Month: February 2006

Sharing the bloggy love

Isn’t this sweet? Which one of you lovelies put me up for this??

Heather of One Woman’s World has put together a bloggy love award exclusively for women bloggers, and someone nominated this blog under the category of “Best Conversation”!


I am particularly honoured by a nomination in this category because it’s really all about you guys. I just dredge up a topic every day (and lately, I’ve delegated even that to you!) and set you guys loose in the comment box. Yesterday’s debate on the use of leisurely as an adverb or an adjective was but one perfect (albeit geeky) example of how I set the stage and you manage to upstage me with astonishing ease.

So I see this as a group nomination – and the credit is mostly yours! Go ahead, vote for yourself! And while you’re at it, check out some of the other terrific blogs that have been nominated in categories like best writing, best humour, and ‘most makes me want to have kids’.

Now, pssst – ‘fess up! Who nominated us???

We may never get another pizza delivered after this…

It was my turn to bring the boys home from daycare last night. Unlike last week’s fiasco, where I towed them in the wagon the 3/4 of a kilometer home in -10C, only to realize I had forgotten my keys, and so promptly decided to drag the boy-filled wagon another kilometer or so to show up uninvited to my parents house for dinner, this time we made it home in plenty of time to leisurely dial up a pizza for dinner.

While we were waiting for dinner to arrive, I sorted through a few days’ accumulation of mail. One piece was a cardboard fold-out ad for those new Kandoo wipes from Pampers, complete with coupon, storyboard, and 20 or so stickers. The storyboard showed the importance of wiping, flushing and washing your hands, and the stickers, each about the size of a quarter, were supposed to be used to reward each of those tasks.

Since Tristan continues to excel in his potty achievements, and since we are several tonnes of non-compostable waste away from training Simon, we didn’t have much use for the stickers, so I let the boys play with them while I snoozed sorted through the rest of the mail. Before long, the stickers were all over Tristan, Simon, the dog, the end table, the couch, and me.

By happy coincidence, the stickers ran out just about the time that the doorbell rang to herald the arrival of the pizza. It was a new pizza dude, not our regular guy, and I have to admit, I was a little disconcerted by his rather obvious glances from my chest to my face and back again. It was so obvious that I almost said something, but in the end just stiffed him on his tip and closed the door.

It was only when I got into the kitchen and started cutting up a slice of pizza for Simon that something colourful on my shirt caught my eye. I looked down at my chest, and hoped desperately that the pizza dude has kids of his own. How else could I possibly explain that I was covered in stickers of this image?

10-pages-in book review: Woman First, Family Always

I’ve been agonizing over this review.

About a month ago, I received an e-mail out of the blue, asking me if I’d be interested in receiving a book to review. I was so excited and proud to have been deemed worthy of solicitation! (Yes, I am easy to please.)

Before I get into the actual review of the book, I thought I’d share a couple of thoughts on the process. Maybe it’s because I’m a communicator by day and a blogger by night, but I’m fascinated by how bloggers have become a market worth targeting. Businesses are quickly learning that bloggers are valuable opinion leaders. We’re the ‘connectors’ in Gladwell’s Tipping Point model, the ones who build networks and share information. Bloggers have reach, and even those of us with only moderate readership have a strong voice. We’re turning traditional marketing models on their ears in many ways, and smart businesses are ready to take advantage of it.

It’s flattering to have been chosen to get a free book, but I’ve recently heard of bloggers being offered all sorts of cool stuff to review: DVDs of the Electric Company, free cleaning products (!), and even trips to Amsterdam.

And now the crux of my dilemma. I received the e-mail offer, and I said ‘Sure, I’d love a free book.’ There were no strings attached, no promises on my part to do any kind of review, let alone a good one. The publicity agent gave me some background info and a couple of jpegs, should I wish to incorporate them into my review. And less than a week later, my brand new book arrived.

The problem is, I didn’t really like it. In any other circumstance, I would have posted a scathing and sarcastic review of this book. I would have had a lot of fun mocking it. But I want to be nice, because they were nice and sent me a free book. So here we go.

I’m reading Kathryn Sansone’s Woman First, Family Always. Kathryn is an American mother of ten kids, and the book is her way of helping you live your life with the same level of success, satisfaction and happiness that she has achieved.

Kathryn was ‘discovered’ by Oprah (yes, that Oprah) when she attended a taping of Oprah’s show for her 40th birthday, and in the post-show chat had the opportunity to tell Oprah that she was staying fit even though six months pregnant with her ninth (!) child. Oprah was enamoured, so much so that she paid a visit to the Sansone family and even featured them in her monthly magazine, and shortly thereafter voilà, Kathryn became an author. She says, “[Oprah] referred to me as the role model of motherhood – quite a hefty title, but one that makes me think I might be able to affect a wider group of women with some practical advice that has helped me through the years.”

