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i’m not very good with being told what to do. the infinitive imperious tense (okay, i made that up…it is my secret shame that i’m an English teacher with no clue about formal grammatical terms) does not bring out my innate graciousness. rather, my back goes up, my head tilts, my left eyebrow arches, and my mule-like hooves dig into whatever ground is beneath me with a tenacity generally seen only in the barnacle species. it is a charming quality, i’m told, this blind resistance to commands. just ask my mother. our communications during my teen years resembled those between two immovable and opposed objects, one sitting atop the other. i kept a journal during these years…ornery times, reflected in angsty melodrama. shudder.

but i am also, contrarily, a pleaser. so long as a request or direction comes with some semblance of conviviality, of reciprocity, or of appeal to my inflated sense of individuality and uniqueness, dude, i’m there. i hate to let people down. i will walk miles to help someone out, or to do my duty by the social contract, so long as i get to operate under the premise – however illusory – that i’m acting freely and creatively, rather than merely going through arbitrary motions demanded by self-proclaimed powers-that-be.

since i also balk at binaries and couldn’t have a mere two facets to my neuroses special, complex soul, i must add that i’m a perfectionist with mild OCD issues surrounding tasks, so if a “thing to do” sneaks past the initial bulwark of “fuck right off, i’m not doing that, you’re not the boss of me”…i can’t rest easy until it’s done.

thus, friends, when Bub&Pie and the other fine Bon of the blogosphere, Bon777, tagged me for that meme going around that lists its autocratic little rules like an edict from on high, with no mask of mitigating adjectives or appeals…

“A. Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves.

B. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.

C. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.”

…i went through a Jekyll&Hyde&Somebody-Else-Yet-Again chain of huffing and puffing and blowing my own house down. stupid meme, telling me what to do and exactly how to do it! doesn’t it know that i am a Person With Free Will?!? humppph. but i like Bub&Pie and Bon, oh yes i do, and they asked nicely, and perhaps the whole sky will fall and they will think i’m a skanky rude fickle blogfriend if i just ignore the bossy meme, and that would suck…and Bon’s just getting started interacting out here and i remember how sad i was when the first people i tagged for things didn’t play, and besides, now that i’ve even thought about doing it i’d really just like to have it over and done with and then i will feel such a nice sense of accomplishment that i’ll be able to walk around the rest of the day looking like Grover the Muppet.

so i did it. but my own way. did you see this coming….? it’s already done. i hid all my answers in my apparent preamble! take that, meme! i showed you! i didn’t follow your rules to the letter! i did something better! i changed it up! i did it my way! ha!

and somewhere in the middle i lost track of how many items of fabulous interest i actually included!

um, yeh. bonus points to those who can give me a tally. just to be more contrary, i shall encourage you to tag yourselves, or rather “steal this meme” as Chani puts if, but only if you, like, want. if it suits your own excellent specialness.

the ultimate thing you need to know about me, people? i am eternally and forever stuck in my terrible twos.  can’t wait ’til O hits his next birthday and we can tantrum in tandem. :)

we had a little holiday.

we went to Grandmaman and Grandpapa’s house for the Canada Day long weekend. Oscar went to see Grandmaman ride in the Canada Day parade, on a horse-drawn float (yes, Oscar’s grandparents live in the 1800s. or a very small town. you pick your preferred version of the story). Oscar petted the horse’s nose, and then snatched his hand away, rapt but cautious. Oscar toddled and rolled in dandelion fluff, and played by the sea, and dragged a heavy blue bocce ball around the lawn for half an hour like his own pet rock. Oscar decided he likes cake, and doesn’t like lobster – clearly, he is my child after all – and got a ride on his first tricycle, and was enthralled by the little Oscar-size cottage and train Grandpapa built down by the beach, his own personal wonderland. he was quizzical about the grainy sand, and timid about all the friendly great-aunties and uncles, and if he’d been allowed to stay up for the bonfire he’d probably have loved it, but mommy & daddy had to enjoy it on his behalf instead. there was a lot of smiling, all a terribly picturesque time.

go ahead. ask to see the photos.

erm…yes. one little problem.

