Mother-Woman

Discoverers

2012-02-12T22:13:00.006-08:00

It was a few weeks back we headed to the rink still learning. It is that break point of note. The learning and the having.

My children have learned a lot in their days. Things I wavered to believe I could make for them. Ha! I teach them nothing, those surly sponges, discoverers. I work a little harder each day to be invisible. Did well that day at the rink. Hand on the back of the one with the shakey legs. Silent. Him unaware as my hand slipped away and he discovered he could skate.

And one week later we were on a pond like this. Happy winter everyone.

What She Looks Like

2012-01-10T21:12:00.008-08:00

I worked too much in the Fall. I was working more than 35 hrs a week at a new job with a big commute. I was also teaching at the university at night with all the marking and course prep and a big co-teaching collaborative footprint.

My family gave a lot to make it all work out.

I know when I work like that the kids need to see reason. Often they get the money angle, I'll be honest, so I decided on a sad night when my g'nigh came to an already sleeping face.. again... we would go away. The kids and I would spend some of the money on a little vacation. We went to Victoria.

For this trip we travel from our house for a couple hours. Bye-bye Daddy. Lunch with my parents in Ladner nearby and then the kids get to see their uncle in Victoria. A nice getaway, for sure, a simple trip.

We took the ferry and there Miss Fancy made a friend. Her friend's name was Lillian and I have a little story about it.

We met up right away at sailing. Lillian and Miss Fancy playing with Boy-o in the kids' playspace. We quickly went outside. Not. A. Playspace. Fan. I had a nice chat with Lillian's Mom. They were en route to see Lillian's grandparents for Christmas, for them from Australia. They had come via Beijing where they met up with Lillian's uncle and aunt and her 4 year old cousin. They had also said bye-bye to Daddy.

The children played and played. We mothers talked. I snapped photos with my blackberry, Lillian's mom with her iphone. As we neared the shore we exchanged emails, we'd be in touch. "Thanks for everything!" "Merry Christmas". So on and so on.

By this time the kids had taken to the floor to draw. My daughter's bag of supplies being shared, papers askew. Our new friends were setting off quickly and we were running late. They would walk off and their time was more flexible. I needed to muster to the car deck. C'mon! What is the delay?.. N. was slow. She was drawing over which she does often dawdle.

"Mom I am drawing." ..
"What are you drawing?"..
Silence. What is she drawing? I am wondering.
"I HAVE to finish this."
In my mind, what is she drawing (still not peeking) is she drawing something for Lillian?
Lillian is wandering away.
"I have to finish this."
"Finish what"
"I am drawing Lillian. I want to remember what she looks like."

...Agog.

Isn't that interesting? (I mean is that interesting?) We have these devices, their ubiquity to record and there my girl 7 years old knew and to here it means little (or nothing). She wants her picture. She replaces that -- I know her -- what I have with what she might select from her mind. Her idea under the work of her own hand is what makes the memory. It is what she will trust. Somehow I really loved that.

It was a good trip and that was the best story.

Gendrefication or power up the Cloaking Device

2012-01-03T18:49:00.008-08:00

This morning in the race across town to my now distant cushier job I steal a peek @suefisher and @bonstewart. An excellent dialogue on gender and lego; a happy little mind bending to incisive people I have never met. I reach and think a fine few minutes of those I weave some affinity with -- the luxury of it.

Anyway.. the dialogue.. Gender to lego, enough! Damn how can lego have gender? Well too much has gender now. It is what - or it is one more thing -- that is eating away at childhood in my mind. I think one tweeter put it out as market forces. B*%lsh@t! No I know it is not. Not market forces but the aggression of corporations over childhood.

Remember I have one boy and one girl. I learned early what would and would not go both ways -- toys, clothes even books. It is something I have bucked, if you will pardon the pun. My son wore plenty of track pants just a little bet scalloped on the edge. The kids have abided the rants that there is not such thing as girl music.. even if there is.

I do believe I have become a rantafarian. I freak that we are holding onto childhood by our fingernails that the mania for industrial child corps to extinguish the ambiguity of children in favour of the profitability of mini-adults is winning. Remember I was an administrator for schools so impoverished for resources, begging, brokering and selling to make learning happen. It was a part of my work for a tough three years sick to see the Matrix of learning devices and 'free' software pin kids from the youngest possible ages in a dataset of self that will set them for harvesting for sale in perpetuity. I can't help often to see the black patent swish of a Trinity trenchcoat in each 'it will save us' post of the graces to Ipad in education.

I say this with the intense vulnerability of this space do I? That I have done as much to pin my own children (thinly veiled) on a blog? I don't think so. More than once I thank the test space of this parenting dialogue to allow me to want to hack parenting and fight and differentiate. I have said it before it is the dialogue in these distant spaces that have fueled my (hard come by) commitment and fitting in to to IRL action of being mother-woman. I am not here to tell you how this will end...

So you see I was biting my tongue just a tad....

Inhibited

2011-12-29T21:45:00.004-08:00

It has been a long while since i posted and I smirk what I posted on last.

Our family has had a very hectic few months for sure. Our second child had his first day of school, I went back to teaching at the university on top of a full time job, changed that full time job, p-man out to extend himself, grandparents newly solo.. things here and there. I might write of those things another night.

Really it has been this while since I have been off cavorting around you my friends. Tossing my words about in other 'spheres' as we like to say. Testing the ideas of identity, brand, conversation and so on that began here. Wondering how I can tend it's end now. If that's what's in order. I am out and about on work blogs, and tri-twitter feeds shy to gather the threads or at times writing myself some bigger, more self conscious story of how I really have 'good' reasons to plug up the channels between.

Funny that in light of the name.

It was the descent into family that was the ink in my print. Why has the run out has broken that chat rather than brought it out? Honestly it is that you do feel inhibited. First by the simple math of the life, writing soooooo much by day anyway. Fun though it may not have been. Then there was the cross over and the uncertainty of ever exposing my family to my other sphere there... and exposing what that is/was to what troubled me too much.. why trouble you...

Well anyway, was off, yes. Am back. yes. Will drop in some of the thoughtful on life after schoolwork, on my soc. media diet for 2012 but also leverage the support here whilst we crash from our overindulgence in bacon this holiday season, the What about Santa? fodder of family blog, the state of the cats and so on... Maybe a book or two...

Will give it a go.

'Work'

2011-07-14T21:06:00.005-07:00

I seem to keep saying. I just don't know what is happening with work. I work. Full-time, Monday to Friday, but it seems be dwindling. I work in education so many, many, many of the librarians I know there would NOT have Monday to Friday jobs. We just don't allocate time that way based on our schools, at all.

But everywhere I am seeing it. Jobs downsizing. I would like to change my job but I have serious fears that if I do it will just be subsumed. I have seen this friends go on mat leave and when they come back no job, as if their contributions did not matter. Others choose to take reduced hours -- say between -- two mat leaves... then when the time comes, maybe you want to buy a house there is no full time work to help you afford it.

Are we feeling it? Is the economy gonna nibble away at every job, including the ones we work around as Moms. When we are ready to return full time will there be such a thing?

I have lots of people who tell me how much they love being part time or how they will never work full time but this baffles me. Am I an alien that I expect employers to offer a solid basis of full time positions for people in their operations? I hate when people act like full time is TOO MUCH. It isn't for me (well it is really) and it shouldn't be for anyone. If it is there is something kind outta whack with 'work' there?? I mean I feel grateful I don't work two jobs or 14 hours like many immigrant families. Basic full time being eroded is something to think about. What is the future?

Teeth falling out

2011-05-13T08:46:00.004-07:00

Babes in arms. I would give anything for babes in arms. The mental separation of self and the unitasking of physical need. Now that I live with this 6yo girl andd 4 yo boy it is all existential. I type here and am AWAY. And, I measure away. Sometimes I ask their permission to check my blackberry or use the computer for my writing activity. But really it's not like nap time or the separation from a baby. That first set of growth if different before the teeth fall out.

But time is out. We struggle between my limits on their TV screen time and theirs on my laptop time. It is mostly that they wonder, I am sure, what am I making? Is it some sort of digital cookie?? Do they want one?? Is it their business, and I can't say no. What if she read it?

And that is one more reason why it seems sensible that these are my last posts. I have always admired the exceptional bloggers who can write a digital story in their posts, and I am not one. I drift more to the reportage of stories of others as I lack the art and alchemy of words you will find in the faithful memorists like bon or Nora or Claraor... -- see blogroll.

At six I give first my girl and then my boy -- give back -- their story.

Reading this post last month from bon I never felt closer to encapsulating the gratitude I have for discovering this communications space back in 2005. To have intersected the dialogue to help me through instead of books or kaffeeklatsches.

I wrote on that blog post this comment.
Six.

With that — and the teeth, like you say, all the stuff of babies’ and their human making falls through fingers. At six the squeeze of babes we were so responsible goes away somewhat to a more horrible frustration of the independence we crave so long for them. It has been a tough, aggravating year… The sort of year I pined for a time when my arms ached for hours of feeding and calming and unending latching of me and her (then him). I was so tired then. I thought this would be the dream, something easier. Let them walk. Feed themselves. Tell their stories. But wrong I was.

Weaning and teething -- I have been known to harp on my friends. When they fuss about the right pre-school, or daycare space or sleep routine I remind that these children will be our children all our lives. But that said from a certain age their stories are no longer our stories. And when I watch these children make their stories unfold I am glad I do it on the foundation of parent storytelling.

#thehomeproject Home Edition

2011-04-24T21:04:00.008-07:00

My Dad 'built' our house. In so far as a Civil P.Eng. builds his house without his very mechanical father and father-in-law. No he built it.

It is a profound point of pride in our family that while we lived in the suburbs our home was a home.. made with busted fingers and the sweat and designs of our people. My mother the wizard who brought the 1 and 5 year old onto the old property to foist up a structure that would be home. A builder in her own right she taught me every trick I know to design or tile or finish or ... well I can't uploster, she is the Alpha.

Homemaking has its meaning to us.

My husband is a soft-bodied lawyer from the rich side of town where every domestic charm came from the very best catalogues.

But he tries. Damn I acquired him the summer after we met as a painter and amour. Good combo. He was faking it mostly but 20 years hence blood may be thicker than water but plumb chalk and spackle binds in its own special way. We are now one. I have no end of special treats on my walls and floors thanks to his crossover.

For the long weekend we set to our religion. Renovate. The target to unburden ourselves of the old workshop for a cantina space. The current garage leaves enough workshop room for amateurs like us. And soon more room for summer sun where the kids can all run while the salmon BBQs. A bigger passion than the homemaking the object togethering. Wish you could join us. Soon.

ps.. there is a well known joke at my office. If I am renovating I must be pregnant. But no we can simply rest on our laurels (or bay leaf as the case may be) -- its just for us at this point.

Crystal tree

2011-03-19T08:37:00.003-07:00

We dug for three or four hours. Trying to pry something out. Four doors down the old farmhouse has now been laid flat, a new box of glue goes up where the lumber and shingle was disintegrating before.

For a weekend us neigbours ran all over it like rats. Lots of us stepping through the asbestos removal to scavange some plants or save the piano. It was maybe the oldest house, I didn't look that up. In its way it was the capital structure to our grouping in the most beautiful neighbourhood in the world.

I categorize it as the house where the crystal hung in the sweet dwarfish Vancouver maple tree overhanging the sidewalk.

It was to the crystal tree that my thoroughly independent children were released to from the youngest ages. We live one hundred and fifty feet west and beyond lies the 'high street' the mosh of dollar stores and vegetable stands, old scrungy Fraser street I love, dappled in pigeon poop outside Safi's Quickcuts. I like our house because even a toddler can toddle to the high street. When I had two I would muster them up and let my strong, giraffe legged girl head off first. (yes I know terrible parenting, that's another post I suppose). "Girl Friday. Don't go past the crystal tree"

That was the limit. She wandered there probably as young as a year an a half. A scramble with a hint of sightline and the right measure of earshot. It goes to the dreams I have for them to dwell in the healthy risks. It was so pretty there it would hold her; a small pinky crystal swaying in a tree in the rain, bright sunshine, what have you. My heart cinches in my chest when I recall the day it went missing. Someone we thought had ripped it down. My 3 year old ran to her jewel box for a replacement without a thought. No sense of value to anything yours, mine, ours... she chose probably the best pendant specimen she had to put out on the street. We scrawled a note.

Dear Neighbours
Thank you for hanging the crystal in your tree. It is very pretty and we love it. We see that someone took it down so please have this crystal instead.
Love E.

We walked to the grocery and dropped it off. ON the way back it was dangling on thin measure of fishing line as we passed our hearts full.. not knowing they could be more. Up our front steps there in a heap something woody, brown.. and a note to us.

Dear E.
Thank you for the crystal for the tree. We have hung it up. Here is something for you. Please enjoy this doll furniture it was our little girl's but she is big now and does not need it anymore.
All our love. Neighbours, C, A and J.

We broke two ropes and a chain trying to pull the crystal tree out with the truck. The builders shaking their heads as we dug a tree with roots to deep to make it moveable. They would scoop and flatten the place by Tuesday but did not interfere with our efforts. A last ditch I needed to try and exchange from one patch down to another. The children remember only a little of then having filled their lives with so much in the 3 and 4 years. But they took these pictures for me. It remains for us as parents today .... how they will construct memory when so much is transcribed?

I have let it go by now. Just one small twig sapling to nurture this springtime to remember those things that were, as a child might say, "big as a house".

Shirt

2011-02-14T20:35:00.003-08:00

I think he has the fantasy. That I am home for years. And, the food is always hot, and the beds made and the laundry just so.

But it is him who speaks it aloud. The work I have done, the thoughts, angst, toil, degrees to be me. That it must stand for something, what I have done to become. I would never say so. Not because I am not self-centred enough -- trust me I am plenty self-centred -- #bloginpoint... I don't say so because I am not articulate. I gum it up with blather. Blatherosaur.

But he says it. Cool and smooth. Clear, creaseless and unequivocal. Like the shirt in the closet he irons himself. Better than me.

Manage of the unmanagable

2011-02-04T00:18:00.000-08:00

She was one of those 'young managers'. Do you ever deal with those? People who climb the ranks quick because they're so damn good, professionally and personally. Probably.. you have ...but not enough.

Anyway in 1992 I was on 'mandatory sabbatical' from university looking for a place in a world. A desire to work in theatre box offices and short order cook lines was winding down. She hired me when the public library still resided the Virgin megastore site, an age ago.

I was one of a gaggle of six or so in our mashup division, a good job, good pay, some more serious than others. With slackers and the occasional junkie cluttering up my sofa or apartment floor I was in the category more to the serious side. I was not always so great. Abby in her unflaggingly quiet sterness sorted me more than once. A good investment for the mother corp for the next nine years and for me... The person in my mind who gave me this profession I love so much; someone completely unlike me my mentor.

Just married she had her first child just shortly after. Still remember the crowded workroom scene and the quintessence of giving Goodnight Moon that bright day in '93. My son nightly clings to a bunny just like the one I gave to her daughter J.

