Okay - first, because I have to get these things out of my head:
#4578 from The List of Things I Can't Believe Came Out of My Mouth Since I Had a Kid:
"Please stop playing with your coochie when you're sitting on your father's lap. And now please stop sticking your fingers in your nose after you touched your coochie with them. Now if you're done with dinner, it's time to go upstairs for your bath."
#68 from The List of Things I Wish I Didn't Have to Say, Ever:
"It's not nice to stick your fingers in your ears when Mommy is singing. Especially after you've been touching your coochie."
(circa yesterday)
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What?
Fine.
About Boo Boo.
Boo Boo wound up the year by indulging his penchant for spending a good eleven to thirteen hours each day on our bed. He doesn't care much for the cold. Well, not that it's been that cold. He's just become so very, very lazy. Boo will still make time for some of his favourite antics, like sitting on the stairs in the dark so that I have a heart attack if I should come upon him.
What? You can't see him? Well, neither can I. The streetlight shines just enough light into hall that I can see the edges of the steps, and negotiate them well enough. That is, well enough if there isn't an assassin there.
Let's see that same image with the flash on:
"Cripes - enough with the flash, Lady!"
I doubt others have to arm themselves with cameras to prove that what seems like a funny little black kitty cat is really my imminent demise parading around with Pounce breath.
Now, once this past summer, he came upon a mouse. That is not the kind of thing toddlers forget about. So when last week we all came home from running an errand and saw Boo Boo assuming the position - we figured that I'd better distract Josephine, and quickly. It turns out that was unnecessary. Because as Steve approached the subject...
Boo Boo was more like...
"EEEEEUW! What is THAT doing in here?!"
and then he was all like...
"So, um. Steve? Are you going to be taking care of that? Thanks, guy."
Whereupon Steve threw a towel over the mouse, and took it outside. The mouse was well, intact but hurtin', and we think (it is possible but we're not really going to lay money on it) Boo Boo may have stunned it before we arrived and interrupted his dealings. However, it's more likely that Boo was frozen in indecision before an already infirm creature, abjectly contemplating bolting upstairs to resume his usual posture on our bed, and all we interrupted was him trying to sneak past the little limpy diseased rodent so he could go take a shit in the basement then get back to bed before we could find out he'd exerted himself in the slightest while we were away. The mouse probably came upon Boo Boo on the stairs in the dark and was merely suffering the ill-effects of a heart attack. I can empathize with it.
"Ha Ha Ha. The mouse is gone. It matters not who did it, only that it's done."*************************
You know, there was this moment on New Year's Eve where Steve jokingly aimed the bottle of um...let's just call it bubbly...
...at Boo Boo's bum, and I admit - it was tempting. But, we really wanted to get on with drinking our offering of
"All Shook Up" California Brut Champagne from Graceland Cellars, and so we merely toasted the passing of one year into another rather quietly, deciding not to piss off the cat. However, soon enough the cheap plonk did its job, and Boo Boo got his first kiss of the New Year.
It must be acknowleged that I do pet him, almost daily; and he does sometimes come around and curl up on my lap and purr without attempting to wipe his shitty tail on us or on something we value - but I don't often kiss him. Mostly because now that he's over a year old, he's more like a little man than a wee kitty. A cranky, foul, aloof, ungrateful, dirty little man who shrieks and withers at the sight of mice. Not really all that kissable when you think about him that way, and, while you're, you know
sober.
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On New Year's Day, my goal was to take down the tree. It's good to have goals. It's also good to realize that a toddler is like the proverbial stick in the bicycle spokes. Josie couldn't stand it.
There was clutching of the tree. She was wretched. Utterly bereft. She hugged the tree, and sobbed "I want to keep it beautiful for eh-eh-eh-verrrrrrr! Don't take my beautiful Twistmas tree away! I love it so mu-u-u-uh-uch!"