i am sad to report that our camera is currently on hiatus, its battery as a doornail. it’s one of those finicky camera-charger combos that has to sit in a little shoe to charge, and the little man-bit of the charger no longer seems to light the fire of the camera’s lady parts, so to speak. i couple them ’til they click, whispering suggestively all the while, but the camera’s little blue light remains unlit, alas. even when i wiggle them together like Barbies doing the nasty. seeing as the warranty has expired, i fear the rest of Oscar’s childhood will go tragically undocumented unless somebody invents a Viagra for electronic appliances. if any of you have connections with the fine people at hp Photosmart, i encourage you to tell them of our plight. and tell them that like, i know it happens to everyone…but seriously? i don’t want to be this involved in my camera’s intimate interiors. next time, i’m buying something with a simple, straightforward plug.

and by next time, i probably mean next week.

but in the meantime, i offer these lovely artistic renderings of our vacation at the seaside…
yeh, who needs cameras anyway? though O may wonder someday why exactly he didn’t have a nose in childhood…

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while we were away creating memories and fodder for great art, though, the world did not stop.

there was more bounty. my online girlfriend, Ms. Redneck Mommy – i know, i know, she’s everybody‘s online girlfriend, she’s an incorrigible flirt – flicked her sticky fingers wand and dropped a Rockin’ Girl Blogger award upon me. which, um, rocks, even though any non-hand-drawn picture of me would point out how the word “girl” becomes more of a stretch all the time. but i like my pretty new button, however i have to squeeze to get it over my hips, and have decided to continue stretching its use of the word “girl” by passing it along to a fine blogger who happens to be technically even further from girlhood than myself, but who rocks most indubitably. Mary, come on down. glad you’re out here adding your voice to the chorus.

and still more. the lovely Jen from Playgroups are No Place for Children nominated this for A Perfect Post for June. it was for sweet/salty Kate‘s Liam, and for Finn, but mostly for all of us who in moments find ourselves cotton-mouthed and stuck for words. the funny thing is, i don’t have words to tell Jen how much it meant that she chose that post, because it was something i’ve been struggling to say for a long time. but i am grateful for the honour.

and lastly…the struggles that sometimes leave us all not knowing what to say go on even though i go away for the weekend. Whymommy‘s gearing up to start chemo with great courage and positivity, and the Team Whymommy badge on the ever-filling sidebar is a sign of solidarity and support. i think Thordora would kick my ass if i started a Team Thor, but…she needs a little love too, these days. mental illness is as real and as debilitating and often as life threatening as physical illness, and so much harder to talk about, to drag out of the closet. but she’s fighting too. so lend her a thought where you can, or a word, and some hope. ’cause things, these days, are tough all over.

thus endeth the public service announcements for today, friends. tune in next week when you’ll hear Miss Bonnie say “how in god’s name do i draw a horse, anyway?!?”

in seventeen succinct syllables, my first day at work.

i can has whole day at desk?
yays! but no bloggingz?
oh noes! cruel joke, world.

clearly, my calling as a poet is clarion. but my calling to sit for eight largely unbroken hours in front of a computer with no diaper changing, no singing, no Richard Scarry books, no kissing, and no blogging? it’s going to take some adjustment.

back to my boy, whom i might have missed a little. :)

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.

okay, i exaggerate. more like a plague of snot and coughing and excrement.

and sticky little hands reaching up for comfort, leaving trails of bodily fluids to mark where loving’s been. we’re sick, here. bebe is sick. mama is getting sick. mama is stressed, and stretched, and confused. you ever have one of those days weeks where you feel like you’re sinking deeper and deeper in a hopeless mire of stuff you’ll never get on top of, or even comprehend? and like, all of a sudden, you’re failing?

sometimes i feel like i’m failing. in those moments, i’m not even sure what i’m failing at. i’m just going along, living my life, singing my heart out, and then…i go flat. i lose the tune. i can’t seem to put the stray bits back together.

i find myself lost…in the middle of a day, in the middle of my song, sure the locusts are descending and powerless to move.

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while i’m busy gluing my head back together, go see Mad and jen about a real plague that they’re rallying us to take on for their six-month anniversary, just in time for the Just Posts. AIDS in Africa, the six-month gift. a pestilence and tragedy of a scale that makes me want to scurry away in shame and delete all my petty whinging. beats those cheap paper and tin anniversaries, friends.  join in.