I inherited a new manager and quickly moved elsewhere. It was a big system no need to sit still. In two years we were back together A. expecting her second child then and my eye on a higher position, just married myself now. I covered part of her leave soon after. But not for the maternity, for medical. When her little second one was only 6 mos. A. was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It was terminal. She did everything best she could, as ever so, and we prayed against hope that she would be relieved, protected for being as fine a person as she was. She was an exceptionally fine person. Swearing on my heart this is not looking at someone through the tragedy kaleidoscope glasses. How young was I to wonder as much?

***
I think many of us have chatted when there is loss how it is a capital challenge the appearance of a person, their every moment. I remember an exchange with Tony about how inconceivable it becomes that our children just appeared that it fills us with the dread they, or us, will ever disappear from each other. I know some of you have felt such dread -- or worse. This was my foundation of schooling for it.

***
She is as kind and good and hardworking as A. ever was. We have worked nearby one another for 6 years and it was only in the chatty intercession of Christmas break we connected the dots. "Oh did you work at the library downtown? Did you every know A.?" But "Yes" I gulp. Turns out C. is the sister in law of A. The one who kept the time at palliative care, the one there when other family members had retreated or never began for the dread, anger or unending despair of it all.

Perfect. Perfect it would be C.

C. it turns out had just seen that girl, J., her niece. They were going to buy the graduation dress she will wear this year. I saw pictures of her and of the baby boy who was barely a toddler when he lost his mama too short a while after she took him to Disneyland. They are well. Beautiful children approaching that age I was when their mother hired me.

We went over all I knew and few things I didn't. That A. bought her daughter a wedding dress before she died. What she wanted for her husband another colleague of ours. Again how it was that C. was there.

A circle closed. A cycle of life exploded for me in a thousand pieces. What do we really ask of this life each day? To demand longevity? Or, to value not what we consume but what we create? My heart was elated in its way that it was C. It was the gladness I had which surprised me. So glad it was her that was there for A. What matters but what we have for each other? A moment of faith delivered to me; someone otherwise a skeptic.

I feel some disquiet at the consolation I got in this intersection of story. Worrying I was make it all trite; but as I set it down I hope it conveys, as for me, hopefulness, gratitude.

**** with no small measure of thankfulness to Susan who gives so much through her storytelling and no doubt helped me meld my mother-womanness with value and not demand.

Publish or Perish

2011-01-26T00:09:00.002-08:00

I work in a book heavy environment I watch a lot of the trends for publishing. And it did come to my attention about the make your blog a book option.

At Christmas my daughter asked me for 'a book'. A book Mommy writes... But #lookit haven't I written a book. Is this it? It seems like a good way to take this creation and put it 'on the shelf' and my friends I suppose that is what I am doing.

With these few remaining posts I will put this away. Just as my first post was about putting another book on the shelf.

Brand Recognition : 7th self

2011-01-22T08:44:00.002-08:00

Remember when you were friends with people just because you had the same blogspot theme? Hi MadHat! Hi Kittenpie! Hi Mary P! Oh those were the polkdot olden days. Who would do that in real life? That kinda 'who wears it better'? But digitally it worked; finding a kindred in a sea of electronic loneliness.

Swimming the evolution and realignment in our digital vocabularies both blog and brand needs a field guide these days, it must grow in language to be understood. I started a blog for my Girl Friday's school this week and it is not going well. They feel a blog is a personal artifact and not a handy web-authoring tool. And, fundamentally those who show for in-person meetings and sit on parent execs are a group that do not (necessarily, as our ilk) exist digitally. But me... I feel irresponsible that a school would not be so public as to reach out with news, and information in a non-print, digital way in colour.

I hear it said a lot. They are jetson kids in a flinstone universe @school. At work I hold fast, dutifully pooh-poohing it. Desperately wanting my girl to excel with paper and pencil deeply intellectual, poverty-pure cleverness like a young girly Bob Crachit. Wise but denied. How stupid is that? #igiveup

It is what I call the Obama effect. In all the choice we had I went with the most unfancy for Miss Fancy I could. Local school. Telling myself if she could excel in the that environment she could make it anywhere. Oooh, boy was I right. You know like how fancy was Obama's elementary school in Indonesia; not much eh? And he turned out all right, eh? Well like Barack's popularity I guess opinions shift.

Am I eating my words.. not quite... but some. I have to admit that she is not putting her life 'in public' to maximum reward because even in Grade 1 I can see she'll not apply herself to the sitting and the scribbles when the world beyond the school yard is technicolor (tm).

There is a balance to be had but I am reversing on my prior snobbery about the rules of engagement. I'll admit it give me some customizations!!!

Do you remember the luxury of the shifts for your blogging selves. Those sunny days in 2006 when templates got more free, custom designers rose to the fore that you could personalize or at least up the aesthetic over the worksheet forms of our original selves. Tell me which elements of our blog speak to who you really are. I have under my tutelage at the moment two twitter feeds and four blogs. The are all very very different and none of them really include pictures of my actual self; so is that a 7th self? Don't ask me for the best feed on that, I suggest you watch this space

For example anybody recognize the image I choose for twitteer #1? Really just the p-man fetish for murderous starlets! Sure. I love an apt avatar; the succinctitude in an image as gorgeous as a 70char tweet of distinction.

And, how are you? What is your blog longevity? And, what changes with digital aging? I AM looking at you MadHat who has moved to personal, protected tweet only with the professional blog sidecar. Kittenpie how many blogs you got now? What about the incorporate identities of GGC, beauty in its own wrap. What is our reflection on the juniper brand schism of '06, jdg is in O magazine this month!??? And, you nonlinear? like a good 1992 switch to hand-crafted beer; #smallisbeautiful. No chance I'll ignore the publica grandmaster philosopher who I feel must be the source of this embed code in me, HBM. Mesdames, what can we say of digital demand and dual-diagnosis. Who are we in our digital selves and, especially at school, should the chillun's have as much or be on recess instead?

And, you know if it's all about the content tell me that too -- like the lovely and radiant L. who in her written life is excrutiatingly compact, goddamnit! (also lookin' at you Clara and earnestgirl)

Will you blog forever? Not me -- at some point, soon, I will need to write some newsletters and leave it to the writers, I expect.

#thehomeproject Anniversary edition

2011-01-18T22:46:00.006-08:00

This is a picture from our Anniversary trip away. P-man and I were away from our children for the first time ever for 3days last summer. We stared out to sea a lot. We ate and lived a much slower pace. It was a time to travel.

We met travelling. A long time ago we were away from home and together forged the subtravel in our group. I feel it is critical that my life be embellished with someone who travels well. Its true; he's the chosen one because he asks for directions and will chew out racist, foreigners we encounter anywhere.

I like the picture above for one simple reason. It reminds me of the picture below. The one I took our first month together overlooking a total different sea. His back turned and thus quiet -- FOR ONCE! (I should #talk)... That big head you just have to explore.

Clingy

2011-01-15T21:17:00.002-08:00

I reach for the blackberry on my passenger seat like I reach for his hand. A moment at a stop light to see what he's thinking, p-man.. wherever he is. I realize as I drop it again...two hand on the wheel. It'll keep. Hey, It's me! I'm the clingy one! Me.

My kids had clingy periods sure but mostly they are independent. I remember the day my Ma shot at me 'you just don't want her to be independent'. Who me? of all people? Independence impeder. NEVER. But sometimes you have to wonder....

I am struggling with my daughter's aloofness these days. Aloofness at best; arrogance at worst. Her overly social nature getting the better of her in grade one. Leading the pack and too much independence. Not falling in with the class or abiding the teacher. It's been very hard*** how she is getting bigger and wanting her own way is gonna make trouble. She is demanding too much at times and not good at being flexible or kind when she's not getting it.

My daughter is a friendly kid but when her best friend moved away last year she hasn't found a replacement. I tried not to fuss about it. But I am a fusser into attachment. I realize I am the clingy one. I want to know where everyone is and how they're doing. It is a mystery to me that my daughter is not me in this regard. Ah, well I learn.

In celebration of our 15th wedding anniversary this year my beloved declared himself like a barnacle.. Finds what he likes and sticks to it. So she's not him exactly either. So we have to be the open ones helping her become her while knowing her the best of everyone. We want her to be open.

We all do think about what might be out there, don't we, smirk:

*** in the why I don't blog anymore catalogue... is this sort of sin of the family unbloggable. is it against some law of the parent blog... I think so and won't talk about it too much in my last 30 posts before this blog is closed.

#thehomeproject

2011-01-12T21:25:00.012-08:00

What you might not know is that when I started this blog it was a lot about my husband. Not directly. More about a lure to the writer he is... incidentally the dad in here. (More important backstory...)

I do huddle to the men on my digital, and internal, blogroll. Their mindful lives written. I think the best part of being a mother might be the dads! Since I am so committed to the gender inclusion when it comes to this media I was pretty attracted to the man focus in #thehomeproject. A project to invite anyone to speak weekly to the muse they make a home with... The task at hand a photo a week to show what we see. You know something like this:

But instead I went with Dadzilla from our recent polar bear swim:

ps.. Are we a media? Are we a channel?

Who does she think she is?

2011-01-09T20:30:00.003-08:00

Does anyone know what my 52 reasons campaign was? It was because I was not going to be... A. WORKING. MOTHER. (Or was i? A temp maybe..?) Working motherhood. I am NOT. A. BELIEVER. (Or am i?)

Blog killing disbelief.

What is it? Am I embarrassed to blog, from my desk. Who does that? You blog at naptimes. You don't blog when you have lost your whole sense of place in the parents blogosphere. We barely even nap anymore? What am I doing? Seriously, there is something that made me think this was a 'baby blog' and as the kids were no longer babies .. 'done and done'. But tell me then.. why is it called MotherWoman...? I know, and you know, it is all about me me me!

What can I tell you? There are really three reasons I stopped writing to you.
1. I was never writing TO you in the first place anyway?
2. I was sucking so hard, considering, on the writing quality. (enough already with the lyricism and intellect bon, clara, l., nora. You're killing me over here!)
3. I was in triage. My kids needed me IRL and blog x work, bye bye blog.

... but I spent 5 years of my total 6.25 years of parenting -- in here so much, part of my kids are in here. Can I really do well ... on. my. own? Without my diary? This diary that I am thinking will cap out at a tidy 800 posts, 36 posts from now.

But call this one of my patented half-posts.. and read this right now!

Ps. This blog post title is not to be confused with the excellent film of the same name

I've never been to me.

2011-01-08T00:04:00.011-08:00

If there is one song from my youth I did not like it had to be, Never Been to Me. Idiot damsel trying to look fierce...degrading self, problem-women. Discuss.

It cluttered up the 2nd 3rd of my Rock '82 by KTEL cassette real bad. And we know don't we.. There was no such thing as 'skip' then. Codex hell. I heard it over and over despite myself, tapes, dances, the tyranny of LG73. Oh, woe was me. And woe is me now.

It has, my friends, been a tough few months. Tough like my mother's swiss steak. And at this end I see that my lil' blog has been about -- despite myself -- my 'never been to me' status. My concerns about being Mother and Woman. My uncertainty about knitting up the internal, bloody, messy, human making mother-person with the... womanly everything else. My own wordy variation on a scale of justice ... a place to mix a metaphor as frothy as Cactus Club Bellinis on a Friday night of yore.

A year ago I dialed that discussion down. Respectable after 5 years and in light of new media to be sure. There were good reasons particularly the working mo' issue. I know people say that when you go back to work it is 'too much' how can you handle all the work and your family. But that is not the case, entirely. You make it work. Your work gets done. Your family responsibilities met. What goes is the EVERYTHING ELSE. The extended family bliss, the wide area networks of friends.. including you my friends. The filing of paperwork, the turning over of seasonal clothing, the garden, maybe handmade Christmas cards.

But after this year I realize there are dark reasons I might not have spoken. That it wasn't just the volume of writing and web authoring I was doing professionally that sucked me away from here. There was also a bit of surrender to the propaganda. A giving up on anything like options. My abhorrence for example of quality time and 'work/life balance' cliches. Looking to Parent Differently, TM. Ha! Ha! Ha!

I was type-tied. Reading more than writing and crafting a new brand online that was solely professional. Ha! Ha! Ha! I will talk to you in the next while about what I felt was untypeable to you but this is enough for today... Save...

You can thank me later for the great Swiss steak recipe. A classic in that lineup of working mom meal plans.
There are a lot of trippy covers of Never Been to Me!
What will make you say, hello dead blog. A comment on a long lost post like this.

Deregulation of Childhood

2010-08-29T22:47:00.009-07:00

This weekend we celebrated a fantastic neighbourhood party in the park. Lots of happy families and many growing kids. The tug of war under 3' category was esp. good! Standing over the playground with kids going on 6 years we have debated a lot with our peers. Not so long ago the question came to me as to when I would let my children go to the park by themselves. I hummed and hawed. What 8 years old?

No, surely it won't take two full years for my oldest?? For whom I have been over this groundbefore, a couple times. Access to independence is an important parenting principle for me. Even, if it is not a natural one. My kids' world has grown exponentially. The park is a part of their ground, their city home. They will not always need me to be there. I think over my (philosophy professor father-person) friend questioning... What age he asks? Tossing in the layer of the child's good judgement.. When?

My mind travels to the pre-parenting me; observing. 3 months pregnant on a bench in Montmartre. No doubt interrupting some delicious sandwich I turned to my children's father-to-be saying the children nearby us were playing 'on their own'. *GASP* We watched. Happy, noisy children in a square, late evening. But then the fact... The children we're not 'on their own'. It was after dinner. They were centre of the square and the windows of every kitchen of the surrounding apartments faced out to where they played. Mothers and Dad's would be keeping an eye out, and each apartment on the ground floor had an outside door. They had a sense of being alone and some risk but not like a tap, off/on.

I wish for moments like that Montmartre evening here but tremble a bit myself. I am a pawn certainly like many in the steady terror making of child safety regulation. But I'd rather not be. In a culture of car seat expiry dates and "you must be this high for the water slide" there are too many trade offs of judgement and/vs. god damned regulation. Children will never be truly growing up without toying with freedom and risk. The hide and seek of my own childhood ran too far and wide for my terrified parenting self today doesn't it? We surveil still more closely than those parents in Montmartre at our park I suppose, though soon I guess I'll test it. And at least a couple time my fleet of foot eldest child tested me.

I hope we'll balance. Government and sales folk... enough is enough. Stop throwing a rock through my child's window and selling me more baby junk. Your regulation is so much less than my judgement and the development of theirs. We act too often as if childhood is a stage and not a process. The milestones a millstone. We wait for buzzers and bells to tell us when.. But so often our role is not to decide at all but rather to observe...

Tell is there some simple answer to this one.. When do children go to the playground solo?

Can't dance, don't ask me

2010-07-25T08:05:00.014-07:00

I was making dinner, or washing dishes .. or something a couple weeks ago, in the kitchen anyway, when it hit me... I have, apparently, lost the ability to dance. I do not know if it is a condition of some degradation of coordination due to my advancing age or a lack of practice ... but its gone. We'll worse than gone really, it's out of synch. I still dance it seems but only in a out by two beats and a tad slow sort of way. Yes I dance like a gawky 40 something divorced from the beauty of music. One of my more generous confidants reported its a fairly common affliction but it does not make it better.

