I do aspire to post here and here daily as well as here no less than once a week. I aspire to do so. I also aspire to brush my hair every day and eat my fruits and veggies. Not everything comes together the way I’d like, though. Because there are only 24 hours in a day.
Whose idea was that?
I really appreciate those of you who still stop by to see if I’m around and really super appreciate those who leave comments. You have no idea how much it means to have people say hi. It’s like oh lookie! it’s not dead! the website, it lives after all!
Thanks to you lot!
I’d say more but I’ve got soup to prepare and madness to undertake. The day just goes and goes no matter what I think or do or say about it.
A mother’s work is never done. That old line is right on target.
Also, if you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat.
As is that one. It’s just not right to piss on the seat and leave it.
Jacob is six and in his first year of hockey. The first four practices were painful. He had never really been on skates without the benefit of one or more parents keeping him upright and watching Dan leave him out there on the ice that first day about made a mommy cry. He struggled. He spent more time on his ass than on his feet the first day. Thankfully he was not alone. The coaching staff was amazing and really spent time helping the new guys. Jacob’s favorite part was getting to hit the boards with his stick every time he made it across. He probably figured that if they were going to let him hit things he’d give this nonsense a shot.
It’s been quite something to watch him progress. Rapidly. People said the improvements would come swiftly and People were right. Hockey is not an easy game to learn. There are many skills required to master the basics of the sport, not the least of which staying upright on the damned ice. It impresses the hell out of me that these five and six year olds are doing as well as they are. It’s spine tingling stuff.
And even though it’s been a lot of work, the boy loves it. He’s out there with his red rosey cheeks smiling his little face off every single game and practice. Dan and I are happy as heck to pay the exorbitant fees and get up at 630 on Sunday mornings as long as he’s loving it as much as he is. Anything that puts a smile on your kid’s face like that - a smile that obviously comes from that place deep inside where your real happy lives - is worth it to us. I don’t care if he sucks at the game. As long as he’s happy and doing his best, we’re thrilled.
Still, you want your kid to get a goal. Because we knew he’d love it. We knew that it would make him want to play even harder, have even more fun. I also knew that if the whole season went by without a goal he’d feel it.
He’s had a few opportunities but his reaction time requires more than a split second to take the shot. By the time his brain sends the message to the stick, the puck is usually gone. If it isn’t, he shoots but lacks precision.
Today, he had it all on target. Opportunity, timing, precision. It’s a remarkable moment when it comes together for a kid like that. It demonstrates their growth. You can’t force it. It comes when it’s ready and not even he knew it was about to happen.
He had his moment, the puck was there, he was there. He put his stick on it, backhanded it toward the net and it went. Not to the left of the net, not the the right. But straight at it, just like it’s meant to. The goalie tried to make the save but (thank god!) failed. To say that the fans went wild is like saying the Great Wall of China is long. Dan and I were on our feet cheering like nobody has ever cheered before. Our boy. His first goal. You only get your first goal once. You can’t repeat that feeling.
Jake has the best coaches ever. They patted him on the back and knew what it meant to him. They probably knew what it meant to us too. It meant a lot. It’s the same as when he first started to read, you know? It’s him growing, becoming a capable young man who can do things. It’s Jacob becoming Jacob. It’s fucking awesome.
I don’t care if he never scores another goal. I’m just so proud of him for being the kid he is and for working so hard to do something that just isn’t easy. It’s damned impressive to me, is what it is.
I bet now he’ll be pissed off if he doesn’t get a goal every game.
My computer has been on a slow decline into the dumpster. I’d be working and it would start doing things like sending random instant messages to the zsar of russia (there is no zsar of russia! silly computer!) and other things of a completely fictitious nature. Finally it got to the point where it would only work if I kept it plugged into an electrical outlet. Unplugged it would last eighteen seconds.
You have come to the exact proper conclusion if you surmised that there were battery related issues. Smart cookie, you are! Mommy pats you on the head!
So now I’ve got it back and there are no more drunken russian messages waiting for me on Yahoo! I prefer it this way. Drunken Yahoo messages should be outgoing from this computer and not the other way round.
