whippersnapper snapping snapped

Turd Holes

2007-10-08T23:30:00.000-05:00

...in which I dodge from subject to subject like a chunk of ham in a pinball machine...

A couple of years ago, during my nausea-filled first trimester of pregnancy with Baby Fangs, I remember teaching a math lesson and making a mistake with a number. I wrote 65,980 on the overhead and then, several seconds later after realizing my error, I changed it to 65, 982. This was more than the uptight, super-organized girls in the class could take, and they moaned and howled for a while because I'd made their notes "messy."

As a super-non-uptight, super non-organized kind of person, I normally am able to deal with this sort of thing by laughing at kids like these, but nausea + hormonal changes + general feeling of "uugggghhhh, being dead would be better than being pregnant" had transformed me into a testy, bloodshot monster. I WASN'T IN THE MOOD, and I let these girls have it.

"Calm the hell down back there!" I snarled, "you'd think it was a freaking famine the way you people are carrying on!" Then, without stopping to think, I found myself plunging headfirst into a rambling and incoherent lecture about the siege of Leningrad. My speech included such inane sentences like: "They were completely surrounded, and it was cold out there!" "The Hermitage caretakers survived by eating art glue and roasted baby!" and (most importantly:) "How did uptight people like you survive such a chaotic time, anyway?? You can't handle ANYTHING without freaking out!" It's been a point of pride for me that, without even knowing I was pregnant, my students did not dismiss my little rant as that of a crazed lunatic but humbly took my point and never complained again when I made a mistake. Which of course, being with child and mentally incapacitated by dreams of meatball stew with whipped cream, I did again and again and again.

I have no clue why I just told you that story.

Oh yeah, uptight people. If there is anything more annoying than an uptight student, it's an uptight student's mom. Without giving too many details, (except that one scene involved the words "jerking off" and "banana cream pie" in the same sentence) my careless mouth, slave as it is to my incredibly stupid and unprofessional brain, has let out several verbal faux pas lately that might not sit too well with the moms of my school. I'm currently in a state of uneasy limbo, waiting for one to call. Actually, I'm waiting for several moms to call me right now. It's left me feeling tense and, uncharacteristically, I've found myself indulging in a little retail therapy to help me cope. I've bought a lot of crap that I'm too embarrassed to write about, but I will tell you about this priceless little mini-sculpture I picked up last week at an obscure little art shop in. OK, it was on sale for $12.99 at my local Pier 1 Imports.

Wow, what a fabulous piece of modern art, hey? We call it Swirly Turd with Hole, and I can't begin to tell you how classy it makes the place look. People say the West End is a working class, bordering on the slums kind of neighbourhood, but Swirly Turd with Hole proves that this just can't be true. Its presence brings such a sense of upper class refinement to my house. Honestly, it's more than just a stunning work of art. Whenever I've had a long day that's left me feeling frazzled and out of sorts, Swirly Turd with Hole's smooth and solid brown presence soothes and comforts me. It helps maintain my balance by reminding me of my place in this world and what it's all about. It's like a good friend filled with lots of friendly good sense, only, like, more swirly and of course, definitely way more turd-like.

Unfortunately, I am the only person in this house who likes it. When I die and everyone is fighting over my stuff, poor Swirly Turd with Hole will be totally ignored. It will probably end up in the hands of an autistic great-grandchild who will line the hole with raw liver and use it for self-abusive purposes. But that's OK. Art is for the people, and he can use it for whatever he wants to to help him cope.

OK, that's it, I'm obviously out of control. I've got to go prep a chemistry lesson.

Explanation, Briefly, And I'll See You Later This Week!

2007-10-01T21:25:00.000-05:00

...woe eez me, wizout ze blog...

A few months ago I did a happiness quiz that they had in the Globe and Mail to see how, uh, happy I am. Out of a possible perfect score of "five", I got a "three point seven." According to the person who put the quiz together, this was very normal, and it indicated that, emotionally anyway, I was a pretty healthy person. In fact, a score higher than, say, "four point three" (I forget how high exactly) meant you were probably clinically insane and spent your days wandering around in some sort of Candide-like delusional candy floss fog. This didn't sound like a bad thing to me, but the paper assured me this wasn't true happiness, and therefore not something I should be striving for.

Although it is unpopular, perhaps even embarrassing to admit these kinds of things publicly, I will confess to you that when I filled out that happiness questionnaire, I was mildly discomforted by the fact that I was positively answering a lot of the questions with silent reference to my blog. In fact, the only reason I probably got a "normal" score on that stupid "Happiness Quiz" was because of how much I've enjoyed cranking out these posts over this last year. In other words, my blog... makes... me... happy.

You know why I write this. September saw me plunging back into work after sixteen months at home. The shock and intensity of being back in the school and working with kids again took up all my mental energy. Teaching is weird that way. It takes over your life and it doesn't give you too many breaks, even when you are only working part time. After a couple of weeks back I realized I had no option but to abandon my blog because I had no time for it anymore. Maybe next summer, I thought. Maybe when I retire...

But, no surprise to me, this decision has left me feeling pretty miserable. I slump through my days growling a lot. Cruelly, my school has given me my very own personal, state of the art laptop to lug around with me everywhere I go. It stares at me all day, during my classes, even at home, and when I'm not thinking about Johnny Q Asshole in the back row, third from the right, I'm thinking, gee, I'd sure like to be blogging right now...

Guess I have no choice but to stay.

PS: The floors turned out swell! Now for those crown mouldings...

Sad.. And The Bird Thing Really Did Happen, Too...

2007-09-12T22:35:00.000-05:00

...forgive me, I was high on floor varnish fumes as I wrote this... when Mr. IQ said the floor would be done by Tuesday, damn it, he really meant what he said!!... Of course, silly old me, I thought he meant LAST Tuesday... wait a minute, today is WEDNESDAY!! That BASTARD!!....

Luciano Pavarotti died last week. Without trying to sound insensitive or selfish, I must say he picked a really crappy time to go. Could there BE a more stressful time of year than the beginning of September? On behalf of teachers everywhere who were going back to work last week and totally freaking out, THANKS A LOT, "PAV." Being blasted by your gut-wrenching, soul-searching, weep-inducing, "WhyAmIHereAnyway?"- Demanding, "DustInTheWind! AllIAmIsDustInTheWind!" Eye-Openers EVERY TIME I TURNED ON THE STUPID RADIO LAST WEEK was MORE THAN I COULD HANDLE. What on EARTH were you THINKING?? WERE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME TOO???

(Whoa, wait a minute! It's the touching works of KANSAS that make me feel all those deep things, not Luciano. Anyway.)

Without giving the impression that I'm more cultured than I really am, because, believe me, I'm not, it was terribly sad listening to him all last week. I'm sorry, but if you can listen to Nessun Dorma and not feel like sobbing your guts out, then you have no passion in your heart. Actually, I don't have a lot of passion in my heart, but I do have an amazing, near-genius ability to feel sorry for myself. Really, it's almost the same thing.

Anyway, I was going to tell you about the crickets.

Each year, when I return to work in the fall, our school is filled with the sound of crickets. They're not there in June, but over the summer they always manage to make their way into the building. Or maybe they are there in June, but haven't started chirping yet. My buddy Nitroglycol would know. My own personal knowledge of crickets comes exclusively from reading A Cricket in Times Square as a kid, and it seems to me that that cricket chirped his way through the whole book. (Yes, I do teach high school biology sometimes, thanks for asking! Shocked? Don't be. My only knowledge of chemistry comes from reading a scene in an Enid Blyton book where someone forgot to add baking powder to the scones. As a result, they didn't rise. They needed the baking powder for the acid/base bubbly thing to happen. If I remember correctly, Hilary [or was it Belinda?] was quite upset.)

Anyway. The crickets. Coming back to their chirps each fall would be quite charming, if you didn't know that they were all dying. There is one that sits and chirps all morning in my kitchenette-filled chemistry class, and try as I will, I can't find exactly where he (she?) is. It makes me sad hearing him chirp. Even the prospect of that big Mulberry Tree in the Sky that he may be going to if he's been good doesn't make me feel much better. He's giving his last performance and honestly, it's depressing as hell listening to him. Actually, it totally breaks my heart.

The first week of school is always very hard for me. I get scared and suffer stage fright, because teaching is very much like being on stage all day, and the possibility of bombing up there and being booed is very, very real. Maybe because of this, every fall when I hear these crickets I feel like crying and running away.

Of course, as fate would have it, as I was making my panic-stricken way to my very first class of the year last week, I ran into one of them. Oh, he looked so frightened, scurrying along this way and that, not sure where to go. His jerky little movements were awfully endearing, and he reminded me a lot of Baby Fangs when she was in her crawling stage: so very sweet and innocent and, damn it all, so terribly vulnerable.

"Hey, little buddy, come on, we'll flee this place together!" I tried to surreptitiously vibe him, hoping he'd jump onto my outstretched hand and be my friend as together we disappeared into my car and made a run for the border. But he wisely ignored me, so I had no choice but to head to my classroom where, left distracted (and distraught!) by the Baby Fangs crawling cricket, I found myself greeted by the unwelcoming presence of 31 unfamiliar kids, all staring up at me with unsmiling faces.

Really, there was nothing I could do but plunge nervously into my first lesson. So that's what I did.

"Okay, so I'm, uh, Ms Whippersnapper and today we're, uh, going to learn about sig figs. Sort of. Well, we're going to add them. Not add sig figs, but, uh, use them. When adding. And subtracting! So, uh, let's say we've got 7000 plus 673 plus 120, well, you've got to include sig figs in your answer so, ha ha, let's look at all the numbers, the leftmost non sig fig number in 7000 is 7 and in the other two numbers it's 3 and 0, non-sig figs that is, so you look at the leftmost sig figs and, whoa, I guess if you're looking at the overhead that would be rightmost number, anyway, you've got to add them, that should be easy, you've been adding like this since grade three at least and besides, ha ha, you can always use a calculator, anyway line them up when you're adding them, thousands, hundreds, whatever, do that and look at your leftmost sig figs in the three numbers, I mean, rightmost, well, if you've written it down now on your own paper it would be leftmost and anyway, you need to check out this leftmostest number of the three and that will be your answer. Well, not your answer, but, you know, how you're going to answer your answer. I mean, question. Yes. Well, so you look at it, and it's thousands, right? Right? Right, so you take the thousandsplaceandputitinyour answersoeventhoughtheanswerisreally7793you're doingtheleftmostthingsoit'sgoingtobe8000. See? HAHAHAHAHA! Pretty easy, huh?"

I then spent the rest of the period going to each student individually and re-teaching what I had just "taught" to the whole class on the overhead.

But that was last week. This week has gone better. I think.

Except that I googled "Crickets" and discovered that to make chocolate-covered crickets you have to rinse them in water first and then stick them in the freezer until they're "dead but not yet frozen."

Then while reading Salmon Rushdie's book Fury in the tub, I emerged dripping and headed straight to the office (the office! Oh god, the office! Don't get me started on the office) to google the word "strappado ." Finding out what it meant didn't exactly lift my spirits.

And then a bird flew into our house. Oh, poor bird. It settled on the dining room window sill, and I thought that I would be able to save him, because that window pushes open so easily. But when I moved forward to set him free he flew off frightened in the opposite direction, bashed into our living room window and went crashing dead onto our floor. It happened so fast it took me several seconds to even register what had happened.

If I were a clever girl, I would be able to make some clever connections here about all these dead and/or dying pretty tune makers. But I'm not, so I can't. All I know is that the cricket's little chirp was very faint today. He sounds so sad, and I still can't find him. I can hardly bear it that he's spending his last days cooped up in a dully painted, ugly-floored home-ec room.

But I know. He's only a cricket.

Awfully Short Post

2007-09-08T21:29:00.000-05:00

...give me a week or two of this "working for a living" business to get myself properly sorted out OK? It's been quite the shock to this lazy girl's system...

Because I'm part-time these days, I'm usually on the highway over the noon hour, and I've taken to listening to the UMFM's broadcast of Democracy Now with Amy Goodman during my disgustingly long, carbon-spewing ride home from the small town in which I teach. I'm not ashamed to say that I think I have developed a little bit of a girl-crush on her. Her growly voice just kills me, and she's sort of everything I'm not but wish I could be: Politically articulate, objective and emotionally IN CONTROL when it comes to the pressing issues of the day. Because this has been a weepy week (Baby Fangs has sobbed uncontrollably each morning as I've left for work) her show and that voice have had an incredible impact on me. Words and phrases like "melting polar ice caps", "Abu Ghraib" and "Jimmy Carter" get me bawling in ways that can be confusing (JIMMY CARTER???) and probably not emotionally healthy. I would be reluctant to write about it here, were I not so positive that it is only a temporary affliction brought on by the terrible upheavals of the week.

Actually, a lot of things are making me bawl these days. (Ball whom? Hahahahahahaha blehhhhhh.)

Like the crickets.

I'll try to write about the crickets tomorrow.

TGIF

2007-09-07T22:44:00.000-05:00

...that doesn't stand for what you think it stands for...

Today's schedule, in brief:

5:30 am: Wake. Make up chemistry worksheet. Get ready for work.

7:00 am: Leave for work.

12:47 pm: Return from work.

4:10 pm: Leave for work again to supervise "Gym Night."

8:39 pm: Return from work.

Total hours spent on work (including, admittedly, the commute): 10+ hours

How swell it is that I'm going PART-TIME this year! I can't tell you how RELAXED and UNDERWORKED I FEEL.

PS: Piss off, spellcheck. Underworked is too a word.

Final Update Until Everything's Done

2007-09-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

...and it WILL get done...the floor is half sanded, and will be finished tomorrow...it's looking swell, but I'm tired of writing about it, so I'll spare you any more details until the last coat of whatever that stuff is you put on wood to make it shine has dried... then, really, honestly, truly, there will be pictures...

Do you know how people say things like, "Well, my house can sure get messy, but at least it's never DIRTY"?

Well, right now, this house is dirty.

Or, even better, people who go on and on and on about a disaster zone in their house and then when you finally get to see it you find it's not even slightly disastrous? (Heather sprang one of these on me last month when I was allowed a peek at her infamous laundry room. It was sparkling neat and the disappointment I felt and the feelings of betrayal I experienced when I saw it were frankly soul-crushing.)

Listen: My house really is a total and complete disaster zone.

I feel like the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz when describing what the Winged Monkeys did to him. ("They took my arms and threw them over there! Then they took my legs and threw them over there!") The contents of my house have been thrown everywhere, and while I know it has not been done irrationally, we're working towards a greater good here and it's all part of a well-thought-out master plan, having a pile of books sitting in my bathtub of all places is enough to send any good woman over the edge. Especially when that someone is about to return to work after 16 months!!

I cannot even begin to describe how fabulous it is to start off the school year feeling so wonderfully organized!

Actually, I'm very much looking forward to going back to work. (Having said that, if I wasn't part-time this year, I must confess I would not be blogging right now: I would be upstairs staring at my sleeping children and sobbing my guts out.) But getting out every morning is going to be great, and, despite what people might tell you, teaching is actually an absolutely fantastic job. It's a well-kept secret that teenagers are the funniest people on the planet, and I am NOT lying OR exaggerating when I say that every day at work I get at least three honest-to-goodness belly laughs because students have said things that are hilarious.

So yeah, teaching is great.

If it weren't for the insane workload (do you KNOW how many hours teachers put in at home?) the overflowing classrooms (a blog post of its own) the stupid education "specialists" (you would not BELIEVE some of the crap they've tried to make me do in my classroom) the crazy parents ("how dare you look at my [spoiled, lazy, stupid, rude, total asshole] child sideways!") the finger-pointing media (who blame us teachers for EVERY societal woe from increasing crime rates to childhood obesity) the resentful taxpayers ("how dare you get all those holidays! And what's up with your five hour work day anyway?") ("five hours": ooooh, don't even get me started) and the patronizing academics ("well, we know she's not smart! If she was smart she would have become a doctor!") why, honestly:

It would be practically the most perfect job there is.

PS: Apparently I will be teaching my chemistry classes in the home-ec room this year. Yes, you've read that correctly: Chem labs in the morning; cooking classes in the afternoon.

Someone is going to die.

Update #6

2007-09-02T23:53:00.000-05:00

...yay!!...

The last two posts have been a little negative, and I'm thinking I'd better end the day a little more positively. Besides, things have actually turned out to be OK.

We never found the driver's license, which doesn't surprise me. This place is crazy. (I personally have been unable to locate my own license since last October. Really. I'm telling you, we're not normal people around here.) When Mr. IQ finally seemed resolved to this fact, I gently brought up the issue of floor sander rental.

"If we bring it home today, we'll get an extra day free because the store is closed tomorrow," I said.

"OK, let's do it," he said.

So we did and when we got home he got to work right away. The machine made a lot of noise, and seemed, in my humble opinion, a little out of control. He looked like a cowboy holding a bucking bronco by the horns, only, you know, without the cowboy hat and cheesy cowboy moustache. The whole place was vibrating in an (I'll be honest here) not altogether unpleasant manner. But the expression on his face told me that Mr. IQ was not going to be getting his rocks off on THAT 150 pounder: Not today; not anytime.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," he said. He checked the Internet and then phoned the store. They had him run it while they yelled directions to him. "YOU MEAN IT SHOULDN'T BE BOUNCING LIKE THIS?" he shouted, trying to keep the phone to his ear and maintain control of the machine at the same time. Apparently the answer was no. Slamming the phone down, he yanked the sander out of the room and dragged it down the front steps of our house angrily like it was a recalcitrant child.

"THE @%&!! THING IS BROKEN!!" he shouted, "I'M GOING TO GET MY MONEY BACK!!!!" Shoving the 150 pound vibrator into the passenger seat, he climbed in behind the wheel and tore off around the corner towards Rona, wheels screeching.

I walked slowly back into the house with a heavy heart. There had been only one machine available to rent today. The floor was not going to be fixed any time soon. I started to make supper, vegetarian chicken noodle soup. The vegetarian chicken chunks, which transform into rubber when placed in boiling hot, chicken-flavoured water (I didn't know they did this) symbolized my inability to navigate normally through the murky waters of this basically ridiculous world. And the noodles symbolized nooses, nooses which invitingly beckoned me towards a happier, less stressful place, a place where physical limitations would prevent me from getting into projects that are way over my head (attractive coffin makeovers for example.)

I hope you don't think I'm serious.

(Total side note: The soup, as you can imagine, ended up being thoroughly disgusting, and High Intensity howled all through dinner about how gross it was. It reminded me of the book Trainspotting where the main character says something like, "Everyone grows up thinking their mother is the best cook in the world. I did too, until I grew up and realized she can't cook for shit." Poor old H.I. She knows my culinary skills suck and she's only four years old.)

Anyway! Mr. IQ returned. And he had another sander!!!

"I was very polite," he said, "but I think they could see the quiet rage." To make a long story short, to make up for the inconvenience of sending us home with a faulty machine, they've refunded our rental money, and the first $90.00 of sanding supplies we need are ON THE HOUSE!!!!"

WA-HOO!!!!

Update #5

2007-09-02T21:01:00.000-05:00

...grrr...

Oh, and the open-faced sandwiches? The ones without slices of bread on top? The ones that, here in North America, seem naked and incomplete and definitely missing something? They symbolized EVERY STUPID PROJECT THAT WE HAVE STARTED AROUND THIS STUPID HOUSE AND NEVER GOT AROUND TO FINISHING.

Not that I'm calling us pathetic, unorganized and scatterbrained or anything like that.

Update #4

2007-09-02T13:07:00.001-05:00

...I knew yesterday had been too good to be true...

The day has started slowly, and we just wasted a good hour preparing a large tray of Scandinavian-style open-face sandwiches and consuming them. It was a highly symbolic meal, although no-one at the table other than me was aware of this. The canned wild salmon symbolized my fragile mental health, which, like the wild salmon, is highly endangered right now. The Havarti sandwiches with red pepper rings symbolized the sour, I-Am-Smelling- Something-Bad expression my face is quickly assuming as it dawns on me that we'll probably never get that damn floor finished. (If you've ever gotten a sniff of someone with Havarti breath you know what I'm talking about.) The yogurt symbolized the bacterial cultures that will help decompose Mr. IQ's corpse after I snap and kill him. And the Chinese green tea symbolized Asia, the continent to which I will flee to avoid my inevitable arrest and conviction for my role in his death. (Although were I to be tried by a jury of my peers, assuming these peers were married women, they'd find a way around the law and set me free I think. They'd know. They'd know.)

Why is the project stalled today? Because Mr. IQ has lost his ID and we are spending the day searching for it. He needs it to register for school on Tuesday.

My hair has turned white.

I can't stand this.

Update #3

2007-09-01T21:11:00.000-05:00

...I know these posts are boring, as I said before, I'm doing this to keep me focussed. WE WILL FINISH THIS!!!...

I cannot believe this: I've LOST the battle. He phoned Rona and is renting a floor sander tomorrow. Apparently he can get the whole thing done by Tuesday.

So weird.

Pictures tomorrow. Promise.

Update #2

2007-09-01T16:24:00.000-05:00

...I keep thinking of the show Trading Places. What I wouldn't give to trade places with you right now...

This morning I woke up at 7:30 and spent the next hour or so sorting through a bunch of Mr. IQ's crap that had to be moved for us to work on the TV room. Then he returned from work.

"Say!" he said, "There's a really great looking garage sale down the street! Wanna go?"

My response would determine how the rest of the day went. If I screeched, "GARAGE SALE???? ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND?????? HAVE YOU SEEN HOW MUCH CRAP WE HAVE IN THIS HOUSE ALREADY???" the day, I knew, would go badly. So I did what I needed to do to make everything go smoothly today. I said, "No, but why don't you take the baby and check it out yourself?" He did and came back empty-handed but cheerful.

I am getting so damn wise in my old age.

There WAS hardwood floor down there, but it's in pretty sad shape. Mr. IQ has just spent two hours pulling out nails from it and is now taking a little snooze. We are having a bit of an argument about how to proceed. He wants to strip the floors and restore them to their former glory. I say buy the laminate wood flooring and have the thing done by tomorrow night.

Fifty bucks says I will win this argument.

Update #1

2007-09-01T13:25:00.001-05:00

...oh, things aren't that bad... of course, my lovely parents just picked up the kids...

As I paint these walls I am reminded of this time when I was in high school. I had noticed the walls in our house were particularly dirty and so wet my finger with my spit and wrote HI at the top of the stairs. A few days later I noticed that someone had added an "S" to the beginning of my greeting and a "T" to the end of it.

My mom had done this, and it stayed like that for many, many months.

You should never fight your genetic inheritance. I should have just left these walls unpainted and I would be a MUCH happier person right now.

On the bright side, under the ugly linoleum in the TV room there is a big layer of plywood and under the plywood may be hardwood floors!! Mr. IQ is investigating as I type. Keep your fingers crossed, MAN would it save us a lot of time if it is.

I don't know why we call it the TV room. We never watch TV.

Distress Signal

2007-09-01T08:45:00.000-05:00

...help...

True story, all of this. In the last few weeks alone, I have:

1. Lost a set of keys in the park

2. Left my bank card at the fruit and veggie store and had to go back for it

3. Left my wallet at the vintage clothing store and had to go back for it

4. Lost a pair of sunglasses

It is a major fact of my life that I:

1. Spend A MINIMUM of 40 minutes each day hunting for something I've lost (and really, that is NOT an exaggeration.)

2. Am about as absent minded as they come

I have not yet deteriorated to the point where I leave the house and forget to put on my pants first, but I suspect it is coming to that.

Looking around this house right now, the despair I feel is beyond description. This is awful.

Honestly, I wonder why people like me are even on the planet. I am so unsuited for the workings of everyday life it is ridiculous. I'm back to work in three days and this place is completely, totally and wholly upside down. We can't find anything. And we have a fruit fly infestation again.

I'll post some pictures in a few hours. You would not believe what this place looks like.

WHAT HAVE I DONE??? WHAT HAVE I DONE???

2007-08-31T23:13:00.000-05:00

...OH MY GOD, THIS IS AWFUL!! I'VE NEVER BEEN SO MISERABLE IN MY WHOLE LIFE...

Well, first off, the pictures: I've taken some good ones, but I have to wait until tomorrow morning to post them. Mr. IQ is at work. I still can't believe I'm posting about this crap. Sorry it's so boring, I'm doing this mostly for myself, to keep me focussed and hopefully encourage me to finish everything. I have, as you know, a bad track record for finishing things.

This morning we pulled back the mouse turd-encrusted carpet, confident that it would reveal a breathtakingly shiny and beautiful hardwood floor. As the picture I will post tomorrow will reveal, this is not what we found. Devastated, we decided that we needed to take a break to collect our thoughts. So we went thrift store shopping, and purchased several fine books for our collection.

"Ah good," I said dryly when he showed me this two inch thick copy of some crap labour law thing he planned to buy, "a book! Just what we need around the house to make us look smart or something." (I say this every time he brings a new book into the house. It ceased being funny about six years ago.) (I'm getting a strong sense of deja vu writing that: I suspect I've already told you this.)

It's here I wish I could post a picture of our sunroom for you, because it is now stacked high with the books that used to be in our TV room. They have been piled in there, because the plan is now to install some cheap-ass wood-looking flooring tomorrow. I cannot even BEGIN to describe how much I am dreading this. Just clearing the room this evening caused us to have 234 fights, and no I'm not exaggerating. It's not my damn fault he kept dropping things on his stupid feet, and I really didn't find the words he was shouting appropriate for a house filled with small language-learning children. Of course, when I shouted these words because things landed on my feet, it was entirely appropriate. He seemed to have a problem with this. I had problems with him having a problem. You get the picture.

Anyway, I don't have time for this, I have to get back to painting the halls.

(ARRRRRGHH, WHY DID I START THIS STUPID PROJECT ANYWAY????? WHY???? WHY???? WHY???? I'M BACK TO WORK IN THREE DAYS, I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!!!!)

Seriously mad at myself.

Another Boring Painting Update

2007-08-30T23:55:00.000-05:00

...actually, I can't even believe I'm making posts like these...
.
Well, I got most of the TV room done today, at least the green part. This picture is terrible, as are all the other ones I took. It's actually a pretty darn nice green, not all pukey like it looks here.

Of course, this whole process is killing me. I hate hands-on stuff.

And don't even ask me about the stupid office.

Tomorrow: We pull up the mouse turd-encrusted carpet! Be sure to tune in!!

Sunday Night Office Update Part Whatever

2007-08-29T22:39:00.003-05:00

...in which the blogger gets boring and shows off some more pictures of her House of Chaos...

I'm back at work on Tuesday. I've been off for 16 months and honestly, it feels like 16 days in a way. So weird.

Typically, I've left everything to the last minute, and we're all freaking out around here trying to get everything done that I (and only I) want done. So help me, if the TV room and halls are not painted in the next five days someone is going to die.

Because pressure's on, I'm not going to be writing much over the next week or so, but just to ensure I finish these projects, I'm going to post pictures of our progress everyday until everything is done.

Honestly, the green looks a lot better in, uh, person.

Look, don't get offended by this picture, I'm not giving YOU the finger. I love YOU! I'm just doing this to express my exasperation with the whole stupid aesthetic process. Damn that cavewoman who first started painting pictures on the wall to "brighten up the place." It's all her fault! You know how people are. Her neighbour saw what she had done and thought, "Hmmm, I want that for MY cave!" And so the whole concept of "home decoration" started.

Truly, I sometimes think I would be a lot happier if I did live in a cave.

Hey, don't get offended by this picture either. High Intensity doesn't even know what "giving the finger" means. When she sees me doing it, she thinks I'm playing magic fairy and pointing my magic wand at daddy. WHO WON'T STOP TAKING PICTURES OF ME TONIGHT, EVEN THOUGH I'VE ASKED HIM REPEATEDLY TO STOP.

See you tomorrow.

PS: Please, don't enlarge on the soap dish of this picture. Please. It's... appalling.

PPS: Uh, what about the stupid office??

Musical Interlude

2007-08-25T23:18:00.000-05:00

...oh GOD I love the Internet...

Hey, I wrote you guys a song.

Here it is.

FAME!!

2007-08-23T13:17:00.000-05:00

...I'm going to live forever! Unless I'm stabbed first!!!!...

Aughh!! Guess what!!! I'm going to be on the CBC six o'clock news tonight!! That's right, there's been a stabbing!! A fifteen year old boy!! 100 meters from our house!! They interviewed me on my thoughts and took some shots of me loading the kids into the car!! The car was a mess!! My moustache wasn't bleached!! I'm pretty sure I looked terrible!! My opinions were rambling and nonsensical!! What if the shot of me putting Fangs in the car seat makes my ass look big??!! I'm scared to watch tonight!! Wait a minute -- we don't even have a working television!!

Yup, that's right, there is a fifteen-year-old clinging to life in the hospital because someone tried to stab him to death and here I am excitedly contacting every person I've ever known to let them know I'm on TV tonight.

What a stupid world.

Bummy Blog

2007-08-21T23:50:00.000-05:00

...in which my buns play the starring role and my children hardly appear at all, except as minor secondary characters ...

My friend Jeffen, whom I have known since grade eight, recently started up a blog. It's a music blog and the theme is right there in the title: Music Ruined My Life. On it, you can download great music and read neat things about music. Yip, it's a music blog all right; there can be no argument about that.

Jeffen calls my blog a Mommy Blog.

"It is NOT a Mommy Blog," I said, totally horrified when he told me this. "It's a.. a... a 'Complain About My Health and Mr. IQ' blog."

"Get out of here," he said, "All you do is write about your kids."

"No I don't!" I shouted. I got off the phone and sulked for a while. Then I went and found Mr. IQ.

"JeffensaidmyblogisaMommyBlogwaaghIdon'twanttobeknownasa MommyBlogger ismyblogaMommyBlog?" I asked shrilly, my hair standing slightly on end.

"Well....uh, yeah.... it's a mommy blog... isn't it?" Mr. IQ said, looking totally confused. He seemed uneasy, too, as in Oh, crap, what's the right answer? sort of uneasy. I hate it when I see him looking like that. I mean, for crying out loud, at this point shouldn't he have me all figured out?

"Hello! It's a 'Reflections on Life' blog!" I said indignantly.

"Pretty shallow reflections," he said, and then quickly added, "In all the right ways, of course."

