Parenthood is a Platitude

While I was in the shower this morning (a necessity since I skipped yesterday’s), I heard my oldest say something to the effect of: ‘Henners has the laundry stuff,’ in a tattletale singsongy kind of voice.

By ‘laundry stuff’, I assumed he meant…..the bottle of Tide liquid detergent. Which I store in the laundry basket. Because there’s really not another easily accessed place to store it.

I’d scarcely processed the remark; had just begun to utter the commands of the momentarily immobile parent: ‘take it away from him’ or ‘tell him not to touch it’ when the next news bulletin was delivered.

‘Henners has dumped the laundry stuff on the floor.’

And with that bulletin my three minute shower was over.

I stepped into the hallway just in time to see the Tide bottle lying on its side. With the lid off. Clear liquid (I use Tide ‘free’) crawling all over the wood floor. My only recourse: to use my towel in an effort to stop the liquid from traveling to another city.

When your morning starts off like that, it’s hard to regroup; to retain any sense of optimism about how the day is going to go.

I’d managed to get the big boys to the front door on time for our 9.30 departure, both wearing socks and shoes and coats. When we discovered the Hen had lost his ‘da’. His pacifier. The only pacifier he will put in his mouth. The pacifier he insists on taking with him everywhere he goes.

Upstairs, downstairs, bedrooms and bathrooms were searched in an effort to find the pacifier. With no luck.Ten minutes of searching yielded nothing, and at that point I was considerably late. So we had to depart with his ‘ba’ (the infamous ubiquitous white pillowcase) but not his ‘da’. I braced myself for the inevitable tantrum in the car when he realized one of his ‘comforts’ was gone.

We arrived at our destination and I got everyone settled. The tension in my body started to fade as I held the baby on my lap. The only person who had not caused me any trouble. Yet.

His eyes closed, and his face turned a dull red from the strain. Sure enough, the exertion paid off with several loud noises two and three minutes apart. After five or so squirts I decided it was time to investigate.

I was prepared for his soiled clothing. I wasn’t prepared for mine. The kid had literally pooped on me. Through his clothes. It’s the quirky thing about parenthood, I suppose, that someone can defecate upon you and you’ll still talk to them.

Especially if they’re cute and smiley. With a half dimple hidden in their left cheek.

Being a savvy, third-time mom, I had an extra outfit for him. I did not have any extra pants for myself. Charmed, I’m sure.

Fast forward another twenty minutes or so to where my boys were running around in circles with some friends. I’d turned my back to gather my belongings in preparation for exit when I heard giggles and the word ‘banana’.

Sure enough. Someone had found two bananas and had thrown them on the floor and stomped on them. Mushed banana on carpet? Fan-freaking-tastic. ‘Who did this?’ I asked the group of five boys. Fingers pointed in five different directions. I had to assume, since two-fifths of the group belonged to me, at least one Johnson boychild was involved in the banana massacre.

Many pieces of paper towel later I’d removed the biggest chunks of banana from the carpet and the boys’ shoes. And, for the second time, tried to gather my belongings and children for exit. A process that took thirty minutes….from start to finish.

Naturally we got in the car and the Hen, upon realizing he had no ‘da’, started wailing. Right as the baby, who hadn’t been able to take an uninterrupted nap, started wailing from hunger and fatigue. Right as the Gort said: ‘when are we going to have lunch? Are we going to have lunch now?’ Over and over.

It’s days like these that I wonder about people who spout airy platitudes (about children and parenthood) like: ‘don’t blink…it goes so fast’, ’soak it all in’, ‘it’s the greatest thing ever.’ Etcetera.

Did they somehow end up with the world’s only perfect children?

Have they just forgotten the days when they wanted to send their children to boarding schools…in other countries? The days when it seemed like the only words they uttered were: ‘no’, ‘timeout’, ‘go to your room ‘and ‘no candy, presents, toys or television for you until you turn eighteen.’ The days when their kids took hot pink tissue paper, shredded it into nano-particles and dumped it all over the house. All while laughing hysterically. Right before guests were due to arrive

I read a snippet of an interview with a celebrity-who-shall-not-be-named who said , about motherhood, ‘there’s nothing I don’t love, even the sleepless nights believe it or not!’

I’ll file that one in my ‘gems’ folder.

