blogthecat

I May Not Got Game

So. So the sandwich was not a success. So he cried when faced with it. So.

I took it hard, guys, I did. I was all, "Oh, so I guess it's going to be a cold cuts kind of youth, eh, Oliver? Eh, three-year-old Oliver who's not into my kalamata-f--kin'-olive-f--ckin'--avocado-with-gourmet-other-sh-it-thrown-in-no-meticulously-placed-just-so-sandwich?"

I was all that to myself. To him, I said, "Sorry you didn't like that sandwich, bud."

And he was all, "It's ok, mom. But why did you do it?"

And I was like, "Because I love you and food is emotional, Oliver."

And he was like, "Girls have vaginas, mom."

And I was like, "High-five it, Oliver."

So we got through it, obviously.

Anyway, I felt a wee defeated but I won't stay down, god_ammit. (I love the blank spaces for politesse, btw). I will up the ante. I whipped up an orzo, asparagus (tip), tomato, carrot, lemon thyme soup. Try to resist that, Mr. Man. Just try.

 

 

I Got Game

Once upon a time I was a foodie. A mostly veg/sometimes pescatarian foodie, but a foodie nonetheless. I knew the trendy ingredients, the cookbooks of the season, and the local restaurants you had to try so as not to risk lifelong disappointment. I don’t think I ever got really obnoxious or snotty, but that might be wishful thinking; we did have a bottle of truffle oil (white of course) residing permanently on our dining room table. Still, there might have been a little overenthusiasm, a little overemphasis on the gustatory side of life, not obscene but maybe a little too ... sensual let’s say.

Then we got hit by Oliver. All of a sudden we stopped making Costco jokes and started actually giving them our money (rarely, but twice-a-year attendance stops the humour). In came take-out on a fairly regular basis, and we considered it a meaningful upgrade to make homemade tuna casserole (yes, with a mushroom soup base) instead of cracking open the Classico. Not a trace of an herb or spice, but homemade, you hear?

Why am I writing in the past tense? We still pat ourselves on the back if we make it a week without some sort of packaged or frozen convenience making up the bulk of our dinners at least one night—maybe more so now with Georgia on board. Our kitchen is tiny and there just isn't the time, or the patience from a certain blond-lidded wildman about yay-high, to get anything very sexy going on in terms of our meals.

And so when I heard, the day before summer camp started for Oliver, that we had to make his lunches and snacks instead of the school providing them for us, I flew into a panic. After a short but relieving conversation with Craig, I calmed down. Of course, the old classic: PB&J sandwiches. Every day. No, not every day; that would be less-than-nutritious and even a little suspect. We could alternate with cold cuts as filler. No matter what was in them: we ate them as kids and survived, right? I still remember poking out those murky green olives and macaroni bits from the grey-pink slices of moist … what?

No.

No. First of all, we discovered, as Craig was rolling out the driveway the day of camp, that the school has a never-communicated-to-us no-nuts policy, and that a boy in O’s class is actually fairly allergic. So PB&J was out. Second, some vestige of my luxurious life pre-kids when I actually devoted mornings, afternoons—even days—to food preparation reared up and nudged me: this could be fun. Some voice called out to me, "Cold cuts disgust you. You might resort to them sometimes (and make Craig handle their slimy selves) but step up, woman! Hit that lunch-bag—and make it rock!"

It took me a couple of days to find my stride, I will acknowledge. Day 1's main was hastily wrapped chicken souvlaki chunks (marinated by the kind folks at Costco) and a piece of bare bread but that was the day we found out about the peanut ban in the driveway. On Day 2 I managed a pasta salad with tomatoes, basil, and mozza but the macaroni was on the chewy side. But Day 3, friends, Day 3 was a day of glory. A perfectly ripe (milky green, not too hard, not too soft) avocado, homemade kalamata olive tapenade, and tomato sandwich on greens-lined multigrain. I tested it. It was hot. As our friend James would say, "restaurant quality."

I know, I know, talk to me in a month. And yeah, I know I'm posting about making my kid's lunches. But you know, when in Rome, or mat leave ... blog the cat. And the return of a little foodie-ism? Probaby quite healthy. In every which way.

P.S. Parental unit, I know you didn’t make me eat the olive/macaroni baloney. It was at the cottage. I am not skewering you. I SOLD my lunches at school they were so good!

