Good morning!

Here's my 5 Minute post. I wrote it REALLY late last night (actually, I think I wrote it at about 8 p.m., but I was tired enough that it felt like midnight.). I felt melancholy AND I'd spent the day reading the Greek legend of Demeter and Persephone to my kids and it all came together kind of oddly at the end of the day.

I also heard this song yesterday by Kate McGarrigle - she recorded it right before Christmas and then she died last week and when I heard this song I cried so hard my eyes practically fell out:

And then I played it for my mom and she cried so hard her eyes practically fell out. So I come by this naturally, I think.

My post! I'll see you there, I hope.

And What Do I Think?

About this post that I wrote on - Good grief! - Monday.

I think a bunch of things, I guess. I think that as a generation, we ARE whiny parents. This isn't a scathing dismissal of our parenting, though - parenting is harder now. Someone I know talks about standing on the hump in the backseat and happily looking into the oncoming highway as his dad drank a beer with one hand and smoked a cigarette with another and steered with his knee. Imagine parenting in THOSE halcyon days of limited parental responsibility! I'm telling you, we missed out.

As Happygeek said:

We are bombarded with parenting advice and feel the need to have our kids reading, writing and composing small operas before Kindergarten, plus we can't yell, spank, use negative language, helicopter parent, and we have to protect them, build their self-esteem, but not too much, feed them organic, well balanced meals, play with them, but not too much, and so on and so forth.Our
parents just told us to go outside.

So yes, we might whine a bit more. BUT THERE ARE REASONS.

And also The Baby Boomers! That taciturn, uncomplaining generation. HAHAHAHAHA!

Things I Heard On The Weekend

I had lunch in a restaurant this weekend - that NEVER happens! - and the owner of the restaurant saw a friend from high school and came running over to chat at the table that was right behind me, which was probably NOT a good idea on her part.

So I eavesdropped on the following conversation between High School Friend And Her Husband and The Owner of the Restaurant. All parties were nicely dressed and groomed people in their early 50s:

Restaurant Lady: My kids are all in their late 20s and early 30s now. I even have a few grandkids!


Friend: Me too! Don't you find that our children don't handle parenthood as well as we did?


Restaurant Lady: YES! My kids are always calling me and complaining about how hard parenthood is, and they only have one kid each! There's something WRONG with that generation.


Friend: I KNOW. I worked a full-time job from home, took classes, did crafts, refinished my house AND raised my three kids and you never would heard ME whining the way my children whine.


Restaurant Lady: I babysat three other children while my own were small, did all the bookkeeping, taught fitness classes three times a week and stayed up all night working on the restaurant - and my kid acts like having one three year old kid who is in daycare all the time is somehow the hardest thing ever.


Friend: Suck it up, buttercup! (middle aged laughter)


And I had an aneurysm from repressed speech and said a few fierce whispered asides to my husband. But rather than ranting for several more paragraphs (I tried that and it turned into a massive diatribe), I'm curious to hear what YOU think of that little overheard conversation: is their assessment of the current generations of parents fair? Who is to BLAME for the Baby Boomers' children being such a bunch of neurotic overwhelmed whiners (if we are, that is.)? And WERE they better parents then their own children are turning out to be?

Off to try and douse the smoke coming out of my ears.

Shucks, Thanks!

The Boy was deeply pleased to have all of your birthday wishes, and I was flattered that so many people think that my good-looking fella looks like me. He does and he doesn't, of course - he's better looking - but he DOES have The Family Face, and I thought about this for a while yesterday and it led to today's post.

In other news: BEHOLD MY MARIO CAKE:

Someone complimented the lovely mushroom, which IS very cute, and which I purchased chock full of candy. I DID sculpt the Venus Flytrap at the back of the cake out of Froot Roll-Ups, which is my sculpting material of choice.

This picture could be called This Is Why My Husband Generally Makes Birthday Cakes:

What a mess! But he was busy and The Boy was DEElighted.

Here he is last night at the candlelit restaurant of his choice drinking a GIGANTIC mug of hot chocolate:

I think he's a sweetie pie.

So - today's post, all about what lives on in our kids, I guess. See you there!

Happy birthday, sweetie.

You are the kindest, bravest, funniest, most tender-hearted person I have ever known.

The past 8 years have been delightful, exasperating and fun.

I am looking forward to the next 8 years and to seeing where the rest of your childhood will bring you.

I am not looking forward to making your Mario cake this afternoon, but you are well worth the effort.

Lots of love, forever and ever,
Mommy.

