cribchronicles.com

do you ever get the sense that i get just a little too much pleasure out of being, erm, disappointed by life?

that too much happiness might make me blotchy and damp…and if the world really coughed up sunbeams and roses all over my lawn, i’d move?

yeh, me too.

but maybe not right away. ’cause apparently, not getting rabies was just the start of a neat new turn of luck here in the crib. they called. yep, called. after days of the phone sitting limply in its cradle, taunting my tender, puny, shrivelled sense of usefulness to the outside world, they called. bless their crooked little hearts, they called.

i have a job.

of course, now i have to go to work. perhaps i shoulda thought this all through a little better?

nah.  i am grateful. very grateful. i feel validated. i feel relieved. i feel a pleasant, odd, unfamiliar sense of material security. this will be the very first time in the thirty months since we came back to Canada that Dave & i will both have full-time employment, at the same time. it’s been a long, hard slog, this past two-and-a-half years…and the respite from blatant uncertainty is something i think we need, for awhile. it’s only a term contract, my job, but it’s an interesting contract. and they called.

so we celebrated the turning of the worm in our apparent favour, our little family, by playing with some worms in the yard after dinner. with the sun dappling down, in the grass with my healthy, laughing child on an almost-warm, almost-summer evening, i too felt healthy. ‘normal’. unembittered, unwounded. like someone not weighed down by damage and loss and self-doubt, not crouched, warily, cynically, waiting for hurt and disappointment even in the midst of joy. for the first time in more than two years, i just felt…safe. and pleasantly, banally, hopeful.

now hell, it could all be an illusion. i know i could be hit by a bus on my way to my first day at work. more important, i know that Oscar and Dave, so precious to me, are mortal, and vulnerable. i know. but for a few minutes last evening, i remembered how to forget. and regaining that footing - just that simple sense of balance, the absence of agitation and fear - brought a peace i hadn’t remembered at all.

i have exhaled, finally.

the housecleaners came today, thank Jesus. since last November, they’ve been coming every four or five weeks, two women my own age, and scrubbing the floors and the bathroom and the windows, leaving our tidy but grubby little house grime-free for twelve whole minutes and bringing me great joy and a profound sense of freedom. the one hour they spend here every month releases me from a drudgery i particularly hate, and more important, from the fear that my child will die from eating off my floors. the $30 i spend in that one hour is my ticket out from under the burden of housewifely neglect and all the stereotypes of my sex role. both women tease me that if i don’t get a job soon i’ll have to come work for them. and if some month, freelancing fails to net me the $30 luxury of freedom from my own perfectionism, i’ll happily pick up a pail in someone else’s house rather than lose them cleaning my own. $30 is nothing, for what i get out of it.

i got a pedicure last week. it has been almost ten years since i first discovered the Nirvana that is the pedicure, and though i’ve only had perhaps twenty-five of them in the ensuing decade, i can tell you about each one, like rhyming off lovers in a rolling list of memories. the soak. the scrape. the tidy clipping, the smoothing and filing into pretty moons. the massage. the painting and polishing…my one nod to overt societal beauty conventions…me who never wears makeup feels naked without toe polish, usually matte red-brown, sometimes French, usually chipped and months old because i wait so long between visits to the aesthetician. but i go. last week, after months and months of scratchy, neglected feet scraping small holes in my socks, i went, hoping to usher in some sandal weather. the woman i go to talks too much, shares too much, but she has steady hands and i pretend to sleep and sometimes really do slip out of myself, into that suspended space where all i have to do is lie still and get my toes prettied. she is the cheapest in town…$30 for forty-five minutes of relaxation, turning my hooves into proverbial silk purses. and again, $30 is nothing, for what i get out of it.