 

 

Tickle

So you’re slogging through one of those days, a day where it’s unlikely anything terribly exciting is going to happen, not a dreary day but a purposeful, slightly boring day where crossing off the to-do’s is the major mission. Maybe it’s just going to remain one of those days (and that’s okay, because we all have them). But maybe you’re going to do one thing that reminds you that it’s not always like this, that there is more, that there is brightness and love and brilliant people and that on another day, or maybe even later today, there might even be a little brilliance in yourself. Maybe.

My one thing today turned into two things, and now I am doubly sure the world is full of magic.

#1: I discovered the Llama Font website. You type in anything and out come little llamas in various gymnastic poses. Yes they do. Avery Oldfield and Jack Inscoe, I love your minds and would have been a very happy fly on the wall watching you scribble away in pursuit of this mad and happy piece of heaven. What were you eating? Drinking? Smoking? Why llamas? Whatever the answers, you done did it.

#2: I then took the opportunity to spend some time on the website of the friend who pointed me to Llama Font: Sarah Leavitt, who I have adored for years and years before she became a big-time celebrated author (her graphic memoir Tangles: A Story About Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me was shortlisted for tons of major literary awards). Anyway, today I turned to Sarah’s lighter side: her sweetly funny cartoons of animals. The following stems from Sarah’s musings about the famous poem, The Owl and the Pussycat: “If a cat and an owl can be close friends, could they not be more?”

The drawing is in Tangles, and for more info on it, Sarah's got a post devoted to its origins.

Such non-essential, quirky fare is really so ... essential. The odd tickle in a day of heavy lifting makes everything easier.

 

 

Driving Guru

I am that 40-year-old loser in the Larry’s Driving School car. The one driving with the instructor beside her, the one trying to ignore the gleeful teens giving her ironic thumbs-up and catcalling from the sidewalk. The one who never really, desperately needed her license until now, and who now really, desperately does.

To get into this car, I had to endure two heinous bootcamp weekends in a Larry’s Driving School classroom last year listening to a chainsmoking, hungover teacher explain the rules of the road to me alongside a dozen sullen, stinky high-school students (also hungover) and a couple of veteran lawbreakers forced to show up. So I am relatively happy to be the loser in the car because it means I have graduated from being the loser in the classroom, and because my hours in this car may make it possible for me to finally … drive. Legally. Unassisted. Like a big girl. With two kids. Yeesh.

Anyhoo. My mortification is not the intended subject of this post. What is is the salve for it: my Yoda-esque driving instructor, Param. Param, a bearded 70-year-old former helicopter pilot (in his native India) with a pulse rate of about 20, didn’t blink when I ran a stop sign on our first outing, when I threatened to speed through a busy intersection on my second, and when I nearly stole the right-of-way of a motorized wheelchair on a turn just a few days ago. During these episodes he smiles patiently and calls them my “learning,” noting serenely that “knowledge is power.”

Param is a philosopher as much as he is a driving instructor. Driving well, he tells me, is “an effort of body, mind, and soul.” When I point out a tailgater, he says, “This is not your problem. It is not your blood pressure shooting through the roof. You are calm. They are not. This is too bad for them.” He does, however, applaud my desire for greater space between cars. In fact, he says, we need greater space in all things: “When we have space we have time to reflect. We do not act emotionally. We have the distance to act in our best interests.”

To my complaint that it feels like we’re driving like slugs in a residential area (speed limit 40 km/h), Param says, “More time to enjoy yourself and the scenery.” When a car in front of me blocks my way and there's a chance for me to go around him, he wonders, “Do you really care about ten seconds so much? Will it make a difference to your day?”

When I asked Param how he got so Zen, he told me that he was born this way. “My mother asked the doctors to keep checking on me when I was in the hospital because I was so calm she didn’t believe I was really alive.”

Though he may be quiet, Param has lots to say. As you will have gathered, our driving lessons are as much contemplations of life as they are rote lessons about parallel parking and safe following distances. Our last session together is a perfect example.

I was rattled, and Param knew it the minute I dropped into the driver’s seat. It took about half an hour and about five egregious mistakes before I apologized, explaining a little about the stresses on my mind, including my dying cat and the sheer cumulative exhaustion of my year post-spinal-cord-injury avec newborn and toddler. It was a bit heavy for a chat with your typical driving instructor, but Param hardly fits this description. True to form, he came back with a response that required me to intensify my grip on the wheel and my sense of my surroundings, so taken was I with his words.

“None of us escapes in life,” he said. “Every one of us receives a piece of suffering; some more than others, but each one of us nonetheless.”

