In Which We Celebrate A Pagan Fertility Festival, With Good Reason. And Chocolate.

Tags

Easter, easter bunny, easter egg, fertility, pagan rituals, parenting, pregnancy, toddlers

This was the first Easter where Owl was old enough to sort of understand what was going on.

Previous Easters may have confused him some.

WHY AM I DRESSED LIKE A RABBIT?

Anyway, we skipped the whole “Jesus rising from the dead” part of Easter (since “Jesus” and “dead” and “nailed his hands to a piece of wood” are not things he can or should understand yet) so we stuck to the pagan fertility festival part of it.

He was quite excited about the Easter bunny part.

“Mister Bunny come… come to our home… bring me… CANDY!”

“Yes, Owl, the EASTER bunny will hide candy.”

“And eggs!”

“Yes, and eggs.”

“Yes. I like him!’

“So do we, honey.”

After an argument over how much toys/candy a two year old should get for Easter, PH and I settled on hiding ten plastic eggs, five filled with stickers and five filled with lollipops.

I put a toy ball, a colouring book, and a bubble blowing kit in his basket.

Easter was FUN. Even though we hid the eggs as openly as we could, Owl only found a couple without increasingly specific hints.

“How about over there, Owl? Are there any eggs over there? No? Are you sure? Did you look on the shelf? RIGHT THERE AT EYE LEVEL? No? ARE YOU SURE? WHAT ABOUT RIGHT THERE AT THE END OF MY FINGER?”

He was so proud of himself whenever he “found” the things, too. It was very cute, in an “oh my gosh, toddlers have mush for brains” kind of a way. (Owl did not improve his apparent IQ by biting into an Easter Egg, shell and all, and munching on it quietly until I noticed and snatched it away, explaining to him that you DON’T EAT THE SHELL). All in all, “Mister Bunny” was a hit, and he struck multiple times. One of our neighbours made a drop on his behalf on our doorstep, and he got a second hunt at his friend’s house that afternoon.

PH and I are forced to “help” eat his candy while he is sleeping.

You know. To save him from himself. And also because we’re emotional eaters. Pagan fertility festivals for the win.

Getting Older – THE ORGANIZED WAY

Tags

ageing, cleaning, hoarding, Ikea, organizing, tidying, turning 30

Well, if you have to turn 30, this weekend was definitely the way to do it.

I got to sleep in, and then PH fed me breakfast. He then produced two awesome gifts – A 9 bin shelving set for organizing the toys in Owl’s room (because the pile-everything-in-a-heap method wasn’t really working) and METAMAUS, which is a book ALL ABOUT THE WRITING OF MAUS.

Is that nerdtacular or what??

So I read Metamaus until Owl’s nap time, and then we started cleaning.

Expired/Unused product from my bathroom filled HALF A GARBAGE BAG

In the afternoon my friends arrived and they helped me go through my coat closet, my shoe rack, and (most dauntingly) Owl’s bedroom closet.

You could say that Owl helped, too... if by "helped" you meant "picked things out of the garbage and placed them on the Farm Fairy's baby's head".

I packed away stuff he has outgrown, agreed to donate certain things that I don’t mind re-obtaining for my next child, and clapped with glee as his impossible-to-open closet became a tidy, well-sorted space that my child could enter safely without, oh, say, a COFFEE TABLE falling on his head.

You think I'm joking about the coffee table, but I'm not. Trust me, this is much better.

THANK YOU, PERFECT HUSBAND. This works so much better than the jumbled floor heap.

Oh, and the red chair

Which we offered up for free on Craigslist TWICE

Moby

Still enormous

and the awkwardly large coffee table

Though it did match the floors beautifully

were removed from my living room, which now actually has several contiguous feet of open space for the first time in years.

We can even fit people into the living room, now!

Then we went out for a steak dinner.

SO GOOD.

So, in the last week we have removed 18 garbage bags’ worth of stuff from our house, destined for either the dump or Value Village.

A small sampling of our refuse

Owl’s room is so tidy it looks almost barren, but the walls are not – the cross stitches that I have been storing for a shamefully long time are finally in their rightful places.

and while there is still work to be done in the bedroom and general organization needs to happen on our bookshelves, I feel quite pleased with the results.

On Sunday we went to Ikea to use the gift cards that my friends happened to give me (which I’m sure was an excellent coincidence has nothing to do with PH winking and nodding at my friends when I exclaimed in glee over their good choices).

