My Five Minutes for Parents post is up right now, and it's a particularily cold and cheerful post, just right for those of you sweltering away right now.

Of course, we're not. It maybe gets up to 25 in the very middle of the day, but it's very humid and rains all the time. How very summery. We have a family reunion to go to this weekend AND a ton of relatives are coming into town (no kidding) so I'm going to spend today cleaning up the house. Whoop-dee-doo!

Sea Monsters

There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
(The Kraken - Tennyson)

The Baby is a heck of a kid, especially in the middle of the night. She is a bit of an insomniac and more than a bit spoiled so she wakes up and calls out to us, wanting drinks, wanting stories, wanting to be sleeping in OUR bed, which is apparently THE place in the house to be, judging from our children's constant pleading.

My husband is the nighttime parent. He wakes easier and sleeps lighter than I do, and he's also just a little bit scarier than I am, which helps when you have a six year old who really thinks that he should be downstairs watching cartoons instead of doing this lame "sleeping" stuff. So I woke up in the middle of the night with a guilty start, realizing that I'd been hearing my husband gently talking to one of the kids for ages. I went in, and my husband was sitting on the floor beside The Baby's bed, utterly exhausted. I volunteered for the next shift, and he staggered back to bed.

The Girl spent part of yesterday reading a book on sea monsters, running over to show me old woodcuts of giant tentacles pulling ships underwater, these imaginary things reaching up and snapping boats in half. Then we looked up anglerfish, those hideous deep sea things. The Baby and The Boy were playing on the stair landing, the tube from the roll of paper towels a telescope, the stairs their pirate ship. It sounds like a good day in words, but in reality, it was an endless, creeping sort of day, like I was some slow moving thing at the very bottom of the ocean

And so there I was, the middle of the night and half asleep, sitting beside The Baby's bed, her curls and round cheeks and soft little hands suddenly transforming her into a baby, a little tiny child, this opposite to her brazen daytime self. It all at once seemed like a good idea (SEE? SEE? THIS IS HOW IT HAPPENS.) to carry her into our bed, and so I did, my husband groaning. And then The Baby kicked us for the rest of the night and no one slept at all, The End

I was chatting with my husband this morning on the phone, and handed the phone to The Baby, who said, very sweetly "I love you, daddy." "Oh, that makes it ALL WORTH WHILE," he said flatly to me when I got the phone back, and then we both laughed like crazy people. Crazy, exhausted people. And now I'm shuffling around in my pajamas half-awake and biting the heads off of anyone who talks to me, like some gigantic, half-awake thing that has unwisely risen above the calm, dark water.

I really can't even think of a title

Wow, writing has been hard this summer. Not so much the writing itself - that's easy enough - but coming up with things that feel worthwhile to write about.

I got two packages in the mail today - whaaaat? I wasn't expecting any packages! So I carried them home gingerly because WHO KNEW what they might be? And they both were excellent - one was the cup that I sent away for The Baby, and a gorgeous anniversary gift from my godmother. That livened up my day, it did. And then I watched my kids jump around in the sprinkler and the mud and then I bathed them and then my husband, God bless and keep that good, good man, brought home a bottle of wine.

The Boy has another loose tooth. We're looking into dentures. And then I sang "Eddie My Love" really soulfully (and badly) at my husband, and wondered why there aren't more love songs written to guys named Eddie.

The Chordettes! That was back in the day when you went straight from being a Shirley Temple-curled moppet to being a 46 year old matron with no stops.

We are now going to watch a Humphrey Bogart movie that we got in a three pack from the dollar store. The Dollar Store - full of awesome.

Content free! Good night!

WAITWAITWAIT!

I'm giving away a shiny new small appliance over at The Kitchen Party! So if you're in Canada, go on over and enter and if you're not in Canada you can go on over and see what I made for dessert last night. Everyone wins!
xo

Orange You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?

My kids love knock knock jokes, although they are all just terrible at telling them.

"Knock knock, who's there?" yells The Baby from the backseat. Sometimes we are horrible and pretend that we're waiting for a punchline, and this upsets her because obviously what is funny is the structure of the joke, that she is telling us something and it is funny.

The Boy decided to act up in the grocery store, bored and antsy and wandering around in front of carts, arguing with his sister and just being a big weirdo. After warning him FIVE BILLION TIMES, I grabbed him by the wrist and took him to the bench at the entrance of the store. ("Uh oh!" said an old lady as we walked by. "Someone is IN TROUBLE." She KNOWS stuff.) And I was some ticked, feeling a molten, bubbling core of FURY at the little goof, and he sat with his eyes bright with tears that he refused to cry, his arms crossed stiffly over his chest. So I'm lecturing him about How We Behave In Public (we don't play with our gum, for one.) and I suddenly had this surreal feeling, this bemused distance - like I had been cast in a play as The Irritated Parent.

