Month: July 2007

An ode to boys in the summer time

When I left the house at 6:30 this morning, the boys had already dressed themselves. This is memorable in itself; while Tristan is quite capable, I don’t think Simon has ever fully dressed himself before, and certainly neither of them has done it without considerable prodding and harranguing on our part.

But the really cute part is what they dressed themselves in: their matching Superman pyjamas. You see, it’s superhero day at their gymnastics day camp today, and they are supposed to dress as their favourite superhero. Conveniently, earlier in the summer I had picked up a couple of pairs of Superman shortie jammies, complete with velcro-attached cape, at WalMart. I have to tell you with a complete lack of bias that they are exquisitely adorable, running around in their identical Superman jammies with capes billowing out behind them.

I’m so pleased with the half-day gymnastics camp at Starr Gymnastics. I enrolled them back in the beginning of the summer, knowing Beloved would appreciate the break and that they were both old enough to start with this kind of thing. When I enrolled them, even though the session said it was for 3 to 5 year olds, I had the impression that they’d be in separate groups, and I thought it might be nice for them to get away from each other for a little while, too, but it turns out they’re in the same group after all. Tristan confirmed Monday afternoon that he was very happy to have Simon on his “team” so maybe they’re not so sick of each other after all. They spend the morning tumbling, bouncing on the trampoline, swinging from ropes and climbing on stuff.

Don’t you wish they had fun stuff like day camp when you were a kid? I never even went to sleep-away camp when I was a kid; we spent our summers watching the Price is Right and Match Game in the mornings and then roaming the neighbourhood in the afternoon. Or curled up with a good book – some things never change!

The other thing that I’m doing to live vicariously through the boys is swimming lessons. I’ve got them both enrolled in the same time slot, Tristan with his preschool level C and Simon in a preschool level A class. Last night was the third week of lessons and I still can’t help myself – I sit on the deck and positively beam at them as I watch them in the water. They’re both fearless, Simon moreso than even Tristan was at the same age, and both obviously doing well in their groups. Tristan can swim across the pool with a noodle under him, or for at least a couple of feet without one. Where the other kids in Simon’s class cling to the instructor or to the side, Simon bounces merrily on his own in the water, blowing bubbles or kicking vigourously at the teacher’s suggestion.

They’ve grown up so much this summer. I remember when they were babies (you know, way back in the old days) and how intensely and fiercely I loved them. I would look at older boys with skeptical curiousity, and I couldn’t imagine loving them any more than I did when they were taking their first toddling steps, wearing onsies and smiling toothless, drooly grins. And yet I look at these boys – no doubt, they are boys through and through, no trace of the baby remains – and see them thinking and absorbing and synthesizing, and it’s breathtaking.

Over the course of the summer, Tristan’s mission has been to conquer the monkey bars. Each time we stopped at a park, he would try to traverse the span of the monkey bars, and in a few months he’s gone from being barely able to dangle himself to being able to cross even the ones for the big kids, the ones that arc up and down instead of simply going straight across. After watching the ease with which Tristan could do it, I tried it one day myself and nearly pulled my arms out of my sockets. I couldn’t make it half way across and my armpits hurt for days. Those monkey bars aren’t for wimps.

The best part of three hours of gymnastics camp in the morning, fresh air in the afternoon and swimming lessons in the evening? We finally found out that it is actually possible to wear them out. My perpetual motion machines, the ones that make me dizzy with their boundless energy, actually do have a finite energy reserve. For the first time in I don’t know how long last night, they could barely stay awake long enough for a story, and there were no calls for an extra snuggle, a glass of water or an explanation as to why dogs have fur.

Ah, summertime…

Wherein I give up my eco-principals for convenience

For a week, we’re a two-car family. We’re watching my parents dog while they’re on vacation, and my mom loaned me her car for the duration. It was my intention to leave the car in the driveway except in case of emergency, but I was going to take the opportunity to switch out the boys’ full-sized car seats for booster seats. (If you’ve ever installed car seats into a two-door, pre-LATCH system Sunfire with bucket seats, you’ll know the pain of which I speak. But we got new CARS booster seats for the boys – Granny is going to be the coolest of the cool the next time she takes them for a ride.)

I’d toyed briefly with the idea of taking my mom’s car to work (shades of high school) but decided in the end to take the bus, as usual. However, when the bus showed up this morning, I walked on and realized that there were no seats. No seats. It’s a 40 minute ride, and I would have had to stand the entire way. Not going to happen.

So I pulled the bell and got off at the next stop and marched righteously back to the house, muttering to myself the whole way about how I pay a premium fare ($81/month) for my express pass and I’m three months pregnant and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand up the whole way to work at six friggin’ thirty in the morning and what the hell are all these people doing on the bus anyway because it’s July and shouldn’t they all be on holiday or something?

