Month: June 2006

Bestest playdate ever

I knew if I waited long enough, Nancy would get around to blogging what I was up to yesterday!

She`s got the scoop, but let me give you my own spin on things – and very quickly, because I am in a Holiday Inn `Business Centre` getting my blog fix, with two boys locked in here with me, and the Dollarama marble run and two juice boxes are only going to buy me so much time!

If you ever happen to be traveling through Montreal, skip all the fancy tourist stuff and head straight to Nancy`s place. Four boys played exquisitely all day, either in the basement or terrorizing her guest room, while we sat in the kitchen and mostly ignored them. And Nancy made amazing giant bubbles in the backyard and the boys went crazy trying to pop them. And we went for a swim and our jaws dropped open at her little fishies swimming like pros. And she made us homemade muffins, plus lunch AND dinner and – gasp! – Tristan actually ate a good portion of both meals. Really, best. playdate. ever.

Her boys are so sweet that when Tristan expressed an interest in a little Batman figure, one of her gracious little boys actually gave it to him. How`s that for amazing preschooler behaviour!

More, much more to come, but if I don`t get these boys out of the Business Centre soon, we`re going to have no place to sleep tonight.

P.S. I`m logged onto the hotel internet (in Quebec City) and the Blogger interface is in French. Trés cool!

P.P.S. My mother would have a canary if she saw me admitting on the Interwebs that I`m not in my house. Rest assured, evil ne`er-do-wells, the house is not empty. Don`t even bother.

Life’s great mysteries

I’ve stumbled upon another one of life’s great mysteries. Like the solution for pi, the divine proportion, and the secret of how they get the caramilk into the chocolate shell, this one will be puzzling humanity for aeons to come.

How did they work it so that it takes exactly one roll of paper towels to soak up the entire contents of a freshly opened bag of milk?

And did you further know that if you hear Simon poking about in the kitchen, followed by a thunk, a splash, an “oh oh”, and a “Hey, my feets wet!” you’ll be well on your way to discovering this ancient mystery for yourself?

Ten-pages-in book review: The Historian

I started writing my ten-pages-in book reviews after a book so knocked my socks off that I was worried I’d never love a book in the same way again. That book, The Time Traveler’s Wife, was easily one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Here we are, just over a year later, and I’ve finally found a worthy successor, another book in which I have completely lost myself, not to mention track of time when I’m reading and a will to do anything but curl myself around it and see what happens next.

I’m reading The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova’s debut novel ten years in the writing. I had heard enough buzz about the book to request it from the library, but it took a full five months for my name to claw its way to the front of the queue and by then, I had pretty much forgotten whatever I’d heard about it. When I flipped open the dust jacket and read it was a historical novel about Dracula, I almost put it aside unread. I’d done the same to Anne Rice’s latest tome, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. I read about two pages and a good chunk of the author’s notes at the end, but I just couldn’t commit myself.

But this book, The Historian – this book, I couldn’t put down after two pages. From the first five paragraphs, I was hooked. True, it is about Dracula, but more importantly it’s a set of intertwining quest stories, an exploration of the relationship between fathers and daughters, a whole series of mysteries, a romance, a suspense story and just about the spookiest thing I’ve read since the latest Stephen King novel. Reading it on the back deck in the blazing June sun, there was more than one instance when my skin puckered in goosebumps at a particularly eerie turn. It’s a damn good book, an amazing book, and I’m quite distracted to be sitting here telling you about it when I know it’s waiting for me, only half-way finished, upstairs.

The book jumps back and forth in time to follow three storylines. In the current day, it’s 1972 and a motherless sixteen-year-old American girl living in Amsterdam with her diplomat father stumbles upon a secret from her father’s past. She finds a mysteriously blank book, save for a rather eerie woodcut of a dragon, and a series of letters that begin, “My dear and unfortunate successor.” As the story unfolds, her father, Paul, tells his own story of his quest some twenty years earlier to prove that Dracula, aka Vlad the Impaler, was not only real, but still ‘alive’. His story also tells the story of his own mentor’s quest to prove the same thing some twenty years before that, and the three stories weave a tight rope of surprisingly linear narrative. Stories inside stories inside stories, like riddles and reflections and ripples in time – it’s a breath-taking and sweeping story told with exquisite attention to place and detail. When Paul disappears in the current day, his daughter sets off across Europe to find him, and instead finds evil pursuing her.

As I said, I’m about half way through. So far, Kostova seems to have figured out what I once read Stephen King speak to – that the monster you can’t see is far more frightening than the monster you can. At this point, the evil is only just beginning to reveal itself, although its presence has been alluded to and foreshadowed by the layers of congruent stories.

It could be overwrought and over the top. It’s not. It could have the gothic grotesques and arabesques that Anne Rice brought to Interview with the Vampire and so many of her other books. It doesn’t. What it has is incredible attention to atmospheric detail, so you truly feel like you are in Istanbul in the 1950s, or in Radcliffe Camera on the campus of Oxford University in 1972, or in the court of Sultan Mehmed in the fifteen century. And it has a rollercoaster of a plot, with twists and dives and hairpin turns that will keep you awake at night. And it has compelling characters, characters with whom you are fully engaged from the first time they are sketched out on the page.

I’m conflicted – should I continue to elaborate on how simply gobsmacked I am by this fabulous book, or should I shut this down and go read it some more?

Right. Good choice. See ya!

Simon’s quirks

Simon is becoming more of a character every day. Inasmuch as ‘character’ means mostly adorable, occasionally insufferable, and often hilarious. He seems to develop a new peccadillo every week, and I’m writing this as much to capture them for posterity as for entertainment value.

For instance, he’s picked up a couple of phrases from the bigger kids at daycare, and I’m by turns mortified and amused every time they come out of his mouth.

The first is a very blasé ‘That’s BORing.’ Any time he doesn’t want to do something, wear something, eat something, it’s ‘BORing’. Imagine it uttered with all the disdain a teenage girl could muster, multiply it by three an infuse it with a world-weariness unprecendented in your average two-year-old.

The other is a very staccato ‘No way!’, as if whatever you’ve suggested is the most idiotic thing he’s ever heard.

“Simon, would you like a banana?”
“No way!”

Or:

“Simon, could you please let go of the dog’s lips?”
“No way!”

He’s also exhibiting vaguely alarming tendencies to hoard things, and to depend on rituals. Bedtime has become a complex series of arcane protocols – first books, then the story of his day, then soothers (three, always three, and he will cycle through them looking for just the right one. If one is not to his liking, he will pull it out with a very lispy “Too small,” and repeat until he finds just the right amount of suction and resistance. And yes, they are all the same size.) I’ll push play on the CD player to start the lullabies, place him into his crib, and start the blanket ritual. He must have at least three or four blankets. It can be February or July, but if he sees a blanket you haven’t put on him, he will hector you for it – he’s kind of like a reverse princess and the pea, except he’s the pea. And then there’s the de rigeur rounds of “Hey, you! Put your feet down” as you place the blankets. And he needs companionship as well. Just now, I put him to bed with three blankets (it’s 25C in his room), Gordon, Percy, Scoop, Wags the dog and Dorothy the dinosaur. There’s barely room for him in there.

I have this image of him, twenty years in the future, in a bingo hall somewhere. He’s about 6’5″, 300 lbs, and you’ll loose a finger if you touch the collection of treasures arrayed out in front of him with his bingo daubers. Either that, or he has to touch the doorknob five times before he leaves, tap the glass twice, turn around once, and walk to his car without touching any of the cracks in the sidewalk, with one eye closed and his finger resting against his right earlobe.

If only I could argue with any conviction whatsoever that he doesn’t get it from me.

Miscellany

You, my bloggy friends, have been wonderful thing week. Thank you for your jokes, all of which I will file away to later torture friends, colleagues and strangers on the street. Thank you for your support, and your kind words, and your suggestions on how to brush my kids’ teeth. Y’all are rockstars in my book – for this week, at least!

But hey, it’s Friday, and the Friday before I have ten whole days of vacation, nonetheless. So forgive me if we ramble just a bit, because I have the attention span of a firefly today.

