And now for the overkill...
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Nothing Exciting, Nothing New
This morning I was hanging around outside talking to Mrs. Neighbour and watching our kids scoot around on their ride-on toys. We're pretending spring has sprung, even though the wind still blows cold enough to give you a headache and there's still a fair amount of snow on the ground. Littleput is really good at riding her Rescue Rider now. Oh goodness, I didn't know until I searched for that link that there was a Little Ms. Rescue Rider! Once again I've inadvertently bought Littleput a boys' toy. Anyway, we'll soldier on. Her legs must have gotten longer and stronger in the last four months because she can go really fast on it now. She almost keeps up with Mutie-pie in her Cozy Coupe. She will probably need a Cozy Coupe II of her own come summer. It's so wonderful to see concrete evidence of her growth, especially because I'm always worrying about her weight. She's very petite. Well, I would say underweight or skinny, but the women in my playgroup say petite, cuz they want to make me feel better. And it does make me feel better. Who knew such a chub-chub could have a petite daughter? I hope for her sake that she gets her father's genes and becomes the type of person that can eat half a Hawaiian pizza and three beer and then sit back, burp and pat her still-flat-as-a-pancake tummy.
Watching Littleput on the Rescue Rider reminded me that when we moved here and Fistula was busy all the live long day and I didn't know a soul, I would take Littleput outside and sit on our steps and just let her ride around and around by herself. The thought of it depresses me now, though I don't think I thought it was a horrible thing to do at the time. I was just glad that the baby was getting some time outside and thankful that we had found a nice place to live. I have a feeling that right about the time when I start to think I don't want to leave Waterloo will be when Fistula gets sick of his job. After six months, I have a lot of emotional investment in this place, this Southern Ontario. I mean, I doubt I'll ever care a whit about the city of Kitchener-Waterloo itself, lacking as it is in charm of any kind. But the people, the people! If I stay here until Christmas, I will get closer and closer to all the mom-friends I've made here and probably make more and then what? I won't want to leave, that's what. Crapnuts, as Fistula would say. It'll be just like leaving Bakersfield, California when I was twelve. I was only there a year, but man I looooooved my friends so much.
Considering the intimacy of some of my online friendships, I guess I could hold onto friends I make here via email, which I never did as a kid. That would be some consolation. Yeah, that sounds better.
I'm not going to yoga anymore. The powerful people way up in the top ranks of the recreation facility world aren't letting in any waitlist people this session, because supposedly all the people who actually signed up for the class are showing up each week. Bastards. I called my yoga instructor and he said he wouldn't notice if I just kept on coming, without registering or paying for the class. That was nice of him, but I don't think it's the right thing to do. I've already gone to four sessions without paying and that's enough morally-objectionable behaviour for this semester.
I'm going to Toronto again on March 3. I'm going to this cool, cool conference, hosted by the Association for Research on Mothering at York University. How appropriate that I'm breastfeeding as I type this! I'm interested in the topic (Mothering, Sex and Sexuality) of course, but I must confess that I'm mainly going to see Ariel Gore, founder of Hip Mama and author of one of my favourite books. I remember when I was thanking Audra for sending me the email about the conference and telling her I was considering going. She said "Did you see who will be there?" and I said, no, I'd only skimmed the email so far. She said "Guess!" and I said "Not Ariel Gore". And she said "Yes Ariel Gore!" and I said "No fucking way!" and then "I'm going." I got to brag about it to everyone at Saskatchewan's potluck on Sunday, because they are all members of the Hip Mama community and hence jealous of me, cuz I get to meet HER.
Fistula took advantage of my not going to yoga tonight to skiv off to the pub with his colleagues, leaving me to give Littleput her bath. It's a strange coincidence that the nights when Fistula is unavailable to bathe her are usually the nights when I don't really think she needs a bath; she's a little too clean. This might be one of those nights. I think I smell Johnson's Baby Shampoo emanating from her scalp.
Breakfast Talk
This morning...
Is there any cheese left?
BEC:
Yes. It's in the fridge.