It was a gorgeous morning to be driving with the sunroof open, hot coffee in my hand. I didn’t get to read the morning paper, but I listened to CBC the whole way in. My route of preference brings me first through pastoral countryside, where I can wave to the cows, then along the full length of the Rideau Canal. On the early side of seven o’clock in the morning, there’s no traffic to speak of.

No rude person tried to take up more than their half of our shared seat, no crazy driver lurched to sudden and unexpected stops, nobody’s oversized back pack bonked me in the head as they shifted back and forth in the aisle. It cost me a whole $7 to park half a block from work and the most traumatic part of the commute was choosing between the sketchy elevator and the even more sketchy stairwell in what must be the world’s scariest parking garage where I tried hard to not touch any surface with my bare flesh.

I’ve long acknowledged our days as a one-car family are limited, and I’m proud that we’ve lived in the suburbs for four years without a second car. But there simply isn’t room across the back seat of our Focus wagon for three car seats, and I absolutely refuse to spend an entire year of maternity leave stuck in the house at home with no car and three kids while Beloved drives back and forth each day.

And after years and years of subjecting myself to the whims of OC Transpo twice a day, I could get used to driving downtown by myself. It’s still a bargain at twice the cost of the bus.

OB versus midwife

The week we came back from Bar Harbor, I had been feeling awful. I was so tired I could barely put one foot in front of the other and I just wanted to sleep all day. At the nadir, I found myself standing in the kitchen, half way through throwing together tacos for dinner, wondering if I had the energy to finish chopping the onion on the cutting board in front of me. It wasn’t pretty.

So I called the OB, and was told to come in for blood work. (My next scheduled appointment was still two weeks away.) So I went in and had seven vials of blood drawn – I must again comment on the irony of having them leech out seven vials of blood when I suspect I am anaemic – and went home again. I decided to start taking the prenatal vitamins more regularly, as I had been avoiding them because my stomach was already in some constant state of upset anyway and the only time I’ve ever actually been sick through any pregnancy was directly following a prenatal vitamin chased down with a glass of orange juice one unpleasant morning.

When three days went by and I hadn’t heard from the OB’s office, I called for the results. The receptionist left me on hold, where I hope but cannot confirm that she checked not only the results but with the OB as well, and came back on the line and said, “Everything’s fine. Just keep on truckin’.”

I paused, then sputtered. “But… but I feel like crap on a cracker. I can barely function I’m so cataclysmically tired.”

“Well, she said, you ARE pregnant.” I hung up, thinking but not saying ‘Yes, well, I’m not exactly new at this, and I’ve never felt this bad before.’ In truth, by that time I was feeling considerably better, and by the end of last week I was feeling pretty darn close to myself again.

But the whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth, so I hung up with the OB and promptly googled until I found information about midwives in Ottawa.

The good news is, I’m on a waiting list and am to call them back later this week. They expect they can take me. The bad news is, I don’t think I’m going to go with a midwife after all.

There seem to be two midwivery collectives in Ottawa, neither one of which has priviledges at the Civic hospital where both boys were born. I don’t have a lot of attachment to my OB as far as the actual childbirth is concerned, but I do feel strong ties to the Civic. Plus, Tristan was even conceived there before the IVF clinic moved off site.

Both midwivery collectives only seem to have priviledges at the Montfort Hospital, against which I have to admit I have a bit of a bias. I’ve heard of English-speaking patients having trouble there, even though it’s here in Ottawa, finding a fluently bilingual nurse. And while I’ve never really paid attention, there has been a lot of talk about closing it over the years and I don’t know why. I know the Civic, I trust the Civic, and I can’t say the same for the Montfort.

There’s a midwivery collective out in Carleton Place that has priviledges at the Queensway Carleton Hospital, which is convenient to where I live and several of my friends have given birth there. I’d happily consider that option – except then I’d have to find my way to Carleton Place, a good 20 minute drive from the house and probably an hour from work – for each appointment. Oh, and we only have one car. Not going to happen.

So, while I’m quite drawn to the concept of midwivery and I was ready to make the switch all things being equal, they aren’t equal at all. My OB’s office is a bloody pain to get to from work (as you’ll remember from my epic tale of the good-hearted cabbie and the very, very bad day) but fairly convenient to home. I’m ambivalent about her personally, with some significant pros and cons in each column. But mostly, I’m loyal to the hospital where the boys were born because I think that’s the most critical factor for me.

And besides, you know I’m not so good with change.

Order of the Phoenix

So I don’t usually do movie reviews here, mostly because I don’t see nearly enough movies. And this isn’t exactly a movie review, because it’s not terribly critical. But we went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on Friday night, and though Beloved and I have rehashed it to death, I still want to talk about it.

(Lots of people are talking about it, and it tickles me to no end that when you google “Harry Potter invisible horses” my blog is the first search return that pops up. The traffic spike has been pretty funny to watch.)