I had nightmares all last night, my sleep disturbed my the sudden change in venue to the kids' room (our floor is still drying) and the crackling thunderstorm outside. In my dreams, I kept doing regular dream stuff and then realizing with a sudden jolt of terror that I had forgotten my children someplace perilous, that I had let them slip through my hands and fall away. Sitting in the grocery store, it felt like my motherhood had slipped away, like part of me was suddenly missing. And sitting next to me was a small embarrassed and upset boy, and I wrapped my arm around his shoulders like I was his friend.

Ten Years!

Ten years is a really LONG time to be married. And since we're very traditional and the traditional ten year gift is tin, I am giving my beloved a can of peas. My husband woke me up this morning - he goes to work early - to say happy anniversary to me, and I was like "Buh." and "Glorp." I am articulate in the morning, especially the 5 a.m. PRETEND morning part.

I also wrote a post at Five Minutes For Parenting - surprisingly enough, it's about being married for a WHOLE FREAKING DECADE. So go read that, and let me know what you're surprised doesn't matter anymore in YOUR marriage.

I'm Looking Good For 72

My in-laws always give us a spectacular anniversary gift - a gazebo last year, a yard storage bench three years ago, a SET OF DINING ROOM FURNITURE two years ago - and this year they announced that they were bringing us a new bay window for a back room that needs work (this is an understatement) and a new backdoor, too.

How nice, I thought. What a terrific anniversary gift! Really, they are so generous. So we were waiting for them AND having supper outside, the younger two kids absolutely covered in barbecue sauce and chocolate. My in-laws pulled up and my mother-in-law stepped out of their truck with two large, polka-dot wrapped boxes in hand. Unexpected presents! Awesome!

And guess what they brought us? It was a Wii! Oh, the excitement!

We've wanted one for a while now - a) they look like fun and b) The Boy is REALLY into video games, but we didn't want to buy a traditional game system and have him become a big fat pasty slug child, like so many of his contemporaries. But we couldn't afford it and they were also in short supply, so... And now we have one. Lucky!

Part of the sports game that comes bundled with the system is a "test your fitness age!" feature. How jolly, I thought! Let me see how old I am!

You may guess my results from the title of this post.

And therein lies the dangers of a life dedicated to the love of reading. And napping. And eating cookies: premature athletic aging. So any geriatric-types want to challenge me to a game of baseball? GAME ON.

On Her Blindness

I am doing, let me start, quite well right now, aside from having one of those sudden insidious infections that come out of NOWHERE. But the antibiotics are obviously doing their work and not killing me in the process, so hooray for that.

When I returned home from the hospital that time, I was still very unwell. I've mentioned before how I had an extremely low white blood count and that hematologists in the nearest city were "extremely concerned" and that they suspected I had leukemia and appointments were made - as soon as I was well enough to travel - to confirm this. (and whenever I'm telling one of my brothers a story like this, he freaks out and demands to know the punchline, if everything worked out okay. I was fine and didn't have cancer.) In the meantime, I was put on EXTREMELY strong antibiotics, and almost immediately, I began having vision problems, in that I was barely able to see and the room was spinning wildly and I would have waves of utter DARKNESS that erased everything, this whole dark world.

I mentioned this to my mom, who was watching The Baby while I recovered and she freaked out and insisted that I call an ambulance. The ambulance attendants were a middle aged man and a very pretty young woman, like an Ojibwe supermodel. "Look at her eyes!" the man said, and they both freaked out and hustled me off. (I never knew what they saw in my eyes, but it must have been pretty exciting.) And my husband - who was rushing home, since I'd phoned him first - has asked never to return home again to his wife being removed in an ambulance, thank you.

So anyhoo. I was taken off the MegaBlindnessBiotic and my vision returned to normal once it was out of my system, the end. I was really, REALLY unwell for ages afterwards, and everyone I knew kind of treated me like I was a delicate porcelain mouse, which was much more annoying than I always thought it would be. When I was a kid, I read lots of books of imperious Victorian invalids and I always thought "THERE is the life for me!" but it turns out - not so much. Kind of annoying, actually.

This time? Nothing too dramatic. My stomach feels kind of bleh, but it's manageable - and now I feel a grim satisfaction that I DIDN'T go to BlogHer, because I was getting rather sick all weekend and then I would have looked really GHASTLY in any pictures. Priorities!

Same old, same old.

Veronica has an interesting post up on children's potential (called, wisely enough, "Potential."), which really has me thinking. And that is a good thing, because earlier I was wandering around having little proto-thoughts like "Me like banana. Banana good." and "Toilet paper roll empty again. Hulk smash."

Anyhow. One of the lovely things about newborn babies is the sense of untainted potential, the very newness of them, unsullied by cynicism, although I've known some cynical kids and my GOSH, they were horrible. If your kids are cynical, you are FAILING AS A PARENT, because cynicism is what cheap jerks use in place of experience or wisdom or knowledge and I HATE it when children are cheap, cynical, smartasses. Am I going someplace with this? No.

They're testing a new antibiotic out on me today, because I'm a) really antibiotic resistant and b) really prone to serious infections and c) also really prone to bizarre reactions to antibiotics (LIKE THE TIME I WENT FREAKING BLIND. BLIND!) and so I was told, rather off-handedly, to take note of any unusual side effects, like going blind again or death. So now I am like a crouched panther of alertness, although so far, the only side effects are a bit of a queasy stomach. A crouched, nauseous panther.

And what colour is my bedroom?

It's at my Kitchen Party post! (and the answer, if you really can't stand to wait, is a sort of muted bluey-green. It's lovely.)
And on the pretty pink gingham room - I really thought it was cute, too. My husband does a REALLY great job with all household projects, and it was sort of wrenching to have him paint over something that was SO MUCH WORK. But try as we might, it just never felt like our room, and that's important.

I am SO proud.

110 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

And as for Mr. Beck?

156 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Gosh, we're admirable.

I do think - all kitchy vintage tests aside - that what makes a person a good spouse probably does not change that wildly from decade to decade. Being respectful, kind, good-humoured and loving are ageless virtues, regardless of how domestic details vary from era to era. I do think that my husband - hard-working, kind-hearted, patient and polite - would be a winner in any era, although possibly NOT in the filthy, disgusting 1970s.

Hey, we're painting our bedroom today! It looks like this right now:

My husband PAINTED that, back when our room was The Girl's room, and it's quite cute but neither of us are a six year old girl, so it's time for a change.

Okay, this is just totally gratuitous. If men knew how women felt about them doing household repairs, there would be a LOT more household repairs going on. And probably a population increase.

Anyhow. We're also painting the floor today - yay! - and if we had more money, we'd put in some gorgeous hardwood floors or something, but we don't, so paint it is. So guess what colour we're painting the room? I'll post some more pictures tonight when everything is done, since we're going to be sleeping down here and everything.

Five Minutes for ME.

My VERY FIRST post is up at Five Minutes for Parents. I'm pretty excited to be writing for the Five Minutes people, so it would be swell to have lots of comments over there, hint hint. It's a melancholy summer post, which suits the rainy day we're apparently having.

"Swell"?

It was St. Swithin's Day earlier this week, so I told the Girl about the traditional rhyme:

St Swithun's day if thou dost rain
For forty days it will remain
St Swithun's day if thou be fair
For forty days 'twill rain na mair

She's been very disappointed that our weather isn't complying and instead has been a mix of sunny and rainy all week. Tsk.

The Boy Will Now Review Something

I get a lot of emails asking me to review things and normally I ignore them, but when Brighter Minds Media asked me to review the new Thomas and Friends computer game, I immediately realized that this was a job for The Boy, who doesn't really get enough blog time.

Back in the day - oh, as long ago as last year - the Boy was quite wild for Thomas and spent hours setting up elaborate (and horribly expensive. GEEZ.) train tracks for Thomas and his fellow trains to hurtle down, often to their doom. I wondered if the game would catch his interest, and it certainly did - he spent many cheerful hours playing on it. But let's hear from The Boy himself:

"The game was fun," he said. "I really liked the toy matching game. The stories were good and I especially liked the extra game. This would be a good game for people who are my age and also for people who are little kids, too."

So there you have it. Stay tuned while The Boy has further reviews on such things as "the stupid tv show the Girl has picked out", "tonight's supper" and "the sticky playdough mom just made."

Morning Chuckles With The Baby

Upon hearing that me tell her brother that her poor father hadn't slept well last night:
"Is he dead?"

Upon talking to her not-dead (undead?) father on the phone:
"You should cut back on your coffee drinking. No, no, no - no more coffee for you, mister."

Upon hearing that I was thinking of making pancakes for breafkast:
"I don't want any big fat poopy pancakes for breakfast!"

And after hearing them described that way, sheesh. Neither do I.

My kids are preparing for a big puppet show tomorrow, which is sure to be a blockbuster - elaborate sets and props, a multi-character cast, carefully hand drawn tickets, and The Girl's prize-winning* molasses cookies. We're still a bit short on a the whole script thing, but I'm sure the kids will come up with some endless, rambling, spur-of-the-moment thing when the show starts.

Like mother, like children.

I have a new writing project that's going to premiere on Thursday, and I have to get things out Wednesday night. My husband asked me casually this morning if I was going to work on It tonight, and I was like "Buh? No, it's not due in until Wednesday night."
"When are you GOING to work on it, then?" he asked, his brow a bit furrowed with worry.
"Wednesday night?" I said.
This makes him nervous.

I like writing with a bit of pressure on me. When my brother got married, he asked me to give a speech at his wedding and my husband was completely freaked out that I didn't write it before we got there - but I wanted to wait until I was inspired, and inspiration decided to wait until 2 in the morning in our hotel room, The Baby (not even three months old!) laying between us like a little bundled sausage. And it was a GOOD speech. It made people cry. And you know - total digression here - I should have lived in the Victorian era, where I would have made a freaking mint writing sad, sad poems called things like "The Dying Factory Child's Lament" and "The Poor Little Forgotten Dog Who Is Sad, Probably Because of Industrialization."

My husband suspects that one of these days I'm going to drop myself on my head, find myself in front of a roomful of people with a blank page. Well, that'll be embarrassing, eh?

(* for reals! She won first place in the children's division at a local fall fair last year.)

Scientific Principles

The Baby is in A Mood this morning and also she has a bad case of Bratitis - her brother sat on some random chair in the living room and she screamed FROM THE KITCHEN "THE BOY STOLE MY SPOT!". Every spot, you see, is potentially hers. She's sitting on my lap right now, crying. Poor, poor, spoiled rotten little girl.

My Kitchen Party post is up - I wrote about conducting a highly scientific experiment this weekend, which should really advance the cause of Scientific Cookie Making everywhere. I also wrote more of my typical stuff, which generally goes something like this "I was in a really bad mood and then I realized how lucky I am to have my life." I think, rather wistfully, that it's probably not possible to walk around in a permanent state of joyous luck. You'd probably get hit by a bus, for one. It would be nice, however, if The Baby could be in a good mood for longer than five minutes, and while I'm at it, I'd like a pony.

"Why haven't you been blogging?" my mom asked me, a short while ago.
I have so been blogging, I said. Just not yesterday or yet today.
"It's been days and days," she said, although she said it very nicely. My mother is a gentle woman. "I keep checking for a blog post from you and there's never anything new."
So for my mom, I am blogging RIGHT NOW, even though I have nothing to write about. That's just the kind of dutiful daughter I am.

I was grocery shopping this morning and turned around to put something - some yellow squash, looky-loos - into my cart and HURT MY BACK. At first it hurt so much that I thought I couldn't breath, that I would die RIGHT THERE on top of the broccoli but then I managed to stiffly finish my grocery shopping, because I am made out of stern stuff. It's not too bad now, but that was sort of a shock, a little "Hey there!" from encroaching age.

Doo doo doo, nothing to write about. Okay, I'm going to resort to the High Quality Embarrassing My Kids Material that I normally try to avoid: The Boy has been gone all afternoon, adding to the festivities at a friend's birthday party. He was the only boy invited, and when he came in, his young hostess shrieked "MY BOYFRIEND IS HERE!" Oh, and another female friend's mother told me that her daughter recently informed her mom that The Boy is the person that God has personally chosen out to be her future husband. "All the girls always fight over me!" he complained after school one day. Yes, it's hard being a six year old dreamboat.

The Baby likes to ask any available adults to draw her pictures, which she then fancies up a bit, and normally she limits herself to asking for drawings of cats and dogs. Lately, however, she's become more challenging - today alone, she has asked me to draw "a child mouse, all alone and sad", broccoli, "my brother getting into lots of trouble" and most troublesomely, a sea lion. I actually blanked on what a sea lion was, imagining a magnificent maned fish, although I wasn't quite sure that such a thing actually existed. I asked The Baby to draw one for me first, and she drew quite a passable walrus, while giving me a rather sidelong glance. Ah HA.

(and finally, if you are the praying sort, could you pray for my youngest brother? We're having kind of a scary weekend. Thanks.)

Trixie Beldon and Mystery In Beck's Kitchen

"Pee-eugh!" said Trixie, covering her freckled nose with her hand. "What is that nasty smell?"