Leaving aside the obvious question, namely, why does the Mommy Blogger label bug me so much, I ask you, are these guys wrong or what?? Listen, don't answer that! Let's read through the following story and then analyze it at the end for so-called "Mommy Blogger" content. I think you'll quite agree with me when I say that what I'm serving up here isn't your standard mac n' cheese mommy fare! My blog is deep! Complex! Controversial! Politically insightful and deeply textured! Its smooth finish is nuanced with subtle hints of chocolate, ripe bursting plum and dangly cherry! Oh crap, sorry. Got distracted and started describing the wine I had for dinner tonight instead. Anyway.

The Story

So, yah, like, I was getting dressed this morning, and, as per usual, the sight of my naked pale butt proved too much for High Intensity. Racing over, she began pummeling the old hamcakes like they were a set of bongo drums. She sang a little song, too, while she was doing this:

POUNDING THE BUM!
POUNDING THE BUM!
POUNDING THE BUM IN THE SPRIIIIIING-TIME!

Such a charmer! She does this kind of thing a lot, even when it isn't spring.

Now, I don't know how other mothers deal with their little pre-schoolers doing Ringo Starr impersonations on their asses, but I imagine the responses would be pretty varied.

Gentle mom's response: "Now dear. Mama's bum doesn't like that."

Sneaky mom's response: "Say, is that a chocolate bar over there?"

Intellectual mom's response: Oh yeah, right, as if I would know.

'End of Her Rope' mom's response: Censored.

It just so happened that this morning I was tired. I was apathetic. I wasn't feeling particularly gentle, but then I wasn't energetic enough for a full scale attack either. So I chose the easy, "Maybe if I ignore it, it will just go away" response, which didn't work: it didn't go away. BONG-GA bong-ga BONG-GA bong-ga. The tribal beat she finally settled on was admittedly pretty mesmerizing. Combined with the hypnotic "ripple and wave" bum flesh vibrations, it knocked the baby out cold. And of course, eventually it got Mr. IQ's head popping in through the doorway.

"What's going on?" he asked. "It sounds like a Caribbean festival in here."

"Oh, like the kettle drums," I said, blushing, assuming he was making a coy reference to my amazing buns of steel.

"Heh?" He looked confused, so I explained.

"More like buns of mashed potato," he said, staring at them thoughtfully.

"BUUUNSSS OOOOOOF MAAAAASHHHH!!!" High Intensity shouted, like the announcer from The Muppet Show shouting PIGS IN SPACE.

"CHEEEEEEKSSS OOOOOOOF CHEEEEEEESE!!!!" Mr. IQ bellowed, getting right into the spirit of things.

"GEEEEEEEEET THE HELL OOOOOOUUUUUTTT OF HERRRRE!" I snarled, but they didn't budge. Glaring didn't get rid of them either. There was only one thing left to do, and that was put my pants on. So that's what I did.

-End of Story-

Analysis: The above vignette neatly illustrates how this blog has NOTHING TO DO WITH MY KIDS AT ALL AND EVERYTHING TO DO WITH MY ASS THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I'd write more, but I have to go bathe and feed my ~~kids~~ ass, and then take ~~them~~ it to the park. So I'll see you soon. I'll regale you with more delightful tales of my behind. (Get it?? "TALES??"Ahahahaahahhahahahahaha)

Bleh.

Dali Day in Seven Short Scenes

2007-08-16T10:00:00.000-05:00

..the weird thing is that once you start LOOKING for surreal things, you realize that they're everywhere. So your challenge for today is notice one of them, and report back...

Prologue

Some mornings you wake up and for some inexplicable reason you are filled with a terrible sense of unease and dread. That's when you know you are in for a bad day. Other mornings you wake up and you are a melty-face clock. Then you know you are in for a surreal day.

The Day

You wake up. A honky tonk version of Pink Floyd's Young Lust ("Oooh; I need a dirty woman") is blasting in your ear. You have never heard this particular version, but it is bad, so bad it's almost creepy. "#@%$&@ CBC!" you swear, and burrow your head in your pillow. But it isn't the radio, it is a CD being played by that person you live with. You stare at him strangely all through breakfast. That someone would choose to record such a horrible version of this song is weird. That someone would voluntarily listen to it is freaky beyond all possible description. Who IS this person?? you think, and why am I suddenly so afraid of him??

You head off to the Motor Vehicles Branch to renew your driver's license. Outside the building is a sausage stand, and as you near it you realize it is being run by a pleasant looking woman wearing a headscarf. A Muslim selling kubasa? You feel uneasy. Worriedly, you look around for the "Our Sausages are 100% Beef!" sign. But there is no "All Beef" sign. You start to hyperventilate.

You get your license and leave. As you walk nervously towards home, an expensive sports vehicle rounds the corner. It is being driven by some reckless young hooligan and he is blasting music. POUND! POUND! POUND! sounds the music, and the noise is deafening.

"Mommy, that music is TOO LOUD," your oldest child says.

"Yes. Yes it is," you say unhappily, casting an anxious look at the young delinquent. You hustle your child off in the opposite direction. The punk squeals his tires and rips down the street. You look about crazily. Has the world gone insane? He has been blasting CLASSICAL MUSIC. Something with VIOLINS and maybe even a CELLO or two. You whimper unhappily. Something is definitely up. You just want to go home.

Unfortunately, when you get home you find yourself locked out and wandering around lost in the forest-like back yard like Dante's little hell-bound boy. It is forest-like back there because you have neglected to mow the grass for a while, but no matter: You feel despondent. You remember that the guy you live with has gone off to do errands and won't be back for a while. You would stay home, but your fear of sitting there with two bored and whiny children overrides your new-found concerns about the BIG WEIRD WORLD. You decide to go for a walk. Before you leave, you scrawl a message in play chalk on the front door.

Locked out.
Meet us at Flying Pizza.
Hurry, please save us.
Everything is Freaky.

You hope when he sees the message he hurries.

You walk east of Arlington Street with your offspring. A thug on an old rusty ten speed bike with curved handlebars approaches you from behind and you edge out of his way. "Thanks very much ma'am," he murmurs politely as he passes. At the Portuguese bakery a pimp and two lovely and stoned prostitutes make way for you as you walk by. The pimp helps you carry the stroller up the two stairs to the bakery and then waits for you so he can help you bring it down again when you leave.

"He's a very nice man," your oldest child whispers when you are out of earshot.

"Mmm, really swell," you murmur.

You head for Flying Pizza. Once there, you have a long and painful conversation with the man behind the counter whose English vocabulary is limited. Your order for a medium Greek vegetarian pizza with black, not green, olives doesn't appear to be registering with him. He seems angry with you and keeps shouting something. You don't get it, and would consider hanging out at the vacuum cleaner shop across the street instead, except that you suspect their pizza wouldn't be as good. "A medium Greek!" you shout. "Black, not green!" You break out into a sweat and hope your order isn't being perversely misinterpreted.

Suddenly there is a tug on your arm. Your four-year-old child is looking up at you. "I know what he's saying," she says, "He's saying the medium and large ones cost the same." And so he is. You change the order to a large pizza and the man beams at you. He was on your side all along! You think about this as you wait outside at the picnic table. Then you suddenly realize that the guys making your pizza are Muslim as well.

The guy you live with appears.

"Is it odd?" you ask after greeting him, "that the guys in there are Muslim and cooking up pork products? I mean, instead of the Greek vegetarian pizza I ordered, we could have had one with ham, sausage and bacon, no problem."

The guy you live with looks wistful. "Ham, sausage and bacon," he says mournfully and gives a heavy sigh. You sit silently waiting for your pizza. When the Greek vegetarian arrives, you decide not to take it home but to eat it right there outside on the old and faded picnic table. It is about as un-Rome-like a setting as you could find. You feel a strange longing to have an Italian man with a violin come play at your table, and the surreal gods kindly grant an interpretive version of your wish: A shirtless man carrying a large Big Gulp walks by and gives a big musical belch. You start to relax a little. Perhaps surreal days aren't that bad after all!

Then just as you are finishing your pizza, a scary-looking thug approaches your table, and you brace yourself. What will he ask for? Money? Cigarettes? A lighter?

"Say," the guy says, "Wanna buy some frozen pickerel fillets?"

The guy you live with starts to say no, but you know that you have no choice but to buy some. This is YOUR surreal day, and just the words "pickerel fillets" brought up casually on a busy urban street by a scary-looking stranger makes you feel like you're tripping on acid. Besides, you recently re-read A Year in Provence and felt a wistful sense of longing when reading the descriptions of the outdoor markets. Purchasing stolen frozen fish fillets from criminals on the corner of Arlington and Sargent is the Winnipeg West End equivalent of going to a charming French stall and sniffing melons for freshness and wandering home with a couple of freshly baked loaves in your basket. You feel giddy. "I'll take two pounds," you say. After a complicated series of whistles and hand gestures, a second thug-like gentleman arrives with your purchase. You take them home and put them in the fridge.

For dinner, you cook them up.

"What's all that white stuff?" your oldest child asks, pointing to the glistening parts.

"White stuff. Everything's got white stuff," you say, trying to normalize it for her so that she'll accept it and eat it.

"Everything?"

"Sure. If I was frying YOU up, people would ask the same question," you say. "They'd say, hey, what's up with all that white stuff there?"

"No they wouldn't," the man you live with says reasonably, "they'd say, 'Hey, why is there a small child being sauteed up in your frying pan?"

"Oh, of course they would," you say, "good point."

Naturally enough, the surreal day ends with dinner.

Moral

Embrace your surreal days, don't run away from them. And on the days when the local food bank is handing out pickerel fillets, hang out on West End street corners and look hungry. You'll be glad you did.

THE END

Boring Medical Update

2007-08-11T23:35:00.000-05:00

...I should have posted this earlier but I was SO SICK of writing about my STUPID HEALTH and I sort of assumed you were SICK OF READING ABOUT IT...

I think I have mentioned that one of Mr. IQ's summer jobs is an overnight-dealy where basically he gets paid fairly substantial coin to sleep. I think he actually loves going to these shifts. Unlike here, at work there is junk food in the cupboards, plus cable: He can, if he chooses, not sleep, but sit and stuff his face with Cheetos and watch TV all night. He comes home to our TV channel-less house filled with nothing but chick peas and green leafy veg a refreshed new man. I think he likes this job a lot. I, on the other hand...

You know, there are not too many things I'm very good at. I can't draw; I can't sing; I couldn't organize my way out of a paper bag and the things I cook are often burnt and never delicious. But I must say, when Mr. IQ is off doing one of these overnight shifts and I'm alone in the house, I am a freaking GENIUS at imagining the different ways psychopathic home invaders could get in here and kill me. Lying in bed alone, listening to every creak and moan this house makes, I can work myself up into a right tizzy, mentally going through all the possible "Kill Whippersnapper!" scenarios I can think of. I've spent many a scary night holed up in this pit picturing myself being shot at, stabbed, poisoned, hacked in the skull with an icepick and shish-kebobbed Bavarian style with a side order of fries. I've even imagined myself being sat on in the face and smooshed to death by a big fleshy pair of robber buttocks. (Clothed buttocks. Oh my god, if that actually were to happen to me, fat ass mister robber man better bloody well have a pair of pants on.) In this manner, I terrify myself into a psychotically freaked out paralysis and then a coma-like trance takes over. It's like sleep, but when I snap out of it the next morning I find that I'm really not as well-rested as I would like to be. Also, I've usually peed the bed.

If you've been reading this blog for a while you probably know that all this is leading up to something and it is: Being sick for an extended length of time (like, oh I don't know, maybe HALF OF MY FREAKING SUMMER) just happens to be another one of those things that gets old Whippersnapper's imagination running off the deep end. I start envisioning some pretty bad scenarios, all of which end up with me in a casket and everyone bawling at my funeral. (Balling whom? Hahahaa) Anyway, because of all this I have a message I'd like to pass on to Winnipeg's health care professionals, in the wild and totally irrational hope that they read my blog: IT IS MEDICALLY IRRESPONSIBLE TO LEAVE AN AGING HYPOCHONDRIAC LIKE ME UNDIAGNOSED FOR FIVE BLOODY WEEKS. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? ARE YOU CRAZY???

Let's recap the last month and a half of doctor's visits, shall we?

Visit #1: (To the walk-in clinic, one week after illness first appears) "Well, the blah blah blah blahs on your throat indicate that the infection is viral in nature. Go home and take it easy."

Visit #2: (Two weeks later, to my family doctor) "Why are you coming to see me for a virus?? Here, take these antibiotics."

Visit #3: (Another two weeks or so later; again to my family doctor) "Hmmm... you're dying you say?? You think you have West Nile? Maybe Hantavirus? Ebola? Well, maybe we'll take some blood and, oh, why not, let's swab your throat for a sample as well since it's bugging you so much. Wow, would you just look at it down there, it's redder than old Karl Marx dressed up as Santy Claus!"

Gaaar. Anyway, the trips to the doctor are done and the tests are in: We have an official diagnosis. What have I been suffering from for all this time?? (Drum roll please... )

Strep throat.

(Strep throat?????)

Yip. Strep throat. Strep freaking throat. Half my summer wasted because of strep motherpluckingcanucking throat.

You know, I have been known to stretch the truth a bit on this blog. For instance, in the last post, it is not even slightly true that I regretted not having meatballs on the floor to cushion Mr. IQ's fall. In fact, if I had had meatballs down there and he HAD landed on them, truthfully, I think my first thoughts would have been ones of irritation. (Hey! That bastard just ruined my meatballs!) But it's important to me that you know that, on my honour, EVERYTHING I wrote about my symptoms last month was absolutely true. When I said I had a fever, I really had a fever. When I said my throat was killing me, it really was killing me. And every time I said I was suffering a relapse, darn it all, I was totally relapsing. My July was a ruin.

However! One good thing has come out of all this! My roll of fat around my middle, compliments of Baby Fangs and her nine month sojourn in my belly has -- well, not entirely disappeared, but definitely shrunk a lot. I'm happy about this and recognize this is a fabulous thing, however I'd also like you to know that I had become rather fond of my Fangs Roll. I liked to lie in bed and fondle it the way some people like to fondle their well I'm not going to finish that sentence, suffice it to say it was my comfort tire and unless I was looking sideways at myself in a mirror (something I rarely do) I didn't really begrudge its presence. Now that it's gone I must admit a small part of me is a little wistful and melancholy. Besides, what am I going to do at night now in bed? Besides freak myself out with my freaky little death visions, I mean?

I really can't believe I just asked that. If that's not a cue to end a post, I really don't know what is.

Uh, good-bye.

Mystery Life

2007-08-07T10:16:00.000-05:00

....oh those pesky forces of nature...

Ingmar Bergman died last week. Perhaps because I spent a significant chunk of my childhood driving through the (holycrapcanwesayboring) forests of Sweden on the way to my grandparents' farm in Norway, the news of his passing has affected me quite a bit. I haven't been this sad about an entertainment figure passing away since Oliver, the original singer of Good Morning Sunshine from the hit musical Hair, succumbed to cancer in 2000. Ah, Oliver. I still hear his song occasionally, played late at night on the golden oldies station, but I'll tell you, it's just not the same; I hear it as Good Morning, I'm Dead now, and I find this is a less perky version, even if the scooby-dooby-bow-wow chorus lyrics haven't changed.

I mention this because last night the kids and I made some popcorn and flipped on The Seventh Seal and what do you know, for the first time EVER there were all these themes of DEATH and HELL flashing at me and it was all very confusing. I've watched this movie at least three thousand times, and, until last night, all I'd seen were happy Swedish beach scenes complete with hunky Swedish stud-muffins playing chess. People think beach volleyball is all that and then some, but, wow, you really haven't seen anything until you've watched a beach chess game. Raaar. Anyway, it's all different now: Just because Bergman is dead, his cute and, let's be honest, chick-flick genre movies have become PHILOSOPHICAL NIGHTMARES for me. I must have a morbid personality or something. What's wrong with me??

Death ruins everything.

Anyway, because the movie got me thinking about death and hell and things, I thought I'd share with you that generally speaking, I am of the opinion that hell is:

70% other people (Not you. OTHER people. THOSE people. You know who I mean.)

5% Mr. IQ

15% entropy (With regards to my messy house, not the thermodynamic-y thing-y.) (Yes, it is official, I will only be teaching chemistry next school year; piss off.)

10% gravity

That's right, you heard me, gravity. My dinner plate-sized hands have never really reconciled themselves to "playing for the team" and they're always fumbling stuff, making my life a misery. They're spiteful things too and like to drop things on my feet, and when they're not doing this, High Intensity is doing it for them. And of course every ten seconds or so, old Baby Fangs is hurdling her tiny baby frame down a flight of stairs or crashing down from a shelf or something. Then she cries a lot and the whole house is miserable for a while, feeling her pain and then some. Gravity is horrible. I hate it.

I mention all this for a reason.

Because I am a very lazy person, when the cloud of inertia descends on my spirit, I tend to try to fight it. That is, I sometimes try to fight it. At least once a month, in a desperate attempt to once and for all rid myself of the "slothful bum " label, I force myself to do something that I absolutely hate doing. This usually involves tackling some ridiculous and grim household chore like "cleaning out the fridge" or "colour coordinating the dried legume jars in the cupboard" or "light dusting of the mantelpiece and cocktails." It takes much inner dialogue, but I usually manage to do something. Or, at very least, get started.

A few days ago, when every bone in my body was directing me to go lie down on the couch and re-read East of Eden for the 786th time because it would be comforting for my brain and non-demanding on my body, I managed to summon the will necessary to clean and shine our hardwood floors. I didn't really want to do it, oh god, I soooo didn't want to do it, but I got myself into the kitchen and under the sink to search for the necessary cleaning supplies. Naturally, I perked up momentarily when I discovered we were out of Murphy's Wood Oil, but I didn't let myself get off that easy. Giving myself a stern, if silent rebuke, I stubbornly grabbed the wood furniture cleaner and defiantly got down on my hands and knees and gave the whole house a good floor polishing. Actually, the furniture stuff did a beautiful job. The floors glowed. I lay on my couch under my Penis Wall Hanging feeling very self-satisfied, and, cool beverage in hand, congratulated myself on a job well done.

What I didn't know was that furniture polish, when used on hardwood floors, takes the notion of a "frictionless surface" to a whole new level. We spent a scary and tense day wiping out and showing off our bruises. By evening, both Baby Fangs AND High Intensity had reverted to their crawling stage, fearful of another skidding fall. It was terrible. I silently calculated the cost of carpeting the place in sandpaper. We were pretty miserable.

Then Mr. IQ came home.

If the world had a kinder, gentler moon-like gravity and we were kinder, gentler moon-like people, slipping on freshly polished floors would not be so catastrophic. Mr. IQ would have gone GA-BOING GA-BOING and then landed on the sofa or something and we would all have had a good laugh because daddy looked silly END OF STORY.

But alas, we are but mortals; Earth is our playing field. And really, let's face it, Mother Earth is one impatient, grabby little bitch, isn't she? You try and jump away and she yanks you back so fast, hurting you in the process! She's a possessive mother but without the soft cushy breasts to sink into. What I'm trying to say is that there would be no gentle GA-BOING GA-BOING for old IQ as he smashed down onto the floor, despite his moon-like proportions. Oh no. Instead, 200+ pounds of solid IQ came crashing down like an avalanche the world has never seen. The house gave a kind of seismic shudder and a terrible silence followed as we collectively waited for it to collapse. Even Baby Fangs froze, waiting for the end. We watched as slowly, slowly, a mushroom cloud of fury formed above his motionless, supine body.

Sometimes, as we all know, life slows down and things move along much slower than they normally do. I always thought this happened when we were about to die, but the fact that it happens when you are witnessing the potential death of someone else came as a bit of a surprise. In the eternity that it took for him to respond to his fall, all kinds of things went flashing through my head. I thought, Aughh, I can't believe he fell! And then: Ouch, that must have hurt! And finally, I guess because I had Ingmar Bergman on the brain, a heartfelt, Gosh, I wish there had been a layer of Swedish meatballs down there to cushion his fall. High Intensity tiptoed over to see if he was OK. I think we were all a little freaked out by his lack of reaction. Was he dead? Was his life insurance policy paid up? If it was, would I buy a new dining room set with the money or take a trip to Europe first? These were some more of the things that went flashing through my head as we watched him lying there.

Then he responded.

"&$*%#@ ICE RINK &%#$*&!!FLOOR &%$@*!!! SLIPPERY$*$$*# @*$??????" I didn't try to talk. I wisely knew that the best thing for all of us would be to let him bellow incoherently for a while. Interruptions would only intensify his rage. So he went on and on and on. I played with the baby for a while, did H.I.'s hair, made a sandwich. Finally there were signs that he was calming down so I explained about the furniture polish and apologized.

"Well, I'm going to have to start wearing a @%$$!! pair of *&*#!!!! mountain spikes just to navigate around the &*%$@# house!!" he shouted. And then something shifted in his expression. The old pack rat paused and looked at me, and I could tell he was thinking... deeply. "Luckily," he said slowly (and I really hope you're a long-time reader and can appreciate what I'm about to quote off here), "Luckily," he said (he who has put me through hell and back with his massive collection of stuff), "Luckily, " he said, (and his voice reverted to his regular one), "Luckily, I have a pair in the basement." We stared at each other, not moving. And then both of us collapsed onto the ground, because honestly, that was one of the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me in my whole stupid life. I laughed until I cried and then I made him go down and get them. I tried them on and plunked around the living room in them for a while. Then High Intensity tried them on. We had a good time.

Oh Ingmar, Ingmar. I don't believe in a biblical hell, so I don't think you're there right now. If it's true that the only immortality we have is via our genes, then the 732 children you had with your 567 assorted wives and girlfriends have well-assured you of that. Death is the big mystery I guess, but the fact is, I don't get anything about this world, never mind the Great Equalizer. I don't get gravity, pain and why I would want my stupid floors to shine in the first place anyway. I don't get why breaking my hair-straightener would send me into a despair that borders on the pathologically ridiculous. And your movies! I didn't get that weird dining room scene in Hour of the Wolf where the Bjorndiggy-diggy character said, "Fonken splunken fishball plunken"; it left me confused, and searching for herring sandwiches and answers, both of which I never found. Instead I wake up each morning, drink my coffee and stumble through my day not getting anything, feeling like a fool and bawling occasionally when the news comes on.

But I got the mountain spike reference. Scenes like that that keep me going. I guess that sounds a bit more morbid that I mean it to.

Sorry.

Waiting...

2007-08-01T17:15:00.000-05:00

...and did I ever mention that I'm not a patient person?....

They took blood, and it's off being tested for the presence of West Nile antibodies as I type. I'll be honest: I was really hoping it WAS West Nile, because when you've been sick on and off for as long as I have, you just want to know what the hell is going on: If the test comes out negative then I'm right back to square one, not knowing what is wrong with me. Also, five weeks is a long time to be moaning and carrying on about how crappy you feel to all your friends and relatives. You start to feel a little self-conscious about it, like you're a big sniveling whiny hypochondriac. Receiving conformation that I have indeed fallen victim to a potentially very serious disease would, obviously, relieve me of THAT particular worry. See! I HAVE been sick, I WASN'T just trying to make you do all the work around here cuz I'm lazy... heh heh...well, maybe partly...

Last night, though, I spent some time reading up on the disease and, holy crap, no, I DO NOT WANT IT. Long term effects sound pretty bad, and include impaired motor control, headaches, tremors and DEPRESSION. Three words, people: "Permanent neurological damage." Aughhh, freaking out here! If my brain becomes impaired everything is going to suck! My students will know I am a big dummy and call me mean and hurtful names like "Ms Big Dummy." My chemistry lessons will be over my head. Kids will raid my chemical supply room and make pipe bombs in class and I'll be too dumb to figure out what's going on. (Ha ha ha, having fun guys?) My plan to master the Russian language and read the complete works of Tolstoy in the original? So out the window! And when the Globe and Mail arrives on Saturday I'll just stare blankly at the day's top stories and then head straight for the Style section to ogle the pretty pictures of smart furniture. Oh wait a minute, I already do that...

After reading about all the long-term effects of WNV, I went to Mr. IQ and said, "Hey, did you know permanent neurological damage can result from West Nile Virus? I could end up with BRAIN DAMAGE if that test comes out positive."

He looked up from the paper he was reading. "Well then," he said, "I guess you'll have to rely on your looks for your survival then." He gave a little guffaw -- well, not that little, more along the lines of a hearty "AHARHARHARHAHRHARHAR," sort of thing, and then, wiping the tears from his eyes and obviously very pleased with himself, went back to his reading.

Hhrrrmmppphh.

A Birthday Poem for Me

2007-07-29T23:55:00.000-05:00

..with explanations in italics when the deepness of my poetry gets too... deep...

Today, it was my birthday
They brought me out a cake
They said, "Hey look, Rome's burning!"
Cuz I'm old, I'm 38

It's true, the candles were many
My cake was covered with tallow!
We said, "Hey let's roast weiners!
And a fluffy white marshmallow!

I got a really good present
A fabulous CD
The surprise, it almost killed me:
I'm such a spoiled girlie

Unfortunately:

Alas, I am a'suffering
From Relapse #2
I think this means I'm dying
And soon must say adieu.

For yes, again a fever
Is raging through my bod
My throat is raw and red and sore
Like someone snacked and gnawed (*like, on my throat flesh)

This heat wave isn't helping
I'm sweating like a pig!
But morgues are very, very cool,
Ah death! Please take me: Quick!

(Wow! That was terrible! Forgive me, I'm ill again.)

(I WILL ask for a blood test this time, I WILL ask for a blood test this time...)

Finally!

2007-07-27T23:00:00.000-05:00

...the moment you were (probably not) waiting for...

Yeah, so, uh, here it is... the penis wall hanging:

Here's, uh, a close-up of the offensive middle part:

As I said in the last post, I had this thing on my wall for quite a long time before that casual and world-changing remark destroyed my idyllic vision of it. I had spent hours staring at this and never seen the damn penis: Now, thanks to that soul crusher, it's all I see.

I'm happy to say, though, that just yesterday I purchased something new to put on my wall as a replacement. Phew! Has it ever been a relief saying good-bye to that stupid purple spotted rag of perversity!! My new piece is quite modern. Although I've hunted for it, I haven't been able to find the name of the artist. It hasn't been signed. I figure it's probably a Jackson Pollock or something like that.

I'm quite excited about my new work of art. Is this a conversation starter or what?? I've never been one to get too deep about things or spend a lot of time searching for hidden meanings, yet even I can see it's a bold piece: amorphous, yet symmetrical, the basically indecipherable shape symbolizes the order in chaos and the odd predictability of this crazy little game we call life! The furrowed brows at the top, combined with the Stygian shades serve as a somber momento mori, but then the little round blobs, which represent bubblegums, help keep it playful and light. And you'll notice that even though there's no face, the big blob is wearing earrings. Honestly, I don't know what that's supposed to mean at all. That's OK, though, not everything in this world is meant to be understood. I mean, a little mystery never hurt anyone, right? All I care about is that it's not a penis wearing earrings.

I couldn't handle that at all.

Of Tongues and Fingers and Penises (but no Cabbages or Kings)

2007-07-25T07:20:00.000-05:00

...the human body sucks...

For the first two years that we lived in this house, one whole wall of our living room remained bare. It was a big chunk of wall, right above our couch, and I just couldn't find anything good to put up there.

So I didn't.

Then one day, I found a fabric art wall hanging for sale in the hippie neighbourhood of town. I loved it immediately! I put it up on the wall and it made me feel like I was in an art gallery. I loved it. I loved lying on the couch and just looking at it. Aaaaaaah, my beautiful wall hanging. How I adored you.

That's right, "adored", past tense. One day someone came over and said, "HEY! Check it OUT!! What's with the big PENIS on your wall?" He (she? Lucky for this person, I can't remember who s/he was) pointed to my precious, beautiful wall hanging, and, sure enough, right there in the middle of it was a big stupid penis. For some strange, psychologically interesting reason, I hadn't seen it before!

My piece of art was destroyed!

It's still there, of course, hanging on the wall and covering what would otherwise be that big empty space above the couch, but looking at it no longer makes me feel like I'm in an art gallery. Now it makes me feel like I'm in a bordello or a Turkish bathhouse or something, only with toys all over the place, so, like a weird bordello or Turkish bathhouse or something. Anyway, I don't like it so much anymore.

The fact is, I'm not a big fan of the human body, male or female. I wouldn't be crazy about girl parts hanging on my wall in a swell fabric art design either. And in case you think I'm a prude, I should add that I would find a cute button nose or a pancreas pretty unacceptable as well. Especially now. Like I said, I'm off bodies at the moment, thanks; they're horrible things. They have to be fed. They have to be rested. (My own, particularly lazy body is especially insistent on this point!) The things they force us to do each day are disgusting. Their care and maintenance drive me crazy, especially all the hairy bits. And I'm sorry, but pregnancy and childbirth are just ridiculous processes. Why so much nausea? Why so much pain? Ridiculous. It's been over a year since I closed the book on that soul-crushing but necessary reproduction chapter of my life but I'm still traumatized by it. Honestly, I think I always will be.

And I hate being sick. Everything just shuts down when you're sick. (And the getting well part is just as yucky. These antibiotics I'm on for my virus [???] have given my pee an odour that could crush armies.) (You're welcome for sharing.) Did you know that this year alone I have been sick four times? And that's not even counting stupid bladder infections. This is ridiculous, too. So I've decided to fight back. Health nut Whippersnapper is going to now go OVER THE TOP in her efforts to remain hale and hearty for the rest of the year. My goal? To not get sick again in 2007.

My plan is threefold:

1. Develop a hand-washing obsession. I was in Chapters bookstore last month and when in the bathroom was witness to a pretty Japanese tourist go through the most bizarre ritual I have ever seen. I couldn't help but stare, and in retrospect, I can only say that I hope my tongue wasn't hanging out while I did it. It was pretty fascinating. First she exited her stall and turned on the sink. Then, leaving the water running she went and got some paper towels. She then washed her hands in a very complicated and elaborate fashion and then turned off the sink with the paper towel. Then she got more paper towels and used them to open the door to the bathroom to leave. If old High Intensity hadn't been sitting in her own stall at that moment howling for me to come wipe her potato, I would definitely have followed her to see what she did with those paper towels. The whole thing was sort of a revelation for me, like the first time someone told me they always flush public toilets with their feet. Like, oh, duh, of course, why didn't I think of that myself?? I think perhaps the protected door opening procedure might be over the top, but the rest of it... well I'm pretty desperate for some solutions here.

2. It's all about the vitamin C, baby. Every time I drink water now until the day I die I'm putting lemon juice in the glass too. I drink a lot of water, so this should be good.