Dave’s parents have a shaky, scratchy old taped-to-VHS home movie of him as a toddler, bumbling across a rolling lawn in polyester pants. in it, he does an uncanny impersonation of a round, giggling, bouncing, silly-putty drunkard – up, and down, and wheeee! up, and down, and hahahaha!

then he bangs his head smack into a concrete step.

and gets up and laughs into the camera, tears streaming from his eyes.

Oscar apparently inherited more than prehensile toes and those blue, upslanted, smiling eyes from daddy. now that he’s walking, he too is a wild, silly-putty-esque rover, toddling and tumbling headlong into as much of the world as he can get his eager, grubby little hands on, squealing with glee. he’s down as much as he’s up, and he’s had a recurring black eye now for over a month, but he will not be held back. there is too much out there to be explored, tasted, giggled at. he totters across our lawn on chubby legs, arms waving like a football fan, laughing at the way the grass tickles. he is wonder incarnate…intoxicated by movement, by living. he is beautiful.

and he scares the living shit out of me.

this month, in Achtung Baby, Her Bad Mother wrote about the bittersweet ache of this path of discovery and exhilaration that our children are on, about the thrill and the terror of watching them take flight, knowing – as they do not – that they are fragile, mortal…that they cannot fly. and yet knowing, remembering, with an act of courage adults are not always willing to engage in, how important it can be to believe that one can.

i had almost forgotten what it felt like to be small, and dangerous, and immortal, until i read her post…and then it came flooding back, all the power of fearlessness…all the joy.

“I know that beneath her wings there is flesh and bone and blood; I know that no matter how immortal she seems or feels, no matter how removed from the exigencies of time and space is her experience of life, no matter how freely she flies… I know that she is as bound to earth and body as am I.

But I also know this: that being bound and feeling bound are two very, very different things, and that once upon a time, a long time ago, I felt unbound. I flew. And the memories of this flight are among the sweetest that I carry.

So. I want for her to fly, as much as she can, while she still believes that she has wings. I want her to be dangerous, to tilt into the wind, to aim at the sun. I want her childhood to filled with speed and light and the delicious tang of fear.”

unbound. i had almost forgotten.

but i can see it, the seeds of it, in Oscar’s freewheeling curiosity, his blithe exuberance. i want to pin my own fearful hands to my sides when they reach out to hold him back, stifle my voice in my throat as it calls out “danger! danger!” achtung, baby, indeed. my hands will catch. my voice will comfort. but i do not want them to take from him the wonder of the world. i want him to feel unbound, for as long as he can…and unbound by my fears for him, most of all.

for reminding me, i want to award Bad a most grateful for May. Bad is good. and has a heart that soars, and the courage to let her daughter have one too. you heard it here.

to check out the other Perfect Posts for this past month, visit Petroville and Suburban Turmoil and see who else is out there making us remember what we’re doing and what a darn good time we’re having in the process. :)

there is a petty, bloodless battle being waged in our house about the meaning of the word “meme.”

yes, it’s true. my name is Bonnie and i come from a domain of hopeless geekdom, alas. or at the very least, Dave is rubbing off on me. and not nearly so often as would be nice so long as i have to keep getting up at quarter to crocus not in that way, you degenerates.

he – and apparently the rest of the internetz – consider a meme to be a formal, complex, Richard Dawkins-inspired concept in which the most adaptable if not meritorious information is adopted and then takes on a life of its own. or something like that. you know, like, lolcats and, erm, uh…internet slang. don’t know? diaf, noob. they’re genuine memetic paragons.

but what we do, the mommyblogging phenomenon of starting a list or survey and tagging other people to do their own version? according to the otherwise fine man with whom i share my life, the phenom itself is a meme, but each actual incarnation is…wait for it…no more or less than a chain letter. yep. don’t forget to send to seven people or your happiness will explode and kill kittens Jesus orphans YOU within the hour. offensive, i know. what a mommyblog noob. feel free to send him spam. :)

i, however, am taking the high road.

