Just in case

Spring cleaning at the voodoo bungalow is no small thing. We are all messy people with squirrel-like proclivities--there are, in fact, peanuts stuffed down the sides of the couch, just in case. Luke never met a photocopied conference programme from 1987 or a grade sheet from three years back in a different country that he didn't want to keep, just in case. Elvis hides socks all over the place, just in case. I cannot throw out anything that has the handwriting of a loved one, just in case. (Just in case it turns out to be the last thing they wrote or just in case my action starts the wheel turning and something bad happens next. I am clearly the craziest one. Yay me!)

But this year I'm getting serious about this whole down-sizing thing. That means it is time to say goodbye to some of the mommy hoard.
--plastic bag full of baby spoons, one with a tiny toothmark. I don't know if this is Lief's toothmark or one that was there when the spoon was passed down. I might have been hoarding a spoon with my 15yo niece's toothmark on it, which would cause her to roll her eyes and say "Eww, gross."
--two pieces of gravel that might have been given to me/thrown at me by my baby at the swings park. Or might have simply fallen out of one of his socks.
--one "Tiny Swimmer" disposable bathing suit in size 9mo. I kept it because "tiny swimmer" reminded me bitterly of how I got to be in the predicament of being in my bathing suit, lumpy and old and disheveled and now also wet, in public, with strangers, at 8.30 on a Wednesday morning, in the FIRST PLACE. One of the things I'd like to have less of is bitterness.
--that's not true. I love bitterness. It smells like victory. I want more.
--the earring that Lief found underneath our table at Brava, the first time he went anywhere with us. That was also the last time he went anywhere with us, for a very long time. That was the night he also found and ate someone's lipstick under the table at Brava. Well, he actually found it in someone else's purse under someone else's table at Brava. . . . It was actually a really nice shade and I kept it to try and match it against different brands at the cosmetics counter at the downtown Bay one afternoon. This is an episode in my life that I should probably try to forget. Farewell, baggie containing someone else's half-eaten lipstick from 6.5 years ago!
Scared yet?
I originally wrote "sacred yet?" And now I'm worried that there are no mistakes, Freud is 100% spot on and if I throw these things out I will be losing some holy part of my life. Something sacred and memorable, deep, religious, chthonic, powerful. I could be losing something important forever.
Good enough.
Out. The. Door.

Car Snacks

When we used to head out to our Windermere cabin, back when Lake Windermere had something like 10 cabins on it in total and not ten condos per square meter, we observed certain niceties. Barfers at the window seats. Long-suffering but uncomplaining and very awesome sister in the middle even though as the eldest she should have punched someone in the head until the window seat was hers but ahem moving right along. Flatulent poodle (version 1.1 of which had three legs and was full of hate as well as noxious gasses) on the arm rest of the front seat--and wedged in somewhere would be Gramma with her tin tartan picnic basket. Which all comes back to the barfers, because MAN would they have something to work with.

We were allowed to commence dining once we reached the Cochrane turn-off. Something like 20 minutes into the 3-hour trip. And then the tin would open and inside would be egg salad sandwiches, tuna salad sandwiches, sweet pickle and butter sandwiches, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, Wink or Tahiti Treat, celery sticks with Cheez-Whiz, Bugles, ju-jubes, coconut marshmallow cookies, popcorn twists, salt and vinegar potato chips and red Twizzlers. That was when she didn't really have enough time to pack a "proper lunch." I remember rolling out of the car at the cabin, easily 5 pounds heavier, redolent of many chemicals and dyes and sugars and processed flours, having said very little to anyone else, all of whom were rubbing their jaws and bellies and looking like little bubbles were floating above their heads. We were well on the way to porkitude and ill health including, probably, significant brain damage, but damn it we were happy and we felt the love. The pink coconut marshmallow love.

These days, now that I am Queen, we go to Banff on the weekends. It's an hour-long drive, door to door. Last week, so that he would feel the love, Kid got pretzels, some juice, an apple, a banana, almonds, and two squares of organic dark chocolate.  I figured that would get him through the ordeal of being driven to a nice condo with a pool, something to help him concentrate on blasting battledroids and resisting pleas to for God's sake look at the scenery you are so lucky to live here. I imagined him thinking fondly back through the years to the thoughtful little snacks his mom would make for him on skiing weekends.

