Month: February 2006

There is, I have recently discovered, an advantage to a minus 33C (minus 27.4F) windchill.

When you find yourself catastrophically pushed beyond your ability to cope with the relentless pressures of work and you find yourself melting down rather spectacularly, you can go for a walk outside and blame your streaming cheeks, running nose and glowing red eyes on the wind.

Our grocery store has a dry cleaner, a café, a tobacconist and a women’s gym on site. They have a portrait studio as well.

Each time I’m in there, which is about three times a week, I stand in the checkout line and admire the oversized portraits of cheeky babies posed with adorable props – fluffy white teddy bears, giant daisies, stainless steel tubs. And I look at those pictures and wonder why I never get around to getting professional portraits done of our boys.

My sister-in-law brings my 14-month old nephew in to her local version of the same grocery-store/portrait studio every few months, and we have a series of exquisite photos of him, from sleeping peacefully on a pillow (barely a days hours old) to sitting proudly on a rocking chair (his one-year-old portraits.)

One day, all the tumblers clicked into place, and I had an epiphany. My boys are plenty photogenic. They are growing like weeds. They have sweet dispositions and are natural hams. We are in the grocery store every two days anyway – while we’re in there, we should get some portraits done! (cue ominous music)

For weeks, I was excited. Despite a complete lack of foresight on my part, the portrait sitting happened be the week before my mother’s birthday. What grandmother wouldn’t love a framed 8×10 of her beauties as a gift?

I spent idle hours minutes considering which outfits the boys should wear. I made sure all the laundry was done so we would have my first choices plus full back-up outfits to wear. The day of the sitting, I waited until 15 minutes before we went out the door to dress them, to avoid any potential unpleasantness with half-chewed goldfish or mashed-banana bits. We made it to the grocery store with just the perfect amount of time to spare – not late enough to be frazzled, not early enough to have to spend excessive effort corralling idle preschoolers.

And that’s when the dream of the perfect family portrait began to fade away like raw images exposed to bright sunlight.

The session before ours ran late, so we waited in an alcove in tantalizingly full but unreachable view of the toy section. Oversized babies leaning on giant blocks looked down on us as the boys went from disinterested to impatient to agitated in the span of minutes. Simon heard the voices behind the black curtain and became obsessed with getting into the studio. Tristan whined that it was taking too long. The oversized babies began to look less cherubic and more sanctimonious with every passing moment.

After a tense quarter hour of waiting, which included some of our lesser moments in public parenting, we were finally allowed into the studio. The photographer was a seasoned professional, likely old enough to drive but certainly not to drink. Which was unfortunate, because I could have used a drink by that point.

There were no giant daisies, no rocking chairs, and no big steel tubs. We chose the fake rock as a prop. (We could have gone with the paint-chipping-off wooden blocks. Maybe there is a reason professional photography studios charge more than $24.99 a package?)

Naïvely clinging to the idea that the picture-taking itself would go smoothly, we had Tristan lean on the (fake) rock while trying to entice Simon out from behind the curtain, where he was playing peeky-boo with himself. Tristan discovered that the (fake) rock was not level, and in fact could act as a catapult, should an unsuspecting brother be placed near it.

Neither boy would look anywhere in the vicinity of the camera.

Tristan was suddenly and chronically afflicted with an inability to smile in anything other than an ironic grimace.

Simon would.not. sit. still.

Eventually, Beloved and I hopped into the picture, hoping at least to confine the boys within boundaries of the frame for the length of a shutter-click. We poked, we begged, we implored, we ordered, we tickled. Finally, regretfully albeit successfully, we made fart noises.

After what seemed like mere moments, our session time was up. Beloved shepherded the boys back out into the alcove while the photographer (I am making air quotes around the word photographer as I type – I can’t help myself) showed me the scant few images she had deigned to capture.

With every passing image of painfully forced smiles, blurry toddler escapes and maternal hairy eyeballs (nobody should have to look at a picture of themselves giving the hairy eyeball), I felt my standards lowering from perfectly composed, beautifully realized portraits that captured the complex but ultimately sweet essence of their personalities and the magic of being a parent to one marginally acceptable pose that didn’t feature someone with a finger up his nose or looking like (s)he had been recently lobotomized.

And then I saw these.

(Oh, and the bit about the fart noises and that throbbing vein over my clenched jaw muscles? Let’s just keep that as our little secret, okay?)

Ack, here it is Monday and not only am I drawing a blank on what to write about this morning, but I’ve drained The Vault of all my ideas-to-be.

So, in the absence of anything meaningful from me, let’s play a game. I saw this over on Michele’s blog on the weekend. It’s called One Degree of Separation. (Tangent: has anyone ever played Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? If you haven’t, it’s kind of funny – there is virtually no one in the celebrity world who is more than six degrees of separation away from Kevin Bacon. I forgot to mention him in my celebrity crush list the other day. Wouldn’t it be fun to analyze the blogosphere, to see if anyone is more than six degrees away from anyone else? Sorry, my brain is not big enough to figure out how to do that today ever.)