HELP! Send Arthur Murray groupons.

I am sure I will find a way to blame typing. That the deft actualization of self I achieve in this modern world with my tappy tappy fingerpads is sucking skills from my toes, foot soles, ankles and knees.

It must be fought! I am pray now and always to be a dancer. It is always a part of me. Lacking the music making skills of my elders I was erstwhile inseparable from music in the form of dance. When again?

But really how can it be expected to maintain itself with no practice and less and less physicality period. There are many things about being an office jockey that slays me but these days I zoom in on the sendentary bit. When I was home with the kids it was a pretty active life. Shopping on Fraser street to fill a stroller has been replaced by the 11 o'clock flights to a late night box store. Park time replaced by the office chair spun ever so slightly. This summer I got my own goat driving to the Y to work out in my car. That is just not me. A couple days later I started the evening walk. I use them to catch up with other mother people and generally to get out of the house/out of the office

This sort of activity is v. common in my neighbourhood where a walk at 9pm can find me struggling to keep pace with the Indian Grammas in packs of 4 flapping chiffon scarves motoring around the park. The park is full of still swinging kids on the monkey bars and maybe a pick up game soccer ... better yet a cricket match! It gets me off my butt and out of my head. Talking about being digital seems all the rage.. but this week I just couldn't help thinking how I need help being physical. And, how, I rage against the fleeting physicality.

In related news -- this week as I left for work 'shiny and new' p-man lobbed a nice compliment. "Honey, you look nice. Very Ella Fitzgerald." Moi: knit brows & confused, STARE. Him: "Oh, I mean v. ZELDA Fitzgerald!" Yeah okay better. So there, we're both losing it.

Stay tuned for details of our rehab.

Nice picture via niceness of alicepopkorn

Stonewalling

2010-05-24T20:35:00.009-07:00

This weekend we reworked the back garden. It's been a project to remove concrete, add lawn space, plant the vegetable garden and spruce up the flower beds. I wanted to add a stone wall. I have rather soft spot for dry fit stone walls. We found a good stone yard and took a look on Saturday. The children loved snooping around all the accoutrements of the 'rock store'. The fountains, rock walls, pavers, fountains, et cetera, all delightful.

Our kids are good helpers. I come for a house that was always more into chores than sports; I keep up the 'get to work' expectation. When we went to the stone yard to collect the supplies for our project the kids brought their garden gloves. We picked our own rocks for 7 cents less a pound than you pay for a skid. It was slow going but we got the job done; and, we did it together.

The rock store was fine but it's one of those places you feel you are annoying the staff just to ask a question. They are obviously trying to dual track their service from only for trades to some place they can harvest big $$$ from clueless yuppies, like m'self. They were pretty bad at answering inquiries or otherwise moving us along. And, to top it off quick to deliver a sneer for taking too long on the scale or letting my children touch their crud. P-man was kinda embarrassed. Me? NOT AT ALL. I have HAD IT with people being overly mouthy about how long I take to do things with my 3 and 5 yo. I am calling the spade a spade... I won't put my kids away. You can throw all the Kids meals and IKEA ball rooms at me that you like but I'm not interested. I'm not a quality parent, eh. I'm a quantity parent, the kids come with me. The glares are wasted this time.

Is it just me or is it a bit of scam all the 'kids stuff' and 'family rooms' and 'nursing areas'. Are they some special place for us or tell me don't you just wonder a little if we're being shunted or shunned? Keep out? Keep away? When I look at how sniffy folks are that children might be slow to complete their restaurant orders or to -- for example -- load a truck with 1000lbs of basalt rock.. it sits a bit wrong. Slow down society. Get some tolerance. Get over yourself.

I am the sorta Mom who will take her kid to work, I do not avoid grocery shopping, housecleaning, dinner parties or regular restaurants with my kids. I expect them to be developing to be members of the whole society and not just some plastic coated, comes with a chocolate treat or face paint sort of existence. It is hard. It is embarrassing at times, yes, but it's where we will be so the children can learn to behave. I admit it maybe I don't know the boundaries of righteous behaviour any more? What I'm wondering here is whether there's some new unwritten rule that children should not only not be heard, but they shouldn't even be seen?

Tell me have you ever had a time when you were 99% sure your whole family should be allowed to be somewhere but the tone suggested otherwise?

the Near Miss

2010-05-09T13:21:00.018-07:00

Last week I flipped out about missing Northern Voice. I knew Dave Cormier was going to be there. I follow Dave. I knew what he was going to talk about.

I needed that talk.

I was struggling with a coming congress on ebooks: yes/no for schools as textbooks, novel studies, library books. I am also committed to producing a system rattling presentation to 100+ school librarians over the next 3 weeks. An urging to weed down collections, build new spaces for critical thinking -- that are physical and digital -- a talk to reconnect us with library principles of collection management and selections. I wanted to go to Northern Voice. I felt what I needed might, in some measure, be there. I kinda knew a girl. I sent out a plaintive tweet, feeling sorry for myself. Like a Wonka ticket by the next day I'd scored. I would get to go. I would be able to get the talk.

... Then ... I missed it.

In buying a drink for the person who sponsored me... in indulging in one more of my rants on publishing futures for children's literature to a new acquaintance... in walking in the sun I missed most of Dave's talk. Stumbled in late and saw that last slide "tyranny of the book". I knew what I had missed. I heard @jbmurray's whole piece of the talk. Saw Dave long enough to say hi, sure, but I'd missed IT...

Or did I...?

You see I was there all day. I was in the #nv10 and it was an exceptional day for me. An exercise in putting myself out there, all of myself. The mother-woman part, the @maryakem and even the legal name me who was printed right there on my name tag. I didn't meet 200 people. I met 12. And I think they were the vital 12. I hit on good sessions. I felt integrated to a number of important conversations, for me, on twitter. I said some silly stuff but a couple good ideas and perspectives also came. I was very much there. And it was a good place to find what I felt I needed.

Did I mention Dave Cormier was there? I'm sort of connected to him. It's not personal. It's a system. I won't bore with any details; they are of little consequence. I was there in that place exceptionally close to his talk. An exceptional presentation of a critical perspective he brings to a dialogue I am a part of and flagging under for its importance. I watched a recording of Dave today for what I missed, and you know...

I missed nothing. I am caught up. More than caught up...

In all its asynchronicity, the centre holds. What's 15 minutes between good research and learning? NB: @davecormier has a certain consistency that, for lack of better words, does transcend time and space. It is intrinsic to the message - or what I took of it -- yesterday and in the other online resources I have already (or again)...

...the access we need to knowledge is to be unbound from print and sequential pagination. I found it could be unbound from the clock/calendar of a conference. We don't schedule learning we find it. We find it in libraries of so many kinds today.

I will spend next week trying to convince librarians to unbind knowledge from the opening hours of their libraries, to take down shelves and focus on the finding. I will do that better with clarity on how sense of place/space is core. I'm hopeful this will make a lot of bookworms better able to deal with the aggressive weeding I'm advocating.

The talk gave me what I needed to secure the knowledge and to release myself from self doubt because I was there that Saturday. I was there with @wakemp and with @HHG and with Bon's husband, my friend Kerry and the owner of Dexter the dog and that we r connected. The strictures that make me wonder 'am I missing something?' were undone. As much as the talk that's what I needed.

ps. I feel it is our responsibility as librarians to help people let go of books. Books are our brand and we should protect them from the drek or near misses they can be.

The end of assvice?

2010-05-02T20:16:00.002-07:00

I have been working a lot in the area of shifting publishing and more and more I find my identities crossing over. Mother. Woman. Librarian. "Blogger". Twit. I am happy about that since I actually started the Mother-Woman blog back in 2005 to weather the fracturing of identity I faced when I returned to work that autumn a mother surely but unsure how to be a hyphenated mother.

To this day, though I do it so infrequently now... I do still like the blogging. I was so excited to hear my friend and mommy-to-meta-blogger Kerry is presenting at Northern Voice a Vancouver blogger event I am going to for both personal and professional reasons. 1.) let me rankle.. the NV folks better not be billing my best mommyblogger peeps just to attract the inevitable, Mommy Bloggers you suck press coverage from the top flight proprietary news outlets. And 2.) aren't social media threads for parenting information just the best thing ever invented???

As I spend more time, as a librarian, thinking about what is happening to the quality (qualities?) of information a bit of an aha moment. I keep looking for the points of disconnection between the information sources we've had and the new options. Do you agree with me when I say it's not just about convenience it's about credibility? I mean if you share my low-ish opinion of the parenting books from main stream publishers blogging makes inordinate sense. If we asked the question what's so great about parent blogging? Well yeah it's because it is better and more credible than those books. Parenting that's about a social as it gets, innit?

And, if you ask bon... well what about the genres. We need to reshuffle the deck on voice. As I wade through they myriad of choice for information sources in schools day by day I never make up my mind. Organize by format? By access.. by discipline. Well like one of my best friends said to me when I had my first baby "Repeat after me. Your guess is as good as mine"!

And, that's peer review for ya nowadays, innit?

Whither the empathy

2010-05-01T20:39:00.004-07:00

You know I do have a tendency to obsess that my kids are well-socialized and lovable. We have a good friend who once said, to the great disdain of p-man, she wants her kids to be popular. This is more important to her than being smart.

I know what she means. I have my frustrations with my kids not rocking the free world in their piano or writing skills. I get annoyed when they are picky eaters. It drives me crazy that when they don't obey... But really what pains me.. what slays me is their being spurned, their social failures and the sense of exclusion they experience from time to time.

My Girl Friday was driven to tears this week when she handed over an I Love You picture to a 'friend' at school. The classmate just flatly refused the picture and then topped it off with a comment about her "real friends" who are bigger. I know all the dogma that says small children need a lot of our attention but days like that day make me feel for our bigger kids. When I chat to soon to be back to work moms I do say that there is never a good or a bad time to be stay-at-home. Kids need a lot and always ... but when they are 13 months let's face it you don't really worry who's gonna hurt their feelings. Of late these school days really do get me down.

And, hey, little people ... whither the empathy? If you promise me nothing can we all make the point to our kids this week. If someone gets hurt and is crying; give a damn.. maybe even a hug.

Skate

2010-02-28T21:30:00.007-08:00

I grew up in a town with little for recreation. Even less in the winter. There was nothing or skating at the rink. I was one of the few chumps who could bbbaaareely skate. I dragged myself there. These were the days before I was dateable at all really; gawky and bookish then. I was a girl who couldn't attract a decent skater suffice it to say and that was the rank for those many dark months.

Today our family went for a skate and we all had fun. Me the most. I put on my game face to teach my kids. I urged my husband a good Canadian all-star swift on ice to skate away. I love to watch him skate. Even on days that are not today.

Men are better when their feet don't touch the ground.

Thinking space for civilization

2010-02-23T22:22:00.002-08:00

I am telling every librarian I can to read this : http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6716277.html

Q: What do you think is coming for publishing generally speaking and the idea of words on a page? How can information managers in a library environment either help influence public opinion or help content creators?

A: If I were a librarian now, I would attempt to conceive of the library from an experiential point of view. I would say, “What is the experience that is missing from the agora, from the world out there, from the private home? What is the experience that’s missing that we need in order to be human, in order to think, in order to consider?”

My own take on it would be that information availability in some sort of raw form is not a problem anymore, because of the Internet. It is for some people, as you well know; not everyone has Internet access or equal Internet access. Acknowledging all of that and just speaking in a very crude way that ignores [the digital divide] for a moment…if somebody has broadband at home, if they’re affluent, it doesn’t mean they have all they need. They still, in many cases, lack the time and space really to think in their lives. And, gradually, libraries will take on the role in civilization of providing that space. I don’t think the home will provide it anymore.

The thinking space where people can get to know themselves and get their ideas cogently arranged or what have you…

Q: So the cliché of the librarian going, “Shhhhhhhhh….” Oh, are we tired of that!

A: I’m sure you are, but, in a way, that is going to become something that is so desperately desired that I have a feeling there will be a new life for the library in which it provides the thinking space for civilization.

A thinking space for civilization.. that’s a good core service list for a libraries sharing/community + ideas/knowledge + beauty = civilization.

If I have been asking for months.. what are our principles? What can we offer that students don’t get elsewhere… there it is.

Colonic

2010-02-10T23:01:00.003-08:00

Mo has dreaded the day when I begin to say "I told you so. I told you, I told you Vancouver is no winter town! We should neeever have hosted the winter Olympics." I know this because she has said so three times which therefore qualifies it in the p-books as being said.

But I won't say it, though the heavens rain away all the fake snow, bales of straw, and dry ice that Vanoc trucks onto Cypress Mtn. I will not. Because it could still snow in time for the snowboard savants and their ilk to catch air or hang up, in, or out or whatever it is they are doing between bong hits and coitus. (Not that I have any misconceptions about the sport.) Instead, I will apply the fruit of Onan to my scalp, pout a wee bit (more), and sing it. Yep. Like this guy.

Also on the subject of life's little disappointments and non-sentences, fucking Toyota. We've been driving this mfg. for the last 7 years or so. I have oft said: Ooo, what a reliable motor vehicle we are owning... you should trade in that piece of monkey dung you are driving and get a Toyota. Meanwhile, we kept waiting for the blog endorsement loot to rain upon us like an Olympian golden shower because Toyota is so big they can tell what we are saying to strangers in parking lots who chase us while shouting for no discernible reason, other that our helpful little PSA, and Toyota is sooo very generous to John P. Public that they will pay us mind-control subjects/Toyota owners lots of money in large denominations just for having a Toyota, a big mouth, and an inferiority complex. And by we and us, I mean me. But now it looks like the good times are over. No money for us. And plus also our current flotilla of two is not subject of any recalls. So no class action cashing in. Not that money would help - who is going to compensate me for my loss of smugness?

p-man out

Recommended title: The fabulous song

2010-01-04T20:32:00.006-08:00

The fabulous song / Don Gillmor [author] ; Marie-Louise Gay [illustrator]
by Gillmor, Don
Stoddart, 1996.
Music -- Fiction

ISBN: 0773728600 ; 0773760997 (pbk.)

I was reading this 4 times last night and you know I do just like this book. I think it is not as well know as it should be so there you go. If I could get it past the Library of Congress I would add Subject: Being yourself and loving it without driving your parents crazy -- Fiction. Which indicates why my kid is getting a lot of reading of this book.

Also a time to post a seasonal photograph of my children. Serving suggestions may not be exactly as illustrated.

A better cat

2009-11-12T08:51:00.002-08:00

Behold the best designed cat for Canadian girls under six, or anyone really. A better cat could not be made.

Replete with, even, the Colin and Justin oversized boutonnière! The resemblance is uncanny. Il est un dandy!

