What do you call it?

We're sitting at the kitchen table. Rissa is watching Sex and the City on her phone while she enjoys her cinnamon raisin toast. It's the episode where Charlotte and Trey are having a frank discussion about their nonexistent sex life. 

After all this time, I can't really remember all the plot points of the series very well, but something strikes me. "Hey," I say. "Has Trey never done anything just for Charlotte? I mean, FOR her?  Sure, he can't get it up around her, but there are a whole lot of other options. Did he not buy toys? There are so many toys. Mutual masturbation? What about cunnilingus?"

Rissa looks up at me from her toast. "Do you know you are literally the only person who uses that word?"

"What? Cunnilingus?" That cannot be an accurate statement. Plenty of people say cunnilingus.

"I have never heard that word except when you say it," says Rissa.

"What do you call it?" Maybe there's new-fangled slang that I don't know about because I'm over 50.

Rissa's eyebrows are horrified. "I don't want to call it anything with my mother."

I'm perplexed. "But why? Do you say going down on her? South of Front Street? Lady BJs?

"Okay, that may actually be worse," she says. She gets up from the table and grabs her plate. "This is what happens when I eat breakfast near you. It's like on The Big Bang Theory when Sheldon says 'intercourse' or 'coitus.' " She shudders.

"Henceforth," I proclaim. "I shall only call it Lady BJs."

"Please don't."

My New Superpower

Our weekly pancakes aren't going entirely to plan. We don't have buttermilk on hand, and none of us feel like masking up and braving the No Frills to get it. Granny's recipe is always better with buttermilk.  

"Can't we just use regular milk?" asks Rissa.

"How about we sour the milk. It only takes..." I begin.

"GAH! It will take so long!" she responds.

"Five minutes," I say, rolling my eyes. "We can wait the five minutes." 

"Okay, but we're going to end up with lime-y pancakes."

"I LOVE lime-y pancakes!" David chimes in, ever the optimist.

In spite of our best efforts, this week's pancakes are mostly crap. After mixing the grudgingly soured milk into our regular batter, we get distracted and the first batch is mostly Cajun. The second batch isn't much better, and really? In spite of my Better-Homes-and-Gardens-substitution-mentality, soured milk doesn't cut it anyway. The texture of soured milk pancakes is pretty much hit-and-miss, not like when you use buttermilk. It has to be buttermilk.

"You know what Super Power I'd like to have?" I ask.

"What?" Rissa and David respond simultaneously, as they soak their pancake failures in butter and syrup.

"I'd like to be able to snap my fingers, say 'BUTTERMILK!' and wherever I pointed, buttermilk would appear."

Rissa and David blink.

"That would be your superpower?" asks Rissa.

David coughs to disguise an involuntary snort.

"Uh.... yeah..." I say. "Then we would never again suffer the buttermilk conundrum."

"We have a buttermilk conundrum?" asks David.

"Almost every Sunday when we forget to purchase buttermilk," I say, the DUH, very apparent in my tone.

Through her laughter, Rissa queries, "So you are saying, that your first wish, if say, a genie were granting you wishes, would be to have a power that would specifically give you buttermilk on whim?"

"Yes. Definitely."

David gives me a Scooby Doo eyebrow before saying, "Nothing more broad than that? Like you have the ability to magic literally ANYTHING out of thin air and you are going to limit it to buttermilk?"

I think for a moment. "Maybe my second wish would be for coconut milk, because we seem to run out of that too."

Rissa shoots me a look of such utter disbelief that I wonder if she might be having a stroke. I am about to ask her to smile so that I can check whether her face is drooping when she says, "Ummmmm... any other specifics that you might be hoping for?"

"I might want to be able to do it without having to say 'BUTTERMILK!' Like, just think it, and it appears."

"Of course," David says. "Completely understandable." He is biting his lip. "You could be a new member of The Mystery Men."

Rissa concurs. "Instead of being the Shoveler, you could be the... MILKER??" Through some miracle she does not expel juice through her nose. 

"Mostly," I say - shooting dagger eyes at both my daughter and my husband (who is now almost crying). "I would be thrilled to SNAP! POINT! and then have the milk appear - with, or without, saying 'BUTTERMILK!' Although I'm second guessing the silent magicking now, what if I were to SNAP! POINT! and then buttermilk appeared, but those who see it, don't know it was supposed to be buttermilk?"

"You feel like people seeing this miraculous buttermilk appearance would deny its authenticity if you don't broadcast what it's supposed to be, when you're snapping and pointing?" David raises an eyebrow at me. 

"Wait!" Rissa says. "Wait, wait! What if, depending on which finger you pointed, it could be a different type of milk product?"

"Why limit it to fingers?" David asks. He generally indicates his own nipples. "Chocolate. Strawberry... Think about it."