3. Garlic. Wait, I mean, "gahhhhhhrlliiiihhhck," said while practicing my diaphragm exercises. One raw clove daily, taken in the form of a delicious vegetable juice cocktail. If nothing else, people will start giving me a wide berth and stop passing on their stupid diseases to me. I will be lonely, it's true, but while my social life slowly rots away, my body will ripen into a robust and strong tank. You, dear blog world, will be my only friends, but sometimes that's the price one must pay for good health. I'm willing to make the sacrifice.

Later: BLEEEEEEEEEECCCCHHHHHHHH!!!!! Vegetable juice w/ freshly minced garlic clove tastes TERRIBLE!!! I think I'm going to have to explore some alternatives here. Perhaps chilling the juice first will help. Warm generic V-8 on a 35 C day makes your tongue want to pop out of your mouth and give you the finger. You know, if tongues had fingers and all that... Hrrmmph, my body has betrayed me once again, I try to give it something nourishing and healthful and all it does is reject it.

***

I keep putting off posting this because I wanted to include a picture of the penis wall hanging, but Mr. IQ is never home to do it for me. This is pathetic beyond words, I know, but being technologically dependent on him gives me an interesting taste of what it must have been like for women in the past who were financially dependent on their husbands. It must have been hell. Anyway, I think I'm going to just post this now, and tomorrow post the picture.

Off topic: Stay cool Winnipeggers. This heat wave is a killer.

Warning: Contains Spoilers

2007-07-21T21:49:00.000-05:00

...well, spoiler, singular. Don't read this if you've never seen Easy Rider...

One day, a long time ago, I was lounging back and watching Easy Rider for the first time ever when suddenly I received a phone call from Mr. IQ. I told him I couldn't talk right then and explained why I was busy.

"Oh," he said, "Has Jack Nicholson died yet?"

That's how I came to find out, well in advance of it actually occurring on my TV screen, that the Jack Nicholson character dies in Easy Rider. Was I pissed off? Oh, you have no idea.

As you know, today was the release date of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it's all CBC radio talked about all day. (That's not even remotely true, but whatever. "One must never let the facts get in the way of a good blog post!" Whippersnapper, 2007)

Finally Mr. IQ snapped.

"I've just got to know!" he muttered and disappeared into our (still ridiculous-looking) office. He emerged about 20 minutes later and, once again without asking me first if I cared to be privy to this little golden nugget of info, said, very casually, "Well, it looks like ******** gets killed."

For you to understand the significance of this thoughtless action, you have to understand that the question, "Is Jack Nicholson dead yet?" instantly became a part of this household's vernacular the moment it was first uttered. If someone good is being interviewed on the radio and one person rushes in late and asks, "What did I miss?" the other person is sure to respond with a pleasant, "Well, Jack Nicholson died." What I'm saying is, it's not like he's forgotten the first incident, it comes up every time we don't pause a movie for someone's trip to the can! How could he do this to me twice?? The fact that I have absolutely no plans to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ever in my lifetime is entirely beside the point. I was steamed.

About an hour ago, while stumbling to get to the computer in our (still nightmarish) office, my eyes happened to fall on a brand-new CD still in its wrapper.

"What the heck is this?" I asked, because we are in what you might call the "abject poverty" phase of our lives together and will probably remain in this phase until Baby Fangs hits Grade One. Buying brand-new CDs is verboten, ja. Hell, it's a wonder we can afford diapers these days.

Mr. IQ looked at it. "Oh!" he said, "That's for you, for your birthday next week! Oops, sorry, I guess I should have hidden it better!"

Because money is scarce, we've agreed that he will still wrap it up and present it to me on my "special day" as if nothing has happened. I've agreed to still be "surprised."

Good old Mr. IQ: Taking the fun and suspense out of everything since 1999.

RELAPSE!!! WITH UPDATE

2007-07-17T01:19:00.000-05:00

....okay, we have definitely reached the WTF stage...

WTF???????

Fever: 101.1 F

Throat: More elves, more curlicue knives

Body: Chills, followed by sweaty misery

Head: POUND! POUND! POUND!

Bones: Achy

Mood: Helpless despair

Thoughts: Terribly profound

Example: "The human body is a #@%&*$!!!! prison!"

Pretty: Deep, huh?

Best part: Swallowed pride and phoned parents. They came and took care of kids and, even better, tidied the house

They are: Swell

Worst part: I worry that my blog is suffering, what with all this sickness

(I realize this is: Pathetic)

Theme song: Relax by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Only I'm think-singing it with the word "relapse" instead

Actually: I can't get it out of my head, and it's driving me freaking crazy

I am going to my doctor's tomorrow to demand a blood test.

Anyone willing to bet a fiver with me that this is West Nile??

**UPDATE**

So I went to my doctor. Naturally, I chickened out in her presence, and did NOT demand a blood test. (I'm sort of scared of her.) She roughed me up a bit and gave me a hard time for coming to see her for a virus. (She's tough.) Then she ended up giving me a prescription for antibiotics. (Huh?)

The subject of West Nile was not brought up. I couldn't bear to face her sarcasm.

Perhaps this is indicative of some latent masochistic tendencies, but the funny thing is, I absolutely adore my doctor.

Go figure.

Because It is My Life and Because I Suck

2007-07-12T23:50:00.000-05:00

...okay, well, I wrote the title and then I wrote the post, and now I'm thinking the two don't exactly mesh; however I'm going to keep the title anyway because a) I just like it and b) I'm a really, really lazy person...not that one should EVER admit that to ANYONE...

Several years ago, I took a road trip to California with two friends of mine, "Bill" and "Bob." It was the brilliant idea of "Bill" to scout out a watering hole everyday to swim in.

One day, we stopped at a beautiful swimming place, which also happened to be the local town's water reservoir. It was a smoking hot day, and we wasted no time getting on our bathing suits and into the water. After a while, a large black dog came and joined us. He padded in, sat down in about nine inches of water and then turned and stared at us with the most mournful I AM HOT expression I have ever seen in my life.

We watched him for a while, pretty amused, and then naturally the wisecracks started, and someone joked about how he was probably peeing in the local town's water supply. I should have just laughed (ha ha ha!) and changed the subject, but no, dumb old me had to go and open my big mouth.

"Oh, come on!" I said gaily, because, after all, I was with friends, and friends can supposedly be honest with each other, "Let's face it, ALL of us have peed in the water at some point during this trip!"

There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

"Actually," said Bob finally, "I HAVEN'T peed in the water. Not even once."

"No," admitted Bill slowly, "I haven't either."

Arghghh. Total humiliation. You'd think I'd learn from incidents like this, but no, I am a fool and do this sort of thing all the time.

For instance.

Last month at my local thrift store I stumbled upon a, um, Best of Styx CD that I just couldn't resist snapping up. Hey, it was only a dollar, STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!!! After our visit to the thrift store we went to the park where we ran into a friend of High Intensity's who was there with her mom. She's a pretty nice mom, and at least as old as me so I had no reservations showing her my new purchase. I'm very naive in my own way, I guess. I knew it was crap, but it was guilty pleasure crap, right? I always assume people understand the difference.

Obviously not. "Ew," she said when she saw it, wrinkling up her nose as if she was smelling a dead pig. "Why would you buy that?"

I could have still saved myself. I could have said, "Oh, it's for my mom!" or, "Baby Fangs likes destroying CDs and it was only a buck!" But no, I'm an idiot. "Oh, come on!" I said, nudging her and giving a little conspiratorial wink, "'fess up you coward! Everyone likes the songs Babe and Come Sail Away deep down secretly! Right?"

"No. No they don't," said the other mother, smoothing down her tight Ramones t-shirt over her perky little boobies and giving me a look of terrible pity.

Hrrmmphh. So I guess I humiliated myself again. Obviously the secret to life is to keep absolutely tight-lipped about anything, and I mean ANYTHING that might make you look less than perfect in this world, and I really need to learn to do that. If my dishwasher is on the blink and the dishes don't ever get done until the weekend, I mustn't laugh and tell my co-worker that every Friday I put my week's worth of dishes in the bathtub to soak overnight before washing them. This will garner strange looks! If my dinner the night before consisted of a can of chick peas mixed with ketchup (unheated), for God sakes, I shouldn't tell the in-laws!! They'll think I'm crazy! And whatever I do, I must never, ever admit to anyone that I like to yodel loudly while in the shower! That's one thing I could never, EVER live down!

I've thought for a while now, though, that where I really need to learn to just bury the truth and start lying a lot is in the area of my crappy parenting skills. Whenever I get down and dirty with other mothers and we start into the hard core confessions about what terrible, negligent, irresponsible moms we are, I've found that, more often than not, when it's my turn in the confessional booth, my own disclosures are always rewarded with a stunned, embarrassed silence, followed by a rather quavery "Oh....my...."

In other words, they may suck, but I really suck.

Yet my stories are so innocent. When I shared pictures of my kids frolicking naked on a kitchen floor covered with cinnamon, they were like, "ugh, why did you let them do that?" When I broke down and confessed that I once gave Baby Fangs my brand-new lipstick to play with and destroy they were appalled. And yet it had bought me ten minutes of peace! I mean, she would not leave me alone that day! I was desperate! What was their problem?

One good thing about all this crappy stuff that has happened lately is that, corny and cliche as it may be, it certainly has given me a lot of perspective. When your life is sort of falling apart at the seams, and your basement smells like a rotting sewer pit and the government informs you that you owe them $780, little things like the world thinking you're a big crazy bad mom with crappy taste in music and a weird penchant for peeing in lakes, well, you just don't give a damn about it. And I'll be honest: that's a lovely feeling.

Yesterday, while still convalescing, I managed to get myself together enough to take the kids to the park. While I sat limply on the grass, High Intensity played on the play structure and Baby Fangs plunked herself down in the sand and began snacking. Several ants disappeared between her sweet tender rosebud lips and were not seen again. I couldn't stop her. I just couldn't. Frankly, I wasn't sure how I was going to get the energy to drag myself back home; keeping a very willful baby in check was totally out of the question.

Of course, other people were around to remind me of my negligence.

"Your little baby is eating sand!" a little old lady told me.

The Old Me would have scrambled to put on a Good Mom Act, yanked Fangs away from where she was sitting having fun and kept her miserably on my knee for the rest of the visit. But the New Me Whose Head is Wrapped up in Other Things didn't care.

"Hmmphh," was all I said, "and you'd think she'd be all full after that large colony of ants she just consumed!"

Misery, it would seem, can set you free.

Non-Royal Proclamation

2007-07-10T23:13:00.000-05:00

...da da daaaaaaah!...

Our basement pipes have exploded again, so, uh, I guess that makes it official.

Summer 2007 totally sucks!

Illness, not as Metaphor

2007-07-06T23:59:00.000-05:00

...because, quite frankly, I'm just not that deep...

In the last post I wrote something about having some profound thoughts about illness, but if there is one thing I've learned from this 13-day bout of viral hell, it's that being sick is a lot like going on a big boozy bender. You only THINK you're having profound thoughts. In your fevered, delusional state, you're pretty convinced you're bloody Voltaire, Hobbes and freaking Wittgenstein all rolled up into one hot-thinking little sausage. But oh no, trust me my friend, you're not profound. You lie there in a miserable hot fever, a baby screaming in your ear and a fruit fly infestation buzzing in circles around your bed and you think, Oh I get it! I'm -- we're -- in HELL! Hell is life here on earth!! It all makes sense now!! You think you are a genius. But you are not a genius. You're just sick and pathetic.

Two Saturdays ago, June 23rd, while lying comatose in the blackest of sleeps, I was suddenly yanked into semi-consciousness by the presence of a soggy-assed baby sitting on my stomach, purring loudly.

"Ahraaaaaaaah," Baby Fangs meowed, poking her big curly head into my personal space and exploring my barely conscious face with her prodding, sharp-nailed fingers. Blearily I looked over at the clock. It was 6:30 am. I was so terribly tired.

"Oh God," I thought, "I'm going to die."

Just as I was thinking this, High Intensity bounded into the room. "Good morning mom!" she shouted and jumped onto the bed.

"Ooooooooooow," I thought desperately, "Talk about rubbing salt in the wound."

I was so tired I did not even feel human. My brain felt like a bottle of oozy glue. My lethargy went beyond the usual realm of sluggish inertia and into the surreal zone where misery, fatigue and vague thoughts of suicide meld into one terrible, terrible mood that always keeps Mr. IQ hopping to prevent me from killing someone. His efforts come mostly in the form of helpful advice to the kids, warnings like "Just Stay the Hell Away From Her!" and "Get Out of the Room, She's Going to Blow!" Actually, it's moods like these that remind me why we're still together. I could never be a single parent.

But unfortunately, when I woke up that Saturday morning, Mr. IQ wasn't there. He was working an overnight shift at this place where he gets paid to, well, sleep. He wasn't scheduled to return until after 11:00 am, either. There was only one thing to do, and that was to somehow get my butt downstairs to make coffee. It took about 15 minutes to muster my forces, and when I finally got downstairs I discovered to my absolute horror that the worst of all possible scenarios had happened: We were out of coffee. That this was a crisis of epic proportions cannot be overstated. Simply put, my day just doesn't start without coffee.

Hazily, I stumbled my way to the couch and collapsed on it, thinking, "How how HOW am I going to get through the next four hours until Mr. IQ comes home without coffee??" I lay there in a paralyzed stupour while High Intensity destroyed the living room and Baby Fangs crawled over my body and breakfasted on small chokeable lego pieces. (Note: Did you know "chokeable" is not a real word? Weird.) It went on like this forever, and I realized I had to do something. I needed to get it together and fast. Groaning, I asked High Intensity to read me the numbers from the stove. It was 8:13 am. Mr. IQ wasn't due back for three hours. I had no choice. I was going to have to make the trek to Seven Eleven.

Thinking back on our trip I am for some reason reminded of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout and Jem are heading home from the Halloween party and there's a sentence like, "And so we set out together on the longest journey of our lives." Absolutely nothing happened on our walk to the local Seven Eleven, so I don't know why my mind conjures up that particular scene.

Except that it WAS the longest journey of my life.

What a sight we made. Baby Fangs, sitting in her filthy, pathetic squeaky wreck of a stroller, wore nothing but a diaper. Conversely, in perhaps an unconscious attempt to balance things out, High Intensity went commando. As for me, barely conscious, I managed to climb into the first items of clothing I happened to stumble upon, a pair of Mr. IQ's underwear that can sort of pass for shorts, and a somewhat soiled t-shirt emblazoned with the word "SLUG".

("Oh boy. I bet you were SEX," said Mr. IQ later that day when he came home and I was relating all this to him.

"Oh God, you have no idea," I said, cringing at the memory.)

So we set off. I have since taken note of the distance on my odometer, and I now know the Seven Eleven is exactly 1.1 km away from my house. How we made it there, I don't know. Each step was torture, and thoughts of the Bataan Death March kept flashing through my head. Well, perhaps that comparison is not quite apt. The Bataan Death March involved intense prisoner suffering at the hands of sadistic Japanese and Korean soldiers. There were beatings, outbreaks of dysentery and malaria, and a malicious withholding of food and water. I know the heat was unbearable and thousands died. It's a crude comparison, I know, but sometimes you just have to work with what history has to offer to make your point, okay? Don't lecture me! Obviously what I suffered on my trip to Seven Eleven for coffee was at least a thousand times worse than any wimpy Bataan Death March! Hello! I'm just trying to give you some generalized idea of what I went through, calm down already! I feel your outrage, really I do, but I've got a blog post to crank out here! Leave me alone!

Anyway, we made it there, and I got my coffee and we left. "We're going to sit here for a minute," I told High Intensity, pointing to the curb right outside the store. "Mommy needs to drink a bit of her coffee first." She eyed the broken glass suspiciously and then gingerly sat her panty-less buns down beside me. (I had bought her an apple juice, a pretty rare treat for her, and obviously the desire to drink it in comfort overrode any safety concerns she might have had regarding shards of glass in her ass. Heh.)

So we sat on the curb guzzling our beverages, a sad, sorry sight if there ever was one. And even after I'd finished my whole liter's worth of java I had to admit my fatigue was still there. Oh, the coffee had taken the edge off, that's for sure, but I certainly didn't have my usual euphoric "Hey Yowza, There's Coffee in my Bloodstream and All is Right in the World!" feeling. We plodded home. I went back to the couch. I waited for Mr. IQ's return like some await the Second Coming. My head hurt. I didn't know what was up.

Of course what was up was that I was in the beginning stages of one DOOZY of a flu bug. Mr. IQ came home and I slept all afternoon. Then he left again for his other job, just as I was entering the crazy fever stage. Baby Fangs spent the evening crawling over my 102 F body. "Oh God," I thought, "if only this baby would fall asleep, then I could possibly stand this." When she finally fell asleep I suddenly became aware that High Intensity was still awake and being particularly obnoxious. "Oh Gee," I thought, "Please, please, please make her fall asleep too. Then and only then can I be happy." When she finally passed out I gave a sigh of relief and sank down onto my bed. Only then did the full magnitude of my illness hit me, and I suddenly realized that I was really sick. "Hey, the kids are both asleep and I'm still miserable!" I thought. "The human condition is to be miserable!" The brilliance of my words overwhelmed me, and I suddenly realized that I was a genius. "Hey, I should write that down somewhere!" I thought. Then I too passed out.

And so it began. My horrible two weeks of hell. Mr. IQ was working what felt like 18 hours every day, so for the most part I was alone with the kids. It was awful. Everything has been a bit of a blur, but briefly, here are some highlights (lowlights?) of the last 14 days:

Day Two: More fever. The house is already a pit. Despite my fairly delusional state, I nevertheless take a vague, purely hands-off interest in what my children are up to, and realize something important. I've read that kids of non-functional adults end up being either super responsible, crazy workaholic types or else super irresponsible. I can see these roles being assumed right before my eyes by High Intensity and Baby Fangs after only 24 hours of benign neglect. Old H. I. is bustling around, telling Fangs what to do, bringing me glasses of water and preparing light snacks every fifteen minutes for herself and her sister. The baby just crawls around, filthy, not a care in the world. It makes me sad, and I cry a bit. This is a precursor to:

Day Three: The weepy stage. Everything, and I mean everything, makes me bawl. ("Ball whom?" my buddy Nitroglycol once asked me politely. Ha ha.) The dirt encrusted on Baby Fangs' neck makes me bawl. A bird on our lawn makes me bawl. A glimpse of my copy of Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz makes me bawl. It's all so weird and inexplicable! The fruit fly infestation makes me -- well, actually, it makes me want to kill someone. When Mr. IQ returns from work I am a mess. "I'll take the kids and get them out of your hair," he says, and they go have a picnic. While I appreciate the respite, the fact that he does not stick around to do at least some superficial tidying means that I am left to bake alone in a squalid hovel. I try to get up to clean but find I absolutely can't do it. This makes me bawl.

Day Four: High Intensity gets down the bucket of ice-cream from the freezer. I am too weak and apathetic to stop her. Pow-wow style, she and Baby Fangs sit around it on the floor, eating their way to the bottom. They have a blast. Baby Fangs is wearing a diaper that is swollen with urine to 17 times its regular size. She is surrounded by chaos. I watch them helplessly from the couch. "Hey," I whisper, my voice cracking a bit in self-pity, "aren't... aren't you going to bring me some?"

Day Five: High Intensity stops wearing clothes.

Day Six: I stop wearing clothes too, at least when no-one else is around. I insist on keeping my bra on at all times though. It is a maternity bra, and the flu bug has sapped the necessary energy needed to reattach the flaps that unhook for nursing. This means my naked breasts hang out of it like grotesquely huge hairless rodents gasping for air. This is not as sexy as it may sound, I can assure you.

Day Seven: High Intensity's Last Day of Nursery. I bring her to school not realizing that there is a big celebration planned, and the parents are expected to stay. The other parents and kids are all dressed to the nines. I am wearing Mr. IQ's SLUG shirt again. "I'm sick," I croak at the teacher. "Oh dear," she says, crinkling up her nose in disgust. I look terrible. All the parents stare at me, and give me a wide berth. We watch a video showing everything the kids have done over the school year. There is a nice shot of High Intensity picking her nose and eating it. I am embarrassed, and look over to where she is sitting. She is on the floor with her classmates picking her nose and eating it. She is filthy, and her hair needs a good wash. You are a failure of a parent, I think and then have a coughing fit that lasts for the remainder of the film.

Day Seven: Mr. IQ takes a picture of me at my most wretched. Once again, it pains me to show off like this, but I have to say that no-one, no-one on this planet can take an ugly picture like me; incredibly, however, this particular picture puts all other snapshots to shame and believe me, that's saying something. (I am almost tempted to post it here, but I'm just not that brave. Besides, then all of you would think I look like a monster. I'd have to post a really stunning picture of me alongside of it just to give some perspective. And that would just be dumb.)

Day Eight: Mr. IQ starts getting sick. Or did that happen on Day Nine? Day Ten? I'm not sure. All I know is that he's still sick. Last night, lying on the couch, he started muttering something under his breath. I looked over at him. The room was hot and dirty. Baby Fangs was sitting on his head in a less-than-crisp looking diaper. There were fruit flies buzzing around his mouth. He was naked from the waist up and sweaty.

"What was that you were saying?" I asked.

"I said I just figured something out," he croaked, "about Hell. It really is here on Earth! We're -- we're all in hell!! I'm in Hell!!"

"You betcha, genius!" I said fondly.

It looks like he's getting better. The profound stage means that the fever is breaking.

Still Sick

2007-07-03T22:00:00.000-05:00

...can you believe this??...

I'm still sick, and I'm at the point where I can't even joke about it anymore. I'm at the "Coughing So Hard Chunks of Lung are Coming Up" stage of this miserable illness. It's horrible. Mr. IQ is sick now too, he came down with it two days ago. He's in the "Raging Fever" stage, and has spent the last 24 hours lying on the couch, melodramatically taking his temperature every three minutes with the Dora the Explorer children's thermometer we have. Even I was only doing this every four minutes when I was in the fever stage, although I haven't pointed this out to him yet: he's pretty cranky right now. As am I. As am I.

Our children are raising themselves at this point.

And you would not BELIEVE what the house looks like right now.

I think I have some profound insights on all this sickness business, but I can't write about them now, staring at the screen for too long gives me a headache. I just wanted to check in. A lot of people have abandoned their blogs lately, I've noticed, but I suspect this is because they're on fun-filled summer vacations and not because they've succumbed to some nasty virus like me.

*sigh*

Lucky bastards.

Ugggghhhhhh Part II

2007-06-28T23:30:00.000-05:00

...that's, uh, a moany, sick sort of "uggggggghhhhh" there, not a zombie-grunt....

Still ridiculously, hopelessly sick. Some invisible giant has mistaken my head for a large and juicy melon of some kind and is currently trying to hack it open with an ax. Several sadistic, minuscule elves have taken up residence in my throat and are shoving their cute little curlicue knives into it. This makes it difficult to eat, so my one consolation is that when this is all over I will be a light delicate swan. In as much as a person who is five feet ten can ever be considered "delicate."

At least I don't have a fever anymore.

I went to the doctor's this morning and was told I could well have the West Nile Virus; I was then shuffled out of the office and on to my non-merry way. "Make sure you take it really easy over the next few days!" the doctor added as I was leaving. Sure, right. I'll just leave everything in the competent hands of my manservant, Bunsworthy for the next 48 hours while I lie in bed with a box of bon bons and an assortment of Russell Crowe movies. Ha ha. As if. (He knew I had kids at home too, he'd asked!! What a clueless jerk!!)

Mr. IQ came up with a design for the tombstone I wanted. He really enjoyed working on it too, got himself worked up into a right excited lather. You should have seen him bopping around here, holy cow, talk about uncharacteristic behavior! He was even humming! Honestly, he is sometimes so sweet and generous to me, it melts my heart.

See you when I'm finally over this. (Soon, hopefully.)

Ugggghhhhhhhhh

2007-06-26T04:32:00.000-05:00

...help, I'm dying....

I've got the flu. Holy crap, am I ever sick. And, just in time to fuel my world-famous hypochondria, the newspaper today listed all the symptoms of West Nile Virus. I read the list uncomfortably, while absent-mindedly scratching the mosquito bites on my legs, all 47, 000 of them. (Mosquito bites, that is; although in many ways I AM a genetic freak of nature, I don't have 47, 000 legs...) Even though I appear to have what the paper describes as a "mild case" of it, I still feel like a big bag of hell, and am pretty sure I'm dying. Mr. IQ has promised to write "Whippersnapper Snapping Snapped Snuffed it" on my tombstone, so that has been a bit of a comfort.

Update to follow when (*sob*, IF) I'm ever feeling better...

Sunday Night Office Update, Part IV

2007-06-21T23:59:00.000-05:00

...oooh, I've just discovered you can do colours with this thing!!!... (and to think last year at this time I hated computers)....

I was going to write this two days ago, but on Tuesday around 10:00 pm, my usual blogging hour, we had the most terrific thunderstorm, and so I sat by the window in our darkened living room and watched all the lightning instead. It was quite spectacular. Hmmm. Reading that over, it sounds like I actually had a choice in the matter. The reality is that whenever there is electricity in the sky Mr. IQ gets all paranoid and insists on shutting the computer down. He is convinced that our last computer bagged it because of lightning and so now, if there is even the merest hint of rain, he's racing in to shut everything off. It's a little annoying, especially given all the crappy weather we've been having around here lately.

Anyway, I was going to tell you why I haven't been blogging much lately...

Because the first step to getting anything done in this life is to make a list, this spring, Mr. IQ and I sat down and outlined all the things we would like to see completed by the end of the summer. Actually (and this should really come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about male/female dynamics) I outlined them while Mr. IQ looked on, assuming the expression of a sick old man. Lounging around on the deck with an assortment of international beers was not on my list of "must dos" for the summer. This seemed to distress him a bit.

"Summer is going to suck," he said as he stared at my list.

"When the Mama Bear is happy, everyone is happy," I told him.

I received a baleful look. No, it said, when Mama Bear finally keels over and dies everyone will be happy.

Harsh, I vibed back. But I knew he meant it. Had I upped and snuffed it the next day in a car accident, behind all the feigned tears his thoughts would have been, Phew! That was lucky! Building that greenhouse-slash- winery she wanted in the backyard would have really sucked...

But none of this matters now anyway. The Great Sewer Explosions of 2007 have cut short all my plans for an organized office, nicely painted walls and a decently tiled kitchen. Now any free time Mr. IQ has he spends down there in our Hellzone, ripping up boards, sorting through crap and swearing. And bringing up stuff. Sloooooooowly. And here's the frustrating and annoying thing:

All the stuff he has brought up so far belongs to... me.

Now listen: 99.999999999% of the crap down there is his. Really. Okay, maybe 95%. It's a basement for crying out loud, where else do you store seasonal items? OF COURSE I keep some of my stuff down there, and I do so at the risk of never, ever seeing it again, by the way. Last winter, for example, he was unable to locate my super warm winter boots, essential for walks in -40 C weather. To say this was a source of conflict and stress between us would be tantamount to calling Pol Pot A Very Naughty Boy. We never found them. My feet froze. We fought a lot about it. It wasn't pretty.

Then spring came along and he couldn't find my roller blades. I'm sorry, there aren't too many pleasures in this miserable world but roller blading is definitely one of them: Knowing I was going to be spending the spring and summer without my beloved, precious blades sent me swirling into about as black and miserable a rage as any person has known. Each time he went down there I would snarl, "And find my @#$&!! roller blades!" But he never did. Tensions were mounting. I made inquiries about a nice rooming house on Main Street he could move into. You know the story. Things were looking bad.

Then one evening, about three days after Great Sewer Explosion #1, he emerged from that hole with a triumphant look on his face, carrying a large, bulky plastic bag.

"I have good news and bad news!" he said happily.

"Give me the bad news first," I said.

"Well, the bad news is, I still haven't found your roller blades," he said. I growled.

"But the good news is, I've found your boots!!" he shouted and dumped my 40 pound, triple layered Kamiks into my lap. This was a June day, mind you. The temperature was about 28 C out with 99% humidity.

"Oh yay," I said, trying hard to quell the sarcasm. He was so proud and happy and all I wanted to do was punch something. (Have I ever mentioned my clever and groundbreaking theory that men and women are not compatible and should never live together? I'll have to outline it for you some time, it's quite original.)

To be fair and true, he did eventually dig out my blades too. But that's not the story here. What I wish to discuss is the fact that while only a modest 5% of the basement contents belong to me, it was those items that were being carted upstairs. Okay, not everything I have down there is a seasonal item. I have a weakness for, um, cheap garage sale furniture with "promise." So, uh, there have been a number of items I've purchased over the years for a song that I really have been meaning to fix up. A chair. A desk. A dresser. A telephone table. Large, bulky items. All pretty ugly. He brought them up one by one and placed them conspicuously in the front hallway. I think this was his silent but damn effective way of making a statement.

A lesser person than me would have balked at the evidence of her own tendency to accumulate things. But not me! No sir! I took a look at that dresser and said to myself: I'll show him! I'll have it redone by the end of this week! And after spending some time on the computer looking for a modest and workable template....

...I spent the rest of the week sanding, priming, purchasing paint, re-consulting my original design, making a few adjustments here and there and DA-DA!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I DID IT!!!!!!!! The finished product!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm kicking myself for not taking a "Before" picture. Keep in mind this was a $15 garage sale find. While staying for the most part true to the original Tibetan design I picked out, yet boldly adding my own personal touches here and there, I must say I really created a masterpiece of a furniture item. It's been cause for some reflection, let me tell you. At the risk of sounding hopelessly immodest and evoking your jealousy, I have to admit that I really am an incredibly accomplished person. I can make a hearty and nutritious lentil and parsnip stew that makes Mr. IQ shed tears of wondrous joy before he's even taken a single bite. I mastered most of the important swear words at an incredibly young and tender age, bringing praise and recognition to my understandably proud parents. I can go for days without bathing and my peers are none the wiser thanks to my well-honed mastery of the perfume bottle. But I have to say, none of these things even compares to my completion of this dresser last week. Really. I'm so damn proud of myself I could cry.

Another Addiction Bites the Dust

2007-06-18T22:53:00.000-05:00

...and that's probably a good thing...

It's a sad thing to admit, but my love affair with the "Next Blog" button on my computer screen has come to a rather abrupt end and there is little hope that it will ever be restored.