Look upon me, the standard bearer of exceptional parenting. Look upon me, you mothers in the McDonald's drive through lane, and WEEP!

Ahem.

Kid's babysitter has just informed me that he's pleaded with her to pack him a proper snack for this afternoon's excruciating drive. "You know Laur," he says, "She's not too great with the snacks. Mostly leftovers." He did not feel the pink coconut marshmallow love.

I'll be spending the next 45 minutes picking and choosing from our wide assortment of leftovers, which include cold green beans, a rind of Some Smelly Cheese, 2 inches of cranberry cocktail and what looks like tuna salad. I bet he'll be feeling the pink coconut marshmallow love next weekend, all righty.

The dark side

Time for a confession here: when I was a kid, sharing a bunk bed with my younger sister, I used to hang down from the top bunk in the middle of the night and growl her name in a demon voice. Then she'd wake up yelling and I'd pretend that I was just sleeping along, minding my own business, when this stupid shrieking nightmare-ridden sister woke me from the dreams of innocence.

I've told this story to a couple of people over the years and their response has been the same: That Is So Awful.

Oh, the shame. Oh, the hand-wringing. Oh, the kind of sort of thinking about maybe kicking in for some of the therapy bills.

Tonight I'm sitting here in the kitchen trying not to put on the glow-in-the-dark monster makeup that Santa brought for Kid and scaring the bejeezus out of him.

I might not always be a good mother, but I bet I'll be a memorable one.

Piperade

Kid is a great eater. The greatest eater among Kids throughout the ages, perhaps. He is not in the slightest bit fussy, is an adventurous diner (squid, capers, duck, cauliflower, quinoa), and has a man-sized appetite that causes moms to beam. His stomach will surely land him an heiress and I don't much care whether that's because the heiress's mom has pushed her daughter into a marriage just because the potential groom can't get enough of the tuna casserole that the heiress's dad has turned his nose up at for the last 30 years.

However, he balked at this. And I cannot imagine why.

I know. Hard to believe. I explained to him that it was an ancient Spanish dish much beloved by the peasantry. That the olive oil and peppers were aromatic, that the onions were soft and melting, that there was enough garlic in there to kill 400 vampires, and that the eggs came from genuine free-range chickens from a real farm who probably ate worms.

What I heard in return: "Lor, that looks like barf and there is NO WAY ON EARTH I am going to eat it."

You know, looking at the situation honestly, I had to agree with him: it does kind of look like barf. So for the first time in his life he got a different dinner from the rest of us; although I couldn't help pointing out that peanut butter looks kind of like dog poo.

Feargal Sharkey

Back in the good old KROQ days, when I woke up in LA to the rude humor of Kevin and Bean, I once heard this:

Don’t pick at it. You’ll get a Feargal Sharkey.

It instantly became one of my favorite things to say, and for such a long time, that I knew—knew—I was developing dementia when I reached for that name in a moment of motherly desperation and could not find it. I needed something to frighten Kid with when he expressed concern about some newly festering part of his anatomy, who knows what, I hardly can bear to look at the bathwater some days. GOD. Anyhow, I finished lamely with “. . . you’ll get a . . . boo boo.”

A boo boo.

I consider this a sad commentary on my ouevre as mother.

Like Kid, I was mothered as a young child by a woman on the verge of many things, including her 50s. In an age where children were still spanked in public, we were all used to such colorful threats as “I’ll skin you alive!” or “I’ll give you to the first gypsy I see” or “I’ll warm your backside with the wooden spoon but good.” It was all in good fun, mostly—none of us imagined for much more than a moment that our mothers would actually trade us for a pack of bubblegum and a stiff drink.

