Bibliomama

Kim came back to Ottawa, and a bunch of us went for lunch, including Susan, which means two of my newest awesomest friends with fabulous hair were in the same place at the same time, creating a magnificent hair singularity the reverberations of which were probably felt for miles around.  Patti biked to lunch in a skirt, confirming her rock star status. Eve and Kim and I got hopelessly lost after parking in the National Gallery underground parking lot. First we went into an administration building, then we found this lovely treed lot. Eventually we happened upon the front entrance, but we thought we might be lost forever for a while. Eve. Flowers. Eve climbed on and in a tank at the school barbecue. Eve helped me get ready for my birthday party. Pam came to my birthday party. She got really drunk. But she's not the one who barfed all over our back deck..... Some people just can't hold their breastmilk. It's totally

Why do I even bother putting stuff in draft form? Every time I'm stuck for a blog post I look at the drafts folder and everything there is as useful as tits on a bull. Once I saw Teri Garr on Letterman and she said she always writes things down on cue cards so when she goes on talk shows she'll have witty comments ready, and then right before she goes on she looks at them and they say things like "Khadafi goes to Moscow. Chicken on a stick". That's how it goes with me and draft posts. Both my kids have birthdays at the beginning of a month. Since they were actually born on those days, at the beginning of those months, one could argue that it's been happening this way for as long as I've known them, and one would be indisputably correct. One might wonder why, then, I never realize that I have to get my ass in gear for birthday-party-type preparations not too late in the month BEFORE the aforementioned birthday months, if we don't want to be scrambling

So, we flew away. We had some adventures, we hugged some people, we saw some stuff, we had some laughs. Right now I am in love with being home. I love my bed, in my bedroom, which is attached to a bathroom that only I use. Right now I'm just enjoying being able to walk around with bottles of liquid - more than 80 millilitres if I feel like it - from room to room or floor to floor or ANY DAMN WHERE I PLEASE. And scissors. I love scissors. And being able to get a drink of water should the whim strike me. But I miss the people. And four days of Angus having no access to video games was kind of nice. He's smart! And funny! Who knew? Well I did, but it was nice to have it re-confirmed. I will tell you some stories about some things that happened. Such as why Eve gets the spirit award. And why my family will be polling members of our future flights on their recent medical experiences. Tomorrow.

Things are a little hard right now. Firmly in the 'first world' kind of hard, though. My dryer's busted. It stopped working just as we had decided to buy a new one BUT also just as Matt left for a week and a half in Japan, so we couldn't go shopping for a new one right away. We also couldn't go shopping for a new one the day after he got back from Japan because I left for Barrie to visit Zarah for the week-end. We're going shopping for a new one tomorrow, but who knows how long it will be before it gets delivered. In the meantime, you can't move in the basement without being slapped in the face or  caressed around the knee by a cold, clammy piece of reluctantly drying fabric. I hang a lot of things to dry anyway, but adding in having to hang sheets, towels, socks, underwear and dish cloths has made the process quite a bit more unwieldy. It's tiresome, but it's only tiresome because I'm accustomed to the ridiculously convenient way I usually do it

I was getting tired of looking at that pitiful political protest post (ha - try saying that three times fast). Both my laptop and my motivation are having some work done. I'll be back.

Eve stayed home sick today. I seem to have this weird problem where I regress back to when she was two years old and sick, and I would have to spend all day cuddling, consoling, entertaining, making her drink and helping her blow her nose (you know how kids can't blow their noses for shit? She would blow through her mouth with a TOTALLY CONVINCING noise and I was convinced she was a snot-expelling genius, until my husband clued me in. Whatever. She was a fake-nose-blowing-prodigy). At this point, she really requires almost no attention. She reads, watches tv, blows her nose on her own (kind of pathetically, actually, since she doesn't feel the need to fake the noise any more). I could easily go about my business - write stuff, clean stuff, organize stuff - but instead I wander around aimlessly asking her if she needs anything and getting nothing done. At least she's entertaining. She was lying on the couch and I was enjoying the novelty of having The Wizards of Waverly Pl

Scintilla prompt Day 4:  What does your everyday look like? Describe the scene of your happiest moment of every day. This is from a post I read at Blogging out Loud Ottawa in July of last year: ... I'm nearing the end of my second year of both kids being in school full days, and I still haven't gone back to work. I know - it sounds heavenly. I assumed I would be giddy with freedom. I assumed my house would be spotless and scrupulously organized by the end of the first month, I would be finished my first novel by the end of the sixth, and OBVIOUSLY I would be thirty pounds lighter, because, like my mother said "you can go to the gym five times a week!" From where I'm sitting at the kitchen table right now, I could reach out and lay hands on six novels, three textbooks, a kit for making twinkle tiaras, the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Cheese Touch Game, a sock puppet wearing sunglasses, and a box of ant bait. That should give you a clue about the state of my hous

Seems I accidentally took a break from blogging. I'm not doing that great. I thought I was doing okay, which I sort of am, but not great. And I'm not sick. Which is fantastic, I got through Christmas and vacation return without getting the Chest Thing that I always get over Christmas or after vacation return. I still cough a lot because that's just the way my crazy airways work, but it's still way better than last year, and I am thankful. Except even without being sick I'm not doing that great. But I did make it to the gym the last two weeks, and go to physio for my oh-so-poetic Patellar Femoral Syndrome. And I shelved library books and made dinner and watched Angus's volleyball tournament - okay, I'm sounding pathetic now just to console myself. My husband assures me that I'm not wrecking our children and reminds me that even the Cleavers weren't actually the Cleavers and offers to have sex with me because you know, that's what normal married

-My husband got back from a week and a half in Japan yesterday. I also got my hair cut and highlighted. I know I should be happier about the former than the latter, but honestly? Those roots were getting really depressing. And the hair appointment didn't leave me with a mountain of well-travelled underwear on top of the washer. So...  -I took Eve to the mall on Monday morning to see Santa because she suddenly sprung on me that she really wanted to see Santa and there was no way in hell we were going after piano lessons, which would be right when the dinner rush was ramping up. She got to school two hours late. Judge me if you want. It was adorable. She wore her Santa hat and asked for a science kit. In other news, I bought a science kit today.  -After seeing Santa we went to the Footlocker in Bayshore and they had ONE pair of the god-awful shoes Angus has been wanting that no store has had in his size, in his size. Yay. And also, bleargh.  -After Santa and the Foot

I've been ignoring all of your blogs because it helps me pretend I'm not writing because I don't have a blog, what? I don't even know what a blog is, what a funny word, blog blog blog, lalalalalala I can't hear you. This week sucks much less than the last week Matt was away for the week, which was two weeks ago, what a funny word, week week week week. I always forget to reverse whine about my head not hurting - hey everyone! My head doesn't hurt this week! I have wrapped, I have taped, I have melted and beaten and creamed until light and fluffy. I have trod the mill and pumped the iron. I have done all this while still producing creative and nutritious meals every night (that's a bald-faced lie - this week has been brought to you by frozen pizza, grilled cheese and chicken wraps made from grocery store barbecued chicken. I just wanted to feel like Superwoman for a millisecond. It really wasn't me). I'm slowly managing to separate the actua

Eve's home from school again, barfy-but-not-quite-barfing. It's okay - obviously I wasn't going to be allowed to step foot out of the house today, because my hair is AWESOME. And the number of people I see in a day is inversely proportional to how bad my hair will be, and my hair mysteriously knows AHEAD OF TIME. My hair is an asshole. I spent hours in an Etsy wormhole last night favouriting hand-made ecologically-sound non-toxic wooden toys between which to choose for my nephew, while at the same time wondering exactly to what degree my brother-in-law and his wife would shun me if I sent him a gigantic Nerf machine gun. I just finished reading this book , which should be easily dismissable as the foul product of a horrifyingly diseased mind, but somehow isn't. Somehow there's enough compassion, melancholy, intelligence and social commentary shaded into the loving descriptions of bodily disease and decay to rescue it - although I have a few qualms about it be

Yes. I have named this post George because this post has proven otherwise unnameable. I considered 'Spinning my Wheels' or "Blurry and lacking in focus" and "little nuggets of pure crazy" and nothing worked. I will call it George. So apparently I should put a honking big slash between the Biblio and the Mama because (and I really should have known this), I can only do ONE THING at a time. I can blog regularly, or I can do book reviews. So not surprising. Whenever people talk about working out at lunch hour or stopping at the gym on the way home from work I try not to stare at them with my mouth gaping unattractively, but I'm always thinking "huh. So not everyone has Exercise Day, where they exercise first thing in the morning and then spend the rest of the day recovering from said exercise?" I've been on this baking-for-the-lunch-boxes kick because it's the beginning of the year and I'm still optimistic and energetic (well a

It's Wednesday, and I haven't posted since Monday, and I don't want to just let the week go by postless again, but I don't really have anything. I had book club tonight. We read a first draft of my friend Sharon's first novel Keeping Mum, which she printed out and bound for all of us. It was really good - it was so good that I totally forgot I was reading something by someone I knew while I was reading it. I heard Rihanna and Britney Spears kissed at some awards ceremony. I was astounded. That anyone actually bothered to report it. It's Eve's dance recital on Sunday. It's at the National Arts Centre, downtown, the same day as the Ottawa Race Week-end. This is causing me intense driving and parking anxiety, exacerbated by the fact that my Mom is supposed to come with us. I'm trying to convince my husband that we should just take the bus, but he's not really a bus guy. I'm trying to concentrate on the fact that dance recitals in the pa

I hope all the people who whined and grumbled and beat their breasts about the water ban know that I totally blame them for this apocalyptic rainfal l - I'm well nigh certain that Mother Nature in her infinite wisdom and bitchiness heard them and said "YOU WANT WATER, YOU PUNKS? I'LL GIVE YOU WATER". We're in week three of the spring baseball season. The kids should both have played six games so far: Eve has played two, Angus has played one. My husband, who coaches Angus's team, has had to have his belt and shoelaces confiscated. Every time he opens his computer and yells "Nooooooooo!" I know they've cancelled another game because of the danger of losing a kid in a pit of slime, or of the entire diamond floating away and ending up somewhere around North Bay. It's not good. I was going to call this a List of Things that Have Made Me Smile Lately, but then I typed that out and it made me throw up in my mouth a little, so let's just c

Gotta love when Shan the Fairy Blogmother comes along to rescue me from blog oblivion with another Knowing Me Knowing You. 1. Do you consider yourself a foodie? I looked at this question a couple of days ago and my first thought was 'what exactly is a foodie?' Then I read a piece in the paper last night that made it sound like 'foodies' are sort of snobby and elitist about everything they eat - organic this, local that, molecular reduction of the other thing. In that case, I'm most emphatically not a foodie (I kind of hate the word foodie the more I type it). I enjoy cooking and I try to have most of what we eat have ingredients I can pronounce and not have to look up online, but one of my friends the other day says she can't even think about a McDonald's cheeseburger without feeling nauseous and, while I sort of wish I could say the same, I can't (although I do feel dirty inside after I eat one. A little.) We've been doing dinner parties with

I can't just leave the cranky book review post lying there, even though I've really got nothing. I'm less sick, just feeling kind of out of it. I went to an Oscars dinner party on Sunday night (well duh, going to an Oscars party on some other night would have been kind of moronic) and drank a bunch of whiskey sours, which I've determined to be good medicine indeed. I made "The Fighter" cauliflower (ear) fritters with smoked salmon and crème fraiche, and caramelized cashews with maple syrup and cumin (because the mother was nuts). I never used to watch the Oscars until my friend Collette had the brilliant idea of tying it to stuffing our faces. I read in the paper the day after that some people thought Melissa Leo should have been more prepared and professional, and this would have avoided the vocabulary malfunction (which apparently only we in Canada got to hear -- lucky us). Prepared and professional? Dude, her profession is acting, which means she acts

I'm cranky. Not in general. Today was a pretty good day. The kids had dentist appointments first thing. I was going to cancel them because the kids have only been back at school a week since missing a week, and Eve was sick half of last week, but then I was thinking about what I was going to say to the receptionist when I called -- should I go into the whole 'they just missed a week of school right after Christmas, and I don't know if I want them to miss another couple of hours right now', or should I say my daughter was sick and my husband was in France so there wasn't anyone to take Angus if Eve stayed home from school, or should I make up a field trip... it got so complicated I decided it would be simpler to just go to the fucking appointment. Then I dropped the kids off at school. Well, Angus I dropped off. Eve I walked through the school out the back to the portable, then realized there was no one in the portable, then went back to the office where we

As far as I can recall (this may be one instance where my failing memory comes in handy) I rocked the Mama Pants this year. Exhibit one: every time my husband says he's going away on another trip the kids yell "yay!" (this is because they treasure the quality time we spend together, NOT because I relax the TV and junk food restrictions while I'm single parenting). Exhibit two: I don't feel like doing exhibits any more. Oh yeah, I've also been great on consistency and follow-through as a parent.   Angus and I are a mere few pages away from finishing the first book I've ever managed to read aloud to him all the way through. We read a few pages snuggled in his bed before he goes to sleep most nights -- if there's no hockey game, if I'm not out dancing, if he doesn't fall asleep first, if I'm not coughing up a lung. It takes a LONG time to read a book out loud. We tried with a couple of the Harry Potter books, The Golden Compass, The Hou

Eve's been having nightmares and coming into bed with me at five a.m.-ish the past few nights. Yesterday I couldn't fall back asleep, partly because she was snoring in my ear and partly because something was really bugging me. The fact that I haven't started my Christmas cards yet? Nope. The fact that I have to write an exam on Sunday for which I've barely studied and it will be following two days and nights of partying with some of my high school friends? Uh-uh. That I haven't bought Angus's video game that he wants for Christmas and forgot to double check the name of it before he sealed his letter to Santa? Nah. It was that I couldn't remember what we had for dinner on Saturday night. It was driving me bonkers. I knew we had ribs on Friday and chicken on Sunday, so I was thinking it was probably meatless, but I couldn't see myself making it when I tried to picture it, or putting stuff on plates and handing it to the kids, and we definitely ha

Yah, I know that makes no sense. After all my moaning about how long November is, I totally didn't realize that today was the last day. Seems like I should have something more auspicious than...what I have. My friend Pam's husband is away for an unspeakable amount of time so I picked up her kids and took them to school this morning so she could stay in her pajamas, because my Dad picked up the kids a couple of times while Matt was away and I stayed in my pajamas and it was five flavours of awesome. I worked in the library for a few hours and got my cuteness fix from Eve's adorable little twin friends who always come up and hand me their books beaming these fantastic little smiles. And their hair is a different length so I can tell them apart. Then I went to Winners to stock up on advent calendar stuff. Then I went to Chapters to buy battling rodents for my nephew and an obsessive compulsive squirrel book and toy for my other nephew and in a fit of giddiness I bought