Seriously? I Can't Even...

Admittedly, I've been hustling the kids around from place to place all day long for several days in a row.  Even I think we do nothing but drive from one end of town, back across to the other end.

We're renovating our main floor (which in a bungalow includes all the bedrooms too) and have had all our schiz in either the garage or the basement for the past month now.  When the painter finished with Kiddo #1's room and I was able to reassemble her closet, it gave me a new lease on life.  Plus, I don't have to tread through 3 feet of her clothing every time I want to join them in my bed.

Oh yes, that's the other thing-- it's been like living in a hippie commune, minus the pot, for the last month, too.  We're all co-sleeping, and let me tell you, it's like sleeping with blue whales.  At any moment, my coma-sleeping children can roll onto me and I would essentially drown in sleep-slobber and my own sweat.

So, since they need to be punished for my lack of sleep, I've been schlepping them all over hell's half-acre looking for bits and bobs.  Plus it's been like, 600C here and the workers prefer to leave doors open, which means no friggin' A/C.  A second reason to be driving around in my frigid, heavily air-conditioned car.

After the children made it successfully through the China shop, the grown-up section of the library, a broken-glass store and a candy shop (in which they were forbidden to get anything! bwaaa haa haa!), they were a little testy.  Now that I've re-read that paragraph, I think I must've been a little testy, too because that's some cruel shit.

Anyway, I took them to Canadian Tire because I was looking to see if they had bathroom cabinetry as well as a watering can; conveniently, Kiddo #2 began skating around the store in his worn-out flip-flops.  Chasing his sister around, who was squealing like we were actually in Wal-Mart (because that's where all the kids scream, non?), I usually would've had better control of my children.  But frankly, I had Just. One. Stop. Left.   Just let me find the watering can and let's get the hell home.

Only... there was something between the sliding sound of his flip-flops and the happy giggles of my first born that irritated me.  How dare they STILL be happy when I was running on no sleep and had been driving them around all damn day?

So I, gently, asked them to stop.  No dice.
I counted back from 5 telling them "5, you are done or you lose your iPad; 4, you are done or you lose your iPad..." No dice.
Then I told them they'd lost the iPads and they just giggled between aisles 14 and 15.
I hung up the P.A. system phone and sent up a flare from aisle 132.  Ish.

The children followed the flare and path of glowing pebbles I'd left Hansel-style, to aisle 157, and I was quite cross.

Truthfully, I was annoyed that I had to call to them, and also oddly comforted by their initial absence.  I think we might need to take separate vacations next summer. For the whole 2 months.

When they finally arrived at my side, I flashed my angry-mom eyes and told whisper-yelled, "Kiddo #1, you sit at this end of the aisle.  Kiddo #2, you sit at the other end of the aisle.  I don't care if you make faces at each other, but you are NOT TO MOVE OR SPEAK to one another until I'm ready to go."

Honestly, I don't even know what's IN the aisle we were in.  Might have been fishing lures, might have been hockey skates; all I know is that I spent a total of 11 blissful, quiet minutes pretending to be deciding between several important items on the shelves.

I grabbed an industrial fan and impulse bought a paint roller (totally forgot the stupid watering can) and headed for the check-outs, ornery kids in tow.  Ok, the kids weren't ornery, I was ornery, and the kids were annoyed that they had to deal with me raining on their parades.  Whatever. Po-tay-toe, -po-tah-toe.

When we got to the car, I didn't say anything. I just had them get their seat belts on and I turned on the music.  Then Kiddo #2 said, in a not very hushed voice,"Hey, Kiddo #1? Are you ever gonna do that to your kids?"

Kiddo #1:  Which part?

I feel like I should note that they were speaking as though I were nothing but a driver who should've put up the partition.  It was surreal.  Like watching TV, only it's your kids?  

Kiddo #2:  Make them sit on the floor in the aisle ways when they're bad.
Kiddo #1:  NO! That was hu-MIL-iating!
Kiddo #2:  Really?
Kiddo #1:  Nope.  No way. Especially not to my 8-year-old.
Kiddo #2:  ...I dunno...
Kiddo #1: Are YOU gonna do that to YOUR kids?
Kiddo #2:  Well, it worked pretty well...  So maybe.