For those of you keeping score on the frostie thing, I had my ultrasound yesterday and everything looks great. I have a blood test on Monday, and if the progesterone levels are within range, we’re good to go next month. After this week’s leaky ambivalence, I’m feeling excited and enthused again. I was gobsmacked by how nice the new Ottawa Fertility Centre is, especially compared to the facilities before. The ladies’ room had granite counters and flowers – I can only imagine how nice the sperm-gathering room must be! The whole place has an air of cool calmness, just what you want when you are at your most vulnerable.

It’s been such a busy week, and there have been tonnes of stuff I meant to talk to you about. For example, did you see that new show “America’s Got Talent“? We were instantly hooked; it’s perfect summer brain candy. It’s like the Gong Show, which I’ve always loved, but with David Hasselhoff, for whom I have developed a latent affection after seeing this video. Go ahead, click on it – I dare you, and then I double dog dare you to not be humming that song all day (right, Andrea?) What with this, and that new Gameshow Marathon, it’s all my favourite childhood TV shows all over again. Nothing reminds me of the endless summers of my childhood like The Match Game, the Price is Right and Card Sharks.

And speaking of childhood TV, did you hear that CBC is finally retiring the old Mr Dressup episodes? Even though I didn’t realize they were still on any more (Ernie Coombs died in 2001, after all) it does make me feel a little sad, and a little old, that they won’t be running those old episodes in perpetuity.

One more note on seminal children’s programming – I don’t think I ever told you that I finally got my Electric Company DVD set as a Mother’s Day gift. It so rocks! Now I just have to get a couple of Muppet Show DVDs and The Littlest Hobo and I’ll be set! Simon’s current favourite movie is Beloved’s copy of the old Batman and Robin movie from the 1960s, so with a little luck and a good stock of 1970s TV DVDs, we many never have to watch an episode of Dragon Tales or Arthur again.

And now, finally, my contribution to the joke-fest yesterday – to which you should feel free to continue to contribute, by the way. If you know me IRL, chances are you’ve heard this one; it’s one of my favourites!

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard. A few days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried.

Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, “Hmm, interesting, that seems to be Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony being played – backwards.”
He listened a while longer and then said, “There’s the Eighth Symphony, and it’s backwards, too. Most puzzling.” So the magistrate kept listening. “There’s the Seventh… the Sixth… the Fifth…”

Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, “My fellow citizens, there’s nothing to worry about. That’s just Beethoven decomposing.”

Emotional wreckage

Ah, there’s nothing like a good meltdown to clear your head. Maybe the toddlers are on to something?

Apparently, I’m not taking this whole frostie thing with the zen detachment I thought I was. I was talking to a friend today, my knickers in a twist supposedly about all the *other* things I’m trying to balance right now (new job, new French lessons, pending holidays – I’ve got a list as long as my arm right now) and when I lost it and choked up and eventually started leaking around the eyes (isn’t it absolutely mortifying to cry at work?), I really thought it was about my new French teacher. She’s new, painfully new, I’m her first-student-ever kind of new.

Except, I was riding the bus home after work, and I couldn’t stop crying. Not hysterical, hitching sobbing… I was just sitting there, looking at the river and the passing scenery, except I couldn’t stop the steady stream of tears running down my face, and I realized that the point at which I actually started to cry, we weren’t discussing my French lessons at all – we were discussing my pending mock-cycle ultrasound to check my lining. And everytime I would settle down and get myself under control again, I’d idly think about frostie or the ultrasound or the goddam OPKs, and I’d start crying again.

Hey, I only took one year of psychology, but I don’t think you need to be Dr Freud to figure this one out. Besides, really, who cries about French class?

Okay, I admit it, I’m not zen. I’m officially freaked out about the frostie cycle.

I’m freaked out because I peed on three OPK sticks yesterday and none were obviously positive and then I peed on another one this morning and the line was practically non-existant so I called the clinic in a panic saying, “I must have surged yesterday, is it too late?”