(pauses to gather thoughts and dial down sarcasm-meter)

The book is divided into three sections – Your Self, Your Marriage, and Your Family & Kids – and each section has 30 ‘reflections’ ranging in length from a couple of paragraphs to a couple of pages. They are not quite self-help, but neither are they anecdotes; they fall into a bland and colourless netherworld between the two. For example, reflections in the “Your marriage” section include:

11. Don’t Nag
12. Argue – the Right Way
17. A Little Lipstick Goes a Long Way
19. Make Your Bedroom Your Sanctuary
20. Date Nights are a Must

Similarly, the “Your Family & Kids” section includes reflections titled:

7. Be an Emotional Coach
11. Mind Their Manners
19. Teach Kids to Manage Time
And even,
22. Select the Right Paediatrician for You.

As you might have guessed, I had trouble garnering anything helpful from this book. Sansone isn’t an expert – she doesn’t even have Dr Phil’s questionable qualifications. I’d forgive her lack of credentials in a minute if she had an engaging voice or a unique style to her writing – after all, you don’t need a license to mother, and she’s had a lot of experience. And it’s not the content I have issue with; it’s all reasonable advice. It’s just that it’s so sterile it’s devoid of any traces of humanity. It’s a self-help book written by a Stepford Wife.

A book written by a mother of ten kids has a lot of potential. I mean, I come up with stuff with only two kids, and she’s got five times the source that I do. I’d’ve loved to hear how you manage laundry for 10 kids, or what mealtimes must look like, or even how you get from one place to another with that many people to corral and transport. What’s it like delivering that 10th baby – do you need a sling to hold it in place for the last trimester? How do you make sure each child gets individual attention when they outnumber the parents five to one? But, unfortunately, rather than intriguing insight into the author or her day to day life, you get some platitudes and suggestions for living well.

She seems like a nice lady, she really does. And anybody who can raise ten kids has my respect. In the end, her key point that you have to love yourself and treat yourself well is a good one. Heck, I’d say 90% of the book is filled with good advice. And I’m really flattered that her publicist sent me the free book. So go ahead, take a read of it and let me know what you think. But I just couldn’t warm up to this one.

Thankfully, needy wasn’t one of the choices

I said in my earlier post that I’m known for fishing for compliments. Thanks to this nifty tool, as filched from Phantom Scribbler, now you can tell me what you really think of me with just a few clicks of the mouse. It’s called a Johari window, and I remember studying it in one of the many communications courses to which I’ve been subjected over the years – but now new and improved, and bloggable! Do I strike you as dignified? Complex, perhaps? Most certainly, you see me as powerful, proud and confident, right??

As I said in the title, thankfully needy isn’t one of the choices!

This is not a post about love

It’s St Valentine’s Day, so I should be blogging about love, right?

I was going to write a cute little thing about “Love is…” and list a bunch of reasons why I love my boys. But it was coming out sacchariny and contrived, and I wasn’t happy with it.

So then I was going to write about how lucky I am, and all the love I have in my life, what with Beloved, my boys, my folks, my family, my friends. I’m truly blessed. But you know that already.

So I thought I’d go the other way, and talk about why I hate Valentine’s Day almost as much as I hate New Years, and I think a lot of it goes back to grade school and being unpopular and how much worse it was being unpopular on Valentine’s Day than it was being unpopular on any random Tuesday. But that sounded pathetic and like I was fishing for compliments (which I usually have no problem doing) and so I scrapped that, too.

For someone who considers herself a hopeless romantic, I’m having a surprisingly hard time writing about love today.

It’s what bothers me the most about Valentine’s Day, I think. You feel put on the spot, like you have to produce something unique and special to honour the people you love. But I don’t want to be told to do that, or even moreso, have them feel obligated to do that, just because it’s February 14. We won’t be going out for dinner tonight at an overcrowded restaurant, and Beloved probably won’t be sending me flowers. The boys are too young to be making construction-paper hearts at school. And although I’ve picked up trinkets for each of them, I like to do that for no reason too, so this probably won’t seem out of the ordinary.

I don’t want them to remember to tell me they love me because of some artificial construct of the greeting card industry, and I don’t want this to be the only day we celebrate the love that binds us together.

I don’t need chocolate to tell me I’m loved today. I’m a lucky girl – I know it every single day.

Holy crap, I did it!

