Author Archives: branch

Remake

I have a mole on my chin. One day, many (probably twenty) years ago, it grew one hair, which I plucked when it was long enough to pluck. A few months later, I noticed it was back and pulled it again. Eventually there were two hairs together, then four. A cluster! I remember the day I pulled one of the hairs out and was thrilled to realize it was silver. Silver chin hairs! I like silver hairs.

It has recently come to my attention that my chin hairs are growing at an increased rate of speed. It used to be months between pluckings and now it is weeks. Possibly I have plucked more than once in two weeks. I don’t know what this means and I don’t really want to know. I do enough late-night googling as it is.

When I get right up close and look at my chin hairs to pluck them–the lovely pressure and strain of the hair coming out of its follicle is so satisfying–I see other hairs on my face. A few of the other moles grow hairs as well. There is a place on my neck, just under the jawline, where a hair grows quite inobtrusively for [x amount of time] until one day it is long enough to curl up over my chin. Hi. I’m your neck hair. I am what stands between you and a career as a supermodel. What is it doing that whole time I don’t see it, I wonder. I have looked for it before and not found it. It’s only found when it’s exactly the right length to be found, at which point I dutifully yank it and marvel at its length. How does something get that long without me noticing.

***

When I came to parenting, I was not a physical nurturer. I cared about people, but not enough to go out of my way and sacrifice my own comfort for theirs. Dirty, sick, grouchy people, those are not my people. Sad, anguished, angry people, I am good with those. I will be your emotional rescue. I do not want to clean up your vomit. I would rather listen to you talk about your ex-whoever for a week than clean up your vomit.

The thing about parenting is: against the limits of your own comfort level, nurturing is how you pass the day. Like any skill, the more you do it, the better you get.

I remember the tragedy of the first snotty nose, the first shoulder barf, the first moaning, feverish face against mine, coughing in my nostrils, me thinking, “OH GOD I CAN’T MOVE AWAY BECAUSE SO PRECIOUS BUT I SO WANT TO MOVE AWAY DON’T COUGH ON ME SICK BABY.” They were all these walls I had to climb and get over, this “taking care of people” “whether you want to, or not” thing. Not to roll over and put a pillow on my head when I hear someone crying in the hallway, but to get out of bed and deal with it.

You do it every day and you don’t notice that you’re getting better at it until you are doing it without thinking. It gradually gets less hard, then easy, then subconscious.

After a nice, calm holiday season, we spent half of January ill with something or other, something else in February and the past week in the house with the ‘flu. Arlo (and later, Eli) was weak and feverish and coughing and I turned into robot mom: here’s a tissue, here’s medicine, here’s the TV remote, here’s a book, here’s more tissues. With little of the old panic or dread, I gave myself fully to caregiving, became The Mom Who Cares.

Every day. In the house. With sick children.

And I know that people do worse, do more, do more with worse. Other than the whole no-school thing, I didn’t even notice that a week had passed until the first morning we walked Arlo to school and the air felt like a beautiful salve against my skin. Being outside and walking down the street was such a gift and I realized that I hadn’t had that gift in so long.

Was this why my head had ached all week, why I had felt as though I might be getting sick but maybe not after all, why I was so tired, despite not doing anything. Because I hadn’t been..outside? Because no, I hadn’t done anything, except look after other people for a week, with the occasional break to stare at the Internet, waiting patiently for it to yield something wonderful or even just less annoying because everything was annoying and no, it wasn’t me, it was everyone and everything else. In the world. Everywhere.

I was surprised to realize I had forgotten about myself. In a way it’s good to know that I can step up and nurture if needed. In another way it’s scary that I could morph so quickly into someone for whom self-care becomes news. If I was a nurse I would be the chain-smoking, tequila-drinking kind. The pill-popping kind who is fine, fine, until she isn’t. What happened?

***

My chin hairs are invisible, until they are not. They appear, as if by magic, under my fingers as I write with my right hand or read things. They grow quietly and appear fully fledged when they are ready, a surprise, though not an unwelcome one.

Poop.

