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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.

the ick has come to our house. and it seems to want to stay.

it is not a welcome guest. it has brought snot and coughing, instead of a nice Shiraz. i am not a fan of snot and coughing, particularly my own…and i’m the one who’s worst flattened by this particular ick. green and nasal and drippy am i, o joy. but this ick is showing signs of encroaching on my child, which means war. i’ve broken out the Purell, people. and the slightly sticky Vitamin C chewables hiding in the back of the cupboard. SeaKing helicopters in the battle against germs, perhaps, but the best i’ve got on hand.

i suspected the ick was lying in wait outside our door all winter long, when we stayed preternaturally healthy while others succumbed to infections and illness. i told myself it was just biding its time…waiting until we were most vulnerable. now would be that time. Oscar’s first birthday is this coming weekend, for which we’ve planned a small orgy of family cake-eating and photo opportunities. no biggie. but three days after the birthday party, we fly to Europe. Europe, people. eight hours on a plane with a sick one-year-old who also just happens to be getting his molars. delightful. may i suggest you all stay the hell off our plane? i don’t think it’s going to be pretty.

(of course, a little voice inside my head says “you’re going to Europe, you ungrateful bovine. if you have to fly there yourself, flapping your wings with six sets of quintuplets hanging off your teats, suck it up! who cares if the other people on the plane skin you with shells and blunt airplane knives? who cares if you don’t sleep for twelve days straight? London! Prague! bring on the crumpets and the absinthe!” now, part of me sees the little voice’s point and feels terribly petty and guilty and frivolous about my dread. people would give their teeth to have my problems…travel is a privilege, and all that jazz. the other part of me is sure that if Oscar (and i) aren’t hale and hearty and ick-free by the time we board that first plane, the whole twelve-day trip will be as much fun as having our eyes pecked out by small lobsters, privilege or not.)

O isn’t himself…he’s a bit rattly when he breathes, and his nose is a small river merging with my own Mississippi anytime our heads come close…but the clearest symptom of his not feeling well is that he’s turned into a little Klingon, dissolving in puddles of tears and horror if ever i am so callous as to, say, walk in a direction that suggests i might be leaving the room without him. yesterday, i had to drop off a job application for a rather promising position. trying to get myself all gussied up for this event with a weeping, clinging Oscar in my arms was, erm…informative, at best. i did not realize how quickly snot adheres to dryclean-only fabrics. i eventually gave up on wearing tights with my skirt, despite the 0 degree temperatures, because everytime i tried to drag the damn things up over my childbirthing hips, the creature i birthed kept dragging ’em on back down in his attempts to climb me like a lemur. a forlorn, slightly sick little lemur.

so i am not enjoying the ick’s visit. and i hope desperately that it vacates before we travel next week. but just in case it isn’t so considerate as to do precisely what i ask of it, any tips out there from those of you who’ve travelled with little ones? especially sick, teething, semi-mobile little ones? especially on trips that involve an awful lot of moving thither and yon, on public transit and such? advice gratefully received.

ps. Oscar took his real, honest-to-goodness first steps on Sunday night. the intended post announcing this fine and noble event was precluded by the ick, but O’s parents are nonetheless rightly puffed up with pride and terror.

pps. i hear voting for someone in the Blogger’s Choice awards (see button on the right hand side of page) helps banish the ick from their system permanently. all healing will thus also be gratefully received. i have no hope of winning, but am entertained by the numbers crawling upward nonetheless. ;)

so the 50-foot-tall Redneck Mommy batted her impressive eyelashes and threw me a few questions. i was, of course, secretly hoping to be chosen, standing by the bleachers in my best dress, trying to look taller. Redneck Mommy made my day. i frequently wish life was as simple – and as full of harmless flirtations, even with other housewife types – as blogging. ;)

1. If a magic fairy swooped down into your life and offered to turn you into a man for ONE day, what would you do with your day?