Today we went to the park.

Tedx: Holy CRAP!

So there was this one time when I did a Tedx talk.

Some amazing people in Chatham-Kent decided to host a Tedx talk two years ago, and this year I was a speaker.  Rather, I wanted to talk about Kindness, sent my pitch and continued on my merry way.  Gretzky says you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, so I figured I'd at least take the shot.  When I got the call that I was selected to speak, I was both excited and honoured and TERRIFIED.

After much writing, editing, starting all over again, pouting, (I did a surprising amount of pouting?) I finally had a workable speech.  I edited, edited, edited, and here it is.

I am torn posting this tiny thing. While I know it's not humble to brag, I truly believe in my talk and feel it should be easily found and accessed.  I worked hard, I've lived hard, to get to this point in my life and I want to celebrate that.

Whatever.
Haters goin' hate.

I just want to not lose this recording.  Is that even possible in the interwebs? Meh.

Click to check out my Tedx talk on kindness.

Peter Pan and The Mermaid Lagoon

Over the last week we have been slowly moving all furniture out of our bungalow and into the garage.  

Not gonna lie, I think a great deal of it should remain there with a sign out front that says "Garage Sale: Don't Make Eye Contact or You'll Be Leaving With Something Heavy" because the majority of the stuff was purchased more than a decade ago and is ... needing a little fire to repair it. 

We've finally compromised on a floor we both like.  It took 5 years to get there, but we're there, and I'm not slowing down until the floors are in lest we both decide we're not ready again. 

Much like naming our children, Husband and I came close to divorce trying to get here.  Not in a "domestic in the flooring store" type of way, but ... uh, not that far from it.

"Did someone say rainbow flooring? YES PLEASE!"

"Oh, this? I just had them move the Sistine Chapel to Chatham, obvi."

I just really wanted the herringbone, vibrant alive look and he just really wanted something elegant, grand and ... uh yeah.   

Don't ask how we got from these two places to where we both ended up (a wide, engineered hardwood in a dark espresso) but it involved a lot of trickery, a couple of ninja moves, and quite a lot of hard bargaining.  I'm sure the owner of the flooring company probably drinks more, now, too.  But whatever. I can't control how other people react to my awesomeness, now can I?

So, Monday, the flooring peeps are gonna bust in and tear shit up.

I'm super excited because a) it's getting done and I'm not involved and b) I'm not involved because Kiddo #1 has a week long MERMAID SCHOOL to attend.  

Yes, I said it. MERMAID FRICKING SCHOOL!

GAAH!  She's living my hidden dream.  Ok, not so hidden.  The whole experience came up because everyone in the world knows I'm obsessed with interested in mermaids and unicorns.  I'm basically a 6-year old girl.  So Second Best Girlfriend, who lives in Kitchener-Waterloo saw an ad and posted it on my Facebook wall.

Mermaid FRICKIN SCHOOL!

SAY WHAT?!  Learn how to do Mermaid things? What do mermaids even do? I don't have any idea, but Kiddo #1, complete with tail, will find out next week.  Honestly, if she came out of the water able to create pearls with her hands, I would not be surprised.  If she learned nothing except got a chance to swim around with other mermaids in some sort of mermaid city, like Atlantis, and pose for pictures, I'd probably be completely ok with that, too.  Seriously.  

What an AMAZING time to live, when you can LITERALLY be a mermaid when you grow up. Like, fuck the future.  Even when feminism wins and we're all equal on the planet, we won't be equal with tails.  

I've set up special rigging in the rafters of the synchronised swimming pool so that I can take video from waaaaay above the mermaids, while they swim in circles and whatever else they're gonna do.  It's gonna be fucking EPIC.

Our house was previously owned by cream, not coffee lovers, I assume. 

 Kiddo #2, meanwhile, will be learning to fly with that same rigging.  I mean, if Kiddo #1 can become a mermaid, why can't my son become Peter Pan? I'm seriously squealing in delight with all this. Sure, I'm gonna have to teach him, but it can't be any harder than like, climbing a rock wall, right? Make a fancy knot and ta-da, Kiddo Pan. He's gonna love it.