Cover Ups

2009-11-09T20:18:00.006-08:00

So like I'm pretty old, right? So I remember the "fall of communism". I remember 1989 crystal clear. 20 years old it was one of the best years. I was newly independent, trashed with the two jobs I held and in my third year of a degree program I loved. So lucky, and happy, hopeful. I could do things and I loved that a lot.

I remember when The Wall fell.

What I remember is the celebration of it the following summer. That July and August my summer in the UK. An archaeological dig and new friends to pass the time. Lucky ever more. The dig program began with many having come from the celebration concert in Berlin backpacks weighty from the pieces of graffiti'ed concrete. The Wall undone.

In only three weeks this end would prove itself nothing but an intercession. I stood at the Tie Rack in Victoria Station behind three ladies in their burquas. Their credit cards declined. Arguing most vigorously as, apparently, Kuwaiti ladies in burquas do when they can't expeditiously secure a new scarf due to a turn in the tide of world politics. There was no end. Kuwait had been 'invaded' and the red menace had been replaced with a fresh foe.

All this revelry is depressing the hell out of me. It seems like all it took was those four weeks in the summer of 1990 to unearth interminable strife that will stay with my children into their twenties. Lame, civilization. Lame.

Social Networking

2009-11-06T11:49:00.003-08:00

The thing about social networking is that ... women are so conversational. The old librarian data to knowledge pyramid didn't have a strata for gossip so I'm lost.

Bibliodiversity

2009-09-21T20:12:00.008-07:00

I am predicting that physical collections at our schools will shrink by 15% over the next couple years. A combination of the rise of good information online, budget cutbacks over 17 years that have made buying good books harder and harder, increasing virtualization, format creep** and a culture of hoarding = frugality have caused us to reach this point.

I am excited. I keep harping on the shortness of distance between the libraries and production as these changes come. A dream that change will come and we will find our way to keep what we value and need. It's probably all Pollyanna but in my heart I hope I am at the cusp of a metamorphosis in resources for learning and living .. and not the death of library system.

But who knows?

** Format creep is what I bill as "It's the 70's all over again!" Listening centres are back, video streamed clips are the new film strip, models are huge and we are all media makers. How can this not be awesome?

JDG image above first seen on this post. Now part of a show at the David Weinberg Gallery, Detroit.

Let's get small

2009-08-29T07:20:00.007-07:00

I have tried twitter. It's tiring. But as fall approaches I wonder how many bloggers will be coming back to blogger. Twitter is certainly buzzing but I'm glad for blogs. Even if I haven't had the energy to write a real post for over a month.

Those things happen.

The most valuable thing I have taken from twittering is the 'nano' of everything now. It is reassuring that things are gonna 'get small'. You know I'm a Steve Martin fan so that's good. As a librarian I spent so much time recently trying to help people survive an overnight in a chilly sea of information without a survival suit. Didn't we all get bit by 22 apps last year at work? I look forward to a new outlook where all I have to do is get them to grocery store or the bank or where they are actually going. Obsessing about how we could go anywhere now that was tiring.

Sure do

2009-08-18T10:39:00.001-07:00

Some days their vulnerabilities sure press to make us better people than we are.

I like traffic lights

2009-08-04T20:46:00.006-07:00

We went on our annual summer trip 6 hours away to MIL-land. It was fun. There was a lot of lake time and ponies to feed. We drove.

The blithe road trip is such a great Canadian fixture I can barely confess the transformation I have undergone to be in this place of hating it. We drove up the night before our first holiday to avoid the traffic. The road trip is torture for me. I used to get right into the high speeds, junk food, rest stops and 'sense of freedom'.

Now it is all sense of dread. The recognition that this trip is the most dangerous thing we do with our family. Testing the odds and driving holiday weekends when everyone is crazy, kids hot and yappy, 'pushing it' and, yesterday, rubbernecking at a roadside forest fire!

1km on, a sight out of my minds eye, a family vehicle flipped. I understand a 9 year old boy was thrown clear. There but for the grace of god...

I traveled a lot by car as a child. My dad was always the one helping some guy out of a drift in Wells Grey Park in the pitch dark of nighttime December. I know of a dozen gas stations that sell headlamps for early 80's Caprice Classics. I sigh knowingly at overheats, poor devils. It used to be all good. Go see Granny.

I hope I can get there again with a decent measure of careful on the side. In the meanwhile I am grateful my husband is as good a driver as he is. That he shares the driving to be smart.

I'll tell you I am so enjoying people cutting in front of me at 40km/hr. Cross-town traffic never looked so good!

The Threat From Above

2009-07-28T09:59:00.004-07:00

I saw a piece in the news the other day about the health care 'debate' ongoing south of the 49th. Our creaky but wonderful health care system has been described by several concerned citizens of our neighbour for what it is. Canada's health care system is a "Marxist Threat". Presumably the threat is directed at the good old USA envisioned by these concerned citizens... a utopia of spacious green suburban lawns, bourbon, beltways, Ball Park Franks and Chuck Norris movies.

Some of our American readers, as in, those who can read, may respond to this accusation in a dismissive manner. They may apologize on behalf of their fellows... "We're sorry, Cletus is drunk again... his cousin is his mother... He fell on his head, see the flat bit?"

Dear friends, do not apologize. It isn't that we can take the slings and arrows of demagogic rhetoric. It isn't that we are willing to forgive simpletons their excited utterances. It isn't that at all.

This is to say the accusations are true! It is a fact, as I stand on this earth, that Canada's health care system is a Marxist threat, and it is the very lynch pin of Canada's design for global domination.

First we shall take over your health care. Then your national government. Then we will take all of your cars and replace them with Ladas. We shall place a professional hockey team in every state, including Arizona, so you'd better think of some good names. Everyone from Portland will be relocated to Juneau and everyone in Alaska will be sent to Guam. Any questions?

Consider yourselves warned.

PMO

Watch TV!

2009-07-22T20:57:00.010-07:00

One of the joys of my job is helping children read sure.. but also watch tv! I prefer good tv. Say something like this:

Now free for home use anywhere and licensed for classroom use across BC. Next time they try and make them watch something airheaded at school remind them there is good kids video to choose... still. http://nfb.ca/playlist/kids-cartoons/

Watch for my playlist details.

Amusement

2009-07-19T21:01:00.008-07:00

3 years ago the bundle we were gave way to a rattle of bones that would create me and ... him.

Happy Birthday boy-o. (I call this the 'Crazy Ludwig Hair')

And, if I do say so myself just the best birthday party ever: grotesque excess of cupcakes; 100 water balloons for ecstatic play for 90 seconds; wine by 1pm. Nothing but the joys of close friends to amuse all and each other. I should have gotten married this way... but no loot bags.

Blog on Blog Action

2009-07-14T22:21:00.009-07:00

Hey did you know where I was last week? I used to shy away from the blog on blog action but now I'm a real tire biter! That's me eating it up at the Mom Road Trip Vancouver meet up:

It ain't just that splendid, fat, Morton's Steakhouse Martini makin' me smile. It's the earnestgirl and Left Coast, 5and1, n' MandyGratton. It was our royal guests from the East motherbumper and Her Bad Mother. The legendary redneckmommy was there putting the real wild west into this Easterners' journey to our parts as was her hostliness Mr. Lady.

And you know like not too long ago it seemed the only place I went and stayed up past 11 was effing Safeway! Thank-you mother-people.

Use a tissue

2009-07-09T18:23:00.001-07:00

I feel today that -- despite what I have thought for years -- my children are NOT as I see them. While I enjoy the people we are together I must stop immediately thinking about translating that to others. The world will never see my babies as I do.

I can see as I ready for kindergarten and this major phase in my kid's public life that I could be that parent. The one who feels teacher doesn't understand, as a better blogger put it, my "widdle pwecious pumpkin". The nattering dufus trying to input 'at home they always' say please/thank you, eat, read Kant, use a tissue et cetera et cetera.

My children are who they are in the world full stop. No measure of their cozy, kind or brilliance at home will really serve their way to stability of identity 'out there'. The raising of my babies and the formation of a public person are two separate and important things.

It makes the intimacy of their specialness to me of more value to make this shift today. To really free their spirits and our relationship and all those relationships the days ahead will offer them.

Come and knock on my door! The Crunchy Carpets online Baby Shower

2009-07-05T22:10:00.006-07:00

Last week I had the privilege to drop in on our beloved Crunchy Carpets. I couldn't help myself. I just HAD to know exactly how itchy her belly button was. Seems it wasn't too itchy but she was interested in having her baby soon. So I figured perfect time for a mo-wo Online Baby shower! Nothing says have your baby right now like a Mo-Wo Online Baby shower!

It has been no mean feat for me to come up with the best shower theme for my spectacular friend CC. Did you know we have been friends for more than 20 years? Yep back in the late 80's we met thanks to our kind and radiant shared best friend, we'll call her Nerka for her brief blogging fame. And from there came the nub of our theme today, the olden days -- 80's -- and one of its principal artifacts... Three's Company! Who can ever turn down a great Three's Company reference?

Since this baby will make three chillun's for the Crunchy one to wrangle, no brainer, right? In prep for this I asked a mother-of-three friend about how it went for her. She explained that once she had that third she really had to de-stress and learned that the children were their own pack. That was similar to where CC was at last week, too; trying to find the ease and unworry. I can tell you she is not bothered one jot by what the need for a baby wipes warmer or other long expired details of extreme baby-care. My lovely girl is looking for the breezy loose-fitting bell-bottomy motherhood of child 3. Scanning existence for a yoga and macrame approach to letting it all hang out and living the motherhood to the max! Let's help her.

So our Three's Company challenge for the CC baby shower is to tell a story of sane-making easy-going parenting. What can you remind CC to let up about and be sure to hang ten the baby phase? Is there a baby gadget or piece of advice to have or to ignore? Is there a great trick to get through baby wailing? What 'easy does it' can we share?

My own advice? Never forget you can run a dishwasher as many as 4 times in a single day! I've done it!

Good luck honey. We love you and wish you a speedy delivery of your precious new baby. Stay calm, be brave, wait for the signs.Cross posted at Wet Coast Women.

Zzzzzz

2009-06-29T22:45:00.004-07:00

The problem with caring for children is that it completely interferes with dealing with how they may be. I remember reading in some Tracy-what's-her-name? book about looking at your newborn months after I had missed the chance. Inspect their lovely minute forms she urged. I wish I had done so. Would mean a lot more than the scribblings I saved. 13 feeds, 3 poops, 6 diapers, total sleep 13.5 hours for that day.

Babies are very demanding and all that care takes over too often and blocks out the introduction of an astounding new person. I won't get on my normal soap box about how child-care is a industrial consumer complex conspiracy, not this time. But it is the care that's the rub.

My son has stayed up very late for the last few weeks. It is annoying. This week p-man suggested we might cut the N-A-P as a test to get better bedtimes. Now we of course would never do that because ~~we respect and value the amount of sleep our kids are evidenced to need in a variety of parenting books~~ we are nap addicts.

To lose the nap would cue the first time in nearly 5 years we were not spending part of our day punctuated by a child at rest. A child asleep. A child away. I realize the nuances and degrees of identity I put into nap. I register only today so fully what lay behind my inumerable nap/no-nap anxieties.

It is about the care. The beauty of the nap is that it signals to me the moment when I need do no more. The moment the infant is done feeding, the toddler turns over from storytime, the intermission between hours of carrying and encouragement, negotiation, displine.... etc etc. A penultimate coffee break. The windows I carry with me from the time before; the aloneness of pre-child self. Aloneness, in the day where for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes I need not care for them.

It frightens me to no longer have the naps. To have them awake ALL DAY. Mostly I think it frightens me to not have the buffer. For nothing to remind me of that degree of aloneness or my separation from the awesome responsibility of being their mother forever. Night and day, day and night year upon year. My motherhood stretching out to infinity, no 6 month checkups to assess, no milestones writ large.. know what I mean?

But when I put it that way I feel a full measure of liberation. A new phase into this being where my relationship with them, while still caring, is not defined by care. Something with much more room for them to be... and me too.

Together Forever

2009-06-22T21:23:00.005-07:00

They play so happily together. Deep belly laughs happily. I know I wish for 'more nicely' but I will take happily. Would be a fool not to.

En Route

2009-06-14T21:25:00.008-07:00

My parents help a lot with my kids; my in-laws too. This used to be torture for almost all parties concerned until I learned the magic. Off-site time for kids and grandparents is soooooo much better. Why did I avoid it so long? Why, indeed.

I had a very, very, very good reason. I wanted to be included. And, I wanted them to see the generations working in a seamless, inter-operable harmony. I wanted it to work well. And, I WANTED TO ENJOY TIME WITH MY KIDS AND MY PARENTS TOGETHER. I think of it as the fundamental tone of love, connection. That's the way I'm built.

I have let it go. I realize now how little a difference it is to anyone, even me. But despite the diminution I feel the difference. It is another trade off I make, especially as a working mom. My husband, my children and myself benefit greatly, for example, from the weekdays' sleepovers that offset childcare time and protect precious family time on the weekend.

But now it has come to the weekend. Today p-man and I split up our time with the kids and it made for a rather good, possibly better, Sunday. I took them to Granville Island and Kite Festival, p-man picked us up. We didn't have much time all together this weekend and I feel odd about it. Am I strange in this view? It seems to be screaming at me as only logical to split up the work on account of the success it affords. But I can't quite peel myself away from an idyllic view of togetherness. I burn somewhat, not inconsequentially, at the solitariness of the memory built today -- my 3yo being told the bus was express breaking into this at the top of his lungs:

I love repeats

2009-06-09T20:21:00.003-07:00

I should post but I am a bit low on the energy. And LOOKIT! Thanks to this I found this. Reminds me so much of this.

Ah, memory lane.

Social ME-ME-ME-dia, or, Prepare a Face

2009-05-31T21:28:00.001-07:00

I have to talk to you about our cell phone plan. It is really bad. I need a new plan but it seems like every option requires me to submit more and more self to a subscription of surveillance.

I have no physical tattoos and I am not really into the digital ones either. Sure I blog and I've even begun my tweety bird phase. My intuition and the iPhone are hand in glove. But, still, I am sick of it. Sick to death of the options I have to submit more data about myself into the abyss.

I started on the Internet in 1986 and I cling to the classic I suppose. In my canon there remains a certain sanctity to dial-up. Network seemed nothing but a step into the Matrix. Cloud computing well yee-ha.

I look to my kids and wonder about the diffuse and selective identities of the children to come. The distance from their own privacy through avatars and handles. It is different no matter what the p-man says. I think we'll pray they need some great corduroy coat or velvet hat someday to scream me, me, me. It will harken us back to a gentler time when people talked to each other instead of to their cars.

52 Reasons: [Why] Are we [not] there yet [enough]

2009-05-28T20:21:00.003-07:00

We have the parenting workshop at my house. We have our gaps in consistency. My cousin swears consistency is critical in parenting. I fear that constantly. The lack of shared minds, the differences in opinion the discord. Parenting the Thelonious Monk way! That's us.