So, have you seen it? What did you think? (mild spoiler alert – consider yourself warned)

I have to say I loved it. LOVED it. The “fidget factor”, the means by which I measure my own engagement in a film by the number of times I shift, stretch, check my watch and look around the theatre, was a perfect score. I think I shifted from one cheek to the other once, that was it. I was completely engaged through the whole movie. And I have to say, the theatre was packed and kids between the ages of 8 and 16 comprised about 1/3 of the audience – and yet, with the exception of one annoying giggler in the front row, the theatre was largely silent and glued to the screen throughout. (It really was cute seeing kids showing up dressed in robes.)

It’s rare, so rare, when you can love the book and love the movie. The only example that comes even close for me was Carl Sagan’s Contact, one of my top-ten fave books of all time. The movie did the book justice, but wasn’t nearly as wonderful as the book.

Now, as I may have mention once or ten times, I’ve been re-reading the books for the last couple of months, and I just finished Order of the Phoenix the night before we left for Bar Harbor so all the details were fresh in my mind. There were quite a few points where the book and movie diverged, but I imagine a movie true to a 600 page book’s every detail would probably run somewhere around 26 hours, so I get the shortcuts they took. I realized after the movie that there was not a single reference to quiddich in the whole movie. Not that I missed it; I always kind of found the whole quiddich thing kind of tiresome.

It was too bad we didn’t see more from some of the supporting cast, but again I can see why they had to trim things down to size. Even Ron and Hermione probably had about three pages each of dialogue in the whole movie. I didn’t find Dolores Umbridge nearly toady enough, but that was my only quibble with the casting. They did a fantastic job with the special effects and a great job with the Ministry of Magic. I loved the final battle scene, especially the one brief bit where Harry and Sirius were fighting Death Eaters side-by-side. Probably my favourite scene in the whole movie – very stirring, especially for a hormonal pregnant woman.

As we were walking out of the theatre, I told Beloved that I’d happily turn around and go watch the whole thing again. It was that good. And then I went home and read the last four chapters of Half-Blood Prince.

Six days and counting. I’m stoked.

High school, 20 years later

I saw this over on Andrea’s and Bub and Pie’s blogs, and though it would make a fun Friday brainless meme. I’ve been thinking about high school a bit lately, since I’ve been playing on Facebook. It’s amazing to me that so many people who have signed up to “I graduated CCH in the 1980s” group are complete strangers to me, but I suppose in a school that huge (when I went there, Catholic Central was one of only two Catholic high schools in the city of London and had an average population of 1700 students) it’s little surprise that I don’t really remember anyone except the ones I spent significant time with. And, high school in general was a painfully awkward time for me socially anyway so I’ve probably blocked out all but the very best and worst of it.

(This is long, even by my standards, so I’ve tucked it below the fold. Click the “more please” button below to keep reading. And please excuse the excess white space, but Blogger has decided to insert two hard returns between each paragraph no matter how many times I edit them out. Grrr!)


1 Who was your best friend?

In Grades 9 and 10, I was inseparable from Suzan Marchand. She was my first girly-girl friend, in the giggling, note-passing, boy-crazy, incredibly annoying way only 15 year old girls can be. By Grade 11, I’d started running with a different crowd and I suppose the person to whom I was closest would be the guy who eventually became my ‘practice husband’ James. He lived in Sudbury, though, so during this time, I was pretty much inseparable from the Fry brothers, and Todd and Yvonne and Rose and a large, revolving pack of oddballs and outcasts.

2 What sports did you play?

Sports? Guffaw. No thanks. I didn’t even take gym in high school, and didn’t discover that physical activity could actually be enjoyable until my mid-twenties.

3 What kind of car did you drive?

The first car I drove was one of those giant early 1980s Oldsmobile station wagons, the kind with the faux-wood paneling on the sides and the backwards-facing third-row seat that folded down. On my 17th birthday, my Mom bought a new 1986 Mustang coupe and we ‘shared’ that for the rest of my high school career. How cool is my mom?

4 It’s Friday night, where were you?

Again, that depends on whether it was early or late in my high school career. Early on, probably talking for hours on the phone to Suzan and watching Friday Night Videos together over the phone. Later on, probably at the Fry’s house, or standing in the parking lot of McDonalds with the rest of the crowd trying to decide on where to go.

5 Were you a party animal?

Um, no.

6 Were you considered a flirt?

Um, no. But not for lack of trying. And again, I think I got much better at this by Grade 12 or 13. Funy how I suddenly became that much more attractive to other boys once I had a steady (and conveniently out of town) boyfriend.

7 Were you in band, orchestra, or choir?

Oh yes. I played flute in the high school band for four years, and really wish I had taken my music lessons more seriously. With the band, we traveled to Orlando for a festival one year, and to Ottawa in my senior year, just a few short months before I planned to move up here with my boyfriend.

8 Were you a nerd?

Um… I don’t know. I was socially awkward, especially in the first couple of years. I think I was too desperate to be liked to be a true nerd, but I had definite nerdy tendencies.

