Yes Sir, that's my baby...

Rissa is at the piano.  Surreptitiously, I watch from the kitchen.  She sings as she plays Adele's Someone Like You  - she's been working out the chords with David.  How she can sing and play at the same time mystifies me.  Her lovely soprano drifts across the room, she has perfect piano posture - she is stunningly beautiful.  I find myself in awe of this person whom David and I created.  Then she notices me watching her... and she turns into a velociraptor and starts growling the song and banging on the keys with her little raptor arms and her head.

Sometimes in a lull in the conversation at the dinner table, Rissa will play a trumpet voluntary with her navel.

Or this...

Rissa, nearly choking on laughter in bed.  "You know sometimes when you're talking, and spit from the back of your throat squirts out?  That just happened to me!"

"So Mummy, you know how I'm playing this Sims game with cats and dogs?"

"There are cats and dogs who play Sims games?  Those are some smart mammals..."

"NO!  The characters are cats and dogs.  I am on the cats' side."

"Right.  Okay.  I'm with you now."

"Well in the game, you can do tasks to build up points and stuff.  So I just spent the last 1/2 hour... (she's so excited she can barely speak) ...WEEDING!!"


We're saying goodnight - it gets a little sloppy somewhere between the regular kiss and the butterfly kisses...  Rissa nearly ends up in hysterics.

"Why are you laughing so much?"  I ask.

"I remember when I was little and I tried to kiss you in the front hall - a big wet sloppy kiss with my tongue.  You asked me what I was doing and I said, 'I'm kissing you like Daddy does.' "


"Mummy, you know who would be a FANTASTIC superhero?

"No, who?"

"A NUN Superhero.  'Cause you know that crucifix belt thingie that nuns have with all the beads and stuff?"

"Uh-huh...?"

"She could totally whip that around and leave the sign of the cross on the criminals' faces!"


And tonight, just before dinner...
"Wait!  Wait!  I need to put on my bag!"  Then she arrives, clad in her ballet leotard, tights and a blue recycling bag which she has turned into a ginormous bib, by cutting holes for her head and arms.  "What?  I don't want to get stew on my tights!"

David looks at her, obviously impressed "That's quite ingenious."

Rissa shakes her head dismissively. "This one isn't as fancy as the one I took to school last year.  That one was a clear bag and I wrote "Rissa's Pomegranate Bag" on it... in red Sharpie - you know... (she is obviously excited at this part)...  to coordinate with the pomegranate JUICE when I was eating pomegranates..."

This is my daughter.  There is no one else on the planet like her, no one even comes close.  The joy of being her mother is something for which I am thankful EVERY SINGLE DAY.

What I did for fun in the 70s...

Brace yourself.  I'm about to wax nostalgic.  I grew up in Winnipeg.  Twice.  Once between the ages of 3 & 8 and then again between the ages of  15-18.  My Dad was Air Force.  He was a navigator.  He 'told the pilots where to go' is how he used to put it.   We lived off of Ness Avenue in PMQs.  (Private Married Quarters)  We weren't technically ON BASE, but we were pretty frickin' adjacent to it.

We moved to Conway Street when I was four, I think.  Memories from before the age of eight are all sort of ... fuzzy.  I've had a head injury... okay three... I've had three head injuries. 

Ticky Tacky Houses as contracted by the Canadian Forces.  I think mine might have been the yellow one.

Now one of the great things about Winnipeg, is that there were back alleys.  Any garages were to the rear of the properties, which made for tidy front yards without cars cluttering the scenery.   No fences anywhere - as a kid you could basically run rampant through everyone's yard ... so we did. 

This was the time of playing outside until the streetlights came on.  The time when your Mom would say "If you can't hear me call you for dinner, you're too far away!"  You pal'ed  around with a gang of kids, all Air Force brats, all your parents knew each other so you couldn't get away with anything. Because this was also the time, when the parent of your best friend would grab you by the arm (or ear) and march you back over to your house and tell your parents what you did.