I used to... well, not really "love" it per se, but I certainly always found it pretty interesting to peruse total strangers' blogs (from an *ahem* purely sociological perspective, of course!) Even dull blogs could be kind of fascinating by virtue of their very lack of zest if you know what I mean (who and why would anyone write about this??) and I loved them all! Kid pictures: Why not? Details of a church picnic: Fabulous, especially the pie descriptions! Chapter 63 of some guy's novel: I'd read it! Corny poetry? The more maudlin the better! The right-wing, fundamentalist Christian blogs sort of got on my nerves a bit, and I usually skipped over them for the sake of my mental health, but other than those ones it was pretty rare for me to really dislike a blog, or judge a blogger harshly. Except for maybe this one time, when I read a blog set up to coordinate a twenty year high school reunion. Yeah, I confess, I read a big chunk of it, and yeah, I found it interesting in a sort of horrifying, I-think-I'm-going-to-throw-up kind of way. (It has, uh, been twenty years this June since I graduated from high school myself, OK? 'nuff said.) Anyway. This is going to sound harsh, but let me tell you: I've read blogs about dog grooming shows, harebrained get-rich-quick schemes and the quest for the perfect burger. I've ploughed my way through a penis reconstruction surgery blog (complete with pictures!) I've even read blogs ostensibly written by Che Guevara and a long-haired cat named Frisky; but believe me, never, NEVER did I stumble upon a blog more pathetic than that one.

My addiction to the "Next Blog" button was mostly an evening thing, although I always had to shut it down when it got really late. After midnight all I'd get was Very Large Tits blogs. These always horrified me, because, damn it, if I'm going to hunt for porn, I'll do it the old fashioned way, thank you very much: I'll look for it under some teenage boy's mattress.

But all that has now come to an end, thanks to the efforts of one totally sadistic bastard of a blog that sent me here last week. WAIT!! Don't y'all go pressing that button until you're properly aware of what you're getting into! Going to this site is NOT for the faint of heart! Without giving too much away, it involves some pretty scary visual images that I don't want you to see unless you're properly prepared. UNLIKE I WAS.

Picture the scene: A cold, rainy, lonely night, and Mr. IQ is out with the lads having a few ales. I am alone in the house with the kids, fiddling around with the computer, idly pressing my favourite "Next Blog" button. The room is dark except for the glow from the computer screen. I click innocently on a link that says something innocuous like "fun site!" or "groovy game!" It starts. The pictures start flashing and the music slashes into my brain. I scream, and soil my pants. I run from the room and spend the night curled up on the couch with a large carving knife clutched in my hot and sweaty hand. Scared? Oh my friends, you have no idea. I was freaking TERRIFIED.

OK, so now that you know what you're in for, you can go. Make sure the volume of your computer is turned up! Have fun! Are you wearing your Depends?

(Doo dee doo, waiting for your return, it won't be long I know!)

Are you back? How long did you last? I made it about 13 seconds into the thing. Remember, I was alone in the house and it was late at night. Can you just IMAGINE how terrified I was?? It was awful.

And so, just like that, Pavlovian style, thus endeth my love affair with the "Next Blog" button.

I'm a little sad about this, naturally. It was through this button that I found The Constant Whiner and DoctorMama, two of my most favouritest blogs ever. All not in vain, I guess. I told Mr. IQ all about it, and after fiddling around for a bit on the same site he found this for High Intensity. She spent at least twenty fabulous minutes playing with it which meant I got at least twenty fabulous minutes alone... dealing with... the other kid. Oh yay.

***

I haven't been blogging much lately. I'll show you the picture of why tomorrow. (I would post it now but Mr. IQ isn't here and I still don't know how to get pictures up by myself.) (Yes, I suck.)

Sunday Night Office Update Part III

2007-06-12T18:39:00.000-05:00

...screw the office, it's all about the basement now...

So. Perhaps you've been wondering: Did the sewer explosion business last week do a number on Mr. IQ's 40,000 tonnes of crap currently amassed in our basement?

The sad answer to that is no. Damn it all to hell, no. His stuff is doing just peachy, thank-you, and sends you its warmest, non-sewage-covered regards.

How could this be, you ask? Easy. The previous owners of this house, for reasons we don't quite understand, but probably involving the disposal of dead bodies, built a wooden platform floor in the basement. All his stuff is located on the platform. All the sewage has been going under it.

I have not written about the pack-rat situation for a while here because, as per usual, thinking about it makes me want to tear my hair out. Stuff has been moved out of this place, honestly, I think we have removed a minimum of fifty boxes since last February, and here's the thing: It hasn't even made a dent. Not a dent. Not one little motherplucking dent.

What's more: Last week, in an attempt to regain at least SOME order to my life, I decided to clean out the car. Actually, I was inspired to do this after giving my dad a ride. (He'd spent the trip sharing the passenger seat with a large tractor tire inner tube, something I'd found a little mortifying.

"Sorry dad, you know I live with a pack rat," I'd said apologetically.

"Mmphhh," he'd said, uncomfortably suckling on his kneecaps.)

So yeah, I cleaned out the car and discovered to my horror that the trunk was harbouring at least seven boxes of stuff which I thought had been sent to the thrift store in February. Stuff old you-know-who was having trouble letting go of. Stuff like:

1. A moldy picture frame, sans back.

2. An embarrassingly huge pair of bright yellow headphones circa 1981 which plays AM radio stations.

3. A book on Finnish Disco Moves, crumpled

4. A bunny on a stick

5. A coffee mug that says "Still Frisky at 40"

In another time, in another age, I would have found this all hopelessly charming and amusing. But I'll tell you, when I saw that bunny on a stick, I could have... I could have... well, uh, do you know the meaning of the word "gerbilism"? Just for the record, I didn't know the exact word either until I looked it up for the purposes of this post, and my hunt for it is really a story unto itself: sooooooo embarrassing. (There's gonna be a lot of people out there tonight saying, "Guess what sicko came to my site today!!" I really hope no-one confiscates our computer anytime soon.) Anyway. Anyway. The bunny and everything else is gone now. The threat of un petit lapin dans le derriere really got things cracking.

But I've got to go. They've just issued a tornado watch for the city. Oh my God. If I have to spend the evening huddled in that stinking, crap-filled pithole of a basement tonight, someone is going to die.

Probably me.

Brief and Miserable Life Update

2007-06-02T23:30:00.000-05:00

...BLAAAGHCHCH...

...oh, and some background info before we begin: 'stines is the cool slang for "intestines"... (or so I always tell my biology students)....

Oh my God, what a nightmare. The basement pipes, ostensibly fixed by the kind plumber man who came here last week, burst again. Once again, it was MY visit to the can that caused the system to overload, giving me the temporary nickname of "Mama 'stines." I resent that name.

Every half an hour or so, at least two of us are trundling off to the nearest McDonald's to use the facilities. It wouldn't be so frequent, but that damn High Intensity has got a bladder the size of a pea. (Get it?) It's quite a situation. High Intensity is getting more and more resentful of the fact that she is being taken repeatedly into a McDonald's but not being purchased a milkshake, burger and/or large order of fries. As the evening progresses, she's getting more and more vocal about her displeasure. Unfortunately for her, Daddy is quite firm about that one.

"No-one's eating a #$%*&!! THING," I believe his exact words were as he headed downstairs with a mop in his hand and a ventilator over his face, "until the @#&%*@!! plumber gets here." Rather inconveniently, he is not scheduled to arrive until tomorrow morning at ten. McDonald's closes at midnight. I think we're in for quite a night.

At least the weather isn't bad, so we can have the windows open...

(WHERE, WHERE, WHERE ARE MY PARENTS?? WHY WON'T THEY ANSWER THEIR @#$^%&!! PHONE???)

Tonight We're Gonna Gossip Like It's 1899!

2007-06-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

...see, that was an eighties' song reference...

So the old bats at the thrift store are really starting to get on my nerves.

They are volunteers, little old ladies who spend one or two days a week selling old faded crap to us poor inner city folk. I don't know any of them personally, but I pop in there so often I've given them all secret pet names (Old Bat #1, Old Bat #2, etc.,) and have come to fondly regard them as an extension of my family. Well no, that's not even slightly true. If I had a family filled with old hags like them I would have definitely thrown myself off a building a long time ago. And this is ME saying this, ME, a girl who, two years ago for Christmas, received not one, not two, but THREE copies of Douglas Copeland's Every Family is Psychotic because everyone who had to buy me a gift that year, including my parents, knew it was just so appropriate. I did not grow up with the Waltons, that's for sure. I'm not sorry though. If I had been raised a Walton, my name would be Whippersnapper Walton. I would have been teased at school and had my ego stomped into the ground. That would have sucked.

Every time you turn on the news these days there's a story about some violent incident occurring in my part of town. Just last week, the local high school had a big lock-down because of some gun thing, and I sense the old volunteer ladies are getting more and more freaked out about hanging out for a day in the "ghetto" slumming with us "junkies." They don't have to worry about me, though, I'm certainly not packing a gun when I go out. Diapers, yes. And wipes. A receiving blanket or two. Plastic spoons, plastic bags. Extra clothes. Paper. Pens. Tylenol. Gripe water. Giant, moon-sized sedatives for the kids. A mortar and pestle to crush them with. Mushy snacks to slip them into. A book, in case I get "lucky" and the kids pass out somewhere en route. When we leave the house to go for a walk, we're so loaded down with stuff we look like 19th century peddlers, shuffling down the street selling our wares. But there's certainly no gun on us. Never a gun!

Of course, the part of the West End I live in is perfectly respectable, all the violence happens east of here, but for good folks who fled to the suburbs a long time ago, this is the Scary Inner City where crime and immorality reign supreme.Those old blue-haired old ladies think I'm a low-bred, drug-addicted criminal. As I was saying, they're all getting on my nerves a bit.

First, way back in January, Old Bat #6 said I was orange. Frankly, I thought that was a little personal. But this week they took it up a notch which has left me wondering: how much crap am I expected to take from my local purveyors of cheap, second-hand goods?

It seemed so innocent. Old Bat #4 said to me, "Nice ring!" I was immediately pleased, because the ring I wear is my great-grandmother's wedding ring. I have seven girl cousins on that side of the family and I got the ring because I have her middle name.

"Thanks!" I said, "It was my great-grandmother's ring. She was from West Virginia, but they moved to Indiana soon af...." My voice faded off when I realized she wasn't looking at my ring. She was looking pointedly at my ring-less LEFT hand, i.e., my naked wedding ring finger. Then she looked over at my kids. What the hell? Had I climbed into a time machine and found myself unhappily transported back to 1943? I couldn't believe this was happening.

"Uh, anyway," I said, a little flustered. That's when Old Bat #11 decided to enter the conversation.

"Your daughters, they look SO different from each other, SO different!" she said. It's true, they do, and maybe, MAYBE I was being paranoid, but really I don't think so. She said it a little too slyly, her beady eyes grasping for information. So I gave her what she wanted, why not, I thought, I don't know her.

"Well, they have different fathers," I said smoothly lying.

"Oh really?" she asked eagerly, rubbing her nasty little claws together in an excited greedy motion.

"Yes," I said, and then furrowed my brow and pretended to think about it a bit. "At least... I think they do..."

No I didn't say that last part, damn it: Typically, I thought of it after I left. For the next few days I stomped around the house kicking myself, feeling almost physically sick that I hadn't been quick on the mark with that one. No worries though. Next week I'm going to go in with Mr. IQ and while he's perusing the book section I'm going to slink over to the Old Bat Patrol and hiss, "Hey, see that guy over there with the glasses? Don't mention the girls having different fathers, OK? Poor fool, I have him so totally duped..."

Yah, that's what I'm going to do! It's gonna be GREAT!

I'll give 'em something to gossip about.

No, Really, I am NOT in a 70's Musical Time Warp No Matter What My Friend Jeff Says

2007-05-29T21:45:00.000-05:00

......sewage explosion in basement + in-laws in living room = not a lot of time to blog....

Well, I don't know what the weather is like in your part of the world these days, but here in the geographical east/west center of the darkest pits of Canada it has been nothing but rain rain rain for days and days on end. It's so stinking horrible and, I'll be honest here, it has made me crankier than a prettily-frocked bride knee-deep in cow dung. Listen up, Weather Gods, I don't care if we're the stupid breadbasket of the world and the crops shrivel up and dry, as far as I'm concerned everyone can do Atkins next year and carb-starve, just BRING ON THE BLOODY DROUGHT ALREADY!!! NOW!! NOW!! NOW!!!

ha ha.

I would apologize for my foul temper, but most of you who read this are from the same wet and dreary locale as me and will, I know, sympathize. When things are damp and gloomy outside, things become damp and gloomy inside too, and you basically go around wanting to kill everyone. This becomes especially true on buses, especially inner-city buses traveling downtown. Dripping wet, mentally ill men steam up the windows, fart and tell the same stupid jokes that, like mosquitoes, always pop up after a long period of endless rain.

Mentally ill man: (Loudly, after 5 minutes of muttered obscenities): Heh heh. What do Winnipeg and Cher have in common then? Heh? Heh?

All other passengers, including other mentally ill ones: (Unspoken, but because of the collective nature of the plea, pretty audible nonetheless) Oh God, please don't make him look at me, please don't make him look at me.....

Mentally ill man: THEY'RE BOTH NOT FUCKING SUNNY!!!! (Wheezily laughs for the rest of the bus ride.)

All other passengers, perhaps especially the other mentally ill ones: (No words. Wistful looks out of window at independent, single passenger car owners.)

But the worse part about continuous rain is not the damp bus rides spent sitting under moist armpits and cursing your maker for giving you olfactory nerves. No, the worst part is when the radio stations start cranking out those damn miserable rain tunes. Yes, those ones. You know what I mean.

I've done an independent scientific review of this, and I've determined it takes exactly three days of wet weather for those clever DJs to start rolling 'em out onto the airwaves. It's always the same ones. Karen Carpenter curled up in the closet, sawing at her wrist with a sharp- edged, heavily caloric cheese curl, miserably confessing that rainy days and Mondays always get her down; Stevie Nicks warning us to prepare for the worst and stock up on toilet paper because it's raining and that's when all the thunder happens; Annie Lennox and her smooth alto telling us coolly that the rain is coming again and that it's "tearing through her head like a new emotion." I'm wondering if that's kind of like being torn a new asshole: Painful, yet somehow character building. (Annie Lennox seems tough, with a strong and sure personality, so I think the answer to that is "yes.")

The songs that really piss me off the most though are the cheery ones, the Singing in the Rain false optimism tunes that just make me want to go and kick someone in the soggy nuts. The Supertramp Rain Song drives me around the bend, and not just because I've heard it at least 4,876, 756 more times than has been deemed healthy by the World Health Organization. I mean, have you listened to the lyrics? No? I'll give you the two best lines and rest my case:

"Come on you little fighter! No need to get uptighter!"

Uptighter?

One song they never play is BJ Thomas's "Raindrops are Falling on my Head." Even Winnipeg DJs are too cool for that. The song has been running through my mind a lot this week though because, darn it, I just can't help being the cheerful, happy-go-lucky optimist that I am. Despite all the crap that has happened around here lately, I find myself smiling all the time and I JUST CAN'T STOP. It's so weird.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed
Nothin' seems to fit
Those
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head they keep fallin'

Last Thursday, it was the contents of our basement pipes that got too big for their bed. As a result, piles and piles of steaming poo burst forth in a big, melodramatic Shakespearean swoon all over our lower level floor. It was so horrible, I thought I was going to die.

So I just did me some talking to the sun
And I said I didn't like the way he got things done
Sleeping on the job
Those
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head they keep fallin'

The house smelled like a big stinky poo barn, and I was beside myself with unhappiness. The cold crappy weather just intensified the situation. Basically we had two choices:

1. Turn off the heat, open all the windows to air out the smell and freeze to death.

2. Keep the heat on with the windows closed and asphyxiate on the poo fumes.

It's times like these when one must be thankful for the little things in life, like a big strong male who can take control of everything. I stared at Mr. IQ's unsuspecting back fondly, and then, placing my arm firmly on his shoulder, said, "I'm going to leave all this in your competent hands darling." Then I packed up the kids, grabbed our toothbrushes and headed off to my parents for the night. "See you," were my parting words, "call me when everything is under control."

But there's one thing I know
The blues they send to meet me won't defeat me

When I got to my parents, there was already a message from Mr. IQ lying on the counter. "This is so gross, I'm dying," it said. I phoned back immediately.

"Look, you're not dying," I said. Then I hung up and sank down with a comfortable sigh on the couch with my book.

It won't be long 'til happiness steps up to greet me
Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turning red
Cryin's not for me

Mr. IQ spent the night shoveling shit. The next morning as the kids and I were eating bacon, eggs and warm cinnamon buns, he went out and purchased eight bottles of bleach to disinfect the floors. As he told the story later, he had gotten his second wind and was feeling pretty motivated. Bleach in hand, he charged down to the basement, dumped a bunch of it on the floor and immediately found himself overwhelmed by the fumes. Staggering upstairs, he managed to find the phone and gave me another ring.

"I just about died!" he said.

"Nyats oo wad," I said, my mouth full of bacon. (I was trying to say "that's too bad.")

"DIED!"

"Well, calm down, you seem pretty alive now," I said clearly, having swallowed my bacon.

"I HATE THIS!!"

Cryin's not for me 'cause
I'm never going to stop the rain by complaining
Because I'm free
Nothin's worryin' me

It was pretty obvious I was going to have to be a little more encouraging, if for no other reason than because my breakfast was getting cold.

"Uh, come on, you little fighter," I said, "no need to get uptighter!"

[Musical trumpet interlude]

Mr. IQ hung up the phone.

It won't be long 'til happiness steps up to greet me

I finished my book while my lovely parents looked after the kids. It was rainy out, sure, but all in all, it wasn't that bad a day.

Raindrops keep fallin' on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red
Cryin's not for me
'Cause I'm never going to stop the rain by complainin'
Because I'm free
Nothin's worrying me

Ah life! It's not that bad, even with the rain.

Bubble Bubble Bubble

2007-05-24T04:45:00.000-05:00

...oh good, it's three in the bloody morning, everyone is finally asleep, I guess I can freaking blog now...(grrrrrrrr)...

Because we are VERY immature in this household with the collective emotional age of about 19, we own a lot of comic books. One book we have is called The Big Book of Vice, and it deals with all the good things in life, namely, drugs, alcohol and sex. In one comic, the life of Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy, is outlined. One panel shows a drawing of him standing with his first wife and kids in a typical 1950's functional family pose. Because it is a comic, we, the readers, are privy to Hugh's innermost thoughts: As he stands there with his wife and kids, thought bubbles are popping up from his head, leading us to the cloudy-black words that are running through his mind:

"I'm miserable!"

When I first wandered my way through The Big Book of Vice, Hugh's unhappiness with the whole "happy families" charade really struck a chord with me. Now, whenever I happen to stumble upon Mr. IQ unhappily dealing with some aspect of domestic non-bliss, I say perkily, "Bubble bubble bubble!! I'm miserable!" and usually this makes him laugh, (bitterly sometimes, it's true, but bitter laughs are better than no laughs, I always say.)

But when Mama is in a crappy mood, no-one is there to cajole me out of my crankiness. When the egg on the ceiling is getting me down, or the two small demanding children in my life refuse to nap and don't pass out until well after 10 PM on a day when all I want to do is sit on a couch and read, old momburger is left to stew alone in her own sorry little crank juices. Despite many wonderful traits, like the ability to make a really good ham sandwich, Mr. IQ is not particularly gifted at reading the emotions of others. As a result... I am ashamed to admit this, but sometimes I am more than just a little sympathetic with Hugh and his need to flee the domestic scene. Some days, I too, while scraping egg yolks off the ceiling and dealing with two kids screaming in my ear, have to resist the urge to run away from it all. Taking off to establish a magazine empire, live in a large mansion and make lots and lots of money certainly sounds tempting, I must say. Unfortunately, the idea of surrounding myself with a bunch of studs dressed up as bunnies is where my interest sort of peters out. (If, God forbid, in the throes of passion I were ever to reach out to stroke a set of tawny, muscular buttocks and found myself grappling instead with a large fluffy bunny tail, frankly, I don't know what I'd do: scream and sign up for years of therapy seems one likely possibility.)

So running away Hugh Hefner style is not, sadly, an option. Luckily, there are other things one can do to deal with the occasional bout of domestic misery. When, for example, an off-the-handle High Intensity is raging once again through one of her irrational four-year-old rants, I've found that flashing a surreptitious yet soul-satisfying finger her way does wonders to lighten the tension and improve the mood. I've done it so many times now, though, that the effect is sadly no longer soothing. It's an almost involuntary response at this point, and watching my extended digit slowly rise in her direction now does nothing but make me feel vaguely like a priapic teenage boy ( a discomforting feeling I can assure you.)

I'm not the only one around here for whom old tricks are wearing thin. Yesterday I came home to find High Intensity and Mr. IQ heavily engrossed in the Pretty Fingernail Game. Object: Collect pretty fingernails on your hand. Once you have them all, you win! As I watched Mr. IQ unhappily try to move the spinner, his hand crippled with the garish, purple coloured plastic fingernails he had already collected, his unread book lying beside him, I realized it was time for me to step in.

"Bubble bubble bubble!" I said dutifully, "I'm miserable!"

Mr. IQ slowly lifted his unhappy head and stared morosely at my large, moon-like, fluffy tail-less ass. He then flashed me a not-so-surreptitious finger. Then he lowered his eyes and continued to play the game, silently, without looking at me.

I don't believe in the happy family thing. I really don't, I think even functional families can be pretty miserable sometimes.

But I have to say, all this made me giggle. And later... much later... he laughed too.

I've Been Tagged!

2007-05-21T23:15:00.000-05:00

...wow, now I know what the Constant Whiner meant when she was tagged...I feel... I feel so... popular!!...

Jessica at Jessi's Crochet Cafe has tagged me! This means I have to write seven random things about myself. I think I'll write seven random things about my blog.

1. I angst a lot about the grammar and spelling of this blog. Usually when I read a published post over the next day, my heart sinks a little because something is not right. In my last post, it was my use of the word "span" instead of "spun" that had me freaking out. Hyperventilating while frantically turning the pages of a dictionary is never the easiest of tasks, but I managed, and discovered, much to my relief, that "span" is an archaic past tense of spin, and so technically correct to use. Still...

2. I try not to swear too much in my blog, but sometimes a good F bomb just has to be thrown into a sentence for effect. Having said that, this, too, can sometimes be cause for some serious anguish. Do you say:

a) For fuck's sake?
b) For fuck sakes?
c) For fuck's sakes? OR
d) For fuck sake?

I know only one is proper (probably "a"), but what can I say? I love them all.

3. I occasionally hate my blog. This feeling usually crops up after I've read something by David Sedaris.

4. For all you doubters: My buddy Nitroglycol took up the challenge and mentioned ussell-Ray owe-Craye on his blog too, and guess what: HE GOT A HIT FROM ARIZONA FROM SOMEONE GOOGLING THE BIRDMAN'S NAME TOO!!!! I know it's him. I mean, if you were famous, wouldn't YOU want to know what the blog world was saying about you??

We need a third mention for total confirmation. C'mon you guys, humour me!!

5. That last point wasn't really a random fact, was it? The problem with me is that, despite being a math/science teacher, I'm not really a fact person. I'm a head in the clouds kind of person.
That's why a lot of chemistry experiments have gone awry in my classroom. Grease fires spring up and I'll say, absent-mindedly, "throw some water on that Billy, hey?" It's not a good thing. When my principal told me that working part-time next year might mean teaching classes outside of my area of "expertise", i.e., math and science, I agreed, saying, "I'll teach wood-working if I have to!!!" Then I went home and freaked out a bit: What if they gave me home-ec? But, as Mr. IQ pointed out, a recipe is really no different from a chemistry lab, and I don't know what I'm doing when I'm running one of those either, so it should be OK. If nothing else, teaching cooking will probably make for a good blog post or two...

6. A memory: One day my brother was recording songs from the radio while simultaneously having a massive fight with me. We were about twelve and ten, and the fight, I am sure, was all my fault: Being older and more obnoxious I'm sure I was tormenting him about something, but I've forgotten now what it was all about. While recording Don't Go Changing by Billy Joel, my brother suddenly decided he couldn't take it anymore and totally snapped, smashing a bowl that lay on the counter and screaming hysterically, "I HATE YOU!! I REALLY REALLY HATE YOU!!" This outburst was recorded along with the song and, over the course of the next year or so, played so many times around the house that even today if Don't Go Changing is playing in a mall or something, it sounds all wrong when, at the critical moment, you can't hear my brother freaking out on me in the background.

7. The thing that my brother smashed was a bowl containing friendship cake batter. My friend gave it to me. The idea was to add more ingredients, distribute some of the batter to five more friends and make the friendship cake with what was left. Needless to say, the chain was broken with the smashing of that bowl, and I faced seven years of bad luck, i.e., the fun-filled teenage years.

I'm sharing this story because, um, another chain is about to be broken here. Forgive me Jessica, I totally enjoyed BEING tagged, but I... I just don't feel comfortable tagging others. What if they don't want to be tagged? Then I would feel bad.

Although I DID toy with the idea of tagging Dooce...

Lady Luck

2007-05-17T11:00:00.000-05:00

....Yay! Yay! Yay!....

Several weeks ago, we went out for Chinese food, and at the end of the meal, they gave us more fortune cookies than there were people at the table. Mr. IQ opened one and immediately looked unhappy.

"Mine's terrible!" he complained, looking genuinely pissed off. Moments like this are always cause for great concern for me. Deep down I suspect that a true Alpha male, confident, rugged and wise, would not go into a big sulk over a crappy fortune cookie. Franklin D. Roosevelt would not have crumbled at the sight of a stupid slip of paper, not even one indicating that a Hawaiian naval base was under Japanese attack! Consequently, at such times I feel despair, followed by unspeakable guilt.

"What does it say?" I asked, burying my true feelings under a mask of curiosity, and he passed it over to me. Your lucky colour this week is purple it read.

"Well, we'll just have to dress you up like an Easter egg," I said pleasantly, "and purchase some lottery tickets."

Sometimes Mr. IQ has absolutely no sense of humour, and this was one of those times. Growling, he lunged for another cookie. "Ah, that's much better," he said beaming, and tossed it to me. It said: You will never have to worry about money.

"Yeah, swell, that's a great one all right," I said, glancing at the bill. Swearing, I spent the next ten minutes hunting for my bank card. That damn fortune was right -- during my frantic search, he didn't look worried at all, only a little superior.

"I told you to bring the card," he kept saying, smugly.

I can mock, but the reality is that we are total suckers around here for fortune telling. So yesterday at the thrift store when I found the Where My Heart Will Wander Fortune Box, I snapped it up without hesitation. It had three balls, red, green and black, which would roll into slots indicating, well, where your heart would supposedly wander. Green would happen first, red next and finally black. All three of us were itching to try it, although Mr. IQ, bless him, feigned a certain amount of indifference. I think he knew what I'd been thinking at the Chinese restaurant and was trying to ease my mind, re: the whole Rugged He-Man of the Canadian Prairies thing. Honestly, the way he can read my mind sometimes, you'd think I go around wearing a thong on my head.

We let High Intensity go first. She span the balls around with endearing concentration and ended up with her heart wandering

First: To exotic lands
Then: To something unexpected
And finally: To a cocktail lounge

The last part, naturally, made me giggle.

"What's a cocktail lounge, mom?" she asked and I said, "Where you go for a boozy beverage," because we're not really the types to sugarcoat the truth around here for the young 'uns.

"Oh, like a beer," she said, very pleased with her fortune, and handed the box over to her dad. He got his heart wandering:

First: to beautiful shoes
Then: to solitude
And finally: to cloud nine

Mr. IQ looked vaguely embarrassed. "I DO NOT have a shoe fetish!" he said defensively. Because I have a very pure mind, it took me a minute to understand what he was talking about, and when I did I felt vaguely revolted.

"Ugh," I said, wiggling my toes around uneasily in my (suddenly) damp-feeling sandals. "That's so gross..."

"Let me go again then," he said, and gave the balls a second twirl. This time he got:

First: To a cocktail lounge
Then: To beautiful shoes
And finally: To a deepening friendship

"Someone in the bar is gonna really like your shoes, obviously," I said, and grabbed the box before he could think about that too much. I then spent the next ten minutes trying to manipulate the balls into the places I wanted them to go.

"Where are you trying to land it?" Mr. IQ finally asked, watching my desperate moves with the last remaining ball.

"To chocolate cakes," I choked out impatiently. "Why can't I get it to go to chocolate cakes?"

He watched me curiously until he couldn't stand it anymore. "You know," he said carefully, and only a little bit patronizingly, "the best way to a chocolate cake is perhaps via a car ride to the nearest bakery."

I ignored him. He knew why I wanted things to work out for me in the fortune ball department, just as I knew, deep down, why at the restaurant he had wanted a good cookie fortune. For us, our lives are all about luck luck luck, and fate fate fate. It's how we get through our days, it's our modus operandi: Frankly, it's the only way we know how to live. We are not the types of people who go out and conquer the world, we're the types who sit back and just let things happen. Consequently, good fortunes are excellent and very necessary morale boosters as we weave our unplotted and unplanned journey through life. I blame this pathetic lifestyle choice, incidentally, on the fact that both of us were accidents, people who made it into this world despite no planning on the part of our parents. Consciously or not, we believe that since we both managed, despite some pretty overwhelming odds, to get ourselves conceived, everything else will probably fall into place for us too.

Surprisingly, it usually does.

Honestly, it's sometimes kind of scary how things work out. When we're totally broke and I'm soberly whipping up flour balls for supper because there is no money for groceries, a cheque will suddenly arrive unexpectedly in the mail. If we need a daycare worker because I happen to be returning to work in seventeen hours, an ad will miraculously appear on a telephone pole in front of our house. If I'm craving ketchup potato chips and it's midnight and I really don't feel like jumping in the car because it's -45 C outside, well --- well-- well then I'll probably have to forgo the chips, actually. Most unfortunately, it only works for the really big things in life.

Big things like my job: Back when I was an unemployed bum, living with my parents and fast approaching 30, my friend put my name on the substitute teacher list at the school he taught at. My parents forced me to pick up the phone when they knew the school was calling me to work. (Not rocket science: who else calls at six in the morning?) And then their math/science teacher went and thoughtfully had a nervous breakdown. As a result, I came in to sub for him and just never left. Very tidy. No application letters, no resume, no cruddy interview. Which is very good, because if I am certain of one thing in this world, it is that I would give a pretty lousy interview.

("What's your discipline style, Ms Whippersnapper?" they would ask, and I would bleat out, "Beat them 'til they bleed, ahaahahahaha," and they'd say, "Hey! Thanks for coming in!" and that would be that.)