9 Did you get suspended/expelled?

No. My most heinous rule violation was to frequently flaunt the school dress code, which required navy pants or skirt and a white or navy shirt with a collar. It was the collar part against which I often rebelled, and I played fast and loose with the definition of ‘navy’ blue.

10 Can you sing the fight song?

Uh, something about “fight Crusaders”… but, no.

11 Who was your favorite teacher?

I had Mrs Hammond for English twice, and in Grade 13 she told me she’d give me a final grade over 90% (I was already close) if I could get published by the end of the year. True to her word, she gave me a final mark of 93% when I got a letter to the editor published in the local paper – which, upon reflection, was about as difficult as getting my name in the phone book, but I was pretty stoked at the time. I also loved my Grade 13 world history professor, a crusty oblate priest named Father Bill Thompson. When James and I got married the year after I graduated (eep!), we asked Father Thompson to officiate and he did.

12 School mascot?

Rodney (the Crusader) from the B.C. comic strip.

13 Did you go to Prom?

Yes. It was at Wonderland Gardens, which burned down a couple of years ago, from what I understand. I barely remember any of it, not because I was drinking but simply because I don’t think it was a particularly memorable time. I do remember the dress, though, a sexy white number with a poofy skirt that fell above my knee (not unlike the ones that were in fashion last year) and a risqué lacy patch over my cleavage that my mother kept threatening to stick a hankerchief into.

14 If you could go back and do it over, would you?

Ugh. No. The good times were great, and I think being 17 was one of the best years of my life, but being 15 was excruciating. Once was more than enough, thanks.

15 What do you remember most about graduation?

At the time, Ontario had five years of high school. You could graduate in Grade 12 and go on to a trade school or community college, or do Grade 13 and go on to University. The only thing I remember about Grade 12 grad is that my parents couldn’t get in to the church because nobody bothered to check tickets at the door and it was overfull. Did we have a Grade 13 grad? I think it was just a mass. I do remember, though, that Father Thompson officiated our Grade 13 grad mass, and spoke about a book he was reading by Carl Sagan called Contact. A few months later, I remembered him talking about it and read it myself, and it has since become one of my all-time favourite books.

16 Where were you on senior skip day?

This must be an American thing? But speaking of skip, yes, I did like to do that. Once in a blue moon, of course. Like the day we decided to drive to Port Huron, Michigan for absolutely no reason.

17 Did you have a job your senior year?

I had a string of jobs all through high school, starting from when I was 14 and working at the tobacco/newstand/camera store of a family friend. I worked at Baskin Robbins, a movie rental place, doing telephone sales of magazines and freezer plans, and Canadian Tire. By senior year, I was working as a cashier at Zellers, a job I continued when I moved to Ottawa and for which I later quit university to do full time.

18 Where did you go most often for lunch?

For the first few months, I was so terrified of the rest of the student body that I ate my lunch alone beside a fountain in a tiny park half a block from my school. By the time I actually had friends, we mostly ate in one of the two cafeterias while we played euchre.

19 Have you gained weight since then?

*insert eyeball roll here*

20 What did you do after graduation?

The weekend after high school finished, I moved to Ottawa to live with James. (We had gotten engaged in May of that year. I still shudder to think of it, I was in Grade 13 and wearing an engagement ring. My poor mother.) I started at Carleton University in the fall, but had quit by the end of the Christmas break that year. James and I were married in the summer of the following year (1989), and divorced five years later. I went back to school part time in 1992 and eventually graduated from university in 1998.

21 When did you graduate?

June, 1988.

22 Who was your Senior prom date?

James.

23 Are you going / did you go to your 10 year reunion?

Our school was never big on reunions. If there was a ten-year reunion, I never heard about it. I wouldn’t go anyway. For the most part, the people I care about from high school are still around enough to be commenting here occasionally or at least a phone-call away. I met up with a few more online recently through Facebook. There’s only one guy, Colin Murray, of whom I’ve completely lost track and often think about – but he doesn’t strike me as a high school reunion type either.

24 Who was your home room teacher?

Oh good lord, I can’t remember the plot of a book I read four months ago and you want me to remember stuff like this? I do remember being late more than my fair share of times because Fryman and Rose and I, along with some combination of others, used to drive in together in Fryman’s beat-up shit-brown Volkswagon Rabbit, and we were easily distracted on the way to school. They had this promotion going on in my senior year called “Freebie Fridays” where you could get free French Toast Sticks at a participating Burger King, and we’d drive all over the city in search of free fast food. For reasons I can’t quite remember, some days we’d randomly do stuff like decide to donate blood, too, and though we’d get peculiar looks from the administration, we at least never got in trouble for that act of altruism.

25 Who will repost this after you?

??? But if you do play along, leave a comment so I can come and relive this most painful and awkward time of your life with you!

"Elephants outstanding"

Some items from the newspaper are just too precious to pass by without commenting on them.

Apparently, three elephants escaped from the Garden Bros Circus in Newmarket, Ontario (near Toronto) and went on a 3 am stroll through suburbia. The electric fence penning them in somehow lost power, and when the elephants realized it, they knocked down the fence and made a break for it. Take a moment to picture two full-grown elephants – elephants! – roaming around in your suburban neighbourhood under cover of night. And now imagine being the caller, or better yet, the dispatcher, on this 911 call, as reported in the Globe and Mail:

Caller: “Hi. Umm… we’ve found an elephant walking down the street near the community centre, the Ray Twiney.”

Operator: “Sorry?”

Caller: “We’ve found an elephant walking down the street. Like the ones from, like, the circus at the Ray Twiney Centre. One of them got loose and it’s walking down the street.”

For the next few minutes, the caller explains that there are, in fact, at least two fully grown, trainer-less elephants milling about, as a woman in the background can be heard futilely exclaiming: “Don’t let it cross the street!”

Priceless!

Now playing at your neighbourhood grocery store

I was absolutely fascinated by a recent post of Julie’s over on A little pregnant. She was talking about going into a grocery store in her town and finding that they have carts with television sets embedded into them, so for a dollar your kidlets can watch an episode of The Wiggles or Bob the Builder or whatever while you do your grocery shopping. A TV! In the grocery cart!

I had to know more. From the Cabco website, makers of the TV Kartâ„¢:

Designed for use by parents and caregivers of children aged between two and five years, TV Kartâ„¢ Classic engages children so parents can relax and have a better shopping experience in retail stores.

Inside each TV Kartâ„¢ Classic, there is a steering wheel, interactive buttons on the dashboard, and a 7-inch TV monitor on which children watch selected TV programs.

There is seating for two pre-school children and appropriate safety belts aboard each kart. The adult carer can select what their children watch from a range of appropriate pre-school programs on offer.

Now, I’m the last person to get all high and mighty about TV. I’ve capitulated to the fact that all four of us are junkies for the big electric nipple, and the TV is often on at our house even if it’s just background noise. And you know I don’t have a problem with the idea of a DVD player in the car for long trips – although I will say that I’m purposefully avoiding a built-in DVD system in the car because I wouldn’t want the kids clamouring for it while we drove to the library or, say, the grocery store.

But seriously! Are kids so unable to entertain themselves – to contain themselves – that we need to sedate them with TV for 60 minutes so mom or dad can pick out the Lucky Charms and cookie dough ice cream lima beans and organic free range chicken in peace?

Call me crazy, but I don’t actually mind shopping with the kids. Sometimes. In our neighbourhood we’re even lucky enough to have a grocery store that offers a free (FREE!) drop-in playzone where you can leave the kids while you shop. But it’s small and the produce and meats haven’t been the best quality lately, so we only shop there occasionally. Heck, there are times when I actually like taking the kids with me to do errands. Simply for the (gasp!) pleasure of their company.

And even if you can get past the whole TV in the cart thing, which you can see I’m not quite able to do yet, it’s bad enough with the stores that have carts shaped like race cars. The kids know which stores have them and tend to whine if we don’t get one. I can only imagine the ruckus if they were anticipating a TV cart and didn’t get one. Or if they happened to notice some other kid watching TV in a cart while they had to, you know, not watch TV. Oh, the whinging!

Whaddya think, bloggy peeps? Would you pay a dollar for the priviledge of using a grocery cart with a TV in it? Or would you stop frequenting your favourite store if they suddenly started offering them?

Eight things

James tagged me for this, and I’ve been sitting on it for quite a while. Part of it has been the interruption of the vacation and subsequent blogging, but part has been simply because I had a hard time coming up with a list of eight things you don’t already know about me.

The Rules:

I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.

  1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

  2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

  3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

  4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay, so here’s what I came up with.

One: One of my favourite after-the-kids-are-in-bed treat is a homestyle oatmeal chocolate chip cookie with a glass of skim milk. And it’s only really worth eating if you microwave it for a few seconds to make the chocolate chips all melty. Twelve seconds is not quite long enough and fourteen seconds is a tiny bit too long, but I cannot bring myself to nuke it for 13 seconds.

Two: I’m entomophobic; that is to say, I’m afraid of bugs. Some more than others. I am wickedly freaked out by tent caterpillars, for instance, but not so much by bees and wasps. Earwigs and silverfish make my skin crawl, but I’m not afraid of ants. While I love to putter in my garden, I’m always vaguely revulsed by the critters that live in it. I’ve been trying very hard to not let the boys see how afraid of bugs I am, and have had to breath deeply to avoid shrieking when they have picked up random insects off the ground and brought them (with their HANDS!) to show them to me. *shudder*

Three: I love my barbecue. From early spring through first snowfall, I’ll use the grill three or four times per week. My favourites are (a) peppercorn steak kebabs with cherry tomatoes (is there anything more heavenly than grilled cherry tomatoes?), zucchini, onions and mushrooms; (b) chicken breasts that have been rubbed and left to sit in a sort of dry marinade made of commercial fajita mix and olive oil – makes for lovely spicy chicken fajitas with a cajuny flavour; and (c) plain old hamburgers, which brings me tidily to my next point:

Four: Even though I am the Queen of Convenience Foods, I am a snob about hamburger patties and will never buy the preformed ones. I make mine with extra lean ground beef, a bit of chopped up onion, bread crumbs or wheat germ when I have it, egg (yolk only) and a couple of shakes of worcestershire sauce. The trick is to handle the patties as little as possible, and to flip them only once or twice, not many times.