Until I became a parent I do not remember thinking about poop at all, ever. I pooped, and I didn’t mention it, UNTIL NOW, and life went on.

Oh god, now you all know.

Anyway! People joke about poop taking over your life when you become a parent. It’s always been framed like “you are now obsessed with tiny person A and tiny person A makes poop and the home care nurses tell you to monitor the poop and also you need to feel some control over your life so you monitor a daily life function, good for you!” but really it’s just that you have to put your face very close to excrement on a daily (sometimes hourly) basis when you have a baby. Repetition leads to normalcy. Then there’s teaching the small person to use a toilet–don’t get me started or I’ll weep–and wipe properly. Years go by and you start to see poop EVERYWHERE.

Not a day goes by when I don’t consider poop in some way. The other day @jenarbo posted a picture to twitter and it was of cigarette butts and I saw poop in the picture. She was all, “um it’s a leaf” and I was all, “whatever, I’m a hammer and the world looks like a nail, I mean poop.” And then she was all, “#unfollow.” Not really. I hope.

It’s not just the kids. There are many days when I don’t think about *their* poop, but then the cat poops on the carpet, with his accompanying POOP ALERT YOWL. There are also days when I don’t think about the kids’ poop and the cat poops in his box but when I go outside there is dog poop on the sidewalk. On the sidewalk!

(There are also days when all of that happens. We call those “Mommy’s Special Gin Days.” No, we don’t. OK, maybe.)

This is what prompts my post today. The last straw of poop, as it were. Dog poop on the sidewalk. It seems like an especial travesty, like an insult duct-taped to injury. How does a dog poop on a sidewalk and get away with it? (Answer: SMARTPHONES) On our walk to school we often have to step around three or four piles. My internal dialogue goes: “It’s bad enough that I have to think about the poop of two children and a cat but to have to step around your dog’s giant poop ON THE SIDEWALK because he couldn’t he even go on the grass, how does that even HAPPEN? makes me absolutely ready to declare a war on poop. An entire war.”

No idea what a war on poop would look like. After all, it’s a natural function of healthy animals. We poop. There are books about it. Oh so many books. We adults and semi-adults put our poop in the poop recepticle and we move on. You can’t battle or war against it. But I can rage, I guess. I can rage against the improper placement of poop.

I need it to be spring. And I need the dogs–dogs, I love you! Don’t ever change, except please don’t poop on the sidewalk! Wouldn’t the grass be nicer, softer?–to poop in the GRASS and then I need their minders to pick it up with their baggies and dispose of it appropriately. I need this.

I have just discovered that poop is NOT one of those words where the more you type it the weirder it looks. The more you type “poop” the more you end up thinking about poop.* Poop.

Sorry.

* I blogged about my children for 6 years and didn’t write about poop once. Now it’s all out of my system, I won’t do it again.

(Poop.)

That Time I Gave Up Coffee

A long time ago I drank a lot of coffee. Well, a long LONG time ago I didn’t drink any coffee. But then I started, got out of control, and sometimes drank six cups a day. I wasn’t even a nurse or grad student. I was just someone who worked in retail and socialized at coffee shops and stayed up too late.

I gave it up, and then slowly started again. My average coffee consumption is one large cup, occasionally two, per day. Except when I was pregnant the first time, when coffee made me nauseated so I drank tea. (When I was pregnant the second time there was no way on this earth I would get from home to daycare to work to daycare to home without coffee, so that’s why Eli is crazy, because he was cooked in a caffeinated, stressed-out soup.)

One or two cups of coffee a day doesn’t feel like an addiction. A habit, yes. A nice, friendly habit. Something you do because it’s pleasant and you enjoy it, not because you have to.

As Saint Aardvark is fond of saying, “That turns out not to be the case.”

Over the weekend, our house had The Barfs. Really it was only Arlo who barfed, but we were watching ourselves and Eli closely because DOOMPANICNOROVIRUS has been in the news for months now and part of me was excited because we could get the Norovirus over with already and get on with our lives, but part of me–most of me–was NOT excited because I hate barf. Barf is not my speciality. And before you say “it’s not anyone’s specialty, you lunatic,” let me add, there are people for whom it is no big deal. I have met those people. I am in awe of them. Though many of them freak out at the thought of green snot in a child’s nose, so: parenting. It’s a buffet of things you may or may not hate!