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Today I wore my new (favorite!) jeans to drop Madison off at school. I also wore my red (red!) coat and a pair of three inch black boots (jeans! are boot cut!) and one of the other moms said to me, she said,
“You look awesome! With your boots and your jeans and your coat!”
So I struck a little pose wherein it is safe to imagine that I thrust my hips forward not unlike a supermodel might do and she said,
“What? Are you telling me you’re pregnant?”
“No,” says I, “that’s my fashion pose. Don’t you know a fashion pose when you see one?”
~ ~ ~
I bought ink cartridges the other day. We had to swiftly remortgage the house to compensate for the financial strain caused by said purchase.
~ ~ ~
I am going to make lunch reservations for Dan and I at our new favorite bistro (and yes, I will wear the new favorite jeans to samesaid favorite bistro) for next week because Dan and I do not do enough nice things together anymore. We were the people who vowed that we would read just as many books after kids as before. We’d go to movies and carry the children along in backpacks where we would let them enjoy healthy snacks like bananas and figs and flax seed oil. We’d eat fine food and drink fine wines.
Well, the wine, it’s still getting drunk but that’s more because of the children than in spite of them.
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My dog absolutely fucking adores me. The same dog I swore I was going to send to the doggy fur coat making factory when he was in the business of pissing all over my new furniture last year. Same dog. He does not pee on things anymore and he acts like I am a beautifully wrapped present on christmas morn every single time he sees me. Even if it’s only been five minutes since our last encounter. In the morning he will not go downstairs until I do and if forced to go before I am ready he will wait for me at the bottom of the stairs and wiggle like I am the second coming of the dog bone making lady. He is my entourage. He applauds when I enter the room.
~ ~ ~
Madison is four and reading and will be way bored in Kindergarten next year because she will reading at a grade one level by then and nevermind, when she gets to grade one she will probably be ready for Chaucer’s The Canturbury Tails. I’m sure they have that book in grade one. I’m not worried.
I started scrapbooking when jacob was wee. I loved it because it involves paper and I love paper. Lay me on a bed of paper and I will be - well, laying on paper which isn’t so thrilling, but you know what I mean even if I have not said it well. That’s what I like about you. You get me. We have that bond or whatever.
The hell was I saying?
Oh ya, record keeping. Well Dan got me a scrapboking magazine as a stocking stuffer at Christmas and I’ve been beating myself up since. I’ve done but little scrapbooking sicne having Madison and I’m pretty major bummed about it. And after I am pretty major bummed about it I am going to go listen to some eighties music and crimp my hair.
Walk Like an Egyptian.
I was just over at fluid pudding and she had a year in review type of thing going on and I was all the more pretty major bummed. Because if I sat down and tried to review my year I don’t think you’d get more than:
I got one year closer to forty and that made me pretty major bummed
Because I keep no sort of record. Not even here, on my website, my journally type website. Because I disdain blogs as journals. Rather, I do not disndain them in gneneral but disdain the thought of keeping one myself. I fancy myself above that sort of thing. I fancy myself more of a sporadic-pointless-poster more than anything else. It’s my recipe for success, might not be yours.
Today I am going to try to do some kind of record keeping planning scrapbooking paper related goals for the year setting slash photography inspired thang. Between loads of laundry and the eighty five thousand times Madison will bounce in front of me saying MomMomMomMomMomMomMom and completely breaking my concentration.
What? What was I doing? What is my name? Who are you?
See, like that.
I’ll let you know how it goes. Only I won’t. Because as soon as I walk away I’ll forget I ever made such a promise because I will be busy getting crackers and keeping a certain four year old from jumping on top of her brother’s 200 dollar robot that he had to have but never plays with.
I realize that I have gone away on yet another unplanned hiatus. I’d like to claim it had something to do with the writer’s strike by way of trying to look important but it turns out I’ve just been trapped under a mountain of laundry and the children who created it. The funny thing about winter break is this: it’s no break.
