Me, me, me

I love Halloween!

Today is a beautiful warm day and we should have a perfect evening for trick-or-treating. I'm feeling good, despite being in the third day of a wicked headache, and despite the fact that some assholes smashed our jack-o'-lanterns. I was a stupid, obnoxious teenager, but I never would have smashed someone's pumpkin, especially if it was obvious that it belonged to a family with little kids. That's just mean.

A day for theatre, art and architecture

My friend L. left today. I won't see her now until next summer, and I'm already looking forward to it.

My head is killing me, a mother of a headache that acetaminophen cannot touch. I took the older kids to a play today, a fun Robert Munsch piece that made everyone laugh and put us all in a good mood, so we walked around downtown in the sun afterwards, and even went up into the new engineering building at my old university. It's quite a beautiful building that feels good within, full of sunlight and varied textures and feelings of both space and comfort at the same time. I approve, but I don't have to use it. We went up to the 14th floor and looked out at the city, including an empty patch of land right beside the new building. Wonder how long that will remain a wee sodden bit of grass... We also visited the art gallery in the university, which featured a sculpture that appeared to be a werewolf in the process of exploding into some kind of mirrored glass structure. You had to be there.

You can have plenty of fun downtown without spending money, if you're willing to put up with requests for food at 5-minute intervals.

Company

I'm amazed at how noisy budgies are! Why didn't anybody tell me this? Actually I'm glad to hear them. They're pleasant company and although I can't know this for sure, I think they may be happy here.

Speaking of pleasant company, I've been spending a lot of time with my friend L. lately, and enjoying it thoroughly. L. is a bit of a nomad, whose travels bring her to Montreal a couple of times a year and usually for a longish period in the summer. She worked here this summer and spent many of her weekends in NYC so I've only been seeing her for about a month. This is a pattern we have adopted in the last few years and I look forward to "my turn" to have her back in my life.

L. and I travelled around Europe when I was 19 and she was 23. We went back a couple of years later, and have a million funny, happy memories of those times. We also saw dozens of shows together and did tons of drugs and got drunk together countless times when we were part of the Montreal hardcore scene. L. is still a hardcore music fan, going to shows all over the place, and she's gradually covering her body with tattoos. I am married (10 years) and have 3 children, volunteer at the kids' school and hang out at the park and the library with my baby. I can't drink more than 2 beers, don't do drugs, I don't travel much and almost never go to shows. L. reminds me of the wild and crazy gal I used to be and at the same time she makes me feel like what I am now is totally cool and that I have a great life. My kids love her.

L. and I get along so well I think she is the only person I can imagine living with apart from my husband. She's like a sister to me, except that we never fight and never get tired of each other. She's hilarious and she thinks I'm funny too.

I have a wee fantasy that L. and I will go on The Amazing Race together. Isn't that pathetic of me? I bet we'd kick butt and win.

The sun she do shine

Things are looking a bit better after a few days of bright sunshine and a pretty good driving lesson in which I wasn't yelled at, and even got a few "beautiful"s out of my instructor. It's so different when you're not driving at night in the rain, which is what I did for 3 out my 4 first lessons.

Yesterday was a busy busy day of socializing and work. My friend came over with her 11-day-old baby boy, who is so deliciously beautiful I felt like crying ever time I looked at him. My baby looked enormous in comparison, but I still didn't feel like I want to have a newborn again anytime soon, if ever. I wandered by another friend's house on our way home from the park and she happened to be standing in her doorway and wouldn't let me go on without coming in for tea. Then I got home and wrote a speech for someone who has to attend an event honouring a woman she's never heard of. Then another friend came over for supper and a movie. While I had planned to cook a lovely homemade feast for my friend, my day had got so away from me that we ordered souvlaki (and enjoyed it thoroughly with a bottle of hearty wine).

My daughter spent last night sleeping over at the Ecomuseum, with a nighttime tour. Lucky duck! My kids have experienced more in their childhood than I had by the time I was 30. I'm glad she can do these things with the Brownies, because the teachers in this province are working to rule, and so field trips and extra-curriculur activities have been suspended indefinitely. That rots.

Oh, speaking of my daughter, please permit another mother-moment. She was chosen as one of only four in her class to be part of a special advanced math group that meets once a week. The man who teaches this group is a 92-year-old phenomenon who does this as a volunteer in at least 2 schools that I know of. They don't do curriculum stuff: the first meeting they talked about Mars in perigee and learned about integers. He makes math interesting and encourages them to see math in real-world experience. It's so cool! I'm glad that something exists for gifted kids in her school, and that she has been recognized as one.