True to our history with The Barfs, Eli didn’t get sick, SA waited until last, Arlo improved drastically within 24 hours and within that same 24 hours, I started to feel queasy. This is my thing. Two years ago it had me frantically googling queasy NOT PREGNANT Gastroenteritis NOT FLU cancer but now I know, it’s just how I get stomach viruses. I feel like I might barf for some period of time (the longest was two weeks. TWO WEEKS OF FEELING QUEASY NOT PREGNANT) and then one day I wake up and don’t feel that way anymore.

So on Sunday, that queasy, might-barf feeling in my throat, I cancelled all the plans because of course this was the weekend we had all the plans, drank a pot of ginger tea, got into bed, held all my calls, read stuff, and napped. And lo! Rest cures the wicked and on Monday I felt much better, which was handy because Arlo still felt bad and SA was on his last legs.

Yet! Yesterday I decided to not drink my morning cup of coffee, because when I have my queasy-times, a cup of coffee generally sets them off again. I had some weak tea and a lot of water. I got through the whole day yesterday without coffee, which to me said “Hey, maybe you could give up coffee! Or not? Your choice!”

This morning I woke up with a headache that felt like Tom Waits in a metal shed recording a new album based on the moral collapse of North America.

“Oh no, oh hell, oh what have I got now, is it ‘flu it can’t be ‘flu I got the shot, oh oh oh” I thought, or attempted to think. I came downstairs, drank a big cup of coffee and somewhere halfway through that cup of coffee felt quite suddenly as though I could conquer small countries if only the prime minister would give me the go-ahead and some money to hire an army and I had the inclination to conquer small countries. Not only that, but I could go for a run, come back, make healthy food, force the kids to eat it, write a novel, publish that novel, go on a book tour, get a master’s degree in country-conquering

you get the idea. I went into the kitchen, dancing, singing, “coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee COFFFEEEEE!” and so I think it’s safe to say that no amount of coffee is a safe amount and I am clearly an addict. And that I should probably never try cocaine.

A Story I Will Be Telling Forever

Oh dear. What has happened here in this empty barn of a blog. Look, there are giant spiders on the ceiling and entire generations of mice nesting in all the crumpled up bits of paper. Soon teenagers will be rutting in the hayloft. Let’s not think about it!

We got through an entire Christmas season without illness, which is significant. Since the dawn of time, we have been sick at Christmas. This year we just dealt with run of the mill assholish behavior and crappy weather. I prefer this, for the record.

Christmas Eve was so nice at first. The kids ate pancakes and watched Santa on NORAD. We let them open a present each before bedtime. Eli (that’s 4.75)(I can’t be bothered to refer to them in code anymore) opened the Hexbug set we gave him and he loved it. Arlo (that’s 6.5) opened a bunch of Lego from his uncle and aunt in Calgary. We were all happy and appreciative!

Well, after they went to bed we were less happy because Netflix broke so we couldn’t watch anything but DVDs. We picked Saturday Night Fever because we’ve owned it for years and never watched it. What an odd movie. It starts out all disco! exciting music! cheezy even! and then it’s kind of funny? Or is it just dark? Is John Travolta seriously such a douche? OK. He is. An innocent douche. Now he’s met a girl and they want to dance together. Now it’s all socio-political and about their status in the city. The music has ended. Boo.

Now we’re tired and turn it off, stuff stockings, and go to bed. Ten o’clockish.

At 1:30 AM I wake to the sound of a door opening. It’s children, creeping out of their beds. Ha ha, adorable. SA wakes up too and says, loudly, into the darkness, “It’s not morning.” We hear scurrying and the door closes. He goes back to sleep and I lie awake for twenty thousand minutes because that’s what I do in the middle of the night: have trouble getting back to sleep. It’s kind of a speciality.