Honey's hazel eyes opened wide in horror. "I don't know," she said. "But it sure is funky in here."

The girls looked around Beck's kitchen, anxiously.

"I don't think it's the fridge," Trixie said slowly, running a hand through her short blond hair. "Beck just cleaned that."

"And she just scrubbed the sinks," said Honey in a muffled voice. She was attempting to peer down the drain. "It's not coming from here, anyhow."

A thought occurred to both of them.

"Maybe it's the garbage can!" they exclaimed at the same time, and then laughed merrily. Being 13 year old best friends was so much fun! The girls skipped across the kitchen - which only took about one skip, Beck's kitchen being the size of a jolly shoebox - and carefully examined the garbage can.

"Oh, phooey," said Trixie. "I was sure that it was coming from the garbage can."
She peered around the room thoughtfully.

"Say, Honey," said Trixie. "I think you might have had something about that sink. Do you see how it keeps dripping? I bet -" and with that she knelt down and began rummaging under Beck's sink.

"Ah ha!" she said, triumphantly. "Everything is mildewed down here! And the bottom of the cupboard is rotten because of the leaky plumbing!"

Honey clapped her hands delightedly and then stopped.

"You know what, Trixie? I think we'd better get out of here before Beck finds out about this!"

"You sure are smart for someone named Honey!" said Trixie, causing the two friends to have another peal of giggles. "Let's go stand around with some boys in front of the drug store!"

The End.

Charmers

We took the kids to see a travelling snake exhibit last night, four young people carefully showing different kinds of Canadian snakes. We got there slightly late and I was rather furious at my husband, red sparks shooting out of my head like a pull-back toy. So there were these young, athletic nature people with their hands full of snakes, and I was angry and 100 years old, cross-armed and glaring.

After their little talk about snakes, the young nature people said that kids could come up and hold any snakes they wanted and my kids dashed forward. Who knew they liked snakes? And I was furious because we had forgotten the camera in the car and the car was too far away to go back and get it and even though I had forgotten it, so had my husband and boy, was I ever mad at him. Yeah, that's just the way I roll. And my kids were enthusiastic about the snakes, a constrictor wrapping itself around The Boy's shoulders and his brown-eyed laughter, The Girl being tickled by an orange cotton snake. ("Cotton snakes make great pets!" the young nature person told me. Oh, THANK YOU, Nature Person.)

One of the Boy's friends was there, a little girl with her hair pony-tailed back into a loose bun, and a friendly little white snake whisked into her hair and coiled around inside the elastic. The little girl's mother was suddenly suspiciously absent, and the young Nature Person was unsure of what to do, too young to have ever untangled a child's hair before. She cast a slightly desperate look around and landed on me, fuming and obviously a mother, and I sighed and untangled the snake from the child's hair, gently uncoiling it, the snake wrapping itself trustingly around my hands, cool and as smooth as worn linoleum.

When I was very first a mother - and before then, but it didn't matter as much - I was furious, angry at being saddled with this life, angry at a long list of childhood grievances, like something was coiled and bitter in my heart. My husband would come home to me thrusting our baby at him, and then stalking off "like an angry zombie", he said.

"Make me better than this," I would pray. And bit by bit, while I was not looking, the anger fell away from me, uncoiled, until I was a laughing young mother on the shore, watching her baby girl throw handfuls of crumbs at the ducks, until I was the patient mother untangling a snake from another child's hair.

Oh, magic.

The Baby held a small snake - and none too gently, either - last night, and the young Nature Person helping her move her small hands so they did not hurt had white girl dreads and a red bandanna in her hair and laughed when we said The Baby's name because it was so very nearly her name, The Baby and her maybe older self gently stroking this coiled thing together that rested on The Baby's hands and meanwhile my own anger had uncoiled and gone, vanishing over the water, over the hair, over my children holding these sleek animals that would not hurt them.

Not a snake. We forgot the camera, remember?

Many Hands

The kids and I just cleaned the house, reaching under the couch to pull out a week's worth of junk, shelving books that drift around the room like lazy birds, vaccuming up crumbs and cat hair and scrubbing toilets, this unromantic work that must be done.

The first part of today was awful. Everyone was overwraught and there was a lot of yelling and crying and I felt a tight knot of misery in my chest, like WHO ARE THESE KIDS? Why are they in my house? And then we had a quiet, angry lunch and set to cleaning and something about cleaning - sweeping the broom across the floor, putting toys in a box, closing the door to the dishwasher with a click - something about that seems to have fixed the day. We're all still quiet now, but it's a happier quiet, having worked our way back again.

