This Post Is Only About My Gums

One of these days, I'm going to write a semi-autobiographical novel and change only one thing from my real life. Here's a snippet of my future-to-be written novel - let's see if you can guess WHAT I changed:

"How was your dentist appointment today?" asked Shmebecca's
husband.
"Great!" said Shmebecca cheerfully. "They were totally pleased with how
I absolutely had no gum disease and absolutely did not need hours of bloody
cleaning."
"That is awesome," said Shmebecca's husband. "Now watch your
favorite shows while I put the kids to bed."

Since my husband DOES put the kids to bed every night, and it's literary tradition to change one's name in roman-a-clef type novels (although maybe I won't: "There once was a person named Rebecca. She was right all the time and everyone who disagreed with her was a goof, even when she frequently changed her mind."), obviously the thing I'm changing is the BLOODY GUM DISEASE. Oh, it was a freaking delightful day. I am pitying myself so much right now, as my gums age and bleed and are just generally really gross.

To add to my decaying physical self - I'm having BACK AND NECK problems right now, my hair is really white and I feel one step away from getting a cane and yelling at young punks to get off my lawn. Actually, I already hate it when young punks are on my lawn and I frequently run outside yelling curses to GET OFF AND GO HOME. Freaking kids. They don't know what it's like to be old and have everything get all gross and/or painful.

Here's a funny thing, though - as they checked my developing cavities in my molars - lookin' good, cavities! - and tsk-tsk'd at my decaying gums, they complimented my children's freakishly healthy and straight and cavity-free teeth. It's like, Hello! Your body is falling apart AS WE SPEAK, but the good news? Your replacements are TERRIFIC!

I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled, mainly because I am too lazy to hem 'em. And I am going to go watch an iCarly marathon with my daughter. Carly is young and has great gums and her back probably doesn't hurt, either. Sigh.

My Kids Are Getting Older

Especially my oldest one. I wrote a post about how everyone is being all dire and terrifying about her upcoming teens - love to hear from you.

House, Wife

It's the first day of autumn, although autumn has obviously been in full, multi-coloured swing for several weeks here and the first days of every season seem to refer to some earlier European conception of when the seasons start and when they end. Here, we have maybe two weeks of orange and red and yellow and gold left and then we will have two solid months of black trees with bare branches scratching the grey near-winter sky, which doesn't do much to warm MY heart. Autumn - as lovely as it briefly is - is harrowingly overrated as a season.

Springtime is my favorite, of course - the end of winter and the mud and the promising green haze over the bare branches and then one day you wake up and there's leaves and daffodils and fields of green grass and you've made it through another winter and every day is prettier than the last. But autumn is nothing but slow, pretty decay and the end of things.

At dusk, all of the houses have their lights on and their curtains still open and driving by you can catch little glimpses of life going on in the open windows - a woman reading a book on a couch. an old man watching tv by himself, an empty chair beside him. sisters standing at a sink together, washing dishes. Every house seems to become this oasis of golden domesticity, warmth and comfort and light standing out in the growing chilling darkness.

The letter B originally stood for many things: it meant house and temple and wife and daughter and place, this spot where you are right now. It meant, I think, that feeling of watching out the window at the end of the day for my husband to return home from work, that feeling of watching him step out of the fall evening - darker every night this time of year - towards me, that feeling as he always reaches for me and murmurs into my hair that it's so good to be home.

He does not mean vacuums and doorways and washing machines. He does not mean eavestroughs and snow shovels and change the cat litter, does not mean cookies and tea cups and toy baskets.

If you happen to drive by in the evening dusk and happen to be looking that way, you might see a man and a woman standing near a window that is throwing golden light out into the darkness, both of them - in that minute - home. And outside it is the first day of autumn and the trees are finishing their task of turning red and orange and yellow before they fall away and night is falling and soon it will be winter.

When All Else Fails, Steal A Meme

I'm stealing this from Erin M.!

1. The phone rings. Who will it to be? It will be my 10 year old's best friend. NOT FOR ME.

2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart? Of course I do. Who just leaves their cart standing there?

3. In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener? Blahblahblahblah I can't hear you blah blah blah blah blah.

4. Do you take compliments well? YES. I LOVE COMPLIMENTS.

5. Do you play Sudoku? Yep. Or, more accurately, I went through a Sudoku-playing phase which has since passed, like all of my other interests.

6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness, would you survive? Do I sound like I would survive? No. I do not. I would catch some weird wilderness-disease and then I would die. Estimated elapsed time: 2 minutes.

7. Did you ever go to camp as a kid? Yes, apparently I went to some winter camp thing AND I went to the big Scouts jamboree in Sault St. Marie in... 1984 or 1985. And I met a boy at the dance and we wrote letters back and forth for a while. ROMANCE.

8. What was your favorite game as a kid? I liked a lot of board games. We had this weird Canadian one that we bought at a yard sale and it was SO much fun - it was based on the gold rush. What WAS it? (I figured it out - Klondike!)

9. If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he was married, would you? Are you asking me NOW? Me NOW would never ever do that, even if I wasn't married. And let us leave it at that.