in order to bolster my side of the argument i’ve joined the fine women of BlogRhet, to meta-muse on blogging and start reviving my braincells so as to be able to counter Dave’s big-word bickerings. and in order to get the balls of BlogRhet curiosity rolling, Joy has tagged all of us participating with a meme. you hear that, Davyboy? meme meme meme meme meme…yep, we all use it this way, out here in our little corner of the blogosphere. so what if nobody else on the intertubes does…at the moment? who’s shaping the next generation of tender minds, i ask you? who’s teaching them to while away their lonely hours in front of a blue computer screen? mommybloggers, i tell you! victory is mine! erm…um….the children’s. won’t someone please think of the children?

the children, i betchoo, will think of the word ‘meme’ the way we do, if we mamas use the power at our disposal and start brainwashing the little darlings right straight away. “sorry, sweetie, mama can’t play right now, mama’s doing a meme. now, what do you think represent mama’s top seven most embarrassing moments?” think of the potential, friends. do NOT waste this opportunity.

(and while you’re at it, if you’d like to take the opportunity to be a part of this particular BlogRhet meme, you can do that too. we’d love to have more people at the table.)

right. so the meme. or the example of meming, if you prefer.

Your mission: Give these questions a stab in a post, and then tag three more writers. If you don’t mind, please link back to this original entry—we’d LOVE to track the progress of this meme with trackbacks.

1. Go back to first or early post. How would you describe your voice back in those early days? Who were you writing to? What was your sense of audience (if any) back then?

my very first posts were written in the ten days before Oscar was born. it’s strange for me to go back and read those posts, because a part of me sees them as almost painfully exposed. not because i was writing to a faceless audience of internet readers, either…at the time, i knew sweetfuckall about the mommyblogging community, and wouldn’t for many months to come. no, i was writing to a public audience of people i knew…the blog, for me, took up where months of mass emailing people about the state and progress of my bed-rest-ridden pregnancy left off. and while my voice in those early posts is a composite of one developed during years of mass emails lampooning my travels and many more years of journalling my most personal shit, i still felt terribly exposed using it because i was determined to be honest, and to discuss Finn – which i never did in person or in emails – as well as to entertain and to work through some ideas i’d been having. because my audience, in my own mind, wasn’t just these people who knew me and might want to stop in and read occasionally, but posterity – the baby-to-be, and my eventual mother self.

2. Do you remember when you received your first comment? What was it like?

i was incredibly lucky in that i got two comments on my second post, and Dave actually linked that post to his own blog and introduced me & the belly to his own online community at that point. my first commenter was Cyn, who’s been a well-known satirist and entertainer and blogger here on the Island for some time (and who just became a real, live MLA in Monday’s election…yay for friends in high-ish places, pity her government is spurning the PEI tradition of patronage jobs). she welcomed me to the blogosphere, and blogrolled me. i preened, imagining a gig with Rolling Stone wouldn’t be far behind. then i went another six months or so with no appreciable rise in audience. :)

3. Can you point to a stage where you began to feel that your blog might be part of a conversation? Where you might be part of a larger community of interacting writers?

it was always a conversation, for me, though a one-sided one…between me and the baby, me and the people i knew were out there. it was, in one sense, a way for me to share a lot with people without having to meet their eyes…and without having to solicit those conversations in person. but it was only in early March, almost a year after i started blogging, that i began to actually fully participate in the community and gather a broad-ish audience of fellow writers. this post, which was my 80-somethingth, was the one that opened the doors for me, i think…and interestingly, it was one of the most candid things i’d written to that point. i have carried, since Finn died, a deep shyness about making people – and thus myself – uncomfortable with the weight of my sorrow. i always intended the blog to be a way for me to work through that sorrow without burying it…and i intentionally exposed myself in those early posts by introducing Finn and the messiness of me being a first-time mom with my second-born child, but only really since i found a place in the larger conversation of joy and sadness and living that goes on in the blogosphere have i been able to let go of some of that shyness and trust that my audience can carry a little of my sorrow with me. and they have, with graciousness and kindness…which has lessened the weight of the sorrow considerably and helped me heal, i think. it makes sense, really…it’s easier for all of us to say the things we want to in writing, rather than in the vulnerable flesh…but i am grateful to have had it work out so much as i’d hoped, particularly since i had no idea this community existed out here when i started.

