Who is this Count Vronksy?

Hey, things are financially tight right now in Casa De Beck, which has me doing my semi-annual mullings about how I can make some money. Moral qualms and the sorry state of my post-baby physique make stripping out of the equation, my lack of education leaves everything else out, and so I guess I can get a job at the grocery store unless I start writing seriously. You know, seriously, as in "while frowning."
How does one start writing for money? I could slap those little ads on the side of my page, but I suspect that's not the path to fortune and a big room full of money to swim in, ala Scrooge McDuck. Has anyone had any experiences with that?

But here you go: how would I go about making some money by writing? I have no ideas. My dad has a publisher, but he only does poetry and short fiction and neither of those are what I have in mind, so HE is no help. So..... ideas? Suggestions?

The Baby has recently picked up the habit of suddenly stopping whatever she's doing and running to me full tilt with her arms up, shrieking "Mama! Mama!", like I've been gone for an agonizingly long time and thank God, I'm finally back. I always run right to her and pick her up for one of those huge full-body little kid hugs, pretending in turn that she's been gone for ages, that I had to send her away because of a war, maybe, and now my baby is back and remembers that she loves me, no matter how long she was gone. I like to make my own fun.

The Girl is a good kid - kind, works hard, makes friends easily, smart, attractive, pleasant, one of those kids who manages to be popular with both classmates and teachers alike. She's a mighty pain in the butt at home, though, being generally a big petulant mope about every little thing these days. This will pass, being just a jolly little preview of her adolescence to come, and I've been told that 8 is a delightful age and less prone to the sulks. I hope.

Getting them from this point to safe happy adulthood seems like a near-impossible task some days, this long journey we are taking together. I have a sad feeling that my favorite part of childhood might be the young childhood part, those magical years between 3 and 6 - I'm certainly very wistful these days when I look at my oldest child, feeling like I've lost so much time with her and that from now on it's just a quick ride until she's a teenager, this long process of letting her go. I hope that she always comes back, that she always remembers that she loves me, no matter how long she'll be gone..

missing

My husband was gone to a retreat this past weekend - only the second time he's been gone overnight in our eight years of marriage! My mom spent the weekend at my place, in part to keep me company and in part because I keep the grandchildren here, so I wasn't alone by any means, but I still missed by husband very wistfully all weekend.
You get used to someone being around, and then they're not and suddenly that space they occupied, that you took for granted is empty of them. I normally sleep with a freakish and disturbing depth, like sleep is a submarine taking me to the bottom of the ocean, but I spent the weekend sitting bolt upright in bed wondering what that noise in the kitchen was (answer: the fridge).

Marriage can be annoying. My husband is the nicest man in the world, is kind and decent and respectful loving and romantic and hard-working and good with the kids and sometimes I want him to get out of my house. Once he was gone for the weekend though, it was like every cell in me was thinking "come back, come back" for the whole weekend because who else will empty the bathroom garbage? And he DID come back, an hour earlier than I expected, and you'll never guess what I was doing when he came in - was I
a) standing in the doorway, neglige-clad with my long auburn hair waving seductively around me
or
b) changing a really poopy diaper AND wearing his old paint-stained sweats?
Hint: it wasn't a). I thought I'd have another hour to get cute, you see. But cute or not, he was happy to see me and happy to be home. And I got to sleep waaaay too soundly again last night, content that the person was home who keeps the house's weird noises monitored at night, content that the person who makes this house my home was back.

Cordially, Future Dwight

All of the cool girls are doing it, so here we go - letters to myself. From myself.

1987
Dearest Future Rebecca,
You had totally better be married to that guy with the mohawk by now, because he is cool. I KNEW walking up and down that hallway would catch his attention! Or maybe you're an artist and you committed suicide which is also cool but then how are you reading this? Or maybe you moved to England and married Morrissey. That would be excellent.
Love, Rebecca
p.s. Sorry for failing that math exam, but like you're ever going to need math in life.
p.p.s. You'd better not be fat.

2027
Dear Me,
We both know that you're trying your best right now. Stop beating yourself up.
And it's panic attacks, not little mini-strokes or heart attacks or whatever else you're imagining it is. Calm down.
A little suggestion, if I may? A little exercise never hurt anyone but going back for thirds on lasagna might.
The kids turn out fine. They love you.
Love,
Older Me.

In which I think too much about certain things

You'll notice that I don't have a blogroll. I frequently feel guilty about this (I always spell that "quilty", as in I feel like a Sunbonnet Sue pattern. Or perhaps Robbing Peter To Pay Paul. I know my quilts if not my spelling.), since many people have me in their blogrolls and I DO read tons of blogs, but frankly I AM pretty lazy. When I first started blogging - lo these many months ago - I had an ambitious blogroll but erased it after a couple of months when it became obvious that I was just never going to update it.

So. To come round to my point, laboriously and slowly, hey looksee! I got an award yesterday! Yay! Mad was kind enough to give it to me, and she also wrote some incredibly flattering words about me. However, with great privilege comes great responsibility and I am now supposed to nominate five fellow bloggers. That's HARD! In fact, I'm finding it pretty much impossible - I've been working on this, off and on, all morning, and have gone through my entire bloglines, wondering who to single out. I can't decide.

I read SO many great blogs, and all of you bring so many different kinds of great things into my life. Some of you make me laugh, some of you make me bawl and some of you make me think about things a whole new way. To all of you, I say thank you, and would you like a cookie the size of your head?

Edited to add: Oh, FINE. Here are five bloggers who I will very cheerfully give the smartypants award to, and I hope that everyone goes and checks them out. They rock.

1. Kristi at Here In Idaho - She makes me laugh. And her post on Prince was pretty much the funniest thing I ever read. I mean, I'm hardly dour at the best of times but Kristi just cracks me right up.

2. Beth at It's Really Me - She's just consistently so interesting and has such a spectrum of things that she writes about - parenting special needs kids, adoption, books - that there's always something new to think about.