I get mad sometimes. Really really really mad. I don't actually carry on about it, I mean that is what I have a blog for. So blog, I got really really really mad today. It was the same thing, a virulent shame. Angry, angry that I just cannot enunciate. I can't get it out, failure to elocute to simple tasks of family harmony. I have this image in my head of an superlative route from moment A to departure by X AM not to keep others waiting, with grace and ease and no peskiness, out the door laden with healthy foods, a perfect balance of nose-rags, spare underwear and a smile.

But that image NEVER materializes. NEVER.

We rush. I race. I blurt and the 3 perfect steps in my head are said but not heard. They are messed up in my 4 addendums and every other failing of the parenting workshop.

And that, my friends, slays me. White hot mad, ready to pin down and howl at a kid or pull my spouse's earlobes down to his fuzzy ass crack is the 'why don't you understand me!!!! Get this.' Mind the gap! I just bet if I didn't have a vision of how small the distance from here to perfect was life could be a hell of a lot more tranquil.

And then there are good blog posts.

Smiles everyone, smiles!

Stolen Notions

2009-05-24T23:09:00.002-07:00

It's been so long since I've posted. I could trot out the usual excuses* for not posting but you, select reader, you deserve the truth: apathy. I have nary an idea to speak of, and no interest in typing until an idea occurs. However, under gentle pressure from my spousal unit, I am about to post, no wait, I am now in the process of posting, but you can't see it yet, but when you do, I will have posted.**

There is someone outside on the street talking to himself. Maybe he is on the phone. It is a bit late for phone calls. He should be in bed.

In any event. I have had to steal an idea from one who alleges to suffer some epic form of creative constipation, and he stole this idea, I don't know, from the skinny kid at school. Or maybe the subject was suggested to him. Like that. Name your ten favourite movie characters.

I haven't asked about the qualifications. Favourite likely does not mean the characters with the finest attributes. That list would contain three names: Jesus, Gandhi, and that cute little pig who talked. Not Wilbur, the other one. Also, these are all characters from movies I enjoy greatly.

Character Numero One: Jack Carter from Get Carter.

I could name many a Michael Caine role herein. He has been in 50% of all movies ever made.

No. Part Deux: Popeye Doyle from the French Connection.

He just wants to help. Gene Hackman has been in 50% of all movies ever made. Minute overlap with Mr. Caine.

Trois: Danny from Withnail & I.

He just wants to help. I am attracted to enablers.

Four, Five: Terry and Dean from Fubar.

Spreading the Deaner around one nut at a time.

Six: Uwe, from Enlightenment Guaranteed

This movie is very similar in theme and content to Fubar.

Seven: Grandpa, from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Were it not for the fact that the kids love this movie, I could not inform you, dear reader, of my love for Grandpa, the clearly insane ex-soldier who is likely the only male (real or imagined) who complains more than I do - except for the part of the movie where he is kidnapped by the Vulgarians and is transported to that child-hating nation via a blimp while situated in what appears to be an outhouse, at which point he breaks into song: Oh the posh posh life/It is the life for me...

I am too lazy to find the video so here is something else which I love much less.

Eight: The Hanson Brothers, Slap Shot. Arguably 8-10. I don't care. Resistance is futile.

Neuf: Hrundi V. Bakshi of The Party. Inappropriate. I don't care. I love the invisible accompaniment.

Ten: Derek, from Bad Taste. I am no big fan of Peter Jackson the director; but of Peter Jackson, actor/director/writer/blonde alien, I am. He also plays the alien in the opening scene, some type of Platinum Blonde refugee. Anthony Hopkins, eat your brains out.

p-man out

* holistic detective work, anadromous salmon, penile occlusion
** why does it take me 1.5 weeks to write a post this boring? You don't have to answer that. Please don't, in fact.

Nonlinear Babies Shower: The Day the Babies Crawled Away

2009-05-20T21:27:00.013-07:00

The finest blogger on the subject of picture books has to be the Mad Hatter. She has more than earned those stripes. When it comes to a present for the Nonlinear Ones there is something I learned from Mad I wanted to share. It is not just the book itself but also the place of the poignant, prescient picture book post. I have said before:

I want to write about all the people who have given us books. The feeling it gives me to be with the books and my children. It always seems to me like about five hundred souls are all crowded in a little child's room filling it with love and thought. Authors, illustrators and the gift-givers piled high enough to fill the room.

That's what I want for you Nonlinear Girl as these days come with the babies. A literary dogpile of all of us who look and read your dear, wise, giving stories, a little something to give back. You are a special girl and mama too. It has been a bit getting here and so much ahead, showers of happiness upon you all. As you can imagine for me it is always tough to single out certain books. Allow me to share with you the result of my torture. Here goes...

For my recommendation I insist you get a copy of The Day the Babies Crawled Away -- if I haven't already foisted one upon you. This book is many things. It is a loving tale of a mother in conversation with a curious and intelligent child that makes me think of Ada at times, gotta love a link even when it's old fashioned. It is a fine poetic text with superb image value and direction just like you NLG! It is a book of community -- something you ooze out through the blog from your communities virtual and concrete. The aforementioned oozing really defies blogging logic, I challenge any of us to demonstrate how clearly we love our local, physical communities they way you share yours with us, Nora.

This book is at its heart an adventure which more than seems a fit. But, yeah, there are lots of babies so maybe the multiples thing is my impetus for the choice? I mean I just as easily could have picked Little Rabbit's New Baby or the best book ever, Flotsam.

My knowing of this book comes to us thanks to a distant an unexpected trust in a lucky find of a blogger-mother. Someone I have come to adore and rely upon in some small way. I know from those days of second pregnancy and the babyhood after I needed those connections their intimacy and their distance. I wanted to bundle a reminder that when everything else is going crazy you can still have so and so to click at in England or on the East Coast or downtown from you. And, we will still click at you. IRL support is fantastic and though I have not said it till now, I will tonight, the online fills another need, different and important. My shower gift is a little a push on that and a lot of reflection on your thoughtful exchanges with us all this while. Nora you are one of the most generous bloggers I know. Thank you.

And, when -- or if -- you get that more children less blog feeling: we know. Go with the mama flow. Congratulations and good luck with your babies our hearts are filled with gladness for you all.

"You are our hero. Have some pies!"

From - The Day the Babies Crawled Away
by Peggy Rathmann

Want to write a post like this? Here's the deal.

Nonlinear Babies' Shower Book Reports

2009-05-19T21:19:00.021-07:00

Very soon our dear Nonlinear One will be eyeballs to eyeballs to eyeballs with BABIES! Time for a celebration!!!

As a librarian I was blessed with two book showers for my babies and that's what I propose for NLG and family. I've heard reports she has enough socks. So if you are a friend of Nonlinear Girl (or if you want to be and my oh my don't ya?) here's the virtual baby shower plan.

Let's write NLG a booklist. For those of you with second (and third, and fourth) children I think you might agree with me that in those in early days it's crucial to have great stack of books to look through while you -- and the new big sibling -- deal with all those feeds and all that getting to know stuff.

To give it a bit of a challenge I have some rules, feel ~~free~~ encouraged to break them. Please post something about a book, a book you do, or don't, recommend; a story that says something special for you about the early days with infants or nascent big sibs; or, any and all other manner of message you might want to make to the Nonlinear family we all know and love so much.

1. Make it a picture book. I think there is a need to emphasize the visual with an image-impeccable specimen like NLG; I will be posting on my choice, The Day the Babies Crawled Away, in a couple days.
2. Books can be on any theme although books that are about boys and girls or big sisters or new babies or HATS!! might be especially fun to track
3. Send me an email at motherwoman04 AT yahoo.ca by May 25th and I will post all the links for Nora's easy reading. Let's face it, at this point the little ones are makin' her tired all over.
4. Post the button on your own blog and link back in the post so we may effortlessly enact the more the merrier model.

When we're done we will have some lovely suggestions for trips to the library and at least one new book too. Knowing the Nonlinear Family is a fan of Powell's Books in Portland I think their inventory of extra-special books will help me supply a book drawn from among the titles posted.

And, an extra prize for the first poster to guess my 'tired all over' reference. (p-man is NOT eligible for that one.)

The Posts are coming in:

mama without instructions' Books for Babies
the host post The day the babies crawled away
the cheesefairy Babies for Nonlinear Girl
sarah got twins?
Slouching Mom Favorite
Mayberry Mom Gruffalo Twins
MadHatter Pure Poetry

... and we're getting lots of nice suggestions in the comments here too. Thanks everyone I think we are all excited about the 2! 2! who came in month 5! to make The Nonlinear quantity a new and exciting Prime number. And, I 'm just really hopeful this is going to lead to actual post from Nonlinear Papa. No pressure.

Looks can be everything

2009-05-17T21:24:00.003-07:00

So as someone who works for a school board I always worry about how we're doing. But after reading this I think we all might as well give up. The end is now.

In related news a seam came out of p-man's new pants a few weeks back. He took them back to the damn tailor's where he got them. They told him it would be 2 to 3 weeks. I flipped out. What are they doing??? Sending pants to Puerto Rico for repairs?? I was already to start the 100-mile haberdashery movement!... But then they returned the pants in good time.

Forget you Nick Cage

2009-05-13T21:05:00.011-07:00

I am convinced I don't speak about my son enough. His freakish capacity to operate an iPhone. His love for his sister. The way he passes up cartoons to make muffins. How he says "I sad about you at bedtime when you go out for dinner."

The resemblance he bears to Derek Zoolander

How often I wish that Paltrow woman hadn't scored the name Moses two months before he was born. His is a natural Moe.

Oh Baby!

I love you.

But I think you know that. Don't you?

Ya think, ma?

She writes, with three good posts stuck inside her and no sign of the energy to execute them.

Recommended title: Elsie Piddock Skips in Her Sleep

2009-05-08T21:29:00.009-07:00

Elsie Piddock skips in her sleep / illustrated by Charlotte Voake.
by Farjeon, Eleanor, 1881-1965

Candlewick, 2000.

Subjects Rope skipping -- Fiction ; Fairies -- Fiction ; England -- Fiction

ISBN: 0763601330 ; 0763607908

This simply and beautifully illustrated skipping story lays plain the history of the oligarchy's corruption of the natural world while remaining an exceptionally fun, albeit long, read. Try it! And, if you are a Canadian who has ever heard Alan Maitland read the Gift of the Magi or the Shepherd on CBC radio tell me, can you read it in your own voice? I simply seem to automatically channel the storytelling spirit of Fireside Al as my own version of a Sussexian accent.

ANdy SPANdy
Sugary CANdy
French Almond ROCK
Bread and buttER for your suppER's
All your mother's got.

-- for Elsie, a born skipper.

Ahem

2009-05-05T11:29:00.002-07:00

Wow I have a cough. I am all The Penguin and no Batgirl this week.

And, with the Swine Flu fears deep and rich in our busy busy city everyone stares, my co-workers are annoyed. At the risk of sounding trite I will say I have a whole new appreciation for gay men and people of colour. Can't remember the last time I had such power to make people uncomfortable simply by being; maybe never.

Go Canucks Go

2009-05-03T22:19:00.006-07:00

P-man's office gets the hockey seasons' tickets. I tried to go to a number of games this year with him but mostly stuff came up; sick kids or no babysitters. Too much disruption already in a week or some other mother-woman voodoo meant I would remain unaware of the true beauty of a Kyle Wellwood pass. But I went to the game last Thursday and it was really a good score (made even more so by the deplorable Vancouver loss yesterday). It was a great game.

But it was not for its greatness that I fought back tears. I have a tough time at playoff time because of John. John was my co-worker, fellow Library Clerk at a smallish City library branch 15 years ago. He was amazing. Well-read, kind to a FAULT, a gifted pianist who could knit beautifully. Boyish and dear, always a beautiful girlfriend not far off. John was my friend and an exceptionally special guy. Likely a baseline in my ongoing expectation that my work include lots of lovable aspects. We worked for a year and a half closely and remained friends after that. A happy time for sure those very early twenties of ours something embodied in our plastering the branch in Canucks paraphernalia in their race to the cup 1994. The whole city was as one at that time didn't matter a jot the little piece of this boy from small town New Brunswick and me in the scheme of it all. But I remember the fellowship in general and this demonstrable mischief of ours that made us more the pair we carried on as 35 hours a week, each week.

Made. And was. And after that. For after that year we had another and a few but within 5 years the cancer came. I looked into my nurse mother's eyes hoping for glimmer of hope when I reported its location and my dear friend's overall strength and remarkableness. Hoping in my self-absorbed way that my image of him would hold back a tide of fate and fact and outcome when cancer gets into your heart. Six weeks before the October would come when we would both turn thirty he was gone.

I always resented that loss. The loss of thirty. Why do I do that? I always felt it was something that would have made him a bit 'old enough' to have died. A bit 'old enough' to have counted as lived? Shame. What a nightmare of mistake that part of me inhabits. His was a life full and well-lived ten times over in less than thirty. I remember so much so what am I to say of years. A limerick contest he ran for the whole library system, paying for prizes himself just to do it while he lived in that little basement suite. The time he ran out of that basement suite to report the fire and free all the inhabitants from death or injury. The fact he began contributing to foster parents plan when he was about 19 long before globalization had cachet. Every kindness he showed me. The camaraderie of 25 back pages of the Vancouver Sun with Player of Day from the Vancouver Canucks stuck high in the windows, walls and on the book stacks of the library sticks me with his oddly over-sized head and bushy -- near Lorne Elliott -- curly hair til I cannot help but tear.

We have of late discussed with our kids the plan that we will do all we can to preserve our bodies and live as long as we are able. We promise to die a due and timely death once our dear ones are older themselves. I only wish as much had been so for John's folks.

In related news I ate popcorn at the game. I got quite a lot of it stuck in my teeth. Is it ok to pick your teeth at a hockey game? What about elsewhere? And, how do you pick your teeth?

That Darn Cloister!

2009-04-27T22:56:00.004-07:00

Mother.
Woman.

I think back on the night I chose that name sometimes. I was a very troubled working mom then. And, well, I still am.

I was coming from a meeting the other day, running crazy from one spot to another and thinking about how soft I am, a little afraid of my boss, worried that my performance would be sub-par again. Ah, ruminations on my careerly flibberty-gibbetness. I am a sexist twit. (or is that an 'a'?) I have always really felt that when it comes to work I don't know the concept of doing a woman's job. I instead to do a skirt-sporting, derivative version of a man's performance. I won't hide my measure of shame for that.

You know I come from a pretty soft space, terrified of(or otherwise distanced from) being one of the womyn. Being a mother has troubled that. I found in being a mother a fierceness and a duty so all-consuming it should be a highway to productivity and success. And, yet it suggests some other way, filled with an inexhaustible supply of authority, control, strength and intelligence, but only in that space apart.

What a rip.

The mystery of the inhibition

2009-04-23T21:39:00.001-07:00

People say kids are uninhibited. I don't know about that. They are into the naked. That much is true. Maybe uninhibited is a euphemism for naturalists?

I was at a high school today. There are uninhibited kids there. Taking up a world of space after a fashion and in attitude. Kids and teenagers are different.

Convention

2009-04-20T19:26:00.001-07:00

I was at a library conference last week.

