The World According to the Peevish Kitty
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.
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.
Jul
14
If ever there was a doubt in anyone’s mind that That Baby was meant to be my daughter, it was completely, 100%, completely erased yesterday.
Yesterday, on the 25th anniversary of LiveAid, we began our day of listening to the performances from that day in 1985 with what has been recognized as the greatest live rock performance of all time: Queen’s set at Wembley.
Over her morning waffle, Stinkerbelle sat riveted, bopping her head and telling me “Boy! Walk!” as Freddie strutted around the stage in front of her. She was enchanted.
And then, in due course, the clip was over.
And That Baby? Her little face just crumpled, and she CRIED. She began to wail with a great sadness. And cried “MORE! MORE! MORE!”, big tears rolling down her cheeks.
I was so proud. My kid loves, REALLY LOVES, music. Just like her mama.
We watched Freddie a bunch more times yesterday, That Baby singing along, and once breakfast was done, she spun and hopped and danced around the kitchen. My little African rock-and-roll baby, singing along with me to the original, the great, African-Asian rock star, celebrating the day of music and awareness that began life’s pull on me towards Africa.
Sometimes, the fates get it right.
Jul
13
July 13, 1985.
Twenty-five years ago today, my life changed forever.
My eyes were opened.
My ears listened.
My experience was broadened.
My world opened up.
My mind was made up.
My soul was stirred.
My heart was stolen.
So many things in my life changed forever on that day.
It played such a big part in making me who I am today.
Thank you Bob and Midge. Thank you Michael and Mohamed. You changed the world. You changed me.
Jul
12
I could very well have become a crazy cat lady. It is a known fact. Fortunately, I have lured myself a husband into my odd little life and have also now become a parent, so in truth, full-on “crazy cat lady” status is now beyond my reach.
But still, we have 4 cats — oops, I mean, 3 cats and one ghost-of-a-cat periodically possessing the other cats when she has something to say, fancies some fast food, or is just generally in the mood to be a weenie. So we should, at least, have some sort of honourary crazy cat family status.
Truth is, though, I am a bit nutty about animals. I like them. They like me. It is a relationship that has grown over the years to include all sorts of animals, domestic and not so much, and envelops the furry, the feathered and even some of the scaly variety. As you well know, many bugs do NOT enjoy favoured status — ESPECIALLY EARWIGS. And in this, I could never be a Buddhist, because I have NO problem with seeing the end of an earwig’s life as it meets the bottom of BDH’s shoe.
I am lucky that my husband is also a soft touch for animals (admittedly, mostly just the furry ones). We both firmly embrace what we call The Secret Life of Animals, which basically means we think of animals in much the same way as you’d see them in a Far Side comic: hugely anthropomorphized, with a touch of Daffy Duck thrown in.
It makes life fun.
Our home is in a great location for this, backing onto conservation land as we do, making it easy to be entertained by the local wildlife. Look out our back windows at any time, and you are bound to see someone of the non-human variety milling about the yard, hanging out in the field beyond, or sitting on a fence getting his fluff on.
In recent days we have seen:
This list obviously doesn’t include the friends we DON’T see, like the raccoons that regularly tip over the feeder and try to take it home with them, the skunks we don’t see but definitely smell, and the legendary Three-Legged Coyote that is reported to be living around these parts, no doubt with his coyote pals.
It’s provided us with endless amusement, watching all our friends come and go. Yesterday, Pip got all feisty with the baby bunny, and there was endless chasing and hopping. Pip got game, I am just sayin’.
One of the things that keeps us living here in this badly-designed house of sticks is the wildlife, and the chance to have these things around us. Location, location, location. We have seen other homes we’d consider, except for the fact that we’d miss all the critters, and looking out on the trees, and the quiet.
Wouldn’t miss the earwigs, though. I gotta be honest.
Jul
9
It has been a hot humid week. It saps your energy. Who am I kidding? It saps your will to live, as the sweat forms in places it should not, pooling up under your boobs and then running in rivulets down your belly whenever you shift your gift. Ugh. It is NO GOOD NO.
But we woke this morning to rain, and this is good. And it is Friday, which is always good. So, we have good plus good. I suppose that’s all one can hope for in a day, huh.