Oscar goes back to his sitter’s house tomorrow, for the day, so i can get caught up on my freelance editing and my job searching and the housework that the cleaners don’t do and the errands i want to do, and all your blogs. he has been there three days so far…Tuesdays and Thursdays these past two weeks. he seems happy enough with the arrangement, squeaking with pleasure when we arrive, hugging the dog, greeting the little girls of the house like a mini-Elvis come to swagger for their pleasure. his sitter is kind, and engaging, and if she has the tv on too much for my liking she’s still using his cloth diapers without complaint and feeding him nutritious-ish lunches and setting limits gently but firmly so far as i can see, and it seems like a good home, a caring enough place. for eight hours a day, she is good to my child. my child. my beloved, my baby. for eight hours a day, for watching and wiping and feeding and laughing with him, teaching him, being there for him, she charges $30 total.

and $30 is nothing, for what i/he/freaking society as a whole gets out it…when you consider how many little children are in some form of childcare, how many of ‘tomorrow’s leaders’ are being shaped by someone who gets paid eight times less than the woman who does my feet, and still significantly less than the people cleaning my house. because that’s the market rate, because that’s apparently how we value that work. and i took all the feminist courses years ago, and i knew all this in theory, but still, when it works out this coldly, this cleanly, i’m stunned.

now, O’s sitter can make more. she can take in more babies, more children. right now, she only has her own daughters and himself in her care. but starting in June, there will be two more one-year-olds there, on a full-time basis. and she’s willing to take O full-time. and she mentioned another child who might be coming part-time, too. and i think “my stars, five babies, how will my preshus ever get the attention he deserves?’

but $30 is nothing, friends. and Dave & i can find different options, sure…hire someone we pay reasonably to Nanny for him at our place, instead…though i think he’s really ready for the interaction with other kids, ready to be out of the bubble of this house a few days a week…or i could pay the sitter more! except then i think i’d look like some weird white-liberal-guilt twit who doesn’t have a job but has to feel magnanimous so she won’t have to deal with her class issues. maybe it would offend the sitter’s dignity. maybe she’d be thrilled. maybe both. i dunno. chances are i won’t do it.

and even if i did, it wouldn’t be $30 an hour. i know that childcare is day-in, day-out - hence the reason i’m paying someone to do some of it - and i know that i only get, on average, four pedicures a year, if that. but still. but still. isn’t it weird? my pretty feet and my child being kept safe by someone else…both luxuries i choose to pay for right now, but i pay eight times as much for the former because that’s what my society deems a fair wage. because that’s the going rate.

tell me, friends, what the fuck is right about that? ’cause i cannot figure it out.

the twenty-fourth of May is the Queen’s birthday
and if we don’t get a holiday
we’ll all run away

when i was a little girl, my dear, beloved, older-than-God grandmother used to recite that little ditty every May, just in time for the May 24th long weekend to roll around…a rhyme from her own childhood, she said, when the Queen in question (Victoria, that stout, dour paragon of empire) was only recently dead and the whole concept of a holiday in her honour slightly less anachronistic. the rhyme still gives me fantastical visions of lobbyist urchins and miniature agitators from the turn of the last century, bloomers aflap and braids waving, threatening mass civil unrest and parental abandonment. we have some weird vestigial holidays here in the colonies.

now, holidays are nice, whatever their source…though Victoria Day being our ‘beginning of summer’ long weekend, three degree temperatures and a pissload of rain for three days solid aren’t really what i imagine the Victorian-era junior Jimmy Hoffas had in mind for the holiday they clamoured for. Oscar didn’t think much of the weather, either, and after an entire weekend of it on top of last week’s snow, he was ready to head outside, even if a seaside vacation wasn’t really an option.

we went to the swings, instead, jolly good times.

and tried going high, high…okay, medium

and made mommy get some exercise

and then, all tuckered out, went to the pub and tried his very first stout with Daddy. Victoria Day weekend is, after all, one of the biggest drinking holidays in the Canadian calendar.

and then, just for extra fun, O went home and tortured the kitty cat by trapping her in her hidey hole for, like, ever.

good times, good times.

hopefully your ‘first weekend of summer’ had (or will have, next weekend methinks?) better weather…what did (or will) you do?

because i am a sheep, and it’s apparently annual meme cleanout day on ye olde intertubes, i present with you with a clever merging of two separate tags that have been languishing in my inbox. behold, my very own transmogrified mutant meme! woot!