At 2:15, the door opens again. I put in earplugs and put a pillow over my head but I can still hear it. Rattling, rustling, plastic something or othering. I get up and go downstairs, where I find Arlo sitting in the living room with the lights on, putting together the Lego he opened before bed.

“It’s not morning,” I tell him. I show him the clock in the kitchen, which reads 02:17.

“I just want –” he says.
“Go back to bed,” I say.

He weeps. I do not change my mind. I walk him back to bed.

Fifteen minutes later, earplugs and pillow reapplied, I can hear him and his brother talking in their bedroom. (This means he has woken his brother! I think angrily.) Then I hear arguing. They are having an argument in their bedroom at 2:30 AM. SA wakes up again and goes down to their room and speaks sternly of goblins and evil frankfurters who will come to their beds if they make one more peep before 6 AM. He returns to bed and returns to sleep in what seems like seconds. Seconds of UNFAIRNESS.

Fifteen minutes later, the bedroom door opens again. Two pairs of feet pad downstairs. I try to ignore them but I am now a) fuming and b) hungry because I’ve been awake for almost two hours so my body thinks it’s breakfast. I go downstairs and find my precious angels in the living room, shaking their gifts, all the lights on, eyes glazed like stoned deer in fluorescent headlights.

I eat a banana and stare at them.

They stare at me.

I attempt to explain how angry I am and why and what they can do about it. I don’t think I succeed. I am aware that they are not going to stay in bed, and if they do not stay in bed, I will continue hearing them move about the house and NONE OF US will sleep, except for SA bless him.

Arlo is upset that I am mad (he claims “Daddy told us we could get up at 3!”) and goes back to his room. I put a blanket over Eli and another over me, turn out the living room light (“Can we leave the tree lights on?” “NO.”) and attempt to sleep on the couch because then at least I will not be upstairs wondering what they are doing.

Eli strokes my hair.

“Your hair is soft,” he whispers.
I don’t reply.
He sighs and pulls himself closer to me. I feel his breath on my ear. He sighs again.
“Go. To. Sleep.” I say.
“I just can’t,” he says. I believe him. And yet.

Arlo comes back downstairs.
“I can’t sleep,” he says. “I tried. I just can’t.”

It is almost 4 AM. I give up. I turn on the television, prop them on the couch with blankets, leave the lights off and tell them if they make ONE SINGLE NOISE, Santa will take all their presents back and beat them with willow switches.

Upstairs again, I sleep until 7 o’clock, when I get up and make merry because hey, it’s Christmas. Allegedly, Eli slept on the couch but Arlo swears he, himself, did not. Judging by how quickly they fell asleep in the car on the way to my parents’ house (that’s fifteen minutes away, by the way), neither of them slept much at all.

Boxing Day was much better.

Human V Butterfly

We survived the book fair. The book fair days (2) coincided with early dismissal and parent/teacher interviews so on day one of the book fair, we killed 45 minutes looking at books, then I had my fifteen minute interview (Kid: Awesome. Teacher: So young.), and then we came home with two extra children for a playdate. Wow! Was that ever a day when I felt like moving to a desert island with a big bottle of Malibu.

Of course that day I forgot my wallet, so we had to go BACK to the book fair the following day. I figured this would be easy peasy; the kids had already looked at everything the day before so they would each be able to pick a book quickly — ha ha stop me if you’ve heard this one before!

No, book fair day two looked just like day one except most of the books were sold out, and I had already read everything and chatted with everyone I knew. Fresco picked his book quickly but Trombone. OH DEAR GOD. The child loves books, always has. And now he can read, so he loves them even more. He went through the place and picked up every single book and looked at the back and the last page and the first page and then put it down again and moved on to the next.

It was like last Christmas when I got a gift card for a local giant mall. What a great gift, one I really appreciated. SA got one too and he went to Chapters and spent it in ten minutes. I spent two months with the damn thing. Do I get three t-shirts? A pair of shoes? $50 worth of Body Shop hand cream? A very expensive face lotion at Kiehls? OMG OMG OMG. Watching T at the bookfair was like that, except I was not getting anything for myself, so even less compelling.