3. PlanetNomad. She wrote about eating a goat's head. That just says it all for me.

4. All Rileyed Up. Again with the funny. Her latest post about dog food made me laugh so loud I woke up my napping baby.

5. Antique Mommy. She's an amazing writer even if she makes me cry way too often.

This is frightening

So have you heard that Northern Ontario is out of gas? Seriously.
We're out.
There's nothing in any of the pumps in all of the towns around us - we have one of the last functioning gas pumps and they expect it to run out mid-morning. How's that for scary?
It's scary.
If it starts raining frogs, I'm hiding in my basement.

I grew up on a farm waaay out in the country, in an old (for Canada) house. At the turn of the century, one of the children of the house died mid-winter in the middle of a storm, in the middle of a freeze, and they could not get her body out. They carefully wrapped her up and kept her safely in a cold upstairs bedroom until the spring thaw, until they could bring her to the graveyard. No wonder the house was haunted.

The olden days sucked.

I used to imagine that society would come to a halt and I would then lead a pastoral, Tasha Tudor-esque existence, wandering lonely as a cloud etc. but the reality is I need modern medicine to survive, my kids only eat tropical fruits and we like driving to the mall, so keep it up, Western Civilization! Bring back my gas!

Twenty Two Months Old

You're such a big little peanut now, all sass and tantrums and giant wet kisses. You drink all of my tea when my back is turned, chase the cats around the house, slug your poor brother when he's not expecting it, and eat giant handfuls of sugar from the bag. You are so close to being an adorably troublesome two year old and are still so much of a baby, all soft baby curls and round cheeks and little soft hands.


It's only recently that my maternal panic has subsided enough for me to completely relax and just ENJOY you. We spent so much of your first 15 month terrified, numb with the fear that you were going to die. I can almost write that sentence without bursting into tears now, but it still rips my heart apart to even think it, to think that we were that scared for you and for ourselves.

When I was pregnant for the first time, pregnant with your big sister, I was shocked to find out that there was a life-threatening pregnancy complication. I was - at 27 - still convinced that I was special, that I was exempt from the bad things that could happen in life. It was hard to learn that Bad Things Happen To Everyone And This Means Me, Too. Having you so heart-wrenchingly unwell for your first year and a half of life was horrifying, but brought me to another revelation, a quieter one - that grace can happen, however undeserved, that you running around the house in your winter boots was this huge and soaring blessing.


Mostly, I'm just happy for you, for this suddenly-big girl who solemnly stirs the muffin batter, happy for your shrieking delight at bathtime, the very ordinary toddler-ness of you. We could not love you more.

Shrove Tuesday

PANCAKES! PANCAKES FOR SUPPER! I love Shrove Tuesday.

Big news on the house front - we're not building The Boy a room! What's that, you say? Are we, in fact and as we have frequently threatened, selling him? No. We suddenly realized that the main floor of our house is littered with many bedroom-esque rooms, and so he's getting the room-formerly-known-as-the-playroom for a bedroom, we're moving to the office, the office is moving to The Girl's room and The Girl is moving to our OLD room, along with her little sister, as soon as said little sister is out of her crib.

I phoned my husband with this excellent idea, and was like, "Guess what! I just saved you $7000!". That man loves me when I save him money like that. Yes, I may be a pajama-wearing slattern, but now he doesn't have to convert an attic into a bedroom so he's a happy man.

So ANYHOW. The Girl's current room is a highly busy pink pattern (handpainted in four shades of pink by My Husband in a lovely plaid pattern), which doesn't exactly scream "manly office." And our current bedroom is a dismal mid-blue colour that desperately needs repainting. The playroom is a highly zippy lime green colour, so that's fine for The Boy - he has a vintage British race car bed that his dad has built him, so it's going to be QUITE the room, and the office WAS going to be painted red, but I'm kind of ambivalent about having a red bedroom. I have enough nightmares without having my bedroom being the same shade as Satan's Bordello. All of that room painting is a BIT of work, but not the kind of work that carving a whole room out of nasty windowless/doorless attic space would have been. Everyone is happy!

I was going to write a depressing post about Britney Spears, complete with depressing photo, but nah. Today will be happy.

Mrs. Beck's Book Of Household Management

This is the first Monday in four weeks that I don't have an extra kid at home, snuffling and complaining and hogging the couch. I celebrated by cleaning the house, with The Baby following along behind me keeping up a running narration:
"Mama! Vacuum!"
"Stove! Dirty!"
"Windows! Washing!"
"Toys. Messy." (You'll have to just imagine her shaking her head here, more out of pity than disgust.)
And so now the downstairs is much cleaner (we'll pretend the upstairs doesn't exist), which makes me feel like I deserve to be lifted aloft on the shoulders of my fellow townspeople and presented with flowers by grateful children. Of course, the only thing that will happen is that the house will get messy again, but thus are the Sisyphean labours that are my life.

Another domestic note - I made gluten-free cornbread last night and it turned out so delicious that I could barely let anyone eat it, wanting to save it and thrust it at guests so that they could praise my cleverness with rice flour and xanthum gum. There was a piece leftover, which I made into cornbread pudding this morning for breakfast - both delicious AND frugal, and which of course none of the children would eat. Crap or Nothing: that is their motto. And this afternoon I'm going to make banana cream cupcakes for the kids' afterschool snack. (I say, lying. I'm making them because I read that recipe this morning and thought "I MUST EAT THAT." The afterschool snack bit is just my justifying my gluttony.) Some people don't enjoy baking and you, Non-bakers, are MISSING OUT. And probably thinner.

To clarify something I said yesterday, when I called myself "thoughtless", I meant in the sense meaning "careless, absent-minded." I'm always blowing up small appliances, letting the kettle boil dry, forgetting my keys, locking myself out of places - which I think indicates a certain lack of forethought on my part.