And, then, just when you think life cannot get any better, we're finally replacing all the floors next week WHILE I'M AWAY, and a week or so later, we've decided to finally get rid of the Triple Triple that has likely been on our walls since the house was originally built. It's like Obama and Hilary with a side of glitter.  NO! Pixie dust!  I'm off to bathe a Tinkerbell barbie in glitter so that when I shake her over my kids next week, they'll be able to fly. 

It's a helluva a time to be alive, people. 

Back in the Saddle-ish

After much sing-crying that he doesn't have anyone to love, we have adopted some guinea pigs for Kiddo #2.  I fully expect Kiddo #2's Freddy Mercury Moustache to grow in at any time, but for now, just settle for playing "Somebody to Love" in your head while you read this, will you?

"Can anybody find me, some cavy to looooooooove?"

I have a friend, a Facebook friend, someone I know to see, can comment on her posts, but more or less have never really had any contact with.  Don't get me wrong, she's lovely, and I'm enjoying getting to know her, but this wee detail will become important in just a minute.

After a month of convincing Husband that we do, indeed, need more pets, I was able to message my Facebook Friend and adopt her guinea pig.  During that month, of course, I did all sorts of Pinterest research on guinea pigs (including that they prefer to be called Cavys) and realized that we needed to get a second guinea pig for the new addition so he would not be lonely.

Gosh. I think I've forgotten how to blog. 

I'm sitting here rubbing my face trying to remember how to string together words to tell you this hilariously awful story that ends with me having to call my Facebook Friend to tell her that not 12 hours after we adopted her guinea pig, Skillet, our Jack Russell Terror Terrier may have pushed the cage over and effectively murdered Skillet and I only figured this out after she came upstairs with a beautiful guinea pig puppet. That we didn't actually own.

Yeah. 

Only I can't quite make the words come out in a way that isn't contrived or ... labour-rich.

So I'm gonna tell this other story, about how I am working at an elementary school that, like, you see on TV.  You know, the one where the kids listen, and are excited about learning, and there are no behaviours, and everyone raises their hands? Yeah, those perfect, not-actually-real schools that they make Ministry of Education videos about.

I've been there for the past two weeks, and it's been quite glorious.  So glorious, in fact, that I ask the kids if they want to do some yoga and meditation on my second day. They are STOKED.  I whip out some yoga moves, we do a quick 30 minutes and then head into a nice 10 minute meditation.  We are whisked away to space and while meditating, we see a beautiful white light and that white light is warm and inviting and it reminds you of someone you haven't seen in a while and it feels wonderful and happy and comforting and when we "return" to earth, we know we have that white light of happiness in our hearts forever.

See, I'm stuck again.  The next part is where the kids beg me to do meditation again because it was so awesome, and this time, we get to the white light and all of a sudden, two boys begin bawling.  No, not bawling, but sobbing and wailing and snotty, red-faced, dripping-on-their-shirts moaning, and for the next TWO hours these boys are inconsolable.  Oh, and because the class is so wonderful and kind and big-hearted, you know a domino effect began and in seconds SECONDS, I was the only one in the room NOT crying.  

Blubbering in such a way that I can't discern what they're saying, like Will Ferrell in Anchorman after his dog is punted off the bridge, these boys have completely lost control of themselves.  I send them outside to cry (and possibly distract themselves with a walk around the soccer field) only their crying is so loud that other teachers are sending students out to see if my boys are ok, and were they locked out of the school or something?

Funniest Anchorman Scene Ever

Excellent. Excelllllllent. I broke the whole damn class.   

Later, when I called home to apologize to the parents for destroying the souls of their boys, one parent let me know that her son is ok now, and that he was actually crying about his cat who died. Before he was born.

When I called the second boy's parents, it turns out he was crying because he'd never met his great, great, great, great grandfather, and that was a real shame.

Honestly, if the boys hadn't been in grades 3 and 4, I would assume this whole thing is being edited for Youtube. 