Five: I went to get some blood work done this week because this pregnancy is seriously knocking me on my ass. I’ve passed beyond chronically tired into barely functional (with a healthy does of apathetic on the side) and it’s far worse than it has been for any previous pregnancy. Does it strike anybody else as absurdly ironic that in testing you for anaemia they take SEVEN vials of blood from you?

Six: Speaking of pregnant, I’m coming up on 11 weeks and have moved once again into the realm of transitional pants. Except they won’t stay on my hips and keep wanting to slide off my ass. So in addition to debilitating fatigue and near-constant stomach upset, I plan to spend the next five or six weeks extremely cranky as I battle gravity for control of my pants.

Seven: My memory is getting worse, and my memories for plot details is abysmal. As I’ve said, I’m re-reading all the Harry Potter books in anticipation of the arrival of Deathly Hallows next week. Next! Week! I’m currently just finishing up Half-Blood Prince, which I consumed rather voraciously when it came out just two years ago, and yet it’s like reading it for the first time. I mean, I’m not overly surprised that some of the details of the books I first read back in 2000 have since escaped me, but it’s rather alarming how much of this reads like I’ve never read it before. And even worse, I’m already having trouble remembering the details of some of the books I just re-read a few short months ago. When Harry and Dumbledore talk about Harry destroying the Horcrux that was was Tom Riddle’s diary from Chamber of Secrets, I can only vaguely remember how Harry destroyed it. The good news is, it will save me a fortune in buying new books over the years; I’ll just start recycling the old ones every couple of years. (Speaking of Harry Potter, if you’re in the mood for some great speculation and a considered, intelligent review of the state of the series to date and the prevalent theories on where it’s all going, Macleans had a great feature last week.)

Eight: The boys are in swimming lessons right now. I lucked into the same time slot for each of them in a different level, so I sit on the pool deck and watch both of them with their respective teachers. It’s Tristan’s third session, but Simon’s first without a parent in the pool. They’re both doing extremely well, and I can’t help but beam proudly at them from my vantage point. Tristan never stops smiling the whole time he’s in the pool, and is so obviously eager to please his teacher that it breaks my heart. He’s just becoming able to dog paddle short distances without a noodle, and he pesters me endlessly through the week with a countdown of how many more sleeps until swim lessons. Simon also seems to be doing well, and I was pleased to see that the teacher knew his name from the very first day. Maybe it’s just me projecting, but she seems to favour him. Can’t say I blame her, he’s awfully cute bobbing around like he was born in the water.

So now, I’m supposed to tag eight other people. Hmmm, just about everyone has done this, and I’m so behind in my blog reading right now that I’m not sure who has and who has not been tagged. Having said that, how about:

1. Not so little sister
2. Sara
3. Liz
4. Suze
5. Alison
6. Barbara
7. Miche
8. You! (Leave a comment if you want to play along and I’ll link back to you.)

Ottawa to Bar Harbor Part 9: Tips for road trips with kids

The end is near. The end of this series, that is. JK Rowling needed seven books to complete her magnum opus; mine will likely run to ten installments by the time I get it all out of my system. And like Rowling, I’m hedging on that. I might need an extra post or two to finish frosting my bloggy cupcakes, ya know?

Anyway, today I thought I’d share and solicit tips for a successful road trip with kids. I have to tell you, the boys were amazing on this trip. I never would have imagined spending in excess of 30 hours in a week locked in a car with two energetic little boys could be such an enjoyable experience. They’re veteran road-trippers now, and Beloved and I were full of speculation on the drive back into Ottawa on where we could travel next summer. The whole eastern seaboard seemed within our grasp, from Florida to Newfoundland — until it occured to us that if all goes according to plan, we’ll have a newborn next summer. Ugh. So much for travel freedom!

I’ve always loved a good road trip (hat tip to Fryman, with whom I shared many, many road trips over the years) and when my folks lived in London I used to make the six-hour trip at least one weekend a month. For one busy year when Beloved and I first started dating, I’d drive down to London to see him almost every two weeks. I don’t clock quite so many miles in on the 401 anymore, but we usually drive five or six hours to see family a couple of times a year, either down near Toronto or up through Algonquin Park. All that to say, the boys are already good travelers – but they far exceeded my wildest hopes for them on this marathon trip.