Now we have small, moveable tables for the living room (much better for a small space) and Owl finally has his own chair.

I feel almost like a grownup.

Almost.

30 Years in 30 Seconds

Tags

age, ageing, getting older, life, life story, time, timeline

1 day old

0. Born, squall, learn to move my own body parts.

1. Learn to walk and talk and swim. Realize that the reflection in the sliding glass door is actually how other people see me.

2. Get toilet trained by a visiting aunt. Now, whenever I use the potty I say, “Auntie Helen happy?”

3. Learn to read, which means that I no longer have to pretend to read magazines which fooled no one anyway because I often held them upside down.

4. Attend pre-school. Learn that when someone asks you “how are you, today?” you aren’t actually supposed to respond honestly – just say “fine, thank you”. Learn through teacher’s example that guinea pigs should be fed foods fresh in vitamin C and not left out in the sun for prolonged periods of time.

5. Start kindergarten. When a family friend picks me up at school because my mother was in a car accident, I worry about the safety of my Popple who was in the back seat (said Popple turned up yesterday during a purge of Owl’s closet and I vetoed throwing it away). Come down with chicken pox that same night, because my mother’s day was clearly not difficult enough. Accidentally kill my goldfish, Fred and Frieda, when I fail to alert my mother that their cage is due to be cleaned.

6. Start as a “full day” instead of a “half day” student at my Montessori school. Develop a crush on a boy called Michael who has red hair and spits when he talks. Get a puppy.

Owl Signs

Tags

babies, baby sign, language, sign language, videos

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/35779800]

Is There Such Thing As Reader’s Anonymous?

Tags

addictions, books, literature, problems, reading

Hi, my name is Carol and I have a reading problem.

I can’t remember when I started reading. It seems like I’ve always had this habit, although there must have been pre-literature days in my past.

When it first started, it just seemed like a recreational thing.

The books were short and didn’t take much time – Frog And Toad Are Friends, Millions Of Cats, The Velveteen Rabbit, Mike Mulligan And His Steam Shovel – that kind of thing.

Then I started getting into harder stuff:

• Charlotte’s Web
• The Witches
• The Phantom Tollbooth
• A Wrinkle In Time
• Black  Beauty
• White Fang

By the time I was 12 years old, the habit was worsening.

• Watership Down
• My Family And Other Animals
• If Only They Could Talk
• The Sword In The Stone
• Jurassic Park
• Beautiful Joe
• To Kill A Mockingbird
• Animal Farm

I knew that I read more than a lot of people I knew, but I didn’t think I was that unusual. I just happened to know a lot of non-readers.

It wasn’t until University that people began to broach the subject with me.

Us: 1 House: 0

Tags

cleaning, dehoarding, organization

The first step in the very long list of messes to be eradicated has been completed.

BEHOLD OUR LINEN CLOSET:

IT'S SO TIDY

BEHOLD WHAT WAS THROWN AWAY/DUMPED AT VALUE VILLAGE:

to PH's disappointment, I decided against donating the cat.

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Now we just need to repeat this with every room and closet in the house.

…

…

Fun.

Snow Babbies

Tags

babies, dogs, photos, snow, walks, winter

 

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

And no, Beloved Dog doesn’t knock over Owl at any point.

Owl’s First Scholarship

Tags

child care, compassion, daycare, guilt, unemployment, work

PH and I can’t decide what to do about Owl’s child care situation.

Perhaps it is typical of us that we are turning such a non-issue into an issue.

Reasons why Owl’s care should be a non-issue:

1. Daycare Lady was the first person I called when I got The Infamous Email, because I was shaking and upset and Owl was clinging to me and going “maaaaamaaaaaaaaaaa” and I have never been so close to putting him through a wall as I felt at that moment. So she said to bring him right away, of course, and please, not to worry – that no matter what, Owl would never lose his spot with her.

2. When PH and I came to pick Owl up at the end of that day, she spent fifteen minutes trying to persuade PH that we didn’t need to pay her while I was out of work. That she would not charge us until I found a job again. PH of course refused to consider that.

3. Daycare Lady and her older daughter (who has been known to CRY on weekends because she missed Owl) both pleaded with us to continue bringing him. PH and I assurred them that we would, because has developed an attachment to them (he now calls Daycare Lady by name and has invented a sign for her, which is tapping his chin for some reason) and we wouldn’t want to yank them out of his life like that. They basically responded with “yes, please, please don’t take him away from us.”