I took swimming lessons at the St. James Assiniboine Pool.  We walked from our house on Conway across the western stretch of the Assiniboine Golf Course in the dead of winter.  The golf course didn't have fences back then either.  It was like trekking across the tundra to get to the pool  I arrived cold and exhausted and I departed cold and exhausted. I want to say that those lessons were late at night, but really, I think it was just after school and it was winter and already dark at 4:00 p.m.  My mother would do her best to dry my hair underneath the hand dryers and then would throw  me back into my snowsuit, with an extra hat AND my hood.  I remember the bone-chilling wind driving across that golf course as we walked for what seemed like hours to get back home in the dark.  In actuality, it was probably all of 8 minutes.  I thought I would die on that walk home - I was so cold.  To this day, swimming at ANY time of the year is not my favourite of activities.  (It's sort of a coup for David and Rissa to get me into Lake Ontario - now a mere 8 minute walk from my present house.)

I remember skating  on the duck pond at Assiniboine Park.  Sunday afternoons, cold air, blue sky, white snowbanks and evergreens.  Mom would have thermoses of hot chocolate and maybe some fresh-baked cookies.  My feet would practically drop off from near-frostbite, but I never wanted to leave.  I just wanted to skate and skate and skate.

Winnipeg in the summer was a different thing altogether. Prairie HOT.  A blessedly DRY heat, not like what you can get in Ontario.  Running around barefoot - ALL summer long. That was the best.   Kids' feet must have some asbestos-like quality to them, you can walk on gravel, hot pavement and never seem affected.  Apart from a stubbed toe here and there, you're good to go.  Who needed shoes??  They were so limiting!  When it got REALLY hot, I'd go play in the back alley.    The heat of the sun would soften up all the tar used to seal the cracks on the road and it would bubble up.  And thank God I wasn't wearing shoes, because if I'd had shoes on, I would not be able to pop the tar bubbles with my big toes.  I could spend hours going up and down my back alley popping tar bubbles.  Then I'd go to another back alley, and another - all within PMQs and all within the range of my mother's voice - in case it was anywhere near dinner time.

Tea Towels are NOT Dish Cloths!

I iron quarterly. Beginning of school.  Christmas.  Spring. End of School.  Last week I hauled down the ironing that had been waiting since June.  I ironed dress shirts for David, some pillow cases, tablecloths, napkins and tea towels.   Oh yes, I DO iron tea towels.  I'm not anal enough to iron sheets, underwear or jeans, but tea towels need to be ironed - especially after you've washed them the first time.  Especially the crappy cheap ones that I bought at Canadian Tire for a song in the spring - which were never used after the first washing, because I didn't do the ironing all summer.   And after they were ironed they looked like this - well, not really like this because mine were much cheaper... but they looked nice and fresh and most importantly clean and ready to be used to dry the dishes.  So I laid them over the oven handle and smiled at their beauty.

I got 12 tea towels for what this probably cost.

Then, this morning I came downstairs and walked into the kitchen. It must be noted that I hadn't had my coffee yet. 

"FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING HOLY...  TEA TOWELS ARE NOT DISH CLOTHS!!" 

When I looked on the oven handle where I had just YESTERDAY put freshly laundered, not to mention IRONED, tea towels ... there was BBQ sauce and smudges of someone's hands that had used the tea towel as a cleaning rag, rather than as a towel we use to DRY THE FREAKING DISHES!!!   They are not dish cloths, paper towels, nor are they napkins -  they are for drying dishes or drying CLEAN hands. 

You DON'T use a tea towel to mop up cat vomit, juice or tomato soup.  The only substance that you may mop up with a tea towel is WATER and only if that water has spilled on a completely clean counter or floor.  Or club soda.  Club soda would be fine.  Or say, blood if your child has just cut a finger off.  That is then allowed.  You DON'T use a clean tea towel to wipe hands that you've just had inside the lawn mower, or your ASS.  Thankfully only Rissa saw my rant.  David, towards whom the rant was targeted had already left for work.  By the time I saw him tonight I managed to say in the most pleasant of voices.

"My love."

He knew something was up.  "Uh.... yes?" (he might have already started wincing in anticipation)

"Please, I beg.  From the bottom of my very soul.  Please do not use the tea towels as a..."

"I know.  I know.  I try, I really do, but can we at least have something CLOSE to the stove that I can use?"

"You mean like a dish cloth??" I ask in my sweetest tone.

"Uh... yeah...."

"You mean like THIS?  THIS DISH CLOTH right here - TWO steps away from the stove?!?"

"Yes.  If we could just have something that I AM allowed to get dirty, you know, closer to the stove..."