Someplace, some stern old great-great-great grandmother is nodding her head in satisfaction. She knew this.

Food Costs Money

After an expensive weekend, I went and wrote a fretful post about how much more groceries are costing right now at The Kitchen Party. I think we all know what I'm talking about, so head on over and share how you're coping.



And now I'm going to go make some bread. xo

Me And My Big Head

I am so ambivalent about posting pictures of myself - no way! I bet you couldn't tell! It's a stupid sort of ambivalence, of course, since I like having faces to attach to other bloggers, while I hide behind a drawing of a grouchy child. Anyhow, here's one more picture and I think it's the one I'm using.

One of my cousins is a risk-taker - her idea of a really good time is to jump out of an airplane. Her brother likes to dive in shark-infested waters. And her other brother is in the military. They're practically siblings to me, but the idea of voluntarily taking risks is as foreign to me as suddenly growing gills, so I'm guessing that I'm missing out on that particularily zesty part of their genetics. I don't know how I missed it, since on the other side of me, both of my paternal grandparents were rather... I'll say adventurous. Yes. But someplace, there must have been some very cautious person, some dusty great-great-great grand and here I am. Cautious and moody, that's me.

AND TALENTED AT MAKING JELL-O: LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR!

Oh, YEAH. Awesome.

Actually, that was a miserable thing to make - not that decorating it was in any way tricky but THE FREAKING JELLO DID NOT SET, so I had to carefully frost the shifting liquidy mass, which was quite the task. My kids each ate several bowls (bowls were necessary, since it was a LIQUID) of the glop, so I guess it was successful from that perspective. But there you go - my one patriotic dessert of the year. Next year, I'm just going to drink straight from a bottle of maple syrup.

This post will self-destruct

I Am So A Merry Sunshine

Good golly. Who knew I had so many homeschoolers reading? Thanks, everyone!

Last night was the last night at VBS, and the junior group - The Boy's group - acted out the story of Meschach, Shadrach and Abendago. The Boy was Abendago, and he got chucked into the fiery furnace along with Meschach (a girl) and Shadrach (another girl). The angel was played by a Cabbage Patch doll, who got chucked unceremoniously out of the fiery furnace (or "card table") at one point and landed with a distinctly unholy thud on the church floor. Poor doll. And The Girl's group sang two VERY ENERGETIC songs about Meschach, Shadrach and Abendago, while being soaking wet from having played water games outside. Then we retired to the basement for cookies and tea.

The kids are having what looks like a wildly entertaining summer on paper - weekend trips! fun outings! endless diversions! - but yesterday afternoon was BAD. BAD BAD BAD. The Baby has decided to take her already spectacular tantrums to the next level of awesome, and what was supposed to be a pleasant shopping outing yesterday turned into me - red hot with fury - carrying her out to her stroller while she screamed and kicked with rage. I think she's having a hard time adjusting to having her siblings home all the time, or adjusting to having to live on this stupid planet where everyone doesn't automatically OBEY HER WILL. Either way, I feel like pounding my head on the keyboard just writing about it.

"Bad news, honey," I told my husband on the phone yesterday. "I sold The Baby."
"That never works," he said. "They always BRING HER BACK."

All three kids are playing with all of their Playmobil toys right now, although The Baby is sitting at her own end of the table, playing with the undesired leftover toys - the doll with the missing hair, for example, and a car with no wheels. So you can sort of see where her mounting fury comes from, why she's always SO VERY VERY ANGRY. And then there's her diet, which we handle as best we can, but still leads to her sighing, last night "Cookies and pretzels and cwackers for dem; stupid gwanola bar for me."

And now I've written myself back around to feeling bad for her again, my little Ramona Quimby.
Back when The Girl was a little, little baby, I remember feeling just stricken at the idea of her ever having thoughts that I couldn't guess, feeling stricken at the idea of her having a private inner life. She felt so much like me, you see, that the idea of that sort of separation felt like grief - although the separation was already there and I just didn't see it yet. And now my furious, jolly, affectionate, fiery Baby is sitting on my knee, singing joyously along with her favorite song:

Where you ever in Quebec,
stolen timbers on the deck?
Where ya break yer bleeding neck
Riding on a donkey!

And who knows why she loves that song so much, what it means to her? Maybe in her head she's the Queen of The Pirates, standing astride some magnificent ship. Maybe in her head she's a brave, trick-riding cowgirl. Maybe in her head she's a bigger kid, the toys she wants in her hands, and up on stage with us watching her for a change, the infuriating passivity of babyhood finally past.