So I was determined to sit down and write something. But it is still too hot and humid to write ALL the things. So here are SOME things, at least THREE things. Just some randomness to keep you amused as we head into the weekend.
Jul
6
Okay I apologize in advance but this will be very RANTY. Normally I sit down and try to compose my thoughts before I post, but today I cannot.
Because OMGWTF GUYS GUYS OMFG EARWIG.
Now normally I pride myself on not getting skeeved out by many things. I like mice and snakes and rats and other things that normally make women go EEK.
(Okay, well there’s fish in their natural habitat. But dude. Come on. That makes perfect sense.)
I had gone out to bring in That Baby’s swim stuff off the clothesline. I came in and put it and the handful of clothes pegs down on the kitchen table.
It was then I felt something tickle my hand.
I don’t normally scream like a girl about stuff, but OMFG THERE WAS AN EARWIG CRAWLING ON MY HAND.
And I screamed like a girl.
There is very little on this earth as DISGUSTING as earwigs. Well, earwigs and centipedes. SHUDDER. And there are so many in the backyard right now it is horrible. One must have come in on the laundry.
I screeched and flailed and flapped my hands about like a hysterical bird, and the thing went flinging off. Stinkerbelle was laughing hysterically and I was trying not to retch as my skin crawled in twenty-seven different directions, so doG only knew where the damn thing landed.
It was somewhere in the kitchen, there where I was standing.
I looked all over the place, but not too hard. I didn’t want to lift something on the table or whatever only to get a sneak attack from Disgustobug.
I was so skeeved out. I wanted to vomit.
Fortunately or not, we have white tile floors, and after a bit of looking about I FOUND IT. It was cowering under the kick of our island, hopefully stunned and dying from the impact of my flailing and the velocity with which it smacked into the floor.
But it didn’t die. It MOVED.
Now I own three cats. Used to be four. So what else are cats good for, except bug hunting? I thought to myself “How I wish Bubby were here! She’d get rid of the damn thing for me.” Bubby was the CHAMP of bug hunters. Didn’t matter where they were in the house or where she was, I just had to call out, “BUBBY!!! Come get the UGLY BUG!” and she would be ON THE CASE.
But Bubby is not here. Cinnamon is afraid of individual air molecules. Lucy is the cat version of Cosmo Kramer, or maybe that squirrel from the Ice Age movies.
So I called Duncan.
And I am here to tell you right now, for the record, that OMG DUNCAN IS SO USELESS.
I SHOWED him where the earwig was. I pretty near PUSHED HIS DAMN HEAD NOSE TO NOSE with the ugly bug.
And, thanks to the Stupidest Cat in the Universe, who just SAT AND WATCHED it, I think it’s now taken refuge under the island.
I mean, as it crawled around looking for a hiding spot, the thing practically CRAWLED UP HIS BUTT.
And he was all “BUH??”
****SMACK****
So now, I sit outside watching That Baby in her pool, hiding from the Earwig Of Doom in my kitchen. I am still experiencing full body shivers of disgust and creepitude.
The Earwig of Disgustingosity and Vileness is RAMPAGING WILLY NILLY AROUND MY KITCHEN.
Duncan likely went off and fell asleep somewhere, completely unaware of anything around him.
I miss Opus.
Thank doG BDH is coming home early today.
Jul
5
That dripping sound you hear is the sound of me, sweating. Welcome to southern Ontario in July, folks. It’s 10:30 am and already it’s 29 degrees — 38 with humidex.
THIRTY EIGHT. At 10:30 in the effing morning. It’s exactly like the Caribbean. Only without the tropical charm and the beautiful beaches and the tradewinds and the rum punch.
Okay, so it’s almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the Caribbean. (Thank you, Douglas Adams.)
Walk outside, and it’s actually very much like you’re standing in someone’s armpit. It’s warm, uncomfortably humid, and the air quality is bad.
We’re under air quality advisories here. The air will be thick with humidity and smoggy crapola. And that means Asthma Mom is staying indoors, and, by extension, That Baby is stuck indoors too.
It’s fine, I think. She’s not terribly fond of the heat. She prefers to be cool. She has done, since the day we met her. In our hotel, on that first day, she was never so happy as when she was stripped down to a onesie and wiggling around under the air conditioning vent. Even to this day, she will go over and lie down on the air vents when the A/C is on. So being outdoors and playing in this weather is not her idea of a good time.