Transfiguration

If you grew were a child (well, a girl child) in the 1970s, you will remember Wonder Woman bathing suits. All of the cool little girls had one. I did not, and how I yearned for one, yearned with a force that would later be replaced by yearning for certain men, and now with yearnings for booze, chocolate and privacy. I was certain that the bathing suit was the key to elusive popularity, that it would change me.

I never got it. It would not have helped: I was unfixably nerdish. I know now that I am essentially unchangeable, that ME - this loquacious, moody, self-centered, mawkish, thoughtless person - is who I am, for good or bad. And I am very happy, mostly, but I will never alter.

I saw a baby t-shirt the other day which read "Here to change the world" which is sweet, but I don't know - a bit too hopeful? I can't even get myself to stop biting my fingernails, and it seems a bit presumptuous of me to then expect some newborn to be able to bring peace to the Middle East. Do I necessarily want my child to be a world changer? Too many world changers's bright ideas have only led to millions of people dead in mass graves and yes, I am looking at you, Karl Marx.

An acquaintance of mine bumped into me the other day, her 10 year old son in tow. He seemed downcast, sadder than before, and she confided in me, spitting out the words, that he'd been diagnosed with a serious learning disability. He is the same boy he always was - kind-hearted, gentle, fond of little kids and legos - but you could tell from the look on her face that she was through with him, that she regretted this child, her only child, regretted the work and effort of raising someone who will not change the world. I wanted to take him home with me, because frankly we're too overwhelmed with keeping everyone fed and clothed and reasonably clean to truly fret over whether they're going to be physicists or plumbers. The love which should have been his without condition turned out to be very conditional indeed, dependent on him fulfilling her middle class aspirations and you could see that he knew this, that he would have put off his skin like it was only a costume, allow himself to be changed utterly if his mother would only turn her gaze back lovingly to him again.

I stole this!

From Shalee.
A Meme about my poor, long-suffering husband:
His age: 37
How tall is he: 5'10, about.
How long have you been together (married):8 1/2 years
How long did you know each other before you got together?: 6 years, but we knew each other from around town before that.
What physical features attracted you to him first?: Well, he's very cute.
Eye color: Hazel
Hair color: Mid-brownish.
Hair style: It depends what day of the month it is - around haircut day, it's much too short and conservative, and then as the month goes on it gets longer and longer.
Normal Outfit: Cords, button-front shirt. He's dapper.
How did you meet: Set-up by friends, but as I said - we knew each other from around town already.
How serious is it: Well, forever.
Are you "in love": Yes, but I also LOVE him. I admire and respect him.
Do your parents like him: My parents like him better than they like me, as my father has said many times.
Do his parents like you: No. Not at all. Gosh, now I'm feeling a bit sorry for myself.
Do you trust him: Yes.
Would you share a toothbrush with him?: I often do, although he freaks out when he discovers I've been using his toothbrush. Oh, wah wah wah.
Would he let you wear his pants?: I frequently DO wear his jeans, actually.
Do you have a shirt of his that you sleep in?: When he has to stay up late working, he gives me his shirt that he's worn that day for pajamas so I'm not actually sleeping alone.
Do you like the way he smells?: Isn't that a given? Who wants a stinky man?
Can you picture having kids with him?: Boy, I'd better be able to. I'd been making lists of the names for our possible children since I was 18, so obviously this isn't a new phenomenon.
What bothers you the most about him?: How groggy he is in the morning on the weekends. WAKE UP!
Does he have a temper?: Not at all.
Are you happy to be with him?: Yes.
Does he embarrass you in public?: Sometimes he very quietly starts singing in falsetto in church. That, my friends, is embarrassing AND funny.
Does he smoke or do drugs?: Never. Not once in his whole life. I married Mr. Clean.
Does he have any piercings?: Nada.
Any tattoos?: Nope.
Does he have any scars that you know of?: Big ol' appendix scar, multiple scars on his hands, and a scar on his eyebrow AND between his eyes. Now he's sounding like Frankenstein, but take my word for it - he's very cute.
Is he a Party dude or Stay at home?: Stay at home.
Is he Outgoing or Shy?: Extremely shy and quiet.
Does he love his mama?: Yes but they're not a demonstrative people.
Would he hang out with you and YOUR friends?: They like him a lot, but he tends to vanish when we're hanging out.
Sing?: HAHAHAHA. No.

In sickness

I woke up in the middle of the night with the sudden sure knowledge that SOMEONE WAS WATCHING ME. I opened my eyes, sat up with a start and yep, there was The Boy standing next to my side of the bed and weeping quietly because he woke up with his throat really hurting. Some children's cold medication and he settled back down into bed but I was rather unnerved until I fell back into a feverish sleep.

Did I mention that we're not feeling good? It's like we're one single sickly organism, or more likely that little kids don't wash their hands enough (a kindergarten teacher once told me that you never want to use the computer lab after the computer class because the computer mice are visibly sticky with snot.). Whatever - everyone but The Girl is SICK. There's not much to say about having the cold, really - you know what it's like. It would actually be pleasant if I could crawl into some freshly-made bed piled high with blankets, and endless stacks of new mysteries and hot cups of tea to amuse myself with in between naps, but apparently small children need supervision AND attention.

I wanted to post a film clip from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg this morning - partly for my own amusement because I LOVE that movie (and yes, I want to marry it) and partly because my love of that movie explains why neither of my brothers like watching movies at my house - at any moment, you might have to watch something all-French, all-sung and from 1964. At any given moment. Because I'm boring or something. And now back to my couch and my stack of magazines and my hot tea. Have a good Friday, everyone!

A nightmare

I dreamt last night that I was desperately driving a snowmobile across near-open water while wolves chased me. The only way that dream could have been more Canadian would have been if I had a flask of maple syrup and was cranking the music of Honeymoon Suite. While drunk. With a case of beer strapped to the back of my snowmachine and Susannah Moodie clutching me in terror.

