Puritanically Yours, Rebecca
I've spent the past several days having outraged phonecalls with other parents - and placing some to the school - because they're offering bellydancing classes to the grades 4 to 8 girls. (and without getting any sort of permission from the parents first, too.) Hilariously enough, some of the teachers had no CLUE why any parent might not want their NINE YEAR OLD DAUGHTERS bellydancing, and I shall now group those teachers into a special group called "People Who Should Not Be Teaching."

And Also The Laughter Of Young Children
Things I am allergic to:
1. Balloons. I am not kidding. I am getting more dangerously allergic to balloons ALL THE TIME.
2. Popcorn.

My Head Hurts Already
We invited 16 kids to our son's birthday party, presuming that 8 or so would show up. And this is why we're having SIXTEEN kids over tomorrow, apparently. Uh oh.

Barren - Updated!

My mom took that gorgeous picture out at her farm recently. And on a related note, here is today's snowy and somewhat bleak 5 Minutes For Parenting post. xo

Spongy And Porous and Yellow Are He

I've mentioned before my deep, abiding hatred of Spongebob and his weirdly unwholesome show and this weekend I'm throwing a gigantic, REALLY HUGE Spongebob birthday party for The Boy, which just goes to show you.... well, something.

Anyhow. This isn't a complaint, since I've made my own bed and will lie in it just fine, thank you - it's a call for HELP. HEEELP! We're set for decorations, loot bags, cake - but I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, realizing that the games I had planned will NOT do.

The Boy is seven. He is EASILY embarrassed. Freeze dance? Bubble games? No. So I need a solid HOUR of kid birthday party games that a) can be played indoors and b) are suitable for a mob of kids and c) will not make my son go silent with humiliation. Oh and that d) have a Spongebob theme, if possible. Doesn't that sound easy? SURE it does.

A Burning Post

In that today's post is about my kid getting BURNED last night. Yes, we're not only sickly, we're also ACCIDENT-PRONE. See you there!

Helloooo!

Okay, so my Awesome Break Experiment didn't work out as planned. Instead of becoming a Captain Of Writing Industriously, I just lounged around feeling disgruntled. This makes me feel despairing because part of the whole reason that I started blogging was to force myself to write every day and indeed I now want to... but only writing on my blog. So that went not really anywhere.

And I blogged FOUR TIMES the week of my break anyhow. It was like when my husband and I were on our break, but still saw each other ALL THE TIME anyhow. Eventually I had to just quit him cold turkey and not see him for two solid years and you may guess how that ended. What am I saying? Not that I'm going to marry my blog, at any rate, and also not that I'm quitting permanently. I am saying, as usual, nothing. Mostly just that I'm giving up on the idea of taking a break, in case you hadn't noticed.

Anyhow. I have a stomach bug, so I'm outta here. For today.
(Oh and all my new followers from yesterday? You guys are so cute. I LOVE you.)

I notice that I went from a brief high of 70 followers yesterday to 69 today. Apparently, someone got tired of my nonsense ALL AT ONCE. Who can blame them?

I have a post up at 5 Minutes for Parenting today, and it's all about... well, a lot of poignant stuff. It's about how I don't know what I'm doing, for Pete's sake. Not one little bit. See you there!

Abandoned Posts

I've been cleaning out my office all morning, with twitter pinging away occasionally in the background, and I thought that I'd take a minute and post some of the opening lines from blog posts that never made it. I have DOZENS of them. In fact, I could probably fill up several months of blogging just finishing unfinished posts, where it not for the fact that most of them are unfinished for a REASON.

Let us see, shall we?

1) Cruel Posts About Old Friends

One of the many ways that I trick myself into falling asleep (instead of
staying awake fuming and staring at the ceiling, which would be my preference)
is to compose imaginary posts in my head. They're always really much better than
the stuff that actually makes it downstairs, eventually, but there's no way I'm
getting out of bed to Capture Genius because a) I'm lazy and b)... well, mostly
a) covered it.