Having the kids home full-time has been a lot of fun, of course, but it's also been like living in a bowling alley, which I don't know about YOU, but I don't find very conducive to thinking or writing or doing anything much besides getting headaches.

I'm making a BIG book order today. We have no money and so I really SHOULDN'T, but I'm out of books and it's sort of an emergency. SEND NEW BOOKS STAT! And besides, everyone else is going to BlogHer and I am jealous, jealous, jealous.

We made strawberry jam yesterday and my kitchen table was covered in sticky fat jars of red goo, which The Boy has just dutifully transferred to the freezer while I wrote these very words. What a good kid. And now he's asking me if we can make MORE jam today, which we certainly can - I have apparently an unending supply of cheerful helpers when it comes to making sticky jam, which spreads itself fragrantly and red-ly all over my kitchen. So today there's more jam and then there's Vacation Bible School tonight, which is AWESOME and also means that I can follow my kids around singing the following:

1. "I've got the JOY JOY JOY JOY (clap) down in my HEART! DOWN IN MY HEART TO STAAAAAAAY!"
and
2. "Rise and shine and (clap) give God the GLORY GLORY, CHILDREN OF THE LORD!"

VBS songs. I love them.

The kids came home with prizes clutched in their hands last night - The Girl had a prize for "I forget MOM." and The Boy had a prize for "Best Listener" which... really? HIM? I mean, he's a great kid and deserves many prizes but... for LISTENING? Well now.

This was rather pointless. I wonder if I'll have another thoughtful, planned-out post again for the rest of the summer? It seems doubtful.

Oh hey, homeschooling parents - can you email me? beckfrogandtoad AT gmail DOT com, please and thank you. I've got questions. THANKS THANKS THANKS.

More Memes than You Can Stand

I meant to do this on Sunday night but I WAS NOT HOME. Did you miss me?

Long, long ago, the frighteningly hilarious Kristi tagged me. And I didn't do anything. But now I am, and here it is:
1. What were you doing 10 years ago?
Getting ready to get married in July, thankyouverymuch.

2. What are five things on your "To Do" List?
1. Write the Great Canadian Novel, which I actually think I have in me. Or at least The Mediocre Canadian Novel. Hold onto your hats!
2. Start pottery-ing.
3. Have another kid. I should probably get on that, eh?
4. Paint my bedroom next week.
5. Finish my laundry. That's a little bit from tomorrow's actual To Do list. Oh boy! I can't wait to wake up!

3. What are five snacks you enjoy?
1. Chocolate stuff. I'm not picky.
2. Sweet Chili Heat Doritos, which I love so much that I have to pretend that they don't exist.
3. Items 3 through 5 are just a sad list of more things made out of chocolate.

4. Name some things that you would do if you were a millionare.
I would pay off our debts and help our parents out financially. After setting up some university accounts for our munchkins, we might build a house.

5. Name some places you've lived.
Kristi's answer to this question made me laugh until tears LITERALLY ran down my face. OHMYGOSH.

6.Name some bad habits you have.
I'm moody. I'm self centered. I'm lazy. I have a bad temper. I'm thoughtless. And now I FEEL BAD ABOUT MYSELF. Geez.

7. Name some jobs you've had.
Librarian's badly paid assistant. Office clerk. Typist. Nanny.

8. Tag some people:
(Karla), Erin K, and Chelle.

And then Susanne tagged me with a new book meme:
1. Do you remember how you developed a love of reading?
I was a lonely, unhappy, smart kid in a houseful of books, so it was inevitable.

2. What are some books you loved as a child?
- A Little Princess
- Take Joy by Tasha Tudor
- and the creepy books of John Bellairs.

3. What is your favorite genre?
I read a LOT of mystery fiction.

4. Do you have a favorite novel?
The Time Traveller's Wife really stayed with me. I also totally love Fifth Business by Robertson Davies and Persuasion by Jane Austen.

5. Where do you usually read?
I read anywhere!

6. When do you usually read?
Generally in the evenings!

7. Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?
Yup, I generally have multiple books going on a time - my bathtub book, my bedroom books, my couch book and the books I keep at my computer desk that I read while my computer is slow. Oh, and a book in my purse and a book in the car.

8. Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?
No?

9. Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?
I do a mixture of the three. I have to call up some friends tomorrow and see if they have books because I AM OUT.

10. Do you keep most of the books you buy?
Noooo. I buy a lot of books at used bookstores and then just pass them on.

11. If you have children, what are some of the favorite books you have shared with them?
The Ramona books, the Pippi books and a ton of storybooks, so far. Oh, and The Girl and I share a love of Archie comics, too. STUPID ARCHIE! WHEN WILL YOU LEARN TO APPRECIATE BETTY'S LOVE?