10. Could you date someone with different religious beliefs than you? How different? My husband is Catholic and I am Protestant, so if you measure beliefs in that way, than yes. Yes, I can. But being Christian matters a lot to me, and so I suspect that I would only be willing to MARRY someone who was at least willing to go along with my beliefs.

11. Do you like to pursue or be pursued? Oh, I can't remember.

12. Use three words to describe yourself? I asked The Girl. She said "nice, kind, good." That's not how I would describe myself, but it's sweet to know that's how she sees me. Aw.

13. Do any songs make you cry? TONS of songs make me cry. TONS. Kate Rusby's version of My Town. Cat Power's The Greatest. All I Can Say by David Crowder. This list could go on and on. I cry easily.

14. Are you continuing your education? Only in the sense that I read nonfiction books frequently. I have no interest in ever returning to school ever again in my entire life.

15. Do you know how to shoot a gun? Yes. I grew up country.

16. Have you ever taken pictures in a photo booth? Oh, yes.

17. How often do you read books? I read a book a day.

18. Do you think more about the past, present or future? I don't know. I sometimes wonder if I actually think at all, or if what I THINK I'm thinking is actually just a series of memories and feelings.

19. What is your favorite children’s book? Right now? The Tale Of Timmy Tiptoes by Beatrix Potter. "Someone's been digging up MY nuts." HAHAHAH! The Baby loves it and as a result, walks around saying "Fie on you OH FIE!" all the time. Hilarity!

20.What color are your eyes? Brown.

21. How tall are you? 5 foot 7.

22. Where is your dream house located? Oh, who knows?

23. If your house was on fire, what are the first things you grab? My KIDS, my HUSBAND, possibly the cats if they were within eye shot and didn't scratch me too bad. I'd try to grab the quilt my grandma made on my way out if I could.

24. When was the last time you were at Olive Garden? Pfhhh. Years?

25. Where was the furthest place you traveled today? We went several towns over to my in-laws place.

26. Do you like mustard? Nope.

New post!

It's about the changes that motherhood genuinely brings to us - I'd love to hear from you.

September

The lovely balmy summery weather that we'd been enjoying so far this September has abruptly ended. And by abruptly, I mean that the temperature has dropped from a delightful 25c to a grim 8c in two days.

TWO DAYS!

The household little kids and I have been talking about ancient Mesopotamia for DAYS and DAYS now and we are finally done and do not have to talk about ancient Mesopotamia anymore. Yesterday, as a final summing-up of our several weeks worth of work, I had the kids write postcards about Mesopotamia, and The Baby narrated the following.

Dear Daddy,
In Ancient Mesopotamia, everyone ate onions and kids did not wear pants.
There was also a man named Sargon. He was not very nice.
Bring me candy.
Love,
The Baby.

Sort of a breathtaking summary of history, I think.

Okay, So What Happened?

The Boy and The Baby are LOVING homeschooling. They're both enthusiastic and gung-ho and LOVE being home and I always knew it would be a great match for them. ALWAYS.

But the Girl is a social gal. She just is. I don't know where she inherited that from, since her parents most strongly resemble turtles, but she likes nothing better than to be in a big chatty group of same-aged peers and although she liked our short experiment in homeschooling, she missed her friends and classmates and by Tuesday it was just heart-breakingly obvious that what was such a great idea for her brother and sister was just a terrible idea for her.

"Parenting," my husband always says, "is not about the parent's feelings."

Waaaah!

So I had to put on my Grownup Clothes and march down to the school and re-register The Girl today. It was sort of galling, in a way, but on the other hand, it feels good to be making what I know is the right choice for my particular kid.

She came up to me last night and rested her chin on my shoulder as I wrote an email. "I want you to be happy," she said. "If you need me to be homeschooled to be happy, I'll stay." And even now I find myself staring at that sentence a bit, but my feelings are not HER JOB.

So anyhow. We made a cake this afternoon, to acknowledge her last day of her eight days of homeschooling and, at her request, they're watching cartoons now, having worked really hard all week - the Boy and The Baby will need new math textbooks by the end of October if they keep it up - and it's a sweet day, knowing that we've made the best choices we can for EACH of our kids.

The Baby just read me a story she "wrote". "This is the title," she announced. "It is called The Little Girl Who Got What She Wanted And Everyone Stopped Whining About Her Being Rude."
Ha ha! That Baby.

All Quiet On The Blogging Front

I think you can guess how well my Writing At Night idea has been going by my recent non-existent blog output, which is to say, of course, that I have not been writing at night AT ALL. Not one bit!

I blame nature.

It was a non-summer - cold and wet and gray - but the past two weeks have been glorious and warm and sunny and if you pretend that the leaves are not RAPIDLY turning yellow and red and gold, you can pretend that it's still early August or late July and that this summer is gonna be GREAT. Of course, the temperature has been subtly dropping by a degree or two every day, so that today's 22 is less clement than yesterday's 23 and nothing at all like last week's balmy 25 and within a week, we're supposed to be a frigid 10 for the next while and so gather ye rosebuds while ye may and all that.

I also blame homeschooling.