In my extended absence I told my kids where I would be. I would be with other librarians talking about libraries and maybe what we could be doing that would be new or different.

I asked them what they thought libraries should do differently. Here are the 3 strategic directions for libraries by our Girl Friday and the Nuthatch.

1. Decorate!
2. Get a new sign. Bookshop AND library.
3. Give away toy dinosaurs

Oh Rob!

2009-04-18T20:56:00.007-07:00

A few weeks back MetroDad posted On racists, and such. I wanted to write something back about coming from a family of racists but instead I expressed my curiosity about the production value of the new MetroDad TV show!! Read all about it!! What it's gonna be like Little Mosque on the Prairie or Corner Gas? I wonder about things like this.

I appreciate what MD repeats from the gospel of Denis Leary, racism is taught. But how is it taught? That's what I want to know. This morning we crossed Oak street and a clutch of fellas were striding through the intersection in long coats and yarmulkas. I pointed them out to Miss Fancy pretty absentmindedly. I also said they were going to church. A Jewish kind of church called synagogue. I am ignorant as shit, eh? Why didn't I just say synagogue in the first place??? Part of me thinks being so totally self-centred about culture or religion is a way to teach racism. Idiot.

So 1.) What about you? Do you know how to not teach racism? and 2.) What do you think would be the best production value for MetroDad TV?

The Un-Anti-Not Very Epic of Considerable Renown

2009-04-09T22:08:00.005-07:00

I had great plans for this post - a cross between a traditional trickster tale and Homer's Odyssey, written in iambic pentameter, decorated with runic emblems drawn by real live faerie folk!

Instead, this: the homunculi recently re-scribed the three little pigs for us. I would like to think the difference in the telling cannot merely be ascribed to gender differences.

The miss included an impromptu passage wherein the wolf attempted to gain entry to the brick pig house by means of trickery: I have a pepperoni pizza for Mr. Pig! Didn't work. Boiled wolf. The end.

Then the boy, who apparently also enjoys tales of clever wolves and fiendish pigs, had a go. The pigs would not permit the wolf entry. The wolf had a key, he unlocked the lock, he opened the door! The pigs killed him with screwdrivers - one to the forehead, one to the eye. Goodbye, wolf!

The end.

A Cool Change

2009-04-05T22:30:00.006-07:00

1. Well pretty slight here for posts, must say its the quality time people. The weather has been warm, the garden needs putting in and my desk calendar is full, full, full. These seems to spell... Go out for dinner! PICNIC!!! Friends for supper! Friends for breakfast!

Friends. Yummier with maple syrup!

I am just waiting for the other shoe to drop but til then, know I wish I was here < more > but I'm up to my elbows in homemade playdough. Fakin' it til I make it.

2. I do have a fun little activity wherein I learn podcasting and you guys speak to me. Does anyone have experience podcasting? I am happy using Audacity for recording but I'm looking for the best way to 'host' an audio file. There seems to be two ways. Make it a movie and post or host it on media.org or something. Any advice would be most appreciated.

3. I have had a tough blogging week listening to one of my first dear blogger friends set to hang up the shingle.

Finale

And you know this really defines my time in the Navy too,
Syzygy60.

Manufacturing Uniqueness

2009-03-30T22:09:00.004-07:00

Those who know me, and this blog, know I hate making decisions. I am seriously the most anti-choice, pro-choice chick you will ever meet. The onslaught of choices for us since that first day of school sign up January has been the torture I should have expected. It all ran to today when I sat down to cry over the betrayal of the quality and rarity of my first-born girl in our ultimate decision.

My daughter is special... to me. She can read and draw the most beautiful pictures. She is a good sister and friend and she tells amazing stories. She does one of the best blowfish impressions I have ever seen. And, she's pretty.

In registering her for school I have had to take her specialness and plunk it into a system and I hate it. Part of it is my pointless railing against the dual identity I have for myself as a working mom; part of it is the angst and inescapable politics of choosing among the 100 plus schools I work with just one FOR ME! For HER!

It has been the longest first day of school in the history of motherhood. I broke down today with the weeps like so many before us as we watched them disappear behind a heavy bright red door. It was today and not in September that I felt the... Klunk, and the tweed tartan jumper is gone. Slam, and the pastel pink jeans take off at the behest of two keds. Swish and a pair of corduroys pad off into kindergarten land.

Into ~~the~~ an unknown.

I turned it all over a hundred times in a futile effort to make this unknown a known. More often than not we tried to make it what we knew, no matter how dissatisfied we'd been with our schools. We tried and we lost. It's like the feeling when you have to sneeze; when you have to sneeze and you're driving. You know that at some point you will involuntarily close your eyes and it will be over but there is both risk and culpability in that moment. God, I hope no one sees me.

This was the first time we were so fully on course to screwing up our kids. To seeing nothing in their future but an adaptation of our own past. We want to find a place in a system to ... wait for it ... nurture.... you had to know it was coming... nurture their uniqueness. It was hard for p-man and I not to 'emphasise academics' -- even at this young age. While we bear the academic unremarkableness of persons you might think had other cloaks, we don't really. We reflect on our own smart(ass) statuses as an insurance plan we need against society. Why not her? And, him?

Our kids are smart enough but they are also very friendly and pretty and all much that makes it likely for them to fit in in a way we know nothing about. The world is their oyster it seems by virtue of their being or their age don't ask me. All you can ask me is why the hell would you make choice for them based on your own experiences. Because that's something we really must answer for.

I telephoned this morning the second fancy school and said no thanks. The decision has been made, in September we will go to the local school. We will walk with neighbours and maybe we'll sign her up for Chinese school on Fridays. She will go to a plain child care program there run by the Y. She won't speak French or learn under much method. The child care doesn't have any leather furniture and it doesn't make its own paper. It will be plain.

And, she'll still be special, maybe more so.

ps. I think I have a fun post tomorrow

Clueless and Unilingual

2009-03-22T21:42:00.000-07:00

We bored ourselves all week with the wrangling for credibility on the subject of school. We've betrayed our country and turned down the French Immersion option. We've wandered from our cozy East side home to consider the bright lights of l'ecole cote d'ouest. We love the Montessori? We were offered a surprise quality new option in the neighbourhood last week.

Yay, back to the Olympic matrimonial sport... consensus.

I believe the last salient words in the decision-making process was "That's just crap. That's just a race for authenticity." Tell me how many parents do you think make a decision about what school to choose by flipping a coin?

Where I'm at

2009-03-20T14:32:00.001-07:00

It seems where others might count to ten, I need to count to one hundred.

It isn't that long a stay

2009-03-18T20:14:00.012-07:00

I remember entirely to clearly for my twenties the figure of Daniel looking for K that night. A massive raggedy twenty-two year old friend skittering about the building then looming, have you seen her? K's mother had just died -- suddenly and too young -- from a stroke. I don't remember the details, I remember the sight of Daniel; and, then those days later my friend and neighbour, K.

I know it is trite to lump all us mothers together but I guess won't resist the tritely-temptation tonight. Despite all the far, far, away about Natasha Richardson she seemed a very genuine, lovely person. I expected to hear from you, SB, on those two well named Neeson boys' mother as you're so often our Hollywood correspondent. (Things ok up North tonight?) I tend to over-analyse which pieces of news I follow and which I don't. I don't ever really read the celeb pages -- I didn't know Richardson and Neeson were a couple even. It stuck out how I couldn't ignore this one family's sad news, the last couple days I have carried a little hope for her in my heart that this story would turn.

Among all the accomplishments and accolades of a thoroughly likable star... Natasha Richardson, actor of stage and screen, Brit society luminary, wife of a Jedi... mother-woman. Prayers there.

News of the Day

2009-03-17T20:06:00.010-07:00

I could not believe it would come to this, but now it has. I worked in the library of our Vancouver newspapers not long ago and boy that used to be the plum job, though the rumblings were there back in '01. I spun my theories of how newspapers WOULD survive. It's like a Mr. Coffee and Starbucks, yes I can have a coffee at home but community is a craving. Society demands space for interchange, physical space, things like newspapers. While we all have moments when newspapers piss us off, that's always been the point.

I love me some technology but print newspapers are important: editorial positions, views simultaneously independent and intertwined, something of value in the composure of an information serving. It is the hallmark of the information overload we seem able to accept at this juncture that composition could become so endangered.

And, me? I have spent all day on the most tedious spreadsheet in the history of the world. Analysis of our school board digital subscriptions and what students are taking from the nearly 1 million database sessions executed in a quest for ~~knowledge~~ information

New Digital Learning and Teaching

2009-03-15T22:03:00.008-07:00

A few weeks ago I attended a brilliant presentation by Dr. Jason Ohler. Dr Ohler presented to us on the topic of new digital narratives and schooling in general. It was fantastic both professionally and personally.

The content was wide ranging but the core information was built around the place of storytelling in learning and the general delights of using technology to bring the stories home. Well, now don't we all know about that.

You can read all about the movement to banish the book reports and all other manner of reports in favor of the narrative at Dr. Ohler's site. But I will highlight the one video we have been watching over and over at our house that makes the best case for it. Hannah and the Fox is a 6 minute presentation by a 4th grader that she wrote and performed. These new artifacts of digital learning are not about the ability to demonstrate you can indent in Powerpoint, nope, you have to be able to write, compose, illustrate and expand information.

I think of this stuff and really feel I should be enjoying our transition to the school years a lot more.

How to animate a rolling ball is pretty awesome too. And, it's my means of celebrating Pi Day.

The Album

2009-03-12T22:05:00.002-07:00

Middle Cyclone people, git it.

Three Case Studies

2009-03-10T20:49:00.000-07:00

When I meet pleasant blogger families in person it never fails to blow me away how incredibly life-like the husbands are. I am surprised. Not that the writing makes spouses seem wooden or anything. Oh, dear. What am I saying? Maybe I have bought into the words of our enemies; we all blog because we live insular, repressed lives that prompt our ~~whining~~ writing.

Noooooo, she reports.
Au contraire.

In my case study of three I have now proved that we blog because we all have rakish, genius, articulate and engaging husbands. It's like how people say if your spouse dies and you have a good marriage, you'll marry again soon. That shit creeps me out but it's undeniable.

Me. I'm a dreamer. I'd like to feel we were out here writing away because we need each other. Too bad for me and my dreams.

Thanks for coming over Famille de Fromage-Tamano

Tell me do you blog, just to show off your husband?

Seven Minutes

2009-03-08T22:16:00.007-07:00

I saw a dear mama-friend rushing to the driver's seat Friday. I'm late. I'm late. she crowed. I'm just 30 minutes late all the time now. She explained. I could tell it really bothered her. And, I know it.

With two kids the job schedule is wingy, you are often late. And, you're pretty sure all the time they are talking behind your back. Everyone noticing you come a lot late and leave a little early. And, within the painful first months especially when you are 30 minutes late knowing about the by-choice bit. It is slow with the kids, certainly, but only about 23 minutes slow by their pace. There's always those seven minutes. The seven you owe the world but hoard instead. Just two for your own reluctant separation, in general, and the extra pieces of time at each brow. Just like her, my baby boy, my little girl and a small, guilt-filled lingering.

Happy International Women's Day, ladies.

Productivity Depression Over

2009-03-04T20:37:00.005-08:00

My brother is the best brother, really. He never gets mad at me. He comes to my house every other Christmas and helps make the finest roast turkeys. He hates cheapskates! And, he's smart. I have been pretty stressed about lots of things for a while. I believe, now, that I had been in a productivity depression. My brother gave me some excellent treatment for that, on top of his own freakish tone of calm intelligence, he got me some time to chat with Merlin Mann.

I watched this last week and you know if you are anything like me.. how's your inbox? Do you have a clear productivity construct to work within in a world that expects you to collaborate with 5 million people everyday? Do you feel the creativity but don't see it enough? If you answered yes to even one of these questions, you gotta know Merlin. Do you know Merlin?? If not maybe you should see this? It's a bit of a commitment but it is worth it. (For a Merlin tasting try 5ives)

And how awesome is it that I got a chat with Merlin for Christmas from my brother. What might you say or ask?

Social Engineering: Exercise 1

2009-03-03T19:25:00.007-08:00

I have had my little brushes with social engineering as a parent. Playdates gone bad, pre-school selection, cautionary tales, I've seen my share, and now this. We have heard back on school. The community school looked good... but... we have also been offered a spot at the French Immersion school.

Shit. I'm in charge again. Unhelpful fates.

The buck needs stopping and I'm riddled with holes. Elitist? Nicer class sizes? Close-by? Better after-school care? Pros and cons are pointless and aimless. Gonna have to decide.

About all I've learned in this fretting is what school is not. I probably began worrying what kids we would be sending her to learn with, and what teachers might be like -- cause yes I am a self-serving bitch. The stress of making a perfect choice of a place where she will be safe was my off-base pre-occupation. School is not custodial. Daycare is custodial but school ain't. At daycare there are 25 kids and 3 to 4 'teachers'. At school there are 18 to 21 kids and 1 teacher. In the school library she will chose books I will never see. She will build friendships that will annoy us; but what of it? She will be ever, even, more her own.

School is independence and I need to find the best place for my kid to be independent. The best place will be where I am sure I will support her well when she has troubles. And, there will be trouble sometimes. It is the path to independence after all and those usually have wars. I mean we can't all be Malta! I need to find a piece of schooling, that microcosm of society, that offers happiness, community and a rich learning environment AND THEN WE HAVE TO SUPPLEMENT THAT.

It is tough choosing a school. (Especially, she whinges on, after a year when I feel I have had to make too many major choice too often.) It seems so surely life-changing. But it isn't, is it?

ps. I have noticed that choosing a school is a lot like having a newborn baby. If you haven't been here already just wait for it... Oh the assvice! harsh.

Bad Parenting Confessional: Time Off

2009-03-01T14:59:00.007-08:00

At Christmas I was very sick. I was home a lot for the first time since I'd re-started working. It hurt a lot. Not so much the hurling and stomach cramps but rather the time passing. The time with my dear ones. Owie. I secretly set to mind to avoid them.

I haven't taken time off since I started working. I'd scoff and explain how the kids just get ornery and refuse to go back to daycare when I take too much vacation. But how much of that is true? More likely it's me.

It's sort of like a breakup. After all that time together I've now torn off the bandaid. Just blenderize the metaphors and don't look back. I am not with them so much late and soon. Better to keep it way; a few too many moments and I awash in most un-motherful vacilation, attention-seeking and ambiguity.

But then there are times like these, a Friday off and a little vacation. We went away the three of us. It was little like I thought it would be.

And, there isn't that just nothing like the excellent post I clearly conceived 'round midnight last night; my arms wrapped around Monday's child in the dark of his Uncle's house?

Sometimes

2009-02-25T21:09:00.004-08:00

Sometimes I wonder if everyone loves wind chimes. Or if somebody out there is quite annoyed.

The Careerist

2009-02-23T20:19:00.003-08:00

My job has its drawbacks, mountains of endless, unachievable objectives, surly co-workers and customers, low-grade professional rep building and the whole sudden fickle interpretations of my rights to my position, et cetera. But you know, when push comes to shove I am fond of the old gal. The cute corner office, the co-workers and customers (even when they are surly), the crazy 'just-do-it' pace of it all, the way they call me a goddess... and of course the children.