Answer, take one – yeh, well, actually, i AM a man. i’m just pretending to be Bon, mommy, because i want to meet housewife types. ha. April Fools. no really, April Fools. (chuckles nervously…looks around, hoping you haven’t left).

Answer, take two – i’d ask that damn fairy why s/he wasn’t offering me unlimited riches and power, instead! or wait, maybe that’s what being a man is secretly all about? do i get to choose WHICH man i am?

Answer, take three – seriously…um…my inlaws read this blog sometimes. and they’re very nice people, and i hate to make them feel dirty. so i would, uh, erm…shave my face a lot? revel in my unplucked eyebrows? check out my new centre of gravity? lift things? and perhaps take a few extra minutes in the shower to…um…wash?

much as the physical discovery of inhabiting a male body would fascinate me – i’d really hope for good biceps, and would go around all day long squeezing my flexed arms quite lovingly – it is actually the potential power differential that would interest me most. i’d love to break into regular conversations, say things i usually say, and see whether or not people accorded my new lower register more authority and room. i’d like to tell someone off without being called “shrill” or “strident.” (not that people actually call me that now, to my knowledge, but i refrain from telling an awful lot of them off in fear of those kind of epithets…)

2. What would it take or how much would someone have to pay you for you to pierce your nipples and flash them to a stranger?

about ten bucks? maybe twelve. they’re not exactly my perkiest feature anymore and my modesty is growing with all this motherly maturity, so the price is going up. ;)

i don’t actually have any piercings that are not on my ears, but in truth would have been very open to nippiercings back post-college when all my friends were raving about them, except i’ve always been a little shy about my nipples. they don’t quite match. this used to bother me. i’d have flashed my tits for free in any number of circumstances, and *may* have on a couple of fuzzily-remembered occasions, but would never have drawn attention to my nipples for fear of having them found wanting. (inlaws, i hope to god you stopped reading back at the word nipple.)

i did do nude art modelling back during my undergrad, because $9 an hour was a lot of money to me then. and it was probably the best thing i ever did for what was at the time a very troubled body image…there’s something about having the familiar quirks and planes of your body reflected back to you in clay or on paper that makes it harder to see yourself as hideous. except for that one weird kid in the sculpture course who, while i was doing a reclined pose, breasts resting comfortably in my armpits, built my assets up into watermelons exploding from my chest. with NO nipples….like Little Orphan Annie’s eye sockets. when i walked by by his clay in my robe on the break i did whisper quietly (quite unstridently), “dude. i am not a comic strip.”

3. If you could magically have a Do-Over and change one thing in your life, what would that be?

insert big sigh here. i suppose the obvious answer, and the one my heart leaps to first, is Finn. i would make my firstborn live. i would have him with me, would get to hear his little voice and hold his hand, would get to see what he looked like at almost two and whether his brother really does look like him except that O is fair and Finn, even as early as he was, was dark like Dave & i, with a little brown almost-monobrow across his forehead and a shock of hair that O has yet to catch up to. i would have hope of hearing him say “mama.” i would have him here to worry about. and i would be less scarred for having not had to let him go.

but…but. much as this is clearly the big Do-Over looming in my file, i don’t know if i could choose it, were i really given the chance. even just imagining myself on that precipice, with that power, makes think of the old tale of The Monkey’s Paw, where the parents wish for the return of their dead son and get a creature from the grave. it’s not the ghoulishness of the story that puts me off. i could not fear Finn, in any form he might take, nor turn him away. it’s the metaphorical morality tale that hits home for me, the reaping of unexpected horror in wishing to abate one’s pain. if Finn had lived, would there be no Oscar? if i got my Do-Over, would i lose the child i have? i recoil from the possibility of fucking with the space-time continuum because i know enough to know that i do not in any way fully grasp causation, or how things come to be. had i carried Finn to term without problem, he’d have been born only a few weeks before Oscar was conceived. chances are, O would never have existed, certainly not as the particular Oscar he is…not firstborn but still our practice baby, focus of our fumbling attentions…locus of much healing. if i could have them both, safe? then yes. a thousand times yes (though the cloth diapers might have to go as my boys were born 51 weeks apart, to the day, and that seems like a lot of laundry). but without guarantees, i cannot use the Monkey’s Paw. the Do-Over will have to rot on the mantle, taunting me. i have one i can still protect, even from my own heart’s desire…and losing the other has made me wary of trying my luck.

4. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?

you know, i always coveted the 64-box of Crayolas when i was a kid, just for its splendour and excess, but i don’t think i ever owned one. and in truth, i wasn’t a fan of crayons…i liked fingerpaint better. pure pigment. pure red. pure blue. colours so bright and rich and deep my head spun. but…if i had to be a crayon, i’d be a stubby little silver one, nubbed down and with the paper mostly ripped off, but still shiny and a little gaudy, and just a bit waxier than all those regular colours. because waxy is, you know, cool.

5. What do you think about people who chew on their toes or the dead skin off their feet? (Are you one of them?)

erm…well…no.

but i used to live in a glass house where i quite liked to chew on my toenails, so i cannot in good conscience cast stones at those with an oral fixation for their own feet. of course, i was about ten at the time of my own little chew-fest, and my friends eventually caught me doing it at gymnastics practice one night because i apparently had no inside/outside privacy boundaries. they teased me so mercilessly that i completely lost the ability to even get my toes near my mouth. so no. not anymore.

but i do not judge those who do, merely envy them and suggest they keep their chewing to the privacy of their own bedrooms, as i don’t particularly want to watch. unless they bring popcorn. i like popcorn.

so there. now…if any of you would like to play the interview game with me, announce yourselves in the comments and i’ll select a few lucky contestants to torture interrogate. :) you don’t need to put on your prettiest dress or anything…but batting your eyelashes will get you everywhere, dahlings.

Happy April, everyone.

so, Oscar apparently wants to cut hair when he grows up.

he was content, he was cheerful, he was downright tickled by the sparkliness of his environment. O sat parked in his stroller like Miss America on parade, gawking at the pretty blue cylinders with the combs sterilizing in them, smiling and waving at all the reflections in the mirror. he did come out with a light dusting of darker hair than he’s accustomed to sporting, but he didn’t seem to mind. for the whole six minutes Fast Eddy took to actually trim my hair at the walk-in salon, O was on his best behaviour. obviously, i could have dragged him along to the beauty parlour months ago.

live and learn.

i’m not unhappy with the results, either. for thirteen dollars, they’d pretty much have had to make me look like Bea Arthur for me to have any reasonable objections.

…and then there’s Maude?

nah, i’m cool. however, this whole ennui with my “mom look” has made me think. yep, i needed the haircut, and i appreciated the kick in the arse and the kind suggestions and commiseration from all of you. but retail therapy isn’t going to scratch this itch. this itch is me. i can’t buy me a new me, even if i save up big. as Jen pointed out, in the comments, maybe it’s acting like a mom that’s really getting to me. caring for my child is a good, primal thing. but i’m not sure that i know anymore what it means to care for myself, exactly, or act like myself. Mad asked what a mom acts like. my answer is that a mom acts like someone i’m not accustomed to being.

i am both the same and entirely different since the birth of my children.

i am also, as a few of you were probably sagely thinking to yourselves, well into my mid-thirties and thereby ripe for some kind of identity shift anyhoo. perhaps it just makes sense that i haven’t known what to do with my hair.

it sounds shallow, but to me it feels quite significant, near profound. the last eighteen months or so has been the first period of my life where i’ve actually worn my hair at some kind of medium-length…at least intentionally, not just as an in-between in the transition from Sinead O’Connor to Cousin It. i’ve been a swinger in the hairstyle department over the years, cultivating length and then chopping with abandon, thrilling with the power of the scissors. medium lengths were too safe for me.