One of the things I was looking forward to when I discovered I was about to become a mom was joining that jovial crew of sarcastic child observers. As a kid, I knew they were having fun, rolling their eyes at one another, taking long drags on the Craven A, wiggling their painted toes as they watched us fall off the fence, parachute from the swings, or chase each other around the yard brandishing sticks. “Honestly, Micky,” I remember my mom saying, “they’re enough to drive a strong man to drink.” The ice in her drink tinkled against the glass as she spoke, the bright green lime a flag that signified her total acceptance of our shenanigans. We drove her to drink, sure (a weak gin and tonic), we were hooligans and vulgarians and there were potatoes growing in our ears but that’s the way kid life was and she was up to it if we were.

Today, it’s a little different, as we all know. We’re encouraged to believe that children don’t “get” sarcasm until they’re 9 or 10 (although Kid wouldn’t have survived 15 minutes in this place if he hadn’t learned to be the world’s most sarcastic 3-day-old). Hooliganism is definitely out—where would it take place? On a playdate in front of educational toys, all watched over by maternal machines of loving grace? Kids don’t run wild anymore and that means that moms don’t get to run wild anymore, either. What is there left to be wry about? “Honestly, Micky, Kid just cannot distinguish between b’s and d’s.” So many of the surprises are gone. I always know where Kid is. I pretty much always know what he’s doing. I know the state of his clothing. I know if there’s dirt on his face and where that dirt came from. I never have to say “what on earth have you gotten into now, you heathen?” The world has become perhaps a little less piratey not just for kids but for the moms who, if they’re like me, long for a little adventure, want to be shocked and “horrified” by what the little buggers have gotten up to this time.

Tomorrow, I do believe I shall spring my nearly 7yo from the backyard and let him go to the park with his friends for a little while. And when he comes home, all covered in gravel and mud, I’ll welcome him back with some colorful sayings that he’ll be able to tell his kids all about, things his mom would say when he showed up at him with the unmistakable sings of adventure on him. The word “boo boo” won’t be among them.

Why so ragged?

Someone asked me the other day why I call this blog "Worn Ragged." Don't I have only one child? Don't I work from home? Doesn't my husband have a good job? Didn't I think that I actually have it pretty easy?

It got me to thinking.

I started with Gramma in Broadview, who had nine kids, was widowed when the youngest was about two years old, who lived through the Dust Bowl in Saskatchewan in the 30s, who had no running water in the house until the 1970s, who couldn't drive a car, who kept her own chickens, who collected rainwater in a barrel for washing hair and clothes, who had 5 kids fighting in WWII in some capacity or other.

I can't compete with that. Bone-crunching labour, loneliness, fear, poverty, responsibility.

This is what I have for today:

Woke up at 7.55. School starts at 8.30. (Husband under misapprehension that his family was up and around.)

Fruit fly infestation in kitchen and bathroom, making breakfast a revolting experience for all involved.

Only clean pants for Kid are summer-weight formal slacks.

Car is iced over, requires much scraping.

Sunrise hits only partially-defrosted windshield, causing temporary blindness in middle of left-hand turn into school parking lot. Kid gets the first of today's late slips.

Kid leaves mitts, scarf, hat and backpack in car.

Back to the school.

Gently berated for not announcing myself at the school office and hanging Kid's belongings on appropriate peg without having first verified my security clearance.

Email migration at work causes much confusion, lost time; looming proposal deadline gets looming-er.

Kid breaks glasses on way home for lunch.

Dog escapes up the hill, poos on a neighbor's lawn. Neighbor is watching. I have no bags. An awkward conversation and fervent promises take place.

Water on the boil for lunchtime pasta has by this time boiled to nothing. No fire, but one must begin again.

25 minutes before the school bell rings. Lunch now on table.

Lunch now on table is judged to be "gross" by blind Kid, who wants to know how to spell "resuscitate."

Fixing Kid's glasses does not go well. A trip to the repair shop will be necessary.

A ritual phone call, one of several thousand, is made to the school attendance line. They must prepare the second of the day's late slips.

Up the hill to pick up poo. More than one bag required. Back down the hill. Back up the hill. Back down the hill.