"You DO have something like that!  It's  a freaking DISH CLOTH and it's right here!!!!"

Other than the tea towel thing?  David is the best man on the planet and I'm the luckiest woman in the world to have him as my husband.  He puts up with my petty craziness over tea towels and the unwashed juice container.  But really, is it so FREAKING hard to wash the juice container when you've finished the last of the juice so that the freaking fruit flies don't lay their larvae in it???

PMS Diet

25 days of the month I succeed in eating a healthful diet.  I snack like a good girl.  I eat almonds,  drink soy milk, avoid gluten and sugary treats.  My blood sugar is stable - I'm not quite as crazy.  Those other 5 or 6 days in the month?  The ones leading up to my period?  I pretty much lose my mind.  Apart from the accompanying emotional instability, Rissa and David LOVE those days; Rissa in particular.  "I love when your period is coming, you let us buy ANYTHING we want at the grocery store."

Chocolate covered pretzels?  OH YEAH!!   The perfect breakfast treat!

Hey LOOK!  Greek flavoured President's Choice potato chips.  No gluten in those!! My blood sugar will be stable.

David asks, "What are you eating?"
"All the extra crumbly bits from our various nacho bags.  I smoosh them like this (I demonstrate with another bag - crunch, crunch, crunch).  See? This is me NOT wasting food."
"You're eating them in a cereal bowl with a spoon."
"Yes, but it's a teaspoon.  This way I won't eat as much.  Plus I didn't want to get my fingers all icky with the extra salsa I poured on...  I am a genius!!"

Healthy dinners devolve into glutenous, fat-filled, saliva-inducing foods from the bad side of the grocery store.
"What's for dinner tonight Mummy?"
"Pizza!"
"YAY!!! Pizza!  Is it the frozen kind?"
"Yes.  Yes it is - one full pizza per person!  I call dibs on the extra meat one!"

"What's for dessert tonight, love?"
"Lava cakes..."
"Oh, lava cakes.  I like la..."  (David is a bit of a chocoholic himself.)
"I'm not done... with rolo ice cream..."
"I like rolo ice..."
"Still not done... covered in caramel sauce..."
"I..."
"I. AM. NOT. DONE.  ... and chocolate sauce, and chocolate chips and cool whip and...."
"And a cherry?"
"Yes."
"You had me until cherry." 

You know how sometimes you're craving your 2nd dessert even before you've finished your first??

I think the sugar coma is setting in, I've started writing bad limericks about the PMS Diet Phenomenon.

For few days she forsakes her food sense
Before her period, she spares no expense
Chips, cookies and chocolate
PMS throws its gauntlet
With junk food the only defense.


PMS rules our lunar calendar
Oh hormones, you maternal saboteurs
Salty sweet things might assist
Shake her a martini - we CAN co-exist
QUICK!  Dark chocolate is what she prefers.

Tomorrow.  Tomorrow I shall eat properly.  It'll be easy.  We finished the ice cream tonight, I'm out of Drambuie for my Rusty Nails and Rissa took the last of the Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies to school with her today.    Tomorrow morning I shall enjoy my Rice Krispies... that's right my BROWN Rice Krispies. Oh yeah... Mmmmmmm... the anticipation... it might just kill me.  No seriously, that crap turns to dust in a gal's mouth, I'll need extra soy milk nearby.

Exactly how rich ARE you???

On Lakeshore Drive there is a house.  Situated on the south side of the street, its back yard opens to  Lake Ontario.  I pass it every time I go for my extended walk.  The new owners seem determined to transform this 1980s homogenized architecture into... something... more.  I've been watching its transformation for months.

In the spring, there was a new roof.   (TA-DAH!!!)  An oddly shaped,  pseudo-Mansard, steeply-sloped roof was added ON TOP of the original, standard suburban roof.  ON TOP OF IT.  What the...?  First there were roof trusses, then plywood was laid upon that and then...  SHINGLES! And they weren't just crappy shingles, they looked like the faux cedar shake, much more expensive than regular type, shingles.  This roof was a high class call-girl in a roadscape of suburban housewives.  The windows were out of proportion with the house - it looked like it was wearing the wrong hat.  I thought, "It's missing something - maybe they're going to add dormers.  That MUST be it!  There will be dormers!"  Course then, it would just be a house with a weird roof that had dormers - for that to work, you really need a house that has at least 3 floors underneath, all with 10 foot ceilings.  Really you need to be in Parisian townhouse to get away with that merde.