FISTULA:
Oh, I wasn't sure, because there was only about a half a pound left after I made my sandwich yesterday and I know you were at home all day with it, so...
BEC:
Whatever! Littleput is the one who eats most of it! She eats chunks!
FISTULA: (holding up a hunk of cheddar)
Is this it? Is this all that's left?
BEC:
That's more than enough. There wasn't all that much yesterday, you know. I only had four slices for my sangy and Littleput had a couple of chunks.
FISTULA:
Uh-huh. I'm sure you didn't have any chunks at all.
BEC:
Actually, no. I didn't. As I said, I had four small, thin slices on my sangy. I'm sorry if I ate a sandwich yesterday for lunch. God knows I don't deserve it. I'm sorry if I haven't had a ham and cheese sandwich since before Christmas and I'm sorry that I wanted to have just one for lunch yesterday after I did Tae-bo. I apologize!
FISTULA:
Did you eat all the pickles too?!?
BEC:
There were barely any left! I only had five! --note: these are bread and butter pickles, so five means five slices -- There's enough left in the jar for your sandwich. I specifically left enough of everything for your sandwich today.
FISTULA:
But you didn't have ham in your sandwich. This is the same amount of ham that was here yesterday...
BEC:
Actually, I did have ham. I had two slices of ham. I'm sorry if I didn't take enough ham.
FISTULA:(ignoring me)
...and no bread either. See, I can tell because the loaf is cut so cleanly, as if someone took care in cutting it. So you musn't have had any.
BEC:
I'm ignoring you.
FISTULA:
See? This is what it'd be like if we never had any money. We'd always be sniping at each other. Just like **** and ****. It doesn't matter if you're madly in love with someone. If you have no money like we do now, you'll always fight.
BEC:
What did you say? Were you saying you're madly in love with me?
FISTULA:
Noooooo. No no no. I was saying that **** and **** are madly in love.
BEC:
Hey Fist, have you seen that Best of Ernie and Bert video I got for Littleput from the library? Have you seen that part where Ernie sings the song about how when someone's your friend you don't mind all their bad qualities? That's like me. I'm madly in love with you so I don't mind the little things. Ernie sings a song about it. Something like "It doesn't matter if you're a bit of an ass, cuz you're my friend, la la la."
FISTULA:
Mmmmm.
BEC:
I think we're like Bert and Ernie, doncha think? You're like Bert, all anal and shit, and I'm like Ernie, all "I love you anyway Bert!"
FISTULA:
I'm not like Bert.
BEC:
Oh but you are!
FISTULA:
But I hate Bert.
BEC:
Oh well, maybe Bert hates himself too...
Ham arrived on the bus on Friday evening and Queen came a half hour later in a rented car. We had just sat down to a quick dinner of leftover veggie lasagne when the new babysitter El Angelo arrived. I took her and Littleput upstairs so they could get acquainted and then came down and finished my supper and my Elquila tequila cooler. Then MQ got gussied up while I nursed Littleput to sleep and Ham and Fistula grilled El Angelo about her future. She said she wants to do a degree in English Literature, but the boys said that she hadn't actually read any English literature. I decided to let her babysit for us anyway.
We caught a cab down to the Jane Bond, a supposedly cool bar. Well, I didn't think it was all that cool. Not, that is, until I spotted a celebrity! A fancily dressed group of student-types had taken the table next to us. I was sort of drunk, so I leaned over and told two of the women that I thought they looked really nice. One of them was wearing long black gloves and the other one had on a black velvet dress held up by shiny, rhinestony straps. I asked them where they had come from and the gloved one said an Arts formal. I didn't know what an Arts formal was, but it sounded good to me. They said no, it was boring, and that's why they ended up here. They were with about ten other equally gorgeously dressed guys and gals. I was just about to end our mini-conversation and return to Ham, Fistula and Mighty Queen when I realized I reallllly recognized one of the women I was talking to. "Are you CARA?" I asked. "Yeah!" she said, eyeing my curiously. "I'm BEC!" I said. See, we read each others journals, and live in the same town, but we've never met. I knew that I'd run into her one day, but I didn't think it would be on what was pretty much my first night out ever in this town. And I didn't think I'd be half cut at the time either. Cara, just so you know, I'm normally much more calm. I don't remember the details of what happened next, but I was pretty giddy. When we left the bar I told F and H and Q that it was just like meeting a celebrity. They just rolled their eyes at me. Hee. It was cool.