Anyhow. One of my favorite nightime imaginary blogging topics is Endlessly
Rehashing Old, Used-Up Friendships. I never post them, though, because it would
be rude and wrong and also because there's always a possibility, however slight,
that someday one of them might read it. Life is ackward enough without that. But
old. long-gone friendships are haunting, and often surprisingly bitter, this odd
venom that startles me when I recognize it in myself. The high school friends
lost to time

NOOOOOO! Not "high school friends lost to time"! I may have mentioned before that I was a bit malfunctioning in high school, but I only HAD a handful of friends and we were all quite cordially sick of each other by the time we graduated. I was apparently feeling crabby when I wrote this, since I don't normally lie awake at night brooding over people I was friends with when I was 15, FOR PETE'S SAKE.

Reason it was not completed: It was kind of nuts.

2) Well, that's too bad for her, I guess

So good ol' Shania Twain is getting divorced.

Reason it was not completed: Really? You're wondering that?

3) The Jonas Brothers Made Me Feel Threatened, Despite The Fact That I Could Beat Them All Up

I just watched a brief clip of a Jonas Brothers video online and then turned it
off, bemused.
"HEEEEY!" shrieked The Girl. "TURN THAT BACK ON, PLEASE!"

So I did, a bit startled.

She watched the rest, spellbound, and
then turned to me, her eyes big.
"What was THAT?"

And so it begins.

It's things like that which make me debate never writing directly about my kids again. I mean, if MY mother had written lyrical posts about my room at 12 - completely and utterly covered in A-Ha posters - I might be a heroin addict now. Or at the VERY least, I would have a much more bitter blog, with pictures of weeping big eyed children on the side.

Reason I didn't complete it: Because it was stupid. And so WHAT begins, smart guy?

4) See: Cans Of Worms, Not Opening

I was going to write a post on my favorite travel books to take the bad taste
left by A Certain Book out of my mouth, when I realized, grimly, that I like
very few travel books.

This was right after I raved insanely about Eat, Pray, Love and then got a ton of hate mail. Really, people? REALLY?

Reason I didn't complete it: Because I actually DO like Bill Bryson's travel books, but that's mostly just because he sounds sort of crabby and finicky. My people!

5) Things I Am Wanting To Eat For Lunch

1. A really gooey, melty grilled cheese sandwich, with ketchup on the
side.

2. The
Baconator, which I've never eaten but have suddenly decided that
I'd really like to eat. Whenever we drive by a Wendy's, The Boy pipes up
"Drive
through there and get me a Baconator!". The poor baconless,
television-addled
child.

3. This astonishingly awesome Thai Chicken
salad from my favorite
restaurant.

4. A big bowl of spicy pasta with
some cheesy garlic bread.

Sadly, I am having none of those things. It's
the end of the week, which
means that the pickings are slim at Casa Beck,
and I am just TRAGICALLY hungry.
Very, very hungry. Irresponsible food
decision hungry. Irresponsible, that is,
if my fridge had anything left in
it besides the wilted remains of various
vegetables that were too
unappealing to eat in the first place.

(Ack! I can't fix what's going on with the above paragraph.)

I think I wrote this after reading about the No One Wants To Hear What You Had For Lunch book, and I think I stopped writing this to go and forage desperately for food. The Boy DID eventaully have a Baconator, by the way - and that cracked me up, reading about how much he'd wanted one. I'd forgotten!

Reason I didn't complete it: Too hard to type while eating everything in the house.

6) The Baby And I Are Legend.

We watched I Am Legend recently - boy, that stunk - and I was totally
unimpressed by the sight of Will Smith wandering around a deserted New York
City, since The Baby and I do that all the time.

Nobody is home in Little Town.

If you go places, to the restuarant or the hardware store,
there are little clumps of people, old men drinking coffee and ranting. But the
streets of the town - even in the spring when it's perfect for walking, even in
the fall with the leaves drifting softly towards the ground - there's no one
about.

