Aug
22
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Aug | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |||
Hello again.
I’ve been away. Well, not away, so much as not here. It has been a busy time for us at the House of Peevish. Going to appointments. Talking to people. Working. Playing. Doing ALL the things!
Alright, not all the things. For one thing, I have not blogged this week. And in general, I’ve been away from my usual internet haunts this week. I’ve been out of the loop a lot, but that is okay.
Sometimes it is good to take some time offline. Sometimes the angst of others and the bad news of the world and the stupid and the petty annoying can get overwhelming, and so it’s okay to skip it. Sometimes, reading about the minutiae of the lives of others or the things going on that you cannot fathom out in the world or the opinions people have of what you should be or the latest greatest things you need to know and have and be are just… exhausting.
Sometimes you just have to turn off the monitor or close the laptop lid and just walk away. And sometimes, it’s just nice to do so.
We’ve had a lot on the go. For the past two weeks I feel like I have been running and planning and doing full tilt. I haven’t, mind you. It just FEELS like it. But I HAVE been busy. I have had lots of work to do. We’ve had appointments. We’ve had playdates with friends. And we’ve spent some time as a family just relaxing and chilling and doing stuff.
It continues to be busy this week. So we’ll see how things go. Maybe there will be things to say. And maybe it will all be too AAAAUUUUGGGHH and dashing to and fro, and that’s hardly worth writing about, let alone reading about. And maybe it’ll just be me, hanging out and soaking up the last little bit of the season with my kid as the summer draws to a close. And that’s good enough reason to be offline for awhile.
So it has been dark here on my blog. But that is okay. Sometimes the darkness is peaceful for the reader, too. Like a little bit of quiet space amid the noise.
A little bit of offline and quiet, sent from me, who has been offline and quiet.
Aug
11
These are the dog days of summer. At least, I think they are — because honestly, I don’t know what, exactly, the “dog days” are. If, by “dog days”, they mean OMFG IT’S TOO FRICKING HOT AND HUMID then, yes, they are. What, do dogs sweat a lot or something? Because the phrase “sweating like a pig” also comes to mind, and, in that case, perhaps they should be called the “pig days of summer”.
There you go. I’ve coined a phrase, and a catchy one at that. And at the same time, I’ve let the dogs off the hook for the responsibility for these arsingly humid days. AND I’ve given pigs some much-needed facetime in current vernacular. So. You’re welcome.
Anyway, it’s frigging hot. But for whatever reason, I’ve chosen these days to DO ALL THE THINGS. Which could indicate that the heat is melting my brain. I am running around doing errands and making calls and going to the grocery store like some kind of wizard.
In a car with busted air conditioning. Yep. Heat melting my brain.
It’s okay. If we’re not outside doing things, then we are at home and That Baby is shouting “WHY! WHY! WHY!” at me, to indicate “PUT ‘SUPERWHY’ ON THE TELEVISION, YOU STUPID WOMAN, FOR THE LOVE OF DOG I AM BORED”. So rather than hear the SuperWhy themesong ONE. MORE. TIME., we go out.
Today, we went and did a name change for Stinkerbelle’s health card. It’s just one more tiny part in the endless bureaucracy of adopting a child, and one we have been slacking about. So we booked an appointment for today, and off we went.
Nine in the morning is a fair time to drive one’s air-conditioning-deficient car on a stupidly hot and humid day. It is still cool and the fans are blowing cool air on the occupants. So we arrived cool and fresh as a daisy at the government office.
And OMG what an office! This is one sexy building. Cool and terraced inside with glass and tile and the smell of government money — it was NICE. I may just go sit in the lobby on the next hot day and let Stinkerbelle run round and round in the revolving door.
But today was not for such amusements. Today we had an APPOINTMENT. So while That Baby shouted her brains out about doG knows what and did her high-steppin’-I-got-the-rhythm-in-me-I-can’t-stop-it thing all around the office, I did the paperwork for her name change.
It went mercifully quickly, and we got out while it was still cool-ish.
So, feeling optimistic, I decided we should head over to The Little Gym and have a little look-see and check things out. Which we did. And, as the temperature in my tin can car got exponentially hotter as we drove along, by the time we arrived I was sweaty like I had jogged there.
The woman at the desk was pleasant, and asked if we had 45 minutes to try a class out and see if we liked it.
This was a surprise, but I figured, hey — air conditioning. So I said yes.
A word to the wise: Air conditioning means little in an industrial building full of running around kids. Just sayin’.