We spent some time browsing and discussing which things were books and which were not (stickers: not a book! Spy kit: not a book! Captain Underpants: A book!) and I strongly suggested some books to Trombone and he made noises like “yeah whatever” at me.

That was when the librarian’s daughter, who was about age 3, started a show. She was this adorable, curly-haired reincarnation of Shirley Temple and she had a little singing and dancing routine that ended with jazz hands and a repetition of “I’m a princess now! I’m a princess now!!” We clapped and I asked Trombone if he was done yet and he said no and I said OK five more minutes and then little Shirley started her next song, which went like this, with great pathos,

“The butterfly! Eats the human! The butterfly! Eats the HUMAN! The butterfly! Eats the HUUUUMAAAAN!”

At first I wondered if she was the soul sister of Megan’s daughter who .. well it’s hard to explain here but a) she’s adorable and b) she would sing a song like that. Then I just laughed and laughed until tears fell to my feet and formed a giant puddle. Verse two:

“The HUMAN eats the BUTTERFLY! The human! Eats the butterfly! The Human! Eats the BUTTERFLYYYYYY!”

Jazz hands. Spin. Bow.

“Trombone,” I said. “That book in your hands. Pick that one.” So we did. And we lived happily ever after; princesses, butterflies, and humans all.

Selling Books to Children. Those Devils.

My first interaction with Scholastic books was when flyers came home in our first year of preschool. The preschool gets books for free! the Scholastic parent rep crowed. Buy books for your kid(s)!

I wasn’t sold. I buy a lot of books anyway, and also we are given a lot of books, plus we use several libraries heavily yes, we are heavy library users, and we were already giving to the school with our fees and fundraising attempts. Oh chocolate almonds, how I loathe you.

Oh, all right. I just plain resented being asked to buy books from a particular retailer. I don’t know why. The Scholastic flyer’s tendency to describe books the way Columbia House described its tapes and CDs didn’t help. New book from author of More Pies! You’ll love it!

I don’t hate the company. I think they distribute books and help organizations get more books and I love books and it’s fine. I just don’t particularly want to support them. I think it’s because I either never got Scholastic flyers when I was a kid or my mother hid/burned them. I don’t have any nostalgic connection to them at all. Whatever. Books come from all kinds of places.

Last year was our first year of elementary school, and there was a Scholastic book fair. The books come to town for TWO DAYS ONLY! and you can BUY THEM IN PERSON in the LIBRARY! It’s like the kid-equivalent of U2 coming to town. My then-kindergartener was very excited about a FAIR of BOOKS, and we went and looked at the books, all displayed beautifully in the library, and I bought him and his brother each a book because how could I not. How. Seriously. The prices are not terrible and they’re right there, in person, in the library.

A year passed.

I had actually forgotten all about the book fair; if it wasn’t for my internet friends who live in cities further East than me talking about volunteering for and running the Scholastic book fair I would have totally let it pass me by — but wait, no I wouldn’t have because the book fair is a very smooth machine. I have to say, if schools ever started selling Avon or crack or things not as morally superior as books, they would be able to pay for millions in improvements and playground equipment.

I imagine the Scholastic Training for Schools goes like this:

Two weeks before book fair: Put up posters. Talk about book fair at weekly school library visit.

One week before book fair: Send home catalogue (flyer!) of books available at book fair. Remind children of book fair. Send home notice to parents telling them about book fair. Send email to parents reminding them to check the backpack for the notice telling them about the book fair.

Two days before book fair: Reminder notice about book fair. (I am imagining) Announcements over the PA system on the hour talking up the book fair.

Day before book fair: Take children to library for regular weekly visit. Do not allow them to take out books because all the books are blocked off by the book fair display. Do allow them to make a “wish list” on a piece of paper and tell them to show their parents later. Mention in passing that certain books are “already sold out!” – this creates more demand.

Day of book fair: Kids line up outside the library to get in and freak out about books. I have been told.

I know. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with it. Books! Kids + books! It’s not a NINTENDO fair. It’s not a sloppy pants and ugly tuques fair. What is my problem.