“Life will have its way with us, and to a certain degree, there is nothing we can do about it,” he continued. “But there is always something within our control. One of the most important things we can do in life is to understand what is in our control and what is not, what power we have to change things. Some people instinctively know this, and others learn it. The unfortunate never do understand this truth and are always in the position of victim.”

Param then gently advised me to get some rest and let up a bit on myself. Then, as he always does, he drew back from his life philosophizing and applied it to the task at hand: driving. To be precise, defensive driving (all drivers have a certain amount of power to protect themselves against others’ mistakes). His segue brought me back to the road—and to the hell task of lane changing—a little less jumpy and fearful.

You never know when you’re going to meet someone extraordinary, or how.

Man Forms Book Club

Not to get too stereotypical, but book clubs are generally the purview of women. They are sometimes successful but often find these—often contradictory—complaints lodged against them:

• Only half the members actually read the books
• Half the members are overeager snots and half are annoying ignoramuses
• All that ever happens is we drink ourselves drunk and lose the thread
• There’s never enough booze to make it fun
• I don’t get to talk enough and I’m right and everyone else is a dumbass
• If she #@!!% opens her mouth again I’m going to have to shove this breadstick down her gullet

Things like that. From what I’ve heard.

So it’s with great interest that I note the formation of a new book club into which Craig has been inducted: the three-member Book Club for Men established by our friend Raoul. Raoul has, as is tradition when forming a book club, laid down the law for the unique parameters of BCM gatherings:

• Book Club For Men will meet semi-regularly at a pub/bar of agreeable taste
• BCM will not hold exclusive membership, but those who are jaded, doggishly loyal, or earnest will be discouraged
• BCM will not discuss books

Raoul concludes with his fondest aspiration for BCM: “If it works well, maybe we'll end up fighting in alleys. One can only hope.”

It’s an ambitious program, but BCM may just be the radical model we need to shake things up. I’ll be watching. Or at least giving Craig Tylenol when he stumbles in, mysteriously edified.

F*ck Off All You Pregnancy/Child Development Scaremongers!

A nice positive post to get things rolling ...

Yesterday at the chiropractor's (a practice I’m still nervous about but have resorted to in desperation due to some wicked pregnancy sciatica), I picked up a local pregnancy/baby resources newspaper and found this special column:

In the News

1. "Research shows a potential link between a pregnant mother's use of painkillers, and her son being born with undescended testicles:

'Use of mild painkillers such as acetaminophen, aspirin and ibuprofen during pregnancy may partly account for a sharp increase in male reproductive disorders in recent decades, according to a study published Monday.'

The research found that women who took a combination of more than one mild analgesic during pregnancy had an increased risk of giving birth to sons with undescended testicles.

2. Stress during pregnancy may lower a child's IQ as much as 15 points:

'Severe stress during pregnancy can damage a baby's brain and put the child at greater risk of anxiety, depression, and ADHD later on in adolescence, according to British research revealed last week.'

The higher the levels of cortisol—a stress hormone—in the womb, the lower the toddler's "baby IQ" at 18 months, the researchers found."

Having been informed last year by a similarly naturopathic publication that my son was 4x more likely at age 18 to be a criminal due to his having been delivered via forceps, I received this new business of undescended testicles, emotional disorders, and lower IQ with what can only be summed up as “WTF?”

Pregnancy, delivery, and child rearing are stressful enough without media like this making parents worry in vain about things over which they have very little control. If your baby isn’t progressing during delivery, something has to be done (hopefully not forceps but possibly). If you’re in great pain during pregnancy, you might have to take some Tylenol. And if you’re like me and a lot of other women I know, you’re going to feel some additional stress during pregnancy, if only because of changed hormone levels and anxiety over baby’s imminent arrival.

I say lay off the horror stories and scaremongering—especially when you're going to report it as cursorily, in so sensationalist a fashion, and with so little context as the above column does—and focus on information we really need and can actually work on. How to prepare ourselves physically and mentally for birth … how to raise caring, emotionally developed sons … how to build self-esteem in our daughters … how to remain in touch with each other and the world as parents. That’s news we can use.

If I do in fact have to deal with criminal activity, genital abnormality, or cognitive/emotional disorders in my children at some point, I’ll deal with it at that time, and through the appropriate resources and professionals. Until then, I raise my middle finger high and with feeling to irresponsibly alarmist publications that publish columns like the ones refenced in this post.