The original roof, with the profile of the 'new' roof.

Then a few weeks later, the fancy roof was gone. The original roof remained, it was as if the more elaborate roof had (POOF!) never existed.    Had we not seen the remains of the trusses in the garbage bin out front, it might have been some architectural hallucination.  We couldn't figure it out.  Why would they put a roof up ON TOP of the original one, and then tear it down? Why would somebody do that?  I joked that maybe the owners wanted to see what it would look like, but that couldn't possibly explain it - who would do that?  It was a mystery.  It was killing us.  One morning, the construction crew looked to be on a break and were enjoying their double-doubles.  David and I HAD to stop. 

"I'm sorry," David said.  "I just have to ask... What was with the roof?"

Every person on the  construction crew rolled their eyes.  One older gentleman, probably the crew boss, closed his eyes for a moment in... could it have been... pain? "She wanted to see what it looked like."

"The homeowner wanted to see what it LOOKED like?" I asked, incredulously. 

The older dude gave a short, mocking nod of his head "Yep."

"You are KIDDING!"

"Nope."

"Was she unaware that there are programs on a computer that can do that sort of thing?"

"It was suggested to her."  He looked like he might have an aneurysm.  "She said she needed to SEE it."

"So, I guess she didn't like it?"

"Nope."

"And she asked you to tear it down again?"

"Yep."

It was then that I realized how rich these people must be.  They would rather spend...   let's say $20,000 as a rough estimate for a completely new roof with near-Mansard sloping and then the fancier shingles.  Who?  I ask you, WHO, has that kind of money to throw around to just see how something might look?  And then, THEN, she had them TEAR IT DOWN, which would be another day's work for a crew of demo people, so I'm thinking at least another $5K in demo maybe, plus fixing any issues underneath.  $25,000 JUST TO SEE HOW IT LOOKS??  WHO DOES THAT?  In theatre you don't just BUILD the set, first you build a scale maquette  to see what things will look like.  This woman was one of "THOSE wives."  The worst I've ever done in a one of "THOSE wives" moments, was when I made David move an armoire all around the house because I didn't like the way it looked in the 2nd bathroom. 

One day, I plan on being rich.  It will happen soon.  When it does, I vow that I will never be THAT kind of rich.  The kind that just throws money AWAY.  You, know, just to SEE WHAT SOMETHING LOOKS LIKE!  You could have an architect show you a computerized mockup of that roof for probably $24,750 LESS than the cost of building what amounts to a life-sized maquette.

Now if it were $25,000 to put on a show...  THAT is totally reasonable ;-)

PMS and the Grammar Gazpacho*

What you don't see is the dude on the left then beats the other dude - TO DEATH

Okay, so YES - it IS that time of the month again.  And this time around, I noticed something...  The closer I get to my period, the greater the chance I might lose my mind over grammar/proper usage.    It's like I'm out for... wait for it... and I hope you've got a Band-aid handy... BLOOD.  HAH! 

This week, I nearly had an aneurysm when the word "nauseous" was misused in an otherwise well-written book.  All I could think was - "Does this person not have an editor!?!"  Even if the author doesn't know which word to use, an editor is supposed to catch this sort of shit, aren't they?  Unless the editor doesn't know 'nauseous' and 'nauseated' mean two vastly different things.  In which case the editor should be shot by a firing squad and then drawn and quartered, their body parts jettisoned to the far corners of the world.  Too harsh?  Perhaps if the editor where just beaten into unconsciousness with a copy of The Elements of Style, then fired?

Wired magazine recently had an article about the love of Japanese cutesy cat videos.  http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/08/ff_cats/ 

Musashi the cat, photo Panda Kanno

I am a cat lover.  Nay, that is too tame a title.  I am a cat adorer.   I have three cats.  If I could have a domesticated house cat the size of a tiger - I might possibly reach a state of nirvana. 

After I read the Wired article, I got suckered into watching Maru cat videos http://www.youtube.com/user/mugumogu?feature=watch and laughed myself silly at the antics of this large Scottish Fold beastie jumping in and out of various boxes.  The big box video almost had Rissa and me peeing ourselves. 