Christmas was good and went off without a hitch despite my being completely ill-prepared and sick. Yes, sick. I got a cold day before. My nose is still running like a bandit getting away from the train robbery. You know that wet you just felt? It was my snot. Sorry.
I’d like to tell you about all the awesome gifts I got but it’s been so long that they are put away and forgotten. Oh but I remember I got this exact awesome hat and some ski socks and a pretty bracelet and other stuff that seriously? Can’t remember without thinking hard and I do not have time to think hard.
I’ve started running again (yes, in winter! i know! rock star!) and it feels good. I’ve got two pilates dvd’s coming in the mail and I am going to start weights next week. These things do not result from newyearsresolutions. I don’t do that.
Oh and omg I just remembered something else awesome we got for Christmas! After so many years of dreaming and hoping, TiVo has finally come to Canada and I? Well I am recording programming with reckless abandon and cannot imagine having ever been without this absolute necessity. Remember vhs? The Tyranasaurus Rex ate them. Oh how we laughed.
So, there you go. I’m back. Didjya miss me? Didjya?
Now tell me my hair looks pretty and get me a beverage.
A distant cousin of mine (distant by relation and not by proximity or affection) has a four year old who goes to the same preschool as Madison. As the mother works and the child is cared for by the grandmother I have been called upon to drive him to and from school. A task not requiring much of me other than a degree more patience (he and Madison have begun to argue not unlike brother and sister) and a small detour to my usual route.
In the first week of this childpooling arrangement Sam honored us with near constant humming of his favorite tune: The Imperial March from Star Wars.
Near cosntant humming. And when you tried to speak to him over this humming he would hum louder and louder and at a higher pitch the more you dared interrupt. It was cute. For about ten minutes.
Today when I picked him up Sam informed me that all boys like to play rough, it’s what they do. He said this almost as though he knew of my struggle with Jacob’s inclination to wrestle every human being he encounters to the ground. He was telling me it was alright, embrace the teststerone, it’s alright, go ahead, no one will hate you.
I asked him if that were true, that all boys like to play rough and he said yes. He said they like to do battle. He likes to do battle. Battle is fun and all boys like battle.
He then told me he had some kind of swords at home by way of proof or perhaps by way of demonstrating that not only did he like to do battle but was also ready to do battle should I get out of line. I took him at his word. I have no doubt that he has swords at home. From the way he talks it sounds like damned near everything he does has to do with battling of some kind. His favorite thing in the world is Star Wars Lego for XBOX.
Cute, right? But also? Lots and lots of battling and guns! Boys like to play rough! It’s what they do!
Dan and I are extra super careful about how much violence and traditionally boy fare Jacob is exposed to. He is a battling kind of kid, to be sure. Sam’s hit the nail on the head when it comes to my boy, no doubt. I’ve seen him take on kids twice his size and have no common sense about it whatsoever. Bigger than me, he scoffs, and finds an even bigger kid to prove his point.
Anyone who says you can raise boys to be something other than boys is wrong. I’ll admit that there are male children who do not like so much to do battle. I know such children. But I also know the kind Sam refers to and find them to be the norm. Boys will, if they are so inclined, be boys and I think the time has come to embrace that. Let them knock eachother around. It’s what they want to do and the world needs some guys around who aren’t afraid to stand up for us when there is a bear about. Or a nasty spider. Or worse.
I think, though, that it is possible to let boys be boys - let them crash about in a testosterone induced state of battle - while at the same time teaching them to be responsible about it. You do this, I think, by giving them a richer base of experience from which to draw when interacting in society. There was a time when boys will be boys meant ach, nevermind them, they’re just brutes, let them be. For some reason the desire to wrestle with their friends at recess rendered boys exempt from human activities requiring intellect and depth.
Lately though there’s been this movement. Boys don’t have to be boys, after all, The People cried, we can turn them into girls. All we had to do was love them right and keep them from hitting one another. That’d fix it all. No more hitting, gents. Just keep your hands and feet to yourself.
The kindergarten teachers of the world knew this was going to be an exercise in nonsense. Because boys really do like to do battle. They do like to play rough. As much as girls like to play gentle.