12. What are you reading now?
I just finished "Towards Zero" by Agatha Christie. Actually, I read that in a hotel room late on Sunday night. Awesome.

13. Do you keep a To Be Read list?
Nope.

14. What's next?
Who knows?

15. What books would you like to reread?
I have a ton of books that I do reread every year - a bunch of Jane Austen, Jane Eyre, the Chronicles of Narnia - but I would love to be able to read them for the first time again. A good book just improves with rereadings, though.

16. Who are your favorite authors?
I'm mostly just reading vintage detective fiction these days, so my current list would be all people like Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett.

And I tag.... Veronica, who is SMART; Jennifer (who is also SMART!), and Minnesota Mom who is, it should go without saying, SMART as well.

And Ali just tagged me with this:
Think back on the last 15 years of your life. What would you tell someone that you hadn’t seen or talked to for 15 years? How would you sum up your life? You get 10 bullet points. A list of 10 things to summarize about you. At the end of your list, tag 5 more people and send on the love…
GEEZ. Okay.
1. I got married! To the guy I actually was dating right before I turned 20! It's a LONG STORY.
2. We got pregnant on the honeymoon. She's nine and a lot of fun.
3. Then we moved back to my hometown.
4. Then we got pregnant again. He's six and a lot of fun.
5. Then we bought a house that needs a lot of work, but that is old and quite beautiful. Because we are lunatics.
6. Then we got pregnant again. She's three and a lot of fun. And a character, to put it mildly.
7. Then I got sick with an unlikely infection and very nearly died. It was pretty life changing.
8. So then I decided that I should start taking my writing seriously - in part because I started to have a sense that time might be fleeting and also because I decided that my kids deserved an idea of who I was and how much I loved them if I didn't live until they were adults. (that would probably be a real conversation killer with hypothetical friend, wouldn't it?)
9. I'm better now.
10. We're a busy, happy, religious family - probably a surprise for long-ago friend. But happiness always takes an unexpected shape, I think, this sudden light shining into your life and letting you know how lucky you are in the brief space of time that you have for your life.

Five people to tag!
1. Heather!
3. Cyndi!
4. The Dragonfly!
5. and No Whey Mama.

O Canada

Today is Canada Day, which we are celebrating by having a barbecue and by making a big jello dessert that looks like the Canadian flag. Oh boy! I just skipped the pound cake, and voila, a big gross gluten-free dessert that delights my kids AND is weirdly patriotic. A winner! Sort of!

So what happened this weekend? Well. We found a toad in the yard:

The toad was a funny mixture of completely adorable and completely revolting. Look at his wee toady fingers!
The toad didn't look too entirely cheerful about things.

And The Baby was just desperate to hold the poor toad. After checking him out for a few minutes, we let the him hop away.

Okay. We had some big plans to go visit Great-Grandpa in his teeny town and spend the Canada Day weekend with him - but The Girl was sick all Friday night and so we decided to keep our valuable germs to ourselves and not loan them to our elderly relatives. So there we were, all of our suitcases packed and our car loaded up and not going anywhere - it was the right decision, and it stung. So we spent a rainy day watching movies with our very, very sad kids.

Sunday came rolling along and we decided to take the kids to their yearly movie - we took them out for lunch and to Wall-E (recommended! awesome!) and to a book store and then headed home again with plans to go over to Great-Grandpa's on our return. But the HIGHWAY WAS CLOSED! WE WERE TRAPPED! IT WAS CLOSED FOR TEN HOURS! WE COULDN'T GET HOME! And the relative closest to were we were was.... visiting near Great-Grandpa and not home.

Because it was the long weekend, there were HUNDREDS of cars stopped with us. Locals zipped around on their ATVs - some driving through the bush to fetch friends who had come to visit and were stranded on the other side, and can I just say that is one of the things I love about Northern Ontario? We're PLUCKY. Well, I'm not, but some people are. One guy - a plucky guy - had a plastic crate duct-taped to the back of his ATV and his small dog was happily riding around in it, which I guess is the Northern version of those bags that Paris Hilton carries her dogs in.

Motels filled up quickly and we had to drive into the nearest city to stay at a shabby hotel for the night. The kids were SO THRILLED, while my husband and I were LESS THRILLED. And then we came home and went berry picking and I nearly got sunstroke, the end.

And now it's Canada Day. We're leaving shortly to go see an art exhibit that my dad's part of and have some lunch. I hope today is relaxing and fun for all of you.