And I am okay with that. Really.
I grew up with a pool, as did BDH, and we both miss it. And for many years as adults, we had access to a cottage on a lake, which (despite my fear of fish) was also lovely. Just getting into the water on a very hot, humid day is a luxury we both wish we still had access to. It’s tempting, on such days, to go out and sit with Stinkerbelle in her blow-up paddling pool.
But we don’t. We’ll stay indoors, doing our errands only until around 10 am, and enjoy the air conditioning until the sun moves around the house and there’s some shade in the back yard. And then after naptime, we may go out and play in the water from the hose or splash in the paddling pool. I’ll sit in the shade and That Baby will run only in the shady parts of the lawn, and we’ll maybe invite the kids across the street and their asthmatic mom to come over and keep cool, too.
It looks like a scorching, humid week. So, this routine will continue, until storms or a cold front blow in and offer some relief. Or not.
My money is on not.
But if relief does not come, I’ll be scouring the internet for a good recipe for rum punch. Or some fruity girly drink with an umbrella in it.
Jul
2
So, it is Friday, but it is essentially a long weekend for many since yesterday was the Canada Day holiday.
So do you know what that means? It means that there are people around. Everywhere.
I don’t like people. They make me mental. On the internet, I can close my laptop and oh! People are GONE! But in real life, we are not so lucky.
You know my Naked Neighbours? They are NOT home. And so this means we have No Nakedness to worry about for a month! JOY!
EXCEPT.
They have a son. A book-smart-but-not-so-bright-in-life son. Who, inexplicably, they leave alone to his own devices while they go on these trips. Far too often for my liking, if you ask me, because he invariably does something stupid.
Two years ago? He had a party, in which undue noise was made, guests were drunkified, and neighbours were pissed off. But worse still, against the expressed wishes of His Mother.
Bad decision.
Last year? He was having a girlfriend living with him while they were away. So he invented a story that he was out cycling and got hit by a car and ended up in hospital for several days and then needed supervision and help cooking meals “so my FRIEND volunteered to come and take care of me”.
Uh huh. AND, in the process, trashed the house. (With the help of friends. No explanation why they had to be there.) Well, I’ll give him points for ingenuity; it wasn’t a PARTY per se.
But still… Bad decision AGAIN.
This year? He came out Wednesday evening and said to me, “Uh, you know how my mom said ‘no parties’? Well…” and then proceeded to tell me he was having a party on Saturday night.
So, as I see it, he’s combining the two elements of his epic screwups of the past two summers: 1) having a party against the expressed wishes of His Mother, and (as I watch a poor facsimile of Miley Cyrus pull up and let herself into the house with her own key) 2) having people living in the house.
Oy. This boy is full of stupid.
So, here’s the thing I want to say to him. When judging the relative WIN- vs FAIL-ness of your plan — putting aside the fact that your plans of the last two summers have been complete disasters, and the fact that neighbours will kick your ass AND tell your mom if you are noisy on Saturday at even a MINUTE past 11 pm, and the fact that OMGWTFYOURMOMSAIDNO!!!! — when did it seem like a good debate tactic to argue the merits of your plan with me by coming at me with “Uh, you know how my mom said no parties? Well…”?
ON WHAT PLANET IS THIS A GOOD PLAN?
Sheesh.
So, when BDH inevitably marches over there after 11 pm on Saturday night, at least once, and tells them to STFU, and when other neighbours inevitably go over there after 11 pm on Saturday night, at least once, and tell them to STFU, and when eventually we call the cops and ask them to come over after 11 pm on Saturday night, at least once, and tell them to STFU… when, if at all, do you think it will occur to him that “Hm. Perhaps this was not my BEST LAID plan.”
Judging from past experience, probably never.
We’re getting the power tools ready for work on Sunday morning, bright and early, though… just to help drive the lesson home. And if anyone wants to come over and chop some wood with a power saw or cut my lawn with a gas-powered weed whacker or chop up a metal double-bed frame with an articulating saw, just let me know. I’ll supply the ear protection. And I’ll put on a FULL pot of coffee. And make you some muffins.
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