Rissa continues. "SNAP! POINT! GOAT MILK!! SNAP! POINT! ALMOND MILK!!!"

"Sure, go ahead and mock me," I say.  "But with my new super powers I will be able to make unlimited baked goods and Thai food."

DON'T STEP ON THE TEETH!!

"Uh-oh," I say as I'm about to step into my bedroom.

"What?" asks Rissa.

"Hold these," I say, pushing freshly washed sheets into her arms. (Sidebar: have I mentioned that I have a kid who never complains when I ask her to be my Plus One in household chores? She's a fucking unicorn.)

"Why?" She looks around suspiciously.

"I had a little ceramic box on my dresser that holds pins and baby teeth. The cats must have knocked it off. Everything's on the carpet now."

"You have a box that... You...?" She shoots a horrified glance to the floor.

"Just don't step on the carpet. I don't want you to step on a pin."

"Or a BABY TOOTH?!?"

"Or a baby tooth," I say as I start to gather up the debris.

"You kept my baby teeth?"

"Uh... yeah..." Obviously.

"You have my baby teeth in a box."

"With pins."

"Ewwwww... That's so fucked up. EEEEEEEWWWWW!!!"

I shoot her a confused look. "Everybody keeps baby teeth. Plus, you're going to be a nurse, you should be okay with this."

"A nurse. NOT a dentist." She shudders. She reaches for a baby tooth and almost vomits.

"You're SO weird."

"I'M SO WEIRD?!?"

***

FYI everyone - according to DOCTORS - parents are supposed to keep baby teeth. You know, in case your kid needs a stem cell replacement. Mind you, I didn't know this until today when I Googled it, but still...

https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/news/a36607/why-you-should-save-your-babys-teeth/

And that is why you put your toys away...

It felt as though we were missing a limb for about eight months,  but we managed to survive Rissa's first year at university.

However, with no one to "adult" for, we devolved into teenagers ourselves. We forgot to do laundry, haphazardly cleaned the house and rarely grocery shopped. Rissa would come home for a weekend and clear the fridge of expired items for us.

"What are you guys eating? How many frozen pizzas do you ingest in a week!?!"

We didn't have to worry about food for Rissa's lunches, so there was no need to head out every Sunday and grab juice boxes, mini yogurts, and sandwich fixings. David took a salami and crackers to work and I existed on Protein Bars at the office.

We both began to work late. David was in rehearsals after school for various drama projects, and with no one to welcome me home except the cats, I felt there was no real point in my rushing to leave the office. Not to say that having a ginger Tom, his high-strung sister and our crotchety, arthritic senior cat at the door didn't ease the pain, but walking past Rissa's empty room for the first 5.5 months of the school year kicked me into cardiac arrhythmia.

Settling into our sans enfant routine after Reading Week, we realized that vegetables existed and that we didn't have to carve out intimacy or Running-Around-Naked-Time. To be fair, I have always enjoyed my Running-Around-Naked-Time, but David seemed to revel in striding around majestically without having to throw on underwear.

We had sex whenever and wherever the urge struck us, and we weren't quiet about it. We had dinner at friends' places and stayed out late.

Rissa arrived home at the end of April. We easily went back to our regularly scheduled programming of sofa-snuggling, binge watching Netflix and family dinners.

We didn't realize the shift in what had been our non-parental status quo until a couple of weeks ago, when Rissa was out with friends. Feeling amorous during an afternoon nap, we were well on our way to the Big Finale when the downstairs door crashed open, and Rissa sang out, "I'm ho-me!!" Nothing like a good case of coitus interruptus to put  Return of the Child into its true cock-blocking perspective.

We didn't despair. With Rissa working nights from 10:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. at a health-care facility, we knew that climactic sex was on the horizon.

Early Friday night, I enjoyed a lowball of spicebox whiskey. Before we headed up to bed I had the epiphanic recollection that with pot now legal in Canada, a friend had been kind enough to roll a joint for me. Having placed said joint with my vitamins on the bamboo lazy susan - above the stove where the cats couldn't mistake if for catnip - I grabbed said joint and smoked 1/4 of it...

This note was waiting for us in the main bathroom on Saturday morning:

The arrow was pointing to the toy.  Feel free to enter the
pool betting on what the toy was and its colour.

Turns out that after we had our mind-blowing, child-not-in-the-house sex, we HAD remembered to clean our accompanying sex toy in the bathroom, but we HAD NOT remembered to take it back to our room. Oh, and when I smoked up? Because I'd already imbibed my Spicebox Whiskey and was a little tottled, I enjoyed those few puffs in the windowless 1/2 bath downstairs. The main floor smelled like a frat house.

It would appear that I have yet to leave teenager mode.

Anorexic Caterpillars

Rissa is taking up all the space in front of the bathroom sink - arranging her eyebrows.