There are no little kids. None. No little kids playing in their
yards, no little kids having a leisurely stroller ride. They are someplace else
- some at the daycare, some hidden away within their houses, watching life go by
on their tv.

I think that I had an interesting final destination for this post - it was actually supposed to be about the slow, strangled death of these little Northern Ontario towns - but it was just too ambitious for me that day. Also, YES. My life is JUST like a bad vampire movie.

Reason I Didn't Complete It: Too Lazy.

And now I must finish sorting through several YEARS worth of children's art projects. AAAAAGGGGGGGH NOOOOOOOOOOOO.

His Seven Favorite Things

Seven years ago and very, very early in the morning, I had THE WORLD'S BIGGEST BABY. And now he has turned seven and is probably a whole head taller than your kid, if your kid is currently in grade one, and is a very fine boy on top of that.

1.

This ad. The Baby loves it too, although she thinks they're singing about cannibals. Why does she even KNOW about cannibals? BECAUSE SHE HAS A SEVEN YEAR OLD BROTHER, the lucky girl.

2. The Magic Tree House books. Oh Jack and Annie, you wacky time-travellers!

3

He LOVES this game. He loves it so much that we've had to set mean, mean limits on it. He loves it so much that he insisted that he write his speech for school on it, which meant that I've spent the past week and a half of my life learning that Mario wears a hat because Shigeru Miyamato didn't like drawing hair and that his childhood love of exploring the forests and caves around his house is reflected in the settings of the Mario games, and I am shrieking on the inside as I write this, but mostly I'm fine.

Once upon a time, I would have disapproved of this. My goal as a parent, I would have said loftily, would be to steer him away from things like this, to point him in more tasteful directions. Blahblahblah blabbity blah, Mommy Was A Big Control Freak.

I don't know what sort of generational switch has been thrown, but a lot of my contemporaries seem to think that it's okay to keep their kids away from things that kids actually like, that their children will really thank them in the long run for making them write speeches on things that MOMMY thinks is worthwhile. Get OVER yourselves, fellow parents. This isn't supposed to be about raising up little clones of ourselves. Let us learn the difference between passing on values and forcing our interests, shall we?

So says the mother of the kid with the three minute long speech on Mario Kart.

4. When they make cookies in Sunday School.

5. This video:

Does it only get better with repeat viewings? APPARENTLY.

6. This game.

Okay, a few people have been puzzled by the site. The site itself is in Hebrew, but the game itself is wordless - just remember that Hebrew goes right to left, so be sure to click the top right button and away you go.

7. Seven years ago, at about six in the morning, a nurse came in to check my fine big boy's temperature and was worried that it was plummeting. The first thing she did was tuck him in with me, with his dark hair and already kind dark eyes, and at six this morning, the same fine big boy sat in the inky winter darkness with us again and opened presents and then declared that this was his favorite day ever.

Phew!

Apparently, I need to start blogging every day again, because otherwise I'm going to end up with tons of super long posts like today's offering at the Kitchen Party. Of course, you might view it as more bang for your reading buck. Your call.

Anyhow, that post took me ALL MORNING to write. I think it's aw'ight, as Randy Jackson might say. Might. Maybe.

Another day, another dollar.

This break from blogging thing has not led to a greater amount of Real Writing being done, after the initial rush - now I'm mostly just hanging out and doing crossword puzzles. So I'm not sure what I should do.

Anyhoo. This being Thursday, I'm posting over at 5 Minutes For Parenting today, and it's a rerun of last year's HEART BREAKING Valentine's Day post. I'm on break, remember?

See you around, probably sooner than I'd planned.
xo

How Can You Miss Me

.... if I won't go away? That's right - another day, another post by me. Today, I'm guest-posting over at Lotus's, so go on over.
Miss you guys. xoxoxo

We Interrupt This Break

... to bring you this morning's Kitchen Party post.