I don't know where the wolves came from, really - I'm not scared of wolves, although I DO have some exciting stories about them. I'm very scared of dogs though and with good reasons, because DOGS BITE PEOPLE. One lovely cousin of mine - The Baby looks a lot like her - has scars all over one side of her face from wandering into a neighbour's yard as a toddler, where the neighbour's dog ripped half her face off. See? That's frightening. And then one time I was out for a walk with a friend in the evening and suddenly on a deserted street this HUGE! like, a big meaty wolfhound huge! dog popped out of nowhere and started growling and barking at us. My friend bravely stood her ground and yelled at the dog to GO HOME, while I took off and headed for the nearest front door.
The stuff of legend, I am not. My friend - who was fine, no thanks to me - still laughs at me about it.

I tend to divide the thing that people are frightened of into two categories: reasonable and dumb. Dogs = reasonable. (THEY BITE.) Driving = reasonable. (car accidents.) Mice = dumb. (I'm terrified of them but acknowledge that they're relatively harmless.)Spiders = Dumb, Unless You Live In South America Or Australia or someplace else where spiders are actually poisonous and not here where they're harmless little scuttling things. And so forth. My own fears span the spectrum from the reasonable (dogs! They bite!) to the utterly inane (I don't actually think those department store shelves ARE going to collapse in on me and even if they did, I'm sure SOMEONE would notice.). Mostly, I'm just scared of subtly poisoning my children with my long list of fear, of making them feel like they can't go live their lives because things are much too perilous. The fear of doing that to my kids = reasonable.

My grandmother - the one who, my children will tell you very solemly, is in Heaven - was driving the family sleigh home one dark winter night, back when she was just a young teenager and the nights were inky dark, when she heard howls and baying behind her and this story ends with my terrified teenaged grandmother and her terrified horse being chased across near open-water by a pack of snarling wolves.

The Baby looks a lot like my Grandmother. She has a family face, a family way about her. When she gets older, I will tell her the family stories, tell her of how her great-great grandfather, a giant of a man, half missing from a mine explosion, heard the howling, heard the ferocious running of the horse and came running out of the house with his rifle*, driving away the wolves as his child and the horse tore desperately into the barn, the barn only 30 minutes from where I now sit, writing about my grandmother who has passed into legend, into dreams.

*I just read this to my dad and he said that it wasn't my great-grandfather but instead a local farmer who heard the horse bells and the wolves. Same difference!

Love, love, love

Thanks so much for all of the kind comments yesterday, everyone. They were much appreciated and I promise to spare you any further glimpes into my tormented, self-centered id.

When I was pregnant the first time, my husband and I went through our combined genetic pool and shuddered at the results - his father's nose, my father's terrifyingly hairy beetling eyebrows, and just skipping any of our mothers' genetics altogether, since they're both good-looking women - and worried about our poor, theoretically ugly child. Oh, we would love the ugly child with all of our hearts and help them grow up to understand that it's not looks that matter.

I got an email from one of my cousins this morning, commenting on some photos that I'd sent out to the family group:

Beck ALL your children are so attractive....I think (oldest child) is just absolutely beautiful.....always have, but as she gets even older, she becomes more and more stunning looking....

And it's true. All of my children are attractive but one of my children - the oldest one, the one we worried about being all beetling brows and gigantic nose - is extremely beautiful. Really. Not just me being biased here. And therein lies the problem, I guess. Everywhere she goes, people are always telling her how lovely she is and I worry that she'll decide that her face is the sum of her, that she need go no further than being an object of beauty, this pretty thing. She doesn't give me any cause to worry, by the way - she's smart and good and hard-working and kind-hearted and sensible.

I AM extremely biased. If you met her, you might think she's just a skinny little stringy-haired kid, all giant Chicklet-sized adult teeth and holey socks, no prettier than the next girl in her class. And you would be so wrong. She's the prettiest girl in the world, my little replacement, my heart.

Goodbye cruel angst!

Shalee tagged me yesterday and I forgot about it till right now - and if you've tagged me lately and I didn't play, I FORGOT. It's part of me moping around. My memory will return when the sun does. So here, in all it's memey goodness, I present: A MEME.

If you had to choose one vice in exclusion of all others, what would it be?
Sloth.

Name the cartoon character you identify with the most.
Uh... Bugs Bunny when he's dressed up like a lady. Because I am so very, very ladylike.

If you could live one day of your life over again, which one would it be?
That question is too hard for me today. I'll get back to you on it.

If you could go back in history and spend a day with one person, who would it be?
One person? I'm going to say Isaiah, presuming I have a suitable translator.

What is one thing you lost, sold or threw away that you wish you had back?
My grandmother's locket.

What is your one most important contribution to this world?
I proved that you shouldn't turn on your empty microwave to use it as a timer. True story. You may all thank me for this important contribution to science.

What is your one hidden talent that nearly no one knows about?
I am the Queen of Scattergories.

What is your most cherished possession?
My beloved television. I love you, tv!

What one person influenced your life the most when growing up?
Mr. Dressup.

What word describes you better than any other?
Moooooody.

Lines

So I just told my husband that I posted his picture and he very politely freaked out and asked me to take it off. He's a sweet guy and a very private one and whoops! I crossed that line.

I've been having some big "who do I think I am?" issues lately. I have so many interesting readers, people who live in exotic places, people with challenging careers, people who are very clever, and recently I've been feeling not smart enough, not worldly enough. I live in a hick town, stay home with my kids and am rather on the blue collar end of the spectrum. While I think I'd make an adorable rich person, I'm quite happy with my lot. Right now, though - likely because it's late winter and I'm more than a little PMS-y - I've been feeling like I don't have anything worthwhile to say. So what better than to write a whole post about my feelings of inadequacy? You're all so very lucky!

We're Sick! Valentine's Day Edition

I have some horrible consumptive illness, which is causing me to swoon around the house feeling rather under the weather. The Baby has the same illness, although she's mixing it up a bit by throwing in a deep, croupy cough. The Boy is taking the day off school because he announced that he had a very sore throat. And my husband just phoned me from work and said that he's feeling really sick.