Which opens the whole can of let’s take the girl out of girls by setting Barbie aflame and giving them baseball gloves and jockstraps instead.
We’ve essentially been working toward a reversal of gender roles. Boys, you go play with the barbies and stop bashing things and you girls, take this stick and hit stuff with it. You’ll be better off. You’ll thank us later. We’re fixing you.
There are people out there who still subscribe to the philosophy that you can keep boys from rough housing by simply speaking to them in preschool teacher tones of voice. You can’t and you know what? You don’t want to. They’re like this for a reason and while I do not believe for a minute that this excuses bad behavior or precludes their ability to do well in other areas of social existence, I do not think we should be trying erradicate masculinity.
My goal, as parent of one tough little motherfella, is to let him be who he is, follow his own path, and when he needs direction I will give it to him. I will give him depth of character and I will let him figure out for himself that if you put your fists up with a kid twice your size you might get knocked around. I will let him take his knocks but I will be there to protect him if he cannot do so for himself. I’m his mother and I like who he is. I like this boy and I am done with this nonsense that he’s not good enough if he likes to do battle. Sam’s right, boys like to do battle and that’s okay. They also like to read and paint and help their mom bake muffins and carry their sister’s backpack and shovel snow with their dad and collect money for the Christmas Cheer Board and when they watch ET for the first time they will cry when it looks like ET is dead and do you know why? Because boys are more than the sum of their battles. Boys are amazing just the way they are.
Hello! My goodness there you are, lurking in the back of my mind like some hideous childhood monster! How lovely you are with your green eyes and boogers dripping from your nose! Is that a new hat? It’s delicious!
Thing is, now, I’m afraid I’m a little behind. Which, I realize, you’re well aware of. You, of all others! Of course you know. Sitting there tapping your toes, staring at the calendar, watching the days tick by as I move further and further into the horrifying abyss of christmasnonshop madness. You’ve been very patient with your gentle 4am reminders and the little alarms you send when I read or hear the actual date throughout my day.
December third?! Twenty two days til Christmas?! Heaven help me?!
I’ve seen you cavorting with my Household To Do List, I’ve seen you laughing at me together. I know you think you are so witty and amsuing with your mocking ways. I am an joke to you, I realize. A joke to all of my various and too many to mention lists.
I love you all equally even if I do nto mention you individually and that is to say I love you not at all. Aha! You are shocked by this! A declaration of anti-love! But it is so! You cannnot be loved for you do drown me with your constant neediness and cries for immediate attention. Do you not see how I try? Do you not see that I am only one person and sometimes I just want to sit down and eat chips until my pants don’t fit like I did when I was twenty? Do you not see this? ARE you blind?
But okay, alright, I get it. I need to buy presents because there are like fifteen minutes until Christmas morning and lo but my children will be sad when they get a gas station air freshener under the tree but it will be amusing, no? That their last minute sad gift smells like the tree under which it sits pathetically? That is some amusing, no? Ha? Ha?
It’s not that I mean to ignore you or the other eighty frillion things I have to do it’s just that things come up and things come down and things are often on fire and things just keep falling on my head while I am trying to eat those damned chips and would you believe that I canno get one single morsel into my mouth and yet the pants? They get tighter anytotheways? Madness, I know. We’ll call it a wonder of the world, will we? A mystery for all time?
So anyways, I have to wrap it up. One of those things that happen is happening and I must dash. But I swear, honest, I’m getting to it. To you. Totally. Like maybe tomorrow. But likely not. Picture next week. But you know what, either way? i cannot ignore you forever - the way I do other lists. You have a deadline and if I do not meet same I will have sad little children faces to contend with. and Dan’s. Which is worse. Sad Dan face on Christmas morning. To be avoided at all costs! It renders the heart broken to think of such a thing!
Before we had kids Dan and I talked a lot about what kind of parents we wanted to be. That’s one of the benefits of waiting until your thirties to have kids: time to think.
Other benefits: more time to sleep and go to movies.