(yes, it’s Friday night and i’m drinking. by myself. could you tell?)

earlier in the week, my fine friend George asked me what was on my fridge. our wise Daffa says this disclosure will tell a great deal about my personality. since i am secretly fascinated with all potential keys to my personality, and this seems like a lot less work than learning numerology, i leapt at the opportunity. erm…slowly, i leapt. it’s a four or five day process around here. i’m a bit of a delayed leaper, but a sincere one.

the following day, after the great leap to taking-a-photo-of-my-refrigerator began, and i was getting really geared up, the lovely Julia at Won’t Fear Love tagged me with the “random-number of things i am” meme. since this also suggests the potential for fascinating revelations about my inner self, but requires more work (and waaaaay more verbal clarity than i am likely to summon this fine evening), i thought…hmmm. could there be a marriage of true memes in here somewhere?

you can see where this is going, can’t you?

freakin’ precocious readership.

may i present yon refrigerator, inhabitant of my kitchen? it is my favourite Rorshach test cum archive in the house.

on my refrigerator, you will find, categorized by type…

1. postcards. one of Miffy, but of course, one of an art deco clock, one of the Art Nouveau metro entrances in Paris. a tasteful collection. ten years ago, when i lusted for travel and was sure i’d never go anywhere, i stuck every postcard i got for three years on my fridge, to the point where it began to resemble a small travel agency inside my kitchen.

tells you…the things i love, i love a lot. i sometimes don’t know when to stop.

2. fridge magnets, mostly of the colourful, sarcastic, retro-50s, cartoon fish and/or free handout variety, some of which advertise pizza joints in cities and even countries i no longer live in. plus one that’s a pastel rendering of a hot air balloon. it doesn’t fit with all the others, is not my style - but it belonged to my grandmother. it was given to her when she began the slow decline of her battle with cancer, and says, in frilly italics, “if you cannot walk, creep.” it went with her from the house she was born in to the downsized apartment, to the nursing home, to her hospital nightside table. when Dave & i moved into this house days after Finn died, i think it was the first thing that i put on our fridge. it made me feel less alone.

tells you…i am sentimental as shit, deep inside. and capable of strength. and i have been, in my life, well-loved, and am still drawing from that well daily and hoping some of the same love rubs off on my child and my partner and those around me.

3. Oscar’s birth announcement from the local paper. he was the cutest baby in that week’s edition, like, by far. plus his cousin Angus’ birth announcement card from the hospital. and a picture of Angus and his older brother Isaac, and a picture of Isaac by himself, and a picture of Ava in Moncton and Robert and Michael in Ottawa and Joseph in Korea and my little cousin Emma in Guelph and probably, under stuff, some photos of other adorable children who have now gone off to college but are forever trapped in chubby-cheeked preschool photos, like bugs in amber, on my fridge.

tells you…i am a lover of images i can clip and cut from paper, arrange in space. i hate to see old media die. i will miss the curling corners of photos when they’ve all gone onscreen, and would like to be the last person in the world to keep a traditional photo album, much as i lurve me my flickr account. but alas, i am already slipping from the world of printing photos, and i am sad about it. lazy, yes, but very sad.

4. another picture from the local paper, this one of moi and veteran Canadian actor Gordon Pinsent. yes, i run in heady circles. funny story…see, i was eleven days postpartum, staying at the NICU with Oscar pretty much full time, and burning out. the baby kept losing weight, so one evening the nurses said “listen, we’re going to tube feed him tonight, make sure he gets lots of calories. get out. go do something. clear your head.” thus, Dave kindly took my drippy, puffy, mournful self to the local rep cinema to see the local premiere of Pinsent’s new film. it was May. in the eleven days since O’s birth the slush of April had suddenly turned to spring, and as we made our way towards the theatre, i became aware that i was ambling out in public in velour maternity pants, a horribly unseasonal acrylic cardigan, a stinky, milk and lanolin-stained tshirt that clung to my still-swollen belly, and bad shoes. very bad shoes. plus a hospital bracelet, which identified me as the mother of isolette number 3B, but made me look rather as if i were on a day pass and off my meds. and i said as much to Dave. he, of course, laughed at my vanity and said “what? you think you’re going to be discovered at the movie theatre?” heh. uh, yeh. what was i thinking? so in we went, got popcorn, settled ourselves, got comfy. and the minute i slipped back out to the lobby to ask for more butter for my popcorn (i’d been eating hospital food, people), the photographer from the local paper pounced on me, snuggled my startled carcass up under Gordon Pinsent’s arm so fast i could barely say butter, and left me staring vapidly into the very blue eyes of the elderly, charming, just-my-height Pinsent while he went to round up more sheep for the photo. i remember trying to sniff myself without appearing obvious. i could not think of a single thing to say, except “i just had a baby” which seemed rather defensive and all about me, really, so i think i blurted out “come here often?” instead, as if i were about to buy him a Singapore Sling. he was shy, and quite sweet. the photo is one of the most awkward of me ever taken, but i keep it on the fridge to remind Dave that my narcissism should always be taken seriously.