But we stayed, and we participated, and it was good. It was good enough to convince me that this would be a good program for Stinkerbelle.
So, at the end, I said we’ll sign up for the September session.
And she said, “That will be $375 please.”
GULP.
I hesitated. I had scanned their website sixteen ways from Sunday and had not seen a fee schedule. All I saw was that a membership cost $35, and so, somewhat naively I grant you, I just assumed…
No. It was much, MUCH more than that.
I tried not to stagger backwards and hiding my surprise behind oh-so-cool stammering, stuttering and waffling, I debated walking away. But Stinkerbelle really enjoyed herself, and the program would be very good for her. And it was almost 6 months of exercise, interaction with other kids, and organized class time.
So, we’d have to cut out one of the other programs in town we wanted to register her for in order to afford this one. Fortunately, my attempts to sign her up for another program yesterday failed SPECTACULARLY — do not ASK me to recount it for you; suffice it to say it involved a voice message that essentially said, “We know that demand for these programs is high, but even though our advertising says ‘Call this number to register’, we are not answering the phones to register people. You should come and register in person. But we know that not everyone can do this. So, if you leave a phone message, we won’t call you back. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.”
Soooo… Decision made. (The Little Gym will get your money, government organization bastards. HAHAHAHAHAHA.)
I registered That Baby for her program, and off we went, out the door considerably poorer and into the scorching midday heat. Where we got into our mobile sauna of a vehicle and drove off to the grocery store.
Sweat pouring off us, we did a quick run into the mercifully air-conditioned grocery store for a couple of items for supper. I am making calzones for dinner, so I wanted to buy some pre-made bread dough. If you have not purchased this before, it can be found in a freezer in the bakery and it costs next to nothing. You let it rise when you get home and voila! Instant fresh bread.
Except when you have to drive in zillion-degree heat. In which case, your bag of bread dough goes POOF! and puffs up like a startled cat in the three minutes it takes to drive home.
Le sigh.
So this afternoon, it’s a couple of episodes of SuperWhy in the air conditioned comfort of Stinkerbelle’s playroom, followed by a dunk in the kiddie pool in the backyard. To be followed by more air-conditioned goodness. And poofy calzones.
And tomorrow, when it is stinking hot again, rather than get a bee in my bonnet to run off and do some stupid errands, I’m planning to do exactly nothing and leaving the day to the dogs. Or the pigs. Whatever.
Aug
10
Summer will soon be drawing to a close, and so in many communities, it’s that time again: the time for registering children for their fall and winter activities.
For Stinkerbelle, this is a Very Big Deal. She is coming to an age where she will be soon be able to participate in a whole bunch of new activities, things she has had no exposure to before. Things like dance classes, sports programs, social programs and memberships generally start when a child is 3 or 4, and at almost 2 1/2, Stinkerbelle is going to be able to attend some pre-preschool sorts of things this fall.
She needs to get into some programs. While having a stay-at-home mom is a benefit to lots of kids, one of the drawbacks is that, unless the child’s mom is well connected with friends with children, the kid’s going to spend a lot of time playing alone. Stinkerbelle sure does. So it is time for her to get out and meet new kids and play and socialize.
When we met That Baby, two years ago now, the caregivers we spoke to said she was a very social baby. If she fussed or cried, all they had to do was put her down next to another child and she was as happy as can be. She loves other children, and always has done. So I feel bad that she was saddled with a mom who is old and has few friends with kids her age, and one that is unable to connect with other moms well enough to have playmates for her to visit.
She needs some time with other kids. It’s time.
So I have been spending some time this week looking at what to enroll her in for the fall. I don’t want to overprogram her; as a minor sports coach, I have seen kids who are way overprogrammed by their overly ambitious parents, and it is not pretty. But I do want to find a couple of programs she can attend during the week and have some fun.
First off, we always look at swimming. Stinkerbelle loves swimming (her visit to Grammy and Grandad’s and her reluctance to get in the pool we’ll put down to her being sick). The problem with swimming lessons is the age divisions. When That Baby started swimming lessons, she was a Duck. The Duck age division is something like 1 year to 3 years of age. That means that she has been a Duck for 3 sessions of lessons already, and will be for two more.
Even for a water baby like Stinkerbelle, it’s a bit repetitive.
So we are going to have to find something a little different. I want to keep her swimming, and so maybe a program that combines activities and playtime AND swimming might be in order. Or, maybe we’ll have to just suck it up and be Ducks again this year.