I’m freaked out because I feel terrible that I haven’t been actively doing everything I can to make this cycle a success. I could have been taking vitamins, or eating protein to boost my lining, or taking viagara (apparently that helps the lining thicken, too) or doing accupuncture or about 100 other things I’ve seen the girls on the IVF boards doing to improve their chances of success. We could pay for assisted hatching, or ask about embryo glue. But we’re not. We’re just doing this, letting nature take its course.

It suddenly doesn’t seem natural, it seems apathetic. And that’s no way to prepare yourself for a pregnancy, for a future life.

Crap, crying again. Fucking hormones – and not even artificially boosted hormones. 100 per cent me. Good gods, the mother guilt has crept beyond the mothering era, beyond the pregnancy, into the pre-conception period.

I’m freaked out because I want this baby with my whole heart, and my whole heart is terrified of having another child. How can I feel both ends of the spectrum with complete intensity? I’m completely invested and absolutely ambivalent. I want both outcomes, and neither.

I do feel better, having cleansed my emotional plumbing with a good cry. And I’m going to try really hard to go back to my zen “the universe will make the right choice for us” attitude.

In fact, forget the viagara, the vitamins, the accupuncture. It seems what I really need is a clown – the type with a red nose, floppy shoes and rainbow hair. According to this article, “after introducing clown therapy to patients having in-vitro fertilization, doctors at Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Zerifin, Israel, said the conception rate rose from 20 to 35 percent. (…) The scientists, who submitted their research to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology meeting, had set out to see if humor could reduce the stress and anxiety of the IVF treatment, particularly after the embryo had been transferred to the woman’s womb. A smile, a few jokes and magic tricks was enough to get them to laugh, and in some cases, conceive.”

So, bloggy friends, have at it. What’s your best joke today?

The one with the dentist

I don’t know what makes me feel worse: that Tristan has had two appointments with the dentist recently; that one of them required a filling (with a second to follow in two weeks); or, that I completely forgot about one of the appointments and didn’t remember it until Beloved called me at work to tell me it had gone well.

I’ve slid from micromanaging the parenting of my children to being an absentee mom. Oh, the guilt.

Poor Tristan; I just don’t know what to do about his teeth. He had a couple of fillings last year, which I attributed to neglectful brushing on our part. After that appointment, I vowed to be more diligent, and we were. Except here we are, a year later, with two more fillings. The dentist assured Beloved that he simply has deep grooves in his teeth, and that’s where the cavities are hiding, but I still feel awful.

When he went for his first fillings last year, he went to a paediatric dentist who used gas to relax him before doing the work, but since he was fine during the exam appointment a few weeks ago, yesterday they just did the fillings in my family dentist’s office.

Beloved said he was a trooper, never squirmed or complained and did exactly what was asked of him. Maybe a fear of dentists is a nurture thing instead of a nature thing after all! (Sorry, Twinmomplusone – nothing personal, but I have a deep and abiding fear of dental procedures.) Beloved was highly impressed with the dentist herself, a new partner of my usual dentist. She told Tristan that she was putting the tooth to ‘sleep’, and that the cotton balls were pillows for the tooth to snooze on, and that she was cleaning out the ‘sugar bugs’. (That last one would have freaked me out, but it seemed to work for Tristan.)

Toothbrushing is an ongoing source of drama at our house, at least with the preschoolers. They both start out willingly enough, but I can’t get either of them to keep their mouths open long enough, or really give their teeth the scrubbing they need. There is much flailing and wriggling, a few threats, a lot of pouting, and some tears – every. single. time. we brush their teeth.

We’ve tried creative solutions, like telling the story of Tommy the Toothbrush and his visit to molar land. We’ve tried pinning them to the floor and just forcing them into submission. And we’ve tried most points on the spectrum in between. They always resist, they always complain, and it’s always annoying. We’ve just bought Tristan a new Spiderman electric toothbrush, and I’ll probably pick one up for Simon, too. Despite all that, though, toothbrushing is a battle of wills and tempers every single time.

If y’all are having the same struggles, I won’t feel so bad. (Hey look, misery does love company!) Any thoughts on how to make this a little easier?