It would have been funnier, if it weren't so pitiable and heartrending...and I really wouldn't have laughed at all if my childhood ornament of a bear on a potty wasn't banging into her head with every sob and heave.
The thing is, I don't know if I'll have make better plans for next year, or if she'll have grown out of certain "sensitivities" by then. It's all a mystery! So, it seems the best thing to do in the future might be to adjust my goals. You know, parenting is hard enough without adding emotional holiday crap to the mix - and it seems my standards are more negotiable than is her temperament.
It took Josie a couple of hours to get over the pending tree removal. We discussed compromises. By the end of the day, I was able to take the decorations from the tree, but we'd agreed to keep the lights on. The next day, the tree went outside, but in the back yard. We decorated it with popcorn strings and birdseed for the critters, likely including other mice that Boo Boo will have nothing to do with. On garbage night, we will sneak it out of the back yard and deposit it in front of an unsuspecting neighbour's home, so the trauma of seeing it fed into the back of the big green truck doesn't send us all right back to square one. Some things are easier for us to discuss with the toddler in the abstract.
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Later on New Year's Day, we went to the matinee at
Graffiti's to see our friends play. Josie was at her adorable best, which was rather a relief. It's nice when something is a treat for the whole family. Then there is less screaming.
But, the worst happened.
(It is beautiful when daddies wear the pearlescent plastic teddy bear bracelets their daughters make them. It takes you mind off the fact that a toddler is sleeping in a bar.)
It couldn't be helped. She fell asleep near six o'clock. We were doomed. Even two minutes sleep at that time can mean that Josephine's actual bedtime will be delayed by hours. I gave her fifteen minutes, then woke her and hoped for the best. But, no.
It took several attempts to get her to sleep, and the hour grew later and later. I took a turn, then Steve did. She was finally drifting off around ten-thirty, rocking in Daddy's arms, when Steve cut one.
It was silent...but...as the saying goes...deadly. Josephine jolted awake, wailing "IT'S STINKY! IT IS STINKEEEEEE!" Steve, well, he had to apologize, and explain. She was incredulous. She wailed "When will it go awaaaaaaay?!" and then Steve had to explain dissipation to her. "Where does it go? Why won't it go away NOW?!" she cried. I'm afraid, under the circumstances, I couldn't have been expected to go upstairs and rescue either one of them.
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And so, the holidays have mostly been put away. The presents, with their freshness adding appeal to what will soon become just more stuff, still seem odd in our home. I mean, the luxury of having stacks of new books to choose from...all of us...it's bliss. I have so much stinky bath stuff! Stiff, dark new jeans - what joy! And the fun of seeing something new and wonderful like this gift for Josephine from a very cool friend hanging in the closet:
...well, it's wonderful. Strangely, it's only slightly more of a delicious a feeling than the harmless, but slight horror I feel when I peek into the boxes of clothing my aunts chose for Josephine. I mean, I expect people to occasionally choose merchandise-driven outfits emblazoned with characters for toddlers - even my toddler. I don't expect a seventy year old to find kids clothing made over from vintage adult-sized Clash tee shirts, though I always hope for the best. I know faux sherpa fleece exists and I understand people wear vests with hoods as outerwear. Why they don't want sleeves, I don't know. I don't have to understand garments like that. But.
A white turtleneck ? Okay, really, nothing to blanch at. Not great for toddlers who, oh, I don't know...EAT FOOD or PLAY and stuff. But the kicker?
That there are people on this planet who make white corduroy pants for toddlers. Let me correct that - they're winter white -
WITH SPARKLES all through them. And there are people who buy them.
Sparkles. Sparkles over every square centimeter of these pants. They are beautiful, if you're a sixty-three year old bingo player in Vegas. I can see why my mother and other elderly Italian women would swoon over them. Picturing a cute little girl in them would be easy. You'd just picture her standing there and smiling and being a cute little girl. I'm sure there are little girls out there who do that!