"Excuse me hon," I politely request - reaching for the taps so that I can wash my hands.

"Sorry..." She scoots out of the way, allowing me full tap access, before returning to the mirror with tweezers in hand.

Moments later, I remember having caught a whiff of my armpits as I left the bed. They really need a good wash... with soap.

"Excuse me," I repeat, reaching for the soap at the edge of the sink.

"Sorry..." She twists her body to allow me entry to the water once more, while somehow managing to maintain full facial focus in the mirror.

As I dry my pits and hands, she moves back to glue herself against the vanity - sheer concentration on her face as she landscapes the browal region.

I'm not going to ask a third time, it would just be mean. I reach under her for the toothpaste and toothbrush and covertly turn on the water.

"Sorry, sorry," she says, stepping back again, giving me full use of the sink so that I can spit. "I just can't see if I'm farther away from the mirror and if I have my glasses on then I can't control the tweezing /slash/ makeup process." She has now grabbed her eyebrow pencil and is applying it with determined precision.

"Ahhhhh... Totally makes sense when you put it that way. I do find it strange though that the only makeup you apply is to your eyebrows."

"It's all because before I grew them out* I used to have anorexic caterpillars for eyebrows," she says, now pulling clear eyebrow gel from its tube. "With really LARGE heads."

I snort.

"It's true! Remember? They used be all anemic and anorexic... Like caterpillars trying to fit into a dress from three years ago, but finding out it's way too tight and they end up looking like this..."





















*To encourage her anorexic caterpillars to have a healthy BMI - Rissa spent our European vacation last year growing them out over a three week period - where only strangers could watch the process.

Snakes don't have legs

"So if they're asking do I have experience working with animals, does that mean REAL experience?   I mean, I have three cats," says Rissa.

"Yes, you do have three cats," I reply. "And don't discount the dogs that we've had."

"But do they mean experience like squeezing a gopher's anal glands?"

"What!?!"

"Or like, I've seen a bunny... once?"

"I don't know..."

"Or is it please collect my horse's urine?"

"Where are you...?"

"Or can you spout general animal information like 'snakes don't have legs' ?"

Snort.  "I say put it all down.  You never know where you might be placed."

"Check.  Now onto the Code of Conduct.  O...kay...  O...kay...  O...kay...  WHOA!!!  What about lighting fires?  Why don't they specify lighting fires?  That seems like a no-no in addition to the no drugs, alcohol and serious behavioural problems."

"I think that pyromania might fall under the serious behavioural problems."

She's already moved on.  "Under gender I'm going to say 'squirrel' for you."

You can bet that whomever ends up with her for a summer exchange is going to be entertained at the very least.

Heart of Darkness Dance Party

"OH MY GOD!" Rissa exclaims.

"What?" I ask, glancing up from my e-reader.

"This," she says, indicating her book.  "THIS. STUPID. BOOK."

"What are you reading?"

"Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.  ARGH!"  The book has fallen from her hands and banged her on the head.

"Dude.  Careful."

"It's not me!  IT'S. THIS. STINKING. BOOK."  She holds it out to me.  "It's not weighted correctly. You see this?  This here?"  She's indicating the first 6th of the tome.  "This is the actual book. 77 pages.  You see this?" She indicates the other 350  pages.  "This is the part where it explains to you why those 77 pages are worth reading!!"

"Seriously?"

"You shouldn't have to have FIVE times as many pages explaining why the book should be read!!!"

"I have to concur."

"Right?!?   It's a 77 page monologue. GAH!  And I have to read 10 pages tonight. He just keeps talking and talking and talllllking.  I'm not going to make it."  She brightens for a moment.  "I'll   have to have a Heart of Darkness Dance break every 2 pages."

"That sounds like a plan."

"Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack should do it."

Never underestimate the power of a good soundtrack when played on your Crosley portable record player at 45rpm.

Gilmore Girls Meltdown

"IT'S IMPOSSIBLE!!!" wails Rissa.  "WE'RE NOT GOING TO MAKE IT!!!" She is flailing, face-down, on the couch.

"Yes we will honey."  I smooth her back.  "We've got 77 days."

"And 95 episodes!!"  How are we going to watch 95 episodes in 77 days?!?"

"Easy.  One episode a day, with 18 days where we watch two."

"But then it'll be like work and we won't enjoy it.  We'll resent it! WE CAN'T RESENT THIS!!!"

"Some days we can binge watch - like 8 episodes."

"IT'S TOO MUCH!!!"

She's panicking.  To her this is a seemingly unattainable goal. To me this is a perk, nay, a privilege.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa there chickadee...  Say, 5 weekends of the next 12, we watch 8 episodes each weekend - so that's 40 episodes of the 95 which means then we only have to watch another 55 episodes over the remaining...  69 days. That's only (insert mental gymnastics here) 3/4 of an episode a day on those days.  If we watch 12 episodes each of those 5 weekends, that's 60 episodes of the 95, leaving us with only 35 for the remaining 69 days - a mere 1/2 an episode each day.   Sooooooooo easy...."