Hi again

Well hello, blogthecat. I have been both missing you and avoiding you over the past couple of years because I didn’t know how to treat you since becoming a mom April 30, 2008. This was because I didn’t know how to treat becoming a mom—didn’t know which feelings were allowed and not allowed (yes, I could put quote marks around “allowed”), which ones were strictly private and which were okay for public consumption, which ones I’d love to voice but would regret having shared later, etc. I didn’t know how to write about my life—its moments, frustrations, and revelations—and my take on things without including Oliver, who is in every fibre of my being and who influences such a scarily huge proportion of my experience. At the same time, I didn’t want blogthecat to become all about momhood and Oliver. It was starting to go that way, and it made me feel kind of queasy and swallowed up. Like I wasn’t a person outside of him, and like I would be forever trapped in a focus on nurturing, capturing special moments, and solving quirky baby/toddler behavioural conundrums.

Blogthecat had been eclectic before Oliver, and all of a sudden it was single-focused and superficial in how I spoke of motherhood and how I felt about it. The truth is, that first year was HARD, as much as I loved Oliver and how much support I got from Craig. But I felt too guilty, as if I were a "bad" mother, to write about the tougher aspects ... like wondering resentfully if I would ever get off the couch again without a baby locked on to me like a great alien sucker-fish, and cursing silently and not-so-silently as that baby refused for more than a year to go in the stroller without screaming and kicking the entire time, thwarting my sweet dream of somehow dropping the 50+ pounds I had put on in pregnancy and resulting in all sorts of damage to my back. I thought these less thrilling aspects were verboten to speak out loud ... that they were simply the price you paid willingly, gratefully, and quietly for the gift of your wee one.

I thought and thought about what to do … didn’t want to say goodbye forever to blogthecat, wanted to resume writing about things I would find interesting whether or not I had Oliver in my life, yet wanted to respect and express that massive part of me that is now and for all time touched by Oliver (and soon, his baby sister).

My solution … the one I am trying out for now … is to move Oliver and mommish posts to a new blog, The Bam Bam Blog, and to make blogthecat a place where I write about the rest of my life.

I am a little daunted by this separation. I’m pretty sure, especially given baby girl’s being expected in early March, that I’m going to have quite some bit to say on The Bam Bam Blog. It will doubtlessly be addled by sleep deprivation and the chaos of two rather than one, but it will be easier to write given its ever-presentness and intensity.

Will there be enough “rest of my life” to write about on blogthecat? I'll have to see, and maybe force it when it doesn’t come naturally. As much as I want to be a doting and involved mom for my kids when they’re this small, I also want to retain my sense of self so that when they get older, I won’t look up and go, “Yes, now what exactly am I meant to do now?” We all do this to some degree sometimes I think, but I don’t want to exacerbate it by losing touch with the rest of the world outside my family. And I’ll bet that if I remain interested and even interesting, there’s a better chance my kids will turn out that way, too.

These are the sorts of things I imagine will be fodder for the revamped blogthecat:

• Excellent achievements of my friends and people I admire
• Food I cook on the rare occasion I cook, recipes I ogle but will never actually get the time to try out, and restaurants/cookbooks/brands that make me quiver
• Raves about books/movies I love and want you to love too
• Notes about daily life—the good and the bad
• Interviews with people who are doing cool things, or on why they love something they do
• Stuff out there in the world that amazes me or that I feel strongly about
• Reflections/moments in my family life (not every day, but sometimes).

It seems a hopeful list for a hopeful day of the year. I look forward to using it as a guide to keep me oriented during what will likely be a crazy few months ahead. All the best in 2011 to everyone who reads this; come back and visit as often as you can.

 

5:46 am

It’s 5:46 a.m. Thursday morning. For those of you who know me, this is not an hour I am generally awake. In fact, it’s often one of my prime hours for deep slumber since falling asleep at night is not something I’m good at. But by 5:46 a.m. usually, I have tossed and turned my way into drool-accompanied oblivion and you could set off a firecracker next door and I wouldn’t wake up.

But not today. Today is the official mark of 39 weeks of pregnancy completed. That means one week, technically, to go before the LD enters the world outside my tummy. My tummy, which contains him and keeps him safe. And quiet. And without a need for diaper changes. Or feeding. Or nurturing and stimulation of the kind that will make him happy and see him grow up to be a good, bigger dude. Right now, he is a blob inside me, one that I joke endlessly about given his effect on my figure, my comfort, my sense of dignity.

But very, very soon, the blob becomes a real little person, who looks like something, has a personality, and needs his parents desperately and incessantly.