tells you…i am completely incapable of telling a short story. i love artifacts of moments that are messy, and funny. i am vain, but keep and even treasure the very worst pictures of myself if they remind me of who i was in a particular time & place & skin. i will never again go out in public dressed like that, even if my house is burning down. that would be the night David Bowie would be wandering down my street, dressed as a fireman. i have strange luck.

5. a ream of non-date-stamped coupons we were given by Welcome Wagon when we moved in two years ago, and when O was born last year. i haven’t gotten around to using any, and am not really sure we need a free beach ball or home milk delivery (maybe more now that O’s moved to cow’s milk?), but i can’t seem to throw them out. we might need them.

tells you…i’m cheap. and secretly hoarding for a scarcity economy i’ve been imagining how to survive in since childhood. i think it’s one of the scars of Scots Protestantism as it was practiced in my family, all frugal noble denial and waste not, want not. i don’t even like beach balls.

6. an invoice from the city Water and Sewage Utility, reminding us that we owe them money for the water we are going to use later this year. (and telling us our pipes are likely full of lead…yay! fun!) the invoice is there because until last week we were in rather serious arrears for all the water we used last year, since i had failed to get the we- bill-you-in-advance memo that apparently goes out to all other Islanders at birth, and in my addled and poorly dressed post-partum state at this time a year ago had thought that when the nice lady said “your account is up to date” she actually meant that our account was up to date, and paid through 2006. my stars and whiskers, no. it wasn’t. silly me.

tells you…i am an uptight, sarcastic snotbag who hates the powerlessness of feeling disorganized, and will go righteous all over your ass if your policies are not clear and leave me owing more money than i think i should. and i will punish you by paying you on time next time! so take that! (spit. insert offended head tilt).

7. a giant picture made for Oscar’s first birthday by his second cousin Sarah, who is six. she is my cousin’s daughter. i’ve only met her twice in her short-ish life, but my drunkle Bill (her grandfather) happened to be visiting PEI with her the day of O’s birthday and brought her by. she is charming and hilarious, and spent half the visit trying to get her long, spidery six-year old legs in and out of Oscar’s exersaucer, pretending she was the baby.

tells you…i am a sucker for six year old girls. and hopeful about six year old boys. i cannot wait to really play with my child, to talk with him and make up games and stories, to find out what’s taking shape inside that little blond head, inside that imagination. i hope he will draw, and play, and fantasize. i hope he will not care that i hate hockey. i hope i will not tell him.

8. plastic fridge letters. sometimes i like to spell out words, just for the pleasure of seeing them appear in front of me in neon.

tells you…i am weird. i love spelling. it is my great gift, the one place where i am a savant…i spent my childhood cursing Whole Language and longing for the days of spelling bees. i see words as i say them, cannot remember a name unless i know how it’s spelled. to focus myself, i spell things in my head, long words…and the letters just come for me, line up one after the other, almost always in unerring order, subconsciously just…there.

riveting, huh? need another drink? me too. except mine was actually quite gross and i gave up on it somewhere about item #2 on the fridge list. note to self - if you’re going to crack open the delicious chamomile-y goodness of the Becherovka you’ve drug back from the Czech Republic, do so when you have mix in the house, or when there is another adult in the house to free you to go buy mix while baby sleeps. because Becherovka, dear friends, however tasty with tonic, does not gel well with grapefruit cooler and flat diet ginger-ale, no matter how scrumptious the combo may sound.

you’ve been told.

and despite all the meme-ness going around today, you will not be tagged. in the spirit of Puritan party-pooping that matches so well with my pitiful attempt to try to drink alone, i’m not going to tag anyone new. “consider yourself tagged if you wanna be” may be a cop out, but it’s one that goes nicely with the plain glass of water i’m now taking off to bed with me.