To say that Rissa shoots me a 'baleful' eye would be an understatement.

David takes a different tack. "I'm sending you both a link to the must-see episodes - there are only 19."

Rissa immediately runs to grab her phone.  "We've already watched three of these!" she crows.  "No - five!!  No wait - SEVEN!!! WE'VE WATCHED SEVEN EPISODES!!!  We only have to watch 12 more and we'll have the gist of everything."  She reclines back on the couch, completely relaxed.

"See?" says David.  "Now you only have to watch 12 and you're good to go.  No stress at all."

"Oh, we're going to watch all 95," says Rissa.  "Those 12 are our backup."

Husky, deep... Barbara Stanwyck

Rissa and I are watching bingeing Gilmore Girls.  Cats blanket our already afghaned laps.

EMILY: Oh look -- Barbara Stanwyck. I just love Barbara Stanwyck.

LORELAI: Oh yeah, she's good. 

EMILY: She had that wonderful voice -- that husky, deep voice. I just love that voice.

LORELAI: You know Mom, you have kind of a Barbara Stanwycky voice.

EMILY: Oh I do not. 

LORELAI: I mean it. You could have gotten Fred McMurray to off Dad if you'd really wanted to.  

EMILY: Oh you do enjoy teasing me, don't you?

(There is the tiniest of pauses before Rissa repeats the last line in a voice from The Exorcist.) 

"OH YOU DO ENJOY TEASING ME, DON'T YOU?"

"What are you doing?"

"HUSKY, DEEP VOICE."

I snort loudly.  The cats startle.

LORELAI: I know. (pause)

EMILY: You did a lovely job.

LORELAI: Thank you. 

"THANK YOU."

"Stop it. I'm going to wet my pants," I say.

"SORRY."

I am now in emergency Kegel mode.  We both giggle madly as the show continues.

RORY: I don't know...having my boyfriend defend my honor. It's weird. 

DEAN: Uh, boyfriend? 

RORY: What? 

DEAN: You said 'boyfriend.' 

"BOYFRIEND,"  Says Rissa - convulsing with laughter.

"STOP IT," I say, snorting harder.

"I CAN'T."

"I'M BATMAN."

The pair of us can no longer breathe.  That's when David looks up from his computer and pulls off his headphones.  "What are you doing?"

Both of us in unison intone "HUSKY, DEEP VOICE."
 

Is that a dirty book?

... asks Rissa as I pop open my e-reader.  "I'm asking, 'cause you mostly have dirty books on there, right?"

"Yes, there are mostly dirty books on this e-reader.  But this one hasn't gotten dirty yet."  I'm not a fan of Dickens when I'm winding down with a book.  Some good character development, some sex, some puns and I'm good.

"What's this one called?" she asks.

" Beautiful... something..."

"It's called Beautiful SOMETHING? That's a terrible title."  She leans back on the pillow and puts a lavender cat mask over her eyes to block out the reading light.

I explain. "No, it's just that on an e-reader - or at least my e-reader - they don't have the book title on the top of each page and you can't just turn the book over to confirm the title or even the author.  The book is one in a series and they all start with 'Beautiful.'  Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Stranger.. HAH!  This one must then be Beautiful PLAYER."

"So basically you could just have some random title and it wouldn't even have to be sexy?"

"Possibly."

Rissa lets out a snort of laughter, the lavender cat becoming displaced momentarily.

"What?"

"I'm thinking of titles now.  Twenty questions with Irving."

"You're such a goof."

"The Lampshade of Destiny."

"Dude."

"Indigo the Bullfighter Meets the Marsupials."  She is vibrating now with laughter.

"You are so weird."

"Elbows and the Renaissance!!!  Or, or... if you have sentences within the dirty book they could be even weirder, 'She was fine until Marcel and his marionettes came to town'. "

She is silent for a moment and then starts convulsing with laughter.

"What?"

"I have to  ̶  " she stops.  "I have  to be able to do this without  ̶ "  She blows out calming air, but then loses it again and pitches into a fit of giggles.

"WHAT?!?"

" 'Linda never though that the limbo could be fun until she met Jean-Paul and his dog' !!!!!  BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAA!!!!"

I am snorting now too.  "How do you come up with this stuff?"

She cackles again.  "I have my thinking 'cat' on.  Get it?  I'm wearing the cat mask?  BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAAAA!!!!"

This is one of the many reasons why I love my child.

The House Hippo...

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!" from Rissa downstairs.

"What?  What is it?"  I bolt to the top of the stairs.