Ahem, so, back to the game. I will start us off with the name of an actor. You comment with a movie that this actor was in. The next person comments with an actor from the movie in the previous comment. And the next person comments with a movie featuring the actor in the previous comment. Get it?

Let’s launch this with: John Cusack.

A sampling of files that have crossed my desk this week…

If you recognize the quote in the title, you’re going to want to read this. It’s from the inimitable Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Tonight and for the next three weeks, PBS will be running six one hour specials (two each night) called Monty Python’s Personal Best. Each member of the troupe wrote and directed his own episode in the series, with the group collaborating to put together the episode on behalf of Graham Chapman.

Ottawa Citizen arts writer Alex Strachan wrote a great feature on the series this past Saturday (read it, it’s worth the time just to read the Eric Idle quotes). I had no idea, but Holy Grail was funded entirely by the “grandaddies and geezers of English rock’n’roll,” including Pink Floyd, Genesis and Led Zepplin. And Life of Brian was funded entirely by George Harrison. Strachan quotes Eric Idle as saying, ‘It’s still the most that anybody has ever paid for a movie ticket.’ Who knew?

This one will be worth setting the VCR for…

I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be one of those mothers who frets endlessly over her children’s birthday parties – or, in our case, lack thereof.

Does a four year old really need a party? Granted, he had a party last year, but does that mean I am indentured to commit a party every year? And his brother has passed two birthdays without a party – the guilt is starting to get to me. Because I am turning out to be one of those mothers who gets obsessive about relatively equal treatment of each kid.

Of course we will celebrate the day. There will be balloons, there will be presents, there will inevitably be a Thomas the Tank Engine cake, because he has been requesting one every time the subject of any kind of bakery goods has come up for at least the past six months. (So much so, in fact, that when we attended the first birthday party of our favourite baby girl last weekend, he was astonished that the cake would be neither the Thomas nor Wiggles variety.)

But does there have to be a posse of sugar-poisoned preschoolers smushing cheesies into my already-abused carpet? Do I have to shell out $200 to some clever business for the pleasure of letting the kids smear cheesy fingerprints into their fixtures – be it gymnastics, indoor climbers, or a favourite local museum?

And who do I invite? He’s four, he doesn’t have a massive social circle of potential invitees. He’s got a few friends at daycare, but I only know the parents in a “Oh hello, nice weather we’re having, eh? Oops, is my car blocking you in? Just pass me that boot over there and we’ll be out of your way” kind of passing. If I invite the kid, I’d expect the parent would want to come along to supervise, and the idea of politely hosting a room full of strangers for two hours while my kids go insane on hot dogs and hype is far from my ideal way to spend an afternoon.

And there’s the whole minefield of kids you don’t like. I have to admit, there are a couple of kids in his social circle that I’d just as soon not have him spending any more time with than absolutely necessary. This will probably be even more of an issue when he goes off to school, and I know I’m going to have to learn to deal with it, but for now if I can avoid bad influences I will.

The other alternative is to invite a bunch of our friends over, and let their kids play with my kids while we grownups have a great time. I like this alternative a lot, but it makes it a lot more about me than about Tristan, and my birthday isn’t until August. (But you can bet I’ll be getting a Thomas cake.) And the booze would probably cost more than renting a party place for the preschoolers.

In the end, we’ve decided to let him spend a day with one of his best friends, my cousin’s son. We’ll make it a fun day, maybe including his first cinematic experience. We’ll have dinner with my folks, and prezzies and cake, and it will be a fun day.

But I’m still feeling guilty, worried that he’ll someday be telling a therapist that he had blissfully perfect life, right up until he didn’t get a party for his fourth birthday…

Everyone in the blogosphere seems to be waxing nostalgic lately. On the weekend, Phantom Scribbler evoked the essence of my 1970s childhood with a post that crossed from Darth Vader to Peter and the Wolf; Mililou posted a great quiz on kid-TV from the 1970s, and then there was my own memories of a mediated childhood from the week before.

So when I was looking at your suggestions for blog topics, Dean Dad’s suggestion of worst celebrity crushes struck me as perfectly timely. (And when you’re done here, click on over to Dean Dad’s hilarious reproduction of a freshman essay comparing and contrasting Brokeback Mountain and Curious George. It’s painfully funny.)

See, I’m a bit of an expert on crushes, in that I always have one. I love crushes, and no, that’s not an oxymoron. My first celebrity crush was Davy Jones from the Monkees. My best friend, Jennifer Morgan, was going to marry Shaun Cassidy, and I was going to marry Davy Jones, and we were going to live across the street from each other just like we did then, and raise our families together. Since I ended up being 5’8″ tall, I think Davy Jones would have come up to around my sternum.

That crush didn’t last long, but for years I had a major thing for Donny Osmond. My cousin gave me this album and I nearly wore it out for playing “Puppy Love” over and over and over again.

Then Star Wars came out, I was instantly in love with Luke Skywalker. I had a crush on Mark Hamill, too, but by that time I could understand that he was just an actor playing a part, and lived far away in America, and we would probably never meet. But Luke Skywalker, I pined for. I read the Star Wars tie-in novel, and in the scene where Luke is confronted by the angry Tuskan Raider on the sand dune while searching for R2D2 and he faints, my nine-year-old heart melted with his vulnerability.