I love cute cats, kittens, puppies, virtually any fluffy mammal.  You'd think this would translate into my going nuts for the "I can haz cheezburger?" cat photos.  You would be wrong.  I know that these photos most likely were originally created by people for whom English is not their first language, but I simply cannot get past the poorly phrased, cutesy and incorrectly spelled words in these nauseous  photo/posters.  Plus, what cat do you know would talk like that?  Seriously?  All I want to do is create my own posters saying "NO!  You may not have a cheeseburger!!"  Then I want to drown those cutesy, baby-talking cats/kittens - which horrifies the cat adorer in me, but the proper usage gal in me is more dominant in these situations and will always win in the end.

* Yes, I could have used Gestapo.  It didn't feel right to make a quick alliterative joke with the word.

Fleas = BLACK DEATH

Fleas, the bringers of the Black Death, have infested our cats, our home, yea verily, our souls.  I am posting this picture of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers because photos of actual fleas make me want to hurl.  A lot.   I have to say that as pictures of Flea go - it's a pretty good one - usually he looks way crazier, more gap-toothed and less, uh... toned.  This photo makes me want to get really close to him to read the tattoo above his left nipple and maybe just see how his chest might feel, you know, under my hands...  But I digress.

Flea

 Barely tolerable graphic of a flea deservedly about to be drowned.  Suck it you bastard!!

In a fog of repellent I type. (hack, hack, wheeze)  I despise fleas.  I despise that they can jump 150 times their height and escape if you're not vigilant when trying to kill them.  They freaking BOUNCE!  Fleas turn me into a vengeful, predatory, serial killer,  laughing manically as I catalogue my death count.  My eyes glaze over in a haze of vengeance as I watch them drown in 2 qt casserole of dish soap and water.  I see them struggling and do NOTHING to help them!

I get such satisfaction when I take a flea and pop it between my thumbnails.  It's gross and disgusting, but that POP! when one of these suckers dies, is frickin' music to my ears.  I wish I could find the milk of human kindness somewhere.  I rescue spiders, bats, mice, those hairy millipede thingies... worms on the sidewalk... but fleas... (shudder) I get all twitchy and itchy as soon as I find one and then go on a primate-esque grooming binge with the cats.  We have three freaking cats!  And Lola, the littlest, seems to be the tastiest.  I probably got a dozen (shudder) of the little parasites off her.  What is the emoticon for vomit partially filling one's mouth?

As soon as David gets home from work, I will be heading to the vet to get some Advantage and probably more flea spray. See?  This is the peril of a one-car household.  I NEED Advantage to start my home grown extinction of a species and I am car-less!  It had been such a great idea to go down to one car, when he was teaching in town, but now he teaches 50 km away and I am car-less  and we NEED to start Advantage treatment right NOW!!! And I need more flea-killing spray.  I already went through one full can which sprays 2000 square feet.  It conked out on our 2nd floor and I still need to do the attic.   And then I'll need to do it AGAIN in a couple of weeks.  EEEEEEEEW!!

I wish there was something like an EMP, that instead of knocking out electrical devices, it could fry every frickin' flea's brain - make their grey matter explode in their own devious, disgusting, disease-carrying craniums.  Wait!  David's totally a techie!  Maybe he could make me an app that would do that.  You hold your IPhone up to the flea-ridden animal and hit a button and presto the fleas' brains explode!  Just for fleas though.  Not cats, or dogs, or kids, or grownups,or mice, or bats or spiders or worms.

*Except fleas - that's the subtitle on the interior page

p.s.  
David, upon his return from work today: "What is in this casserole dish doing here full of water and, cat hair and... specks of... are those fleas?"

I laugh cruelly.  "Yes, fleas.  FLEAS.  FLEEEEAAAAS!  (my eyes get very wide and very crazy) This is the Casserole of Death - none shall survive."  Now I totally want to have a little gangplank up to the casserole with miniature palmtrees and signs around the casserole saying things like "Flea Spa Day, all parasites welcome!"  "Mani-Pedi specials here!"  "Aromatherapy Massage included!"   Then when they get to the edge and see that it's just dish soap and water...  I submerge the gangplank and watch them not tread water.

MOOOHOOOHAAHAAHAA!!!!