Am I excited? Yes, I am. I love falling in love, and I can’t wait to do it again, and enter into what so many say is the most profound bond possible. But I am also terrified. I feel almost shy to meet the LD—what if each of us is not what the other expected, bargained for? What if I can’t morph seamlessly into “mom,” that most powerful—and to me so far in my life—foreign of roles? What happens to the me who was not a mom? Does she disappear, usurped by a brain and set of hormones dedicated slavishly to the care and protection of a baby? What does this transformation entail? Is it like an alien abduction, or a less dramatic shifting of priorities?

More practically, will my famous gag reflex stick around for my own baby’s poops?

All these questions are ricocheting around my addled head, complicating the traditional and socially condoned sense of pure excitement I’m supposed to have right now. But I’m giving myself a break. This is like stepping off a cliff into the unknown. I don’t imagine jagged rocks below, with a pack of vultures and hyenas anticipating my fall. Nor do I expect a cushy landing all decorated with hearts and pretty things. I can’t really imagine anything, in fact. I just know life is about to change immeasurably, and it’s a strange feeling knowing it’s going to happen in a matter of days.

So if I’m not on here for a while … you’ll understand. I’ll be trying on a couple of new hats. Or something like that.

Thank God, it's not just us

Went to parenting class again last night. This was #4 in the series of seven, and finally, a less earnest, less awfully polite vibe has made its way through the group. We became aware of this welcome change just after being shown the most graphic video yet: strange woman after strange woman moaning and groaning through labour to produce strange babies. When I say strange, I (mostly) mean to say we don't know them, and the intimacy of watching them naked and in pain was fairly uncomfortable.

In any case, this time after the video, no one piped up about how beautiful it was. We were all visibly shaken, and it wasn't just Craig and me who allowed a few nervous giggles. There was some catching-of-eyes and empathetic, silly grimacing, which was lovely, as it prevented another descent into hysteria.

Utter proof of the change in the air came when our teacher broached the subject of placental considerations. That is, she advised us that it might be wise to keep our placentas (as in store in some way ... I'm not sure, I was close to fainting at this point) since there are businesses that can freeze-dry placentas, turn them into powder, and pack them into pills to be ingested by the mother to ward off post-partum depression. Yep, it's a documented cure.

Into the stunned silence and widened eyes came Jenna's response:

"Unless knowing you are eating your own placenta makes you more depressed."

I tell you, we were all spitting up and clutching our sides. It was the deadpan delivery, too.

Thank God it's not just us.

If you're lucky and you know it ...

Things are pretty hairy around our place just now. We are racing to meet too many deadlines, readying the apartment for the LD, and walking around a little zombie-like if truth be told. Not in an awful, dreary way—but yes, we are a wee exhausted. So tonight, we decided to try for something halfway normal: push off from our desks at 7:30 p.m.... go shopping for food since the fridge is bare … make an easy but promising recipe from a Jamie Oliver cookbook … sit down at the table like civilized adults.

We get home from the IGA at 8:30 p.m. Craig unloads the groceries. I begin the recipe: Risotto with Roasted Garlic, Thyme, Almonds, and Mascarpone Cheese. I’m well underway when I ask Craig for the thyme. As soon as I say it, I realize it’s the one thing in the $150 shop we forgot. I forgot. Craig’s poured himself a rare bourbon (he’s not drinking very often to keep me company through the pregnancy), and has had one miserly sip.

“I’ll go out again,” he says, though it’s mucky outside and there’s a hockey game on. “Should I pick up anything else?”

I tell him some basil and milk, and apologize absentmindedly.

He comes back while I’m chopping and on the phone with my brother. I point to the recipe book and signal that he should start the risotto-making part of the process, the directions for which, according to our recipe, are on another page. I’m yammering away with Dylan when I notice Craig looking somewhat despondent.

“We don’t have half the ingredients for the basic risotto part of the deal,” he responds to my questioning look. I hadn’t thought to look on that page, thinking it was a matter of rice, butter, and stock, or something equally simple.

I get off the phone, and try to convince him that we can make do with some admittedly paltry substitutions. He heads to the door. Without a scowl or a muttered anything, he heads out again (it’s after 9 p.m. now and his bourbon sits forlornly on the counter, ice all but a memory), waving off my repeated bleats of how awful I am.

When he comes back, I am so tired I have dropped to a chair at the table to chop feebly—no more standing up on my swollen feet. He makes the risotto carefully and quietly, and without the smallest complaint.

At 10 p.m., we sit down for dinner. Brian Browne jazz in the background, dimmed lights, single candle. The most delicious risotto I have ever tasted. Life is good. Very good.