We ended up driving about seven hours each day, which was just about enough if not about an hour too much. We’d leave after breakfast and arrive in time for dinner, and stopped on average around every two hours. Half way through the second day, Tristan figured out that if he said he had to pee, we’d stop somewhere (yet another reason to love the two-lane highways instead of the Interstate: we were always within 10 minutes of an Exxon station or a general store or something with a bathroom.) After the third shrug and “oh well, I guess I didn’t have to go after all” in half an hour, we had a little chat about how much longer the trip would be if we stopped every 11 minutes to pretend to pee, and the situation improved considerably.

A while back, Chantal and Andrea debated the merits of DVD players on road trips, and I’ve always been firmly in favour of them. What surprised me on this trip is how seldom we actually used ours, and that it was the boys who occassionally declined the opportunity to watch something. I think we used it as much in the hotel rooms to get them to settle down at night as in the car.

I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked preparing my little bag of tricks to distract the kids, but it turned out I had more than enough. In addition to having the maps and my notebook and the camera in my lap, I spent the entire road trip with a bag of kiddie treats at my feet. Every hour or two, pretty much whenever it became obvious that the boys were getting particularly twitchy, I’d pull something else out of the bag for them.

Divided over four days’ worth of relatively equivalent bags, I had snacks, drinks and other distractions. For snacks, I had individual baggies of small amounts of stuff like pretzels, trail mix, fruit snacks, and cookies. (Tip: don’t bring things that liquefy in 36C heat, like yogurt-covered raisins or mini-Aero bars. Ick.) I had a couple of juice boxes, a couple of bottles of water, and some rubbermaid drink boxes. I had colouring books, sticker books, and a book of mazes – Tristan loves mazes right now – and a box of crayons for each of them. Each boy had a dollar-store cookie sheet with a rim on it to use as a lap desk, perfect for containing runaway crayons and also fun to stick magnetized letters on. I had a couple of different sheets of stickers. Most of the stuff I actually already had lying around the house, but one great investment was a 5×7 blank sketch pad for each of them. Simon stuck a few stickers on his and lost interest, but Tristan drew pictures, wrote letters and filled more than half the pages in his sketch book. There were also a very few small toys, all pilfered from forgotten drawers, and a deck of phonetic flash cards from the dollar store that had Disney and Pixar characters on it.

Before we left, I stood for quite a while in the toy section of WalMart, considering the hand-held electronic games. The few that the boys have seen, mostly cheapo stuff from Happy Meals, have engaged them, and I thought long and hard about getting one for each of them. In the end, I didn’t and I’m glad. I’m sure we have a lot of Game Boy days ahead of us, and I’m happy to put hold off as long as I can.

We played a few car games, but given the fact that we were driving with all the windows open to combat the heat, conversation was not always easy. The boys’ favourite game is “I’m thinking of a (blank).” The blank started out being an animal, but has since moved on to be just about anything. The boys’ favourite topics are movies, foods and people they know. It’s basically 20 questions for preschoolers. Simon has improved from choosing the same thing every time it’s his turn to think of something, but now has the unfortunate habit of changing his item half way through the game when he gets distracted and forgets what he’s supposed to be answering questions about. He’s more like his mother every day.

While Tristan mastered the famous “how many more minutes” question on this trip, and I’m sure I would have gone postal if I had had to share just one more bathroom stall with multiple occupants, I still have to say that I’m incredibly proud of how well the boys traveled. I’ve got a couple more weeks of vacation coming up, and with this trip still fresh in recent memory, we’re already considering a six or seven hour drive to Lake Huron for my birthday. That’s the mark of a good road trip, when you come home already wondering when your next trip will be.

Do you have anything to add? What do you do to make long car trips with little kids bearable?

Ottawa to Bar Harbor Part 8: Stalking Stephen King

We left Bar Harbor early on a sunny Saturday morning, with a plan to follow Route 2 back the way we came and stay once again in St Johnsbury, Vermont, for the night. But first we had one special stop planned – and another unexpected one that delayed us for a little bit.

We were heading north away from Mount Desert Island on our way to Bangor, Maine through the small town of Ellsworth and I was mourning the fact that we had just passed the not-yet-open LL Bean outlet store when Beloved said, “Does he mean for me to pull over?” I looked in the mirror and sure enough, there was a cruiser with lights flashing behind us.