And yesterday, I was headed home when I saw a beautiful red cat on the side of the road in the middle of ... somewhere where it's mega rural and the streets don't have pavement. 

I saw that cat and I said out loud, Oh shit. I'm gonna hit that cat.  And the cat never moved, and I swerved to get away from it, and since it was still sitting on the side of the road, and I was swerving away from it, I thought maybe I might not... damn it.  I ran out. FRICK it clanged against the bottom of my car. OOOH FRICK!  

I understand how people might hit and run because it took me a country block before I could stop screaming and turn around.  I pulled into the nearest house and parked the car.  I walked to the front door, which said "other door" on it.  I knocked, and no one answered. There were 50 cars parked around the lot, but everything seemed ... quiet. 

In the distance some dogs barked.  And a wee kitten mewed.

Oh FRICK!  I picked up the adorable 10 week old baby, who looked exactly like the cat lying in the road, It started purring like an engine and I walked around the yard wondering what I should do now that I'm a mother-slayer, I looked around.  

I walked to my car, trying to shoo the baby back to the backyard because I didn't want it to see its mama on the road, and also I didn't want it to think it should head closer to the road and also, I couldn't take it home because stealing a kitten after killing the mother is easily, the shittiest thing to do to someone ever.

I wrote a note that said that I am so sorry to for killing the cat, and I borrowed a shovel and moved it to the side of the road, but didn't bury it because that seemed weirder than I already felt, prowling around their yard with the kitten that looks disturbingly like the cat I hit.

And as I wandered to the house to stick the note in the door and get the shovel, in drove a guy who was the most farmerish guy I'd ever seen. Oh, and is that his 12 year-old child in the passenger seat.  Girl? Boy? I can't be sure, but there's no way s/he didn't see the cat.

Damnit.

Frick.

These two guys's farmer-baby would be the guy who pulled up in the truck.

So I walked over to the truck.  Farmer says "You tha one that hit our cat?"  And my knees buckled and I gulped and nervously said, "Uhh, I think so. I'm so, so sorry."  And the farmer said, "Meh. No biggie."  And I said "Um, but is that the mother of the kitten in the backyard?" and the farmer just laughed and I said, "I was just about to borrow your shovel and move it to the side of the road." and the kid said, "Oh, naw. I'll just do that." and I said, "Um, But I tried to swerve. I should, um, well you shouldn't have to..." and the kid and father laughed and said "Oh, naw. It's just a cat." 

And I smiled in disbelief and said, "I'm just gonna head back to the big city now." and I tapped the car door thing twice, and the farmer and kid both howled.

I don't really know why I feel like I have to tell these stories, except that I feel like I've been the star of some secret Youtube videos. So, if you find any Youtube videos where I am looking around for hidden cameras, do me a favour and send them to Ellen.  

In the meantime, I'm gonna try and blog a bit more often so that I stop forgetting how to craft a tale. 

Where Does the Drama Come From?

Me: How was your day, Kiddo #1?

Kiddo #1: GAAAAH! I want to be ALONE!

Exit Kiddo #1 running down the hallway, tears streaming down her face. She plops onto her beanbag chair and wails like a mistreated Disney Princess. The dogs begin to howl in harmony. No. Not in harmony. In solidarity. I’d forgotten to top up their bowls today and it was like a chain gang between Kiddo #1 and our two woeful dogs, howling of the unfairness.

On any other day, her request to be alone would not be unusual. She’s little more like Husband and needs time to recharge after a long school day.  I take a deep breath, exhale slowly and help get Kiddo #2 a snack.  

When Kiddo #1 shouts “I can’t believe you don’t CARE enough to come see WHAT’S WRONG!” I look around for hidden cameras, take another breath, and softly pad my way to her bedroom. 

Kids.  Why didn’t we have 6 or 7 more of these amazing creatures?

Me: Honey?

Kiddo #1: Why don’t you even LOVE me?

Me: Ok. Um. I do love you?

Kiddo #1: If you LOVED me you would’ve come to my room and asked why I was upset.

Me: I loved you enough to let you settle down.