So back in March when my principal told me he would not consider giving me part time next year, I really couldn't face the thought of sending out my resume to different school divisions. No, I resigned myself to staying where I was and miserably slogging my way through a full time assignment, dealing with not one but TWO daycare workers and living a life of chaos with underwear in the crisper, etc., etc., ugh ugh ugh. Silly me for worrying: given my track record, I should have known something would happen. And it did. My principal called two days ago and, what do you know:

I GET TO GO BACK PART TIME NEXT YEAR AFTER ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HUZZZAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I am so grateful, I rushed out at once and got the BIGGEST box of wine I could find (Northwest Territory Estates, 2008) which I plan to give my wonderful principal later this week as a token of my thanks.

Oh, you have no idea what a relief this is.

Wow, am I happy!

Letter to Fangs

2007-05-13T00:50:00.000-05:00

...~~how dare your birthday be on Mother's Day??? It's MY day, MY DAY, damn it all~~...

Happy Birthday Sweetie!!

Just think. One year ago today I was in the hospital screaming my guts out because you had the audacity to start heading out into this world during the nurses' paperwork/shift change hour when no drugs are administered. I shrieked blue bloody murder through the whole miserable ordeal and even, at one point, shouted, "I'm DYIIIIING!!" but not even a measly Tylenol was thrown my way. In response to my anguished cries, your father, always the voice of reason and heavily engrossed in some weighty news article, looked up from his reading and said, very matter-of-factly, "You're not dying, you know," before going back to his paper. Funnily enough, I found this incredibly not comforting at all! So I continued to scream and the Powers That Were continued to not give me any drugs or pain relief until finally you popped out. Well, I'll use the common phrasing there, but really, getting you out was not in any way similar to the opening of a champagne bottle, believe me: It was a lot less fun.

No offense.

When we left the hospital, I was given a questionnaire to fill out. One of the questions was:

How well did we manage your pain? Please indicate all that applied to you.

Epidural _____

Gas ________

Morphine ____

Quick puff on crack pipe (which I MOST CERTAINLY would have brought in with me had I known what lay ahead)______

Cool cloth on forehead ______

My X on the "cool cloth on forehead" option was so filled with bitterness and resentment it ripped through the page. Now, of course, I'm sort of masochistically proud that I did it all sans drugs, but it took a while to get me to that point, let me tell you. I was screaming SO LOUD and all that damn nurse did was continuously shove that wet rag into my face. I could have killed her, and her little wet rag too. But time, as they say, heals all deeply traumatic and mind altering psychological wounds. I'm all over it now. Really.

They say it takes weeks, sometimes even months before a mother truly bonds with her child and falls in love with her, but for me it didn't take that long. On our first night home from the hospital, you were lying on my lap, and yer Pa was off picking up a pizza and suddenly you puked up what seemed like a whole liter of the reddest blood I've ever seen. I panicked, screamed, and started to bawl. Your grandma was there and she shoved me out the door when your dad returned, and we belted it for the Children's Hospital. We didn't bother with the baby seat: I clutched you in my arms all the way there, and, thinking you were dying, stared into your face trying to memorize your features. You were awake and stared back at me in that wise way babies sometimes have. I thought you were dying. I thought you were dying.

When we got to the hospital there was a line-up, but I ignored it and went rushing up to the nurses' station, shrieking, "My baby's vomiting blood!" And the nurses -- well, they didn't even glance up from what they were doing. One actually turned her back on me. The other one just looked very bored.

"So," she asked in a really weary voice, "Are your nipples cracked honey?"

...And... so... they... were...

Ugh! You had been drinking my nipple blood!

When you're old enough to read this, no doubt you'll be even more grossed out by that than I was, but remember this: The whole event was the turning point. It was when you transformed from The Baby to My Baby. That horrific and terrifying trip to the hospital was the moment when I first realized how jagged-rich and cutting-deep my love for you was.

Fangs at three months: "Before the teeth came in"

Happy birthday, Baby.

Oooh! Oooh! Ooooh!!!

2007-05-09T21:50:00.000-05:00

...don't try to discourage me in my delusions here, OK? And do me a favour: Mention him on YOUR blog too and tell me if you get a hit from Arizona...

Oh my GOD you guys, guess, just guess who came to my blog last night!!

USSELL-RAY OWE-CRAY!!!!

How do I know this, you ask? Because someone from Arizona googled the name into Blog Search yesterday and this showed up on my sitemeter. "Who on earth," I asked myself when I saw the referral, "would be checking blogs for HIM??" Then I thought.... and did some checking... and found that the owe-Cray man LIVES IN ARIZONA!! Well, I'm no dummy, I can put two and two together. It MUST have been him!

(Loud girly scream.)

I should point out that I'm not the kind of person who really hero-worships movie stars. But I've seen Master and Commander: Far Side of the World so many times I probably should be named an honorary third lieutenant and, uh, well, he plays the Captain in that movie, and, uh, men in uniform and all that, and... oh jeez, listen, just go and rent the movie. You'll see what I mean.

Once I realized he'd been reading my blog, naturally I went over the post with a fine-toothed comb and to my horror discovered SEVERAL awkwardly phrased sentences that, for the life of me, I just COULDN'T figure out how to correct. (Does this happen to you too?) In fact, I had to go to bed and sleep on it before I knew what to change. Of course, my corrections are too late for Russell to see. Now he thinks I'm just a big lame blackhead squeezer who doesn't see anything through to completion, including a properly constructed sentence! Oh, this is so terrible! Blogging sucks!

(gloomy black cloud of unhappiness)

Off to sulk now.

Finishing Wood, and Other Things

2007-05-08T09:31:00.000-05:00

...gotta stop watching those damn home improvement shows...

Yay! Exciting times here at the House of Whippersnapper. Last night, I started yet ANOTHER project that I will NEVER, EVER, EVER finish!! Stripping, sanding and varnishing all the wood trim in our house is a task that I, blessed with the attention span of a two year old child and the innate, stick-to-it abilities of kumquat, have about as much of a chance of finishing as I do completing a doctorate on solitaire chess moves and yet I MUST start this. The inner masochist in me absolutely COMPELS ME to set myself up for failure. It's a compulsion bordering on mental illness: If Mr. IQ collects books and "neat things," well, I accumulate abandoned projects. Quilts, diaries, baby books, old furniture that needs to be refinished, they're all scattered around this house, serving only one purpose, that being to MAKE ME FEEL GUILTY. Oh, and to make you-know-who feel smug and superior.

Everyone I know likes to rub my inability to finish things in my face. Even my brother. Several years ago, when courting his now wife, he wrote a little love poem to her which I just happened to accidentally stumble upon one day while hunting through the far dark corners of his locked desk drawer. It contained the following lines:

My sister stops doing
Everything she starts
But I'll never stop
Loving you

As you may have guessed, he went on to become an ath-may ofessor-pray, not a world famous poet. Hmmm, it has just occurred to me that people tend to like writing poems which highlight all my personal failings. Suddenly feeling quite resentful.

The difficulty I have completing things hit a new low two years ago during spring break, when the only goal I set for myself was to try out this coconut cream cake recipe I read about in a gourmet magazine. I'm not much of a baker, but for some reason, the picture of this cake just triggered something in the coconut cream pleasure center of my brain, and I HAD to make it. But try as I would, I just couldn't get past the creamy filling stage. I made it at least four times, and each time succumbed to the temptation and gobbled it up before managing to wedge said filling between two light fluffy cake halves and covering it with delicious icing.

So pathetic.

I have to say, though, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about this latest project. I bought this great product called Peel Away, which is ridiculously expensive, but pretty fun to work with. You slap it on the wood, cover it with plastic and 24 hours later just peel everything off. I'm feeling optimistic, because the peeling part of the process really appeals to the grosser side of my personality, i.e., the side of me that likes to squeeze blackheads and pick at the cradle cap on Baby Fangs' scalp. Oh my heavens, did I really just admit to enjoying these things? How absolutely embarrassing. If my grade six teacher or my brother read this, no doubt they'd write a poem about it.

I feel quite ill
Watching my sister squeeze her blackheads
But I'll never feel ill
Squeezing you

Damn smug PhD types!! I'll show him! I WILL finish this project! I WILL get it done! It's like the time Russell Crowe and I were walking on the beach together back in 2001. We were holding hands, and he looked at me and said, "Look Whippersnapper, it's

Fever 'n' Ague

2007-05-06T23:05:00.000-05:00

...ugh...

Totally ill, and Baby Fangs keeps trying to suckle from my runny, snot-filled nose.

Yeah, exactly.

Sunday Night Office Update (Part II)

2007-05-04T11:55:00.000-05:00

...posted on a Friday! I love this! Boy, this will be a fun thing to look forward to next week, huh, guessing which day I'll publish my Sunday office update again!...

Well, here's the situation. He SAYS work has been done. I SAY he's full of shit. He SAYS many, many boxes have been removed. I SAY the room looks worse than it did a week and a half ago. He says "Faaaaaaaaaawwwwk," as another pile of books collapses on him. I say, "heh heh heh." He says, "Time to take a break," and doesn't do anything for many days. I say, "Garrrrrrrr," and, snapping, throw everything that is left in the room ( a considerable pile of crap) outside on the front lawn. He says good naturedly, "Gee, why did you do that?" and hauls everything back into the front hallway. I say, "Yay, we can see the office floor for the first time since we moved in here!" He says, "@#&*%*!!, now everything is disorganized." I say, "Are you KIDDING ME??" and search for a hint of irony in his eyes. He says, "Grumble grumble grumble," and pretends to sort papers. I say, "My blog buddies all told me to drink lots of red wine, and I think I'm going to go do that now." He says, "Not only is everything all messy, but I think several very important papers blew away in the wind." I say, "Yay, more stuff gone!" and take a deep slug from the cheap colostomy bag of Cabernet we keep in our fridge at all times.

("Help get me through all this," I whisper, and stroke the gross, bloody-looking bag fondly.)

In other words, things have gotten a little ugly.

Part of the problem, of course, is this blog. I never used the computer before, so I was never in this room. The door was always shut, and what the eyes don't see, the heart don't bleed. But now that I'm in here all the time, well, things have to change. I want flowers. I want warmth. I want a book-lined study that gives the (incredibly) misleading impression that we are very, very clever, academic types. I want pictures on the wall. I want light music playing and a well-worn but comfortably organized atmosphere. I want to hide all the Mauve Binchy novels and have copies of scholarly tomes strewn casually about. Damn it, I want to stare out of my window as I write my wise, poetic, thought-provoking, Earth-changing, face-of-new-literature posts and see nature, a little forest perhaps, with a stream running through it and an occasional deer or two running by. I want. I want. I want to change my appearance so I look a little less like a crazy, moustached, bigger version of Cindy from Three's Company and a bit more like Noam Chomsky. I want an extra 30 IQ points. I want a WHOLE DIFFERENT LIFE COMPLETELY, AND IT ALL STARTS WITH THE OFFICE, BABY!!!! YOU HEAR ME??? ONCE THE OFFICE CHANGES, LIFE AS I'VE KNOWN IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!!!!!

Whoa! Ha ha ha! Well, I guess I let my imagination run a little wild there! Um, anyway.

(so embarrassed)

'Oooooh look, you can see the floor.'

The highlight of the (alleged) organizing process so far occurred on Tuesday, when Mr. IQ came rushing out of the room with something waving from his hand. He looked like the archangel Gabriel himself had descended from the heavens and singled him out for special treatment.

"Look, something stained this paper and made a picture!!!" he said excitedly, shoving it into my face.

I looked at it and refused to be impressed. "If it had looked like Jesus or Richard Nixon," I grumbled bad-naturedly, "we could have sold it for thousands of dollars on eBay and hired someone else to clean out this shithole."

My wise words hit him soundly in the cerebrum. "You're right," he said sadly, and crumpled up the picture and threw it into the recycling bin.

Huzzah! One item down, 7,469,987 to go!!

***

For whatever reason, whenever things get ugly in the office organization department, things brighten up for me in the form of a Perfect Post award. Thanks, CCE! Really, it made my week.

How to be Good

2007-04-30T23:55:00.000-05:00

...in which a confusing and exasperating trip to the grocery store is described in great and only slightly fictionalized detail... yes, I know this has been done before, and by much better writers than me, but it's MY blog so I get to do it too....

Purchasing groceries has become so complicated lately, and not just because I'm ~~too embarrassed to return~~ standing firm in my decision to boycott Stupidstore. Our food shopping trip last Saturday was a true exercise in 21st century guilt and uncertainty. Who would have thought that good old Harry's Foods could bring out such an stimulating range of neurotic emotion?

As I remember, we wheeled into the fruit and veggie section first.

"Well, I really think we have to start going 100% organic, for the kids' sakes," I said firmly. "All those pesticides, they're just not good for them."

"I don't know," said Mr. IQ, looking worried, "the organic stuff is pretty expensive."

"Are you saying we should save some pennies and risk giving our babies cancer?" I demanded.

"Well, no, but... "

"There you are then!" I said, bustling over to the organic section.

"I want grapes!" said High Intensity.

"Sure!" I said cheerily, and then stopped dead in my tracks. A small tray containing maybe 20 grapes was $7.99. "Ughhfkkgahh" I choked out, unable to speak properly. Luckily Mr. IQ jumped in to save me.

"We can't buy organic food," he said, "it's all flown in from thousands of miles away. It's not produced locally."

I looked at him gratefully. "Yah, think of the fossil fuels being used!"

"That's definitely not something we should be supporting."

"So true," I said. Slowly I scanned the aisles. "But then what...."

"No produce!" declared Mr. IQ decisively. Quickly he moved the cart towards the bakery section. "How's about we buys a pie?"

I snorted. We are not pie-buying people, not even at Thanksgiving. "I don't think so," I said. "Get some bread."

"But wheat is grown with pesticides too..."

"I know but... you know.... sandwiches..." I said helplessly. Mr. IQ grabbed a loaf off the shelf.

"Not that one!" I said, "It has to be whole wheat!"

"This is whole wheat!" said Mr. IQ, confused. "100% whole wheat, look, it says on the label."

"I know, but according to the CBC, that kind of whole wheat is just like white bread. The labels are very misleading. You have to get... WHOLE whole wheat."

"Huh?"

"Um, I don't remember exactly," I said, not wanting to admit that I had turned off the radio discussion to play my Dr. Hook CD. "But just because it says whole wheat doesn't mean it actually is. You have to... look for grains or something."

"Oh for fuck's sake..." Silently, we scoured the bread aisles for WHOLE whole wheat.

"How about this one," asked Mr. IQ, holding up a loaf. Carefully, we inspected it. "Look, there's a grain," he said pointing. On the crust there was a lump of some kind.

"Is that a fiber-filled, colon cancer-fighting lump? Or a white bread lump?" I asked suspiciously.

"I don't know!" said Mr. IQ, poking it tentatively with his finger. That got High Intensity's attention.

"You touched it, now you have to take it!" she said sternly.

"Why?" asked Mr. IQ.

"Germs, dad," she said. She didn't add "Duh" but she might as well have, it was pretty obvious she was thinking it.

"Fine, we'll take it," I said, grabbing it and throwing it into the cart, despite my conflicted emotions. "Where to next?"

"Let's stay here," said High Intensity. "Can we get a cake?"

In the meat section, Mr. IQ's eyes glazed over a bit as he stared at the steaks.

"We should have a BBQ now that spring is finally here," he said.

"Red meat!!" I said, "are you crazy?"

"But you turn into a limp, lifeless worm if you don't eat red meat occasionally," he said, holding the steaks close to his chest defiantly. He didn't add, "And as cranky as a three-balled rhinoceros," but he sure as hell wanted to.

"Yes, but the steroids will give us breast and prostate cancer," I said primly.

"And I'll start menstruating when I'm seven," piped in High Intensity helpfully. No, of course she didn't say this. I whispered it in his ear.

"Fine," said Mr. IQ, hastily putting the meat back, "we'll get chicken instead."

"We certainly will not!!" I said, "I read somewhere that there's arsenic in chicken feed, we can't risk feeding that to the kids!"

"Okay, fish then. How about salmon? Salmon is a super-food: It has Omega-3 fatty acids!"

"But farmed salmon has parasitic lice-y type things growing on them."

"Wild salmon then. "

"Wild salmon is endangered."

"Tuna?"

"Hello mercury poisoning!"

"Luncheon meats?"

"Killer nitrites."

"Cheese, and we can make pasta."

"Saturated fat city, dude. You'd have a heart attack before the meal was over. Besides, milk products cause osteoporosis."

A little tic was starting to become noticeable around Mr. IQ's left eye.

"Get out of here!" he said, "They're full of calcium!"

"I know, but it doesn't matter. That "good for bones" thing is just a big lie being promoted by the dairy farmers. It's actually the vegans who end up with the strongest bones in old age."

"Look, we managed to get bread, can we just find something to put on it?" he asked piteously, "I mean, I'm totally starving."

"Well, uh, I was thinking of some nice tofu."

"TOFU?"

"Yah, I saw a recipe, you just mush it up, and, uh, add some spices and it's supposed to be really... delicious."

"But tofu has estrogen in it."

"So?"

Mr. IQ's voice lowered to a whisper. "Man boobs," he hissed worriedly, "Could... could eating it give me man boobs?"

Half an hour later, our one loaf of bread was starting to look pretty lonely in the cart.

"Let's just circle around one more time," I said, ever the optimist, "there must be SOMETHING we can buy."

"Like maybe something like potato chips," grumbled High Intensity

"Oh GOD," said Mr. IQ, snapping, "GET ME OUT OF HERE, just GET ME OUT OF HERE, I CAN'T STAND THIS ANY LONGER."

"Good idea," I said, "but, uh, can we go by the baby section first?"

"And the candy aisle?" asked High Intensity.

In the baby aisle we didn't make eye contact as I grabbed a box of environmentally destructive disposable diapers.

"Those stay in the ground forever you know," said High Intensity, having been fed all the propaganda by her school last week during Earth day celebrations.

"Hey! That's pretty smart!" said Mr. IQ.

I made a panicked noise. "DON'T CALL HER SMART!!" I whispered.

"Why not?" he asked.

"According to this article I read, telling kids they're smart just kills their work ethic and sets them up for failure!!"

Mr. IQ looked slightly ill.

We paid for the diapers and headed out into the wrinkle-creating, skin cancer-causing/vitamin D forming, cancer PREVENTING sunshine. Then we got into our fossil fuel-consuming, greenhouse gas producing/absolutely fucking necessary vehicle and headed for home. Unhappily, we split the loaf of bread for dinner. Then Mr. IQ broke down at midnight and ordered pizza. It was totally delicious.

As that old wicked witch would say: "Oh, what a world, what a world."

Oh So Tired

2007-04-26T11:50:00.000-05:00

...hey, I kind of like it when the font is screaming at you, it makes it look like I've gone insane!!!!...

We had a playdate here yesterday. "Playdate." The first hundred times I used that word I said it smirking, my fingers making little quotation marks in the air to show how dumb and corny I thought it was. Now it's part of my vocabulary, said more with a shudder of horror than with amusement. The mother was very nice, and thoughtfully injected her daughter with a triple dose of speed and amphetamines before she dropped the kid off, just to ensure we'd all have a really good visit. I shall be sure to return the favour the next time I dump High Intensity off at her place. It's really great the way mothers look out for each other these days.

Actually, it was a relatively short playdate, lasting only about an hour. They spent the majority of the time eating a box of these weird sausage casing-enclosed popsicles I picked up in Chinatown, which I threw at them about 15 minutes into the date because they were already screaming at each other and I just WASN'T IN THE MOOD. And don't you all be thinking to yourself, "And she calls herself a TEACHER????" I teach civilized TEENAGERS not wild pre-school animals, OK? Anyway, they split the box, and when the mother came to pick up her kid I was lying limply on the front steps and the two of them were chasing each other around the pine tree in hyper-crazy circles. The lawn was strewn with what looked like hundreds of used condoms, foreshadowing, perhaps, the parties they'll be having ten years from now. "They're Chinese popsicle wrappers," I explained, but I think the mother thought I was speaking euphemistically because she gave me a funny look. Hopefully she now thinks I'm crazy and incompetent and won't entrust the care of her daughter to me again. Ha, who am I kidding? She'd do anything for an hour's free time, she doesn't care what psycho is taking care of her kid. I know this to be true, because I feel the same way.

Mental fatigue is wearing me down. As she grows older, Baby Fangs is getting more and more pissy about being left alone on the floor with a bottle of Windex for company. High Intensity is always demanding, and while part of me, I can assure you, treasures this time I have with her, part of me is always screaming inwardly, "GIVE ME A BREAK ALREADY!! I JUST WANT HALF AN HOUR TO MYSELF!! IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?" And everything, everything that I do occurs in these horrible, monotonous, frustrating cycles that I can't seem to break free of. Cycles like:

-The Cleaning Cycle-

1. Tidy room
2. Tidy another room
3. Return to first room and tidy again
4. Bang head against door
5. Repeat

-The Personal Hygiene Cycle-

1. Wash and put on clean(ish) clothes
2. Bravely endure puking and/or diaper malfunctioning and/or crazy crafting-experiment- gone-awry scenario
3. Moan a bit
4. Repeat

-The High Intensity Cycle-

1. Hear screams
2. Calmly deal with it
3. Hear more screams
4. Less calmly deal with it
5. Hear hysterical "Old Porky is off to the Vienna Sausage Factory" type screams
6. Snap
7. Room banishment/sobbing
8. Repeat

-The Brain-Numbing, Don't-Have-to-Think, Cheezy 70's Music Cycle-

1. Play Doctor Hook's Greatest Hits CD
2. Feel pathetic
3. Reminisce about good-bye party in S. Korea when forced by lovely post office students to get on stage and perform karaoke version of Sharing the Night Together (oooh-yah, all right) without being allowed to get mercifully drunk first
4. Quiver with embarrassment
5. Watch with fondness as High Intensity gets down to Sexy Eyes
6. Realize she's going to be like those losers in junior high who were into Elvis because that's all their parents listened to
7. Feel guilt
8. Repeat

Actually, it's this last cycle that really gets me down. Listening to crap because it's all my poor overloaded brain can deal with means that I'm really in a bad place. But lucky for me, I have a daughter who is not completely unsympathetic to my situation. The other day I was in her room and we were drawing together, and suddenly I closed my eyes and rested my head on her bed. She looked up from what she was doing and stared at me with a concerned expression. "Do you feel," she asked curiously, "like a dog? A dog on a scale that's about to die?"

"Yes, exactly like that."

"I thought so," she said, and let me rest quietly for at least two minutes.

It was a nice break.

Sunday Night Office Update

2007-04-24T10:08:00.000-05:00

...well, except that I'm posting this on Tuesday morning: I really need to learn how to post pictures by myself...also, I can't seem to get the font size to calm down here...damn it, I really need to take a computer course...

When I was in grade six, my teacher, Ms Y, got the brilliant idea to have me and Chris Badboy, the two class slobs, share a desk together. The idea was for us to wallow together for a while in our collective sordid mess until one, or both of us, cracked. She figured when we hit the inevitable rock bottom we'd come to our senses, realize this was no way to live, and together figure out a way to spend the rest of the school year in organized harmony. It did not work out. We hit rock bottom on the second day, and stayed there, week after week, month after nightmarish month. It would have been bad enough with only one person's crap crammed into that space, but with both of our stuff all mixed together, there was no hope. Just the words, "OK class, everybody find a pen," would send both of us into a whimpering panic. At least 137 times a day we'd frantically empty out the desk in an attempt to find our math notebooks, coloured pencils, whatever was needed. Then we'd cram everything back in. It wasn't much fun. In retrospect, we must have made for some funny stories in the staff room.

The desk we shared was actually a long rectangular table with a big open mouth-like space below for storing stuff. My parents have a picture of us sitting beside it on science fair day; I'm proudly holding the frog I dissected and Chris Badboy is sort of smiling sheepishly beside me. The storage area of our table is clearly visible and you can see all the stuff we've jammed into it spilling out in all directions. Hilroy notebooks are folded into two. A small half-eaten sandwich is gasping for air somewhere in the center. Papers limply droop out in odd places, looking like toilet paper tails hanging unnoticed from people's pants. Sometimes out of curiosity, we would give these papers little tugs to see where it would take us. Occasionally it would unearth something good, like a missing assignment, or a tasty lost chunk of lunch, but mostly, it would only cause a startlingly loud avalanche. Then we'd be in trouble.

At Christmas, Ms Y wrote a poem about our class based on A Visit from St. Nicholas. Her line for us was:

With Ms Y at the front, leading the rest
There was Whippersnapper and Chris in
One h*** of a mess

Ms Y was a stubborn thing, and even though her plan backfired and we learned absolutely nothing about the art of tidiness from each other, she sadistically kept us stewing together in our collective slob juices until the end of the school year. When we cleaned out our space in June, Chris Badboy had the misfortune to stumble upon a plastic bag wedged near the back of all our compressed crap, and made the mistake of opening it and taking a peek inside. There lay the frog I had dissected for the science fair back in February. My memory is a little foggy, but I do vaguely remember a shrill girlish scream, followed by a slimy plastic bag being thrust into my hands and a scampering sound of footprints running far, far away. It's sad, really. Chris Badboy and I never really spoke much again to each other after that year, and in grade nine he was sent away to some special farm for kids with drug problems. I really hope sniffing that rotting frog wasn't what originally sent him fleeing into the comforting arms of memory-fogging substance abuse. That would make me feel bad.

I'm reminiscing about all of this tonight because if I thought sharing a DESK with a fellow slob was bad, well, sharing a HOUSE with one has been, well, just a little worse. But school is over, and the office transformation is about to begin in earnest and if that isn't reason for bleary-eyed optimism, I just don't know what is! But to ensure that the operation doesn't fizzle out and stall over the course of the next few weeks, as is its wont to do, I've decided to post pictures of the damn room, and every Sunday I will continue to do so until the stupid thing is finished. Ugh, here they are, how embarrassing:

Note the attractive pink walls with girlish trim. Note the stuff spilling out everywhere. Please accept the very real and fervent vow that not a SINGLE THING IN THIS ROOM, (except, I suppose, the computer, partly) BELONGS TO ME!! Yes, it has been like this since we moved into this house four and a half years ago. (Note to people living with pack rats: Never say to the movers, "Oh, just dump everything in there for now, he'll sort through everything and organize it later." Later could mean very later indeed.) I think Ms Y would be pretty amused to know that living with a total uberslob has indeed worked magic on my soul, and I am now obsessed with organization and neatness. You should have had us sharing a house, Ms Y!! That would have worked!!

I realize that any last remnants of pride I may have are being tossed to the wind with the posting of these pictures, but keep in mind, at least 75% of the contents of this room were actually removed in March to either the basement or to thrift stores. That's right, you're looking at a "cleaned up" version of this space. By the way, if you could spare the time, be sure to leave a comment on how incredibly UGLY the desk is. He found it in a back lane and dragged it home to be with us. Now he refuses to part with it. What a nightmare, it's like the Santa Claus Trophy, only way bigger, so I can't hide it behind a pillow or something. Again, I must remind myself that he's not:

1. A wife-beating alcoholic
2. A two-timing bastard
3. Stephen Harper

...so it could be a lot worse. Right?

Totally Over the Top

2007-04-20T07:30:00.000-05:00

...this is so weird, you just might want to run away right now...it doesn't even make any sense....

....(I'm terribly angry)....

It looks like my plan to boycott Stupidstore is going to have to be shelved for a while, at least with regards to our bacon supplies. A thirteen-year-old was found here in the West End with a fully loaded semi-automatic weapon which he apparently used to threaten at least one person with. Having such armed miscreants in our midst means there is no way we can go ahead with our plan to become independent pork producers. If we bought a pig and set it free for the summer, as was my plan, our little curly-tailed porcine buddy would for sure become fodder for target practice. Then I'd stumble upon the little delinquent eating MY spare ribs. Given what occurred on Sunday, I know I would NOT be able to control my temper, and I'd say, "Hey, gimme back my spare ribs, you little bastard!" Then I'd yank them away from him! Yeah, that's what I'd do. But the jerk would have already eaten everything else.

Of course, taking the spare ribs would send this little freak OVER THE EDGE. He'd have been saving the best part of the pig for last, and now it would be gone! He'd run home and make a crazy little "multi-media package" and send it off to some television station. Then he'd head over to our back yard and take out everything. Cows, chickens, even the ostrich we'd purchased for its "leaner than beef yet still rather tasty" flesh. Total destruction. He'd take out himself too, naturally. Big news. The television network would receive their little "care package" and OF COURSE they would run it on air! The big executives would practically piss themselves thinking of the through-the-roof ratings and their subsequent bonuses! Then it would get on the Internet, and every misguided youth in the country would watch it. Pig-shooter boy would become a cult celebrity! Fabulous! You really can't make this stuff up!

Meanwhile back at home, Mr. IQ would be despondent over the loss of the pig, sobbing disconsolately into his pillow at night and really getting on my nerves during the day, singing a sad, warbling rendition of "Mama's little baby loves crackling, crackling..." all the freaking time.

"Aughh, snap out of it already!!" I'd finally shriek. So he'd go off to get some counseling, from someone like, oh, I don't know, maybe... George W. Bush. He'd say, "I know I'm Canadian, George, but you seem to really understand this gun thing, so I've come down here for some comfort and advice."

"Well, IQ, " George would say, sneaking a look at the clock surreptitiously, "I wouldn't worry too much about it. Your little pig friend is in heaven now. No more pain!"

Mr. IQ would furrow his brow, and look confused. "But, uh, I'm not sure my pig was a practicing Christian, George..."

"And his killer is burning in the deepest pits of hell!! Surely you can take comfort from that!"

"Well, uh, I guess... but I've never really believed in he--..."

"Look IQ-tee-toot toot, your problem is you're concentrating on the past, when the future is what it's all about. You made mistakes. Now deal with them. Repopulate the garage. More pigs. More cows. More ostriches. And this time, no fooling around."

"Huh?"

"Guard 'em boy! Guard 'em with your life!"

"Gggg..guard them?"

"With a gun boy! Here, I'll give you mine!" George would reach into the crotch area of his pants and pull out his heater. It would be warm, but not because he's recently fired it. (At least I hope not for your sake buddy!!) (Heh heh heh.)

"Uh, thanks George," Mr. IQ would say, holding it awkwardly.

"Listen," George would murmur, getting confidential, "I wanna ask you something, since it relates to what we've all been talking about here."