The Great OPK Adventure

I call the clinic, because I have one stick left in my box of five, and I’m guessing that since my life is never straightforward and uncomplicated, I’m going to have to buy another box of ovulation predictor kits. The nurse confirms that yes, I’ll have to buy another kit if my surge isn’t detected on the last stick.

So I’m feeling a lot of pressure as I pee on the last of the sticks, and lo and behold, there is a line – a really faint, turn it just so, let’s try looking at it under the window type of line. I haul out the package insert with the directions on it yet again, and look from my used test to the sample diagrams and back, and while I am happy there is in fact a line, there is no denying the “this is not a positive” nature of this particular spent stick. I’m about to resign myself to forking out another $50 on a box of OPKs when Belvoed says, “But what about that box of tests that’s been under the sink since we moved?”

I rifle through the cupboard, and sure enough, I do have four fifths of a box of OPKs from our IUIs, back in, um, 2001. I check the expiration date on the box – November 2002. (Insert Homer-Simpsonesque “it’s still good!” here.) I actually call the toll free number, and to the credit of the person with the lovely Louisiana drawl who patiently answers my enquiry, she doesn’t laugh out loud when I ask whether three and a half years past its expiration date is too late to get a decent reading from a test. Unsurprisingly, the answer is yes. Way too late.

I’m almost resigned to going back to Shoppers Drug Mart when I remember what you said about buying online. Hmm, I need a stick in the next 24 hours… what do you think the odds are of me ordering one, and receiving it, in time to pee on by 5 pm tomorrow. Yah. But then I remember what Anna said, about a place here in town with cheap OPKs, and I tell Beloved to take over making dinner while I do a little Googling. Because all of this has transpired in the 20 minutes since I’ve gotten home from work, when I should maybe be making dinner for my family.

I find the site for the Extraordinary Baby Shoppe online with relative ease, and I’m astonished to see they carry a five pack of OPKs for EIGHT DOLLARS! That’s more than an 80 per cent discount off the drug store price. And they have an actual store, right here in town. I find the hours of operation, and they are open today and tomorrow from 1 to 5 pm (it’s a mom-based business, and they work when they can around their kids’ schedules. How cool is that?) so I look at the clock and it is – no joke – 5:01 pm. But I pick up the phone anyway, and call, hoping someone is still stacking diapers or counting cash tapes and waiting for the last customer to leave. Alas, there is no answer, so I leave a babbled message about needing an OPK and hoping to drop by the store tomorrow and could you please confirm if you have any in stock before I take the bus over there on my lunch break.

And I promptly forget about it, until about half an hour later during dinner, when the shop owner actually calls me back. She is on her way home right now, and the store won’t be open tomorrow because it’s her daughter’s graduation from senior kindergarden and she can’t find anybody to cover for her. I’m thinking, ‘It figures.”, but she keeps talking, and asks me where I live and when I tell her, she says if I don’t mind the drive, I can come out to her place tonight and pick some up.

Let’s pause for a moment and think about this interaction. I am brokering some sort of deal for discount ovulation predictor kits on the phone with a stranger I met through the Internet while my kids eat crackers and peanut butter for dinner and my husband watches me with growing alarm over what he hears from my end of the conversation. This doesn’t happen to normal people, does it?

So I get her address, and pack the boys into the car after dinner, and we set off on a quest for cheap OPKs. It’s a 42 km round trip through pastoral farmland from my suburb to hers and back again, and the whole way we flirt with black, vicious storm clouds that threaten a mother of a storm. In my head, I’m writing this post with poetic terms like pathetic fallacy, and snickering because the last thing Beloved said to me as we left the house was an accusation that I get myself into these things simply because they make good blog fodder, and he is probably right.

I arrive in her driveway at the exact moment she does, and I pull enough money to cover the kits and the tax out of my skirt pocket. We stand between our collective preschooler-filled Ford Foci station wagons (two cars and four preschoolers between us) and I feel like some sort of suburban addict, handing over my cash for five loose OPKs.