Kid pitches fit in optometrist parking lot. His Smarties, given to him by a GIRL, have been left unfinished on the kitchen table. His mother is CRAZY LUNATIC CRAZY for not allowing him to miss another 20 minutes of school while he goes back and eats them.

And where are his school Valentines?? CRAZY LUNATIC CRAZY mother has not realized that there is no school until Valentine's Day is over and has not thought ahead by six days. Kid wishes to have lifetime supply of paper bags in which to stick his head. Oh, the shame.

Kid safely dropped off. Car begins to smoke. Has apparently dumped 3 litres of oil in last five days.

Hello 450 thousand fruit flies. You've been busy!

So: not Depression-era poverty, widowhood and striving in Saskatchewan. But surely enough to wear anyone ragged, right?

Or do I rename this blog "Spoiled baby whinging"?

Winkie beetle pheromones

At UCDavis, like lots of universities with a central quad, there were well-maintained "official" walking paths cut diagonally through the park, which no one ever used. They stomped out their own paths like undergraduate buffalo--and those paths, while clearly defining a purpose, looked like nothing so much as the dirt version of the sparkly slime left by winkie beetles as they winkie beetle in whatever (completely random) direction they are headed.

I was reminded of those adorable beetles this morning as I watched Kid head off across the snowy field toward the just-about-to-be-closed-on-the-last-stragglers school door. He seems to have a compulsion to be the last kid in and will execute a series of serpentine comings and goings that extend his time-to-door by about 140%. It's fascinating to watch and on Monday I think I'll invite an anthropologist to come along and do a field study. "Peripatetic approaches to authority: A field study of small insurgents." I'll then be able to present this to school authorities who accuse me of habitual tardiness and overall poor parenting. Although what's "poor" about maintaining a near-perfect consistency, even if it is in lateness?

Peanut butter and gi

In 15 minutes the kids are supposed to be barefoot and obedient in their karate class. Instead they're downstairs drinking Coke, eating crackers and peanut butter, and horsing around with Lego Atlantis.

They're happy, but I'm happier: I don't have to get in the goat-mobile to drive them to class, wait for them to figure out how to get into their little pajamas, wait some more while they're actually shuffling and whacking and whooping and hollering, wait again while they try to remember what locker they put their boy panties in, wait in the parking lot to get out, wait in the turn lane, drive all around the twisty-turny suburban cul-de-sacs and crescents that GOD HELP US if we ever have to evacuate this city, we'll all be circling our own neighborhoods for 25 minutes trying to figure out how to get out, and all this in a rusting stationwagon that smells like a certain sweaty coonhound. And all this while trying to edit a business proposal that must be out the door in about an hour. In Los Angeles. And WHOSE bright idea was it to forbid open bottles of alcohol in moving vehicles?

I think I'll couch this latest parenting failure in terms of a beaming gift of childhood. Here, boys, take it easy. Eat some junk food. Teach each other some swear words in the basement. You're welcome. Don't get Jiffy on your gi or I'll skin you alive.

ParentingThing

LibraryThing has sucked the soul right out of my mouth, leaving me gaping, drooling and forgetting to breathe through my nose. All I do all day now is try to come up with highly descriptive tags describing the books I've read. All of the books I've read. None of this "19th century literature" for me. How could anyone possibly recall a book they've read by thinking to themselves "hmmmm, feminist literature, class struggle, Britain"?

Did you just think of 497 books that fit that description?

Now, try this one on for size:

ramparts (sod), patient enduring of torture, spontaneous dropping of eyes to the ground, the insolence of Pelagius, Pictish raiders, abundant corn leads to lying, the malevolence of demons, nocturnal emissions

Yep, that's right. The Venerable Bede. There could be no doubt, could there, not really. It's the combination of "nocturnal emissions" and "Pictish raiders" that gives it away.

Here's another:

really long walks, dreadful realism, annoying dialect, convenient head wound, books that are held to be important but are unreadable

Right? Could not be anything but The Red Badge of Courage.

Fun! Addictive! In fact, I've taken to thinking of my entire day in terms of such tags, adding another charming OCD ingredient to the mix.