"Okay, shoot," Mr. IQ would say, fondling his new gun.

"I've got a new campaign slogan and I'm hoping they run with it in 2008. It's, uh, A Chicken in Every Pot, 'cause There's a Gun on Every Lot! Do you like it? It's snappy, don't you think?"

"Whippersnappy," Mr. IQ would mumble politely. George would blush with pleasure.

"I made it up myself," he'd say, somewhat shyly.

"It's great."

Encouraged, George would get brave. "I've got another one too!"

"Hit me baby, one more time!!" Mr. IQ would say encouragingly, twirling the gun and his Farrah Fawcett-like hair around and then pretending to shoot a bad man.

"Guns don't kill pigs, pigs kill pigs!! As in, scum-sucking criminal-type pigs, not police pigs, kill, you know, the tasty kind of pigs..."

"Not as catchy..."

George would look a little crushed. "Yah," he'd admit, "That one needs some working on." An awkward silence would follow. George would pretend to do something important, like shuffle papers.

"Well, I've got to get going" Mr. IQ would say, taking the hint and heading for the door, "Thanks a lot. I feel a lot better. It could have been a lot worse, I mean, after all, it was only a bunch of dumb animals we lost. It's not like it was 32 NICE INNOCENT UNSUSPECTING PEOPLE WHO WERE KILLED or anything like that."

George would stop shuffling his papers and look genuinely shocked. "Good god man," he'd say, "Of COURSE it wasn't PEOPLE! If it was PEOPLE we'd have to... BAN GUNS or something!!"

Both men would start laughing uproariously: Ha! Ha! Ha!

Everything just makes me so sick these days.

Regret

2007-04-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

...oh bloody hell, it's that damn conscience of mine bugging me again...

It has occurred to me that sticking my bloodshot, rage-swollen head into the personal space of a little old lady and hurling inanities about parks and the human condition and grocery shopping on a beautiful spring day is not the best way to help speed up humanity's slow and uncertain journey towards that idyllic time in yon future when we as a world come together to embrace, call an end to all hostility and shake the collective kumbaya snuggle-boogie together.

And it's certainly not the sort of action that is going to help rid the world of these horrible, horrible school shootings.

Sigh. Yeah, she was rude and cranky and brusque, and, just between you and me, I truly think she was about as concerned for my baby's safety as she is about the fate of endangered Peruvian rain forest species. Really, truly, honestly, I think all she wanted to do was just boss me around.

But.

Kurt Vonnegut wouldn't have gone over to an old lady and given her hell, even if said old lady was a big crank.

And:

1. As Pamela pointed out, she's sure as hell not amassing a fortune working as a door greeter at Superstore.

2. It was her Sunday afternoon too, and the first nice day of year for her as well. And what was she doing? Working.

3. But why did she have to be so nasty?

I hope she's thinking about the whole incident too. I hope she's thinking about that crazy woman who ranted on about... (what the hell was she ranting on about anyway?...) and thinking:

1. Wow, it must be hard taking care of two small children all by yourself. (It is. And I've been doing approximately 99% of the childcare around here for at least a week because Mr. IQ has exams right now.)

2. That baby was awfully sweet. Was she really making everyone smile?

3. But... but why did she have to be so nasty?

***

By the way: Thanks for being tactfully silent on this point. I suspect you were all thinking of this yourselves, and decided to let me figure it out on my own. Blog people are swell.

Picnic

2007-04-16T09:12:00.000-05:00

...and the blogger would just like to preface this with the confirmation that she is NOT going crazy, really; she's mourning the death of Kurt Vonnegut. Also, she read a brutal article about a young Sierra Leone girl who had her hands amputated when she was twelve years old and it's been haunting her all weekend. I suppose, for the purposes of this post, it would have had more symbolic resonance if it was her feet that had been chopped off, but so it goes....

Baby Fangs has gigantic hands. When she crawls on the floor they sort of splay out on either side of her, and my intense and unconditional love for her does not prevent me from noticing that when she does this she has an appearance not unlike that of a tree frog. A tree frog with Clarence Darrow's head. She has started to stand up on her own which means she is probably weeks away from walking and then (*sob*) she won't be a baby anymore, technically she'll be a toddler. This has me worried, at least from a blog perspective, because while "Baby Fangs" has a rather sweet, benign sound to it, "Toddler Fangs" sounds ominous, and makes me think of Chucky dolls with knives. When she's standing upright, her huge, tree frog-like hands aren't at all apparent, so calling her my little tree frog won't work.

And I refuse to call her Clarence.

When High Intensity was a baby, she looked like, um, uh, well.... like Adolf, uh... Hit...ler..... We took pictures of her, and with the suspenders, affixed black, squarish moustache, hair combed over just so and German war songs blasting out from the stereo, the resemblance was quite striking. Oh boy, now you think I'm a Nazi. I'm not. Well, maybe a recycling Nazi.

But speaking of Nazis...

Today was the first nice day of the year. The plan was to spend the day walking to Superstore to pick up items for a picnic, and then go to the park. But when we got to the store we were STARVING so we stopped in the food area where they've set up tables and ate our lunch there. I people-watched, and I have to say, the miserable winter we just went through has been hard on the fine folk of this city. Wow, did people look bad. Grey and foul and not smiling at all. However, when they saw Baby Fangs, crawling her jerky, enthusiastic, tree frog crawl around the floor, they would beam. Everyone smiled at her, even people you would not think would smile at a baby, even people who looked like they hadn't smiled since Diefenbaker was in power. They would slow down their grocery carts and give her waves and one guy who looked like a mafia hit man bent down to pat her head. It was nice seeing all these gloomy people, who were spending the first nice day of the year inside, shopping for mountains of groceries, perk up when they saw her. I felt like I was doing a community service. I was very proud of her.

And then. The Nazi Door Greeter came rushing over and snapped at me impatiently to get my baby off the floor. "She might get hurt," she told me brusquely. I felt like a child who'd been reprimanded by a control-freak teacher. Crushed, I sat there for a little longer with Baby Fangs on my lap and continued to watch people, but it wasn't any fun anymore, and no-one was smiling, and what kind of world is this anyway when a baby isn't allowed to crawl about?

I got MAD.

I don't usually get mad, I mean MAD mad at little old ladies just doing their job. But for whatever reason, this really hit a nerve. I stared at the food hoping to see something delicious to take my mind off it all, but since I'm on a Spring Health Kick (which is going about as well as my January Health Kick went, thanks for asking) there really wasn't anything good enough to distract me from my ANGER.

So when we left, I went over to the old lady and gave her hell. Then we went outside, and the plain-clothes store detective came running after me. And I started to bawl, right there in the parking lot. I said it was pathetic that on such a nice day everyone was inside shopping. I said the baby was cheering everyone up. I said people should be at the park. I said I was the mother, and I could look after my kid just fine by myself. Then I said, " I must sound like a total nut," and was not contradicted.

I am totally embarrassed, but in my defense I know I'm right. I am a teacher. I know people, and her crawling on the floor there was not pissing off ANYONE except the Nazi Door Greeter. And she was not in any danger because I was watching her like a hawk. I would chew off my own arm before I'd let something bad happen to her.

Kurt Vonnegut would have liked to have seen babies crawling around on the floor.

But anyway, that's it, I'm done with Superstore. We're going back to the land, and becoming totally self-sufficient with regards to our food. I'll dig up the back yard and plant tomatoes, cabbages and yams. And orange trees. It's very important to eat one item of citrus a day. We'll keep a cow in the garage and I'll learn how to make cheese, jam and ketchup potato chips. Hmmmm, we'll need to get some Bordeaux grapes growing back there too. Ooooh, squishing them with our feet to make wine will be fun! We'll let a pig run wild through the streets of the West End in the summer and then come autumn, Pa, I mean, Mr. IQ will catch it, butcher it, smoke it, and blow up the bladder for High Intensity and Baby Fangs to play with. Ha!

That'll show that stupid Superstore a thing or two.

"You wouldn't run over me with a grocery cart, would you?"

Phases

2007-04-12T11:25:00.000-05:00

..."Sweep the floor, and sweep it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that and everyday of your life; --if not that floor, why then --some other floor"...

Those are the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay, written when she was nineteen years old. I guess she didn't like sweeping floors. Her biographer said that "few young women have ever put it more clearly --or fiercely--" how much she hated housework. I suppose she was indicating that this was an early sign of her promise as a poetess. Yah, I can see that. It takes a real GENIUS to express how much SWEEPING THE FLOOR SUCKS.

Oh, ignore me, you know I'm just jealous. When I read about all of this in her biography I knew that she would go on to write the funky My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night poem and never sweep another damn floor in her life. Inspired, I tried my own hand at writing a little floor-sweeping emancipation ditty, but it lacked the passion, the fervor, the nymphomaniac, drug-addicted, father-abandoned-me-in-my-youth sort of stimulus needed to dash off a real zinger and free me from my bondage to the broom. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to get away from the lines:

Old Fangs explodes at both ends
I'm covered in her shite..

And why was this? Why did I have to be so crude? Because last Tuesday, at approximately 3:17 pm, we here at the House of Whippersnapper entered that much anticipated "Anal Phase" of High Intensity's (so far!) really fun and charming journey towards mature adulthood. And I say "we" because while it may be only old H.I. who is technically going through it, all members of this household are suffering, my friend. All of us.

Although there had been little hints here and there that we were getting close to this much heralded developmental phase, we most definitely reached the point of no return on Tuesday when she presented me with the following picture and gleefully shouted what it (so obviously) was:
Despite the frequent updates I make on this blog regarding the condition of my bowels and the crude bean dinner references I write about with embarrassing regularity, I'm not really an outhouse humour sort of gal. Thus, when I saw this picture, my eyes widened until they were the size of large, overripe melon balls. My mouth gaped open and I could not muster the force needed to keep my dumbfounded tongue from limply hanging out of it. And my larynx, jolted awake by the emergency signal from my much horrified brain, let out an unhappy sort of noise reminiscent of a cow in labour. Perhaps I was overreacting but... those turds. They were so gross. And why... why did there have to be... so many?

In short, the picture kind of shocked me.

Now, High Intensity is not the sort of lass who spends a great deal of time considering the feelings of others. Dare I say, she often takes an unhealthy and discomforting amount of delight in ~~working me up into a neurotic, fire-spitting frenzy~~ pissing me off a little. But this situation was different. I wasn't angry. I was only... speechless. And I guess this kind of freaked her out a bit, because old momburger, despite everything, is never really ever at a loss for words. Quickly, she flipped the picture 180 degrees. "It's not a bum, mom!" she shouted anxiously, "Actually, it's mountains! With snow falling on them!"
Oh how beautiful. Snow falling on mountains. Old Georgia High Intensity O'Keefe. Perhaps an early sign of her promise as a great landscape artist?

Somehow, I think not.

Happy Easter!

2007-04-08T08:30:00.000-05:00

...Yay, it's Saturday night! Mr. IQ has been working SO hard, and he needed a night off. So I laced his dinner with sedatives and when he finally passed out on the stairway I tenderly covered him with a blanket and made a mad dash for the computer! And here I am! Finally! Unlimited computer access without someone standing over my shoulder and making me feel guilty! I blame him entirely for me writing Karma Sutra instead of Kama Sutra in the last post! Damn it, he doesn't give me enough time to edit myself properly!!...

I am not, it must be confessed, much of a gourmand. I have been known to open cans of tomatoes and eat them like soup. Cold soup. High Intensity, on the other hand, has developed into the Grumpy Gourmet. If I give her a bowl of canned diced tomatoes (nicely warmed) and try to pass it off as soup, she'll say, "Mom, this is canned tomatoes," and refuse to eat any of it.

"But it's tomatoes aux fines herbes," I told her the first time I did this, pointing to the French side of the label. "That means it's very fancy."

She fell for it once, and cautiously tried some. But never again.

A few years back, someone at my school got the bright idea to put together a cookbook comprised of our staff's favourite recipes. Of course, I cook a lot more now, especially with Julia High Intensity Child around, but back then I never cooked. It would have been a little embarrassing handing in a recipe like:

Open can of tomatoes
Heat, if feeling ambitious
Um, maybe take the contents out of the metal can first? It's going into the microwave...
Wow, I thought I was lazy.
Eat.

So I ignored the request for a recipe. But even though I did not contribute to the book, I still received a copy of the thing. And for reasons that are difficult to explain, became weirdly, inexplicably fascinated with this one potato recipe I found in it. I have never made the dish, but its ingredients haunt me, and I've described it to practically every person I know. I always have a good time with it:

Me: Wanna hear about this recipe?
You: Sure!
Me: A potato recipe!
You: Right on!
Me: Okay, here are the ingredients. Ready?
You: Yah!
Me: A package of hash browns.
You: Right on! Hash browns!
Me: A can of cream of mushroom soup.
You: I LIKE where this is going!!
Me: Two cups sour cream.
You: Hallelujah!
Me: One cup shredded cheese.
You: KILLER!
Me: A cup of butter!!
You: Suicide! Coronary city, batman!!
Me: And rashers and rashers of bacon!!
You: AUGHGHGH!!!
Me: Mix, bake and serve!!
You: Death in a pan! Love it!
Me: It's called "Bertha's Potatoes!"
You: Bertha, them's some lard-ass potatoes you got there, man!
Us Together: Ha! Ha! Ha!

Over the years this "Bertha's Potatoes" recipe has assumed mythical proportions in my brain, symbolizing, well, I guess symbolizing everything that I think is wrong with North American culture right now. I mean, don't get me wrong. I like my cheese. I like my sour cream. And of course I like butter, hash browns and bacon. But all mixed together and then served as a side dish? Too much, man. Too much.

This weekend my in-laws are in town for Easter. They phoned us on Thursday and said they were rolling into town for the weekend with a ham. They are big meat eaters, and my step-mother-in-law prides herself on never, ever eating vegetables, so when they're here I tend to cook things I don't normally eat. Armed with the culinary motto of my aunt, who is a great cook ("twice the sugar, even more fat!") we tackle huge, ambitious, butter-laden recipes which invariably lead to failure. During our huddled conferences near the end of the cooking process, a panicked Mr. IQ will whisper, "It tastes terrible! Augh! Augh! What do we do? What do we do?" and I will whimper, " I don't know!! Add more sugar! Add more fat!" And both of us will start running around the kitchen like crazy Swedish chefs melting butter frantically and hunting for the sugar bowl.

Wow, have we ever served some wretchedly awful meals.

Having not quite recovered from making Christmas dinner yet, the news that we were to cook up the big Easter spread didn't exactly fill me with feelings of euphoric glee, but they're family and we love them, so of course we agreed to their plan. Less than enthusiastically, I hit the Internet to find an Easter menu, and found one. Can we say Bertha's potatoes times one million? In addition to the Holiday Ham, there are the "Potatoes Grand Mere", "Party Potatoes" and "Parker House Rolls", as well as two desserts, a sassy Lemon Truffle Pie and its sweet ingenue cousin, Little Miss Strawberry Pie. The Potatoes Grand Mere call for two cups of whipping cream, one tablespoon butter and 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese. The "Party Potatoes" contain 1/2 cup butter, one package of cream cheese, 1/2 cup sour cream and then three additional tablespoons of butter. And to make the Parker House Rolls you'll need one cup of whole milk (and yes, they specify "whole" milk), 1/2 cup butter, and then even "more melted butter." I didn't even look at the recipes for the pies. My heart was already seizing up from the potato recipes, and just seeing the words "more melted butter" had made my stomach start swearing and I'd been forced to undo the top button of my pants.

Bertha's Potatoes, you've been replaced.

I spent most of Friday in a bit of a depressed stupor, dreading Sunday for about four thousand different reasons, but then, miraculously, I was saved. Dinner is going to be at Mr. IQ's step-brother's place, and all we have to do is bring a salad and dessert! Yay!

Have a great Easter!

Post with Anticlimactic Ending

2007-04-05T07:25:00.000-05:00

...oh dear, there are a lot of references to sex in this post...

Our kindly neighbour "Bob" dropped by a few days ago to make inquiries about our stolen stroller. He knows of its loss because he has been witnessing my struggles with the temporary replacement, a rusty, perverted thing that absolutely refuses to unfold unless I agree to do weird, Kama Sutra type things with it. Our intimate couplings on the lawn have been frankly indecent and having people walk by when I'm in the middle of one of these trysts, especially if I happen to be moaning at the time (from frustration) can leave me feeling pretty awkward. Kindly Neighbour Bob's head always seems to be popping over the fence during our sweaty entanglements, too. I find that kind of annoying.

Anyway, he came by because there was an errant stroller in the back lane and he thought it might be ours. It wasn't, and end of that story there, but I mention all this because he rang our doorbell at a time when, once again, our front hall was filled with crap from the basement, and everything was looking particularly slovenly. This was more than just a little embarrassing because Kindly Neighbour Bob is one of life's keeners. On snowy mornings, he is up at 6:30 am shovelling the sidewalks. In the fall, I have seen him stand on his lawn with a big garbage bag catching leaves as they fall from trees. One year he even came over and raked our back yard for us because the sight of all the leafy, unraked disorder was driving him nuts.

Actually, and most unfortunately, I think we, in general, drive him nuts.

Anyway, he came over, saw the chaos and I was embarrassed; I gave my usual "Ha ha ha, I live with a pack rat" speech, and he left. Then I sank to the floor.

"Arggh! Now he thinks we're pigs!" I howled unhappily.

Mr. IQ didn't seem too concerned. In fact, he didn't even respond, so I thought he hadn't heard me. But obviously he had, for the next day he presented me with an academic paper he had downloaded off the computer at school.

"Here," he said grinning, "find out what "Bob" thought of us."

The paper was about what insights into personality rooms give strangers about the people who inhabit them. It was entitled "A Room with a Cue." (GET IT??) ( I sure do!) (Proof: HA! HA! HA!)

I took the paper and looked at it suspiciously. It had paragraphs like:

The WAM concept of meaning systems and the RAM concept of good information can be brought together by interpreting the concepts as the two halves of Brunswik's (1956) lens model. Recall that cue utilization refers to the relation between judgements and observable information in the environment. Thus, cue utilization is similar to the WAM parameter of meaning systems, and cue validity is similar to the RAM parameter of good information.

Oooch, reading this made my head hurt, and a sudden strong desire to go hide out in a closet with a copy of Nancy Drew and The Secret of Shadow Ranch flooded over me. But I must admit I was kind of intrigued too. I grew up hearing and thinking about these kinds of things because my mom is big into graphology and personality types. If she checks out your handwriting and your W's are a little too buttock-y looking, she'll think you're a pervert. If your y's and j's and g's are a little too dangly she'll think you're a pervert. And God help you if any of your letters are shaped like penises! Well, I'm only guessing here, but I'm fairly certain that if they are she'll think you are a pervert. Of course, she's very proper, she would never actually use the word "pervert." She would blush and mumble something demure about "sexual issues." And then never look you in the eye again. But it's all very scientific. She looked at a writing sample of an old principal of mine and she nailed his personality cold. ("Asshole.") Of course, she was a teacher too, so she knows what principals can be like....

Anyway, to make a long story short, I struggled through the paper, skimming over parts like the one above, and perking up a little when phrases like “marijuana posters” appeared. But actually, the whole thing wasn’t that informative, at least not for me. There was no discussion of what different room styles meant with regards to personality, only an analysis of how accurate people’s impressions were. Of course when asked, I told him that his messy office indicated that he was fixated on his mother’s breasts, and the tendency to accumulate things meant he had a latent spanking fetish. But of course he didn’t believe me, and no more was said about it, which leaves me wondering why I have written so much about something that really had such little consequence on our lives. It’s a strange irony: The more boring my life gets, and the less computer access I manage to secure, the longer my posts become. Go figure.

Hopefully something really exciting happens tomorrow so I can fire off a really brief, two paragraph post!

Gulp, No Pressure

2007-04-02T20:11:00.000-05:00

...gulp, no pressure...

Oh crap. No pressure.

OK, This Post is Weird, Even for Me

2007-03-30T11:10:00.000-05:00

...spring fever has obviously hit THIS blogger ...

For High Intensity to allow us to take a picture of her being spanked by an out-of-control Brian Mulroney, a rather large bribe had to be coughed up in the form of a... large spoonful of strawberry jam. I feel bad for her on so many levels, but mostly because she thinks jam is a special treat. Actually, I don't feel too bad. She's got my mom to load her up on junk.

She came by yesterday to take her out for some special bonding time. H.I. was particularly hyper while waiting to be picked up, running through the house and singing/screeching Raffi songs at the top of her lungs. ("WILLIBY WALLIBY WOM! AN ELEPHANT SAT ON MOM! WILLIBY WALLIBY WADDY! AN ELEPHANT SAT ON DADDY!") Naturally, I was pretty thrilled to get her off my hands for a few hours, and I don't have to feel guilty thinking that way because she had a blast. Together, they saw a play and then spent the rest of the time pigging out. "Granny let me have everything I wanted, EVERYTHING," she told me when she got home, and from the sounds of it, she was right. A huge plate of Chinese food. A gigantic dish of ice-cream. A toffee apple. A large piece of cheesecake and a 500 ml carton of chocolate milk. Then when they left and my mom was attempting to get the seat belt over H.I.'s grossly extended stomach, High Intensity let out a groan and moaned, "Williby walliby wuke, I think I'm going to puke." Giving a shriek of horror, my mom dove into the driver's seat, stepped on the gas and belted it to my place in record time. She didn't stick around to chat, just handed over my bloated, swollen-bellied child and left. High Intensity lay on the couch for a while groaning, and then mean old mom forced her up and outside for a binge-burning stroll to take in the scenic sights of urban decay.

Ah Spring! Le belle printemps! But really, is there a more beautiful time of year to take a walk? Living, as we do, in the second poorest federal constituency in Canada, an innocent, gentle stroll becomes a glorious feast for the senses when April beckons around the corner. The melty, sloppy soup of filthy snow and dog shit makes our nimble feet dance a pretty spring jig as we dart anxiously from safe spot to safe spot. Cigarette butts cleverly arrange themselves into pretty patterns in the dirt-oozing sludge, and the junky litter of so many discarded meals form a poetry of their own. And the condoms! So many used condoms! Happily, the trendy colour for prophylactics this spring is a cheery, sun-kissed yellow, which certainly helps perk up the mood and highlight the natural beauty of this little chunk of urban paradise I am lucky enough to call home. My piercing shriek served to really impress upon High Intensity the gravity of not disturbing these pretty little love-bundles from their natural habitat lest we, uh, destroy them. (Thank heavenly god, she doesn't try to pick them up anymore.)

I think what really warmed my heart the most during our little walk was realizing how so many residents in my area have really taken the classic Elvis song If Everyday was Like Christmas to heart. The soggy festive decorations that adorned almost every house we passed were really a delight to see. Reindeer pawed at (dripping wet) roofs while shyly sneaking looks our way and Santas winked at us from (no longer) frosty window panes. At one point the wheels of our crappy stroller (the "good" one was stolen a few weeks back) fell off and a group of life-sized wooden carolers cheered me on as I struggled to reassemble the thing. Perhaps most poignant of all was the scene at one particularly drab house, where the word JOY, in bold red colours, had been assembled in the front yard. Only the Y was still standing, which struck me as a particularly clever thing to do. Why indeed? I thought, staring at that most philosophical of letters. It seemed to want an answer. I didn't have one. Overcome with emotion, I fell on my knees (into a puddle) and, shaking my fist at that impenetrable sky, shouted, with anguish in my voice, "What's it all about then, eh?" and, when no-one answered, added hesitantly, "Alphie??" In the distance, through the foggy recesses of my (obviously chemically imbalanced) mind I thought I could hear Elvis. He was singing... to me.

Oh why can't everyday
be like Christmas?
Why can't that feeling go on
endlessly?
For if everyday
could be just like Christmas
what a wonderful world
this would be

"Oh Elvis, you're right!" I sobbed, and racing home, dug out the Santa Claus Trophy from the donation box and stuck him into the last remaining pile of snow in our yard. All neighbourhoods have a theme. Ours is obviously, "Keeping that festive feeling going all year 'round!"

You win, Mr. IQ! You win!

The Gods Must be Angry

2007-03-26T23:55:00.000-05:00

**WITH UPDATE**

...totally off topic, but I'll use this space today to apologize for not keeping up with YOUR blogs too well these days...I'm not getting a lot of computer time right now, and yes, I AM suffering, thanks for asking...

Back in the day when we were sacrificing human beings on the alter to ensure a good crop of millet, people did not go around tempting fate by showing off about their kids. Gods were vengeful beings and jealous too: you didn't want to piss them off. If a child was particularly smart you would shout to the skies, "Holy crap, I've got rutabagas in the pantry with more brains than that chowder head son of mine." If a daughter was comely, parents would shake their heads in the marketplace and say loudly, "Our baby Bloodwyn is so ugly a small fry-up may be in order." Them heathen folk were pretty serious about their superstitions.

Baby Fangs WAS an unbelievably good baby. She never cried. She slept through the night. She rarely pooped, and when she did, her movements were compact, and thoughtfully timed. Then dumb old momburger had to go and say she was "perfect" on her blog. Almost immediately, Baby Fangs turned cranky on me, in a sort of fingers-down-a-chalkboard kind of way. It's not like she shrieks or howls a lot. She just whines all the time. All the time. ALL THE TIME. And when she's not whining, she filling her diaper. Obviously Zeus or somebody big and powerful reads my blog, and while part of me, I'll admit, is sort of flattered, mostly I'm just kind of bummed off at myself. Teach me to be so damn show-offy. Tomorrow, I'll offer up a sacrifice in the form of a guy whose talents include assembling a mean-looking Santa Claus trophy (for yes, can you believe it, he actually MADE that thing) so I can get my good-tempered baby back. I would lie and explain I'm sacrificing my first born child to help sweeten the pot a little, but I am so young-looking that I know the gods would get a little suspicious when they saw the advanced age of my offering. Ha ha ha ha ha. Ha.

Actually, now that I think about it, I may well have carved out a terrible fate for poor Mr. Stupid Computer Hog Autocratjerkassgrrrrrr!! Calling him "Mr. IQ" for all those months may well have been no more wiser than calling my baby "perfect", and punishment may be doled out in the form of a large frying pan crashing down from the heavens onto his million dollar cranium. Then I'll be stuck with a vacant, smiling fool who spends most of his days in a corner, contentedly petting his sole possession, a small rubber mouse named "George." Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Mr. IQ 20,000,000 needs the computer back. Much as I hate to leave, I must.

***UPDATE:***

The "stupid" in Mr. Stupid Computer Hog Autocratjerkassgrrrr looks so harsh and is kind of haunting me this morning. Naturally I don't mean stupid as in he's stupid. I mean stupid in the sense that it's stupid he's hogging the computer all the time. You know that, don't you? Arrgghh, I think I need to quit blogging, if you don't actually know me personally you probably think I'm just a horrible person.

The Fight Over the Santa Claus Trophy

2007-03-22T18:50:00.000-05:00

...this is going to be short, because a certain someone has papers due and has totally taken over the computer. I've been calling him Mr. SCHA which he thinks stands for "Super Cool Hunk Animal", but in fact it stands for "Stupid Computer Hog Autocratjerkassgrrrrrrr"...

...(Men are so naive)...

Happy happy Spring! In giddy celebration of this blessed, long-awaited event, I spent most of yesterday shaving the shag carpet off my left leg, and today instructed my personal secretary to hold all calls while I worked on the right one. Yes, it HAS been six months. Yes, it IS a two-day job. Yes, Mr. IQ WAS standing by the whole time with a worried expression on his face and a bottle of Draino in his hand. And YES, YES, YES, I am SOOOOOO happy spring is finally here!! Was it just me, or was that the absolutely LONGEST WINTER EVER??

In addition to spring finally arriving, a little jaunt to Superstore (it's the Sargeant Avenue location that has all the good sales, incidentally) provided another unexpected source of happiness in the form of a lovely discount Danish blue cheese with cranberries. I know you are probably sick of my cheese exploits, but this time it wasn't just me indulging my lust for savory dairy products, oh no, it was also for medical reasons that I purchased la fromage avec les berries de cran. The cranberries will (supposedly) help with my little infection problem, and the cheese's bacterial ingredients will help repopulate the empty nooks and crannies of my microorganism-less bowels. While medicating myself with my health-promoting snack and washing it down with a large glass of cheap Canadian plonk, I suddenly had a flash of brilliance and, in my excitement, sputtered large chunks of aromatic cheese on Mr. IQ's school papers. A book! A health book! An international best seller! I'm pretty excited. There cannot be any doubt that my book, Cheeses that Heal, will make my fortune.

The clean-out process has come to a bit of a standstill as of late, first because Mr. IQ is getting into crunch time at school and also because of the animosity that broke out between us over Mr. IQ's super ugly and ridiculous Santa Claus trophy. Actually, there have been other things that have caused major ripples of discontent but I want to tell you about this one particular disagreement we're having because, well, LOOK at the thing. I KNOW you're going to side with me on this one:

The key to any good relationship is the ability to empathize, compromise, and find some middle ground on issues that are tearing you apart. Consequently, because I am just a super nice person, I have tried to find a place for the Santa Claus Trophy in our lives and in my heart. Armed with my copy of Martha Stewart's Guide to Beautiful Living, I have searched for a special spot to display it attractively or, alternately, find a practical use for it.

Some attempts:

... placed on the mantel of our cute ornamental fireplace...

... a charming conversation piece in the boudoir...

...company for High Intensity when banished to the funky, but incredibly uncomfortable time-out chair...

... a jolly companion for my cheap, dying carnations...

...helping with the paperwork until next Christmas...

... a little bed companion for those cold, lonely nights when Mr. IQ is ~~passed out drunk in the bathtub~~ staying up late writing a paper due the next day.

... and finally, as a "Special Santa Spanking Stick" for those serious crimes when daddy's metal spiked belt "just won't do." (Involving Santa will hopefully help take the edge off our nightly "family discipline hour" and lighten the atmosphere a little. I don't know if this is true of every home, but around here, the beating hour is always so damn tense...)

"This hurts Santa more than it hurts you..."

*sigh* As you can see, I've tried to find a place/use for it, and to no avail. You would agree with me that it has to go, right? Right? RIGHT?????

Late Winter Sunburn

2007-03-18T23:09:00.000-05:00

...oooh, I'm so ill... send flowers via the thrift store down the lane, they owe us a favour or two since half of what they're currently selling comes from our basement...