But hey! The Girl has returned to school after missing a whole WEEK. Her cast is off her arm too, so she's very chipper. Oh, and vain - I was brushing her hair this morning, and she was admiring herself in the mirror, saying "And who is this adorable girl? WHY, IT'S ME! I am so CUTE! C-U-T-E!" Like mother, like daughter.

So in honour of Valentine's Day - and because Kristi asked - here is the story of my meeting, losing and regaining my husband, which I've actually written about before but heck, I'll write about it again. Here you go:

I first saw him when I was in grade 9 or 10 - a friend and I were returning something to the media classroom and he was sitting on a long table, playing guitar with a bunch of guys. I was instantly smitten - he was wearing a PURPLE SHIRT! He had HAIR DOWN TO HIS WAIST! he looked SENSITIVE! - and thus started a low-level crush that would last for the rest of highschool. He dated one of my friends when I was 16 (he'd already graduated by then and was working at the drugstore and painting) and another one of my friends the NEXT year. (it's a small town, OKAY? and they weren't friends with each other - I just happened to be friends with both of them.)

So Grade 13 started (remember Grade 13?) and I was bemoaning to a semi-friend that I really didn't like any of the guys at our school, that they were a bunch of jocky oafs and she mentioned that he was single (he'd broken up with my friend over the summer and she'd gone off to university) and that why don't I come to a party she was having over Thanksgiving weekend? (that would be Canadian Thanksgiving, in the middle of October.) I didn't know a whole lot about him, apart from him being cute, an artist and that he liked my taste in friends, but went anyhow. We had this instant connection, this really undeniable spark -we were both artsy oddballs in a small Northern town, but beyond that something about us just meshed perfectly with each other.

Unfortunately, I was nuts at the time. So I spent the next year and a half being The Worst Girlfriend Ever, the kind of girl who screamed at him in front of his friends, who was constantly emotionally manipulative and who took him completely for granted. I was going through a lot at the time - I started and then dropped out of university, for one - and in my usual fashion didn't handle things well. It was awful, because we both knew we loved each other but we made each other miserable (well, primarily I made us miserable.). We broke up sloooowly and painfully before I was 20. He finally made up his mind about what he wanted to do with his life and moved far away to school. I went to another city and started university AGAIN (what a waste of money THAT was.).

One month. It took one month for me to realize what a mistake I'd made. I'd had a lot of initial optimism about our breakup, thinking that if he was that great - and he was - how terrific would the rest of the World Of Men be, men who had not been raised in the stifling climate of our small towns. But they all sucked. And then for the first time in my life I suddenly had some self-knowledge, some idea of how my behaviour had wrecked the situation. I apologized to him, and told him that I realized for the first time how I'd acted and that I missed him, but he wasn't buying it.

This is depressing me to write - it was a really awful time in my life.

So we became friends - talking on the phone once in a while, writing letters and seeing each other on breaks from school. We had a torturous relationship with each other, dating other people and yet being unable to stay away from each other. For years. Three years went on like this with me desperately wanting him back, dating only losers so that I would be available should he, you know, wise up and want to be unhappy again. I make such great life choices! I'm so smart! Then I met another guy - someone sweet, someone funny, someone who really liked me. I still thought about him a lot but I had this new guy who actually made me happy, and I was finally NOT nuts. Two years passed.

I still thought about him a lot, though.

My brother was living in the same town as now-husband, and needed some roommates for the summer, so he asked if I'd like to move down with then-boyfriend. We signed up pretty cheerfully and so there I was, living in the same city as him and the whole summer went by and I hadn't seen him at all. I knew were he worked and would watch the building out the bus window when I went by, feeling a stab of sadness. Then one day, I was standing outside of the mall waiting for the bus, when suddenly he was walking across the parking lot towards me, with his very disgusted girlfriend following him with some friends. He came over and gave me a friendly hug, asked me how I was doing, said it was good to see me again and then he was gone. And I caught my bus, went home, sat on the floor of my bedroom and cried. Because I still loved him, it hadn't gone away or faded, and he was with someone else, they looked really serious and no one else would ever measure up. I was obviously just going to have to live with it for the rest of my life, this big unmoving love that hurt, like a phantom limb.

I moved back to my city with exboyfriend. Right before Canadian Thanksgiving, my brother phoned me and said that he didn't know if it would matter to me, but now-husband had broken up with his girlfriend late in the summer. He just thought I should know.

I asked ex-boyfriend if he'd mind if I phoned him. He didn't, and now-husband and I had a strange, ackward chat. He was glad to hear from me. We exchanged email addresses and made plans to go out for coffee on Thanksgiving weekend. By Christmas, I had moved to his city, was living with him (poor ex-boyfriend. But he was okay.). By the next Thanksgiving we were engaged. And the Thanksgiving after that, we were married.

My not being a complete jerk now has been a really great addition to our relationship. We make each other happy now. I don't know what lesson there is in my big Luv Story, but I was a really cute bride. C-U-T-E. I'll never fit into that dress again, though.

Valentine's Day Preparations

It's Saturday which means that my creativity dries right up. I blame having my husband around, since I just direct this constant stream of blather at him and thus have nothing left unexpressed.

Valentine's Day is this Wednesday. Predictably enough, we go way overboard - heart-shaped chocolate chip pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast! Heart-shaped mini pizzas in lunchboxes! Homemade valentines for the kids! That sort of thing. My favorite thing that we do is: using double-sided tape and pink and red crepe paper, we put up a canopy around the kids' beds while they sleep, and tape construction paper hearts with things we love about them written on ("The Girl is so kind!", "The Boy gives the best hugs!"). It's sappy and silly but it's also a chance to step away from my everyday role of Irritable, Harried Mommy and just be the person who loves them more than anything, really.

But the best thing about Valentine's Day is the thing that my husband does - he brings me flowers, of course, something I love like tulips or lilies, and then (and this is proof, I think, of how wonderful he is) he brings each of the kids flowers, too - smaller bouquets of carnations and baby roses. The girls were enchanted last year, while The Boy said thanks, gruffly, and tossed his on the couch. His dad plans of bringing him a cactus this year.