my fridge and i wish you a good night.

you know how in a very short time so much life can pass that you feel like it’s impossible to begin to catch up?

i feel like that.

the first time i went to Prague, it was in a handbasket. a wild, debaucherous, wonder-struck, stars-in-my-eyes, no-holds-barred and emotionally wringing kind of handbasket that in effect marked the end of my first (and formally, only) marriage and the utter fulfillment of the travel fantasies i’d had since i was an adolescent. Prague was a frilly birthday cake of seedy, smoky magic to me, and every place since has struggled to compare.

this trip to Mitteleurope was moderately more sedate…but still pretty surreal. it is the Twilight Zone of cities, Praha. Dave and i used to live in its ugly stepsister, Bratislava, but while the Soviet housing suburbs of the two are generally the same vast horrors of concrete bleakness, and the old town squares of each are monuments to Hapsburg frivolity and empire building, Prague - for me, at least - is infused with a unique energy that seems to inspire me to both my best and my worst all at the same time. it’s a heady place.

but it is no longer one i want to live in.

and a part of me is mourning the loss of that lust for baroque vistas and seedy underbelly. because it is gorgeous - indubitably, breathtakingly so. and it is a site ideally suited to the latenight cigarette-infused intensity and abandon and giddy conversation that i still rise to like a swimmer coming up for air, as if i’d never been out of the medium. i love it for that. and i loved that Dave and Oscar and i got to take in the former, and that Dave and i were freed by our generous babysitting friends for the rare freedom and focus of the latter. those things alone, plus getting to connect and catch up with those fine friends in what is now the third country we’ve all shared too many drinks in, was worth the trip. truly.

but the whole time i was just slightly off-balance, uneasy. around every corner, i found ghosts of myself, of former lives, all intersecting. i do not want to be an expat anymore, not one struggling to make enough to leave the (albeit beautiful) city i live in, not one continually bracing myself for a way to comprehend the seemingly Kafka-esque whims of local bureaucracy and red tape, not one looking for community in bars. i know there are other experiences available in the expatriate pallette, but these were my own…at their best. and i am over that. and i am a little sad to realize that so viscerally…because it means that a part of my heart can never truly go home again, to the magical land of faraway.

the journey back from Prague to London involved a race to the local children’s emergency room with Oscar, who’d come down with bronchiolitis all over again, poor wee, then a hustle back to drag our baggage and cartage and kitchen sink down the four flights of stairs from our friends’ flat to the cab, since we were not braving three changes on public transport laden down with luggage and a sick baby, then a screaming match between yours truly and a skanky cheap-Barbie-knockoff Czech Easyjet agent who - despite our problem-free trip from London to Prague with exactly the same luggage, and a confirmation phone call i’d made to the company itself before we ever left Canada to assure myself that i was interpreting their baggage allowances appropriately - charged us an extra $125 US just to depart her fine but still graft-notorious country with the same bags we’d come in with, may she burn in fake tan hell, the smug slag and her entire airline. that was a pleasant day.

London has been rejuvenating, however. Oscar is recovering. he has been, for the most part, an amazing little travel companion, adaptable and curious and pleasant, despite his wretched cold. he scared us badly, the morning of the emergency room run…but only forty-eight hours later, he is rested and pink-cheeked and happy, if a little snot-ridden. i love having him here, showing him things, seeing how he responds to sights and smells and people and the crush of public transit, watching his little feed trod over flagstones that are hundreds of years old. and in moments, i desperately wish Dave & i could have a swank dinner without little hands flailing to taste everything right now. such is parenthood, i guess. i would not trade. we are staying with another of the old friends we are lucky enough to have scattered all over the world right now, and her flat is tres cool and comfortable for getting our feet back under us. yesterday, O got his diaper changed at the London Eye, and at the Tate Modern. i’m sure he’ll treasure the photographic evidence of these adventures when he’s older.

wherever you go, there you are, they say…and i am discovering myself again each new place we go.

wish you were here.

from the underworld? hell, no.

this dispatch is coming to you from a suite in the Hilton Metropol, hop skip and jump from Paddington Station, London.