But when I mentioned to another parent the so-very-businesslike propaganda of the book fair, she nodded (her child is in 2nd grade) and said, yes, it’s weird. The “write stuff on your wish list and take it to your parents” thing is weird. Very smart. But weird. So it’s not just me.

(I remember reading four hundred blog posts by smart parents about Scholastic when my kids were babies. I don’t remember what they said. They probably said something like this post but smarter.)

My kid is so excited about the book fair that he can’t even talk properly. He’s counting down to book fair day. (It’s tomorrow. FYI.) He’s vibrating. All this, of course, depends on me agreeing to buy him a book.

We bargained down to one book. Originally he wanted five.

That’s the part I don’t like. I don’t like being manipulated. Who doesn’t buy their kid a book! “Don’t you LIKE books, Mommy?” *tears*

I resent the implication that this is my Big Opportunity to buy books. And what about those families with less money, who really can’t participate. How do those kids feel. How do their parents feel? Annoyed, probably.

But I can’t muster a really good froth of rage about this. I like books too much. I’m stuck at sort-of-annoyed. However, I will be reminding my kids to save their allowance for next year’s fair.

Vacation

Just a few shots from our summer vacation. I miss it.

My Parenting Career as a Track and Field Meet

The first three months were the marathon. People threw water and food at me and I tried to consume it while still moving and not throwing up. I didn’t sleep, or I slept the sleep of the perpetually interrupted; one hand on the diapers, the other draped artfully over my giant boobs.

The first baby’s first year was a series of 5K runs; seemingly endless but at the end of the year, as I got more proficient, they seemed suddenly so short. The more I did, the better I got. By the end of the year, I was even smiling as I ran.

Toddler life was the shotput. Haul off and try this technique. That one doesn’t work. Does this one work?

Toddler life plus pregnancy was whatever event I come in tenth at.

New baby plus toddler = triathalon. All the marathoning, plus I’m on a bike now? And also swimming? I’m changing my clothes a lot. Also I was wet and sweating and exhausted all the time, and changing my mind every three kilometres/minutes about whether it was the best or worst idea to have children.

Then I was doing those 5K runs again, but with a 9 month old bouncing against my chest. There was also some javelin tossing to get my preschooler to come back from the side of the road because I couldn’t be there to grab him because the baby was eating dog poop off the grass. No, not really.

Since both children became verbal and not-idiotic w/r/t eating poop off the grass, I stopped doing as much running after/for them so I thought the track meet was over but actually I am still tired a lot of the time and I realized two things: 1. mental exhaustion can be just as bad as physical. That’s the kind that comes from talking all day and explaining things and trying to disallow behavior while still allowing feelings except you might also have some feelings NOT THAT ANYONE CARES and also the thing with two children at different ages is if a 4.5 year old says “I’m going to smash your face into the cement,” you DON’T react because he’s just pretending to be a tough guy, but if the 6 year old says it you have to pay attention and take his brother’s face out of his hands. Re: the cement, not OK.

So 2. school aged children are the hurdles event. You’re concentrating on getting around the track and then another hurdle appears in front of you and you have to use some crazy random thigh muscles/psychological technique to get over the stupid thing and then you hurt for a week because who uses that muscle? Nobody who isn’t twenty years old! Or, if you don’t clear the hurdle, you fall on your face and cry. Get back up. And keep running, around that dusty track, leaping when warranted, enjoying that you are in the best shape of your life.*

* Or possibly just a few years from a full physical breakdown. Ha ha ha! Probably not.

Swimming

I went to the swimming pool today with Fresco (4.5) and my mother (age undisclosed). Fresco has been taking swimming lessons since the summer, when he was sort of in love with the water, but a few weeks ago his instructor dunked him in the water and now he is scared of it. Which he wasn’t, before.

Actually that’s not true. Back in July when we went to Ontario for a three week vacation, Fresco started out afraid of the water. But then it was hot. Really hot. And the lake we swam in (Lake Huron) had about a four kilometre lead-in before you got your shoulders wet. So we all just walked away from him slowly and backwards until he decided to follow us and walla! he was in the water again within three days.