4. When I picked Owl up after my interview on Thursday, Daycare Lady again tried to convince me to accept Owl’s care for free while I searched for work: “Carol, I know how men are, they are stubborn about money and their pride causes problems, but Carol, please believe me when I say that I want you to keep bringing Owl and I don’t want to charge you. This can just be between you and me. Don’t try to give me money for this. I want you to bring him.” When I said that maybe we could “figure something out”, like taking Owl down to part time, she insisted again and again “Carol, please. You are like me – your family lives far away. Owl is like my family now. Please. I want you to think of us as your family. Please, bring Owl tomorrow. Bring him every day. We want to see him. When you get work again, then you can pay again, but until then, I feel it is wrong to charge you.”

5. It is undeniable that Owl would prefer to continue going. How PH and I ended up with such a little extrovert, we have no idea, but there is no arguing his extroversion. He hates being housebound. On the day that I kept him home, between The Day Of Infamy and the job interview, he kept bringing me his boots and signing “coat”, and then, if that didn’t work, he’d haul MY boots over to me. Despite the fact that it was freezing cold outside, he loved walking in the snow because HE LOVES A CHALLENGE. He just wanted to be out, out, out. We took three walks that day, one of which was all the way to The Esso, which is a half a kilometre away. Yes, HE WALKED all the way there. In the snow. Tiny step by tiny step. He wanted to walk back, too, but I carried him for time reasons.

So, to sum up:

• Owl loves daycare.
• Owl’s daycare loves him.
• It won’t cost us money.
• It would make people sad to actually refuse.

 So where’s the problem?

Well, seriously, how do you accept something like that from someone? At what point does it just become taking advantage of someone’s generosity?

It didn’t help that when PH dropped Owl at daycare today, intending to reopen the “please let us pay you” conversation, Daycare Lady met him at the door with a heaping plate of food for us – rice with some kind of lamb curry on top – lest we grow faint in our house-cleansing efforts.

At what point does it become too much? How can we get her to accept our money? 

Starting the Chinese New Year/Birthday Week With A Bang.

Tags

chinese new year, fangirl, geekdom, mythbusters

My birthday week has officially begun. 

For the last couple of years, PH has taken a week of vacation around my birthday. This year he is using it to help purge the house as per my birthday wish. But last night we handed Owl off to some friends so he could go enjoy Chinese New Year, and he took me off to a movie.

Except the movie theatre was actually a playhouse.

And the movie wasn’t a movie.

IT WAS THE MYTHBUSTERS TOUR.

Which means that I got to see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman FOR REAL IN THE FLESH.

They shot arrows and made explosions and took videos with their high speed cameras RIGHT IN FRONT OF US.

All worthy geeks out there can begin their envy of me starting… now.

Waste Not, Love Not

Tags

food, love, marriage, relationships

A couple of months ago:

Perfect Husband: “Carol, why are there two waffles in the garbage?”

Me: “I made them and then realized we were out of butter.”

Perfect Husband: “So you THREW THEM AWAY?”

Me: “Yes.”

Perfect Husband: “Because waffles with syrup BUT NO BUTTER are inedible?”

Me: “Yep. The butter is a vital component of waffle eating.”

Perfect Husband: “How can you waste food like that?”

Me: “Would you eat something you didn’t want rather than just throw it away?”

Perfect Husband: “Yes!! I can’t just THROW FOOD AWAY.”

Me: “Why would I eat a high calorie fattening meal if I wouldn’t even enjoy it? Either way it’s a waste.”

Perfect Husband: “You and I are, in some ways, very different people.”

Yesterday:

Perfect Husband: “So, while you were at your friend’s house for dinner, I decided to eat hot dogs.”

Me: “Oh?”

Perfect Husband: “So I defrosted two hot dog buns. Then I took out the wieners, and I realized that they were two weeks expired. So I took out the OTHER wieners, and found that they were a month expired. So I took out the OTHER OTHER wieners, and they were TWO MONTHS expired.”

Me: “I’m sorry.”

Perfect Husband: “…So I THREW THE BUNS AWAY.”

Me: “…But why not just put the buns back?”

Perfect Husband: Because I’d already toasted them and put cheese on them.”

A moment of silence.

Perfect Husband: “…I HAVE BEEN HOISTED WITH MY OWN PETARD.”

Me: “I love you.”