When I faced the option of leaving the my schools job I had to admit that going pretty much anywhere else would comparatively, completely, fry the social payoff I get. I have drunk the Oprah kool-aid, teachers are awesome! Working to support teaching and learning in a very tangible and active way has been the most rewarding work I have ever done, and the most maddening. Had to get that out.

When faced with the option of leaving the job I once again retreated to the math. There must be some perfect mix of time off I can set up with my banked vacation and gratuity time. They'll be flexible. I have heard about the mania for 'retention' and how employers accommodate really valued employees when asked. Hey, maybe I'm a valued employee.

Insert fading of the flex schedule fantasy... we have all heard so much about.

I think for the first few months of my return to work I was in denial. Sure, I had seen them out there, the working parents, but in the near 5 years before I was out/in/out so fast I didn't identify with them. Shopping at Safeway all hours of the night... taking kids along to catch more time with them... microwaving all the foods... and, of course, the requisite crying in the car. Those things will happen.

But to quit, to bail on work I want to do, to just take any job wasn't the cure I had plotted. How long do you think it would take till there would be more, if different, tears? And, those things matter. I was told by an older colleague that her generation was more willing to sacrifice things for their families than us parents today. I wonder a lot about that. I will, and do, ask myself everyday if I am unwilling to sacrifice myself enough. But work is work, mine with some rewards, sure, but still fundamentally toil. I'm not on a daypass from motherhood.

Let me put it this way, just because I consider work/life balance a misnomer doesn't mean my work is my life.

There is no -- such thing as -- Plan B

2009-02-19T20:08:00.006-08:00

I was offered a new job last week. And, I did not take it.

There is pretty large part of me that feels like a rotten mother to have taken a pass on a less stressful part-time job. After what I said I should have been grabbed it?

A little earlier than that post I was in conversation with a dad of a young child who outlined how his partner was at home since she was not, and I quote, a careerist. What the hell is that? A careerist? I got non-careerist envy right away. You know me, who can't quite hunt down a job with twelve resumes and a nanny. Me, who has only worked one of the last 4 years, well, now one and a half. Please don't get me wrong I'm not out to slag dads for their perceptions of 'careerism'.

I told the folks who'd offered me the job the truth. I am committed to things I just can't depart right now. So when? The hidden gift of the position was that it was a 3 year term. It made me try hard to picture where I need to be in 2012. I realize now that I really have a pile to sort out over the next 3 years. I am not sure where I need to go but at least I have a better idea of how long it might take me. Trying to transition to tomorrow in time for yesterday had been entirely soul-sucking.

I remain, yours, until after the revolution, Mo-wo

The underwear holiday

2009-02-15T19:52:00.005-08:00

Valentine's Day is considered the underwear holiday around here. We all get new underwear and this year, a repeat from two years ago -- different kid -- , my son lost his diapers/diapering.

Done babies.
Done diapers.

I should be happy instead.. I just feel old, eh? Well, perhaps the nuthatch will wet the bed again tonight and then I'll at least have a few more months of Huggies overnights on which I might hang my fleeting youth.

La La La

2009-02-13T20:02:00.002-08:00

I have learned. That when it comes to music I will inevitably love any album for which I can learn all of the words. I appreciate the unsnobbiness of me, a lot, sometimes.

Love is...

2009-02-12T22:16:00.000-08:00

“Love is omni-inclusive, progressively exquisite, understanding and tender and compassionately attuned to other than self.” – Intuition, R. Buckminster Fuller

Happy Valentine's Day to all my progressively exquisite friends

Dry eye

2009-02-08T21:13:00.006-08:00

A friend has a little baby, to go with her big one.

I remember what that's like. I remember for example begging to drive. Gawd just let me look in the distance. Just let me look anywhere than this 4 foot loop of me to toddler, to boob or hip, to toddler's danger zone to baby drop zone, and back and back and back. My corneas drying out from watchfulness.

I remember the desire for aloneness and the hydration through the previously unknown extremities of my eyeballs that would elude me. The moments to look away from them and see in front of me.

I have forgotten a lot of it, it's true. But it's funny what I remember.

Poor Materialist

2009-02-08T18:20:00.013-08:00

I went shopping today. Ah, dismay.

Don't get me wrong. I bought stuff. Good sales, new coat 70% off, shirts, child garb. I even stopped by the jewelers to check out how much replacing what I've lost would cost. Owie.

I don't know if I will replace it. Could I face losing another expensive little thing? I can't say I am anti-materialist but I am a poor materialist. I suck at owning things. My husband is good enough to say I keep track what is important but it fails to excuse what slips through my fingers.

Consider my record of losing little things others would meticulously track. The very first 'real' jewelry I got, that star sapphire ring. How about the vintage rhinestone cuff bracelet my Mom had kept across two continents and 20 years you know the one I didn't even ask to borrow. Then my principal MIA the fine silver bracelet bought to celebrate my first performance pushing a human out of my body. I am a woman letting herself go in all the stuff I don't mind while conducting this life.

Now, I have the operations manual for every kettle I have ever owned. I can produce the minutes of a strata council meeting I attended 14 years ago. Downstairs find a photo of a friend from grade 6 who's name escapes me. I have a Tube pass from London vintage 1987; in my hope chest you'll find a salt shaker and an empty mickey from a tequila adventure at Spanish Banks one year later. How can I justify that stuff? Do I have no sense of value? There seems to be some whiff of a vacuous socialism on my part here. In a manner I do not really want to be fully associated with the abundance I enjoy. But at this advanced age it seems, frankly, stupid.

Ruminations like these often validate my career history in libraries and museums. I really do like things but it seems too much responsibility for me to own them myself. I wonder if I can solve my problem by changing scale maybe I should go out and buy a nice new suit 'at regular price' for once. Or perhaps we will buy a dining table for the first time in our lives instead of relying on hand-me-downs. It would be pretty hard to misplace those!

What do you think my problem is? If you have precious odd item archives yourself? do tell.

ps.. for the source of that darling image at the top of this post you gotta check out belle and boo. Thank-you Rachel Loves. Which reminds me we all have to talk about how to help save handmade soon... You won't believe what CPSIA means for libraries!

Lemming

2009-02-04T20:20:00.003-08:00

Yeah, I'm in.

Off to the kitchen.

*****

And for the uniformed, after a time away back on the blogroll miles, etc.

Ring of Truth

2009-02-02T19:57:00.011-08:00

A long time ago a young man went to the bank and cashed that bond from grandma. The store was on Granville Street and they'd been there together. You would have thought the bond would cover it but no the deal could only be done after he crawled past the mushrooms growing in the floor of the Camaro to find those last few dollars among the spare change slipped beneath the bucket seats.

Credit cards were something unknown.

Almost immediately he went to his girlfriend to ask she excuse herself from her 4th floor office. She scowled harshly and they took the ride down in the freight elevator. "What do you need money?", she asked.

Out came that ring. You asked me to marry you.

In that moment you shattered the myth that I'm the sensitive one. A good start to this marriage, I'd say. That you would transform that bitchy girlfriend into your wife is always with me, I know you didn't know that. I'm not one to say marrying you has made me feel like the most beautiful girl in the world, thank god. Marrying you gives me what I need, counterpoint. The opportunity with each day to save myself from myself.

I am one to put on airs, for sure. Sensitivity, intellect, responsibility. All those years ago I chose a diamond ring in an antique shop that I thought was a good choice. I loved it, especially that first day, but I never wore it. It seems diamonds are something I admire but not something I wear. A few weeks ago I checked the black velvet box and it wasn't there. I can't remember when I last had it but despite that I'd say I'm heartbroken. It screams callousness to have lost track of something most women guard with their lives. It saddens me to be without this piece of that day. As a talisman of lives together I most comfortably sit, instead, adorned only by the plainer gold band from our wedding day. But I'll keep looking as, apparently, I just never seem to know where things turn up.

Asynchronicity

2009-01-28T19:59:00.003-08:00

At times in my job I get steeped in the ~~rabble~~ babble of new media. Worse yet new media and youth. Woefully unqualified for this my mind will get spinning, metaphor upon simile upon paradox. All to make imaginable, dare I say do-able, some response from our school system to what all this is. I hope we might offer something a smidge better than cobbling together.

Telling myself the more things change [textme, pod, iPhone, whatever] the more they stay the same.

But, seriously, a woman just walked down my street in a microfibre jumpsuit carrying two plastic bags on a stick à la :

Modernity, go figure.

52 Reasons: Tipping Point

2009-01-26T20:08:00.000-08:00

I feel the tipping point. In the mire of embarrassment when any unfriendliness emanates from my kid. Cowering in the face of a hit or shove. I am, as they say, out of excuses. Save one..

Blame the mother. I mean I do.

I have seriously thought, and threatened, to stop going out with them to save the double worries of their weaknesses and mine. The punishing rancour of my self-consciousness knows only one remedy. More time, more of MY parenting. Brute force I get; balance has a nuance that fails me. I am no Ace. No easy-winner. I come from a long, long, long line of workhorses. Participant performers with nothing to show for their days but the comfort of a job done. Hey, I resent power steering.

It's been more than six months hard labour home/work. The jury is in, I am not up to full time. I need to put every iota of brain power I have into this family life. Working my goals AND coming up with a melodious, nutritious menu plan for the week is more than I can offer this world.

Plan B here we come.

The Long Way Home

2009-01-24T08:04:00.009-08:00

The extended Wo family is close by. Once a year we drive 5 or 6 hours to see my MIL but apart from that I only have to deal with 'are we there yet?' over a span of 20-40 minutes.

Next week one of my best friends will journey home to see her family 5260 miles away. Since her husband just started a new job he will not be going along. I wish I could go with her and help with her 3 year old boy and one year old girl. Bless 'er my friend's sister has come to help her travel east, she'll be solo west. That is a long trip.

Duo, or especially solo, there is dread. I mean it doesn't matter if you have a kid "disconnect" in flight for 20 minutes or 2 hours, it can be dreadful. All you can do is your best, right? Gather some tools, be prepared, spin the cylinder of cabin-pressured humanity and live to tell the tale. I remember being a fellow passenger with little people back when I had a travel-life. If your kid is mostly behaved and you pay attention you are a great traveling parent. No one expects 10 out of 10; most cabin mates are realistic.

I wish I could help more than a sticker book and some understanding. The librarian in me is out for some intel and info, too. What is this blog for? Please share with me -- and my friend -- any tips, tricks and warnings you can. Activities, must pack toys, divine distractions, breathing techniques, what-have-you...

Bon Voyage, J. I am so happy for you and your family that you will all be together SOON. Here's hoping it's soon enough.

Singer Sewing Machine

2009-01-21T21:25:00.001-08:00

In my garage is the now broken down Singer Sewing Machine table. You likely know these well, they lurk in the corners of many homes for reasons only slightly unique to each owner. Mine is a hand me down from my great aunt another one of the antique items acquired through the Wood Furniture refugee program p-man and I have run since our early 20's. We never met a piece of wood furniture that we could let go to goodwill; not even the ones we really don't need.**

So, I had the treadle sewing machine. About 8 years ago I also had a super cute blueberry iMac, one of those first generation thingys. I thought the sewing machine cabinet would be perfect as a computer desk. I got some keyboard glides and did a conversion. After numerous arguments with my Dad about how I should be doing it I got it done. Out came that machine and on went my new INTERNET machine. I wrote my Masters at that desk, my first website, I trafficked in serious amounts of email and got ready to blog from there, I figure.

I thought about it then -- and still -- how I didn't convert much. The easy transition 19th century sewing machine for 21st century portal; a machine that enables, a new opportunity for independence and intention. I felt the connection over time to my aunties and grandmas who worked at the many many identical veneer table tops night and day. I expected the time they would have spent at that appliance would have been quite comparable to the time I spend at the interface, but who knows. I feel still some romance for this now broken down symbol of womanly enterprise, its resonance of solitary exertions with bounteous outcomes.

P-man observed the table's surplus status in the recent inventory of the wooden unpurposed we shelter. He thinks we should get rid of it. It's true I could get rid of it now but part of me really hopes we don't actually know how to throw out furniture.

**I have always wanted to take the tv parts out of our antique tv set and put in a goldfish aquarium.

Bad Parenting Confessional: Madonna? or Whiner?

2009-01-19T14:31:00.009-08:00

Work is busy. Long days, overtime, the weekend, et cetera. Last week I worked late while my sniffling "how ill is she??" child shared a sleepover with her brother at the grandparents place. I called to say good night. There were tears.

????

Usually, I am absolute wallpaper to the grandparents. If there is little to be said for the predictability of kids; let's say that goes double for sick kids. In the subsequent hour I did my mind numbing overtime work up to my armpits of the image of my daughter weeping on the phone. I AM evil career woman!!!

Then just to torture myself I followed up with p-man, made my confession. Of course at that point I got the report about his delightful tear-free phone call. How 'Hi Daddy' sounded and what sort of movie and flavour of ice cream she was fully ensconced in about 10 minutes after I had called.

Duh!

Last night I grappled with how to take a second day off in a month for family illness. Now it is the nuthatch puking and spiking a fever. Work is a mess. I have a lot of customers on call-back queue and I know there are more coming. I wrote an appropriate note to my department at 10:30pm and updated my voice mail. No big deal. Then I wrote a note to my customer group. IDIOT! I actually mentioned in my message to more than 150 people that I would be away because my kids are sick (of course I put it in the form of a cute segue, but still.) So don't you know I am now obsessing** about being 'unprofessional' now.

Fool.

I have heard a lot from my female colleagues since I have gone back to work about how it was for them. Note many of these colleagues might be 10 to 15 years older than me and quite a few no longer have kids at home. They scoff at the cases of today's working mothers who ~~whine~~ even mention 'I have small children'.... it offends them. (Do they mean me?) They report how when they were working -- back then -- you never mentioned the children. I balk, internally. I hesitate to remind them that few of them worked at all before their children went to school; whereas my kids are only 2 and 4. I get confused listening to their machismo while recognizing them as classic Women's Libbers, the very ones who fought for my mat leave rights. Seems sad?/odd?/[insert right word] that they are disdainful of the fulsome dialogues of family and the workplace in (Canada) in 2009, more so than the men with whom I work... unless something goes on behind my back.

Last year when I was negotiating a return to work I had a long email exchange with my lady boss at the time, she was just of those types, boomer single mom of two. I was jumping through hoops and doing some scheduling wrangling. In the end she did help me out. More than the practical help I appreciate a comment made in the closing on one of her email messages. What she said was I 'having a family and working is complicated'. I think maybe that is one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

**Yes I know, obessing, is crap but did I mention I'm tired. There's your answer.

Switchboard: A wordy lack of commentary

2009-01-12T20:40:00.009-08:00

It's one of those days. Some harsh technical difficulties at work, I ducked in last night around 10pm to work to 11. Came home only to stay up all together too late. Today I was running around like a chicken with me head cut off. I have to put a stitch in the skirt the Girl Friday wants to wear tomorrow.

