August 2005

Well, this is certainly an exciting week to be in our sleepy little government town.

On Sunday night, the Rolling Stones played to 43,000 fans to close out my favourite summer fair, the SuperEx. Then yesterday, a few scant metres from my humble cubicle, they filmed the video for their new single Streets of Love in the Byward Market. They pulled about 100 random people off the street to be extras in the video. And where was I during all the excitement, you ask?

Looking obtusely in the other direction, as usual.

I had no idea. Hadn’t had the radio on, was busying away like a good worker bee, and was completely oblivious. I often pop down to the Quiznos on York for a veggie sub at lunchtime, and the Quiznos is right across the street from Zaphod’s, where the video was being filmed. But not yesterday. Yesterday, I brought my lunch. Coulda been checking out the Stones, but I was eating microwaved cabbage rolls and working through lunch. How hip am I?

Aside from all that, looks like we’ve got another visitor on the way. The remnants of hurricane Katrina are apparently tracking this way, looking to dump a month’s worth of rain in 24 hours. Good thing I spent all day Sunday draining the pool (and scrubbing algae off the liner – ick!) According to the precicise and highly scientific forecast, we could get anywhere from no rain to 100 mm (4 inches) of rain, and winds anywhere from gentle breezes to gale force.

Apparently, Ottawa is where all the cool kids are hanging out these days. Well, at least the aging, once spectacular but now mostly spent ones.

Have you ever had a celebrity encounter?

{ 22 comments }

A little end of summer photo essay, because sometimes they really are worth a thousand words…

Tristan has given Simon some potty training tips this week. Most important: you gotta take time to look at the trains.

Two boys + one garden hose + one hot summer day = priceless.

Tristan’s first day on his big-boy bike.

Fun at the Ottawa SuperEx:

Not as sexy as Marla’s Charlie’s Angels pose, but yet more proof that we were separated at birth (both photos taken at an Ex on Sunday, half a province apart and with no prior consulation).

{ 9 comments }

I was trying to resist this, really I was. But it’s so on topic that I can resist no longer. You see, I too have converted to the Cult of FSM – Flying Spaghetti Monsterism. No idea what I’m talking about? Then you haven’t been paying attention.

You might remember I have issues with Intelligent Design. I have found an ally and bloggy mentor on this topic in Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer. It was under his tutelage that I was first exposed to the growing FSM movement back in the first week of August.

I’ve been looking for a devotional outlet for a while now. Catholicism was good when I was young and naïve – and not divorced, and not mother to a child created through assisted reproductive technologies, among other things. I needed something more inclusive. Here’s what FSM founder Bobby Henderson said in his open letter to the Kansas State board of education:

I am writing you with much concern after having read of your hearing to decide whether the alternative theory of Intelligent Design should be taught along with the theory of Evolution. I think we can all agree that it is important for students to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that students will only hear one theory of Intelligent Design.

Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.

From the moment I first read about His Noodliness, I knew. And yet despite the obvious draw, I waited. I’ve been burned before, you know. Could I trust FSM, or would it leave questioning myself in the quiet dark of sleepless nights? But now that FSM has it’s own Wiki entry, I know it’s for real, and it’s here to stay. Far be it from me to reinvent the pasta wheel, when I can quote Wiki to tell you what FSM is all about:

Flying Spaghetti Monsterism is a parody religion created to protest the decision by the Kansas tate Board of Education to allow intelligent design to be taught in science classes alongside evolution.

The “religion” has since become an Internet phenomenon garnering many followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (sometimes referring to themselves as “Pastafarians”, a pun on Rastafarians) preaching the word of their “noodly master” as the one true religion. FSM is primarily the invention of Bobby Henderson, a graduate of the Oregon State University with a degree in physics.

At last, I have a community to call my own: the Pastafarians. And I’m in good company. When the Lincoln Sign Company offered FSM stickers with the logo you see above and offered them to the first 100 people who sent an e-mail, they were inundated with over 3,500 requests in seven hours, and the 100 decals were gone in the first eight minutes.

Boing Boing has offered a $1M reward to anyone who can prove that Jesus Christ isn’t the son of the FSM.

How could you not love it?

{ 7 comments }

(stretches, rubs eyes, peers blearily at the screen)

Oh god, I am so very tired. I thought the days of sleep deprivation were mercifully behind us, but I fear not. I’ve been up since precicely 4:15 am. I know it is 4:15 because Simon has an atomic clock stashed under his crib somewhere and wakes up at EXACTLY the same time for days on end. These past days on end have started in the ungodly hours before dawn, at precisely 4:15. Not 4:13 or 4:16, mind you. Every single day this week, 4:15 am.

He’s got this idea in his curly little head that when he wakes up at 4:15, he gets to go sleep with mummy, a myth perpetrated by mummy herself staggering around in the dark trying anything to make the baby go back to sleep for a little while longer. Some days the soother does the trick, some days the blanket does the trick, and some days only crawling into bed with mummy does the trick. How many of you are nodding along as I whine that once baby snuggles under the comforter he falls blissfully back to sleep, leaving mummy wide awake and grumbling in the gloaming? And no wonder I can’t sleep – he’s such a twitchy little sleeper. He grunts, he rolls, he hoots (there is no other word for it, he does in fact hoot) and he sticks his little feet in the middle of my back and kicks. He’s worse than his father! And inevitably, just as I finally drift blissfully back to sleep, the clock strikes 5:45 and the radio clicks on and another day leaps out of the bushes and exposes itself to us.

I’m not one of those people who functions well when sleep deprived. I can quite clearly imagine all the little synapses in my brain letting go of each other, breaking connections and disrupting mental traffic, so information traveling along its usual neural network highway gets as backed up as the 401 on a long-weekend Friday rush hour. That’s what my head feels like today – traffic congestion.

It’s better than it was. I went for more than a year without getting more than two or three hours of sleep consecutively, and averaging five or six hours of sleep a night. I was chronically and constantly sleep deprived. And it was not pretty. What I remember most is thinking, “I’m off work for a year at almost my full salary, staying home with my two spectacularly terrific children – this should be the best year of my life and I’m completely miserable.” And then I would feel guilty about being so miserable, when all I really needed was about 30% more sleep than I was getting.

I remember feeling such anger toward Simon when he woke up, when he woke me up, in the middle of the night. That part was scary. The sound of his cry would cause a violent release of adrenaline into my system, giving me that same nauseating rush you get after a bad scare, but three or four times a night, every time he woke up. I’d have to force myself to think of the “daytime” Simon, as I thought of it, the one who cooed and smiled and laughed, the one that I loved beyond reason, and not think of the nighttime Simon, my opponent and nemesis, who was not sleeping out of some form of infant spite. So many hours of silent and frustrated rage were spent in his room, rocking him endlessly in the darkness, while I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed and let somebody else be the one responsible for taking care of him. Dark nights indeed.

It seems like it happened to someone else. I’ve never admitted to the anger before, never wanted to acknowledge it, but I can see from this safe distance that it was entirely the sleep deprivation. I regret those dark nights, regret not being better equipped to deal with and overcome my own tiredness. But that’s kind of like regretting the sky is blue, isn’t it?

So today I am tired. Oh so very tired. But I have learned that I can function on a whole lot less sleep than I ever, in the time before children, would have given myself credit for.

Pass the coffee, wouldja please?

{ 15 comments }