Stay

I will lay with him just until he falls asleep and then I will leave. I will be careful not to put my weight on the creaky spot in his doorway or he’ll wake up and the dishes will go undone, and tomorrow’s school lunches will be unmade. Sometimes I fall asleep with him and we sleep heavily, shoved together like cell mates in a crowded prison on his bottom bunk.

It’s habit now to stay after he’s read his book to me and the lights are out. The house is quiet and dark and I am tired at day’s end. I can’t refuse the minutes off my feet and his measured breath is hypnotic and it keeps me here. I remember listening for it from the doorway when he was a baby and I wanted to make sure he hadn’t left us in the night. Does this worry ever cease? I could have used some warning. I’m exhausted by the worry sometimes but it’s a part of me now, inscribed in my flesh like a fingerprint.

He doesn’t seem to care for me very much lately. Not in any cruel sense; rather that the need to create his own space has superseded my desire for sharing stories. So, curled together under a heavy blanket may be all the time I get for a while.

People say your children will leave, but that they eventually “come back to you.” That they pull away and return, only to pull away and return. I don’t like either of those options. The pull stretches my already strained heart, and being one to hold a grudge, I sometimes warm slowly to the coming back. Why must they go, ever? They’re young so I still get the “where” and the “what,” but I miss the “why.” I used to know all of the why’s. I used to be consulted for answers to those questions.

I now see a closed bedroom door where I once had a toddler wrapped around my leg. There is a “please stop asking me questions” when I finally got accustomed to answering countless ones.

Maybe I will let myself fall asleep here in this bunk tonight. It’s already warm with the heat from his small body and tomorrow he will turn from my kisses.

Couch Potato

Several things about my week:

1. Over 90% of my meals have been handed to me through a window.
2. I left my house for a potato or some version thereof at least three times. Not sure if its winter hanging around or what, but I have had some serious hankerings for potatoes lately.

That’s about it. I’m a real party, folks.

I also decided I hate cleaning my house and I’ve pretty much made my peace with it, which would be very freeing except that I can only function properly when my house is hospital corners NO WIRE HANGERS clean.

So to make things as easy as possible, I bought some disposable dusting cloths and now dust when there’s either a crack in my apathy or a really bad commercial comes on the television.

I even broke down and paid for paper towels which I never do. But I am 40 years old and I deserve paper towels, goddammit. I hid them somewhere so my kids don’t abuse the privilege, and I also don’t want them becoming accustomed to the trappings of a fancy lifestyle and suddenly thinking they’re above their station. It’s protectionary, really. I should be commended.

(WordPress and iPhone spellcheck are telling me that “protectionary” is not a word, but screw that. It sounds good, and I’m using it. In fact, it’s now this: Protectionary™.)

I’m not sure if I posted about this before, but at Christmas time my son won a trophy in a Jiu Jitsu grappling contest. I was proud, but not surprised because my son is an eight year-old 60lb bag of muscle with beautiful brown eyes to trick you into passivity before he kicks you in the nuts.

He was so happy with his win and wouldn’t put the trophy down. My daughter has many trophies that she won in soccer, and she keeps them all on a shelf, where they are cared for meticulously. I dusted them today, in fact, when a commercial for Cholesterol medication was on and I didn’t need the reminder that the window clerk at Wendy’s and I are on first name basis.

Then I went in to my son’s room to clean his “treasures.”

It seems the bloom is off the rose.

You can find me at MamaPop.com on Wednesdays and Fridays, as well. Here’s some words I arranged there last week:

Michelle Obama Criticized For Her “Dance Across Your Television” Tour

Why You Gotta Be So Mean: Can We Please Stop Slut-Shaming Taylor Swift?

Choking on her dust

My daughter starts high school next September. Her grade eight teacher tells me she should be placed in the Advanced Program at high school – that my daughter is a hard worker, a fast learner, and that she retains information.

I hope they offer “Emptying the Dishwasher 101,” and “General Laundry Folding Techniques” next semester.

She does indeed have excellent study habits, and refuses to miss school  for almost any reason. I say this not to brag, but in the same way that I would tell you my son once buried our compost bin in 3 feet of mud and that I am 39 years old and need compression stockings and blood pressure medication– because it’s true.

Last night her future high school hosted an orientation for grade eight students and their parents. Bubbly high school seniors in black polo shirts with popped collars gave the kids warm cookies and a tour of the school while telling them what to expect in terms of uniforms, dances and clubs, and delicious hot cafeteria lunches. They told them all about study abroad possibilities and travel opportunities and how they could earn credits by building schools in the Dominion Republic!

At the same time, parents were corralled into the freezing audigymnateria where school officials in suits and ties told us how much we had to pay for uniforms, how much we had to pay for dances and clubs and lunches, and also how to begin the organ donation process so that we could afford to have our kids build schools in the Dominion Republic.

When the parent presentation was over, the parents of these intelligent, quick-learning studious children in the Advancement Placement program were invited to another room for further discussion.

I was almost late getting there, to that Advanced Placement meeting.

My finger was stuck in my purse zipper.

Tip Thursday: Enjoying a stress-free Christmas

There is so much to get done during the holidays that it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Once you factor in baking, decorating, and wrapping gifts, there’s hardly any time left for sobbing into your eggnog because the only Christmas card you received was from your divorce lawyer.

Just me?

In any event, here are some Christmas tips for today’s Tip Thursday that  I hope help you manage holiday stress a bit better. I’ve used them all to varying degrees of success.

1. Elf on the Shelf – Get rid of it. If you’ve got more than one kid, the truth is you don’t need it. You’ve got a built-in Elf on the Shelf every day of the year. I’ve got two kids, and I’ve even given them both incentives to reporting behaviour. For example, one tattle earns a square of toilet paper. Two tattles? You get a sheet on your bed tonight! Three? That’s big time, helper child, and you’ve just gotten yourself a full glass of milk with dinner. Now nothing happens in this house without me knowing about it, and if something is so well thought out that it involves both children, I don’t want to know about it.

2. Caroling – Just say no. Seriously, does anyone even do this anymore? If you must participate in this tradition, make it easy for yourself: drive around the neighbourhood with your car windows open, cranking Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas CD.

3. Baking – Today’s home chef can make treats rivalling those found in European bakeries. Thanks to speciality shops and pushy friends selling Pampered Chef products, you too can churn out delectable, gorgeous treats just like those in a bakery. Have I said “bakery’ enough to indicate you should just GO TO A BAKERY? No one will know. Jab a few of the cookies with your finger, and maybe throw a couple into the toaster oven to burn the bottoms if you’re worried about appearing too perfect. I wish I had your problems.

4. Gift wrapping – Fancy papers, ribbons and bows, personalized name tags…Where does the madness end? You’re already getting a present. You expect me to spend 30 minutes carefully wrapping it in foil paper with co-ordinating hand-punched calligraphy name tag? Take a cue from my Ex-husband: wrap everything in the bag it came in and seal it up with whatever roll of tape is in the junk drawer. Some of the nicest things I ever got came in duct taped Wal-Mart bag. (And by nice I mean okay. And by okay I mean not good at all.)

5. Decorating - Right now my lawnmower is sitting out, mid-lawn, right where it ran out of gas in August. I just threw some lights on it and called it a day, so maybe go elsewhere for decorating tips.

6. Meals  - Planning nutritious meals for your family while you’re busy with things like shopping and crying, or wrapping and crying, or trimming the tree and crying can be hard. Well, wipe those tears away, friends! For I bring to you one of the greatest gifts God bestowed on the Universe: the grocery store rotisserie chicken.  This golden BBQ bird has saved my hide (and potential calls to Children’s Services for suspected neglect) many, many times. In fact, in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” the verse “partridge in a pear tree” was originally “A chicken in my buggy.”

7. Parties - Make them “BYOBAFAYNLUEICU” : Bring Your Own Booze and Food and You’re Not Leaving Until Everything is Cleaned Up. Enforce this. Hide people’s coats, their keys, whatever you have to under piles of crusty dishes and empty wine bottles. They clean the mess, they find their stuff! This is also a great way to keep guests entertained. You’ll secure a reputation for being the “hostess with the mostest” employing this technique.

I’ll check back after the holidays to see how it all worked out for you. Please, add your tips in the comments if you’ve got some to share.

Merry Christmas!

Slow Sunday

Things are the same here as always for Sunday morning. It’s raining outside, and I can hear the washing machine running. The dual sound of water is comforting and familiar. There is a pork loin marinating in the fridge upstairs for me to ruin later, my daughter is still sleeping and I am letting her, and my son is on the couch watching commercials which will no doubt rot portions of his tender, still developing brain.  

I have a list of things to accomplish today and can tell you right now that many of them will go undone. I have articles to write – deadlines loom and I’ve made commitments, so I will work a bit today. But otherwise I am going forward with no expectations. I think we all need a bit of a break this weekend. Whether you find that peace by spending the day window shopping, or wrapping gifts and watching movies, or sobbing silently while a stranger licks caramel sauce off your toes, whatever; I don’t judge.

For instance, later on I will eat an entire box of Toffifee while I make my kids perform a shadow puppet version of Led Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same,” DVD solely for my amusement.

Just do something that makes you feel good, okay? If you can make someone else feel good while you’re at it, even better. Gold stars for you.

Because YES, the world sometimes is a shit-filled, painful asscrack suckhole of a place.

But sometimes it’s not. And as long as the “not’s” outweigh the “is’s,” we’ll be okay.