Last week, I was telling you that I had to take my second-language exam. In the obscure way of rating second-language ability for government employees, there is a five-point rating scale:

x = statistically insignificant
A = basic comprehension
B = intermediate ability
C = fluent
E = exempt from future testing

They measure your ability in three categories – reading, writing and speaking. You have to be tested every five years, unless you get that glorious exemption score. It’s been six years since I’ve been tested, and any future promotions hinge on me getting at least at least a B level across the board. In 2000, I scored a C in reading and a B in writing and speaking.

I got my results from my reading and writing tests. I scored a C in both!! Woo hoo! In fact, I only missed getting my exemption in reading by one point.

So now I go for my oral exam on March 2, and I need to get my B level -and the oral exam is always the hardest part. But I’ll take my CC and run with it! (huge, happy exhalation of breath)

Sunday morning at the museum

We’re lucky to have a lot of great museums in Ottawa. On a Sunday morning, when the windchill is a nippy – 20C, visiting one of the local museums is a great way to burn off some preschooler energy. And taking pictures and posting them is a great way to post to blog without actually doing any work!

This is our morning at the Canadian Museum of Nature, which happens to be admission-by-donation while they’re undergoing some renovations. The boys, as you can see, loved it – from the cockroaches to the bullfrogs to the dinosaurs, from the colouring to the digging to the really big puzzles, they had a great time. And you know what they liked the best? Four flights of stairs. Go figure.







The Internet is a really small place!

This is a story about how small the Internet really is.

I, as you know, am a Canadian living in Ottawa. I have made friends with a blogger named James, who writes a blog called Coyote Mercury. I think he found my blog one day while searching for a book, and stumbled upon my 10-pages in book reviews. Or maybe it was via Library Thing. Regardless, he’s a writer and I’m a reader, and we’ve been back and forth to each others’ blogs, even though he lives somewhere in the neighbourhood of Austin, Texas.

This week, a writer named Connie Schultz who works for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and whom I therefore assume lives and works in Cleveland, wrote an editorial called “Land of the Free-For-All.” In it, she talks about how she loves and hates blogs, and talks a little bit about bloggers and the MSM and a few other topical bits. Then she talks about just randomly clicking through the blogosphere. She says,

Most of the blog world is a glimpse into what used to be a whole universe of unexpressed thoughts by people hoping that someone, anyone, will care. There’s a lot of real life out there in that virtual world, just a click away.

Click. A young mother in Canada swears she’s not all that complicated.”All you have to do is read the blog to know what you need to know about me. I’m Tristan and Simon’s mommy, Beloved’s wife, Granny and Papa Lou’s daughter, peon employee of big government, and lucky enough to have so many friends that I couldn’t possibly list them all.”

Sound familiar? She doesn’t give me any kind of attribution beyond that. But her editorial gets picked up by the Austin-American Statesman, and James, my Austin blogger friend, happens to be reading the editorial and recognizes the description, so he tells me about it.

How cool is that?

Wherein I just blather for a bit

It’s been a helluva week. I am so far behind in work, in housework, in domestic paperwork, that I can’t even string together a coherent post. I’ve been so busy that I wanted to thank you all for your recent comments – the questions are great, and I’ll get to them soon, but also thanks for the well-wishes on kindergarten and other adventures, and for the nostalgia kick on 1970s TV. It’s been fun reading your comments – even more so than usual!!

Simon went for his two-year-old check-up this week. The ped asked how he was doing with his words, and when Beloved told him he was forming sentences with clauses, he was suitably impressed. Simon at two is a perfect square: 35 lbs, 35 inches tall. This sounded vaguely familiar, so I looked in my own blog archives and sure enough, Tristan was a perfect square at three years old! Simon’s currently 90th percentile for weight, and 80th for height. We brew our boys big.

Tristan gave up the guard rail on his bed last night, which is another major milestone for us. We had suggested removing it quite a few times, but Tristan always asked to keep it. He’s been in that bed for longer than he was in his crib, come to think of it, and it’s strange to be able to just sit on the edge of the bed without cramming my butt into the gap between the rail and the footboard. Simon is still in his crib, and showing no signs (touch wood) of contemplating escape, so we’ll leave him there as long as he is content.

He also still takes his nightly bottle (Simon, that is – not Tristan), and I really should get around to weaning him from that. But it’s me who loves the five minutes of cuddling at the end of the day, and Simon is much like his mother in that he is a creature of routine. The other day, I put the empty bottle on the wall unit instead of the side table and he scolded me for it. Apparently it’s important for the balance of power in the universe that the bottle goes on the table and NOT the wall unit. Now I know.

I’ll leave you with this conversational snippet from last week. We’re sitting at the table, the remains of a Greek take-out feast spread out on the table. Tristan looks up and asks, “Mommy, why does dinner come from boxes?”

This is my domestic legacy.