Another option I want to pursue is to enroll her in our local Little Gym. Stinkerbelle really seems to love running and jumping and the like, so maybe a gym class might be something fun for her. It’s also a segue into some gymnastics and dance and karate classes as she grows, if she likes the Little Gym and the environment. So we will probably give it a try.
So, that will be two days a week. That’s pretty good.
We’ve also got some drop-in programs at our Early Years Centre, as well as offered by the various social programs in town, that we could look into. I am hopeful that some of these might appeal to us as well. That way, when it is getting colder and we are feeling housebound, we can get out of the house and play for a couple of hours.
What we really need is a regular, reliable playdate, for some fun, unstructured playtime. Our weekly playdates will be ending shortly as Stinkerbelle’s little buddy will be going to daycare and his mom off to work, so we won’t have that time to get out and play as we are used to. So, that’s something I am going to have to work on.
Soon, I am also going to have to find some structured programs for That Baby where I just drop her off for a morning or two somewhere. You know, something preschool-like. Gah. Can time be flying that quickly, that we’re soon going to have to start thinking about preschool? Well, not this year, but this time next year, she’ll be 3 and it will be time. So we have to start looking to reserve a spot.
That prospect intimidates me to no end. And saddens me. Our time with Stinkerbelle as a baby seems to have gone by so fast. Too fast. And when I think of the fact that there probably won’t ever be another baby in our house…
Excuse me. I have something in my EYE.
In the meantime, I have to continue to find things for That Baby to do in the fall and winter. She will have a busy social life — certainly moreso than her mom, at this rate.
I can’t lie — I am comforted by the fact that we still have to plan her social life around naptime. My baby is still a baby for a little bit longer.
Aug
9
Monday sucks. First, it’s MONDAY. Show me someone who loves Mondays and I’ll show you a person in need of medication. Second, our vacation is done. And that’s NO GOOD NO.
Nobody likes the first Monday morning after a vacation. It’s hard, waking up and getting your poop in a group on Monday at the best of times, let alone the first day after vacation. It’s like morning came along and punched you in the face. HARD. And then laughed about it.
We had a lovely vacation, though, relaxing and visiting with BDH’s family. We did a lot of swimming, and playing with Stinkerbelle, and watching Castle on the giant TV.
(Life-size Nathan Fillion FTW!! *ahem*)
And even though we were, as is usually the case when we go on vacation, sick almost all week with colds, it was great.
So it’s hard to return to our normal everyday routine, several provinces away.
Admittedly, it’s not as bad for me, the stay-at-home mom, as it is for BDH, who had to not only drag himself up and out for work, but also had to steel himself for a shift on call. Nothing says “vacation’s over” like preparing for phone calls at all hours of the night. But even for me, the start of the work week means a change in thinking.
I may not have to get up and make myself presentable and go anywhere, but I do have a bit of readjustment to real life post-vacation. For one thing, it’s just me and That Baby, all day every day, once again. Throughout the week while we were away, there were grandparents and cousins and aunts around, to visit Stinkerbelle and play with her and keep her entertained, which was great for her — she is such a social kid, and she loved having her family around all week.
But it also gave me a break every now and then to shower or knit or read or just relax, which was nice. And it gave me other adults to talk to, which is something I definitely miss being at home all the time.
Stinkerbelle, who developed a love of PBS children’s television while we were away, returns to a life without cable. Fortunately, there are enough SuperWhy! DVDs at the local video store to keep her rocking out to the SuperReaders theme tune for awhile, and the rest we can probably watch online. But we can’t replace her lovely time with Grammy and Grandad and everyone quite so easily, so we’ll have to plan and budget for more trips home in future.
And we can’t make up for the endless diversions of her home away from home… so we have already begun the search for a reasonably priced, and hopefully second-hand, slide for the backyard. Or even a full-on play centre.
We came home to a clean(-ish) house and healthy cats, which is always good. But our voicemail contained a few important messages and our fridge was mostly empty, so this Monday also involved making calls and appointments, getting out and running errands, most notably for groceries. Trucking around with a cold on a humid, stanky day is nobody’s idea of a good time, least of all mine, but it had to be done.
And at least we got out of the house. Overcast, humid and threatening rain: the trifecta of keeping a two-year-old housebound.
But although we enjoy getting away for a vacation, I must admit it IS always nice to be home again. Sleeping in one’s own bed. Routines. And AIR CONDITIONING. Oh how we missed our A/C.
So, you know, it’s not ALL bad.
And Monday morning is now Monday afternoon. Monday can’t last forever.