I am just.. zzzzz.

Not enough in me to comment in a spot where I want to see if L. can give away her rocking chair. While almost awash in the ease of the white comment boxes proffered by the cheesefairy; wanting to say for the 100th time my greatest regret about getting my job back is losing 45 playdates with her, alas, still... no comment. A smidge inadequate to respond to the profundity of perspective from bon ; would it fit to say 'his eyebrows are AWESOME!' ??? Sighing at the loss of another four weeks passed and not a just post in me. Can I add, posted at 4am???? Man, what are you on lady??? And, did you share it with Subspace Beacon so she could beat out Entertainment tonight with this post?

I do have one comment in me tonight, it will go to Alberta via the Life of Pie Parkway. And I mean the LADY not the looming near-republic east of here. I got something because, hey, this is fun to do.

Then back to zzzzz. And, I'm not even pregnant at all, let alone with twins!

...Hard on the heels of delurker day, I'm done.

On Con Moms and Non-Confidence

2009-01-07T15:43:00.007-08:00

Last year when I was looking for work, and not finding it, I had some blue days. I was sad, and I was weak.

In one 'dust me off' telephone call with my mother the matter of confidence arose. I admitted that my confidence was eroded. I admitted that eroded confidence = near depression for me. My mother pointed out that when it came to confidence forget it. Confidence simply was not "what was going on with me". Non-confidence was the new way of the world for me and I better figure that out.

What she explained is that parenting, or did she say MOTHERING, is an antithesis to confidence. "Give it a rest" being her stalwart message at my life of whining, this time I heard the ring-a-ding-ding of truth big time. "She is right!", I thought. Looking after the kids is completely at odds with my old constructions of confidence. There were facts where now there are feelings. There were numbers and shares where now there are bottomless needs and illusions of fairness. It's all a crap-shoot. Every breath I take, every move I make. I am just making it all up. I DON'T KNOW. Yet, everyday the shining faces look upward thinking I do. What was my old tagline? "Yeah, right, whatever you wanna tell yourself, Mother-Woman." Do the kids know its a confidence GAME?

And, with that advice/realisation I entered what I call my parenting repose. Ahh... or is that Ohm? And there you have it people, non-confidence, not just for Stephen Harper, anymore.

I don't know extends to... Does kitty look ok, here?

Waitlist

2009-01-04T20:25:00.004-08:00

Tomorrow morning I will be lining up to get my kid into a 'good school'. Jan 5 is the first day of applications for the September '09 Kindergarten year and that's where we're at.

After much discussion we are about 80% sure that we'll send our kid to the standard down the road public school but in the meanwhile we need to play along with all our friends and neighbours and a good chunk of class politics, too. Considering everything I need to make applications for 6 schools: the two public montessori school lotteries; two french immersion; our local school (that tends not to have a waitlist so yeah) and a second local school that's considered 'better' than our actual catchment school. The latter school is in fact closer to our house by .1 of a kilometer. I repeat 6 schools! Hey I could make it 8 but I cut-back. Consider me suddenly some hyper-social-engineering, self-centered freak-show parent. A garden variety busy-body and worrier I despised, well, a little over a fortnight ago.

I wish I could enjoy the pride of my daughter being such a big girl now, the twinklings of independence to come but no, screw that. I am newly immersed in a forest of anxieties about making the right choice for my kid. I mean why are half the families around here sending their kids to French immersion? ESL-paranoia. If they go to French immersion they won't have immigrant kids holding their kids back! Yeah, what a crock -- then on the flip side my daughter actually likes what French language learning she's had so far so fingers crossed we win a lottery space for that option!! Montessori? Well that's a similar thing, get my kid out of the regular school please I am afraid of the ordinary????

The most time sensitive application I have to make is for the school nearest our house. I will honestly be standing there begging them to timestamp my submission all the while elbowing three other dear mothers of my daughter's dear friends to do it. While we sort of prefer this school location-wise it would be a lie to not also acknowledge our perception that this is a better class of school, more English speakers, a better balance of ethnic groups, fewer special needs kids. It's shameful all the euphemisms. Hello, this is PUBLIC school, don't we want our kids to learn how to operate, you know, IN PUBLIC??

My daughter is a sweet girl. She's clever enough by half. I think a lot about what she might do with her life and thus I will comb all the options here. But seriously, wtf??? What I want most is that when she goes to school next September she is among friends. That she will go to a school with a few good friends she knows and that she can build from that community base to the bigger, and better, community base school offers. For a lot of reasons it is becoming freakin' complicated to achieve that.

I really hate anything that requires me to give a crap about how my friends choose to run their families. Know what I mean?

ps.. I would prefer there wasn't a lot of driving involved to do that either.

This blog sucks

2009-01-02T14:21:00.000-08:00

I was reading crib chronicles with mouth agape, as usual. Bon can really, really write, eh? The post was as charming as many found there but annoying no end in its closing inquiry. "What do you do when the words don't come?"

Well. You know... I write anyway.

I would estimate that the words stopped coming about a year and half ago. What did I say, twice the children, half the blog?? p-man has been good to the change but me, well obviously, not. I publish, and perish, weekly. I can crank out some'how mommy blogger can I get??' post just to burn a few pixels that I, what?, feel I'm entitled to at my advanced age of bloggery.

I don't know how to stop.

But on the other hand. Who cares? It's just an eency-weency blog. I need to keep my launch pad to the blogroll of worth-whiles. I need to keep only a very tiny persona alive enough to give meaning to the real work to be done, commenting. Just a bit of texture when the comment is labeled, mo-wo.

And, on the third hand it's the nature of the thing maybe? The mother-woman in it all? Look at my kids, they're big. We are milestone-less. The good times are gone, when to wean? the wonderment of the aquarium, the charms of mocking my own blogging have all passed me by. Poignancy is OVER. And, while the dimming might fell greater blogs than this I persist.

Many times I've thought, what if my mother knew I had this blog? Would she be proud? Inside, all the while, I know what... she'd laugh. Well not to my face, but behind my back. She would look at all the typing and fury and scoff. It's my mom. That's where I come from, no? "What makes her think it's worth talking about??", my mom would think, I think. Parenting? You just do it. Make it up as best you can. Put yourself out there. Let the buck stop with you and, then, let it stop there. Too abstract.

For now I keep thinking of Gore Vidal. Did you see him on US Election night? The BBC used him as a pundit. At closing the panel just laughed their asses off. What was up with Gore Vidal?? Who booked him? Did he know what he was talking about, at all? Was it the dementia? I want to be Gore Vidal. I want to still show up, in a really fantastic cravat and everything. Show up and not care if I suck. I know it's Barack's night.

When I was having my words I didn't know bon. The wonder that is the cheesefairy eluded me. Relatively it was bleak. I had no Mad Hatter and we spent too much time thinking about the sweetjuniper people. Now is a good time; no matter how badly I write, nor how often. I know I have my moments, and I still get those random comments from complete fly-by's that I know might make it worth it, some 'you tell it like it is' endearments. But, they don't make the persistence of unexpurgated drek at this url worth it. The only thing that makes it worth it is the trip to all of you to see good work now. You know who you are.

Hours of Entertainment

2008-12-31T20:23:00.005-08:00

In our bundles we have our own genius to thank for hours of fun. Bath will do who needs the pool?

'Til the wii years ahead, ahhhhhh. Happy New Year everyone. Many blessings come.

Update

2008-12-26T14:26:00.003-08:00

So I didn't have to do much on account of my illness. My brother and spouse made that finest of bacon-barded birds we all perfected in '04. I had a sliver.

Now back to the miso soup, god bless it.

And, on to Boxing day the day I open my presents.

And then?

2008-12-24T08:46:00.003-08:00

Getting ready for the big holiday this year has been fun. One foot in front of the other..

Have the big party...
And then?

Get presents...
And then?

Build kids project presents? (yay p-man!!)
And then?

Plan dinner...
And then?

Run out of time, things overlapping, run out of time, running out of time....
And then?

Last minute shopping, mo-wo not finished project..
And then?

Record breaking Vancouver snowfalls...
And then?

Get flu...
And then?

~~Make Christmas dinner~~... TBA

We go into tomorrow looking at what matters and what does not. It is a happy time in fact all buried in the snow, relying on each other and keeping it simple. From there I wish you all a very happy, fun, healthy and festive holiday time.

And then?

Recommended title: Sleeping Dragons All Around

2008-12-15T22:47:00.007-08:00

Sleeping dragons all around / Sheree Fitch.
Doubleday Canada, 1989.
Subjects: Dragons -- Fiction ; Bedtime -- Fiction ; Stories in rhyme
ISBN:0385251653; 0385253982 (pbk.)

Canadian book publishing is a fickle thing. Canadian childrens' book publishing perhaps more so.

As you can imagine I am a pretty avid library user but some books I just HAVE TO OWN. And Sleeping Dragons All Around, by Sheree Fitch, is one such book. We discovered it at the library and have blessed the fine free status of Vancouver children for two years. I have sought to buy it new and sat on the out of stock lists. I have scrounged and begged for used copies. I was prepared to pay the exorbitant 'rare' book price this MUST have was garnering.

This past school libraries day I read this poetic chronicle of dragons from Priscilla in pink pantaloons through Ching-Chung, Lindy Lean and all the rest to two classes of Vancouver kids -- always a winner. As recent as this morning I was angling to have the school library I was visiting rank their copy 'discard' so I could, quite shamelessly, ferret away with the product for myself.

Then tonight I learn -- oh, bonnie day! A reprint will be run for the 20th Anniversary of Sleeping Dragons, January 2009. Here's hoping it will be a bit hit, again! And, if you prefer to just check it out on the library shelf off you go.

ps. Do investigate my source here, Just one more book, a bright new podcast source for m'self.

House Party

2008-12-11T20:08:00.008-08:00

There was a time when the coming weekend meant planning the food and doing the booze run. I was cavalier about the number of people I invited over and I got a bit of rush from the impending volume. Always invite the neighbours, and who's to mind?? My key concerns might be how much my place would get trashed, the smells, the amount of sticky to be faced through my Sunday morning hangover. Of course, I might fret -- a tad -- about who might snub whom and if everyone would get along but I always felt a well-planned level of debauchery would smooth those things over.

THOSE TIMES HAVE COME AGAIN!

House party this weekend, Chez Wo. More than 60 people and I think nearly 30 of them are under 5! Replace somethin's with gingerbread add enough wine/cheese for grownups and set out the lines of smarties, that's a party. Call me.

Woman Mother

2008-12-09T21:08:00.004-08:00

When I started this blog it was to attune the mother in the woman. Three years hence I am trying to reorient the woman in this mother.

As I crammed my wobbly ass into pants today I reflected on a bloody difficult year for both iterations. The off-putting nature of post-babydom. The loss of job, take in of nanny. Loss of nanny, take in of job. The full-time schema and all. It is officially too much for me.

The 'life'. It's too much.

I mutter, mutter and rail. Placating with those cheese crackers and an onslaught of ice cream. My ass telling the story words evade. Little to help me tell self-loathing to bugger off -- instead I beckon. So Sage, since you asked, I guess that's what I'll think of'08; transitions, lack of control and fresh starts that slink off, more suitable for a younger self.

The Santa 'Script

2008-12-05T22:51:00.005-08:00

Oh Good Evening, my name is Tyrone. I am an elf calling on behalf of Santa. May I speak with the under fives in the house?

First question.

Have you been naughty or have you been nice?

Do you have regular stocking or one of those homemade kinds?
What are the rough dimensions of your stocking?

This year you can choose from:
Doll House
Play tent
Scooter
or
New Kite
Which is your first choice for a Christmas present?

Will you share with your brother/sister?

Which of the following choices would you also like for Christmas?
Puzzles?
Blocks?
Legos

Do you believe he knows when you are awake? Yes/no

Should Santa expect cookies at your location? Yes/no

Ok that's it. I have updated the database with all your info for this Christmas. Have a good time.

Would you like to be entered in our draw for a follow up visit from the Sugar Plum Fairy.

Of course you would.

Amazing elf picture from here.

What is the Internet for?

2008-12-02T20:53:00.002-08:00

I was at a digitization symposium all day. My head hurts.

Because really... This is so totally where the Internet is at, brother.

aaaawesoooommmme!

Let them eat change

2008-11-30T21:46:00.009-08:00

A little girl on the corner of Robson and Howe reaches for her pocket.

Mommy, I want to give.

It was my little girl. He was a youngish fella in a wheelchair, cap in hand friendly on a soggy Vancouver Sunday. Even friendlier when she dropped in the change. A whole dollar was what she chose, though I suggested a jingle-jangle quarter; she really doesn't know the difference.

Warm smiles among us all. A lovely end to a spend-free trip downtown thinking about what, if any, shopping we might do this Christmas. A happy day only a bit consciously carefree.

First thing we'd packed our glorious van with cast-offs from the kids closets -- to give. Both of us forcedly explaining how we must share what we no longer need with those who can use it; strangers. Our tongues tripping on "what is poor?" We headed for the poorest neighbourhood in Canada, the downtown eastside.

Ah my dear conscience and child conspire. They prick the awkwardness of the morning magnanimity showing it too easy. And, as always for us much too much is too easy. I know the downtown eastside, do NOT bring your pity. They are fierce, smashed to smitherines, yes, but not to be pitied. How dare I? There are the poor I locate in a wave of a hand for my kids. Over there at this drop-in give them three bags of hand-me-downs. Downs.

I was never a bright child about the pains of class. I am a true Canadian in that regard, hiding behind the myth of our classlessness. I don't know that my ignorance was only bad, though. Thankful am I for that full array of friends I had at my mixed-up small public school. They stay with me, the ease I have citywide for one. The fact that, like my girl today, I don't fear the poor or reel from those who might stand for 'other.' In my father's house given a choice between a filthy beggar and a pompous ass we would always choose the former. I know I am just a grandpa away myself.

In my life the regret for oversimplifying it all did come. When I had to pay my own way I started to really get it. It would echo to me. Friends without, the women at risk. The horror in my mother's voice when my playmate's poorer mother came down with Multiple Sclerosis. The agonies she must have truly had, especially as she was the breadwinner to a nearly dead-beat dad. I am ashamed of the obliviousness. But I will not wallow in it. I cringe at the nobility made of savages no matter how articulate the class commentary.

People. Not class. People being valued not weighed. So hard to lay plain.

The poor they might be on my street. Our neighbours hold secrets I cannot explain away with the convenience of heroin and alcohol, the things I called 'poisons' for the comprehension of my four-year old. Our trip downtown this morning was an intersection with the 'easy poor'. The ones we cannot legislate away or be more taxed to catch in a safety net. What about the other ones, the downtrodden, might be strived for? What will I do for them? Something trickier than unloading my old baby blankets? Any real change?

I don't often give to panhandlers and somehow I will find a way to explain that to the girl but today it sat well. All the better for the attention it put on how complicated all we come to know must be. All the better for the pressure it placed on us not just to know but to share... and to give. Seriously.