Here is something I hope will ease you into a kinder, gentler week. One of my favourite ladies –  Smacksy – shared it, and I want to share it as well. Please visit her, as she has lots of gentle posted this week (and always.)

26 Moments That Restored Our Faith In Humanity This Year

Four thousand seven hundred and seventy nine days

My daughter is talking about her grade eight graduation dress and shoes and how she “needs” an iPhone. She also needs more hair conditioner, and a new deodorant stick, and her moisturizer tube is empty. Her shoes feel tight and her gym clothes need washed and do we have any razors? Also, where’s the iTunes card she got for her birthday in 2010 and have I seen her “One Direction” CD cover and can I puh-leeze buy the good almond milk next time? Because this one tastes like someone already drank it.

The suffering she endures here is incalculable.

She thinks 5 to 10 fruit and vegetable servings per day is “complete bullshit” and will comply only if I send the proper apples with her lunch – you know, “the pink and yellow ones that look scratchy and taste sweeter than those other ones and I think they have little speckles on them?“

She is funny. This child says things that make me laugh like no one else. In part because she is so very, very smart, and also because sometimes she is so very… not. She is naive, but probably not as much as I think. She is sarcastic and she is impatient and she is a good singer. She taught herself to play piano because she was bored for an hour and can now play by ear. This girl can straighten hair like nobody’s business. She doesn’t trust you until you prove yourself, and then she doesn’t trust you again until you prove yourself again and then she doesn’t trust you until…

The suffering she causes is incalculable.

She loves to draw and she is sometimes even nice to her brother when she thinks I am not looking. She will divide her Halloween candy in half to give to a friend who had the flu and couldn’t go out, because that is fair, and the flu is “complete bullshit.” She is stubborn, and she can write a better speech than most Canadian politicians have paid someone to.

She hates hypocrisy and sexism and the colour yellow.  

She reads Jodi Picoult.  I love her anyway.

On being a hermit

I could easily embrace the hermit lifestyle. I’d be happy with a shack in the woods if the shack was a bungalow in the suburbs with a large grocery retailer and liquor store nearby. And a library. And maybe a doctor; that’s probably important for hermits, what with all the tetanus risk.

But I definitely have hermit-like tendencies. Immediately after I’m extended an invitation I start thinking of ways to get out of doing/going/participating is said activity. I should probably keep a list though, because you can only break a finger or have a bladder infection so many times before people call the authorities on your behalf.

It’s not that I don’t like people; I’d even say that I can be quite extroverted. I have no fear of speaking in public, I’m not generally shy, and I don’t have an issue dealing with others. (Unless they’re assholes. But who can tolerate being surrounded by assholes, besides every single person who works at FOX News?)

Once I actually get to an event, I’m almost always glad I went. I enjoy myself and never once think that I would have been better off had I stuck with my original plan of staying on the couch eating Nutella from the jar with my fingers and crying over “M*A*S*H” reruns.

If I have a project on the go, my hermit tendencies become very strong. Right now I am working on redecorating projects of varying degrees in our living room, kitchen, and my daughter’s bedroom. These projects have become especially difficult because my family isn’t shy about offering helpful comments like: “Well, if you’re aiming for something with a urine undertone, that paint colour DOES work,” or “Our living room is going to look like a tobacco stained bingo hall,” or “Not sure I’m loving the ‘baby-crap’ gone berserk colour theme.” Or my favourite so far, “Oh my God, Mommy! Why are you ruining our lives and destroying our childhoods with your horrible decorating ideas?”

You’d think that with people like this in my house, I’d want to get out more.

But who could help but hermitize (made it up! just now!) when there are things like this on the internet to read from your cluttered but comfortable “Interstate Gas Station Bathroom” coloured office:

McSweeney’s always gots exelllant advice, this time for writers who’d wanna be writin’ more gooder:  “The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do.” Check out their “Open Letters” page, too. Bring a drink, and teach your children how to use the toaster oven; because you’ll be there awhile.

One of my favourite blogs is Finslippy; read how Germany made the book Alice and Eden wrote even funnier. This is what happens when you tell Germany to “Let’s Panic about Babies!”

To sum up my week, in two tweets:

You can also find me at MamaPop.com, where this week I wrote about how Taylor Swift   ruins everything.

Have a great week!

Ugh. Some feelings and stuff.

I’ve been thinking lately about how happy my son looks when he’s fighting. Not the “punch you in the face” variety of fighting; he’s not like that.

No, this stems more from what I saw at a recent sleep-over playdate. His very special friend was here – a boy he’s known forever. They love to rough-house and tumble around, and they know and respect each other’s limits. No one ever gets hurt, or feels picked on, or cries “uncle” or taps out or whatever.

