pumpkin patch and got pumpkins and carved them and roasted the seeds. This morning because it is pissing rain we took a short walk to the store ** and bought red dye 7 and yellow dye 5 to make orange frosting for the sugar cookies we were going to bake.

I almost bought a tin of white frosting to dye but it was the same price as a pound of butter and I reasoned that we needed butter anyway. Bad call; turns out we are all out of icing sugar so I had to switch frosting recipes mid-stream while Trombone dug at the butter with a spoon. The recipe I ended up with would have been fine except we ended up putting in too much brown sugar so it was quite brown and then adding red dye 7 and yellow dye 5 did not make orange but a sort of dried blood colour. So – it’s all cool. It’s Halloween and we have sugar cookies that look bled on. He should be glad I’m not making him do electric jello shots, the only Halloween tradition I have ever considered worth keeping.

** On our way to the store we passed the middle school, just letting out for recess. There was a kid in tight jeans, high heels, with a big, blonde, stringy wig and giganto hooters under a sparkly jacket. “Hmmm,” I thought, “they are correct, those talking heads, about the hoochification of young girls today. But – great Christina Aguiliera costume. Or is it Axl Rose?” Then the kid reached in, pulled out the bra stuffing (paper towels near as I could figure) and tossed it in the trash can. I got close enough to see that the hoochie-mama was a boy! A very brave teenage boy in drag. A very brave teenage boy in drag who was now being chased across the field by a group of boys dressed as a football team. Huh. I averted my eyes. I don’t want to think about middle school.

Posted in food, two! children! | 3 Comments

The Art of Toddler

Posted on 10/29/2008 by cheesefairy

There is a class available for the taking called Dealing with Difficult People. I have seen a couple of versions available through work or for extra credit at the Justice Institute and every time I think, now THAT is valuable skill building. Why isn’t that class mandatory at a high school level that we all might start our lives as adults with at least a primer in conflict resolution and skills of interpersonal negotiation rather than the oh-so-useful Western Civilization (and its Discontents) class where we watched slideshows of bronzed busts for 8 months or heaven help me more algebra (sorry math-heads).

I was talking to a mom of two the same age as my two who lives in my neighbourhood and she helped me nail something down. She said, “I am so tired of all the fighting, all the negotiating, all the back-and-forth about every little thing.” I said, “It’s like we’re at war.” I finally clued in, then, that my exhaustion is mental as well as physical; hence even when I get a nap in the afternoon and awake semi-refreshed, if the rest of the day is spent in non-stop conflict I close out the day feeling like a used dishrag. Conflict is tiring!

I am choosing my battles, never fear. I’m not spending 10 seconds on whether his socks match or whether he can have bread and butter again for the 14th meal in a row or whether we go to X park or Y park. I am very laid back about almost everything. I know you are shocked.

But Trombone is 2 years and one quarter old and he has to assert his identity so he is running away from the diaper change, waffling about the walk to the park, having tantrums about sliding down the slide, claiming there is only one spoon that he can use to eat his oatmeal (okay…) and then dropping that spoon (well – maybe it was an accident) and then commanding me to pick up that spoon and wash it off for him. (not a fucking chance, bub) Though we are rarely actively fighting, I am always engaged, always talking, explaining, teaching, repeating myself, parenting. Gah! No one said it would be like this. I do not like to talk all day! I am a closet extrovert with a history of introversion! I am an Aquarius for heaven’s sake!

On a bad day like yesterday when I am as physically tired as I am emotionally tired, I admit: I just don’t have the energy to be the parent. I don’t have the energy to engage. It is a little frightening sometimes how well I can disengage, how I can be listening for the important bits but not actually paying attention. Saving that last precious bit of energy in case there is an earthquake, I like to think.

And the pendulum swings back – today, after a night when I have had an extra couple of hours of sleep in a row, I can see that it is useful stuff I am learning, that I am more rounded than I used to be. The days when my face is pinched and I have mean-mouth are balanced by the days when my cheeks hurt from smiling. We are all figuring out how to fight fair. How to avoid the battle but still address the conflict. How to help each other – the unique combination of quirks and weirdness and good-hearted soul that we each are – figure out what we need and how to get it. A thick slog, it is. But good.

Posted in the parenthood, trombone | 4 Comments

He Ain’t Heavy. Snotty, Yes. Heavy, No.

Posted on 10/29/2008 by cheesefairy

Having grown up an only child, there are a lot of aspects of sibling-hood that I was in the dark about. Correction: am still in the dark about, as we are currently not even touching the tip of this particular iceberg. However, I really could not have imagined that it was cool for one sibling to rub his snotty face all over the other one’s snotty face. I am here to tell you other only children: not only is it OK, it is funny funny stuff.

And I’m thinking, really?

Yep, they’re still laughing. Both of them.

I’ll be over here, making my ick face.

Posted in ew, two! children! | 2 Comments