safe hasn’t been a big feature or priority in my life to date. for the fifteen years of my post-high school pre-pregnancy life, i walked a tightrope between responsibility and recklessness. i went to university on a mix of scholarships and charity bursaries, plus the pittance my part-time jobs brought in and the contribution Canada Student Loans requested of my father. i could no more be reckless with money or with my good standing as a student than i could fly, thanks to a staunch Scots Protestant strain in my blood and upbringing, but i could spend myself freely. i learned early and hard the fine art of swilling whatever was going around, and i spent too much of my undergrad out until the wee hours, drunk on free-ish booze or high on free-ish pot, trying to shake the fear that something was happening somewhere without me. i never made it to an 8:30 am class in my entire undergrad career, but i could write essays, and i read fast, and i kept my scholarship while busily imagining myself some small-town Mick Jagger. ten years later, in the expat bacchanalia that was a South Korean university’s fifteen hour work week, i could pay for my own gin & tonics and did, aplenty. and my smokes, too. they were only two bucks a pack – the Scot in me needed to smoke like a bad crimping iron, i was saving so much. i did my job well, sobered up for work and held up my end of my contracts. but i didn’t do safe, or settled.

of course, i didn’t feel safe, either. only in the past year have i shed some of the panicky, metallic tang of dread and powerlessness that’s always washed over me at the mention of taxes, or investments, or any large-scale expenditures of money. i am the child of a single parent who still has no financial assets or security, and i came of age in the biggest recession and hiring freeze Canada faced after the Great Depression. for much of my adult life, i bounced like a pinball around the country and the world, looking for something meaningful to turn my attention to, something that would ground me, offer a cushion to fall back on. and in the absence of any sense of deep security, i felt like overt considerations of safety – for myself – were cheap jokes. why worry about lung cancer in my retirement when i’d never afford retirment in the first place? in my recklessness was anger, and sorrow at the lack of place i’d managed to find for myself. but in it, too, was a sheer, unfettered power, because i was mine to take risks with. i owed no one.

now, i do. two of them, in fact…three if you count my mother, who wisely showed very little curiosity about my doings all those years away. i have found my way home, and Dave and i are making a life here and managing, and…i am Oscar’s mom.

now, i wilt when the clock strikes midnight. now, that’s okay. i’m getting used to seeing sunrises on the way into the day, and i’m finding joy in that, because of O. i am less angry, and less frightened, less lost. i only miss the smoking sometimes. i do miss the late late conversations, but Dave & i still squeeze them in, now and then, and i am discovering that i do not mind missing whatever else may be going on in the world. the need is gone.

but now i value the safe in a way i never have. and this, i think, is what is changing me…and making me feel taut and strange when i catch myself in the mirror. i look like a mom, with my nice, inoffensive, medium hair. i feel like a mom, with my bag stuffed with crackers and ointments and chewable books, ready for all contingencies…so long as they’re family-friendly and don’t fuck with naptime. i am a stranger in a strange land. and i am not free to make decisions cavalierly, because they affect Oscar too. i am the responsibility side of the spectrum, without the recklessness. i act like a mom.

and i do not know this woman i see looking back at me with the tired and patient eyes and the medium hair. she is contented, secure. she has a place in the world, and it matters to her. the rage and the wildness and the searching are only shadows on her, now.

it will take time to learn to be her, fully, to be at home in this skin.

next time i need a little jolt of adrenalin and recklessness, though, i think i’ll get O to cut my hair. maybe that will give both of us a thrill. :)

i’ve been noticing, lately, that a certain metamorphosis seems to have settled on me like a permanent new skin…much as i’ve tried to ward it off with incantations and denial. it sneaks up on me in mirrors and other reflective objects, announcing itself to my unwilling eyes, breaking through the bravado of my self-delusion.

i think i’m starting to look like a mom.

i mean, i know i am a mom, and i consider this a Very Good Thing, and an honour and a privilege, and all that. seriously. and i’m not interested in buying into the chic notion of the Hipster parent, particularly…though i do think that our cultural stereotypes of mom-hood are bound to change with the times, and just because i prefer my old Che Guevara tee to an acrylic sweater with Christmas trees prancing upon it doesn’t necessarily mean i’m confused about my role in society or refusing to grow up.

(mind you, i have recently purchased – and kept, out of sheer attrition – a pair of jeans whose waistband is just a little too high for comfort or coolness. but they don’t have pleats, man, or anything like that. i swear to god. i am not turning into my mom.)

i just look a little blurred around the edges, and i know it, and i can’t quite put my finger on it. this is a “more than the sum of its parts” kind of issue, folks. i need some help, here.

first part, without doubt, is my hair. i need a haircut. i’ve needed a haircut for months…and i know i’ve lamented this before, but i’ve done absolutely sweet fuck all about it, so here i go again. i had my last haircut in July, friends. i have an overgrown shrubbery of varying textures crowning my head. to say it is without style would be a kindness of exaggerated proportion. and i do not seem to have the wherewithal to deal with this issue. i don’t really have a regular babysitter…nor a hairdresser, for that matter, though there is a nice local drag queen who occasionally manages not to give me a mullet, avoidance of which is really all i ask of this life. Danny, however, closes shop at four everyday and isn’t all too keen on the rugrat set, so dragging O along or leaving him with his father (who works ’til five) seem like insurmountable hurdles to me. thus i have let the tresses grow. and grow. and grow.

the hair alone could leave me looking simply like a middle-aged student, though. there’s something more to this image reshaping that’s happened to me.

and the wardrobe of gray-flecked sweater and jeans mixed up with blue-flecked sweater and jeans isn’t getting me on any best-dressed lists, true, but i notice the change in me more when i dress up than i do in my regular mom uniform.

i stoop. i look drawn and tired, even on those rare morns when i’ve slept for seven luxurious hours straight. i sag. my eyes are slower to focus. i’m rumpled, even if my clothes – by some act of god – are ironed.

i don’t know what to make of this, or to do about it. i’ve been trying to get in shape, getting on that wild horse of an exercise bicycle almost every day, whipping a little shape back into my behind. the stripey little pooch that my belly, in all its stretch-marked glory, seems to have become doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, but i’m cool with that. it’s not like the pre-baby incarnation of my belly was much to write home about, anyway…i don’t mind being a little round, and soft. i don’t feel the need to erase the marks Oscar & Finn have left on me entirely. i don’t mind looking like O’s mom…i just don’t want to look like i’ve been stuck in the Walmart checkout aisle with my twelve shrieking offspring for the last ten hours all the time, know what i mean?

i’d just like to look as though all the vitality hasn’t been sucked from me by my baby’s little Hoover lips.

i’d like to look in the mirror and see someone who felt good about looking back at me.

(and if anyone thinks more chocolate is the answer to my bedraggled state, you should tell me. it’s wrong to horde that kind of wisdom. ;))

if anyone else has tips…i’m open. i’m asking.

so, i have this new kinda blog crush on Slouching Mom, whose site i finally made it to after seeing her comments on other sites for…well…about as long as i’ve been skanking around on other sites, basically. make that, like, a month. i’m a slow adopter when it comes to using new technologies to their fullest.

in fact, i’m a slow adopter – and adapter – across the board. particularly in my musical tastes. i have a deep affinity for music from the decade of my birth that is rarely matched even by people who were making music then. i’m pretty fond of the decade previous, too, and can tread water into the decade following. but once you get into anything released post-1984, when i hit eighth grade, i’m sunk. i’m hopeless. i’m a relic, replete with an ostrich head stuck in a sand dune, shouting “i can’t hear you!” and “turn that new-fangled crap down, will ya?!?”

this unburdening of my musical fogey-tude is relevant, i swear.

it’s relevant because when i finally got over to Slouching Mom’s site, i discovered that she does not, in fact, have or advocate bad posture…at least so far as i can tell, though i’m quite into bad posture myself…but rather has cleverly titled her blog “Slouching Towards 40.” this is, i think, a wicked, charming, funny allusion to the bleakly beautiful Yeats poem “Slouching Towards Bethlehem”, and it makes me like her very much.

now, Slouching Mom tagged me for the music meme where i’m supposed to tell you all about the seven top songs on my ipod, if i had an ipod. which she doesn’t either, which is reassuring…but her songs nonetheless include artists like Jack Johnson and Fiona Apple. and i think of these as uber-hip choices, very current. they’re from a point in time after which i grew breasts. i’m feeling a bit outed here, folks.

when it comes to music, i live in a bucket. which is like under a rock, except more confined.

a few years ago, when Dave & i co-managed a fledgling English expat website in a small-ish city in Korea, i started a music column called “Bon’s bucket.” in my bucket, i had great intentions of going backwards through the alphabet, waxing euphoric about bygone musicians whose tunes made me weak at the knees. i started with Warren Zevon and Neil Young, tagged Johnny Cash as X since he happened – god rest his crooked little heart – to die the week i got to that otherwise awkward letter, continued through W which had to be shared between Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams, crowned the Velvet Underground – of course – with V, and fizzled out around T since i couldn’t for the life of me decide between Traffic and Talking Heads.

so this should probably give you a sense of where the following list of tunes is going to take you. yep, straight back to about 1975. though i shall try to get as…erm…funky as i can without hurting myself.

thus (insert drum roll) the top seven playlist on my record player computer:

1. Tangled Up in Blue – Bob Dylan (though i quite like the Indigo Girls version too…it’s from the ’90’s! practically new!)

2. Case of You – Joni Mitchell

3. Just a Memory – Elvis Costello

4. Lakes of Pontchartrain – The Be Good Tanyas (it’s from this decade! of course, the song is traditional and could have been written in 1875 for all i know…but the actual recording is 21st century. i’m sooo cool.)

5. A New England – Billy Bragg (or the Kirsty McColl version, both rock…)

6. Life on Mars – David Bowie

7. Hallelujah – Leonard Cohen (and no,while Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, and kd lang all have fabulous versions of this…i’m a purist here. only Leonard makes me hear the broken part of the Hallelujah, babee).

oh, and then there’s The Mountain Bed, which was recorded by Billy Bragg & Wilco to lyrics written by Woody Guthrie back in the day…yep, that’s gotta squeeze in there too. maybe one of the other songs can squeeze a cheek over and share its chair?

i know there’s other great stuff out there. i really got into Iron & Wine a few years ago, thanks to dear friends of ours who were saddened to see my taste atrophy on the vine, so to speak, and i know the words to a couple of Flaming Lips songs. i have listened to the Arcade Fire and liked them. i do realize it ain’t 1979, or whatever.

i’m just not convinced that that’s an entirely good thing. this is a very cozy bucket i’m in. great atmosphere, nice shag rug…why would a girl move on? :)

maybe the rest of you know why. this meme’s been going for awhile, but i don’t think Daffado, WhyMommy at Toddler Planet, Mayberry Mom, S at Bull in a China Shop, Cyn, Lady M, or Her Bad Mother have chimed in. the invite’s open. i figure my taste makes anybody else look downright hip.

i have been remiss. or at least a little slow.

the older i get the more i seem to unable to be quite as mannerly as i’d like to be…and it’s not just my ornery genes at fault, either. i am, inevitably, slightly out of step with the etiquette appropriate to a given situation. after two years back in the fine fishbowl that is my hometown, i’m still feeling like a permanent newcomer…benignly on the margins of this culture on display, mildly confused by the locals and unsure what to do with my hands. it took me a few months, upon return from years in Asia, to stop bowing at my former elementary school classmates when i happened upon them in the grocery store aisles. i still don’t know how to negotiate the intricacies of small talk…in English, which is the only language i speak. i say and do odd things at the wrong times, and i bumble through perfectly ordinary encounters completely unprepared.

all in all, it’s probably best that i stay at home a lot, these days.