Well, so, it's bladder infection time again. Yay. Ever since I can remember I've been plagued with the damn things, and, in addition to all the pain and discomfort they cause, they've given me a whole lot of embarrassing memories I'd rather not be saddled with. Such moments would include a stirrup-footed visit ten years ago to a funny-looking urologist who dove down, fiddled about and then popped up above the blanket-line to say "No kids I see!" in a very friendly, conversational manner before diving down again to continue his enthusiastic exploration. He didn't seem too interested in any response I might have had (which was, for the record, a very faint "Um, no...")

At this point, I have been on antibiotics so many times a concerned World Wildlife Federation conducted a (mercifully brief) inspection and placed my intestinal fauna on the endangered species list. Consequently, I have lately been trying to treat myself homeopathically instead with the help of various Dr. Quack Home Remedy Pages I found on the Internet. I'm pretty desperate for a cure, so I've basically been trying out every single thing someone's granny says works: A glass of diluted apple cider vinegar for breakfast; raw garlic for snack; canned asparagus for lunch. And of course, always, the ubiquitous cranberry juice: lots and lots and lots of cranberry juice.

All this would be fine, I mean, I could survive the horrors of drinking apple cider vinegar and the social ostracism that results from the killer garlic breath if any of these remedies actually worked. But no, they all suck, and basically I've been in pain on and off for the last month or so. (I KNOW I should have just gone to get the damn pills, but for once in my life I was trying to see something through to its conclusion.) Three nights ago, though, I woke up in such incredible pain that I knew I was going to have to try something else. Wearily, I hit the Internet again and found a dandy site. Some woman had suffered just like me for years. She cared. She'd been there. She knew what I was going through. She wanted my suffering to end. She'd spent years and years researching the problem and had found the solution! That's right, she had the secret! She was going to ease my pain once and for all, and I'd never be miserable again! The symptoms would be gone in HALF AN HOUR! FOREVER!! All I had to do was... give her $37. $37 American.

Screw that! I thought, because I'm just not the sort of person who feels comfortable giving out personal banking information over the computer. But the next night I felt even worse, and, throwing aside all my pesky little security concerns, made a furious run for the computer. When asked for my credit card number, I didn't hesitate to recklessly type it in. But my card was REJECTED. The site took debit cards too, so I typed in the numbers of both our cards but they, also, were REJECTED. Truthfully, I was about as close to a breakdown as I've ever been in my life. I'd been in pain for so long. I just wanted it all to end; I was crazy with disappointment. I typed in JUST GIVE ME THE SECRET, BITCH! but that didn't work either. (I didn't think it would.)

So there was no other choice. I was going to have to seek the help of medical professionals.

The last time I went to the emergency room, I got the hunkiest doctor that has ever walked a hospital floor. If he had a blog, he would have to call himself DoctorStud. I think he was South African so I guess he had all those tall, hunky Dutch genes.

Now, doctors hate treating bladder infections. They're always soooooo booooooord talking to me about them, basically, if I went in to complain about a cut thumb (which I also have, actually) they would probably be more interested. I read somewhere that a bladder infection is like a sunburn of the urinary tract, so naturally a sunburn doesn't exactly get the E.R. personnel hopping with concern. That's why, if I go to the hospital, I ALWAYS go in the middle of the night to one particular emergency room. The place is always empty when I walk in, so, if nothing else, the staff are grateful to me for helping to kill the shift.

But despite being 3:00 am, DoctorStud still wasn't too interested. He barely sat down as he whipped off the prescription. I was pretty excited though, because I knew there was going to be some skin on skin action coming up: Consultations always include a half-hearted back pounding to ensure the infection hasn't spread to my kidneys. DoctorStud was going to be touching me! Exciting! But alas, no sooner had he handed me the prescription, he headed for the door. Disappointment flooded my bacteria-ridden body.

"Hey!" I cried out to his retreating frame, "aren't you going to pound my back?"

It was SUPPOSED to come out sounding funny. Instead, it came out sounding like the hungry, love-starved plea of a sad, lonely loser. Arrrgh. Talk about humiliating. DoctorStud turned around and (I swear he did this) raised one eyebrow. He said, "I think you'll survive," in that snooty South African accent, turned and left me alone in the room to contemplate how pathetic I was. It was difficult mustering up the dignity and courage to leave the consulting room, but I somehow managed to limp out, making eye contact with no-one. I vowed never to return.

But last night, I just couldn't take it any more. If I drank one more glass of cider vinegar I was going to permanently shrivel up into an old sour apple. If I ate another can of asparagus or swallowed any more cranberry juice my skin would be permanently stained with unbecoming red and green shades and I would spend the rest of my days looking like an oversized, gawky Christmas tree ornament. So I set my alarm, and left for the hospital at my customary hour of 2:30 am. I didn't get DoctorStud. I got DoctorI'mTiredAndYourStupidUrinary TractInfectionIsNot WhatISpentAThousandYearsIn SchoolFor. It was interesting, because all I had told the front desk was that I had a bladder infection, but when he came in, he said, "From the symptoms you've described, it looks like you have a UTI." Symptoms I described?? I had described no symptoms. Oh well. I got the drugs I needed, and that's all I really wanted.

Unfortunately, so far they haven't been working very well. The bacteria have put on their steel armour and seem to be giving both the drug and me the little phagocytosis finger. So now what? For the time being, I'm keeping myself busy going to all the home remedy pages I consulted and writing, "Your grandma sucks, and so do you, you lying, sadistic bastard" in the comment sections. But this is, at best, a temporary panacea, and I must confess I'm starting to panic a little: When the pleasure I get from doing this starts to wear thin, well, then what am I going to do?

Oh Heck, I Won't Spare You the Details: You Have the Right to Run Away Now...

2007-03-14T21:14:00.000-05:00

...let the purge begin!!...

Discount Cheese Buy of the Week: Danish Cream Cheese Spread w/ Hazelnuts and RUM!!

Last night at Superstore, I bought myself some flowers. I don't usually do this, and when I do I usually get coloured ones, but I'm into the bare, pristine look these days, so I went for the white ones with very green stems. They looked a little taken aback, no, I'd go so far as to say they looked downright pissed off when I took them out of their paper wrappings and introduced them to their new surroundings.

"What do you think we are, miracle workers or something?" they screamed when I told them their job was to make the place look elegant and clean.

"Just do what you can, OK?" I implored them.

"But we're just a lousy $6.99 bunch of cheap carnations!!!" they howled. Frankly speaking, I had a situation on my hands. Some looked suicidal; others were sarcastic. One particularly obnoxious flower snickered and said mockingly under his breath, "Elegant! She wants 'elegant'!" Well, I just wasn't in the mood. Lucky for me, I'm a teacher; I know how to deal with attitude. Casually but swiftly, I moved in and snapped off his anthers.

"Just DO IT," I growled, waving his flower balls over my head menacingly, "OR I'LL LINE YOU UP ONE BY ONE AND DESTROY YOU!!" Then, in the manner of an insincere bully-turned -sudden-best-friend, I pointed to the vase of water and shook the packet of nutritive powder in their stupid flower faces. "I've got treats for you!" I chanted enticingly. That shut 'em up, let me tell you. So now they sit on my coffee and dining room tables, blinking back carnation tears, and bravely doing what they can to bring some sense of, I don't know, purity to my life. That they are giving their lives for this thankless task is indeed noble: All those promises I made them of that big Garden in the Sky better be true, that's all I can say.

But I'm pleased to report the clear-out has begun. An old student of mine is living with a friend who has a toddler, and I asked her if they wanted some children's books.

"How many?" she inquired, and I was honest: "Five boxes full." But I guess hearing the words "five boxes" and actually seeing five boxes are two quite different things, because the friend looked TOTALLY taken aback when she saw them all.

"Whoa," she said, "THAT MANY??" She stared at them with a "what the hell am I going to do with all those??" expression. Luckily, I had a solution for her.

"Would you like a bookcase for them?" I asked, panting with eagerness, "We have several in the basement!" Before she could give me an answer, I raced downstairs and hauled one up. "Here, take it, take it!!" I said, thrusting it towards her. Stunned, she silently took it, looking uncomfortable, like if she didn't accept the thing Crazy Lady would snap and crush her to death with books.

"Are you moving or something?" she asked, staring uneasily at the mountains of boxes we have stacked in our hallway.

"No," I said, and, leaning towards her, whispered confidentially, "I live with a pack rat."

"Oh, I see" she said politely, trying to look like she understood. But she didn't; no-one does. It was very sweet and nice that she pretended to get it, though. She kept thanking me for everything, which was totally embarrassing, because, let's face it, she was doing me the favour.

So yes, the clear-out has begun. Most of the work has been tedious, some of it downright discouraging. There was a moment of total exasperation (read: total meltdown) when boxes of Christmas decorations Mr. IQ said he took to the thrift store three months ago were found hidden in a corner. And the plastic blow-up cow I found beside several empty liquor bottles was definitely an unhappy moment I wouldn't wish to relive. (What's been going on down there, anyway?) Perhaps because she's been gated out of approximately 70% of the house for her own safety, Baby Fangs has gotten uncharacteristically cranky this week, going around shaking her fists and looking like an angry Clarence Darrow. THIS certainly hasn't served to help clear any of the tension. In moments of utter panic and misery I escape to the living room (spotless), adjacent to the dining room (immaculate), stare at my flowers and dream of bright, sunny, empty rooms with clean white curtains blowing gently in the breeze. One positive thing I will take with me from all this: Any lust I may have had for material things has definitely been curbed. Honestly, were I to spend the rest of my days in a room with just a bed, a CD player/radio and a small table for my library book, I would be content. Really, that's true. Well, it would be true if I didn't have kids.

But for now I have booze-soaked cheese to get drunk on. What else could a girl wish for? By the way, be sure and tune in tomorrow for The Fight Over the Santa Claus Trophy!

P.S.: Mr. IQ read this over, and wishes to underline the fact that he "DID NOT have sexual relations with that bovine, Ms. Sukeybelle." Sure, buddy. Whatever you say.

P.P.S: Of COURSE he didn't have sexual relations with the blow-up cow. That's just me trying to bring some levity to this whole absurd situation. If I can poke a little fun at him, then I won't kill him. He understands that, and I hope you do too.

Greed

2007-03-10T20:30:00.000-06:00

...I really hope you've read the Little House series, this might not make much sense otherwise...

It is sort of ridiculous how often I think of Ma from the Little House on the Prairie books. Crows may have devoured the family's crops; her oldest daughter may have gone blind; her well-intentioned, but somewhat failure of a husband may have dragged her around hell's half acre on the futile quest for the American dream; but never, never did she crack. No matter what happened, there she'd be, smiling her gentle smile, and turning those crows into delicious pies so the family could enjoy the silver linings in life. That was her role, really, silver lining creator. Things were always going wrong for that family. Her life must have been hell. Just getting through the prairie summers without air-conditioning or deodorant would have been quite the trial. And in the winter she always seemed to be preparing bean dinners. In a two-room log cabin, that could NOT have been pretty. But never, never was there a scene like:

Laura woke up. There was a commotion from Ma and Pa's bedroom. "You're such a pig, Charles," Ma shouted, "can't you go outside and do that?"

I think about Pa too, but not as much. Mostly, I think about him in the scenes from The Long Winter, where the family was stuck inside one room twisting hay to stay warm and surviving off a bag of wheat because the snow had cut them off from the supply train. Pa got them through it all with his plucky blend of good humour and tenacity, things none of us is blessed with in this house. How would we survive a winter huddled in front of a hay fire and eating nothing but wheat? Honestly, I don't think we would. The whole-wheat farts would break our spirit by mid-December; by January one of us would be dead. High Intensity, if writing a memoir of the ordeal, would not mince words in describing how insufferable me and Mr. IQ had been through it all. Mom was particularly miserable, she would write, always whining about how much she missed coffee. As for dad, well, when mom started complaining about how twisting hay was making her hands cold and threatening to burn his books to stay warm, he got out the butcher knife. That was the end of her...

I am NOT someone who idealizes the past. I think, at least for us lucky westerners, the world IS getting better. Uncle Tom isn't out slaving in my cotton fields making me rich. I'm not tying my corsets so tight my intestines are popping out to say hi. Every third child of mine will not die of small pox. Etc., etc., blah blah. When students in my classes say "Oh, the world is getting so much worse," I always pounce on them. Their argument usually ends (lamely) with, "Well, people swear a lot more now." Well. So they do. Big F**n deal.

Having said all that, something has obviously gone a little wrong. We're pretty spoiled. Today's Globe and Mail said that 11 million Americans have rented storage spaces to hold their excess stuff. What? What? WHAT? That is so gross. Ma and Pa would be appalled. It MUST be the source of at least some of the discontent in this part of the world, all this owing stuff. I mean, nothing is more miserable than a kid who has been given everything, as a teacher I can confirm that in spades. Why would it be different for big people?

So.

Mr. IQ's dad is NOT coming into town this weekend after all. He has a hernia, and cannot lift things, so the big purge is not going to happen. It's a two-man job, and we have no friends I felt comfortable enough to ask help sift through everything we have in the basement, even if very little of it is mine. It's too embarrassing. I was so upset that the clean-up wasn't going to happen, oh, was I upset, but then comfort has come to me in the form of that article I read this morning. Yay! Another epiphany! (Any more and I'll probably keel over from all these lightening bolt flashes.) It's pretty obvious the hernia has saved us from doing something that I KNEW was ridiculous, but now realize is also, well, sick. Phew. I am 99% relieved. 95% relieved. OK, if I can't be honest with you I am living a life of deception, so I'll tell you the truth, and say I'm at least 80% thankful. No storage spaces. It's just got to go. Period.

I have a plan, and it's going to work. I'll spare you the details. I'm about as sick of all this as you are.

A Plan

2007-03-06T23:24:00.000-06:00

...oh, you must be so sick of hearing about this crap... but I have nothing else to write about, nor have I anything else on my mind....

Last year, in the weeks prior to Baby Fangs' birth, I cleared out the big walk-in storage closet that we have upstairs, with the idea of turning it into a play area for High Intensity. It took forever, as you can imagine, and I ended up with about 16 garbage bags full of crap to give away. 95% of it was kids' stuff, 4.999999% of it was mine, and the rest was you-know-who's. "The rest" consisted of three items:

1. A Hawaiian shirt (ugly)
2. An African recipe cookbook (useless, old, ugly)
3. An empty "Pope Cake" box with pictures of John Paul II on the sides (oh for fuck sakes)

Naturally, each one of these three items was shoved deep down inside a different bag in the hopes that he would not notice, but, ha ha, well, I don't call him Mr. IQ for nothing you know, he's no dummy, before the bags went out he did a careful inspection of everything and dug out his three precious items. He then proceeded to fight like the devil to keep each one.

"Look, this has recipes for groundnut stew... and soup... and relish!" he said, skimming through the pages of the cookbook, "what if we want to make them one day?"

"Then I'll take your UNTASTY nuts," I screeched, "GRIND THEM and MAKE THEM INTO SOUP, STEW AND RELISH!!!!!! AND I WON"T NEED A RECIPE!! I'LL WING IT, AND HAVE A MIGHTY GOOD TIME DOING IT!!!!"

"Calm down," he said, instinctively drawing his bunched-up Hawaiian shirt towards his loins, "no need to get so crazy about it."

Well, to make a long story short, I cajoled, coaxed, pleaded, implored, wept, threatened suicide, threw plates, tore out my hair, tore out his hair, ran around the block in a naked, blind rage screaming hysterically, but no, nothing would move him, he would not part with them.

So they went into the basement.

Reminiscing about this has left me rather worried about this weekend, I must say. That was three items. THREE. And each one was a battle (that I lost.) He's got a basement of crap to cull through this weekend with his dad, and while the books are probably going into temporary storage, he has promised to get rid of as much of the stuff as possible. A conservative estimate would show that we have approximately 8,987,534 items of stuff down there, and if he couldn't give up THOSE three stupid, useless items, oh my goodness, what kind of scene are we in for this weekend?

Luckily, I have a plan.

Probably only Nitroglycol will truly appreciate the genius of my plan, because he is the only one of you twelve or so regular readers who actually knows Mr. IQ personally, but anyway, the plan is this:

I will stand at the top of the basement stairs with a timer. High Intensity will stand by the stereo. When I give the signal, she will press the play button, and a very loud, obnoxious snappy tune will fill the air, some crazy German techno perhaps, or maybe something from Bolero. Pepped on by the crazy, intense beat of the music, Mr. IQ will hurtle himself down the stairs and frantically fill a box as quickly as he can. He will get exactly 35 seconds to do this. He will then run back up, thrust the box into his dad's hands and turn to me for his reward (a shot of booze, a peek at a girly magazine, whatever it takes, man, whatever it takes.) Meanwhile his dad will run out to the truck, and, making screechy noises for effect, vroom away to the thrift store around the corner, who will have been warned of our operation in advance. He'll slow down the truck, toss them the box, and vroom back. We will repeat this ad nauseum all day until the basement is empty, or Mr. IQ drops down dead, whichever comes first.

Ooooh, I'm very much looking forward to this weekend now.

Bad Mom

2007-03-05T12:19:00.000-06:00

...I may have to turn off the comment section for this post, already I can feel the waves of disapproval wafting off my computer screen...

My dad finally had his hip replacement surgery. When we went to the hospital to visit he was all morphed up on pain killers and white as a ghost. He was also wearing a pair of white tights. "You look like a medieval prince, dad," I said fondly, but I guess experiencing pain and being forced to wear pantyhose just wasn't a good combination for him, and he growled at me. My dad has never growled at me in my life, and I must confess, it made me feel terrible. Note to self: No more references to dad's faggy post-surgery attire until he gets his sense of humour back.

I can't remember the last time I was in a hospital. My dad was lucky, he was bunking with another hip replacement guy and he got the bed beside the window. This was good news for me, too, because I went with my mom to visit, and had he been in the other bed there would have been no place for me to sit. As it was, I got the window ledge, not the most comfortable spot in the world, and knowing my ass was getting little radiator line indentations sitting there was not that pleasant. Mmmm, it sure was nice and warm though. And I especially enjoyed stuffing my face with my dad's Get Better Soon chocolates. I had downed approximately half the box and was sitting there enjoying the sugar rush when a nurse came running into the room with a look of absolute horror on her face. I figured the guy in the next bed was dying or something, but no, she headed straight towards...me.

"Look, it is totally your decision, you're the mom," she said breathlessly, "but that floor is absolutely filthy, you might want to reconsider letting your baby crawl around on it."

I looked down at Baby Fangs playing contentedly on the floor. Visions of sick old men lying in pools of vomit, feces and HIV-infected blood came rushing into my head. Yuck! But...then again... hmmm... you know.... she sure looked happy crawling down there... and those little snacks she kept finding and shoving into her mouth meant that I wouldn't have to feed her lunch... Damn that Nurse Busybody all to hell, I thought, because, really, did I have any other choice but to pick her up and do the Good Mom act? That sucked. Baby Fangs is perfect, but she's still a baby with the attention span of a 37-year-old pack rat trying to clear out a basement. Entertaining her is not that fun when you are sitting uncomfortably on a radiator with metal ridges pressing into your bum. Also, she's getting pretty heavy and holding 23 pounds of squirming flesh isn't easy. So when the coast was clear and Nurse Ratchet was out of sight, I put her down again. Unfortunately, she came back. And this time, she didn't hide her disgust.

"She has something in her mouth, you know," she said severely.

"Oh, yah, right, I..."

"It's a USED THERMOMETER LID," she said, raising her voice a little. When I didn't react immediately, she repeated impatiently, "It's USED. You don't know where it's been."

"Ooops, I thought it was a, uh, juice box straw," I said, totally lying, and yanked it out of her mouth. I'm still uncertain as to what the big deal was, I mean, it was the LID, not an actual thermometer that had been in someone's mouth. "Look lady, this baby is a survivor," I wanted to say, but I knew this would not rid me of the nurse's disapproving stare, so for the remainder of the visit I kept old Fangsie in my arms. What a waste of energy! Our house is at least fifty thousand times filthier, not to mention more dangerous than any dirty hospital floor: Her chance of nosocomial infection is really pretty small compared to the risks she takes living with us in this styhole.

I know I often make references to this place being a bomb site, but now that the big clean-out has begun in earnest, it's absolutely insane. I did the smartest thing I've ever done in my life, and told Mr. IQ's parents that their granddaughter was almost killed last week, and they have rallied to my support. His dad is driving into town this week with his truck, and he's gonna help move all the excess crap into a rented storage space for us. This was his excellent idea. I love him. I know it's a temporary, not to mention ridiculous, solution, but until Monsieur IQ figures out a thing or two, it's the best thing we can do. Perhaps by next week I'll be able to post pictures of two lovely, empty rooms.

PS: It's been five days since we made the trip to the hospital. Baby Fangs has never been healthier.

Collapse

2007-03-02T20:34:00.000-06:00

...today, we start a new trend here at WSS, a fairytale approach to the beginning of each post in the form of a very large first letter. Why? So my life can have a fairytale ending, duh!.......

Eureka moments don't usually come after seeing one's baby almost killed right before one's eyes.

No.

Historically, much more mundane events have led to a Big Flash. An apple falling on a head, for example, or a rotund body lowering itself into a bath and causing water to rise. Such humdrum events led to great leaps in scientific thought, but this week's terrifying little experience will not, I'm afraid, affect anyone other than my own little family unit here. So maybe it wasn't a eureka moment after all, maybe it was just an epiphany. Or maybe it wasn't an epiphany, maybe it was just a little reality jolt. Hmmm, maybe I should just shut up and tell you what happened.

I guess I need to backtrack a bit.

Two weeks ago, I went to see my principal about the possibility of working part-time next year. I was very up front and professional with him. I told him I was unorganized. I told him I had two kids now. I told him I couldn't handle 18 hour days filled with nothing but work work work work work. I told him I would go insane. I said I'd rather be poor than a tired, ragged hag. Then I cried.

My principal was very kind. "Why Whippersnapper," he said, "You don't have to be unorganized. Your life can run smoothly, even if you're working full-time. Don't you know that all you need is a bulletin board?"

Heh?

He explained. Seems that him and the Mrs. ( a pair of freakishly organized robots whose personalities are so tightly and precisely wound up you could bounce quarters off them) were also feeling things were a little chaotic, and so they bought a bulletin board. Apparently, it totally helped straighten out their lives and now everything runs with military precision. Everything, everything, everything they do is organized on it. Kids! Work! Cleaning schedule! Bowel movements! Fellatio! Everything! Scheduled! On! That! Mother! Stuffing! Board!!!

"And the best part is," he said, "We always leave Saturday afternoons free. It's very important to leave some room for spontaneity, you know."

Riiiight. Save some room for spontaneity.

To make a long story short he told me he would not consider giving me part-time, and that I should go get a bulletin board. Driving home, I considered this. We certainly have bulletin boards; why, Mr. IQ has at least three that I know of rotting down in that basement of ours. I imagined digging one out and propping it up on his mountains of crap with a strict but perky note tacked to it: TIDY UP NOW, IQ! Would it really work?

Ha ha ha. NO OF COURSE IT WOULDN'T BLOODY WELL WORK.

Segue into this week.

Mr. IQ and I, as you all know, are both slobs, and the consequences of this have proven frankly frightening from an aesthetic point of view. Being a girl slob, though, I have some standards, and my standards are, keep the living room, bedrooms and bathroom superficially clean at all costs. So when Mr. IQ's stack of important papers had sat on the living room chair for too long, I did what any good little non-perfectionist housekeeper would do. I shimmied the seat cushion out from under them, and gently placed it on top. DaDa, all tidy! DaDa, out of sight! DaDa, totally, totally, TOTALLY out of mind. I immediately forgot they were there. So when he spent the weekend looking for his stuff, I couldn't help him. That's why he was grumpy on Sunday morning, incidentally. He had a paper due the next day, and couldn't find his notes for it. Because I had covered them with a seat cushion. Arghh. I'll spare you the details, but when we found them, the scene wasn't pretty. It had me thinking about my principal and his family a lot. Maybe they really do have it all figured out after all. Perhaps, thanks to the bulletin board, their lives are just a clear, smooth sailing ride with days filled with sunshine and lollipops and smiling faces. If so, I was jealous of them.

Thus began a week where everything just fell apart.

First: A water pipe (or something) burst in the basement, flooding the thing. Because I am an optimist who is not terribly rooted in reality, I decided this could be a good thing. Even if it cost us thousands of dollars, all the crap Mr. IQ has down there would obviously have to go, and as far as I'm concerned, it would be worth any price just to get that space cleared up.

Then: All our east-facing windows started to leak water. Drip drip drip drip drip noises filled the house 24/7. Of course, these windows are in the two disaster rooms, the office and the box-filled TV room. Drip drip drip drip. Oh, I sure can understand why Chinese Water Torture works, the sound alone would drive you nuts. Drip drip drip drip drip drip. Again, I hoped all the books were being destroyed, even if replacing the drywall ended up costing us thousands. Really, that's what I thought.

So: There I was, a slob, true, but a girl slob, sitting in a house with a basement filled with rotting wet things, and two rooms where the drywall was slowly being destroyed by dripping water. I felt miserable. I went into the box-filled TV room and was standing there thinking, "Just rent a U-Haul while he's out and GET RID OF IT ALL. IT HAS TO GO!!" when suddenly a big pile of heavy, book-filled boxes collapsed and landed within two feet of Baby Fangs. Really. If it had landed on her, she would be dead right now. Really. Really. Now, I'm not the kind of person who shows off about her kids, but Baby Fangs really is a perfect baby. She never cries. Never. But when the avalanche of book boxes landed at her feet, she screamed like someone had stuck a knife in her eye. And I cried too. Because I just can't stand this anymore. All this stuff everywhere, little bits of paper I'm not allowed to throw out, little "treasures" that are really nothing but junk, and books: Books, books, books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books book boobs books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books books everywhere I go. The areas containing his stuff are, frankly, dirty. And now they are wet too. The combination has sent me over the edge.

Obviously something has to happen. The near-death of Baby Fangs has brought this home to me LOUD AND CLEAR. As far as I can see, there are three things I can do:

1. Leave him. But I can't. I finally have him bringing me coffee in bed every morning, and I just can't start all over again and train another one. It takes too long. I'm too old.

2. Lie and say I'm not coming back until he clears everything out and move into my parents' for a few weeks. But I can't do this either. It would mean living with my parents for a few weeks. I love my parents, but honestly, I think I'd rather move into a tent under an inner-city bridge than stay at their place for an extended period. NOT AN OPTION.

3. Get him to change. Obviously, we can't live the bulletin board life, but surely there is a happy medium we can find and be happy about? His daughter was almost killed this week, for crying out loud. And I'm unhappy. Surely he can see there are more important things in the world than owning stuff. Surely now he can see we've reached the tipping point, both literally and figuratively.

***

And then, in the middle of a terrible week, I find that Pamela has nominated me for a February Perfect Post award. Wow. Talk about the gray clouds parting! Thank-you! That, and the following song helped get me through this week. Thank God for perky music and swell blog friends. I tell you. Without them, honestly, I'd be locked up in the crazy house right now. I really think I would be.

Later: Oh, just the luck I'm having, the video I'm trying to post isn't appearing. I'll try to get it on later, I guess. Grrrrrr.

Family Time

2007-02-25T23:51:00.000-06:00

..."When a family eats together, they make contact with each other. When contact is made, many messages are sent to each family member. Love, caring and support are communicated. This leads to a build up of a trusting family. This in turn communicates respect for the family unit and places importance on the relevance of family. And what follows is the increase of self-esteem in the family." (Focus on the Family)....

There is a member of my family who is a bit of an ontrol-cay eak-fray. It's sort of her defining feature, which is why I may have to lapse into my rusty Latin whenever I make reference to it: She's a freaking ath-may ofessor-pray, and if she knows I have a blog, she's obviously got the brains to find it, you'd think. Anyway, everyday she visits the Kraft Canada site, a reference place set up for those two-income families that have no time to do anything and are going nuts. All you have to do is name three ingredients you have in your cupboard, and presto, it digs up a recipe you can make for dinner. I went there once, but was feeling snarky so typed in:

1. Glass of Chianti
2. Fava beans
3. Human liver

"Sorry, we were unable to find a recipe with those items," the screen read after a totally sweet and endearing search. (Has any one person or thing EVER worked so hard to try and help me before, despite being so little deserving of aid?) (Answer: NO.)

I guess what I want you to glean from the above story is that we're not really the Plan-Our- Meals-Ahead-of-Time kind of people around here. So this morning, I was rather pleasantly surprised to see that Mr. IQ had actually thought about breakfast before he'd gone to bed last night and made a big pan of overnight French toast. High Intensity was beside herself with joy. Her breakfast diet consists almost exclusively of porridge, and I am VERY stingy with the brown sugar. Thus she lives in a state of almost constant sugar deprivation. The knowledge that she was going to have French toast for breakfast had her almost swooning with excitement.

Oh, it was such a nice and thoughtful idea. But choosing a hearty peasant bread fortified with the bold taste of caraway seeds and dill, and delicately blending it with sugar, eggs and a soupcon of vanilla was, most unfortunately, just not going to work. Not that I knew that when I eagerly took my first bite. Oh boy! French toast! Oh boy! Oh boy. Oh.... oh... oh, my holy good lord. It tasted bad. It tasted oh so terribly, horribly, unbelievably bad.

Now, Mr. IQ has a good sense of humour. He really does. Something in his eyes, however, told me that this was one of those mornings where his old humourous self had been replaced by someone who was not in the mood to have his caraway/dill-flavoured French toast criticized and rejected by anyone. This meant I was going to have to lie. I was going to have to lie to save his dignity. I was going to have to lie to save my life.

"Oh ma goo'neth," I said brightly, "thith ith weally goo'!'" I found talking and simultaneously not allowing the bolus of food to touch my taste buds again rather difficult, so I tried making a happy "wow-this- is-so-delicious" noise instead. Unfortunately, my "mmmmmm" came out sounding like a dying man's moan. There was no choice but to swallow. Ugh. There were at least twenty more bites to go. What was I going to do? Luckily, Baby Fangs was crawling around under the table, and I managed to get some of the larger pieces off my plate and into her unprotesting little mouth without him really noticing.

High Intensity, meanwhile, was totally freaking out. (She hasn't learned to read faces yet, a trait she's just going to have to learn if she hopes to stay alive around here.) "UGHGHGH!! THIS IS TERRIBLE!! I HATE THIS !! NOW I'M GOING TO STARVE TO DEATH!!!" she screamed. The disappointment was more than she could take. She collapsed over the table like she had been shot in the stomach. Then she burst into tears.