And when you think of it, our vacation may be over, but we’re one day closer to our NEXT vacation. So. Onwards and upwards.
Jul
31
Okay, not really. But we ARE going on vacation. And the only fishing we’ll be doing is fishing our little water baby out of the pool periodically. Okay, maybe I’ll do a little fishing around in the fridge from time to time for another tasty adult beverage. I can’t lie.
So, see ya!
Jul
30
Tomorrow is the start of our vacation. But today? Today is the time for some TOUGH TALK for a certain someone.
Dear Mom:
GO TO OUTPATIENTS, for the love of doG! Quit worrying about the house and the shopping and whatever else. We can take care of all that stuff when we get there. Take a book and go sit there and let them check out what’s hurting and see if they can give you something and make you feel better. You don’t want to have to spend a day doing that when you could be lounging on the deck with That Baby.
Also? What if it affects your wineglass-holding hand? OH NO! That is BAD! VERY BAD!
GO! NOW! DON’T YOU MAKE ME COME OVER THERE!
Seriously! I mean it! GO! NOW! This means YOU!
Much Love,
Us.
(There. That’s done. You and I both KNOW she isn’t going to listen, but it was worth a try.)
ETA: some extra love. Especially from That Baby. Because if anyone deserves it, it’s Grammy and Grandad.
Jul
28
You know that song, “Rain, rain, go away… Come again some other day”?
How about, “It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring…”?
Yeah. My kid doesn’t.
Right now, we are sitting out on the porch watching the rain and hoping for a storm to roll in. My kid loves water, in all forms. Pools, hoses, taps, rain, snow… water ROCKS. She loves it in all its precipitational glory. So the fact that it is raining? Has her excited beyond measure.
Now, she’s not terribly verbal. So her way of indicating to me, and to the world at large, that she is excited about the rain, is to shout things like “RAIN!” and “MORE!” and “WOW!” as often as possible. And this full-throated appreciation of Mother Nature’s gifts is also accompanied by a little jitterbug of joy as she points at the rain and shouts “RAIN!” for the eleventybillionth time.
You know, in case the neighbouring province hasn’t heard that it is raining here.
She’s also doing this little thing in which (in her mind) she is being very sneaky and (in her mind) she can inch ever so slightly toward the porch steps and (in her mind) I will not notice that she has suddenly found herself standing out in said rain and, (in her mind) because she is already wet I will let her play in the rain.
Yeah. Noisy AND delusional.
So, her shouting and dancing and sneaking is periodically interrupted by me, very sternly saying her name, and pointing to the porch surface on which her bum should, in fact, be parked.
It’s a nice way to pass the time in a storm.
And when it is done? We (read: she) will spend our (read: her) time shouting “MORE!” in increasingly loud and desperate tones as her command for more rain goes unnoticed by the forces of nature.
If I had a crystal ball, I bet one of the visions of the future I would see is of a very old Stinkerbelle, on the phone, shouting at some poor sod at Environment Canada about every change in the weather.
Kind of makes me happy, that.
Jul
26
Yesterday we had a break in the humidity. It was 25 degrees and breezy during the day, which is like the complete opposite to what it was like on Friday and Saturday. On those days, it was rainy, and it was so humid and so warm that opening a door to go outside was like walking into a bathroom where somebody was taking a really hot shower.
But yesterday…. yesterday was just a beautiful summer day. So, after breakfast was done, and some cleaning was taken care of, we decided to spend some time outdoors enjoying the day.
We took That Baby to her favourite park where we were faced with a notice that the park was scheduled to have all its current playground equipment removed and replaced with new up-to-current-safety-standard equipment. Well, I didn’t know the current equipment was below standard, but whatever. The place was empty, and we stood in the shade of the big pines and That Baby enjoyed some Swing Time. Then, it was over to the slides (there are three) where she climbed up and mastered the biggest, curliest slide of the bunch. She played hard and was pooped out as the time came to leave, telling everything “Bye bye!” and waving as we made our way out of the park and back to the car, and “bye bye!” all the way home.
I was tired out from, well, never getting enough sleep EVER. So BDH said he’d hold down the fort while I took a nap. I gratefully accepted. While I and Stinkerbelle napped, BDH was a yard work machine, mowing the lawn, whipper snipping the perimeter and around rocks and gardens, pulling weeds from both the front and back lawns, weeding the patio, weeding the gardens… I woke up to find him sitting on the patio, somewhat crispy from the sun, and everything looking tidy and neat. It was lovely.
He had also filled up Stinkerbelle’s paddling pool while we were sleeping, so when she woke up from her nap, it was SPLASH TIME for That Baby! She had a big time, splashing, jumping, pouring water in and out, and just generally being as wet as babily possible, while her dad and I finished up some weeding and trimming of some unruly plants. She ran around the yard, getting warm in the sunshine, and then back into the water for another round of splashing. Well, there was a brief interlude where we watched her stomping splash, splash, splash, along the brickwork edging of our back garden, and realized that she’d had a big pee and was stomping merrily through it, but that was easily remedied with a garden hose. Then, we grabbed her and tossed her into the pool, over and over and over again, until we were all fairly tired.
After supper was done and That Baby was tucked up in bed, the evening was cooling down. I sat on the patio with some knitting, a mug of tea, and an icepack for my foot, while BDH read a few chapters of a Bill Bryson book aloud. It was quiet and peaceful and relaxing. A lovely end to a lovely day.
Finally, at bedtime, I found myself with an extra bedmate, as Lucy showed up. Now, Lucy injured a paw sometime on the weekend — she’s hobbling and won’t bear much weight on it. (We’re on vacation in less than a week, and true to form, it would not be vacation time if one of the cats didn’t get sick or injured so that we worry the entire time we’re away.) Anyway, Lucy’s built like a greyhound, all loping strides and long legs, so she tends to sprain or strain her paws on occasion, from jumping too high or running to fast or scrambling around like a neurotic squirrel on crack. So this injury, while concerning, is not unusual. Anyway, she needed some comfort, and joined me for a cuddle on the big bed, and ended up staying cuddled up next to me almost the entire night. I have lived my entire life with allergies and asthma, and dreamed of the day when I could have one of my cats sleep with me. It doesn’t happen often. But on these rare occasions, when one of them is sick or hurt, I make a space, take some antihistamines, and get to have a rare and much-enjoyed cuddle. I never get much sleep when this happens, but it’s okay. Even the furry ones need some Mom time sometimes.
And now, I am tired from a full day yesterday, and a not terribly restful night. But looking back, it was worth it. All in all, it was a wonderful summer day.
Jul
23
It’s been a busy week here at the House of Peevish. Some weeks are like that. But it has been “good” busy, so that helps a lot.
- Early in the week, we managed to get out for a walk on an overcast morning. We walked up to That Baby’s favourite park. It was amazing how still and quiet it was. Everybody was either at work or out of town for holidays, it seems, because it was quieter still than a regular work day morning. So we played there for awhile, and then began to explore. We followed a path into the nearby schoolyard, only to find a path leading through some trees to a hidden park. Houses were built around the perimeter of this grassy space, where there was a baseball field and a soccer field and some climbing equipment and a slide. It is all completely hidden from the roads and neighbourhoods around, and completely sheltered and green and quiet. We’ve lived here ten years, and walked by hundreds of times, and I never knew it was there. It’s like a secret garden.
- My kid is a water baby. She loves to be in the water (provided it is warm enough). Just like her parents. I am amazed at how brave she is. Yesterday we went for our regular play date with our friends, and they suggested we go swimming in another friend’s pool. Well, hot and sunny… OF COURSE WE WILL. So we got there and got our gear on and off we went to the pool. Stinkerbelle went in without hesitation — well, a little hesitation, and she got used to the temperature of the water — and within minutes she was jumping in off the side of the pool. She has no problem going underwater, although her standard response to any exciting or interesting situation is an open-mouthed, open-armed “O-face”, and so whenever she’s excited and in the water, she ends up getting a snoot-full of water. So under she would go, and I’d haul her up and out and onto the pool side coughing and sputtering but grinning, where she would choke out “MORE! MORE! MORE!” and leap off the side again. She even went off the slide a few times yesterday. The kid’s part fish.
- Stinkerbelle has some issues with eating — specifically, she won’t eat anything that is a) not pureed to some degree, or 2) not solid and crunchy. She likes the taste of almost everything we offer, but she can’t seem to handle the textures. This makes mealtime a challenge as she will choke on things, doesn’t chew, and will cry if she thinks she can’t handle swallowing something. She doesn’t self-feed much, because we’re so concerned with keeping her full and her weight up that we can’t afford to spill much. Mealtimes can take hours. So we have been concerned about this for some time. Related to this, her speech is not progressing as it should be. Her communication is advanced; her speech is not. So we’ve been stressing. On Wednesday, we finally got our appointment for an assessment with a KidsAbility team of an occupational therapist and a speech therapist. It was FANTASTIC. We were relieved to find that she hasn’t likely got any sensory disorder issues, because of the things she CAN do. So that was good. What we have learned is that she is delayed in eating and speech, most likely by the first five months she spent in the transition home in Ethiopia. As they had one standard size of bottles, nipples and soothers for all the children, it likely was too much for her to handle as an infant. That first 6 months of oral development is key, and hers was likely affected by the giant, fast-flow nipples and whatnot. Therefore, the sensors in her mouth did not get a chance to learn to cope properly with what she was being given, and she is still learning to cope with different shapes and textures, and learning what is safe and what she can handle. So, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but we were relieved to find that it’s very easily remedied with time and patience.
- Based on the assessment we had, which was so much fun — they played with Stinkerbelle and were so impressed by how bright and funny she is, and once they had her belly laughing they were COMPLETELY smitten — we got a few referrals. We’ll be seeing a speech therapist to work on speech and an occupational therapist to work on chewing and the technical stuff around eating. We’ll also be seeing a nutritionist to help us plan out her introduction of new foods and textures, as well as how to load up her food nutritionally until we get fully into the solid stuff. We’re also signed up to be part of an organization called Trellis, which is a huge community resource that we can use to find specialists, childcare resources, day cares, and other resources for us and for That Baby until she is school aged. It sounds really awesome. I never realized how much is out there for parents to access to help raise their kids. But my favourite part of the assessment was hearing the therapists say “Oh, we can’t WAIT to write up this assessment! It’s going to be so much fun! Stinkerbelle is just AWESOME!” It’s great to get validation that your kid is doing well, and that as a parent, you’re not screwing up. All that worry has just vanished, knowing that my kid is healthy and happy.
- We are working on documentation for Stinkerbelle’s citizenship. (“Ontario — where paperwork is a way of life.”) After having our paperwork for her name change rejected THREE TIMES, once it finally came back we were all “SCREW YOU, GOVERNMENT” and could not face doing any more for a little while. But now we are back at it, and we needed some photos for our citizenship application. So off we went to the mall to get photos done. And let me tell you, taking passport photos of a toddler is no mean feat. The photographer got her to stand atop a step stool. Keeping a toddler ON a step stool, and still enough to photograph is, we have learned, a LOT of work. We had to make sure Daddy was not in the shot, so holding her up there while keeping out of camera sight took some coordination. Then, we had to get her looking AT the camera, which involved me standing behind the cameraman, who was waving a fuzzy toy bunny at her, and me also waving a toy, and simultaneously calling her name, snapping fingers and/or clapping. We finally got a shot fit to print. And, having seen it, now we don’t want to give it away to the citizenship people, because it is so CUTE.
A busy week, to be sure. But it was a good one. And now, the humidest, rainiest day of the summer thus far is upon us. So, aside from a trip to the grocery store (if we even do that), it will be nice to have a down day.
Jul
19
Dear Shampoo Making People:
I am not happy with you.
You know the saying “ignorance is bliss”? Well, when you and the Big Mucky Mucks of your Company all get together and make your next decisions around the manufacture and marketing of your product, I want you to bear that in mind. Because nowhere is it more true than in the purchase and consumption of shampoo.
Let me illustrate.
Years ago, my husband and I bought your shampoo. It was a nice shampoo, greenish in colour I seem to recall, and it had a friendly, appealing label with flowers and birds and shit on it. It was nice. It was simple. And it went unchanged for many years.
It was a GOOD SHAMPOO. I would wash my hair, and TAA DAAAH. It was CLEAN. And smelled kinda nice.
But then, one day I went into the shampoo aisle at the store to restock our shampoo, only to find that it had changed. It was still the same friendly label, only now it was saying “25% MORE!” Well, who could resist THAT, right? So I bought lots. And we happily shampooed for weeks and weeks and weeks.
Maybe even months. It was the dark ages, and I remember I drank a lot back then, and subsisted on very little sleep. Could have been years.
Anyway. The time rolled around to go buy shampoo again. I went to get our old favourite shampoo, and it was not there! In it’s place was a bottle CLAIMING to be the same thing, only it was made with FRUIT!
FRUIT SHAMPOO! Well, I was confused.
But we tried it, and it was fine.
And then suddenly we started seeing your shampoo commercials all over the telly. Women were having orgasms because of your shampoo! They had taken to washing their hair in airplane bathrooms!
It was NEW! It was IMPROVED! It was TAKING OVER THE SHELVES!
But still at the store, there was one sad, lonely little column of the (now old, but once new) Fruit Shampoo. It was next to a whole shelf full of Orgasm Shampoo and Wash Me On An Airplane Conditioner. We clutched the bottles of Old Faithful Fruit Shampoo to our hearts, and whispered sweet nothings to it in the hopes it would never change.
And then.
Then, we went into the shampoo aisle. We were ASSAULTED. Assaulted by VARIETY. There was shampoo for every possible human condition under the sun.
There was Shampoo for Women who Insist They Are Still Under 30.
There was Shampoo for Hair That is Ever So Slightly Curly and Dyed a Particular Shade of Not Quite Brown.
There was shampoo for Single Men who Like to Bicycle in February.
There was Organic Shampoo Made with Unicorn Tears and Fairy Farts Harvested by Free Trade Agreement by the Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Tribecastan. (Hi Shannon! :fistbump::)
WHERE WAS THE SHAMPOO FOR PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT CLEAN HAIR AAAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!
So I had to LEAVE YOU, Shampoo that We Have Used For Years. It’s not me, it’s YOU. And I took up with another shampoo.
A nice, bland, ordinary shampoo that says “SHAMPOO” on the label. No adjectives. No quantifiers. No special ingredients. No conditions. Just “SHAMPOO”.
(Okay, so it comes in 4 different scents. I can live with that.)
NOW. I walk into the store and go into the shampoo aisle. And what do I see?
My shampoo is sporting a “25% MORE” label.
It is the beginning of the end.
So I am here to tell you, Shampoo People: QUIT MESSING AROUND.
It’s enough to make a person go back to traditional methods of hair care. Like beating one’s head on a rock.
Sincerely,
A Peevish Consumer.
Jul
19
One of the things I was dreading about becoming a mom was Mommy Politics.
In many respects, a lot of women never leave high school. They may be older, and have children and homes and cars, but they are still the same girls jockeying for popularity and being catty to each other that they were as teenagers. And that is when you see the Mommy Politics come out.
I was never good at the teenaged girl thing. I didn’t try to be one of the popular girls, and I went to an all-girls high school after one year of a public high school taught me I’d had enough of the cliquey-ness and the popularity contests and all that. An all girls’ school leaves you lots of room to be anonymous and blend in, and there’s usually a group for everybody so there’s little exclusion.
But now that I am a mom, I am noticing it still exists, and among grown women who you’d think would know better.
We have a neighbour who is not a very nice woman. She’s always jockeying to be the Queen Bitch of the Cool Mommies Club. She has a reputation as a nasty gossip, and if you watch her body language as you approach, you will see that same lean-in heads-together whispering-behind-the-hand that you remembered the “cool” girls did to you in high school.
I do not like her, having seen her bitchiness in action for years now. And it’s pretty clear that she doesn’t like me. It could be because I am not a girly mom, or I am fat, or I don’t dress well, or maybe because I became a mom later than the rest. I don’t know. Doesn’t really matter.
She is friends with the woman across the street, who has two small children, one of whom is Stinkerbelle’s age, and the other who is four. Sometimes, the kids and their mom will come out and talk to us, or come across the way and let the kids play all together in front our our house.
And invariably, at these times, The Queen will come out of her house up the street, and holler at the four-year-old, interrupting whatever conversation that might be going in between his mother and I. But what is more irritating is that she will call him to come over and see her.
What that does is take the four-year-old out of the play mix. So then, his little two-year-old sister will follow. And that means, their mom will have to follow and at best, retrieve them, but usually stand and supervise as they get involved with playing at The Queen’s house.
And that leaves little Stinkerbelle, standing alone in our yard, with nobody to play with. All because this woman does not like me.
Now, Stinkerbelle is two. I am working hard to set boundaries for where she can play safely, and she is very good about obeying those boundaries. So this woman knows, if she calls the kids away, Stinkerbelle cannot follow.
She’s not proven in the past to be a nice person, so I don’t want Stinkerbelle over there at the best of times. But it is a matter of principle for me to ensure that I stick to consistent boundaries and not allow Stinkerbelle to wander out of the safety of our yard, so even if this woman was not so horrid, I still feel it is important to keep to the rules when out with That Baby.
I have tried to wander over to this woman’s house when she has done this in the past, supervising and extending the boundaries in order to allow That Baby to continue playing with her friends. But when that happens, The Queen makes a point of ignoring her anyway. So what happens is that Stinkerbelle is left standing in a stranger’s driveway while her friends are taken up onto the porch or into the garage and read to or played with or whatever.
