Month: March 2007

I like to think I know from boys. Growing up, I spent a lot more time hanging out with boys than with girls, espeically in those teen years when gender differences become prevalent. Then I married not one but two guys (although not at the same time), and of course I contributed to the world’s male population with two sons of my own.

Being the primary caregiver for two sets of male apparatus has been enlightening. For example, I didn’t know before I had boys of my own that the fly in underwear is purely for decoration and not for utility. I had no idea that you have to take care in pointing a baby boy’s bits in just the right direction when closing up a diaper or risk leakage. And I had no idea the extent to which those bits extended beyond plumbing and procreation to the realm of imaginary friend and playmate.

Being surrounded as I am by the XY chromosome, I was interested to read this article in the weekend Citizen about the new trend toward home urinals. Yes, you read it here first. That article was interesting enough in itself, but what truly fascinated me was the final paragraph.

Perhaps the real appeal of having a urinal at home is that it offers a taste of the sort of freedom men can experience in only a natural or rural setting. As one designer admitted, off the record, rather than a urinal at home, what men really want is a bathroom door that leads directly to a patch of lawn and a strategically placed tree.

I had no idea that the ability to pee outside was anything more than a convenient option. It’s actually a preference?

Clearly, I still have a lot to learn.

I know, I still owe you a post for Tristan’s birthday. It’s okay, as long as I get it in before he’s old enough to read, I’m good.

In the meanwhile, in lieu of anything particularly thought provoking or time consuming, I thought I’d steal this idea from Mama Tulip. Four of these five statements are true; one is a fib. Can you tell my fact from fiction? (Those of you who know me well likely know the truth – if you do, don’t tell!)

1.) In a fit of defiance and independence, I had my belly button pierced despite my ex-husband’s opinion that I should not get it done. It became horrendously infected and I had to take it out after less than a month. I still have the scar.

2.) While traveling solo through Europe, on a train from Munich to Salzburg I was propositioned by a man who told me he had just been released from prison. He was escorted off the train because his ‘ticket’ was hand-written on a cocktail napkin.

3.) Beloved and I met in a bar. He was in the Fine Arts program at the University of Westen Ontario at the time. The night we met, he invited me back to his apartment to “see his drawings”. I said yes, and we’ve been together ever since.

4.) We were visiting my in-laws one summer weekend for the first time. My mother-in-law had just baked two lemon meringue pies for a charity auction and had left them on a shelf in her utility room to cool. We went out for dinner and in our absence, my exhuberant puppy-brained dog licked exactly half the meringue off each of the two pies, leaving the yellow lemon base. I walked into the utility room and froze when I saw the half-demeringued pies, and contemplated for a long minute simply packing the dog into the car and returning home without a word, never to return.

5.) Our long and convoluted fertility and IVF stories, from the first miscarriage in 2000 through the IUIs, the IVF, Tristan’s birth, Simon’s surprise arrival, our Frostie adventure and even the miscarriage last November will be featured in a story in the May issue of Chatelaine magazine.

I’m a terrible liar in person – can I pull it off on the blog? Which one is a fib?

Edited to add: only one day remains in the Great Canadian Rimroller Contest! Enter today!

Remember back last summer, when I was part of that free Nokia smartphones for bloggers campaign? I am feeling almost ridiculously priviledged to be lucky enough to be part of another PR blogger outreach campaign, this one for the Motorola KRZR phone. Two free phones in a year – how lucky am I?

So, you ask, who do you have to know to get a free phone? In my case, I got involved because I met Brendan from Hill and Knowlton (the PR firm handling the campaign) through the other stuff I’m doing on social media.

Hmm, you say. And you ask, what portion of your soul do you have to sell to get a free phone? It’s a pretty sweet deal. Hill and Knowlton gave me a shiny new KRZR phone and some accessories. I’m free to blog about (and with) it however I choose. I can keep the phone or give it back at the end of the campaign. Not a bad deal, eh?

And it came in this fancy-ass secret agent shiny briefcase. When I mentioned to Beloved that the boys could have it to play with, he said he wanted to keep it to bring his lunch to work. The whole family is entertained by the box, let alone the phone inside.

My mom sent me an e-mail to complain yesterday because she was patiently waiting for my love letter to Tristan, and she got a post on Tim Hortons instead. (I tell ya!) Sorry, Mom, but you’re going to have to wait another day, because I won’t write that post to Tristan until I can do it properly.

But I can dash off a really quick post to say that I heard on the radio this morning that today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of U2’s Joshua Tree album.

Twenty years!!

So much of my life has a U2 soundtrack in the background. Pride (In the Name of Love) reminds me of my fifteen year old self, too geeky to be goth but with a painful crush on a guy who wore a black trench coat and occasionally painted his fingernails black. He loved U2, so I did too.

And then in 1987, I went to see the U2 Joshua Tree tour in Toronto at Exhibition Stadium. I was in Grade 12, and my friend’s mother would only let her go if we ‘let’ her get us a hotel room at the Royal York. I can’t even remember how many people we crammed into that hotel room. A dozen, probably. Remember, Fryman? My then-boyfriend (and now ex-husband) drove down from Sudbury, we drove in from London, and we actually managed to find each other in the crowd of 100,000 fans.

That concert was truly one of the best I have ever seen. We still talk about the near-religious experience of being part of a chorus of 100,000 voices all singing “how long, how long must we sing this song” as we poured out of the stadium and down Front Street – no cheering, no talking, only singing.

That was twenty years ago. Twenty years. Yikes!

What’s your favourite concert memory?