but unfortunately, i’m pretty much the same when it comes to my interactions here in the blogosphere. i still feel like a new kid…and am, really, when it comes to realizing that the rest of you are out here too. so i tend to agonize, in those quiet moments on the can of reflection whether i’m trodding on anyone, or committing sins of omission, or just generally exposing myself as horribly gauche by how i comport myself here.

the other day, when Christy and Mrs. Chicken so kindly bestowed on me the bounty of not one but two Thinking Blogger awards – and i know some of you have had hundreds of the damn things rain from the sky but hey, to me it was cool and i really felt honoured – i inferred that at the time of blowing my own horn i was also supposed to pass along the honours to others with whom i’d like to share the happy.  or more seriously, others who provoke and move me, who enrich the internal dialogue that spins in my head and keeps me company.  others who make me less lonely in this journey of learning.

i didn’t.

not that there weren’t a big bunch of worthy people to choose from. i’m just, as ever, a little out of step…a little uncertain about how to proceed. i wanted some time, you see, to check out new blogs and try to go back through my favourites’ older posts and, all in all, just see if i could find people who hadn’t been tagged before, who – like me – might be fresh to this interactive element of blogging and kinda psyched by being chosen. because being chosen doesn’t mean so much, i don’t think, when you’re chosen all the time. and i’m not sure there’s a meritocracy at work in the so-called blog world, anyway.

but then, of course, this is coming from me. who can barely talk about the weather. all this overt socializing that tickles me so damn much here in cyberspace also paralyzes me, because i don’t really know yet what the norms are for this community, and how to negotiate them while still appearing moderately sentient…and neither Stepford-blogger nor insulting eejit.

everyone i read, i like. or i wouldn’t read them. but i’m probably not supposed to give awards to my entire blogroll.

and i read some great blogs that aren’t really momblogs…even if the writers are moms.  so much metaconversation has been had over the past week on the topic of whether mommybloggers are marginalized by the very terms used to delineate our writing that i hesitate to step outside this community for awardees.  because i don’t know.  i don’t know the politics of this new neighbourhood very well.  i don’t know how to avoid causing slight.  i obviously can barely figure out how to give kudos where due.

so in the end, i’ve just chosen five writers who make me feel happy to be stumbling my way through this community, however awkwardly…because they make me think, and laugh, and nod my head not only in agreement but with wild respect for the beauty with which they use the English language. they make me forget that i don’t know what i’m doing out here, in the social sense, and make me just want to interact, to comment, to communicate…even if i do it a little off-balance. or a little belatedly.

every one of them has given me pause at least once in the past couple of weeks.  i thank them all.  and the rest of you too.

please raise your mouse and clap for Kate at Sweet / Salty.

for Wordgirl at Half of the Sky.

for Ovagirl at L’eggs Up and Laughing.

for the already repeatedly honoured but so outstandingly thought-provoking and articulate i just can’t help myself Bub and Pie.

and for Christy at Cakerwakers.

and from the other Christy, who tagged me, i copy the rules of this particular meme with great delight.   if any one has any other sets of rules they’d like to send me so i can figure out what the hell it is i’m supposed to be doing and where…fill yer boots.  but the thankyou cards for your offering will probably come late, i’m warning you. ;)

it is my secret belief that all mommy blogs have a diet blog lurking somewhere deep within them, just yearning to break free.

childbirth is to the female body rather what chrysalis is to a butterfly cocoon, except that those stretched, ripped-open carcasses get left for trash after the flutterbies elbow their way out, thankyou very muchly. we keep our incubators, us sentimental fools, and keep on living in ’em. then we add to the madness the beauty treatment known as sleep deprivation, which descends upon new parents like a thud to the head for the first…oh…five years or so, apparently. not a recipe for great body image among new mamas, folks. lack of sleep can lead one to do terrible, if tasty, things to one’s poor beaten body, like feeding it chocolate and Crunchits for breakfast in a pitiful attempt to stay conscious. when one does this on a regular basis – i speak, of course, hypothetically here – it’s no shock that the corporeal self doesn’t emerge from one’s offspring’s first year looking so snazzy as one might hope. and that hope is where the diet part comes in…hence the diet blogging.