I went through the same Tiger Beat phase as every other preteen I know, and spent endless hours clipping out photos of John Stamos, Willie Aames and Andrew Stevens. Scott Baio in particular was a favourite of this era in crushdom.

When I started high school, I upgraded my little suitcase record player for an actual stereo, and I packed away my Donny Osmond album for a little Canadian content in the form of Bryan Adams. I had a crush on him through most of high school, and remember being endlessly jealous of an early boyfriend’s sister who actually met Bryan Adams on a train to Toronto in 1984. He’s still high on my “celebrities I would love to meet someday” list.

Yikes, this is getting ugly – okay, let’s hit the ‘fast forward’ button and skim through the 1980s and 1990s… George Michael, Rob Lowe, Michael Stipe, John Cusack, Brad Pitt (circa Legends of the Fall), and Cary Elwes from The Princess Bride (actually, it was more Westley that I had the crush on).

Today, I’d have to say that I still have a crush on Evan Farmer, the host of While You Were Out, and Ewan McGregor – especially after seeing Moulin Rouge again and again. And just this weekend we watched Elizabethtown and I finally get why everybody is going on about Orlando Bloom. And quite frankly, I wouldn’t kick Harrison Ford out of bed for eating crackers, either. And speaking of Elizabethtown, he’s not much to look at, but I am head over heels in love with the soul of Cameron Crowe. And Douglas Coupand. And Nick Hornby.

Okay, that’s more than enough from me. What about you? Dish it – who are your celebrity crushes, past or present?

Home with a barfy preschooler today, and on about four hours sleep I’m not sure I have much to say today.

Nancy asked how the overnight stay with Granny and Papa Lou went – it was great! I knew Tristan would have a good time, but I had been a little worried about how Simon would take being left behind. A few times he asked, “Where’s Tristan?” and we just told him Tristan was “visiting” without getting into any specifics. He just shrugged and continued to enjoy being the centre of the universe.

I’m about to try to send Simon to daycare without Tristan. I’m not sure how that one will work out either, but if I have any hope of getting work done from home today – and I really need to do some – it will be a lot easier wrangling just one of them. I really don’t know how work-from-home moms do it!

It’s an exciting day for the family! Tristan will be having his first sleepover at Granny and Papa Lou’s house tonight.

When I was growing up, I spent a lot of Saturday nights sleeping over at my Granny and Granda’s house. We had a ritual, where Mom, Granny and I (and probably my brother, but he didn’t enjoy staying with Granny as much as I did) would do a little shopping on a Saturday afternoon, most likely at K-Mart. We’d have lunch at the Red Grill, where French fries with gravy and jell-o were always on the menu. And we’d always stop by the toy section, where I would get a little treat like a colouring book, or a new outfit for my Barbies, or something similar.

Mom would drop us off at Granny’s house and head home. My Granda used to like going to the races on a Saturday afternoon, and when I saw his car pull into the driveway, I’d run and hide. When I heard him coming into the house, I’d start to make very loud animal noises – mooing like a cow, or screeching like a monkey – and he’d walk through the house saying, “Granny! Do you hear that? There’s an animal in the house.” I can still remember the delicious delight of anticipation, tucked under the bed or in a closet and giggling madly while waiting to be ‘discovered’.

I was the only granddaughter of three grandkids, and my Granny and Granda indulged me like a princess. They are probably the roots of my diva complex! I remember standing in front of their fireplace, singing songs I had learned in school to their rave reviews, or doing magic tricks from one of the kits I had enticed them into buying for me. I remember using a Kleenex box as a cash register, and my Granny singing her song about “come and buy, come and buy” in her thick Scottish brogue. I remember staying up late (all the way to 10 o’clock!) on a Saturday night to watch the Love Boat and Fantasy Island, and I remember my Granny staying up with me when I couldn’t sleep because something on Fantasy Island had scared me. But what I remember most is being the center of their universe, bathed in the gentle and unconditional love that is unique to grandparents.

My Granda died when I was 10 years old, and it’s only now looking back that I realize that me continuing to stay at Granny’s house was probably as much about companionship for her as it was for the convenience of my parents. She was my Granny, but over the years she became my friend.

So even though Tristan’s first overnight stay is a big deal in itself, the fact that he’s going to be staying with his Granny and Papa Lou for the first time is even more notable to me. I can only hope that Tristan and Simon will enjoy the same beautiful memories of their time spent with their grandparents that I have from mine. And watching their relationship evolve over the past four years, I have no doubts that they will.

Did I tell you about how my parents came to live in Ottawa? They were living in London, Ontario, where I was born and where they had lived most of their lives. I moved here in 1988, and over the years tried to move back to London a few times, but it never worked out. I’d occasionally try half-heartedly to convince them to move to Ottawa, but they never took me seriously. For sixteen years, I’d drive back and forth to London on major holidays, and rack up long-distance phone bills in between.

And then in 2002 Tristan was born, and within six months, there was a ‘for sale’ sign on their lawn. They moved here just shy of his first birthday. Not much doubt about where I fall on the heirarchy now, is there?

There is nothing like the relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren!