Month: November 2009

The one with the new floor

W are in the midst of getting laminate installed on the main floor of our house. This has caused considerable, in the words of Sir Topham Hat, Chaos and Disruption.

The decision to even have the horrendously ugly sky-blue-faded-to-murky-grey carpets replaced with laminate was itself fraught with peril. The current home reno tax credit helped push us along, as did the unmistakable smell of doggy feet that seems to emanate from the carpet when the house has been closed up for a while. After three boys with serious reflux issues, the carpet is could likely be classified as some sort of bio-hazzard, in fact. So really, tearing up the carpet is long overdue. But the idea of living for a week or two while transitioning from carpet to laminate — the transition period — was almost more than I could handle. Where would we put half a household worth of stuff? What would we do with the kids when we couldn’t live on the main floor? How would I coordinate it with work, and how could I ask the nanny to work within the inherent chaos? Like so many things in my life, though, the worrying was largely for naught and we’ve muddled through to the half-way point of the project without incident.

As much as I’d like to think we are the type of people who can easily tackle a project like installing laminate ourselves, there are two realities that shatter my idyllic illusion of Beloved and I working side by side, thumping Groove A into Slot B to create a beautiful new floor of our own doing. The first reality is the fact that much as I like to consider myself handy around the house, we have trouble installing picture frames and curtain rods without the anchors pulling out six-inch chunks of the wall. The second reality is the fact that on a given day it takes two and a half adults to wrangle the kids. Since we’re already half a man down, there are simply no spare arms to dedicate to this kind of task.

Besides, my mother has taught me well: there are those who do, and those who are smart enough to contract it out to those who will do it better.

When the first estimate came in for the purchase and installation of the laminate, though, we balked. The first quote we got, sitting in Home Depot one Saturday afternoon back in September, was in the neighbourhood of $2000. Not bad for two large rooms, but still a huge expense. But by the time they came in and measured and evaluated the space and padded where they could, the revised, final and actual estimate was closer to $3000, a 50 per cent increase that I just could not justify. So Beloved and I agreed to shave off about half of the increase by doing some of the work ourselves. We would move all the furniture (to where was a good question) and tear up the carpet and underpad. The best of both worlds, right? Professionals to do the fussy bits, and our own hard labour to do the messy bits.

Honestly, I had no idea how messy it would be. Tearing up 15 year old carpet that has been barfed on, pooped on, and spilled on more times than I can count? Gross. Really, it was so bad that now I want to tear up the carpet throughout the upstairs, too, just so I can get a fresh start. I can barely walk on it, thinking of the dust that we tore up with the underpad.

The actual removal of the carpet and underpad was easier than I expected, though, and only took us one extended afternoon nap on Lucas’s part instead of the two days we were anticipating. Moving all the furniture was more troublesome than I expected. We now have stacks of boxes and books in every room of the house, and the installers won’t even arrive until Wednesday. Because we simply must use the main floor of the house (how you people do six-month renos of your houses is beyond me!) we’ve torn up the underpad, pulled out all the staples and carpet tack, and relaid the carpet back down again so we’re not walking on bare plywood.

You can imagine how much fun this is with Mr Curious, the not-quite-two-year old.

With any luck, by Thursday we’ll have a shiny new laminate floor in, if I remember correctly, “apple wood” which steals heavily from the look of knotty pine. And of course, now that we’ve moved all the furniture and left the rooms bare, all I can see are the flaws in the paint that I now feel the need to touch up. And the TV stand is going to look a little shoddy next to that fancy new floor, we might need a new one of those soon. And because the boys spend the vast amount of their time on the living room floor instead of on the furniture, we’re going to have to invest in an area rug of some sort. And the computer table may not survive the trip back down the stairs. I didn’t realize how close to falling apart it is.

Funny, when we first started talking about getting laminate, I was worried about the boys and the dog slipping on the shiny surface. Turns out there was an entirely different slippery slope I should have been worrying about!

The Muppets go viral

This? May be the best justification I’ve ever seen for the existence of the Internet.

The Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody:

Lucas watched this four times end to end before the spell was finally broken. Between this and Bohemian Rhapsody being on Lego Rockband’s song list, the boys will have a decent appreciation for one of my all-time favourite bands. Pure awesomeness!

Project 365: In which the TtV really gets out of hand!

This week, I went a little crazy with the through-the-viewfinder (TtV) shots. Five of seven days, in fact, the picture of the day was a TtV shot. This is largely for two reasons: first, I’ve been running out of ideas, and I think the TtV shots give things a fresh perspective. Second, I’ve been running out of daylight and too lazy to haul out my lighting gear, and the brightest room in my house, the kitchen, can be the least photogenic. TtV seems to be a lot more forgiving.

This set of pictures of Lucas, for instance, was taken in the kitchen.

309:365 Playing with trains TtV

This portrait of Katie was taken in the kitchen, too. I didn’t, but I could have called it “Portrait of an unimpressed yellow dog in a yellow room.”

308:365 Katie TtV

(It still makes me chortle when I look at it. Poor ol’ Katie, she puts up with a lot, as that look in her eyes clearly tells you.)

This one wasn’t taken in the kitchen, it was taken last Friday in my new office on my second day of work. On Flickr, I described it like this: “I really, really love my new job, from the people to the location to the tasks to the way the light streams in my window onto my happy little corner of the world.”

307:365 @ work

These two pictures I took because the big excavator caught my attention and it was Sunday so there was nobody around to tell me to get away with my camera. (After three boys, i’ve developed a fascination with large construction equipment I might not have otherwise cultivated.)

306:365 TtV digger

I like this one in particular. I think it has an otherworldly, post-apocalyptic quality to it that’s grown on me over the week.

306b:365 TtV digger scoop

Speaking of post-apocalyptic (how often do you get to make that segue?!) I took these stark pictures of bare trees reaching into a cloudy sky because I was trying to capture the bleakness of November before we move on to a December that I hope will be populated with warm holiday shots, bright Christmas lights and — sooner rather than later, I hope! — lots of shots of fresh-fallen snow. But I’m quite pleased with how these ones turned out.

310:365 November TtV

So much so that I really couldn’t decide which of these two was my favourite. At first, I designated this one as the shot of the day, then I switched it to the one above at the last minute. I like the way the branches fill the frame, and the absolute lack of colour — even though I didn’t adjust the colour or saturation on these at all, they’re pretty much straight out of the camera, save for cropping.

310b:365 November TtV alternate

In (ahem) stark contrast to the bleakness from yesterday, last Saturday I was delighted to find an actual flower to photograph. Well, it’s actually a weed, but a flowering weed nonetheless. See?

305:365 November flowers!

And finally, my other non-TtV shot of the week. This one is another in the series of shots that ended up being far from what was originally intended. In fact, I was going to take some macro shots of the typewriter keys, but I was having a little too much “help” and this is what I ended up with.

304:365 Touch typing

I think this is a lot better than a macro of the keys would have been, anyway. And now I can save the macro-key idea for another dark, dreary day’s last-minute shot!

Is there a 12-step program for Tim Hortons?

My name is DaniGirl, and I am addicted to Tim Horton’s coffee.

*hangs head in shame*

Not just Tim’s coffee. I like my own a lot, too. But I am a coffee snob and not just any old brackish brew will do when I need my fix. Which is, for the record, regularly. To the tune of three or four large to extra-large cups a day.

*blushes in embarrassment*

I know. It’s insidious, really. You don’t realize how much you’re drinking, or how much you’ve come to rely on it, until your routine is upended by something like, say, starting a new job. You realize that the coffee on the way into the office is fairly easy to integrate into your routine, but that midmorning fix, when you get up and stretch and wander two blocks over to the Rideau Centre to get your second XL with three milks — is no longer really accessible when there isn’t a Timmy’s around the corner. Oh, I can get in my car and drive to one of four nearby Tim Hortons, or I can take about 20 minutes to walk to the nearest one about half a kilometre away. But it’s just not, you know, convenient anymore.

And, for the record, simply doing without? Not really an option. Not if I want to stay vertical and coherent for the rest of the day, anyway. Not only am I addicted, but I have no desire whatsoever to become unaddicted.

That’s not even the worst part, though. The midmorning coffee can, in fact, be rather easily acquired by either driving over to Tim’s myself, or coercing one of my new team members, likewise addicted to Canada’s favourite java, to pick one up for me on the collective morning run. But my previously-established routine also included one last large coffee to get me through the afternoon. Slipping out one to get a coffee each day seems reasonable; slipping out twice makes me feel surreptitious and guilty. “Who me? No, I’m, erm, just going to the bathroom. With my coat on. It’s cold in there, yanno!”

Yes, I know, in the world of addictions, a couple-three coffees a day isn’t too dangerous. But the change in my routine is showing me how deeply integral to my day those coffees have become! And if I don’t get them? You’ll find me face down on my desk, snoring, by lunch time. Probably not the best way to make a good impression on my new team.

Coffee is definitely my addiction of choice. What’s yours?

On crib recalls and baby sleep

Did you see these news items from yesterday? Over one million cribs recalled, and a world-wide ban on drop-sided cribs. Wowza!

We don’t have a Stork Craft crib, but we do have a drop-side one that has served us well through three boys. It was made by a little mom and pop outfit in Quebec, as I recall from one desperate scramble to find a missing part after we moved in 2003. I won’t be scrambling to get a replacement crib, nor will I be moving Lucas to a bed any sooner than I’m he is ready. I figure we got about another year, if we’re lucky.

In fact, just this morning I had to explain to Tristan that though I greatly appreciated his fraternal assistance, could he please *not* lift the baby out of the crib by himself in the future? I see a lot more risk in the 60 lbs not-quite-eight-year-old hauling the 35 lbs not-quite-two-year-old over the raised side of the crib than I do any inherent risk in the construction of the crib itself! I might find a way to weld or otherwise permanently attach the drop side, though. We don’t use it and haven’t really used it at all for Lucas. In fact, I’m not even sure we raised the mattress from the lower level when he was born — I think we just left it the way Simon had it when he made his way to a big-boy bed in 2006. (Oh my, I really have been blogging for a long time — and I really do love that I can poke back into the archives and find these gems that might have been otherwise lost!)

Ahem, anyway, all this prattling on about cribs has given me the opportunity to brazenly brag about mention the fact that after almost a year of hand-wringing and angst about sleep training, it’s been about a month since the day that Lucas sleep-trained himself completely without any intervention from me. Huh. Didn’t see that one coming!

As you might remember if you’re as long in the tooth around here as me, I am not opposed to letting a baby cry himself to sleep, within reason. The parameters of reason including being close to one year old or older, knowing your baby’s temperament well enough to know he can handle it, knowing you and your spouse and other family members can handle it, and never letting a baby cry longer than ten or fifteen minutes at a time. Those were my personal yardsticks. Sleep training Tristan took about a week; Simon a little longer. Both were between 10 months and a year old.

Lucas’s first birthday came and went, and he was still falling asleep the way he had since birth — in my arms, usually while I sat in the living room far from the going-to-bed chaos of the big boys upstairs. It would take between 20 and 45 minutes for him to drift off, considerably less at nap time. And no matter how much I favoured the idea of sleep training in principle, no matter how much I yearned for the freedom of simply being able to put the baby in the crib and kiss his fuzzy head and walk away — I just couldn’t do it with Lucas.

And then one day last month, I thought he was asleep when I ported him upstairs but I realized as I lay him into his crib that he was watching me. So I did exactly that — kissed his fuzzy head, said goodnight, closed the door and walked away. I went in to kiss the big boys goodnight, gave them a little cuddle and paused outside Lucas’s door. Silence. Hmmm, how curious. So I shrugged my shoulders and walked downstairs, waiting for him to bellow.

Silence.

About half an hour later, I couldn’t resist any longer, so I went upstairs and peeked into his room. He was, to my everlasting astonishment, sleeping. Imagine that! So the next night, just like I have done every other night (because I know from reading every baby sleep book ever written the importance of routine) I told him the story of his day, gave him a little cuddle with his precious “blanky and soo”, and when he was calm but still awake I brought him upstairs and put him in his crib. By the time I had said goodnight to the big boys, he was standing in his crib hollering for me — I tell you, I was almost relieved! — and so I walked back in, tucked him back under the covers, told him I loved him and it was time to go to sleep and walked out again. And — he did!

Giddy with success, three days later we started putting him in his crib awake at nap time too — and do you know what? That worked too. Right from the start. I swear, nobody was more shocked than me.

Now, one of my favourite parts of the day is bedtime, when I put Lucas in his crib, tuck his blankets around him, and sing a couple of verses of my perennial bedtime favourite, You are My Sunshine. I can’t quite keep from laughing as he calls out the last word in every line to “sing” along with me: sunshine, happy, grey, dear, you. Really, it’s way too cute.

Anyway, that’s how we sleep trained Lucas. Or he sleep trained us. I have a suspicion he’s wanted us to just put him in his crib and leave him in peace for months, but he just didn’t have the words to tell us! One of these days he’s going to tell me how he really feels about my singing, but that’s a post for another day.

Photography book review: PhotoJojo!

Dear Santa, Of all the photography books I’ve read this year (and hoo-boy, I’ve read a LOT of them, maybe even ALL of them) the one that I’m asking for this Christmas is the PhotoJojo book. Yes, I know, I already read it once from the library. But it was so fun, so funny, so full of great ideas, that I simply must have my own copy to turn to and flip through and be inspired by at random points through the year.

I’ve been a fan of the PhotoJojo Web site and newsletter for quite a while now. In fact, together with CBC’s Spark podcast, they were the main inspirations for Project 365. I’d seen that they were coming out with a book, but since I’d been subscribing to their newsletter for more than a year, and had spent many fun hours plumbing the depths of their archives, I didn’t think I needed to pick up what they called “the convenient dead trees edition” of their Web site. Then one day to my delight I found it on the express shelf of the library and took it home.

I got about half-way through when I realized that not only was this one of the most delightful photography books I’d ever read, but that I needed a copy of my own.

So what is PhotoJojo? It’s a whimsical, fun and occasionally brilliant set of, in their own humble words, “insanely great photo projects and DIY ideas.” Some of the material has been recycled from their newsletters, but the vast majority of the content was new to me.

There are two parts to the book. The first section talks about things to do with the photos you’ve already taken but are languishing, unloved and unappreciated, in your hard drive or in a shoe box somewhere. The second section is called “have more fun with your camera” and provides ideas and inspiration for all the fantastic photos you are about to take.

You can see why I love it, right? The ideas run the gamut from the silly (how to build a harness for your dog to create “the amazing doggie cam” or how to make a hidden jacket camera) to the sublime (a disposable camera chain letter, and the most inspired take on the hoary old photo calendar idea I’ve ever come across.) It has fun projects like making snow globes and photo cupcakes, and practical projects like how to turn a water bottle into a monopod. And it’s threaded through with the geeky sort of humour that makes me snicker out loud as I read.

Photographic meets crafty, with a bent sense of humour and a penchant for whimsy: seriously, what’s not to love? Oh sure, you can do what I did and check out a copy from the public library, but if you’re a photo junkie like me, trust me, you’ll want your own copy too!

But wait, wait, I can’t be done the book review, I haven’t told you about the “everyone who comes to visit you photo wall” or the “photo lampshade” or “how to turn your SLR into a pinhole camera” or “how to build a fish-eye lens out of a door peep” or…

The “Moms fight the flu” blog tour

When I was approached by Mom Central Canada to participate in a blog tour promoting the H1N1 information provided by the Ontario Ministry of Health, I was more than happy to sign on.* As Mom Central noted in their original pitch to me, “The Ontario Ministry of Health is the reliable source for up-to-date information about the H1N1 vaccine in our province. By sharing their useful links and tips we can help ensure that Moms have access to the information they need this flu season.”

It’s been a little over three weeks since we all received our H1N1 vaccines. Tomorrow, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be taking Lucas for his booster shot. (If you didn’t catch the news, the booster shot is now only required for babies aged six months to three years old.) Considering how much I dithered and agonized over getting the shot in the first place, I am so glad and so relieved that I did. I’m no longer flinching over touching surfaces with my bare hands, and walked rather confidently through the office the first day of my new job this week, shaking hands with dozens of strangers as I went. I’m not sure I could have comfortably done that just a month ago.

If you’re considering getting the shot for yourself or your family (and the government just announced this week that the general population is now welcome to receive the vaccine) the Ministry of Health has provided a list of vaccination clinics throughout Ontario. If you’re here in Ottawa, you can visit the City of Ottawa’s H1N1 sub-site for local site information.

The other reason I decided to participate in this blog tour is because I think the information organized on the Ministry of Health’s web site is pretty useful, and well-organized. For example, there is an interactive self-assessment tool that will walk you through the various signs and symptoms of flu, and whether you should treat your child’s (or your own) illness at home or visit a flu assessment centre.

I have to admit, I’m feeling a lot less panicked by the H1N1 flu than I was about a month ago. I’m not sure if that’s because I feel that the family is reasonably well-protected because of the vaccine, or because the media hype is dying down. But I have a colleague whose 17-year-old son just this week became very ill with H1N1, so it’s not yet time to declare the battle over this virus over.

If your child is sick, here are some guidelines to follow from the Ontario Ministry of Health:

What to Do When Your Child is Sick with Influenza
1. Treat your child’s fever

* Take off heavy clothing and blankets.
* Dress the child in lightweight clothing and keep the room temperature at 20°C (68°F).
* Give acetaminophen or ibuprofen for fever and muscle pain in the dose recommended on the package (unless your doctor says otherwise).

Note : Do NOT give acetylsalicylic acid (ASA or Aspirin®), or any cold medicine that has ASA, to children or teenagers under the age of 18.

2. Treat your child’s other flu symptoms

* Encourage your child to get plenty of rest.
* Use salt-water nose drops to treat a stuffy nose.
* Ask your pharmacist about any over-the-counter medicines for cough.

3. Protect others from flu

* Keep your child at home until his/her fever has been absent for at least 24 hours and he or she is feeling well enough to resume normal activities. It’s important for your child to stay home if there’s fever so that the virus doesn’t spread to other children.
* Your child can return to school 24 hours after the fever has resolved and he/she is feeling well enough to get back to normal activities.

When should you seek medical care for your child?

Use Ontario’s influenza assessment tool to see whether your child needs medical care.

Call Telehealth Ontario at 1-866-797-0000 or your health care provider if your child is under age 5 and develops flu symptoms. The risk of complications from flu is higher for children under age 2.

*Disclosure: I will be compensated for participating in this blog tour with some sort of “Fight the Flu” kit containing items to help keep the house germ free, and will be entered into a draw to win an Acer Notebook computer. The remuneration was secondary to my decision to participate, though, because I think there is a huge amount of conflicting information out there and I am happy to provide a link to the Ontario Ministry of Health for what I believe to be extremely reliable and reputable information.

Project365: 300 days and more than 10,000 shutter clicks!

Can you believe I’m already past day 300 on my 365 project? Two months from today I’ll be done! And just the other day, I noticed that my Nikon is using the same file numbers it was assigning to pictures back in March, which means I’ve taken more than (gasp!) ten thousand pictures in a little over eight months. Sheesh, that’s a LOT of shutter clicks!! Eek, now that I do the math, that’s an average — AVERAGE, mind you — of 33 pictures a day every day. No wonder I feel like the Nikon is permanently affixed to my left arm!

It was such a busy week, it was hard to cram in the photo of the day on more than one occasion. I started the week with this picture snapped during my niece’s and nephew’s joint birthday party at Chuck E Cheese in Mississauga. This picture is particularly funny if you think back to this post about our recent vermin troubles!

297:365 Lucas meets ChuckECheese

These were in my sister-in-law’s new kitchen, and I loved the late afternoon light spilling over the strawberries. I desaturated them just a bit, because I found the red was a little overpowering and I wanted to emphasize the form of them a little bit more.

298:365 Strawberries

The next day was our day at the zoo. Because the whole point of the zoo trip was to see the lions, and because the lion’s roar made such an impression on all of us, even though it’s not quite tack-sharp this one was still the hands-down choice for the photo of the day.

299:365 You lookin' at me?

This was a bit of a throwaway shot in that I was near the end of the day, knew I wouldn’t have the time or the inclination to take a picture later, so I took this one on the way home. Hard to believe the sun sets before 5 pm now — these dark winter days are hard, but it’s been lovely and sunny during the day, so that makes up for it a bit! The green tone in this comes from “cross processing” which is a digital processing that mimics an old film processing trick, where you use one kind of film’s processing chemicals on another kind, giving it a distinctive colour cast.

300:365 Tall grass at sunset

I seem to be drawn to a couple of different photographic situations over and over again, and reflections on the Rideau Canal is one of them! This was taken on my last day commuting downtown, though, so it’s likely the end of this particular series.

301:365 Patterson Creek Bridge

And this? The intersection of my ongoing fascinations with through the viewfinder (TtV) photography and autumn leaves!

302:365 An autumn TtV collage

Finally, speaking of TtV, this is a pencil cup shot through the viewfinder of one of my Duaflex cameras. It’s a bit of an inverse homage to my new job. Since the new job is all about tech and my mad social media skillz, I thought I’d go old-skool with the photo of the day on my first day.

303:365 Pencils

There’s an old saying about how your first 10,000 pictures are your worst… well, at least now I know I’ve got those out of the way! 🙂

The power of positive thinking, or Good things are worth waiting for

Guess what I’m doing today?

*impish grin*

I’m starting my new job!!! Yes, that job, the one that appeared out of the blue to land on my lap like a gift, then broke my heart when it disappeared due to budget constraints. The one with the excellent team, the cool social media factor, the 2-hours-less-per-day commuting time, the wicked-cool multimedia aspect… yep, that job!

*happy dance*

For a couple of weeks around the end of October into the beginning of November, partly because of losing the opportunity and partly due to whatever else ever causes the blues, I was in quite a funk. Last weekend, I started feeling a lot brighter, and on Monday I decided to make a conscious effort to shake it off. I happened to need to change my password for system access, and decided to incorporate the word “happy” into the 10-character string, just as additional motivation and a reminder that I’m in control of my own life.

It was mid-afternoon on the very next day when I got an e-mail out of the blue saying they’d received funding approval for the position, when could I start? Funny, I just had a feeling that it would all work out, but I’d expected to have to take a much longer-term view than a couple of weeks!

As excited as I am, I’m also nervous as hell. Changing government departments for the first time in 20 years, changing jobs, actually taking on a management job when I swore I never would, the intimidation of learning a whole new organizational structure… yikes! For someone who doesn’t deal well with change, it’s a hell of a lot of change all at once.

But you know what more than makes up for my fear of change? I don’t have to take the bus. Sayonara, OC Transpo! Isn’t that the sweetest icing on an already pretty sweet cake?

Strollers on buses revisted

Today, OC Transpo is issuing new guidelines on the management of the priority seating on buses. The guidelines will no doubt be both controversial and divisive, because the gist of the proposed guidelines include a new “stroller policy” that “limits the size and number of open strollers on board at at any one time, while encouraging customers to fold and stow upon boarding the bus. Customers are expected to be able to manage the stroller, the child any other items they have with them.”

(Please excuse me while I pause to snort, roll my eyes and recompose myself. Ahem, where were we?)

Oh yes, we didn’t get to the section about “Stroller Eligibility”:

An open stroller occupied by a child will be allowed on the bus if:
a) It is capable of being folded
b) It is capable of being safely stowed
c) It will not interfere with other passengers or with the safe movement of passengers within the transit vehicle:and
d) It can be wheeled, or (when folded) carried, through the aisle without contacting the seats.

And then it goes on to say that open strollers can only occupy the wheelchair spot on the bus, only one stroller may occupy one of the two wheelchair spots, regardless of whether a wheelchair is present or not; that double strollers are permitted but do not have to be folded; and that triple and larger strollers are not allowed at all.

The thing is, I get where they are coming from. I really do. Strollers are inconvenient, and they do take up a lot of room. Some people have really big strollers, and maybe they could consider using a smaller stroller when they know they have to take the bus. But what I said in my letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen back in October 2008 still applies here:

Stay off buses?
The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Thursday, October 09, 2008

Re: Strollers are headache for drivers, passengers, Oct. 8.

I read with interest Doloros Swallow’s letter and union leader André Cornellier’s comments in Kelly Egan’s column (”Try sitting in the bus driver’s seat”) about strollers on OC Transpo buses.

As a mother of three boys under seven and a regular user of OC Transpo, I’d like to ask these people: what else should mothers of babies do? Do you recommend they leave the strollers at home and carry their babies and toddlers everywhere? That’s not so easy with a 30-pound napping toddler.

Perhaps they should stay off the buses altogether? Isn’t one of the main tenets of public transportation supposed to be that it should be accessible to those who don’t have other means of transportation?

You might argue that there are smaller strollers available on the market. Even if you overlook the fact that umbrella-type folding strollers are not appropriate for very young babies, you should try pushing one through even the thinnest sheen of slush on Ottawa’s winter sidewalks, let alone in more than a couple of centimetres of fresh snow. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford more than one stroller — one for foul weather and one for small spaces. Many other parents are not so fortunate.

Yes, it’s difficult to manoeuvre around one or more strollers at the front of an OC Transpo bus. Yes, mothers (and other caregivers) should do what they can to take up as small a space as possible.

But I think we all have enough things to worry about right now without castigating people who are simply trying to do the very same thing you are — to get from one place to another with as little hassle and inconvenience as possible.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

I think it’s ridiculous that OC Transpo is making an actual policy out of this. How are they going to enforce it, when they don’t enforce the current priority seating? (Trust me, I’ve spent many many hours standing on buses in an extremely pregnant state, wishing the driver would suggest that someone give up a seat for me but too bashful to demand one myself.) Oh sure, I know, you can wear your baby in a backpack or a sling — but despite my own favour for it, not everybody is comfortable with babywearing. There really is a place for strollers.

And seriously, can you picture it? You’re on the bus with your baby and you’re likely carrying at least a diaper bag. Perhaps you’ve even had the temerity to buy something, and you have some packages to balance as well. You’re supposed to get on the bus, remove your baby from the stroller, fold it up, hopefully get your ass in a seat before the bus lurches away from the curb, and you’ve got to balance the folded-up stroller, the baby, and whatever other “items” you might have with you. Better hope it’s not nap time! We all know how much sleeping babies love to be woken up. God forbid you have another child, perhaps a little older than the baby but someone who still needs help to sit still or to keep from falling off the seat as the bus lurches and lunges across town. And then you’re either supposed to open the stroller, with the baby (and maybe some packages, perhaps an umbrella or a diaper bag) still in your arms no less, and put the baby back in the stroller in time for your stop. Or perhaps you’re supposed to carry the whole kit and caboodle off the bus and THEN reassemble everything?

This is so unbelievable ridiculous only a committee could have come up with it. Of all my rants against OC Transpo — and oh, how I could go on! — this one policy takes the cake. If we’re going to be regulating strollers on buses, can we do something about the size of backpacks? Because I’ve taken a few of those to the face. And what about the sound blasting out of the headphones of the guy beside me? Or the woman who douses herself in Eau de Fifi before she goes to work? Or the dude who smells like he hasn’t bathed since the Grunge era?

Shame on OC Transpo and shame on the City of Ottawa for considering this divisive, controversial and ultimately boneheaded policy.

Edited to add: Well, well, well, I have to say that I retract my last comment. Thanks to Lana for letting us know that today the city decided against the new stroller policy. Oh well, it was a good rant, and I worked myself into quite the froth writing it, so it seems a shame to take it down. Props to the City of Ottawa for making the right call on this one!