And how am I liking my blogging break? I am hating it, thankyouverymuch. I'm getting lots of writing done, but I am LOATHING it, which fills me with a bit of despair about my future as a Great Writer. Or even a mediocre writer, really. Grim!

Back on my head.

So Long, Farewell

I'm going to take a break.
I'll still be posting at Five Minutes for Parents on Thursdays, and perhaps the occasional post here and there if the urge strikes me. But other than that? I'm outta here for a while.
C-ya!
IMPORTANTIMPORTANTIMPORTANT
1) everything is FINE.
2) I want some more time and mental energy to work on some other writing projects
3) I'll be back. Email me if there's anything I should know about in the meantime. xo

The title from today's Five Minutes for Parenting post is from one of my very, very favorite books, although I'm going to just let you wonder which one it is. Hmm! And the rest of the post is about my childhood obsession with dolls and then it segues ever so gracefully into me feeling like a big faker bonehead as a mother. Ta da!

Deep, Unpopular Thoughts

1) If you have a dog that has bitten and drawn blood, or that would LIKE to bite and draw blood and you do not have that dog immediately put down*, you may as well be keeping a loaded gun on your front porch. Someone I know LOST THEIR CHILD to a dog attack, and I have no patience with sentimental fools who would endanger their own - or anyone else's -child because they can't see why they shouldn't keep their precious, vicious puppy wuppy.

* an exception might be made if - and only if - you immediately put your dog into some form of hardcore dog rehabilitation training with proven results. Another exception will be made for a hilariously vicious Pomeranian of my acquaintance. NO! Please don't kill me, three pound crazy dog!

2) Before you get too weepy about Oscar Wilde, do try and remember that he was a pedophile before AND after jail.

3) Organic foods are - by and large - a scam. Not always, of course, but often enough that I inwardly roll my eyes when people tell me that they're sacrificing to buy "all organic." I mean, pay $10 for that bag of carrots if you WANT, but you're likely getting ripped off.

4) Talking about negative past events is often NOT a healing thing - a lot of the time, it's just encouraging people to dwell in the horrid past instead of moving forward, which is very often the last thing that someone who is already mentally ill needs. And in that vein, encouraging your kids to talk their feelings to death all the freaking time is probably not the greatest idea, unless you want to raise little neurotics who think - wrongly - that the world will care about their feelings.

5) Permissive parenting has utterly failed, resulting in a couple of generations of apathetic, unmotivated, amoral, vicious, unreliable people. I'm not saying it's time to bring back the woodshed, but it is time for parents to start acting like parents again.

6) I took off six because it was Too Mean.

Gretchen's brand new baby Archie is in the NICU - prayers and good wishes are needed.

Author/blogger Travis Erwin's house burned down earlier this week. Thankfully, his family is safe and sound, but they've lost pretty much everything. Here's a link if you can help financially.

We Three Kings

Today is Epiphany or Twelfth Night and so The Baby - and THE BOY, who managed to make it to school for exactly one day before coming home with a hollow cough and a fever - anyhow, so we're making construction paper crowns, which is feeling EXACTLY like too much for me right now.

The Baby enjoyed having her mother back to herself yesterday, although at one point she came in with her parka and winter boots and a toque and mitts on, which made me ask her where she was going. "I am going to get a dog," she answered.

Whaaaat? I said.

"There are dogs in people's yards," she answered. "I am going to go look and find one I like and take him home."

She was so disappointed when I pointed out that a) it was five billion below outside and we weren't going ANYWHERE and b) that would be STEALING. So to make it up to her, I let her narrate the following letter to me:

Dear daddy,
Get me a dog. Right now. I will build it a dog house. I will help you take
it for walks. Do not take it for walks that are too far. That is boring. I will
not pick up his poop. That is your job. I want his name to be Sally Christmas. I want it to be a girl dog.
Kisses and hugs.