My son has never struck someone in anger, and while he has given one person a bloody nose, he did it under duress as he was being sat on and later told me he was afraid. And guess what? I am totally cool with that. I don’t believe in violence before peaceful attempts to reconcile, but if someone is quite literally sitting on you and you can’t breathe and they’re not respecting your boundaries or complying with your request to GET OFF ME NOW, then they deserve what they get in the way of a bloody nose.

So, back to the play-fighting. After the giggling and thumping subsided, my son and his friend had this look on their faces that sadly I’ve seen less of since they’ve started using things like iPods and laptops. My son is very physical, and very lean. He’s not at all big for his age, but he is very, very strong. (I like the word “very” very much, it would appear, but I’m in no mood for edits, thank you very much.)

After the tumbling they were both pink and flushed. My son’s eyes were positively sparkling and his hair was sweaty and curling up all along the fringe of his forehead. He was beautfiul and happy.

So this week, thanks to some  advice and recommendations from my friend Kelly at Black Belt Mommy, he started Jiu jitsu. He’s only been to one class, where he spent an hour grappling and rolling and running and being told “when you practice perfection, you achieve perfection,” and “Making someone feel bad is not funny, and not ‘just a joke’ – this is not friendship material so walk away from it.”

I already love it there and I’m signing my 13-year-old daughter up this week.

For a quiet boy who never says a word about his feelings, a quiet boy who’s started and tried and didn’t love hockey and soccer and baseball, I got this response:  ”This – this -is the sport I like.”

Between those words and his smile, my cheeks are a little pinker too. 

Here’s some other stuff to read:

Sarah’s ideas are fantastic. You can find her design and DIY ideas at her blog Sarah Gunn, as well as at Yummy Mummy Club. Carve out some time; you’ll be making a list of things to do.

I spent way too much time watching this “Little Rascals” video, but I couldn’t help myself. It reminds me of when I was small and the Rascals environment didn’t feel so different from mine in the 1970′s. I’m sad that many things in this video are virtually unrecognizable to my own children, just three generations later. I especially love Spanky, and you just know from watching him as a child that he would grow up to be an awesome Grandpa. (If you know otherwise, keep it to yourself. I’m in no mood for shattered dreams this week.)

This past week taught me a few things, as well. Like these:

I was also over at MamaPop.com begging for someone to be a hero to Lindsay Lohan, and why it is never, ever a good idea to marry your brother.

Have a great week. A VERY good week.

And our bacon ain’t half bad, either…

“Hey, Frank? Look, I know we’ve already put our chin-strap frying pan hats on, and we’re ready to battle, but… well, it seems I’ve got my entire hand stuck in this here rifle. Since my other hand was blown off in the “incident” last week, I think I may just forgo this one, okay Frank?

Besides, you seem really, really happy to be firing solo at an invisible enemy with your double pistol line shooters.

So we’re good then?

And maybe after we get my remaining hand outta this rifle we could play some hockey, or smoke some of what is pictured on our flag? So, whadda ya say?

Thanks, Frank. We’re saving the world, ya know.”

Dear Santa, please get it right this year.

The holiday season is upon us and my children have started compiling their Christmas lists. This Christmas my son is eight years-old, and my daughter is on the cusp of 14.

What this really means is that I need a goddamn money truck.
 
My son’s gift list consists of things which have been marketed to him with words like “blaster action,” “rev speed,” and “guaranteed to diminish your mother’s will to live.” Everything he wants is going to damage something I own in some way, be it the fabric on my living room sofa or my sanity.

Only one of these items was made by IKEA and is definitely more durable than the other.
 
My daughter wants trendy clothing, “Apple” products, a dog, and possibly a dog named “Apple” who wears trendy clothes.
 
I do most of my shopping at the mall. (It’s where the best “Flying Blaster Action Super-Speed Starter Pack” is sold. I was on one such trip to the mall earlier this week when I parked my car and headed for the entrance nearest the food court. (I like to enter places at their most Chinese-food-smellingest point.)

Our local mall decorates for the holidays and that includes posting large billboard style pictures along the outside walls. Each giant square depicts some variation of a joyful winter scene:  one panel shows a young couple having a playful snowball fight, while another presents a smiling family gathered around a fire, cradling hot mugs, their skis propped against the cabin door frame behind them. Everyone looks festive and happy. The scenes are meant to inspire you to have such bliss in your own life; bliss which can apparently be achieved by entering the mall.

But one scene in particular stuck out. It’s right above the Chinese-food-smellingest entrance, and it is my most very favourite Christmas scene ever.  
 
Now, I don’t know if my kids are going to be thrilled with what they get for Christmas this year. All I ask is this: that they don’t look as miserable as this poor guy:

A hockey stick? WTF?
I wanted a Flying Blaster Action Super-Speed Starter Pack!
I AM NOT MY BROTHER.