Par example:

suburbanites (greying), too bad about the souffle, what's that smell? get your face off the bathmat, cornmeal (effing), no i don't want more turnip, don't say turnip, nips and tatties is a revolting expression, if i check in the toilet right now will it be flushed, grimy little hands paddling in my face, do you understand the first thing about basic kitchen hygeine, you know how long it's been since I came in to brush your teeth?, potty humour (of six year olds), scissors (not being playthings)

I think I'm just going to use this shorthand as my journalling technique from now on. Kinda just lays it all right out there, doesn't it.

Join me on LibraryThing? I'm LBV123.

Revelation at the Crack of Dawn

This morning we were actually five minutes early and I realized that more than 4 other children, none of whom were racing/flailing/praying/trailing mittens as they pelted toward the soon-to-be-closed doors, go to Kid's school.

Further notes on exceptional parenting: The "Prone to Biffing" Edition

$2500 and three years into the project, we still have not convinced Kid that he will ski with us. We have purchased him pricey Mojo Spawn skis primarily because he thought the name was funny. We have allowed him to plaster his helmet with demonic goat faces because he quite enjoys the idea of looking like a radical boarder with some serious attitude. He has been bribed with junk food. We have reasoned with him. We have procured private lessons.

It's a no-go.

Perhaps it's because he saw this:



Perhaps he fears that magical pixie monkeys will snatch him mid-air.

Perhaps he knows himself to be one of those people who are overcome with the urge to jump when they find themselves in high places.

Perhaps in another life he was a sea anemone or a winkie beetle or some other form of life seriously out of place on a chairlift.

What is certain, however, is that he has now talked THREE different instructors out of making him get on that lift. He is like the tiny Saruman of the slopes.

So yesterday, after finishing up his four hours of lessons, we were not entirely surprised to hear that he had not, in fact, gone up on the chair--despite being bribed with the thing he loves best in the world: Puffles. If you don't know what those are, you are among the blessed and I'm not going to wreck that for you. So then I says to him, I says: "Well, looks like no stuffies for you." At which point, Kid falls to the snow, SCREAMING and BEATING HIS HANDS and KICKING HIS FEET and ROLLING AROUND and YELLING and RENDING HIS CLOTHES and CASTING ASHES UPON HIS HEAD.

The entire hill went silent and watched. The lifts ceased operation. The bar band stopped its hideous ruination of the Top 40 of 1976. I imagine some people thought to themselves: "Say, I've seen that woman in the mango skisuit before. Last year, she forced some poor kid to get on the chairlift when he didn't want to. Tsk-tsk-tsk." (Note to self: buy less standy-outy skiwear next year.) The part of me that is still in denial about parenthood looked on from above and muttered "Well, now, that's quite the spectacle that young man is making. I wonder which one is his mother. I bet she's horrid."

I wish I had some zinger to finish this story up with. Unfortunately, I was then and am now too tired to know what to say, what to do, which of the angry tiki gods I have pissed off this time and therefore which vertebrate to sacrifice. I turned my back and left the small screaming person to do his screaming in the presence of his father, who is dark enough of complexion not to blush furiously when humiliated in public by the complete system failure that is his (our) parenting.

Notes on Exceptional parenting

1. Last night, I held my son's nose while he ate the homemade organic butternut squash soup that I laboured over for three hours.

2. It is difficult to deliver a stern lecture on ethics to a recalcitrant six-year-old when one is dressed in long underwear, a yeti hat and pink knee-high ski socks.

Shit Show

Either Kid can now read chapter books pretty fluently, or he has a photographic memory. Either one is kind of weird, but neither justifies why, once again, he was the last one through the school doors this morning. We careered to school, nearly took out a city bus and a cat (not really, but Kid believes it to be true), were temporarily blinded by the rising sun and the bits of frost on the window that I hadn't gotten in my frenzy of last-second scraping, and entered the alley in a cloud of gravel dust. He grabbed his backpack, scooted out of the back seat, blew me a kiss and took off running through the frozen field, shoes undone, jacket unzipped, arms and skinny legs flying in so many directions that it's nearly impossible to believe that he had a torso keeping them all together. Such fierce love for him as I have should surely be strong enough to get him to school on time so that he's not THAT Kid with THAT mom in THAT car. Every morning I seem to have a new excuse for the frenzy. This morning it happened to be that I discovered that Kid can read Jack Stalwart unassisted, so of course we had to read until I heard the school bell ringing 6 blocks away. Yesterday it was that I couldn't find a juice box for his snack. Tomorrow? Probably a rabbit will have been discovered in the laundry room along with a talking weasel.