thank you, o post-feminist world, for making us all into would-be MILFs. i feel so…enfranchised. and lumpy.

all that to say, i’m trying to get my ass in gear. i bravely began a diligent regimen of recording what i eat and do with my body last Thursday evening. this momentous decision was triggered when the single-sitting demise of an extra-large bag of jujubes made me suspect that perhaps i’ve been sabotaging my own path to mommy hottness. so away with the sugar and in with the veggies, says i. and i dusted off the exercise bike and have actually been riding it, rather regularly, despite my terror of pedalled objects.

inspiring, isn’t it?

ha. i am very disappointed to report that an entire week has passed, and new heights of hottness have not been magically forthcoming. i have, in fact, lost no more than a pound. and my belly still flaps over my pants like a puffy little dumpling…a dumpling that curls up beside me when i lie down. i think my torso has refused to reabsorb it or something, but it stays loyally nearby.

i keep hoping for a dread medical diagnosis on that one, but i secretly know it’s just flab, which is NOT hott, no matter how many lies Dave kindly tells me. and despite the fact that i’ve done almost 50 situps over the past week – umm…no, not daily, that’s cumulative…but still, some support here, people! – it’s still there. the world sucks, clearly.

on the very first day of this endeavour, i was full of keen, shiny enthusiasm. now, i’m just beginning to get mad. i have been eating alfalfa and carrots and spinach and all sorts of nutritious goodness. i have been walking and stretching and riding, and writing down every damn thing i eat. i know this is all good for me. it’s a good habit, no matter the lack of immediate gratification. but i WANT the immediate gratification. i want my poor, rejected belly-pot to fit back within my old pants. now. apparently, i may have be willing to try biking for more than five minutes in a row to achieve that particular goal.

so i’m giving it another week. :)

i like to think that at least, watching me sweat and work slowly toward a goal will be some kind of good role-modelling for Oscar. plus, eventually he was gonna catch on that all those jujubes i was eating were tastier than the cheerios he’s been getting, right?

so we shall see what i can make out of ye olde cocoon. send miracles…or at least some staying power.

…nah, we’re not giving him away this week. nor gold-plating him, thank you very much.

but our very own Oscar was of course naturally excited (if a little confused) about the awards gala being held in his apparent honour ce soir, and with his name being chirped from every corner of the media. he clamoured to stay up for the show, but as all fun and no sleep makes O a very cranky boy, we compromised by getting him all gussied up and putting him to bed in his tux.

i’m kidding. i hate those baby tux things. he’s asleep in one of my bridesmaid’s dresses.

okay, no. but do come behind the scenes while we show you a real, live Oscar preparing for the big night of the 79th Academy Awards…

first, the banquet. those paparazzi are always getting so damn close!

then…the spa treatment. O is sporting some actual hair on his head these days…a wee sprouting of fuzz that finally modifies the skullet he’s had since the back of his head grew hairs before the top. look hard, you can see some ducky fluff…all coiffed, of course, for this momentous occasion.

and, in his finest undergarments, O cools pre-awards jitters by tickling the ivories. shouldn’t he oughta be in pictures?

in the end, of course, he knocked out cold from the sheer excitement and is now snoring away, oblivious to the glitterati pouring down the red carpet. perhaps he’s dreaming of sugarplums and bizarrely expensive dresses and acceptance speeches in which he humbly and sincerely tells his mom she rocks. blush. you go, baby boy…mama’s in your corner. you can even go overtime on that little homage if you want…though i’m not sure how many “bwa, ma ma, loooo” coos the Academy will be able to decipher.

O did, before his bedtime interfered with his first annual Oscar party, expressly request that Baby Einstein and the Fisher Price Little People dvds get their due props when the time comes to dole out the prizes. :) keep your fingers crossed, people. those little claymation characters do such heartwarming work.