Like I said, Mr. IQ is usually a big, good-natured bear, but, um, not this morning. Howling with rage, he grabbed what was remaining in the pan, ran into the kitchen, and dumped the entire contents into the garbage. "I can't believe how ungrateful you all are!!" he shouted, "I'm never making breakfast again!!" He did not return to the dining room, and instead stomped off to take a shower. Note: He didn't eat more than one bite of his French toast either. I looked around the room, and broke out into a relieved sweat. With him gone, we would not have to pretend to eat any more of it. Quietly, I cleaned up the remains, and made... oatmeal. High Intensity ate hers in front of the TV watching Elmo, still whimpering a little. Mr. IQ sulkily ate his in front of the computer and I ate mine in the living room. Baby Fangs didn't have any. Instead, she found a secluded, dark corner and in her typically sweet, uncomplaining manner, silently spewed large chunks of caraway/dill French toast on to the floor and stared quizzically at the regurgitated remains.

I don't think Focus on the Family would be very pleased with us.

My First Post Written While Nursing a Hangover Ever

2007-02-22T21:27:00.000-06:00

...she wrote a tad less enthusiastically...

So humiliated. If I didn't phone you, I sent you an email, and if I didn't email, I left a blog comment. I have no clue what I wrote but I'm sure it was all grammatically incorrect, full of spelling mistakes and very maudlin.

Getting drunk with access to technology is so embarrassing these days.

My First Post Written While Intoxicated EVER!!

2007-02-21T23:21:00.000-06:00

....hic.....

WHoooooooooooooooooooooo, am I DRUNK!!!!!!!!

I know I make a lot of references to booze, but the reality is, I don't actually drink that much.

Proof: I am drunk on the bottle of wine my mother gave me LAST FALL!!!

As always, being drunk has filled me with lots of insightful wisdom (???!!!!!??), but my profoundness is beyond the scope of my humble little blog. So I'll just leave you with some memorable quotes from the evening.

Eight-year-old sister of High Intensity's Play Date Friend to her mother while climbing the stairs to look for her pants: "And you thought OUR house was a disaster, mom!"

Mr. IQ, after returning home from a twelve hour day at work and school: "You're drunk... and not that charming!"

Me, saying good-bye to Play Date's mother tonight at 10:17 PM, after ten hours of heavy Playdating: "Hey, come back soon, this has been FUN!!!!!!!"

Guilt, But Not Really

2007-02-20T23:04:00.000-06:00

...sorry Mr. IQ...not that you ever really minded...

I don't know if it's my guilty conscience bugging me or what, but it seems like every time I read a blog these days, the writer in question is saying something nice about her little love partner. The Constant Whiner's husband was kind to her when she was recently ill; DoctorMama's husband is a mensch. And of course Heather CAN'T say anything crappy about Marcel -- he really IS perfect... and I'm posting a picture at the bottom of this page just to prove it. Just kidding, sadly, the image of his walnut-cracking adult buns will have to wait for another day... I can't find it, damn it.

A few weeks ago, I went on a quest to find a blog that contained complaints about a husband. It took a while, but finally I found one. Absolutely spellbound, I read in relieved fascination how TOM made this poor woman's life hell. He made her grumpy. He made her say things she regretted. He brought her down big time, and made the days difficult to get through. Good lord, he even made her retain water. "Wow, this TOM is a real asshole!" I thought happily, "Yay!"

Boo. It took me a while to figure out, because I'm not always the sharpest knife in the drawer, but it turned out TOM was a coy reference to her "Time Of the Month." Ooh, how cutsie. Barf.

Crap.

OK, so no-one else complains about their partner. This may seem like a pathetic attempt to employ some (not-so) clever sophistry to try to assuage my guilty feelings, but as far as I'm concerned, the fact that I complain about him is actually proof that things are pretty darn good. I mean, if I came home and found him prancing around in front of a mirror in a flowery bra and pair of silky drawers, it's not like I would run to the computer and start blogging about it. (Dear blog world, today I had the most terrible surprise...) In fact, if things were really awful, I don't think I would ever mention him at all. So you see? This proves that my complaints are TRIVIAL because I rant about them ALL THE TIME.

Last night before I went to sleep I gave Mr.IQ a jab in the ribs. "Hey, Sugartits," I said, "Does my blog piss you off?"

"Huuuugh? No...."

"When you think about it," I said, "it reflects badly on me, and not you at all."

"Uh huh."

"Because I've noticed no-one else does it. Complains about their partner. But no-one is perfect, I mean, all husbands have their little peccadilloes. But I'm the only one who actually whines about them. So it just means that I'm not very nice."

"Mmmmm."

"There's a big chunk of chocolate fudge in the fridge right now."

"Uhhhhh."

"That Internet girl you had a crush on has unlocked her site and she's posted nude pictures of herself there."

"Zzzzzzz..."

I don't think he's too concerned.

Happy Year of the Pig!

2007-02-18T22:50:00.000-06:00

...we've been celebrating it around here for the last four years....

Ten years ago when I lived in South Korea, it was the Year of the Tiger, and no-one was reproducing if they could help it. Tigers are not nice people, apparently, and have a hard time finding mates. No-one wants to be married to one, I guess having a tiger in your bed isn't all it's cracked up to be. Aharharharhar, get it? Me neither. Anyway, most North Americans I knew thought it was ridiculous, and were not shy about expressing their very superior western opinions with regards to the Chinese zodiac.

About half-way though my year there, a Canadian who was about as stupid as they come arrived at my school. Her first sentence to me was, "Hi, what's your name, what's your sign?"

"Uh, Whippersnapper? I'm a... Leo?" I said.

"Oh," she snarled. And for the rest of our time together, she barely spoke to me. She was a Virgo, and apparently us Leos and Virgos don't get along so well together. Like oil and vinegar, Bailey's and vodka and a Chinese/Italian restaurant that problematically names itself Chittily (it went under, sur-prise!), lions and virgins clash. That was certainly true in our case. I sure couldn't stand HER, that's for certain.

Leos are supposed to be bossy, headstrong things, the kind of people who enter a room and TAKE OVER. Being almost six feet tall, you might think that was true of me, but, um, SO NOT, I'm shy, dude. (Unless I'm in my classroom and Billy is talking through my lesson on carbon bonds. Then WATCH OUT.) A long time ago, during a prolonged and worrisome period of unemployment, my own mother suggested, and only in a half-joking way, that I pursue a career in the S and M field. As she so delicately phrased it, when I put on a pair of tall, leather boots I assume an Ilsa of Auschwitz look that could prove profitable with the corporate CEO crowd who enjoy being forced to lick toilet seats in their spare time. But, uh, no thanks. My birthday may fall in the summer, but deep at heart, I'm an Aquarius. At least, that's what I tell zodiac freaks now, when they ask.

I mention all this because the Chinese New Year, for reasons mentioned above, always makes me reminisce about my year in the Orient, and that idiot who refused to speak to me because our signs clashed. That's why I actually paused on the Horoscope page of Saturday's Globe and Mail yesterday to see what it had to say about us obnoxious, vain, overbearing lions. It said:

Partners and colleagues have been rather demanding of late and if there are any simmering tensions they are likely to come to the boil this weekend. You may feel justified in losing your temper but you will gain more in the long-term if you stay calm. You cannot afford to lose your head.

Well, I have been trying to stay calm. I've been trying to stay calm for the entire four years we've lived in this house. "Simmering tensions??" I've been placed in a pot and slow-cooked into a gluey, miserable, gelatinous wreck of a human who can barely remember a time when life was cool and tidy and I danced through days with grace and ease. Because of THIS!

And THIS!

Arghh, and THIS!!!!!

No. No, I'm NOT going to show you pictures of our basement and garage, you nosy bunch of peeping toms! I have some pride left, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Pride, maybe, but not much left with regards to mental well-being. Basically, I think I've really snapped. Our "clearing-out-the- office-so-we-can-go-on-and-lead- normal-lives" project has transformed our home from just an ordinary squalid hovel to Chaos Central, a place that fills my heart with sadness and despair every time I walk through the door. I post the above pictures so that you can understand, if not totally relate to, my plight. (None of you would be stupid enough to allow your house to get this out of hand, I am certain.) I've tried to explain to him that I am actually VERY easy-going: Most women could never stand this, not for one second, and would have told him to get out and take all of his lousy junk with him A LONG TIME AGO. But everything I say just falls on deaf ears, and my complaints are dismissed as those of a common nag. I recently whined about my situation to a friend of mine (male) who said, "But Whippersnapper, you knew he was a slob and a pack rat from the beginning." Meaning, "You knew what you were getting into, suck it up babe." I guess he has a point, but the reality is, things lose their charm after you've lived with them for a while. My father, with his strong Scandinavian accent, charmed the pants off my mom (literally, I guess, ugh!) by making pronunciation gaffs in words like "locomotive" (he always stressed the second syllable, making it sound like a laxative.) 40 years later, however, "charmed" would be the last word you would use to describe my mom's reaction when he mispronounces a word, let me tell you.

***

Doo dee doo, now that I've vented about him, I've got to go and find him so he can help me post the above pictures. I already know what he'll do. He'll read this, say worriedly, "But now everyone will think I'm a big slob," shake his good-natured head sorrowfully, and then post the pictures. 'Cause in his own special, disorganized way, he is a VERY nice guy.

PS: Regarding the graffiti on the boxes: High Intensity's name is NOT really Violet.

Three Things, Totally Unrelated

2007-02-15T23:47:00.000-06:00

...it's supposed to be +4 C on Sunday, and so help me, I've got my bathing suit ready...

Oh yay. According to Mr. IQ, CBC radio ran a "Debunking All Them Winter Myths" series last week, and going for a half-naked jaunt down the street does NOT burn off calories at a faster rate than, say, walking in circles around the dining room table like the Bronte sisters used to do. Arghh. You know what this means, don't you, (she typed semi-hysterically), it means that it's official, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING GOOD ABOUT LIVING IN THIS FROZEN HELLHOLE AT ALL. NOTHING, NADA, ZIPPO and if I stay here for one more winter, I'M GOING TO DIE.

So we're going to have to move.

The problem is selling the house. We'll need a good ad, of course, so I've been working on one.

Four bedroom house for sale. No, you CANNOT go into the basement. And get the hell away from that office! Auughgh, don't open the kitchen cupboards! That looked like it hurt. Say, check out those hardwood floors! And the cute ornamental fireplace!

Within pleasant walking distance of charming comfort women and cozy crack dens. Cheerful yellow DO NOT CROSS police ribbons add a colourful, festive feel to the neighbourhood.

Serious inquiries only.

I'll never get out of here.

Not only am I cold, but I appear to have developed yet another physical abnormality to add to my general feeling of malaise. No, I don't suddenly have a tiny penis growing out of my armpit, nor have I sprouted a third buttock. But on the weekend I discovered a tiny hair growing from the bottom of my left eyelid and poking straight into my eyeball like a needle. Holy crap, did it HURT. I performed the necessary operation with a pair of scissors and a quart of gin for company, but now I'm scared I'm destined for a lifetime of eyelid hair removal, in addition to my 'stache maintenance. Jeez, I didn't know old age would mean all this extra hairiness.

Hey! I went over to my parents for dinner tonight, and after the main course, my mom presented me with an assortment of delicious cheese. "Have you been to Superstore?" she asked, "they've got a lot of really good cheese sales on right now..."

Feeling Scroogey

2007-02-13T23:55:00.000-06:00

....what IS the equivalent Bah Humbug expression for St. Valentine's Day ANYWAY?....

I'll be honest. I think Valentine's Day is stupid. What's more, I don't even think men and women should be allowed to live together, at least not to the point where familiarity starts breeding things (and I don't mean small children.) I'll probably change my mind again in a few days when I've calmed down, but unfortunately I was recently traumatized by an event that has burned a hole in my delicate and fragile psyche, and it has left me scarred people, absolutely scarred. It happened a few days ago, when I strolled innocently into the bathroom. There he was, That Guy... sitting on the pot, pants down around his ankles and (ugh, I can hardly write it) contentedly reading from a copy of.... Edith Sitwell's English Eccentrics. Stunned, I stared at him, and he stared at me. Red Alert! Red Alert! my brain screamed, nothing good here, get away, get away! Slowly I backed off as one would from a rabid dog or a knife-wielding Crazy Man with underpants on his head. Five minutes later the bathroom door opened and he silently emerged and disappeared into the office. We haven't spoken of it since. But both of us know things have irrevocably changed, and we can never go back.

I know you may be thinking, "English Eccentrics? What's the big deal?" I can't really explain, and that's just the thing: You'd have to live with him for a while to truly understand. I'll simply try to summarize my unhappy feelings by saying, jeez.. couldn't he have been sitting there with a copy of Playboy or Naughty Schoolgirl Hussies or something more... NORMAL?? **sigh** It's just so.... weird.

Actually, my antipathy towards the Day o' Love may well have deep-seated genetic origins, and the reason I say this is because I suspect old High Intensity may have inherited them. Precious angel! She sat at the dining room table tonight, all innocence and sweetness, making her Valentine's Day cards for her classmates and shouting things like, "Ronald! I HATE Ronald! Why do I have to make a card for RONALD?!" The affection I felt for her as she spouted off stuff like that knew no bounds. I don't know, something about a misanthropic four-year-old just warms the cockles of your heart.

Okay, now you're all shocked. Look, from what she's told me, Ronald IS a jerk. Anyway, here's the card she made for him. Great, isn't it? Look out, Hallmark, that's all I can say.

Happy Valentine's Day, all you lovers.

One Paragraph Post , Plus Addendum in Form of Irritated Growl

2007-02-11T21:53:00.000-06:00

...or Winter on the Canadian Prairies...Couldn't we just go and piss off North Korea or something so they could bomb us out of our misery?...

The only good thing about the weather being so damn miserably cold for so damn miserably long is that if you DO pig out on some, oh, I don't know, defrosted discount Brie for example, (it really DOES freeze rather well, incidentally), all you have to do to get rid of that horrible "ooooh, I really did it to myself this time" feeling, is take a quick, inadequately-dressed stroll to the end of the street and back. Your body goes, Holy Crap, it's FREEZING out here, metabolize, METABOLIZE! and voila! Excess calories burned off, and without any ridiculous 45 minute workout on the exercise machine. The only obstacle is summing up the will power to get your butt out there. Which is what I'm trying to do right now. Unfortunately, Mr. IQ has fiddled with the computer, and now every ten minutes or so this little bubbly thing looms up obnoxiously and tells me the current temperature, which is very discouraging. I suppose if you lived in Palm Springs, this would be a welcome, indeed smugly charming feature that you would wish to install to remind yourself that you are living where the rest of the world, especially all those stupid, half-frozen Canadians, would wish to live. However living, as we do, in this ridiculous, frozen hellhole, why the heck would I wish to be reminded that it is -31 C out there every TEN #$@%8$%#! MINUTES????? Is he CRAZY???

Garrgh.

I Love The World at Six

2007-02-10T23:54:00.000-06:00

...news hour, news hour, rah rah rah...

A lot of people say that they don't watch, listen or read the news because it is too depressing. In the last few weeks, though, I've found quite the opposite to be true. All I hear seems to confirm that I am NOT in fact as crazy, weird or slobby as I could be, and that can only be good news. Case in point:

1. When I first became aware of Mr IQ's little Internet crush, I certainly never strapped on a diaper, packed a bag with an assortment of lethal weapons, and headed off to Oxford to do some damage. Now, that's REALLY weird.

2. Apparently Robert Pickton is claiming he has no clue how a bucket with a head floating in it came to be found in his home. As a friend of mine said, "You know, I've let my housekeeping get a little out of hand before, but, um, not to the point where I would have failed to notice a severed head in a bucket lying about..." Yah! Yah! I'm not THAT disorganized!!

Actually, it's pretty bad around here, to the point where we have managed to misplace both of our cordless phones. We've whistled and shouted and called them by name, but alas, they appear to be gone so Mr. IQ went down to the basement the other day and hauled up one of his (eight) rotary dial phones. (Oh yay. I can write another "Great Things About Living With a Pack Rat" list, she wrote dejectedly.) We can't get our messages now, but I still kind of like it. The ring is so cheezy and retro -- every time someone calls I feel like I'm in a 70s cop show and I half expect a macho voice to tell me to meet someone at Joe's Bar to pick up "the package." What I'm trying to say is that running for the phone these days makes me feel like I'm in an episode of the Rockford Files. Fun, eh, aren't you jealous of my life?

The mothers of the world are driving me absolutely nuts. Every time someone with a baby sees me with Baby Fangs, I'm accosted and interrogated on what she has "accomplished." They wait impatiently for me to finish mumbling, "well, she sure is pooping a lot more these days..." before breathlessly running down the list of everything their kid can do (which is always A LOT.) One mother I actually know was obnoxious enough to slow down the car, roll down her window (it was -37 C out), sing out, "Baby Annoying Genius is cah-raw-ling!" and then drive away without so much as offering to give me a lift. As I trudged home to my concrete pillar of a baby (she just started crawling this week, but on that day, she wasn't even close to getting off her launching pad) I decided I'd HAD ENOUGH. So now when I see a mother heading my way to have the Comparison Chat (I can always tell, they look crazy, absolutely crazy) I give Fangsie a good jab in the ribs; not enough to hurt her, but just enough to sort of piss her off. This makes her scowl, and bare all her teeth and I'll tell you, this absolutely stops these women cold in their tracks. They pause, just long enough to shoot me a look of respect, and then scurry off, surreptitiously glancing at my chest to check for blood stains. Ha! I win! 'Cause at the end of the day, it's all about who would survive the dog eat dog world that would accompany global destruction and the ensuing breakdown of society, and in that department, my baby totally rules. Cuz no one would mess with da Fangs, ya know what I'm saying?

High Intensity is having a hard time in nursery school: A bunch of girls are being really mean to her. So I'm going over to the school on Monday to ~~beat those girls up~~ talk to the teacher. She's only four years old for goodness sakes, she's way too young to have to be going through this. And it's kind of breaking my heart. My baby. Why does life have to be so wretched and mean sometimes?

The Competition

2007-02-07T00:01:00.000-06:00

...this post lacks a certain credibility, for reasons that will be made clear at the end... but I swear she DID (DOES) exist...

Crisis has hit the House of Whippersnapper!! Mr. IQ has fallen for another woman!! That's right, some pretentious, neurotic American attending Oxford University has stolen his bastard, two-timing heart!

Things have been a little tense around here lately, because, as you know, I have been spending the days holed up alone with the kids. Sometimes I sneak in here and check out a few blogs, but mostly there is no real opportunity to sit down and really catch up on everyone. When I finally get the two of them to bed, and have the whole house to myself, guess who waltzes through the door and demands immediate computer rights? Oh, you know it. Him. I have to sneak in when he's in the bathroom and quickly check in on DoctorMama (who I'm too lazy to link right now, but she's over there on the left.) In other words, my blogging habit has become furtive, and feels slightly illegal. Yet I must do it, or I become shaky and miserable. I might as well take up heroin.

Anyway, because my computer time is so limited, you can imagine that when HE is hogging it, I am never far away, hovering always on the periphery and suspiciously making sure he does not stray from the task at hand. Naturally then, me knickers got into a wee bit of a knot when he began visiting this one particular blog site a little more than I deemed appropriate for someone who had "ten thousand papers due immediately."

"What the hell?" I exclaimed the 738th time I saw Alice in Wonderland pictures pop up on the computer screen. "Why are you THERE again?" "There" being the Lewis Carrol-inspired blog page of some lovely, long haired girl half my age that I (that's right, I) stumbled upon last December.

"No reason," he said, blushing, and hastily left the site. I stared at the blank screen and then at him. The true meaning of it all hit me with hurricane force.

"My goodness," I said slowly, "you've got a crush on her, don't you?"

"Oh, hell, yeah," he said, grinning sheepishly.

People, I just cannot compete. She takes dreamy pictures of herself staring up into the clouds, and actually displays them on her site. (Every shot taken of me since 2001 has me glaring into the camera with a "get that damn camera out of my face before I punch you in the stomach" expression.) She appears to speak German and French in addition to her native English. I can say "fart" in Korean, and that's about it. ("Pong-goo" -- great, isn't it?) She is a feminist, post-modernist, intellectual scholar. I am a crappy little high school teacher on maternity leave who doesn't even know what post-modernism means. (Does it have something to do with those weird movies that have creepy, mute people peeing into concrete milk cartons?) She ends her ~~solipsistic, whiny rants~~ cynical, yet strangely provocative posts with phrases like, "fuck you, I'm anarchy!" I only drop F bombs when driven to it by several days of housebound despair.

Later: HA HA HA, I just went to her site to link her, and she's made it accessible only to her friends!! Cut off, buddy, COLD TURKEY for you!! (I wonder if she suspected that she was being stalked???)

And later still: In retrospect, it's probably just as well she has cut herself off from all strangers. It's probably against the laws of blog etiquette to link another blog to make fun of it. So I'm very grateful that fate prevented me from being a jerk. Having said that, I must confess I'm rather sorry you can't see her site, and her picture... they were... something else.

Good Things About Living with a Pack Rat, Part II

2007-02-06T04:05:00.000-06:00

...sigh...

As you know from last day's post, the weather has gotten miserably cold again, and I have (once again) spent the last few days cooped up in the house with two small children and lots and lots and lots of stuff. 90% of the crap is books, absolutely ridiculous when you consider that we're not even particularly smart people. No great leaps of brilliance are coming out of this house, that's for sure, except for possibly Baby Fangs: Her glass-shattering, nipple-piercing, eardrum destroying shriek, mastered just in time for the shut-in, must surely must indicate vocal precociousness of some kind or another. Anyway, whenever Mr. IQ comes waltzing home with a new book, my line is always, "Well, we could use a book or two around this place to make us look smart or something." It was funny once. Now I say it in a warbling voice, brushing back tears.

Once again, though, my cheery optimism and unfailing good humour will see me though this. And to help keep me focused on the sunny (albeit frigid) side of life, I've come up with a few more great things about living a pack-rat.

1. Last summer, CBC ran that Ulysses challenge, where every Canadian was supposed to spend the only two good weather months of the year slogging through James Joyce's 1000+ page classic. Although I was doubtful I could do it, I nevertheless spent the better part of three days hunting through all our stupid piles and shelves and mountains of books trying to find our copy of the damn thing. I couldn't find it in time , but I DID stumble upon an old copy of Finnegan's Wake by the same author and flipping through the pages I found a FIFTY DOLLAR BILL!!! Guess what we used it for? A trip to the thrift store, and MORE BOOKS!!! Ha ha ha!!(light tinkly laughter with only a slight, shrill edge to it.)

2. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins. Thus being house proud is definitely a one-way ticket to the deepest pits of hell for ALL ETERNITY!! And despite my many failings, no one could accuse me of having a swelled head about this place! Too much pack rat crap strewn everywhere!! When the doorbell rings, we all fall into panic mode, and run around like crazy closing doors. We also have to frantically search for Mr. IQ's pants. (Calm down, he has his boxers on.) It's very mortifying. In the summer I can avoid having anyone see this place by saying, "Oh, the weather's too nice to be indoors!!" But when the temperature is -40 C (which is what it was yesterday, today we're apparently going to be spoiled with a balmy -37 C) well, it's a little rude to leave 'em standing on the doorstep. What's worse, I wonder? Being known as a rude, unsociable SOB, or as a slobby stasher of stuff? I wonder. Anyway, I'm not going to hell, because I am not proud! (More laughter: HAHAHA! A slight neurotic tinge to the chuckles can be detected now.)

3. Well, we all know that driving cars contributes to the world's carbon emission problem. So by not driving the car ... blah, blah blah... less greenhouse gases.... blah blah .... virtuous, clean-living lifestyle... blah blah... I'm better than you, because you were in a car today... blah blah blah..blah blah....blah..wah...wagh...waah... wah... waaaaaaaaaahh... WAAAAAAAGHHHHGHHHHH!!!!!!! (Choking, guttural sobs. Translation: Severely distressed. Send help immediately.)

BY THE WAY: Check out the time that I am posting this. Yes, that is accurate, I have totally been shut off from the computer for days now, and, truthfully, this whole month has been a bit of a disaster, computer-time wise. To get unlimited, undisturbed access I have to sneak down in the middle of the night illicitly, like I'm off to buy crack. Grrrrr, I'll explain next time.

I's Gots Da Blues

2007-02-03T23:56:00.000-06:00

....there's another draft written, but, my God is it a bunch of maudlin crap, even in her low state, the blogger was not stupid enough to press the PUBLISH button...

I've noticed something about my brain chemistry when the temperatures plunge into the frigid zone. I lose all ability to do, well, anything. Anything good, that is. It's not SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder, it's FINTGOOTHAD, or, Fuck, I Need To Get Out Of The House Affective Disorder. Basically, I've been imprisoned in this hole for three days, and oh, crap, am I going crazy.

The long-winded explanation is locked away in a draft that is tucked away safely, and will never see the light of blog day. In brief, I will tell you that:

1) Because the pack rat has filled our garage with crap, we have been forced to park the car on the street. For those who have not spent a winter suffering on the bald prairie, I will spell out for you that this means disaster, because without a garage, you cannot plug in your car and keep the battery warm. So as I type, our frosty little Tercel is sitting out by the curb, a motionless hunk of useless metal, because OF COURSE IT WILL NOT START WHEN THE TEMPERATURE HAS HIT ABSOLUTE ZERO OUTSIDE AND IT'S NOT FREAKING PLUGGED IN.

2) We have actually had access to two vehicles for the last few weeks because Mr. IQ's parents are in Mexico and they left their van with us. This was excellent for me, because it meant that during the dark days of January, I could actually go places without having to swaddle up old Baby Fangs like she was a chunk of pork in a deep-fried Chinese dumpling.

3) Yes. Yes, I have wanted to kill Mr. Zero IQ for effectively sabotaging my one means of getting out of house during this latest cold snap. You just cannot walk to a bus stop with a small baby when it is this cold, no matter how well she is dressed. And yes, I have imagined a lot of scenarios where I deal effectively with my rage. The best one has him returning home, and I'm waiting for him at the door with a martini in one hand, and a large, shiny ax in the other. "Welcome back, darling!" I say. WHACK WHACK WHACK.

Basically I've spent the last three days stuck inside, and it has NOT been good for my mental health. All day alone with two kids and good old Mr. Bladder Infection, and, frankly, he hasn't been that great company. Dr. High Intensity has been trying to cure my condition by slamming fluffy stuffed animals into my abdomen, and then asking if I feel better. "Oh, much better," I tell her and then I go upstairs and change my pants.

Laffs, laffs, laffs.

Speaking of Cultured...

2007-01-29T22:45:00.000-06:00

...we're, like, so NOT...

Mr. IQ subjected High Intensity to several days of extensive deprogramming, and she now sings that she's a joker, a smoker and a midnight poker. He assures me that this is very welcome change. I'm not so sure.

We, too, have recently changed the way we speak around here, inspired by something that played on CBC radio the other day. I've forgotten exactly who was speaking, or what, for that matter, the subject was, but at one point a very distinguished voice said what sounded like, "I swear on the balls of my father..."

"WHAT???" I asked incredulously, "Did that guy really just swear on the balls of his father??"

"Bones," said Mr. IQ patiently, "He swore on the BONES of his father."

"Oh," I said, a little disappointed. All not in vain though, now every third sentence around here begins with, "Look, I swear on the balls of my father..." One time Mr. IQ mixed it up and swore on the balls of MY father. "You just stay away from my dad's balls," I said, darkly. We both agreed that would probably be for the best.

Another phrase that has entered our vernacular as of late came about after reading an article on Prince William's suspected bride-to-be. The writer of the piece speculated that her "v-plates" were probably still intact. V-PLATES???!! Although the condition of no-one's "v-plates" are in question in this family, (well, I thought I'd write it before you could) we still manage to squeeze the phrase into a ridiculous number of conversations we have. So what with all the ball/v-plate references, we really seem to have hit cultural rock-bottom at this place. Luckily, my parents are around to at least bring some substance into the kids' lives. They came back from Cuba today, and brought High Intensity a T-shirt, beret and necklace, all plastered with a picture of Che Guevara. She wore them stoically while over at their house, but once we got home, she denounced Che as "too hairy" and stripped herself clean of all three.

Vive la revolution!

Life Goes On, Strangely

2007-01-26T21:18:00.000-06:00

I made a huge bowl of rice krispie squares last night to use up more of the excess cereal we have. After I had finished mixing everything, I realized that all the pans were in the basement, and, yes, I AM that lazy, I did NOT go down to fetch one, instead we all sat around the bowl like it was a Mongolian Hotpot, and ate it with spoons. I haven't had a lot of sweets since Christmas, so eating it I fell into a swoon, it was so delicious. It made me think of that poem by William Carlos Williams, you know, sort of a, "forgive me, wretched Earth for enjoying it, but it was so sweet and so crunchy." I am very sad right now, so it was strange to be sitting on the floor like a nomad having fun. Truthfully, it made me feel a little guilty, and more than a little weepy. But life plunges on, I guess.

Yesterday afternoon was interesting. Baby Fangs and I sat in a daze on the couch and watched in stunned, disbelieving silence as High Intensity, stripped down to nothing but a pink boa, played Verdi's The Anvil Chorus 14 times in a row and ran in circles around the house like a crazed banshee over and over and over again. I was going to write that she played it 3,987, 657 times, because that's what it felt like, but instead I wrote the actual number of times because I want you to pause and reflect how actually awful that must have been for me. I blame myself entirely, one, for showing her how to use the stereo, and two, for buying her that Kids' Classical Opera CD. The idea was to bring some culture into her life, but all it apparently is doing is preparing her for a future career as a nerd stripper. Hmmm, that actually could prove to be very lucrative now that I think about it. Well, whatever happens, "cultured" will not be the end result, not if she continues to be raised by us. In Superstore later that day, I lost her for a while. When I found her, she was in the snack aisle, staring mournfully at the potato chips and softly singing Steve Miller Band lyrics. People were staring at her slack-jawed as she crooned out, "I'm a joker, I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker." Then they looked at me. It was all very embarrassing.

***

I really hate technology. I was so proud of myself for figuring out how to post Youtube videos, and then it all got messed up. Don't tell me if you came to my site while the two postings of The Anvil Chorus was on there, because I DON"T WANT TO KNOW. If you play it, make sure you do so at high volume to get the full effect. And do play it fourteen times in a row too. Really, it will be fun.

Le Fosche (Anvil Chorus, from Opera 'Il Trovatore' Act Ⅱ)

2007-01-26T21:16:00.001-06:00