some of us have come up in the world.

we’re here. the sky is dreary and the skyline is ahump with Victorian brick chimneys and i am tired in that strange, shaky way that makes your eyes ache, but we are all three safe and present and accounted for and none too worse for wear.

and wiser. the adult-types among us, at least. much wiser.

i really had no idea what to expect from international travel with a one-year-old whose longest journey until yesterday had been the four hour drive to Grandmaman and Grandpapa’s. i quaked inside. i planned, and organized, and badgered Air Canada with questions until i actually felt sorry for them, which is probably a first in their customer relations history. i felt i’d prepared for all contingencies as best i could. and secretly, inside, below the panic, i really thought O would be fine. he’s a hardy little soul, and pretty adaptable. he’s unhappy? you feed him, nurse him, or give him a drink, and suddenly all is contentment in the land. he’s fussy? give him a toy, or a cup with a piece of crumpled paper to put in and take out, he’s agiggle. he’s Pooh Bear, basically. our own lovable Pooh Bear.

but he does not like to be held. he is a sweet, even snuggly, but essentially independent Pooh Bear.

note to all parents considering travel with their young offspring and too cheap to actually buy the child his or her own thousand-dollar seat: remember to factor your child’s tolerance for extended human lap proximity into your decision. i know to mention this, because we, um, didn’t.

i didn’t think it would be a problem. i’ve continued nursing O, morning and night, for the last three months mostly in this anticipation of this trip. i love the skin to skinness of breastfeeding him, and the extra few minutes of quiet horizontitude it gives me in the morning, sure, but i would have gladly weaned him before now and burned those nasty nursing bras if it weren’t for this trip. because i know he’s not big on lap-sitting, at times, but he’s never turned down a nipple in his life, my son…and he frequently slips off to half-sleep when i nurse him right before bed, sitting with him cradled in my arms. we have, in my mind, been practicing for this trip for eons. of all the things i worried about for this little adventure, the nursing was not one of them. it was my ace in the hole, babee.

apparently Oscar did not get that memo.

from the moment we boarded the plane in Charlottetown, my breasts - and anything, really, that involved being physically too near his loving parents - became Public Enemy Number One for O. we spent the hour and a half flight from Charlottetown to Montreal squished into a tiny little two-seat row, Dave and i, with a howling, squirming, wildebeest crawling frantically between us. lie back and drink his bottle? no problem. turn his head just a fraction and nurse from his mother’s delightfully engorged breast? violation of his human rights, folks. i think every single human being on that plane wondered why we were stabbing the child with forks. i suspect most of them also wondered whether i was, in fact, actually wearing garments on my upper half, as i spent half the flight chasing Oscar’s open, protesting mouth around the row with my nipples, like some weird, boob-juggling circus act used to torture small travellers.

in other words, it went really well.

you can shoot me if anything ever goes that well again.

at the gate, Dave & i were red-faced and horrified, afraid to look at each other. Oscar sat contentedly in his stroller, waving at all the people he’d deafened for the ninety minutes previous.

i seriously considered saying, ‘gee, honey, i’ve got to pee’…and catching a flight for Tijuana by myself.

but when we got on the plane to Montreal, a small miracle occurred. they allowed us to bring the car seat on board, because there were extra seats on the flight…and O spent the entire seven hour flight in his seat, happy as a freaking clam. he ate. he slept. we read books and played patty-cake. i napped a bit, as did Dave. we landed safely, got to jump the entire freaking customs line (!) - apparently a bonus of international travel en famille - and made our way without event or delay to this sweet-ass hotel room.

so overall, really, apart from the first ninety minutes, an amazingly successful trip.

and Oscar nursed like a suckling pig once we got here, the little wretch…so i’m not sure what was up with all the rejection. maybe he was claustrophobic? shy about me baring my bosom in public? i dunno. i know i hadn’t planned on it, and i know i didn’t know what to do with it. i’m thinking we may have to have the car seat surgically attached to his diaper for the trip home.

but for the moment, a nap. then we take London. will keep you posted.

uhoh

Originally uploaded by oscarcormier.

…and he ain’t looking cheery.

i hate taxes. they make me sweat. they make me feel inept, and vulnerable, and sneaky, all in one…tax time for me is like a once-yearly revisitation by that power-mad seventh grade teacher who used to hiss at me and banish me to the hall for offences i could never quite identify. tax time makes me feel like i’m constantly forgetting something important, and am too hopelessly stupid to ever figure out what other people clearly know.

i learned to do my own taxes long ago, out of sheer spite. but i don’t like it.

so i decided to let Oscar try them this year instead. as you can see from his reaction, either his father and i are financial idiots about to lose the farm, or we’re on the road to kicking Revenue Canada’s ass.

i’m hoping for the latter. do you really think the word “count” in accountant means anything? does the fact that he can’t (count, that is - c’mon, he’s not even one, people!) bode poorly?

Dave, in his noble and ever-uphill quest to help me truly become part of the 21st century, has tagged me with the “Five Things You Don’t Know About Me” meme.

the very fact that i know what a meme is is some proof that his efforts have not entirely failed. i like reading these little blogosphere snail trails, mostly because i like to trace the meme back, linking and linking, looking for a logic of connection between these people who choose each other. this one’s kinda obvious, of course. Dave and i are intertwined in Oscar…not just linked on blogrolls. but still. if you didn’t know that, and you read both our posts, i wonder if you’d ever suspect?

so…five things. god.

first - there exists an alternate universe where David Bowie is my Celebrity Boyfriend and is dying to marry me someday, simply because i have been patiently waiting for him for more than twenty years. yes, it is true. this despite the fact that i am generally impatient in the usual arrangement of space/time, that i am quite deeply happy with the other Dave (who i think believes himself to be the “real” Dave) and that i have epistemological misgivings about ever getting married again. this despite the fact that i don’t actually find David Bowie sexy, per se. and yet…and yet…he is my oldest habit, in so many ways. and one must be faithful to something, yes? so i continue to believe, in some small part of myself.

second - i know all the words to the Anne of Green Gables musical. i don’t just mean the songs…i mean ALL the words. and sometimes i still sing the songs in the shower. oh, legacies of a misspent youth in a province where teenage summer jobs all involve prostituting oneself to the wearing of pigtails.

third - i bleach my moustache. (to those who know me in real life, this may not be so much of a surprise as i think it is. heh. we shall never speak of this again.)

fourth - i once played rugby. or actually, in point of fact, i played in three official (and a number of pickup) rugby games, during two seasons as a member of the Mount Allison University womens’ rugby league. yep, three games, two whole seasons. can we say “not a natural”? i also drank with the team for another entire season. i was far better at the drinking than at the playing…as the coach eventually concluded when i finally, miraculously caught the ball during a game but immediately turned around and ran the wrong way. in my defense, i was not confused, just bent on self-preservation. a Very Large Opponent (a giantess, i shit you not, she was, like, six-foot-nine, built like a Volkswagen, had fangs) was trying to tackle me. she ran me down despite my cowardly attempt to flee and gave me a most impressive talon-like scar on my thigh with her illegal metal cleats, which i now prize as my one (ever) sports injury…but thus ended my active rugby career. i think i lack the team sport gene.

fifth - i was voted “Most Artistic” when i graduated from high school. high on such acclaim, i promptly and completely stopped creating any kind of visual art (why fall from glory?) but still have a secret artist buried deep inside somewhere. the trip to MoMA in New York last month made me all moist and wide-eyed and breathy, and inspired me enough that i have actually glopped some paint on a little DIY mirror thingy for O for Christmas. Warhol, eat your heart out.

so there. i stand before you naked. more or less.

and now i get to call out others. hmmm. locally, i’d love to know what Cynthia is keeping under her bike shorts. and way up there in Upper Canada, Dinah needs to get posting and feed my habit. in the mommy blog world…i’m tagging Christy, Beth, and deadbabymama, all of whom have a way with words and feelings and funny/bad/sad/secret stuff that always make for very fine reading.

chop chop, little sea monkeys…trust me, it beats wrapping presents.

i’m a bad mommy.

ever since December dawned three days ago, i’ve been secretly suffering from seasonal denial. while i haven’t quite gone so far as to try to stop Christmas from coming, i have been hoping it will just quietly go away…and perhaps come again another year, when i’m more ready? more festive?