And then I could be THAT mom with THAT talking weasel.

The Annals of Exceptional Parenting, Part CVMXIVLVII

Kid and I picnic at his schoolyard at lunchtime. When I tell people this, they always go "Awwww. He must love that. How lovely for the both of you." And I can see in their eyes a new appreciation of the reassuring depths of my parental stability, far-sightedness and capacity for fun.

When in reality it's because there are no clean plates at home and if we're going to eat on the floor anyhow, might as well be outside.

Child "care"

A lovely friend was recently horrified by the bucket of dirty blocks her angelic 2.5-year-old was handed at a soon-to-be-hastily-abandoned childcare in the neighborhood.

Today I'm hosting that particular angel, her equally angelic (though steely-willed) older sister, my cousin's angelic 12-year-old, and Kid (streaming trails of glory, etc etc). They're in the living room, just down the hall from my office, each in a different chair, all playing DS/Leapster in dead silence. The house is a tip, there's a drooling coonhound licking their feet, roughly 18 million fruit flies in the kitchen, nothing even remotely resembling a healthy snack anywhere within walking distance, and inappropriate music being streamed on my Mac.

And yet how much better this is, for all of us. I will actually be sad when they're all back in school and I am left alone here with my little career. But at least I won't have to share the Pringles. . . .

Comment of the Day

Re: organic quinoa pilaf. "Mommy, I don't want this mush to be the last thing I eat."

Overheard horrors

Cool. The bathroom wall is exactly the same color as the booger. That's called camoflage.

Good morning, sweet darling mommy. ACTIVATE, LUMPY!

I can't tell if the hair on the toast is mine or the dog's. Oh well.

Mommy, the neighbor up the hill says how about doing a little poo removal along the fenceline?

When you swallow barf, you always kind of let a little bit dribble on the floor. I thikn that's the law of physics.

Editor's note: it is 9.15 on a Saturday morning. If anyone is out there and knows where I live, could you perform an emergency extraction, please?

World Victim Finals

Starting to notice: Kid is seriously invested in being a victim. Give him 11 Easter eggs, and he'll complain that only 8 of them are in red foil and surely this is because he is being ripped off on purpose. Give him a glass of milk and he'll note that yesterday's milk was colder and that this isn't fair. Give him a hug and have it pointed out that your glasses have "bashed" his forehead. There are only three Rebel troopers in his Lego battle pack, but ANDREW has four. Help him on with his socks and hear all about how you scratched his leg and could he please have a bandaid. Dad got 7 capers in his dinner and only 6 for poor Kid. He feels unloved when you ask him to please for the love of God please please brush his teeth.

Today being Easter, and me having had it to HERE with the histrionics, I thought I'd explain to him about victimhood on the world stage. As in the story of Jesus. How it ends, not how it started, which he knows all about. (The Mad Eyes brough presents but he couldn't play with any of them because they weren't toys and he had to go home from the hospital on a donkey.)

Kid, already feverish and chattering, is sitting up in his bed, hugging his knees, eyes very very large indeed, totally reconsidering his position on the Romans.

And another day of exceptional parenting draws to a close.

Kid Home Sick: Day 3

Okay, so now all the pretenses have been dropped. There is poor parenting going on here. The kind that says "Honey, don't you want to play your Nintendo for just another hour or two?" THAT KIND.

Kid Home Sick: Day 2

9.23 am: "Mommy, what can I do?"
Why don't you sit quietly and wiggle your teeth til they come out.
"Which teeth?"
All of them.