The Day Before

I compose blog posts in my head as I fall asleep at night, and they are EXCELLENT blog posts - pithy and sharp-tongued, amusing and insightful - and then I fall asleep and the posts gently drift away. And possibly I should dash up and write everything down while the words are so fresh and ripe in my head but I like sleeping better, honestly.


My 7 year old son will be 8 years old tomorrow. Writing that down gives my heart a funny sting, which amuses me - time moves on, kids get older and seven is kind of a miserable age, really, and 8 is much nicer. And yet.


Eight years ago today, I was in labour right at this time, and I did not yet know that I was going to be in labour for another 21 hours, which is the sort of knowledge that you are glad, in retrospect, that you did not have. And then he was born and there was this sudden ecstatic calm in the middle of all of the blood and pain and I held him for the first time and his dark eyes met mine and I instantly loved him.


(Which I told everyone. "I LOVE HIM!" I announced loudly to the whole room. "Hold still," said the poor doctor who was trying to sew everything below my waist back together again.)


We were pushed on a stretcher back to our hospital room, and he craned his head in my arms, staring in fascination at the light fixtures hanging overhead. I know you, I thought.

I had known love before, of course - from the seemingly-hopeless misery of my love for my not-yet-husband, to the hard-earned love for my oldest child - but this was the first effortless love in my whole life, the first person that I ever loved at very first glance. And even now, I don't love him more (I can say with complete honesty that I love my kids equally, that thing your mother always said and that always seemed impossible) but I love him easier, my son, my handsome brown-eyed boy.


Time has passed, as it does.

He is goofing around in the office behind me, making decorations for his birthday tomorrow. He noticed me looking at him and our eyes met for a moment, his dark eyes smiling at me. Time has passed. That original shock of love, that feeling that I knew him, knew him forever, remains. And he's seven for just a few more hours, and soon he will be eight.

Guess why I took a little break?

Important Update!
I airly mentioned in today's post that I'd read something somewhere, but misplaced where it was and now I know - it was THIS POST by Bea.

Hint: rhymes with "ick." Starts with the letter S.

I'm feeling better now. I made some date bread last night because I had a sudden yearning for date bread and I can say conclusively that this was the best idea I ever had. I remember how GROSS I thought date bread was when I was a kid and now I love it, which is obviously proof that I am old, old, old.

Look at my cute new header! Jeni at Peace and Carrots made it for me. THANK YOU!

Hey! I wrote a post! I kind of love it, too. See you there.

(and it's also Delurking Day! If you're reading, say hi. I'd love to hear from you.)

On Homeschooling

So. A lot of you - A LOT - have asked me how homeschooling is going.

It's fine.

A friend of mine is ALSO homeschooling her son and we were talking about just this very thing on Friday and she said "It's great, except for that feeling of it never being finished and realizing at the end of the week that you haven't left the house for five days." Which sums it up, I guess.

BUT. My kid was getting more unhappy every year in school - and he is only SEVEN - and now he is happy again. I have my happy son back. And he's also memorized the Periodic Table ("Let's talk about Boron!" he said to me the other day. OH LET'S.), taught himself division in a day, and can tell you all about the Phoenicians, so educationally he's having quite the grand old time. Did I mention that I have a clever son? Why yes I do.

The social stuff worries me. But I was worried about the social stuff while he was in school. I've met several... maladjusted homeschoolers recently, and so now I'm at maybe Code Yellow or possibly Code Orange, worry-wise, BUT IT IS CERTAINLY NOT LIKE I NEVER MET ANY MALADJUSTED PEOPLE IN SCHOOL, EITHER. (I sat behind a young man in grade nine math who pierced his own ear with a compass. During math class. BLOOD ALL OVER MY DESK. Awesome.) And I don't think he was ever going to be the big social hit of our rural, hockey-lovin' school, come to that, so I don't know, precisely, what I'm worried about. I do worry, though. He gets to see his friends occasionally and he's in activities and stuff, so it's not THAT bad. Still.

There you go. I'm very busy, but pleasantly so. He's a sweet, smart kid and he's so HAPPY to be home that it's heartrending, really, so I guess we're in it for at least another year. Some days I love it and it's like HOMESCHOOLING IS THE GREATEST THING EVER. Other days? Not as much. Overall? It's fine.

I am tired of Henry VIII.

I understand that he had a dramatic life and a refreshingly modern attitude towards personal relationships but I feel like we've explored ol' homicidal Henry enough and it's time to move on to other British royals. And I don't mean "onto Elizabeth I and/or Queen Victoria" since I am also bored of them.