In those times that I have tagged along, The Queen has made a point of manipulating the conversations with the mom of Stinkerbelle’s two playmates to things that the two of them have in common and, essentially, excluding me from their conversation. Or, more pointedly, taking our mutual neighbour aside completely to leave me standing with nobody to talk to.
It’s all very high school. And so I choose not to play. When she comes out now, I stick to the rules — Stinkerbelle must stay within her boundaries, and I stay and play with her. At least, if she and I stay in our yard, she still can run and play, even if it is just with me, and neither of us gets treated like shit.
And since I am not a very social sort, it’s not a big deal for them to ignore me. But what is hard is watching my little girl, who was having such a lovely playtime with her little friends, suddenly left standing, alone, on the sidewalk.
I can handle the cruelty and the bitchiness of high school. I have been there, and moved on. But my little girl has years to go before she should have to deal with the cattiness of other women. It breaks my heart to see her open, trusting face fall as she, at the age of two, falls victim to Mommy Politics.
Jul
15
It is yet another steamy week here in Suburbiaville. It is uncomfortably humid and warm. This means that it will be freezing cold and rainy for the one week we have booked to go home to Nova Scotia for a visit, as well as teeming with mosquitoes, and there will be a coating of ice on the pool.
Le sigh.
Today, we will be going for our regular weekly playdate with friends, except today? We are going swimming. This is good and bad.
It is good, obviously, for the fact that we can beat the heat and humidity for a little while. I like this. It is also good because this is the one day of the week where I can sometimes have our SUV to drive. My almost-fifteen-year-old car no longer has functioning air conditioning — the car’s worth $1500, and it would cost that much to fix or replace the A/C, so that’s a big NO — so on days when it is very hot and we have to drive to visit our friends, BDH lets me take the truck and he takes my car.
He’s a good man. A good man, who is right now sweating and putt-putt-putting along on his way to work, deafened by 4×60 air conditioning.
But back to swimming. It is also good because That Baby loves the water. She loves to splash and paddle and jump. She loves to float on her back in a life jacket. Mind you, swimming lessons were months ago, a distant memory in Toddler Time, so perhaps she will get to the pool today and freak out and DEAR DOG WHAT IS THAT THING FULL OF WATER??? It’s hard to say. But I think she will have fun.
Now, it’s not all sunshine and skittles, this swimming thing. For one thing, this means I HAVE TO BE SEEN IN A SWIMSUIT. There comes a certain age where you figure that when you purchase a swimsuit, it should also come with a supply of protective goggles for all those around you who must be subjected to the horror of Middle Aged Woman In Bathing Suit.
I have reached that age. It’s like trying to pack twenty pounds of sausage in a five-pound bag.
Normally, it’s not so bad if you are going to be somewhere, like swimming lessons, where you are surrounded by people who are also mom-shaped and enduring the trauma of wearing a bathing suit when they really do not want to. But today, we will be around people we KNOW. People who I would rather only see me fully clothed from head to toe — possibly even in a parka to hide all the unfortunateness of my mid-life figure. But I can’t, so I will suck it up because my kid wants to swim.
The other unfortunate thing…
*****TMI ALERT! TMI ALERT!*****
*****LOOK AWAY, SENSITIVE TYPES!! THIS MEANS YOU!!*****
*****PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!! *****
The other unfortunate thing about going out in public in a swimsuit, is that, as a woman, and in particular a Stay-at-Home Mom type of Woman, it involves a fair amount of *ahem* “Womanscaping”.
If you are a SAHM, some days you are lucky to have even put on clothes that didn’t have some sort of stain or food substance or boogers or whatever on it, let alone wear something nice. Showers are, some days, a distant yet pleasant dream. You get up and put on WHATEVER and stumble through your days.
So on days when you actually DO manage to get showered and shampooed and shiny clean, tending the Ladygardens is the last thing on your mind. So when faced with the prospect of wearing a swimsuit in public, it requires a level of awareness and preparation that requires digging into the distant long-ago reaches of your consciousness, when you used to be an Attractive and Social Human Being.
I mean, oh my DOG. You want me to WHAT??? WHERE??
It’s not for the faint of heart.
*****END TMI ALERT. YOU ARE SAFE NOW.*****
It’s a dodgy proposition, this going swimming business. I mean, I don’t even know if I remember how to swim. I might just land in the water and sink like a rock. A fat, spandex-encased, well-groomed rock.
But you do these things for your kids. Because you love them. And you hope they will remember, and choose a nice home to put you in when you are old.
One without a swimming pool, of course.