Just not my little girl. Those who know and like me, and my daughter, will understand that I hope the pleasure of choosing and giving these was enough - because we live in the real world. The real world where we have banished raisins from our house because they get smashed on the floor and resemble knot holes, for weeks at a time. The real world where going out to dinner means that the toddler will actually eat with us, feeding herself, with utensils even - which means there's either going to be soy sauce or tomato sauce or French fry grease or mango smoothie on those pants before you can say Oxi-clean. And the only thing people want to see when a toddler shows up at an eatery is NO SCREAMING. Nobody cares about my kid's pants, and I don't want to have to care.
I can't...I won't even show you the horror of the Strawberry Shortcake outfit. But I peek in the box at it and wonder "Why did Strawberry Shortcake need to be re-designed to look more modern and "tweeny"?", because I could have gotten down with a vintage-style Strawberry Shortcake graphic. Hey, I myself lost a few brain cells huffing that faux berry plastic scent when I was younger. But I'm also not going to say more here, because I am likely going to make a drunken proposal on Thursday night that maybe a friend's daughter who actually has a Strawberry Shortcake doll might want this outfit. It's not that in this home we're all pious about licensed characters - Josie has Barbies and Dora stuff and oh, Lordy, the My Little Pony crap...it's just that at this point Josephine has no idea who Strawberry Shortcake is, and well, I'm the one that has to look at her in that outfit. And one of the places where I draw a line is wearing clothing with what amounts to an ad on it - the company is not paying my kid to promote Strawberry Shortcake.
In fact, to show how "liberal" we are, I even took Josephine to a My Little Pony LIVE show (
#1 on the list of Places I Swore Up and Down I'd Never Find Myself Right Up Until The Moment I told Kate "Get us a ticket too!".
In fact...let's hit a couple of the high points from
that trip.
There was the time when, as we were trying to let the girls run a bit before the long car ride, Josephine had to "go". Except, we were playing in a schoolyard, on a Sunday, and thus, there was no place to "go". Especially not
number two. Not that that stopped her. We figured it out.
Kate has pictures.
There were a few wrong turns, and some traffic. And Kate's Alice felt barfy, and the mission was nearly aborted, two or three times. Still, we persevered.
There were two Type A toddlers in the back seat. There was that part. That meant fighting over snacks, and fighting over touching and over just looking at each other, and then somehow coming together in a mutual decision that footwear was optional.
That part alone was cause for Kate and I to look at each other and think "This is like having two." I know I was all "...and no thank you.", but I believe she's still on the fence. I do know we're both keenly watching others who have made the decision, and one of us is feeling relief that we can smell someone else's new baby's head and then hand it back. The other might yet succumb.
And then, looking up and around...of course. We were at a hockey arena in a suburb, and there was a veritable SEA of s.u.v.'s.
We made it into our cheap seats, which made Josie's hair staticky , so that we somehow looked even cheaper by association.
See how empty they are? We even got bumped up, into the ringside seats from what was to have been a nosebleed designation. Because, if you spent $40 on seats instead of $15, your little pony-lovers not only had static-free hair - they were allowed to wander around and dance in front of the stage. The peanut gallery, the minority of attendees for the record, had to stay behind the barrier. It was a rule that was enforced by young female employees who obviously did not have children. That's a lovely way to introduce kids to things like "class differences", "financial prudence", "expendable income" and "lack of supervision", plus "medical liability" and "no dental plan". Now, to be truthful, the little girls were allowed on the dance floor - but not their cheap-ass Type A mommies. Do you know what is going to happen to the employees of the venue that upheld that position? Good. Then I don't have to explain things like "Bad Karma". We did let the girls go dance for the last song, so that they could be terrified then thrilled by the streamer cannon, and our anxieties were minimized.
The other parts of the show were spent with Kate dosing Alice's oncoming illness using unguents from her wonderbag of neurotic mommyhood.