Did you know that my kids are here ALL THE TIME now? And that I am supposed to TEACH THEM STUFF? Yeah, that's surprisingly time-consuming. Also: WOW, I am awful at math. I've managed to carve myself out a pleasantly math-free life, so I've forgotten the vast gaping chasm of ignorance that is the part of my brain where math was supposed to go. As a result, my oldest child now does her math at night with her dad.

I wrote a review of SafetyTats, which is up at my review blog.

And that is it, I think. I have some blog ideas, but they'll have to wait. What's new with you?

To Answer The Pressing Question:

Why did I not call my mom and dad at the coke house?

They were out at the dance with everyone else. The dance itself was a non-sleezy small town affair, but it wasn't MY small town and I didn't know anyone to call.

My Scariest Babysitting Experience Ever

(Inspired by This Post by the clever Gretchen)

I did a lot of babysitting while I was in my teens. A LOT. I don't know if there was a shortage of responsible teenaged girls or what, but I frequently had to juggle multiple families over one weekend, and if I'd SAVED that money instead of spending it all on CASSETTES and music magazines, I could probably have saved myself a lot of student loans in just a few years down the road. But I didn't.

Much of my babysitting experiences were horrible.

1) I babysat two kids who lived on a horse ranch. The 2 year old went down for a nap, and at some point I went in to check on him, thinking he should be awake by then. He was gone and his bedroom window was open.

THEN I HEARD THE HORSES IN THE HORSE ARENA.

I RAN to the barn and there, sitting happily playing with trucks in the middle of the horse arena, with horses galloping wildly around, sat the toddler.

I have no idea how I got him out of there. I did, but my memory fails me.

So that sounds pretty bad, right? But was it my worst babysitting experience ever? Oh, no.

2) I once babysat some kids and put them to bed and went downstairs to watch tv. Then I heard a creak upstairs, and thinking that one of the kids was out of bed, went upstairs to check.

The oldest child was not in his room.

I checked his siblings' rooms. And there he was, standing over his sleeping sibling HOLDING A KNIFE. "Did you ever feel like seeing what happened when you put a knife in someone?" he said to me.

I took the knife away from him and called his parents in a BIG panic. When they got home I told them what had happened and they were not impressed.

"He does that all the time!" said the dad. "I thought there was an actual emergency."

Again, NOT my worst babysitting experience ever. NOT BY A LONG SHOT.

3) The wife of a relative asked me, while I was visiting, if I could babysit for her sister while everyone went to a dance. Sure, I said, moronically.

First of all, the parents did not leave. No, they hung around until midnight, doing cocaine with friends in the kitchen.

I tried to keep the little kids in the living room. One of them ran into the kitchen and jumped on a stool to grab a bag of candy off the fridge. The dad backhanded her so hard that she ran wailing back into the living room, her nose bleeding.

Finally, the adults left. I tucked the kids in, but they drifted back downstairs. FINE, I thought. I wasn't ever babysitting for them again, so I wasn't going to go to a lot of effort about bedtime.

One of the little girls took a book off the coffee table and started reading. I went over to see what it was and realized that the kid was sitting there reading The Joy of Sex. I put it up.

"Let's watch a movie!" the other kid said. So they put on a video and fast-forwarded knowingly to the suicide scene in Platoon. I took the movie out and put in Mary Poppins.

"THAT IS MY FAVORITE MOVIE!" said the oldest kid, beating at me with her fists.

Two motorcycles pulled into the driveway. I realized with horror that whoever was on them was coming into the house and OH LOOK! Two bikers - complete with gang regalia - walked into the living room!

"You're scaring our babysitter," said the youngest kid.

Did the parents not tell me that they were staying over? said the one biker, who seemed like a startlingly avuncular fellow for a biker. They were visiting for the weekend. Don't worry!

And then they went into the sunroom and played crokinole for the rest of the night. Isn't that anticlimactic?

The next night, they asked me to babysit again. HAHAHAHAHAH! No.

So Far, So Good

It's the third day of homeschooling and the title says a lot. We've been pretty busy - we've made clay maps and read about the ice age and early exploration and made cards for Great-Grandma and went on an archaelogical dig in my HUGE and apparently relic-filled backyard. If you're interested in what we're doing at our homeschool, I'm going to post about it here at my brand-new and somewhat dull homeschooling blog, so this blog doesn't become all cluttered up and stuff.

I have some EXCITING posts in the works. In my head. But the only writing time I have write now is in the evening and come evening, I'm mostly just collapsed lifelessly on the couch. So I'm going to have to figure out how to either write in the evenings or SOMEONE will have to invent a machine to transmit my words from my head to my blog, which will be cool... maybe.

In the meantime, please enjoy this repeat of one of my favorite, hysteria-tinged posts EVER.

First Day Of Homeschooling!

If all our other days of homeschooling are like this one, we will have THE GREATEST HOMESCHOOL EVER. I am not counting on it, however.

It was - hyperbole aside - quite pleasant and felt natural, instead of feeling awkward and weird and pretend-y all day. We read books and did math and made clay maps and played in the yard. My children were abnormally well-behaved. It was lovely.