We’re a lot alike, Dan and I, and thankfully agreed on what kind of family we wanted to be. There’s more than one way to skin the parenting cat and we both knew the method we wanted to adopt. We wanted to be The Huxtables, only paler and with fewer years of university education between us.
Also, not so many people. We know our limits. For goodness sake, there isn’t a house big enough to keep me from going insane with so many people about.
The problem is, we’ve ended up a little more like these people:
Only thinner and totally wishing we had us some Second Becky to class the place up a little. Also, way more years of university education between us.
Parenting, it turns out, isn’t as easy as we cracked it up to be. The road to shouting like a dearranged person is paved with the very best intentions and obstacles known as children.
Yes, I blame the children for being themselves. It’s all their fault. If they would only do what the director says and play along nicely we could all break for lunch. I heard the catering truck has cheesecake. Come on, follow the script and we all get cake.
I’ll be in my trailer, let me know when the little one gets on scene.
I don’t think Dan and I realized how hard it would be to actually spend a lot of time with such completely unreasonable people. Unreasonable people who are relentless in their pursuit of the unresonable. We planned for children who are sensible and willing to bend to our wishes. We thought they’d just kind of fold into our lives the way an egg folds into a batter. They weren’t supposed to be all fold this, bitches! They were not supposed to be rebel eggs who refused to fold.
What we need is some of what Healthcliffe Huxtable up there has, whatever it is. SuperSonicPatience, perhaps, or maybe a secret stash of Bailey’s irish Cream lollipops. I don’t know. What I can tell you is this: parenting is work. Mistakes are made along the way and when that happens everyone is sent to their rooms while mom and dad regroup and talk about family meetings and how when you’re fifteen we’re going to stage this whole thing where we empty your room and get you to buy it all back with two hundred pretend dollars after you say you want to move out and get an apartment with your friend Cockroach. It’s going to be fun, you just wait.
For now stay in your room and calm down because if you come out here and hit your sister one more time I’m gonna ground you until your seventieth birthday. And be quiet, I gotta back comb my hair and go to work at the factory.
We’re watching the CFL semifinals this afternoon. I am not usually a football fan. I usually require the game reexplained to me every time I am exposed to it and when said esplanation is being given I shake my head and say no, no, no, don’t, I don’t care. Today though I appear to have a sudden rudimentary comprehension of the game. It’s very Twilight Zone.
A few minutes ago a call was made and one of the coaches got right pissed off. Like screaming and carrying on and I said to Dan, That’s a job I could do. I am exactly the right brand of cat to coach a football team with enthusiasm, my dislike and ignorance of the game notwithstanding.
Much as these samifinal games are interesting I remain a disinterested football fan. It takes a special ocassion for me to give a frick either way. And I’m sure my freakish understanding of the game essentials will disappear before my head hits the pillow tonight. It’s like calculus. Of course I could understand it but come on, why would I want to.
I prefer hockey. Jake won his game this morning and totally had a chance to get a goal. Problem is his reaction time is about fifteen minutes behind schedule. If they gave him a damned minute he’d be ruling the ice. He likes the flashy positions. Center and Goal are what he’s all about. He also likes to fight which is exactly and precisely why hockey is his game. Not that we would ever encourage him to fight. I’m just saying that if he fights no one is really going to be surprised.
He’s a scrappy center who could score a goal if he had a minute to think.
It is 703 on Saturday morning and not only are we awake but we are dressed and ready to go. On Saturday. Morning. Have been up sincec 630. On purpose. What madness this?
The boy plays hockey now, you see. Hockey is apparently an early morning activity and we (Dan and I - notoriously not 630 Satuday people) are up and mostly smiling about it. But later I expect I will display some short temper and random crying because I didn’t sleep well. Kept having weird dreams. And no, I do not think it has anything to do with the fact that my evening eating habits have been kinda like that of those thousand pound guys who can’t get out out of the house. Nothing like that.
Getting up at 630 on a cold dark wintery morning (which it is not yet but you know, for making a point) is what you do for your kids even if you’re going to have to show up at hockey looking like you drank too much the night before and possibly slept in a ditch.
Am proud of my little six year old hockey playing kid. He’s so Canadian.