I mean it was about a million degrees celsius. You’d have to be a moron not to go in the water.

(there was going to be a great photo here of me piggybacking Fresco in the lake but I realized that I am missing two weeks of photos. Oh.)

We did a set of lessons in August. Then I signed both boys up for the next set of lessons at the same time so I could relax for 25 minutes (haaa!). All was going well, then came the dunking. Then, “Is it Friday?” “Yes! Hooray for –” “No, I hate Friday. Friday is swimmmmmiinngg waaaaaaah wahhhhhhhh.” Good job, me, for scheduling the swimming lessons at FIVE PM so I could listen to the complaining all day leading up to five o clock.

Five o’clock Friday afternoon: You thought it was Happy Hour. You thought wrong.

When we get there, he is fine. Except if his teacher asks if he would like to go underwater. Then he is not-fine. Last week his teacher came over to me and told me she wouldn’t be able to pass him if he didn’t put his whole head in the water. “Oh no!” I didn’t say. “A child repeating a swimming lesson level? Shocking!”

I am pretty sure no child passes any level the first time because otherwise how would they pay your wages, eh Missy? I also didn’t say.

I have learned a few things in my first six years as a parent. One is: it’s okay if you fail a swimming level. I mostly already knew that, having failed a few swimming levels in my own day, because I didn’t want to put my face in the water ahem. I can swim though! And now I can put my face in the water..with goggles..if I’m plugging my nose.

And don’t go thinking that Fresco won’t do it because he’s never seen anyone do it because SA dives like a goddamn dolphin.

I also failed skating because I refused to learn the proper stopping technique. (That’s what the boards are for! Fail.)

Two is: you can match wills with Fresco if you want to? But I don’t recommend it.

I’m pretty sure, also, that if someone three times my size held me under the armpits and then put me underwater, I would not want to go back to class either. After I saw her do that, I told him to tell his teacher he didn’t want to go underwater until he was ready. And I will be filling out or possibly creating a comment card for this teacher. On the other hand, I don’t want to just quit lessons — Trombone is doing well and also, we don’t quit. It’s OK if you don’t pass, but we’re not quitting.

So we went to the swimming pool today to frolic and enjoy ourselves and take away the horrible pressure of LESSONS. It was very good times. The pool is a new one, in a nearby city, and it’s warm like a bathtub with many water features like a ‘lazy river’ whose current actually moves you around. Whee!

Afterward, in the change room, Fresco told me that I was Black Panther because I was putting on black underwear and that I had extra powers because of my black…breast things. (he meant bra) So there. I am Black Panther. I have no pictures of that either. Hm. Oh well.

Fresco face on a boat we rode in Ontario this summer.

Seventeen Truths

Almost nothing makes me madder than being mad and having no one notice how mad I am.

I also get really mad when people treat other people like garbage.

I hate cleaning out empty yogurt containers.

Sinks full of dirty dishes can never touch my bare hands.

But I will pick up cat poop from the floor using only a tissue.

I can’t burp. So when I get gassy in the upper register, I gurgle a lot and then get uncomfortable.

This is why I am picky about what beer I drink: if it’s mostly carbonation, I can only have one. Sometimes half of one.

This is also why I drink approximately one soda pop per year.

My mouth is crooked.

Once I heard a song on the dance radio station that I just loved. I am ashamed to admit it was by some ugly dude named Pitbull whose video displayed more tits than a field full of milking cows and now I can’t love that song anymore.

I have almost no knowledge of grammar rules. I really think I was away from my desk that day in grade seven.

Sometimes I get this panicked feeling that I have been spelling everything wrong forever and no one has told me.

I like the look of boy short style underwear, but all that fabric bunching up in my business! I would rather wear bikini briefs.

I enjoy creating analogies about the creative process more than I enjoy engaging in the creative process, unless one counts creating analogies as part of the creative process.

Sometimes I forget how tall I am.

With a couple of notable exceptions, I just really don’t like most small dogs. Their constant excitement makes me nervous.

I love Cher, mostly because she’s an alto so I can sing along.