4. Do you think that this sense of audience or community might have affected the way you began to write?

i don’t think so…but probably the few old, faithful friends who still read here and have for a year or more could answer that better than i. i think i’ve become a little less earnest, a little more flippant…but that’s likely more about my own comfort with and awareness of the medium (plus the fact that i’m less exhausted now than i was a year ago), than it is about any overt impact of audience.

that, and i’ve always pandered and played to the audience in my head, anyway…even in journals no human eye will ever see.

so there. a meme. a meta-meme. or a charming chain letter, as you wish, Dave-you- oppressor-of-mommybloggers’-right-to-make-words-mean-what-we-want-them-to. we shall have our way with the word, in time. to join BlogRhet and have all your wishes come true, share your answer or answers (dudettes, a meme can be anything you want!) with us by linking back to the site…

if you don’t…oh, those poor kittens. no wait, wrong sin meme internet-type-thingy.  sorry. ;)

edited to add:  i always sucked at these chain letter things…i forgot to tag.  or failed to read the fine print.  either way, Sage, Bub & Pie, and Thordora, you’re up.  pretend it’s NOT a meme.  lie back and think of kittens.

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.

Oscar got a package in the mail yesterday…a belated birthday box all the way from Korea.

Miffy has come to our house! Miffy for mommy Oscar!

oh, the rabbity goodness.

in the box: a Miffy doctor set (with a patient chart in Korean, no less…tres chic). Miffy growth chart. Miffy teezle (way cool, kinda confusing). Miffy wallpaper border. Miffy markers. Miffy puzzles.

mommy Oscar is over the moon.

daddy is a little hesitant about the Miffy wallpaper…because i want to put it in OUR room.

okay, mommy has a little Miffy problem fetish. and Auntie Sarah is enabling me…mwah ha ha. :)

so, how long do you think i can get away with pretending this stuff belongs to O? and how long do you think it’ll be before the neighbourhood kids start, erm, suggesting that perhaps Miffy the rabbit is not the coolest accoutrement for my little boy?

damn gender police.

i should really get a Miffy sign to protest with…

home.

weary world travellers three, but home…and happy. and one of us is getting molars, which is an activity better done in the comfort of one’s own bed, methinks.

lessons learned? they are legion, i’m sure, but in my addled state i can boil them down to a simple triad: one, i could’ve packed less. Oscar would have been happy with two or three books and a couple of the ten toys we dragged all over hell’s half acre. the new environments and places to explore were excitement enough for him, and a plastic airline cup is waaaay cooler than the crap mummy had stuffed in her bag anyway. two, i should’ve stressed less. i know better. no matter how many phone calls you make or policies you read, you can never really tell when an individual airline employee is going to choose to be generous and helpful or otherwise (and you know who you are, oh ye cruel Easyjet snotbag whore, may you rot in your bad makeup). in the end, if you get there, it’s all good… and we got there. and in the process, i got to know my son a little better. that was lesson number three – that i learned what a cool kid Oscar is. so he’s not wild about being confined to laps against his will, true, but he’s sociable, and adaptable, and patient, and curious, and just plain gorgeous to explore the world with.

(i also learned – or at least finally processed – a few things about myself in the frustrating moments of the journey, now that i think about it…but i’ll save those for another post, less light and more focused than this one).

in the meantime…a photo essay of Oscar’s European tour.

first, in London, wee baby Sherlock paid a visit to 221 B Baker Street…

and played Templar of the stroller set at Temple Church

then on to Praha…but first a little wine for the flight

hanging with Daddy outside a potraviny in Prague

and downtown with the cool kids

crossing the Charles Bridge, half asleep

trying his first lemon at a sidewalk cafe

O finds a car just his size

back in London, we checked out Tower Bridge

and the ancient Roman wall

and found some fine lads to kick about with

and a lady love to picnic with at the market.  i think she ovulated, there was so much cooing.  Oscar is still pining.

it was a fine, fine journey, and good to lift my wings.  but it is good, too, be home.

so…what’s been up with you?