And with both of us considering having a couple of swigs of Gravol and fever medicine ourselves. Jeez, today I'm looking back and thinking what it takes to get a person to a My Little Pony Live Show with a barfy toddler in tow, having gone from a period of one's own toddlerhood through a period where the meds in one's purse would have been more um...illegal and expensive.
Of course, they had to sell $5 balloons. Of course, we had to buy them for our kids. Of course, one of the girls had to lose hers. Of course, there were tears. Of course, a second balloon had to be bought.
And yet didn't come away from this debacle thinking "NEVER AGAIN". (That is supposed to be the sad and funny part. I'm not that good at being rueful yet.)
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And well, you know. It takes all day just to get through the day. We find stuff to do. The good runs into the bad. The easy parts are usurped by the hard parts, then there are moments that are hardly even trying.
Then, there are days like yesterday, where after making it through a dinner served with wine and whine, I decide that
I get to be the one to run to the store for cream while Josie gets bathed and ready for bed. Which means I get to go to the store for what we need via the Value Village around the corner, where I wander around looking to engage in a little cheap-ass retail therapy. Oh, I might fondle some sweaters, or check out the wool scarves to see if there are any that might perk me up or become part of a needle felting project...but usually, I find a book or two for Josephine. Sometimes there are some books, be they tacky novels or awesome finds for me. Or, what's more usual is that I just wander around until it dawns on me exactly how depressing it is that buying other people's used stuff is the highlight of my evening, and leave.
But, sometimes I get this little needling urge to go. There's something inside me, telling me to go sniff around, because there is some kind of treasure waiting there for me. Once, it turned out to be what is now my favourite leather jacket. It was strange to buy it, what with it being August at the time, and me in a quite pregnant state. But there it was, and years later, it has stood the test of time. I have found valuable second-hand books. I have found cashmere sweaters. And last night, as I meandered down one last aisle thinking "I know it wasn't the Dora the Explorer book that was calling me..." I found it.
But, because finding a stunningly lithographed tin paint box isn't enough of a treat - I asked to open it at the counter before I chose to buy it.
Then, finding out that it had never been used, and was full of paints with awesome names like "Madder Rose" and "Cerulean" was what I needed to cream my jeans on the spot. And? It was $4.99.
Because some days, talking to a cashier at Value Village is my only verbal interaction with an actual human (outside of my husband and toddler) (and I won't say they don't count, but...) I had to get all excited and chatty, which may have made her think I am slightly crazier than I am. It's a bit fuzzy, but I do believe I said "This is such a RUSH! NOW I don't have to go and buy six Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and shove them all in my mouth on the way home from ostensibly buying cream!"
But it doesn't end there!
After Josie (finally!) went to bed, I showed Steve my treasure. He thought it would be a nice thing for Josie to play with. And he's right - it is hard to explain to a toddler that some of the toys in the house belong to Mommy and Daddy. I was about to arrange one of our usual "services rendered" transactions to convince him that it really should be mine, all mine, because I loved it and NEEDED it, though I didn't really need it. Then, something decided the situation for me. And I was able to send Steve an email (because by then he was working on his computer upstairs, and that is how we communicate, rather a lot) titled "LOOKY! NOT FOR TINK!", on account of how one quick Google showed me
this.
I know. It's an amazing find. I'm still quite giddy. But, damn, now it's too nice for me to actually use.
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OH NO! I'm not done yet!
Because, one more good thing happened. And it is one of the best, most greatest things that could have happened, ever.
Now, last year (and I'm not bothering with a link because this post is long enough and even I'm tired of it), Steve lost then found his wedding ring. We couldn't have been sadder, then happier.
One day last week, his ring went missing from his hand again. It is so precious to us, and because I imagined it had fallen from his cold hand as he slammed the trunk closed on the way out that day, and it might have been lying in the street for one of the neighbourhood skeezy guys to find and pawn - I turned the car right around to go home and crawl in the street in hopes of finding it. It wasn't there, and I checked the sinks and floors and the insides of his gloves...and found it had fallen into the laundry basket when he carried a load to the basement for me. (huge sigh of relief) Lost, and found, twice.