Some days...

I'm not a very happy little girl today, tho' I am happier than yesterday, simply because the sun -- The Sun!! -- is out after, what, 8 days of rain?

Why am I feeling like shit? Well thanks for asking!

1) Remember how I very cockily said that-- and I quote -- driving is easy? Well, consider me suitably chastened. It sucks to suck at something. I feel like a little kid again, and the only upside of that is that I understand how much it sucks sometimes to be a little kid and have to learn every damn thing.

2) We have no money -- again -- and dipping into your credit line just to pay the phone bill blows like Wilma.

3) I have been chugging cranberry juice and gobbling acetominophen for a week now. If you're a woman, you can probably guess why. My beloved doctor phoned in a prescription for antibiotics to my pharmacy yesterday, but after 2 of the pills I feel even worse. They'd better start working or I'm gonna freak out on somebody's ass, and the only ones around are D. and my kids, and they don't deserve that.

4) This season of The Amazing Race is an incredible disappointment so far. As pathetic as it is, I feel so let down that something I look forward to each week sucks like the screaming vortex of death. Okay, maybe not that bad, but the families don't have the same personality draw as couples, and it's been , like four episodes and they're still in the States? I'm sure it has to do with legal and safety precautions for the kids on the show, but it's so uninteresting to watch. And the challenges? They're hardly worthy of the name. Again because of the children involved, but at some point, the producers should have said, um, maybe having kids on the show isn't such a great idea. If they're trying to draw kids to their audience, I'd say they don't have to do a family version. My kids are fascinated by The Amazing Race just as it is. And they learn something when the racers travel to different countries.

What a small, sorry little life I lead. Normally that makes me happy, but today not so much. I think I'm gonna go see if I can apply to be on The Amazing Race. Apparently it brings meaning to one's life!

The death of my brain continues apace

For the first time ever, I actually missed a book club meeting because I didn't really know it was going to happen!

I felt terrible when the friend who was hosting it called me up and asked if I was coming, about 15 minutes after I should have been there. Yikes. I really did want to go to this meeting, too. I have felt like having a good ol' chinwag with these friends for a while. But I didn't organize this meeting, and in fact I didn't even know that it had been confirmed for that date. So I never marked it on my calendar, and if it ain't on the calendar, it ain't gonna happen, as far as I'm concerned.

I could have gone over when she called, but I've been sick for over a week, and haven't taken any time to rest, really. The fact is that when she called I had just sat down after a busy busy day, and had lost all momentum and was descending into inertia.

I hope it was a good meeting, and I'm sorry I wasn't there. I want to have another one soon, like, within a month. I'll organize it this time!

A couple of notes on the baby:

She now says "oopie" whenever something falls or she bangs into something. She gets it from me saying "Whoopsie!", but it's so much cuter when she says it.

Walking is so much better than crawling, cuz you can suck your thumb while doing it, and even carry around Do-do, your stuffed dolphin and very best friend.

Pretty Birdies

After months of promises and delays, we finally got the kids a budgie each yesterday. We had a nice cage already, thanks to D.'s garbage-day scavenging, and now it has two very pretty little birds in it. They're kind of a compromise between no pets and real pets, ie., dogs and cats.

I've never wanted to keep a bird in a cage; it just seems so wrong to me. But we hope to let these guys fly around the house and sit on our hands and generally become part of the family, so maybe their existence won't be so sad. We'll see. They certainly seem to be happy to be by the window, where they can look out and see green and trees blowing in the wind and other birds flying about, sights they've never experienced in their few months out of the egg so far.

Does anybody have any suggestions as to where I might procure some fresh Eucalyptus branches and/or leaves? Apparently budgies evolved in a symbiotic relationship with the Eucalyptus, and having it in their cage makes them happy and can even keep them free of mites.

Turns out high school does maybe prepare you for life

Frightening episode of The Apprentice last night. The blonde faction of the women's team is exactly like something out of my West Island adolescence. Felisha is like a caricature of the uptight bitch who rallies the other nasty girls to gang up on the girl she doesn't like. Not that Toral didn't deserve to be fired. It's just too easy to say that everything is "beneath your dignity" and do nothing. It's much harder to just muck in and get the job done with people you don't like. But those blonde chicks just seemed to enjoy berating her a lit-tle too much, and like, how many times can you say "step up" in one episode of a show? I almost hurled my slipper at the TV. I'm finding this season of The Apprentice hard to watch, so I think I'll abandon ship. I watch enough TV as it is.

Baby Einstein

Have I ever told you that my baby's a genius? Of course, all three of my kids are super-intelligent, and you know that's true because I'm saying it, and I'm their mother, okay? But really, this newest one is pretty amazing. Here's an update:

She's walking -- Hooray! She wasn't early on this, not by a long shot, but she's loving being an air-dweller, after spending her whole life as a ground-dweller. The walking is an exciting development; everything changes for a baby when he/she learns to walk. You can see them having fun with it, and they look different upright, like a kid instead of a little baby.

She's still pretty bald. The tufts are getting bigger, but she's still mostly follicley-challenged. Her hair is quite light, kind of a strawberry blonde.

She talks! This is the genius part: She has a large vocabulary, as she's been saying identifiable words for a long time, but just lately she seems to be having a development-spurt, picking up at least 2 new words a day and even (drumroll please) putting words together in phrases! I find this truly amazing. I'm sure my other ones weren't doing this so early. The other day she got up on the armchair and looked over the back of it, where she usually spots one or more toys that have fallen or been kicked back there. She's looking over and says "All gone down dere?" and sure enough I looked with her and there were no toys there.

Some of her newest words are:

Cow
Piggy
Stick
Water
Loud (pointing to the blow-dryer)

Thanks for permitting me this mother moment. I'll try to refrain from bragging about my kids for at least another week. You may go back to your very important lives now.

It's all good

Despite a nasty cold, Thanksgiving weekend was very good, with a happy family gathering at my mother's and the added bonus of our eldest sister from Vancouver in attendance.

I have everything to be thankful for. My life is an embarrassment of riches. But this year especially I'm thankful to live in this country, where it may be cold as hell for five months of every year but we live in peace, with good government and an abundance of natural beauty and not so many natural disasters. My kids can go to school, eat as much healthy food as they need and want, and imagine a future of limitless possibility.

What more could I ask for?

How to charm me (with apologies to Dooce)

When you come home from work on a Friday at 5:30 and I tell you that you will be leaving again at 6:00 and taking 3 kids to Disney on Ice, then driving one of the kids to his home 45 minutes away in a howling rainstorm, say: Wow! That's so great! Where are our seats? And get out the map of the Bell Centre and show the kids where you'll be sitting for the show.

I need a corsage, stat.

You know how I said, in the post before last, that I hadn't gone out to a show in a really long time? Well, this might illustrate how rare it is for me to go out all dressed up with a girlfriend: As we were leaving, D. ran outside with the camera and took pictures of us on the front walk. Like prom night! How embarrassing!

Wheels

I drove a car for the very first time in my life last night. I couldn't believe the instructor let me drive it, right out into the street, after only about 3 minutes sitting behind the wheel!

I did pretty well, and wasn't nervous at all. I liked it, found it fun and challenging while at the same time thinking, what's the big deal about driving? It's so easy! Well, I know that the big deal was only my own procrastination and borderline poverty, but it really is easy to drive a car, isn't it? Of course, I haven't faced the really challenging stuff yet, but I'm not worried about it. It's fun. My instructor is great. She's this amazingly confident and funny woman from St. Lucia who runs two businesses, a driving school and nanny agency, on her own. She blabbed the whole time I was driving, so that I almost forgot I was taking a lesson. She's cool and I feel like it's gonna be a good experience taking the course with her. And she'll come with me to the SAAQ road test, and offered to look after the baby for me while I'm out doing the test.

All in all, I'm happy I'm doing this, even if some guy shouted at me that cars are killing the earth. It seemed like an omen, but a very funny omen, so it's cool.

Not watching Lost and eating chips, for once

Went to see a show last night, for the first time in, like, forever. My friend L. took me out to see Nashville Pussy at the Cafe Campus. It was really fun! The band was totally hot and super fun to watch. If you don't know them, they're a guy singer with two women, guitarist and bass, and a guy drummer. The singer is a screamer from Kentucky, the guitarist is his sexy, kick-ass wife, and the bass player is another sexy rock goddess. They do a whole sex, drugs, angry fun thing, and it rawks.

The crowd was older than I expected. Not having been to a show in years, I expected everyone to be 20, but this was a 30s and even 40s crowd, mostly guys, pretty mixed with lots of old punks, but rockers and country-punk looking people. I felt good, not like an old lady, as I half expected. I dressed in a somewhat daring outfit, as I thought fit the (slutty band) occasion, and didn't stand out as either a slag or a prude, I don't think.

The only negatives: Smoky bar and really lame lights and sound. The smoke we have to live with I guess, but Cafe Campus -- step up and get some good equipment and technicians, already. Okay? Okay!

I have my first driving lesson tonight. Stay off the road, suckers!