The way I feel about my husband has deepened immeasurably since we became parents - someone who is as charmed as I am by their silliness, someone who shares a silent, bemused glance with me when they're particularly cute, someone who loves them as much as I do. After nearly 17 years (good grief!) of being together, off and on, after being married for nearly nine years, it's still so nice to go to bed each night knowing that I married the right person. I don't write much directly about him (although I have on occasion), but he is all that is kind and good and my heart - not the kind with doilies and stickers and flowery sentiments - beats with the sure and happy knowledge of being well and deeply loved.

Death of a Floozy

Well, of course she was going to die young. Of course. That's what always happens, the combination of ripe sex appeal and utter lack of brains being obviously lethal. Her death, combined with the whole crazy diaper astronaut thing earlier this week, has made it the BEST WEEK EVER for Entertainment Tonight.

We've all known those girls, the ones who got their boobs real young and dated much older guys, the girls in the cheap tight pants with loooots of eyeliner. (What is it about the injudicious use of eyeliner that is The Mark of The Skank? I wish that Those Girls would seize upon the overuse of blusher - that would be a lot more fun.) I was so jealous of those girls when I was in highschool, since I remained miserably pre-pubescent until, oh, 16 or so and and it was pretty much like I had some magical cloak of invisibility that rendered me and my bookish charms unnoticeable to the dull, snowmobile-obsessed boys of my highschool. I think most of those girls turned out okay, one way or another, found their way to some sort of adulthood. Some of them, though, didn't.

Getting my daughters safely through adolescence is a big concern for me. I didn't think that I would have to start worrying about it as early as seven but already there are whispers of things to come and when I think about my oldest child's teen years I get a hard, scared knot in my stomach, like my baby is going to have to go through this very hard time with only her limited experiences and me to guide her and wow, I am not smart enough for this. And then there's the everyday horror of listening to the news and realizing that sometimes bad things happen to children, that they are not actually made out of something permanent and deathproof and I just want to move out to a cabin in the woods with my kids someplace far, far in the forest, away from the big stupid world.

Anna Nicole Smith was always a farcical figure, the sort of publicity-hungry, talent-devoid tabloid figure that makes me despair of this culture. The death of her son, though - right in front of her! right after the birth of her daughter! - turned her into this tragic figure in my mind, this bimbo King Lear. I'd always thought that if anything happened to my kids, I would turn to a pillar of salt, turn to dust - and dumb ol' Anna Nicole went ahead and did just that. The horrifying vulnerability of motherhood has been revelatory for me, turning almost any mother into a sympathetic figure, turning the death of a gold digging stripper/model into a Shakespearean final act.

I can hear mice scuttling in the ceiling of my office, just one of the many things I hate about late winter. Another thing I hate are the illnesses that make the round of my children's school, one of which has kept my oldest child out of school for the entire past week. Her whole class made her a giant get-well card yesterday, and one of the little boys in her class signed it, rather disturbingly, "Love Nick." Back away from my daughter, young Nick! She's cheerfully on the mend, and has spent the day baking cookies in her toy oven (like mother, like daughter), watching cartoons, playing with clay and doing her homework. She's a good girl - she loves being busy and productive (like her father. I'm slothful.), scorns bad behaviour, is a sedate, composed, creative child. I can imagine her so clearly as a woman, her hair caught back in a scarf, her serene face focused and joyous with the work of her hands - her art, her children, perhaps even something I can't imagine (higher level physics, maybe), but something, something worth more than what this world, what Old Nick will tempt her with.

What is WRONG with some people?

We were walking through a discount department store the other day and came across the enchanted aisle of boy t-shirts, the kind with rude slogans on them (Our favorite said something about wiping one's butt with one's homework.). Like the world isn't hard enough without people putting their spoiled brats into vulgar t-shirts. Also, are people really that stupid as to put their sons into anti-school t-shirts and then send them TO SCHOOL? Do they really not think that this will have some effect on how the teacher thinks about AND GRADES their child? Der.

Speaking of shirts - the other day it was VERY cold and we saw a teenaged girl outside wearing a hoody zipped halfway up and a very low cut shirt and the exposed skin on her chest (and there was A LOT of it) was red and white with frostbite. She was walking along casually chatting with some boy and she must have been in agony. My new goal is to raise my daughters to be too smart to do that. Poor kid.

I went for a walk this morning - it's a coldly beautiful day, the sky a perfect blue and the snow glistening. A fat black cat ran along beside me for much of my walk, all soft blackness against the endless white. It was a lot of fun until the final five minutes each way and then I was just too cold. My dad watched my kids and I returned home half-frozen to The Baby sitting happily on the couch wearing an apron and eating a popsicle.

Kyla tagged me with the book meme, and so here you go - from Margaret Oliphant's "Miss Marjoribanks", p. 123, lines 3 to 6:

Nancy came in with more than her usual briskness. It is true that Lucilla had her household well in hand, and possessed the faculty of government to a remarkable extent; but still, under the best of circumstances, it was a serious business to propose a new dish to Nancy. Dr. Marjoribank's factotum was a woman of genius in her way, and by no means unenlightened or an enemy of progress, but then she had a weakness common to many persons of superior intelligence and decided character.

Superior intelligence AND decided character? Is it a weakness for American Idol? A love of candy? No?

A thing of beauty

I spent all of yesterday entranced by the news story of the crazy diaper-clad astronaut chick. Every few minutes my dad would phone with some new tantalizing, hilarious (we're a bad people) detail and we would shriek with laughter.