One of Maine’s finest approached us carefully and stood just behind Beloved’s open window – just like on Cops! I’m sure we looked threatening, what with the car load of luggage and the boys wearing a felt lobster hat and a pirate hat, and me with my usual lap full of Nikon and maps and Scooby Snacks for restless travelers. Seems we had stumbled into a 25 mph zone at a 45 mph clip (to Beloved’s credit, I hadn’t seen any signs) which would have been a fine in excess of $300. The cop was a good guy, though, and when we checked Beloved’s driving record and found it reasonably clean – I only wish I had been driving; can you believe it’s the first time I’ve ever even been in a car pulled over for speeding, let alone been tagged with a ticket – and dropped the fine to $137. Even better, we could pay the fine online rather than having to pay it before we left the state; the story of the Ottawa student jailed 11 hours for speeding in Georgia a few months ago was a little too fresh in my mind! So we had one more expensive souvenir of Maine, and the classic experience of having our oldest son ask in a tremulous voice, “Is Daddy going to jail?” to add to our vacation memory book. With a sinking feeling, I realized that Beloved would not drive one mile per hour over the posted speed limits for the rest of the two-day drive home.

It was still early in the day when we pulled into Bangor in search of my literary hero. Our first stop, just off the Interstate, was Betts Bookstore on Hammond. I’d corresponded with the owner, a fellow named Stu, and he’d promised me a map of some of the key attractions on the Tommyknockers and More bus tour that highlights some of the places Stephen King has immortalized in his many books.

It was a lovely little bookstore, and the owner was a gentleman. He had a little white poodle in the store that engaged Simon while I briefly browsed and wished I had $1200 or so for a signed first edition King book. I settled for a t-shirt and a fridge magnet (we collect fridge magnets of places we visit on all our family trips) and a brief chat with Stu. The map included directions to Stephen King’s house, just around the corner, and I asked if the He ever dropped by the store.

“Not anymore,” said Stu regretfully. “Not since his accident. He used to drop by our old location two, three times a week, but we just don’t see him anymore.” This confirmed what I’d read elsewhere, that the formerly gregarious Stephen King, whose house used to have open doors and the best treats every halloween, has become extremely reclusive and guarded with his privacy since the 1999 accident that nearly killed him.

With all this in mind, we piled back into the car and drove the short few blocks down Hammond (ironically, a continuing extension of my beloved Route 2 East) to West Broadway. It’s a leafy, quiet street lined on one side with more modest homes and the other with larger rambling homes that one could comfortably call mansions. Stephen King’s house is set unassumingly in the middle of a few similarly-sized houses, and we pulled over to rest in the shade of a large tree to consider it.

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“You’ve come all this way,” Beloved said. “Aren’t you even going to get out?” I hesitated, feeling rather foolish. He was right; ever since the idea of Maine crystalized out of the ether into our vacation destination of choice, the idea of Stephen King had been woven firmly into the idea. I’d been reading his latest book throughout our trip, and my perception of Maine has been coloured largely by what I’ve read through a lifetime of voraciously consuming his novels. Here I sat, in front of his very house, too shy to get out of the car.

Eventually, I did. It was just before 9:30 am on a gorgeous late-June morning, the sky clear blue above me. On such a summer morning across America, homeowners were pushing lawnmowers in their yards or drinking coffee with the morning paper on the porch, and I peered hopefully at the house and grounds hoping against hope to see Stephen King himself engaged in some sort of similar weekend pursuit. I slowly paced the length of the wrought-iron gate, admiring the italianate style of the gorgeous house and the well-tended grounds. I even peered hopefully at a few windows, feeling more stalkerish by the minute as I snapped pictures of the motionless house. The iron gates themselves are quite the feature, embellished with spiderwebs and bats and various kinds of gargoyles.

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By the time I’d paced the length of the property, I’d realized that the gate to the driveway stood wide open and a silver Mercedes sat quietly in the shade at the top of the drive. I lingered for a long moment in front of the open gate, looking at my clear path to the front door. I considered the odds of me ever being in Bangor, ever being this close to Stephen King again. I thought about how much I admire him, how much of an influence he has had on my own writing style, how in 20 years he has never strayed from my top-five list of favourite authors. I willed him to stroll out of the house, maybe on his way to the grocery store or the hardware store or any of the other errands mere mortals run on a Saturday morning. The house remained inscrutable and silent in the morning sun. I pictured myself walking up that curving drive, mounting the porch, ringing the bell, and asking in my politest Canadian manner if I could trouble the Great Man for just a minute, a moment quick enough for a signature, maybe a photo, certainly the encounter of a lifetime.

Stephen King's House

In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. With a last regretful look over my shoulder, we drove away. I even scanned the nearby sidewalks with hope of seeing Him maybe taking the dog for a morning stroll, but the streets were calm and deserted. We tried to find the Barrens, made famous in IT and identified as one of several locations on my map of local attractions from King’s stories, but we got turned around and I could feel the pressure of the drive ahead of us bearing down.

We decided instead on a little detour to Target, which itself took much longer to find than it should have. We spent maybe 20 minutes or so perusing the toy section, but I simply wasn’t in the mood to shop, becoming more twitchy by the minute. By 11:00 we were back in the car, heading west on I95, headed back to Route 2 for the long trip back to Vermont.

What do you think? Would you have walked away too, or would you have taken the risk and walked up to the front door and rung the bell?