"This!  JUST. LOOK. AT. THESE. PICTURES!"

"What are you looking at!?!" 

"I signed up for the House Hippo Instagram feed..."

Oh thank God... She hadn't found any of those pictures...

House Hippos AKA Skinny Pigs AKA Hairless Guinea Pigs.  She has been obsessed ever since she discovered them at our local Buskers Fest's Crazy Creatures booth.  It was love at first sight.

"GAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!  It's SO CUTE!!!"

Even I have to admit that I dig them.  I mean, what's not to love?  They're like naked mole rats but so much cuter.

She devoted several hours one afternoon to finding house hippo names for a pet she will probably not have until she's in university.

Boys	Girls
Cédrique	Aurelia
Ignatius	Helena
Lysander	Hermia
Demitrius	Bambina
Constantine	Celeste
Aloysius	Edna
Wolfgang	Wilhelmina
Remus	Maude
Sirius	Harriet
Bartholomew
Bram
Elwood
Paco
Tom
Inigo (Montoya)

    


















By reading her list of names you can glean pretty much all of her media influences:  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Harry Potter, The Incredibles, The Blues Brothers, Love Actually, Studio 60, clowning, cartoons... My favourite: Inigo with (Montoya) in brackets because you know that although she would call it Inigo she would be thinking Montoya in brackets 100% of the time.

GO Train Puppet Show

"Would you like to see a puppet show?" asks Rissa as we travel into Toronto on the GO Train. 

"YES!"  David and I encourage enthusiastically.

Rissa clears her throat and reaches into her bag.

"TA-DAH!!!"  She flourishes two Compak Tampons in their wrappers - one purple, one yellow.  Holding them vertical, she presents them to us.

"Hi Susan."

"Hi Jane."

(They have British accents.)

"Fancy a shop at the supermarket?"

"Ooooh... I'd love to go to the supermarket...  I'm craving yams."

"I, too, am craving yams..."

There is accompanying music as Susan and Jane trot off to the supermarket  "doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-dee-doo-dee-doo..."

"There are 12 episodes in the series," explains Rissa. 

"Of course there are."

RETURN TRIP...

"May we seet the next episode of the puppet show?"

"It's now a one-woman show.  Only Susan survived our trip into Toronto."

She pulls out the yellow tampon.

"Jane!  Jane!  WHY?!?"

Life with a perfectionist.

Rissa may look like me, but she gets her perfectionist streak from David.  David comes from a long line of perfectionists.  On his worst days, David will despair, "I'm not good at anything!!!"  David is on crack when he says this.

"I'm a Jack of all trades and master of none," he huffs.

"Okay, first off, you're a David of all trades and master of most of them."  And then I shoot him an angry eyeball, warning him that he doesn't want me to itemize the myriad of ways he is much, much better than your average bear at almost anything he sets his mind to.  What he is not, is PERFECT at all of them.  But he comes pretty frickin' close.

Rissa, since she began to move, has had the highest of expectations for her performance.  I remember her wailing at Air Zone, at the top of the 30 foot inflatable slide saying, "I want to but I can't."  Which makes sense, because her 3.5 year old gaze was on the 30 foot downward slope of primary-coloured plasticized fabric that I, at the age of 35, would have had to work up my nerve to propel myself down.  I went up and carried her down, but she squared her shoulders and climbed up again and sat there, working herself up to it - all the while crying, as child after child went past her and down the 30 foot drop.  All the parents in Air Zone, looking at me like I had set this Herculean task upon her toddler shoulders, when it was ALL her.

"Rissa, honey, you don't have to do this!"

"I want to but I can't!!!"

Cut to 11 years later...  Dancing.  Rissa has always danced.  We have the obligatory naked baby dancing videos where she bounces to bagpipes and taiko drums from a Cirque du Soleil soundtrack.  Like her father, she understands music and tempo.  It's always served her well.  As she gets taller and taller, her physical centre has shifted and the dance turns she had accomplished so easily last year, are, in her mind, now causing her grief.  Lately, she comes home in near tears, having practiced her turns at the end of an already long day. David brings her home from the dance studio, throws me a sidelong, wide-eyed 'I don't know how to deal with this' look and shakes his head slightly in warning as he brings her into the house.

"I can't turn," says Rissa.  It is obvious that one mislaid comment could send her headlong into hysteria...

"Tonight," I reply.

"Pardon?"

"You can't turn tonight.  You're probably tired.  Go have a shower."

Her face crumples.

"Okay, let's head upstairs," I say.

We flop onto the bed together.  I smooth the tears off her face.  My heart aches for my perfectionist child.

"I'll never be able to turn!!"

"Well that's patently untrue."

"I won't!"

"You already have.  I've seen you do it.  You can't say that you'll never be able to do it, because you've already done it."