It was, I think, the glee that someone who had managed to become an astronaut, someone who had actually slipped the surly bonds of earth etc. had become deranged from something as everyday as a crush. It also makes me think that perhaps in between going to spaceman school, someone - her mom, perhaps - should have taken her aside and explained that the way to a man's heart is not by killing his current girlfriend. Or that NASA needs to improve their psychological testing to include the following question:
53. The person you are romantically interested in is dating someone else. Do you:
a) Cry a bit, watch some sad movies, eat some ice cream, and then go out with friends?
b) Exercise a lot and start dating someone else, just to show them?
c) Stalk their current love interest while wearing a diaper and attempt to kill them?
Free of charge, NASA! I'm offering you that question FREE OF CHARGE!

So I don't think any of my kids are going to become astronauts, if only because I appear to have three artists on my hands. Note, for example, The Girl's self-portrait that she's been working on* in the top left corner. She is SEVEN YEARS OLD, people, and she didn't inherit that talent from me. That's great, because art is traditionally one of those really stable careers that don't attract complete loons, unlike becoming an astronaut.

*She's standing beside me right now (she's sick home from school AGAIN! Stupid cold.) complaining that her painting is NOT DONE. I will post it again when she finishes it.

What a Crock.

Here's the recipe for the chocolate-raspberry bread pudding. It WAS very tasty, but I wouldn't rush out and buy a crockpot just to make it. No, I would rush out and buy a crockpot because they are THE GREATEST THINGS EVER. If you're a working mom, crockpots will beautifully answer the question of how to feed your family healthily while you're exhausted post-work - and even though I am at home, mine still gets used several days a week when I'm busy during the day or whatever. Amazon has a couple of vegetarian slow cooker books listed, too.

Hey, The Girl got a package in the mail yesterday! Pieces' daughter sent her beautiful metallic flowers for her cast and some craft kits and they arrived at the most perfect time ever, right when The Girl was moping around the house with a bad cold. Here are the pictures:
This is The Girl's fairy house, made from a kit that she got for Christmas (from me). The flowers on top were an inspired new addition yesterday. Do note the languid fairies lolling about.

And here is a cute little dragonfly that she built, too. Thanks so much, Girlkiddo! We're going to make the heart-shaped biscuits today.

Your Daily Update

It's cold today and everything is grey outside. The Girl is genuinely sick - she spent yesterday feverishly sleeping and watching movies in her room, the first time such a thing has ever happened. I'm always so horrified to find out that someone lets their kid have a television in their room, as a sign that they are The Worst Possible Kind Of People (which is, admittedly, a bit of an overreaction). Let a kid get sick enough, however, and it's like, here you go, kid! TV in your room!

She was PRETTY sick. She's still feeling pretty crummy, laying palely on the couch watching cartoons and demanding ice cubes. The Boy has a severe case of Mondayitis, which apparently involves being much, much too ill to go to school and needing to build complicated robots in the playroom while snacking constantly. Please, help find a cure. The Baby appears to be unaffected, but then she didn't have school today, DID SHE.

Everyone all healthy at once. Is that too much to ask? Yes?

So let's see. The computer was on the fritz all weekend, which caused me to spend a lot of yesterday fretting because MY EMAIL, IT WAS GOING UNCHECKED, OH THE SUFFERING. And then my husband's grandfather (and my husband's aunt and mother) came over for a visit and took us out for dinner, that good, good man. He also brought us over a lovely clock that he built, with a little version of a painting of his in the bottom and I'd post a photo except I let my camera batteries run all the way down. I'm whimsical like that. I happened to have a crockpot full of raspberry-dark chocolate bread pudding, so everyone was able to come back here for some rather tasty dessert. I rock at making desserts. Me + Sugar = BFF. There are some joy-killers out there who eschew desserts, who think that a homemade apple crisp is in some dark way a nutrional nightmare, but I think they're wrong and that declaring certain foods off-limits is always going to backfire. A little tale to illustrate:

A friend of mine has three little kids and was very, very health-concious. She did not let her kids eat junk food, ever, and kept all processed sugars from their diet. This sounds very virtuous, doesn't it? Anyhow. Said sugar-free children then entered the wider world of school and birthday parties, with several interesting incidents. Here's one:
1) Oldest child, at age six, was dropped off at a birthday party. My friend was then phoned about half an hour later by the parent of the birthday kid - would she come and pick up her daughter? The child had snuck into the kitchen, eaten half the birthday cake and was throwing up.

See? SEE WHAT HAPPENS? I don't think making kids feel like a food is forbidden, is enticingly off-limits, is necessarily setting them up for a lifetime of healthy eating. My goal - and I'm not saying I'm achieving it - is to have something yummy for my kids every day - some gingersnaps in their lunchbox, a homemade dessert with supper. Actual junk food - going to McDonalds, drinking pop - isn't very frequent at all, but still happens, because I don't want any one food to get a desirable mystique. And the result is, of course, that I don't please anyone - my health concious friends are convinced that we're all about to drop dead of rickets at any second, my relaxed friends think that I'm a nutrition zealot and my kids complain fulltime that they don't get Yogos in their lunchboxes. I win!

Hey There, Cupcake.

You know why I'm so good at decorating cupcakes? It's not that I'm some fantastic nurturing Earth Goddess, full of delightful whimsy and endless patience for annoying little kids - it is that I do not have a job, that I am home full-time with said little kids and sometimes the only thing standing between me and completely losing my mind is putting together a tray of frog cupcakes. (also a little bit of that fantastic nuturing Earth Goddess thing, but only a little bit.)

I've written before about how some women my mother's age have taken issue with me being both smart and at home with my kids, like this is some big betrayal or waste of time. But I LIKE being home with my kids. It's a pleasant life and I mostly enjoy myself a lot. I'd always fantasized about having a huge, Duggar-sized family but my health is making me resign myself to having three, which is like 9 these days ANYHOW. Also, I think my husband would grab a freight train out of town if we had 16 kids. Once in a while, though, I feel a bit clausterphobic and there's nothing to do about it except wait for the day to end, for my husband to get home. But that's a minor problem, really, and for the most part it feel like a good, meaningful life, doing something that I love doing.