We race the storm home, and arrive ahead of a torrent of biblical proportions that spends itself in the fifteen minutes it takes to get the boys ready for bed. I am absurdly pleased with my newly acquired, cheap OPKs, and decide to celebrate my frugality (five tests for less than the price of one!) by splurging and taking a random test. With a surfeit of tests, I can afford to indulge myself. Oh, the excitement of my suburban life!

I tear open a package, remove the strip inside, and stand holding the alien thing for a panicked moment – there are no directions!! Please join me one more time in a rousing chorus of, “On Internet, how I love thee.” A bit of googling later, and I figure it out. I test, and the surge line is stronger. Recklessly, I decide to test not only earlier in the day, but many times tomorow. I have four tests left – I could test at breakfast, lunch and dinner and still have one to spare. I am positively giddy with my own spendthriftedness. (Sorry, Kerry – just try not to think about what may or may not be in my cube today.)

And the most exciting part of the whole evening? While doing my illicit suburban driveway purchase of bulk OPKs, the amazing woman from the Extraordinary Baby Shoppe, where you should all go for any future baby-related purchases, reached into her car and said, “Here’s a complimentary pregnancy test, too.”

That thing is going to haunt me in about four weeks’ time.

New, improved and free from original sin

The vision: celebrating our sons’ baptism in a gorgeous old cathedral, hushed voices echoing off vaulted ceilings, sun streaming through stained-glass windows, wooden pews buffed to a dull gleam, well-behaved boys mesmerized by a captivating sermon.

The reality: a touching but blissfully informal ceremony on plastic stackable chairs in the “gymnasium / cafetorium”-cum-church, punctuated by Simon asking every three or four minutes just loud enough for his voice to carry across the entire crowd, “We go now?”

The vision: returning to our sparkling clean house with my folks and my children’s godparents and their adorable daughter to snack on coffee and cake and delicate little sandwiches with cucumber garnish on the back deck in dappled sunshine.

The reality: ten frenzied minutes of throwing clutter out of the main part of the house just before we left, stopping on the way home to pick up a dozen and a half doughtnuts at Timmys, and sending Beloved out for takeout Kentucky Fried Chicken when noon rolls around and there is nothing even remotely suitable for lunch in the house.

You know what, though? It was perfect, even with the stacking chairs and the KFC**. The boys weren’t angels, but they were adorable in matching white GAP polo shirts and tan cargo pants and sandals. Amelia, the 16 month old daughter of the boys’ godparents, was angelic in a way that makes my ovaries pop with covetousness. Father John was kindly and patient didn’t seem to notice that Simon squirmed and wriggled incessantly and Tristan sang under his breath through most of the readings. Simon provided comic relief with his ongoing query of “We go now?” and by excitedly hopping up on the little stool in front of the baptismal font and declaring, “It’s my turn now!” after watching his brother being baptized.

Warning: sentimental moment pending.

Despite my misgivings and concerns about the Church as a whole, I found myself just a little verklempt standing at the baptismal font, basking for a moment in the spontaneous applause of the gathered families as Father John pronounced Tristan and Simon as baptized. (Not only were we in the front row, but we were first at every step. So much room for possible disaster, and yet it all went well. Another blessing!)

I may have trouble with a lot of the teachings of the Church, but I do believe, in my own way, in God, and in community, and especially in family. We made the right choice in baptizing the boys, even if the path to the baptismal font was a little convoluted.

I just have to learn to stop thinking about things so much.

** What is it about KFC? I spend months thinking of it purely toxic food, then somewhere a switch gets flipped and I start craving it. And over the course of another couple of months, the craving builds, and the whole time there is a little voice in my head that says, “Don’t do it. You’ll regret it.” And then I start talking aloud about wanting KFC, kind of like a little test to see if hearing it out loud will somehow alter the craving, and there is the voice of Beloved, who has seen this cycle more than a few times, saying, “Don’t do it. You’ll regret it.” But the craving builds up to an obsession, and I break down and order the damn KFC, and oh that greasy, salty crispy goodness, and the fries smothered in gravy and ketchup… and about a half an hour later and for the next three days, a grumbling, greasy bellyache and a vow to never, ever eat that crap again. And yet, a few months later…