Her breath hitches in with fresh sobs.  We're on the precipice of of true irrationality here...  What I say next could make or break the situation.

"It's times like these," I say, "where you really need a shoulder gnome."

"A..." sniff, sniff...  "What?"

"Shoulder gnome.  It's a little gnome who sits on your shoulder and tells you when you should continue with something... or not."

Rissa's eyebrows meet in a scowl.

"So... you know... if you were... say, attempting to do something physically taxing at the end of a very long day, the shoulder gnome would grab you by the chin and say, 'Dude.  Now. Is. NOT. The. Time.'  And then if you try to ignore the shoulder gnome, it will slap you upside the face and say, 'Seriously.  I'm. NOT. Kidding. Around.  THIS. IS. A. BAD. IDEA.' "

The beginnings of smile touch the corners of her mouth.  Then she frowns again as she glances at the clock.

"It's SO late!  I still have to shower and I need to shave my legs."

"Why do you need to shave your legs tonight?"

"Because it's spring and I'm wearing capris now to school..."

"I can promise you that no one is going to notice your hairy ankles.  Besides, no one should be close enough to your ankles," I give her a pointed look, "to know that they're hairy.  Wait, unless they are the shoulder gnomes who have jumped down, then yes they will notice...They are notorious for noticing leg hair.   'Jerome - you won't believe the undergrowth this gal has on her stems!'  Then they'll come at you with their miniature scythes and cut down your crop of leg hair, carting it off for sale in the local shoulder gnome black market, where all things human go for ridiculous amounts of gold." 

And there it is, a real smile.

"Wait!  How is the shoulder gnome going to hold onto my chin?  They're just little."

I demonstrate with two of my fingers, indicating a shoulder gnome's arm length.  I move her chin from side to side.  "Do not underestimate the grasp of the shoulder gnome."

She laughs.  The tension in my chest eases.  She is back.   My pessimistic perfectionist has retreated.  I hug her, pressing my cheek to hers imparting through osmosis that our love is not dependent upon how well she turns, or whether she has an above 90 average or if her hair is straight  -  I can't say all that right now in case it sends her spiralling once more.  So instead I say,

"Love you hon."

"Love you too Mummy." 

It all comes down to chicken vaginas...

"So what did you do in school today?"

"We had a work period in English."

"Journal entries for your ISU?"

"Yep."

"Oh, and in Geography we got to watch a video."

"What kind of video?"

"A video about sewers.  It's called Crap Shoot."

"Seriously?"  I burst into laughter.  "Madame showed you a video about sewers and it was called Crap Shoot?  That's freaking brilliant!"

"Not only that, but this is the second time I've seen it."

"I'm sorry?"

"I've seen it twice now."

I almost pee my pants.  "You've seen Crap Shoot twice?"

"Yes.  Last year in Science Class.  But that's not even the best part."

"There's a better part than just getting to watch a documentary about sewers called Crap Shoot?"

"There's this big sewer in Rome, one of the earliest sewers ever, and it's called the Giant Chicken Vagina."

"I'm sorry?"

"It's called the Cloaca Maxima - which is latin for Giant Chicken Vagina."

I snort.  "You're making this up!!"

"I am NOT!"

"This was in the documentary?"

"No, Connor just knows this because she lives on a farm.  A cloaca is part of the reproductive tract - pretty much a chicken vagina."

"So Cloaca Maxiuma would be...?"

"Giant Chicken Vagina."

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

"What is going on up there?" asks David from the kitchen below us.

"Clo...clo... a....ca... Max... i... ma!"  My stomach hurts from laughing now. "Seriously??" I ask.

"Seriously.  Connor and I almost got kicked out of class last year because we were laughing so hard.  This year, Connor isn't in Geography class with me, so I had to keep the hilarity inside."

Even better?  I get to recount this to David when I go downstairs.  He too, was impressed with a sewer documentary called Crap Shoot.

"Hey Rissa!" I yell upstairs.

"Yes?"

"Cloaca Maxima!!"

"BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAAA!!!!"

We made her!

Rissa's clear, perfectly pitched (to our ears) soprano drifts down the stairs.  She is in the shower, as she is every night after her dance classes.  For the grace that she exhibits as a dancer, this child, after 3 hours of sweating, smells like a dead goat.  David and I are both working on our laptops on the sofa at the bottom of the stairs.   Rissa belts out a rendition of Lean On Me from above us.  David and I look at each other with parental pride. 

In the next instant, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer joins the playlist.  Rissa sings at the top of her lungs - putting a jazzy twist on the holiday classic.

"We made her..." I whisper, afraid that if she hears me, she'll stop singing.

"We did," David agrees.

How can an egg and sperm make something so remarkable, I think.

From Rudolph, she moves onto Chrisine Lavin's Doris and Edwin: the Movie, I Dreamed a Dream from Les Mis, Blues Traveller's Hook, It's a Hard Knock Life from Annie and then a reprise of Lean On Me to finish the set.

She's in the shower for 20 minutes.

"There's no way I'll have enough hot water for a bath."

"You might have to wait another 45 minutes for the tank to fill."

"I'm okay with that."

When in doubt, add moustache!

"It hurts when I smile," says Rissa, as we're chatting before bed.

She'd mentioned it earlier in the evening.

"The zit?" I ask commiseratively.

"The zit," she confirms - pointing to the right of her nose.  She then does a Vanna White flourish.  She tilts her head to the side and flashes me her best 'fish lips.'

Yep, there it is.  Poor kid.  Day before she starts high school.  For me, it would have been life over.  The wailing and gnashing of teeth would have been EPIC.  I had been very concerned about what other people thought.

"You could always camouflage it," I suggest.

"Balaclava?" she puts forth.

I take a breath to tell her that no one will notice, that everyone else has zits, that the state of 'beside her nose' in consequential in the 'First Day of High School' scheme of things.

"... or a MOUSTACHE.  If it gets bad, I'll just draw a full-on moustache in sharpie.  That'll distract from the zit plus it will give me an air of mystique!"

"Like a little John Waters moustache?"

"NO!" she scoffs.  She then mimes the most elaborate, surpassing Jaime Hyneman, moustache - but hers, of course, would be more well-groomed and waxed to within an inch of its life.

"Definitely the way to go," I agree.

"I'll be a hit with the entire student body..."

"And the teachers..."

"But for the teachers I'll add in this certain je ne sais quoi..."  she raised her eyebrows and looks at me intensely.

"Awesome.   You could throw in your double wink too."

Rissa dislikes the traditional wink, except when Cat Deeley does it.  She therefore created the DOUBLE WINK, which is like a blink, but slightly longer and with much more personality behind it. 

"Oh yeah..."  She demonstrates.  "Okay.  I think I'll be good to go."

Yes, she will.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWW!!!! He's SO old!!

Oh, those iconic 80s dance films.... Quick!  Name the winners!  For me it's three Fs, a D and a W - Fame, Flashdance and Footloose - Dirty Dancing and White Nights.   Rissa had already seen Footloose, Dirty Dancing and White Nights - I got it into my head that she needed to see the other two.  Last weekend it was Flashdance

You know how some 80s movies really stand the test of time and some don't?  I mustn't have seen Flashdance since I rented it in the early 90s - cause man, oh man it's not what I remembered it to be.  Cue Jennifer Beals taking off her welder's helmet and shaking her 80s hair about her shoulders...

Two dance/soft porn moments from that film that will remain embedded on everyone's corneas: the splash of water on Jennifer Beals' boobs as she sits in her chair and the running in place to Maniac while moving her hands all over her upper thighs - or, as is more than likely - the dance double having water splashed all over her boobs and running in place while moving her hands all over her upper thighs.  And may I just ask?  Could they not have found a better freaking wig for the dance double?  Could they not have found a dance double who resembled Jennifer Beals even the tiniest bit??  But I digress...

The hair and fashion styles make me wince, mostly because I can remember wearing some of them myself, but I can't really get into the mocking of the terrible choreography and dialogue because Rissa is freaking out.

"Oh, EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  No!  No, no, no, no....  He's so old, he's so old!!!"  Rissa hides her head in the pillow, refuses to come out.  "She's 18!  And he's... he's... SOOOOOOO OLD!!!!  (Nouri was 38 when he made Flashdance.  Jennifer Beals was 20, playing 18.)

Rissa is so wierded out, she almost has palpitations.

Then, in the after their date scene, when Jennifer Beals comes back into the living room of her warehouse loft, lifts up her leather skirt to sit across from Michael Nouri and pulls off her bra from under her off-the-shoulder sweat shirt in way more movements than it's ever taken me to do the same manoeuvre.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!"

"They've stopped now."

"What is she doing?  He's old enough to be her father!  I am disgusted in my soul. EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  Why couldn't he be all successful and 22?  Why couldn't that happen??  I hate him!!

Now me, on the other hand, I've always had a thing for Michael Nouri - ever since he played Dracula in Cliffhangers in 1979, when I was...  oh dear God,  I was 11.

"No, it's so wrong!  SOOOOOOO wrong!!!"

"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" She screams upon witnessing the restaurant scene where Jennifer Beals eats lobster and then sticks her stockinged foot in Michael Nouri's lap. "EEEEEEEEEEWWW!!!   EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  EEEEEEEEEEEEWWWW!!!  Make it stop!!!"

To Rissa, an age gap of more than 1 grade level is cause for a very deep seated gross out factor.  I have no problem encouraging this tendency until she's well into her post-secondary education.

She's not 3 any more...

When I look at Rissa now, I can't remember her as a toddler.  Even when I see photos of her from that time, it's like I'm looking at somebody else's kid.   I know that she was this small elfin child,

but that child bears next to no resemblance to the tall, poised 14 year old, who looks 18 without makeup and about 25 with it.

We're out shopping for her Grade 8 Grad shoes.  MY CHILD IS GOING INTO HIGH SCHOOL IN THE FALL!!!  She wants something sparkly - silver and sparkly.  Our small town doesn't really cater to the silver and sparkly set.  We have to go to a higher populated town to get a good mall.   So there she is, finally in Le Chateau (oh, the irony because our mall does have a Le Chateau), having already exhausted every other shoe store in the mall - three shoe boxes in front of her.

The first she tries are platformy.  She becomes a leggy giantess in these shoes.  My stomach plummets.  NOT THOSE!  PLEASE NOT THOSE!!  SHE LOOKS TOO OLD IN THOSE!  SHE LOOKS TOO SEXY IN THOSE!  BOYS WILL WANT TO INSERT PARTS OF THEIR BODIES INTO HER BODY IF SHE WEARS THOSE!!!

She takes one step, before turning to me. "Nuh-unh... NOT these.  Nope.  I'd be breaking my ankles after the first step."  She attempts another step.  "Whoa... WHOOOOOOAAAAA!"  She's walking on an invisible tightrope, her steps tentative.  Just as I'm thinking that, she pretends she's on a tightrope and fakes a trumpet version of a circus theme.

"So not those?" I take them from her, all nonchalant.  Thank Christ.  I hand her the next pair.  Ballroom style shoes studded in rhinestones.  My stomach calms a bit.  These ones aren't as sexy.  I could pretend she was on Dancing With the Stars if she wore these.

She slips the second pair on.   "Ooooooh... I like these!"  She takes a few steps - does her best imitation of a runway model.  Shoots me an over-the-shoulder glance and then makes a goofy face.

"They good?"

"These're pretty good."

Next pair.  1950s style peep-toe with a slightly thicker heel - MY 14 YEAR OLD IS TRYING ON A FRICKIN' PEEP TOE!!  Then I remember that in grade 5, my mom let me buy high heeled blue satin running shoes... In Grade 5...  Because I wanted them.   Deep calm breaths...

"These feel really good, I feel more steady in these, but my toes show."

"What's the matter with your toes?'

"They're showing."

"You have beautiful toes."

She grimaces.

"You do!  I love your toes!  Walk in the shoes.  Walk back and forth a bit."

She walks a bit in the new pair.   Every time she turns away from me - it's like there's a strange woman in the store in front of me.  Then she turns and makes a face and I'm okay again.  Until she comes back to me, slings an arm around my shoulder and towers.  She's 5' 7" without the heels - so at least 5' 10" with them.  I'm just shy of 5' 6".

"Quit gloating."

"I'm not," she says... gloatingly.

"So which ones?  Ballroom shoes or 1950s shoes?"

She's chewing on the inside of her cheek.  "I can't decide."

"Put one from each pair on either foot and walk around some more."  She does.  Depending on which foot is hitting the ground, she has a completely different facial expression.  "Dance a bit."  She does a ridiculous cha-cha, but with a big jazz hands finish at the end.

"1950s" she says.  But then almost immediately, "Which ones do you like?"

"I like both of them.  You pick which one you like."

"But if you were buying them for you, which ones would you buy?"

"The dancy ones - but I'm not buying them for me, I'm buying them for you."

"1950s!" she now says decisively.

"You're going to have to practice walking in them before Grad," I say.  "You know, like around the house.

"Yep."

Out of the mouth of Rissa...

"Agnes the camel has three humps..."

"Agnes the camel?"

"Yes."

"O....kay..."

"Agnes the camel has three humps...  Wallace the camel has two humps..."

"You don't remember the actual song, do you?"

"No."

"It's Alice the camel, although I have to say that I prefer Agnes now..."

"Well, obviously."

"It's Alice the camel has 10, 9 8, etc.  etc. humps.  Until you get down to no humps and you find out that she's actually a horse... of courrrrrrrrrrse..."

"Ahhhhhh...  Wait then....  Agnes the camel has three humps...  because she is a three-humped camel and that's how she rolls... Wallace the camel has two humps - completely unrelated to Agnes - he is of the two-humped variety...   Margaret the camel has one hump... and is slightly jealous of Agnes and Wallace. Baby Joey the camel has no humps because he is adopted and is a horse, well, actually a zebra - so he doesn't have humps, instead he has stri-i-i-i-i-i-ipes."

She's here all week folks ...  enjoy the veal...

Sprung from my loins...

Have been experiencing technical difficulties... (will explain later) posting on the fly...

Rissa gave me this card for Mother's Day...