Aside: if you read Cara's journal, you'll know she's always saying how she's sort of kiddish and not like other moms and stuff. Well, it's all a big front. She's very womanly and elegant and mature. I didn't see a trace of Power Puff girls anywhere. ;)
After we left the Jane Bond, we went to a neat Irish pub called Failte (pronounced fall-cha). It was good, but...I don't know. I guess I have high expectations because I spent those four months and Dublin and I know from Irish pubs. If the music had been more traditional and the people there had been a bit more rowdy, it would have been closer to par.
The next day we screwed around for most of the morning. I slept in while the rest of them went for breakfast. In the afternoon Mighty Queen and I visited my favourite bookstore and got some specialty coffee drinks at Williams. Despite some kafuffle over the difference between cinnamon and irish cream, I like Williams. I'm going to make it my own. Anyway, I loved going to the bookstore with Mighty Queen because it was the first time that I've spent as much time as I wanted there. I've always had either Fistula or Littleput or both in tow when I've visited and so my visits have been shorter than I wished. I don't think boys get it. Or maybe it's just my particular boy. He's the same way in the library. In and out. No perusing the magazine shelf, no trying to guess which Staff pick was picked by which Staff member, no fun. I got The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, Literary Lapses by Stephen Leacock, and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin all for $8.56 including tax! I'm so proud of my cheapness. Mighty Queen got two fancy shmancy books for eighteen dollars or something. Spendthrift!
On Saturday night MQ went out for dinner with some guy that she knows in town and the rest of us watched Erin Brockovich. I thought it was okay, but nothing amazing. I can't believe it's nominated for best picture. And so is Chocolat, which was pretty much crap. I say whatevs to the Academy.
On Sunday Fistula made omelettes while we played Cranium. He takes so long to cook anything that we were nearly finished the game by the time it was time to eat. It was girls against boys. Anytime it was the boys' turn Ham would go into the kitchen to sculpt or hum or act or whatever and Fistula would guess. Mighty Queen went along to make sure there was no cheating. The boys beat us by one question, damnit. I hate losing, but not as much as Mighty Queen. She insisted on leaving immediately after the game was over. Just kidding, they had planned to go then anyway. It was a fun weekend.
More developments on the getting-pregnant-again front
Last week in yoga I decided that I would definitely start trying to get pregnant as soon as we move back to Victoria. The plan is still to do that in about a year, give or take four months. I wish I could remember what it was exactly that made me decide that I would do it, when I'm usually so wishy-washy and undecided, but I can't. All I know is, I came home from yoga and told Fistula I wanted to. A day or two later I started reading Library Lil. Talk about perfect timing. I start reading her journal last Tuesday and on Thursday the little girl that she and her spouse will be adopting is born. I got on her notify list just in the nick of time! Reading through her archives made me completely change my mind again. The way she felt about her baby, that happy expectance that pregnant moms and parents on the verge of an adoption have...oh. It sounds so wonderful.When I got pregnant and decided to keep the baby and get married and all, I knew I would miss out on a lot of things. I would miss out on partying. I would miss out on travelling. I would miss out on medical school. I would miss out on being a single, swingin' Bridget Jones type career gal. I would miss out on sowing my wild oats. I would miss out on trying a bunch of designer drugs. I would miss out on having a husband but no kids. I would miss out on going to Nepal to volunteer. I would miss out on shopping. I would miss out on having my own way. It never occured to me that I would miss out on longing, and then having that longing fulfilled.
I missed out on really wanting to have a baby last time. I will wait until I really, really want a baby before I get pregnant again.
Okay. Too emotional to write more now.
The Wind
Last night it was soooo windy. I went to bed, fairly drunk, at 1:30, but couldn't fall asleep for two hours because of the wind. I'm deathly afraid of wind. It's one of my two irrational fears. I'll give a prize to whoever knows or can guess what my other irrational fear is. Mighty Queen and Collan of Ham, you're not allowed to enter the contest.
Last night when we got home from the pub, some of our recycling had escaped from the blue box on the stoop and was kicking around our pseudo front yard. If, by yard, you mean concrete area with dead tree in middle. And the garbage can and its lid were still out at the end of the driveway because I had forgotten to put that back in the garage. I put the two water bottles and the one Coke can back into the blue bin but I didn't bother with the garbage can. This is what I was thinking and worrying about from 1:30 until 3:30 last night. I have this horrible morbid fear about things blowing around outside. I imagine that I'm going to wake up in the morning and the contents of my recycling box will be spread all over the complex, and the neighbours will hate us because we've made the place so messy. I'm afraid that our garbage can will roll out into the street and someone will swerve to avoid it in the middle of the night and run into a telephone pole and die. Wind can and will kill.
I wanted to put in some earplugs to block out the sound of the wind, but Fistula had had as much to drink as I had, and I couldn't trust him to wake up if the baby cried so I didn't want to disable my ears. So, I was tortured by whistling and howling and mostly by my imagined disasters. I've been known to stay up half the night worried about my car blowing away. This was back wehn I was a teen and I had my first car, a '76 brown Toyota Corolla fondly called Chiste (meaning 'joke' in Spanish, or so says my mother). I was truly afraid for Chiste on windy nights. I lost a lot of sleep all through high school.
Speaking of weather, it rained all day yesterday and there was a heat wave. It was around 8 degrees in the afternoon. I thought all the snow would be washed away but it snowed during the windstorm last night and all the progress in snow disappearance was eliminated. It was neat this morning because the wind had caused the snow to be all sculpted. Some spots had no snow at all and others looked like the pictures you sometimes see of the sand formations in African deserts.
We got a new babysitter last night. While Puffy was very nice and has an RN mom and hooray hooray for Puffy, I was happier to know Littleput was with someone a bit older and more experienced. El Angelo is eighteen and very studious and mature. I'm in love with her. She can stay until all hours of the night, and can put Littleput to bed (although this hasn't been tested yet) and is very confident and competent. She's conquered the three Cs of babysitting: confident, competent and cheap.
Blast from the Past
A while back this photo was up on Mysideofthebed.com. It accompanied a story I wrote about my eight year courtship with Fistula. That site is folding, so I went today to rescue my photo, because I'm not sure if I have another copy of it and my scanner isn't working anymore. In it, we are both thirteen and we are in the gym of our junior high school. We weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, just friends. We both look pretty much exactly the same now, except for the following: Fistula no longer has a mullet, I pluck my eyebrows and wear a hell of a lot less makeup, and I'm about forty pounds heavier. I think my eyeliner is so funny in that picture. I used to wear a big thick black line on my bottom lid, and none on my top. Even in gym class! I always laugh when I go to the McDonalds drive-thru or some such place and the teenage girl working the register is wearing more makeup than I would to go to a nightclub. Then I remember that I wore at least that much makeup when I was that age too. It's a blessing that my mother wouldn't let me wear it until I was thirteen, because at least I missed the blue eyeliner and frosted pink lipstick stage. Actually...on second thought, I think I did wear frosted pink lipstick once when I was twelve and I went to the San Diego Zoo. It was Halloween, but my parents didn't want me trick or treating in the town we lived in (doesn't this look so attractive? Aren't you jealous of me?), so they took us to the San Diego Zoo instead. We knew we were going to the zoo on Friday, but somehow neither my sister nor I figured out that Friday was also Halloween. We got hoodwinked. I remember driving down the number five highway toward the Zoo, still wearing our costumes. I was a pirate.
Anyway, Chicanachick and I felt a bit gypped, and our parents - my mom anyway - felt guilty. And this is the reason I got away with wearing frosted pink lipstick even though I was only twelve. I also wore a jaunty black fedora and HUGE hoop earrings. That's because I was really cool. Actually I was a dork. I didn't become cool until years later.