So in the interests of public betterment and for the use by any creative types out there who desperately want to write the next big Royal Novel, let me present:

OTHER INTERESTING KINGS AND QUEENS OF ENGLAND

Richard II - Not entirely unnoticed by literature, but an interesting, conflicted and possibly insane King with an intriguingly mysterious personal life. His reign was turbulent and towards the end there was a whole lot of rebellious drama and he was imprisoned in the Tower Of London and (it is thought) deliberately starved to death.

See? Don't you feel like writing an 800 page novel about him? You really should.

Queen Anne - Was sent to France as a young child to treat a severe eye infection. Made the controversial decision to marry Prince George of Denmark-Norway and had one of the few truly happy Royal marriages. She was a Protestant and her father, the King, was a Catholic (and remember, this is post Henry VIII, so there was A Lot Of Drama About All Of It.) She was pregnant at LEAST 18 times, had 13 miscarriages or stillbirths and of her five surviving children, four died before reaching two years of age. Her only child to survive infancy died at 11 - not only a terrible personal loss but also creating a huge drama about succession. Oh, and her reign was marked by The War Of Spanish Succession. Her reign was unpopular, her beloved husband died, there was a huge betrayal by her trusted best friend, and she died of gout. GOUT.

Lots of meaty stuff there for you Historical Fiction Writers. LOTS.

Ethelred the Unready - Was 10 when his half-brother Edward II was murdered (and murdered, possibly, in exceedingly gruesome fashion. UGH.) AT HIS HOUSE (possibly arranged by Ethelred's mother, so that her son might become king), and has gone down in history as a bumbling goof, although that is possibly unfair. What is certainly true is that he was a very young king and was surrounded by terrible advisers, and by the time Ethelred was 14, his reign was marked as being the reign where Vikings were attacking ALL THE TIME. Vikings! Ethelred ordered the massacre of all Danish settlers in England on St. Brice's Day, and the sister of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark was killed. Then, to sum up quickly, there was a huge Viking invasion in retribution etc.

Go. Write a meaty novel about him, full of sex, murder and VIKINGS. Because I am so, so sick of Henry VIII. I look forward to your endeavours.

Other Possible Fates

There is always, of course, this lingering and somewhat wistful feeling that there are other paths that one's life could have taken, another person we could have been if only we had made some different choice at some crucial moment. It is a bittersweet sort of feeling, really. And so, let me present: Different Possible Careers I Might Have Had.

Sarcastic High School English Teacher
"Oh really, Mr. Jones," I said. "I am so interested in hearing more about how Lord of the Flies is crap. Please come up to the front of the class and explain it to everyone."

I stand cross-armed and skeletal - sarcastic high school English teachers are a thin breed, harrowed out, perhaps, by their contempt for the thousands of jocks who should be rightfully sweeping the high school hallways and not going on to cushy post-University jobs.

"Soon, Rebecca! SOON," I whisper to myself. "Class is almost over and then there is vodka and Jude the Obscure to numb the pain."

Plucky Girl Detective
My handgun sank to the bottom of the lake as did the safe full of clues and the body of the greasy hitman sent to stop me from getting to the police. But I was alive, having escaped the burning car plummeting over the ravine into the icy lake in a hailstorm of bullets.

Suddenly an arm reached down into the water - a strong, sexy arm - and pulled me to safety.
I lay, gasping, and gradually my rescuer came into view. It was Juan, my Brazilian-American third ex-husband and former partner. Even half-drowned, half-frozen and with a bullet in my arm, I was painfully aware of the still-crackling sexual tension between us.

"What took you so long, baby?" I said. And then I passed out.

The World's Most Talented Ballerina
I am the world's most famous ballerina and I also look really excellent with all of my hair pulled back. Tonight is my most important performance. I dance the lead roles in Coppelia, Sleeping Beauty AND The Nutcracker and everyone agrees that I am the greatest ballerina ever. The crowd goes wild, standing and cheering. Everyone from my grade 2 class is there. They all feel really bad that they didn't realize how cool I was back in grade 2.

"If only we had all pretended to be brave WWII nursing dogs that one time like she wanted!" they weep.

Sensible Mother With Three Children In School
"So long!" I said, waving to them from the front porch. "Have a good day! See you later!"

They all march off, grumbling. I chortle merrily to myself and head back into the child-free warmth of my house where I am working on my masterwork, tenatively entitled "Me And Magnum Driving Around In A Dune Buggy."