Now, while I wouldn't link because I wanted to abridge this somewhat (stop laughing), I will tell you a bit about our rings. Formerly, I was a jeweller. I even have fancy initials I can put after my name. I worked at schmancy stores, and ended up managing the Estate Jewellery Department of a major auction house here in Toronto (there must be some people I haven't promoted my former position to, right?). BUT. YET. When we were married, Steve and I couldn't find rings we liked when we eloped in Texas (despite the fact that many of you wouldn't have been surprised had we chosen the his'n'hers diamond horseshoe rings we saw in a few pawn shops), so we used $2.99 mood rings from a tacky gift store. Later, I had our rings made, using an antique rose gold ring I'd found at the auction house as inspiration.
They're in platinum, with comfort-fit interiors (thicker in the middle so they feel amazing, in weight and fit). They were made to fit our respective finger sizes, and have never been cut open to size them - keeping the perfect rings intact. They're facetted, and each panel was hand-filed. Each panel was then hand-engraved by an aged Asian gentleman who used to work for the schmancy store I'd worked at once, and who was so proud to be asked to do them that he said "I have not had the call to do such fine work in a very long time". The designs are of orange blossoms for fidelity and fertility, and they alternate with white feathers for truth and integrity. Steve's was engraved freehand from the engraver looking at the design of the inspiration ring; then mine was made from looking at his. We could only afford this because of a friend and business connections, which sadly, since then, I haven't bee so great at maintaining. What I'm trying to say is, the rings are not only priceless in sentiment - they are simply irreplaceable.
That's not the great news - that's just to give an example of my happiness at finding something that was unique after losing it.
Because a year ago in the fall, I lost something else that was unique and precious. A Christmas gift from Steve, purchased through the auction house, this was something that I adored. I've never seen, and in a year of searching, haven't found another - though they must exist. But. last night when we were making up the bed with fresh sheets, we heard a small clanking jingle of something metal moving hitting the floor under the bed.
Another
prodigal:
My Elsa Peretti designed barrette - or hairclip or whatever it's called. It's like it just materialized out of thin air. I don't know where it had been - it had tarnished, but was in fine condition. It's just weird, because, as my friends will attest - I am the kind of housekeeper who actually flips and rotates our mattress regularly (um, monthly. Really.) and I change the sheets every four or five days, and yes, I vacuum the mattress AND the slats and rails of the bed every other month too, because I have anxieties about dust mites and stuff like that. I'd do it more often too, but the meds are working.
I'd spent so much spare time Googling, and using all of my professional research skills looking for another. I've tried every obscure auction house, used every synonym for barrette...everything. There seem to be no other hairclips like this one on the market, and it is such a beautiful thing. Such a clean, lovely design. A brilliant mechanism. Something so easy to identify, yet so hard to find. My longing for it was such that I never stopped looking for another. I thought it had come off my head with my hat on a walk home from our doctor's office, and there was no chance of finding it just by looking for it.
What I'm saying, in so many words, is that finding so many wonderful things, either lost or not lost but waiting to be found, means I'm pretty happy these days.
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#4 1/2 from The List of Things I Wish I Didn't Have to Say, Ever:
"Steve! Wake UP! Quick! Get a towel to soak up some of the pee! Dammit! I just washed all of the bedding, flipped and rotated the mattress, and dusted the rails last night! It's okay honey - but next time you wake up in the middle of the night, it's your body telling you that it has to go pee. And remember too, Mommies ALWAYS know when there is pee inside you. Please, no screaming about not wanting to try to go next time, or you can't sleep in our bed. Great. The alarm just went off."(circa today)
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"Hey - at least I haven't peed on anything yet this year. Are you done with the stupid peckity peckity thing yet?"Yes, Boo Boo. I'm quite caught up now.
"Ye Gods and little fishes! There are more like you?!?"
"Are you going to confess? Or do I have to rat you out?"