if i had a chimney to stuff the Christmas tree up, oh, i’d have told that tree to stuff itself.

i don’t think this Christmas curmudgeon-ness is because my heart is two sizes too small, though. i’m just too busy and too worn out and have too much stuff clamouring to be done to want to make time for all the extra to-dos that Christmas entails. shopping. wrapping. dragging the tree out of the attic. sweeping up all the insulation that will get dragged out with it. un-knotting all the lights. stringing the damn things. finding the extension cords. taking O to visit Santa. eating all those boxes of “Pot of Gold” chocolates. hard work, all of it.

but it’s good for me, i think…Pot of Gold aside.

because in stringing those lights with Dave, in taking Oscar to see Santa at the mall, even getting carols stuck in my head…i’m hoping i’ll find a little of my inner Cindy Lou Who. maybe a little of that ephemeral Christmas magic will sink in, and my little Grinch heart will grow three sizes, and i’ll be possessed with the power not only to sweep and shop and bake fruitcakes, but to do it all with a little cheer. maybe?

to try to get things started, we took our holiday family photo this afternoon, after propping the tree in a corner and tossing some lights on one side of it. it’s our very first holiday family photo, ever. some families go to Sears for these auspicious occasions. we barely look like we made it out of bed - and Oscar looks rather like a small escapee from Alcatraz in his Christmas stripes - but it’s a start, nonetheless. and it was kinda fun.

so…which of these wonders would you send out to your near and dear ones? elves are waiting to send the family portrait of your choice across the ether…vote early, vote often.

the loony happy family

the loony scary family (with cat and offspring trying to escape)

and god bless us, every one

fa la la la la, blah blah blah blah.

happy December, everybody.

this is a picture of Oscar’s mother in NYC.

it is a picture, more specifically, of Oscar’s mother at the Rockefeller Center, in front of the building her grandparents worked in during WWII.

there is no Oscar in this picture.

for just a couple of days, that was really nice. Oscar’s mother wore clothes with no spitup on them, and went to Hairspray and MoMA and funky little bookstores. she went shopping, and didn’t worry about nap schedules. she had real, uninterrupted conversations with Oscar’s father. Oscar’s mother ate a lot of Korean food, and Italian food, and Turkish food, and some pastries that the gods clearly invented. she had the best cheesecake of her life. she did not stint on caffeine intake.

Oscar’s mother drank in the afternoon.

it was a wonderful trip to a fantabulous city, and Oscar’s mother was enthralled and would go back next weekend if she could convince someone to get her a ticket.

but that isn’t the whole picture.

the picture doesn’t show the panic attack Oscar’s mother had at 1 am the first night, trying to fall asleep in a fabulously skanky “hotel” on Times Square while her very overtired and overstimulated brain reviewed all the terrible things that could possibly happen to poor Oscar over the course of his lifetime and played them in a vivid and unrelenting reel.

the picture doesn’t show the way Oscar’s mother’s head snapped round every time she heard a baby cry on the subway, or saw a little bald head peeping out of a snuggli.

it doesn’t show the hokey “i heart NY” baby onesie that Oscar got as a souvenir, or the NYC nameplate for his door, or his Oscar the Grouch his mother carted back to Canada in her carry-on, or the copy of “The Giving Tree” bought at St. Mark’s Place just so he would eventually know he was being thought of even when we were away from him.

the picture doesn’t show the Air Canada employee that Oscar’s mother nearly ate whole and spit out when the flight home to Oscar was cancelled.

the picture doesn’t show the nice first class seats Oscar’s mother and father got to sit in on the eventually rescheduled flight, once the previously mentioned Air Canada employee was made aware of the existence of Oscar waiting patiently at home. or the fear in said employee’s eyes as she tried to assuage Oscar’s mother into feeling a little less fierce and feral.

the picture doesn’t show Oscar’s mother’s face when she got home at midnight last night after fifteen hours in transit - we could have driven home faster - and pulled Oscar from his crib and rocked him in the dark and kissed his head.

i think that was probably the best picture of the whole trip, but only Oscar’s father got to see it.

wow, what a city…like a toyland for grownups. someday we’ll take Oscar and see if it’s a toyland for kids, too.