Kiddo #1: Today was the worst day EVER.

Me: Oh?

Kiddo #1: I have to do THIS!

She poorly tosses a paper at me, which kinda flops around and lands at her feet, which angers her again. She poorly tosses it again, only this time it kinda stuck to her tear-soaked hands, which makes her madder and she exhales and makes a dragon sound and I briefly wonder what I did in a past life that would make me have to endure this agony. I calmly go over and take the paper.

Me: Oh. It’s a Show and Tell form?

Kiddo #1: GAAAAAAAAAH.

Me: I don’t understand.

Kiddo #1: MOM! You KNOW I don’t like to perform in FRONT of people!

Me: But you were in dance. And you are in piano. And you’re on the swim team. And you wanna make Youtube videos about Shopkins? (I stop short of reminding her of her performance right now, although it might be the strongest of the set.)

Kiddo #1: MOM! Why are you not understanding me?

Me: Probably because you’re speaking Valley Girl.

Kiddo #1: I don’t even KNOW what that means.

Me: Ugh. (pause for a breath) I mean, I love you. And I want you to feel comfortable. What does the paper say you have to do?

Kiddo #1:  GAAAAAAAAAAH. I have to TALK in front of EVERYONE about ME. GAAAAAAAH!

Me: Ok. Look. I get you’re upset. But nothing on this sheet of paper is catastrophic.  In fact, I’d even wager that the teacher was NOT, in fact, trying to destroy your soul. She probably wants to teach you how to be comfortable talking in front of people.

Kiddo #1: Why would I want to do that? (She seems curious, not angry, so I continue)

Me: Well, I’d say probably 96% of future things you’ll do require you to communicate with at least one other person, if not more than one. This is a great way to feel more comfortable. Let’s check it out.

Over the next hour, we talk about what she wants her Show and Tell to be. I’ll save you the drama, but the conversation was similar to the one above, only insert “nothing represents me! UGH” where is says the part about how I know she doesn’t like to perform. 

Seriously, and on a quick side note, is 7 not a little young to be getting the tween angst? If this is what puberty looks like, I’m moving to Egypt. Like, tomorrow. Stay tuned for “Does Coffee Come in Camel Size?”  cuz I’m peacing-the-heck outta here. 

Anyway, no sooner had we figured out that she wanted to talk about her puppy, Bungee, did she have a meltdown about “I can’t bring him in because two kids are allergic! And plus it has to fit in my bookbag!”

Once we calmed down again, we realized she could make a wee booklet of pictures of both Bungee and Kiddo #1, and it would be awesome.

And, actually, it really was.  Kiddo #1 and I spent an awesome couple of hours one afternoon making the booklet. And I think it was awesome because I loosened up and let her do it. I told her what to do, and I sat back and waited for her to ask for help.  And she did, but mostly, she just... kinda... made it.

I thought the control-freak in me was going to jump in a few times to make Kiddo #1’s work “perfect” but the mom in me, the one who was loving the positive, happy interaction between my daughter and me,  just told the control freak to butt out. 

Kiddo #1 did a great job. A really great job. She was proud of it. And so was I.

Now, it just so happened that on the day of her presentation I got news that I would be doing a Tedx talk this spring.  I’m not going to lie, when I got the “You’re in!” phone call, I hung up and screamed while doing a happy dance. I mean, I’d been totally stoked and excited and freaking OUT that I’d even applied. It was all I could talk about with anyone I met. 

Luckily, I got the phone call about 20 minutes before the kids got off the bus. I had my private, elated freak-out, and then I did the impossible: I pretended I had no news whatsoever. 

I wanted to hear what my non-spotlight-seeking daughter had to say about her first speech.  I wanted to hear how she felt, how it went, and if needed, to console her if she froze.  I shelved my amazing news (but I managed to CAPS TEXT Husband before putting the lid on it) and calmly listened to 

Kiddo #1.  As she opened the door I smiled and asked,

Me: How was your day, Kiddo #1?

She was all smiles and said, “It was great mom. But I want to be quiet for a bit before we talk, ok?”

I smiled again.

Kids are amazing creatures.