My husband and I were talking about the recent "issue" about women drinking at playdates, and I asked him if he would be upset if I had a glass of wine at a friend's during the day. He pointed out that I HAVE had a glass of wine during the day (with a friend, once, and my mom was over half an hour later. But still.) and that he didn't care because he trusted my judgement utterly. It struck me that the whole thing - not just drinking wine at playdates but also whether women should or should not be home with their kids, the whole thing - boils down to whether or not we trust other women's judgement, their assesment of their own lives.

I'm a fun mom. I'm relaxed, I like reading and playing with my kids, and I make cupcakes on silly holidays. But I also feel like this is WHO I am, this is my calling, my vocation. Yours might be the same or it might be different and your approach to being a good mother might be completely different. I don't get what it is about motherhood that makes us put up these rigid boundaries and start questioning well-intentioned, loving mother's judgements, what other women want.

The Baby's Monthly Update

The 21st of January came and went and I did not write the Baby's monthly update, mainly because the day before had been The Boy's birthday. However, there has been complaints from certain quarters and so, slightly belatedly, here is The Baby: Month Twenty One. You've kind of been a twerp this past month - you really have discovered yelling and that your older brother and sister will give you ANYTHING you want if you just march over and scream "MINE! NOOOOOOOOOO!". You've been using your Brand New Excellent Social Skills in public, pushing around older toddlers and I think that it's a little bit funny because your older siblings were so timid as toddlers and here you are, this little loudmouthed mite.

You really, really like having your way and suddenly you're verbal enough to be able to say what you want most of the time - the other night, you came marching in at bedtime wearing a pair of fuzzy footed sleepers with Halloween socks pulled up on top to your thighs, your sister's knock-off Snow White t-shirt and your beloved red zippered sweater. I looked quizzically at your father who normally doesn't put you into anything worse than sweatshirts under overalls, and he shrugged and said that you'd really, really wanted to wear that. Well, okay.
Your world suddenly seems a little bit bigger, with nursery hour at the library and playgroup, trips to the post office and friends' houses. You seem more indomintable than your siblings, more brazen - you forge ahead with the expectation that everyone will be your friend, that there are no dangers that won't be removed from your path, nothing you can't yell at into submission. You're very verbal, and until you collapse asleep after lunch, I'm followed around by a steady stream of comments, a running excited narration:
"Mama and Baby eata cheese!"
"Kitty onna chair!"
"Red sweater! Mine! Mitten pockets!"
"Bad kitty! Kitty scratch! Scratch baby!"
"Look mama! Finger ina nose!"
"Haaaaaalp! Stuck ona chair! Haaaaaaalp!"
All day long. And do I have to even mention what a pain in the butt you are in church? The elderly congregants LOVE to see you, but you spent all of service last Sunday yelling about monkeys and bunnies, and shrieking "leggo!" every five seconds. You DO look cute in your spiffy Sunday clothes, though.
It's been a rough month for you health-wise. Several bouts of illness have cost you some of your hard-earned weight, which is distressing. You had to get some needles earlier this month, which disgusted you - you yelled at the poor nurse practioner "Hey! No way! Stop! JEEEZ!" - but recovered from your post-needle crying to take the stickers offered to you by the nurse. When I told you to say thank you (which you'll normally do - you're a loud person but a polite one), you shot me a dirty look and muttered "no WAY." and then marched off with your stickers, unsure of your destination but confident that you'd find friendly faces when you got wherever you're going.



It's Groundhog Day today! Regard my cupcakes:


Their searching glares ask you to look deeply into yourself and ask "Have I voted for Beck yet?". (Humour! Writing! Meeting! Go vote!)

Daughters

My oldest daughter - and it feels very odd to refer to her that way, like she's part of a collection of girls, one of many Hummel figurines on a shelf - has recently just had enough of me. She's only seven, but anything I say is met with complaints or sullen eye-rolling silence. I don't think she's a bad kid at all - she's considered the Nice Kid in her class, she's polite and kind to most people, but suddenly I'm on her black list.

I'm not going to say that I don't mind, that I'm bigger than this - I do mind and she is hurting my feelings. This is my baby girl, the one I expressed milk for every two hours for seven months; this is my curly-haired toddler who fell asleep every night clutching my hair in both hands. But she has recently discovered that she has claws and she must test them and who else loves her quite enough?
My mother and I are not much alike. I take after (and this pains me to write) my dad, with only a few subtle things in common with my mother. We both gave birth, for example. But I tend to define myself almost more by how different I am from my mother - she is uncomplaining and I am certainly not, she is shy and I am loud, she has always taught and I stay home with my kids, I love Jane Austen and she can't stand her. Important things like that. In some essential way, she will always be the person I measure myself against, what being a woman means.

My maternal grandfather's family has a long and scary history of death caused by brain tumours or strokes. Shortly before Christmas, my mom started looking pale a lot of the time and finally confessed that she'd been having headaches. When pressed, she admitted that they were all the time. She would not go to the doctor for ages and finally when she did go, they sent her for all of the tests that you'd expect - cat scans, bloodwork - and I got to sit around and let those nameless whispery fears take solid shape, to live with the thought that I might lose my mother.

Back when I nearly died last March, I was terrified about what was going to happen to my baby, my unwell little child. My husband is a kind and doting father but the baby obviously needed a mother - and it wasn't until my mother was with me that I was able to be calm, because she would take care of her, it would be all right.

So my mom got her test results back yesterday while she was actually at my house. While she was talking on the phone with her doctor, The Baby was throwing a loud and shrieking tantrum and I was trying to keep her cheered up while eavesdropping on my mother's phone call, this feeling of doom hanging over me. My mom hung up, and I was like "WELL?", terrified of what she would say.
"I'm fine," she said cheerfully. "They think it's allergies."
And then, for the first time in my whole life, I burst into tears of relief. I didn't even know people DID that for real.
I imagine that I could live through that loss, I'd have to. But it would be like being hollowed out, like a balloon floating away untethered by the only person guaranteed to always love me regardless of how much of a jerk I am, regardless of me testing my claws.