How can he not take her up on that fabulous offer? And have I mentioned that I love motherhood? It is FLAT OUT the funniest thing ever.

The Last Day of Christmas!

And my Kitchen Party post today is sort of grim and grown-up and about my new year's resolutions which for once are not about my fat butt. Go on over and tell me your new year's resolutions, too.

(and no pictures for right now - my hair is looking more like Janet from Three's Company and less like Joan Jett. Maybe if the magic combination of makeup, good hair + flattering photography happens, I'll post a picture, but for now......)

About the Nativity Picture on my page

Any number of people have emailed me about that gorgeous picture, and for the record: it's from the 1400s and is called The Nativity At Night, by an artist named Geertgen. That is just a small portion of the larger painting, which is well worth seeing in full.
There ya go.

IN other news, I got my hair cut yesterday and now I look a lot like Joan Jett. Huzzah!

Stolen! Utterly stolen!

I am totally copying this idea from a ton of other people, so if you are one of them, do say so in the comments. Here we go: the first line from the first post I did each month in 2008.

January
We celebrated the changing of the New Year with our usual debauch - The Baby went to bed at 7:30 and then the older two kids attempted to stay up until midnight, with The Girl (and her mother) giving in at 11 and The Boy actually staying up until 12:01, the VERY latest he has ever been up.

Holy run-on sentence, self! We celebrated in EXACTLY the same way this year, although The Boy fell asleep five minutes before New Years and muttered "STOP IT! YOU ARE FREAKING ME OUT!" when his dad tried to wake him up at midnight. Hardy har har!

February
Today is a holiday - the kids are home from school because of a PD day (do they ever go to school? Only rarely.) AND it's St. Brigid's day, to be followed by Candlemas.

You know, sometimes I fool myself about how much I write about holidays. I don't write about them THAT often, I think to myself, but obviously, I am deluded. It's not a terrible thing to be obsessed with, I guess.

March
YES!

I like that. Nice and zippy.

April
Today - not yesterday, as I falsely claimed in my post - is April first, or April Fool's Day, as I have been reminded 800 times since my kids woke up.

That line gives you no warning whatsoever that the rest of the post is possibly the most poignant thing I've ever written. I never set out to corner the blog market on poignant weepy posts, but that is apparently My Lot.

May
... daffodils,
That come before the swallow dares and take
The winds of March with beauty....

That's a quote from The Winter's Tale, and I should throw more Shakespearean quotations around to give me a false air of Class And Brains while I'm busy churning out more weepy posts than a Victorian Lady Poet.

June
If you have a few minutes or if you have a particular favorite, could you let me know which of my posts you think is the best, and the most, let's say, worthy of being reprinted in an actual book?

See: Nothing, Came To.

July
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.

Yeah, I NEVER write about holidays.

August
I've been working on my mammoth August and September notebooks recently, which has been taking up much of my time.

That's a REMARKABLY boring sentence. It makes me despair a bit about myself, really.

September
Thanks for all of the birthday wishes yesterday - that was lovely!

It WAS lovely! I love my birthday. I'm not all that keen on aging, but I like cake and wine and parties and presents just for me, so I'll put up with the whole getting older thing.

October
Hey, The Baby did my makeup this morning!

Little did I know that was only the beginning of her obsession with makeup, and that from that point on I could no longer depend upon waking up from an afternoon nap NOT wearing purple glitter eyeshadow all over my face.

November
The Girl lounged around looking pasty and miserable until right after lunch, and then she said, in a pale, pale voice, that she was going to try and get ready to go to the Halloween party at school.

That's a more interesting first line AND I managed to work in all of my usual themes: holidays and being sick. Good for me.

December
Hey look!

I start a lot of sentences with "Hey" and that is because I am just RUDE.

In summation: I have a blog and I write a lot. Much of what I write is kind of dopey. The end.

Happy New Year!

2009. WOW.
And I got the most astonishing news yesterday to end the old year on and you'll have to go over here to find out what it was.