How to be a domestic goddess

There are books and magazines aplenty detailing the ins and outs of creating your very own spic and span sanctuary. Line your drawers with perfumed paper. Sprinkle flower petals on your pillow. Line your lampshades with pink silk so that the light will have a soft, pink glow.

But really, the people who come up with these lovely ideas either don’t have small children, or they have more disposable income than they know what to do with and possibly a housekeeper.

As I was scouring the caked on spots of toothpaste on the upstairs sink today, I thought of some practical ‘tips’ for achieving domestic nirvana.

• Store a toothbrush for each family member in every bathroom in the house. That way, if your two year old runs off with your red toothbrush, you don’t have to try and find it when you finally remember to brush your teeth. You can just reach for the downstairs toothbrush, instead of having to (a) use your spouse’s or (b) skip the brushing altogether.

• Keep a set of cleaning supplies in every bathroom, so when the sink is laden with dried chunks of toothpaste and other nastiness, and you can’t stand it another minute…. you can start cleaning right away. No need to procrastinate because you don’t have the energy to walk downstairs to find the cleaning stuff.

• Wear a watch. This will help you know what time it is..at all times. It will keep you from having to ‘guess’ what time it is when you’re at other people’s houses and don’t want to rudely interrupt conversations by asking ‘what time is it?’ It will also keep you from having to squint at clocks that are far away in order to guess what time it is. However, if your watch is an hour and three minutes ‘behind’ the actual time this may present a challenge to your sleep-starved brain, resulting in continued lateness for things like kindergarten pick-up.

• If you still struggle with being on-time for kindergarten pick-up, put your two year old son down for a nap wearing his jacket and shoes. That way, you can whisk him out of the crib and into the car without wasting precious minutes trying to squish too small shoes onto his feet, and pushing his unyielding arms into jacket sleeves.

• Limit every family member to five outfits and two pairs of shoes per season. This will drastically reduce the size of your laundry pile. Not to mention the pile of shoes discarded by the front door.

• Let your kids watch television or movies for hours every day. This way they don’t play with any toys or use any art supplies. And your house stays remarkably tidy.

• Throw toys away. I’m not talking about ‘good toys’. I’m talking about things like plastic spiders and ten-cent cars they get at the dentist’s office – that type of thing. Sure, they’re really excited about it for the first forty-eight hours, but after that, the allure of the cheap, smelly toy wears off. Throw it away. If they ask for it, distract them with a cookie. Or, a movie.

Clutter, part 2

My good intention to make 2009 the year of ‘no clutter’ got off to a slow start. I vowed to be ruthless, but it took about a week for the ruthlessness to kick in. It’s in full effect now. Or, at least pseudo effect.

Rummaging through the detritus that covered our dining room, the other day, I found the main culprits of my clutter problem. It was as I previously suspected: receipts, child art, bills and account statements and then the miscellaneous junk pile. Which consists of random screws, and ‘parts’ to things, broken toys or toys that no one should play with, business cards/ticket stubs, paper clips and other office minutiae. And of course, tools and bits of tools….everywhere.

For some reason I’ve got it in my head that I have to save every single receipt of every single purchase I make. For an infinite period of time. When I told someone this over coffee, she looked at me like I was crazy. ‘You must have a lot of receipts,’ she commented. Yeah. Bowls and bags and boxes full, actually.

I thought the IRS wanted you to keep this stuff?

Strategy 1: research IRS receipt requirements, locate our shredder…and use it.

But aside from the receipts, the main culprit is my husband. Who likes to leave little CD Roms lying all around the house – and flash drives, and notes scribbled on scraps of paper – usually with important phone numbers or contact details that he will inevitably request the day after I threw it away.

I dumped out the contents of a bowl yesterday and handed him a few ‘choice’ items…which he promptly placed in his jeans pockets. The jeans he would be sure to leave on the floor at the end of the night. Which I will wash…finding the aforementioned items in the washing machine or the dryer. It’s a bad cycle that must be broken.

Strategy 2: remove all vessels (i.e decorative bowls) for stuff from eye level…so that there is no place to dump whatever is in one’s pocket at the end of the day.

After tackling the dining room, I moved on to the kitchen where we have two thin wires suspended above the art tables. The wires are so laden with art, they’ve started to sag. What started out as a creative way to display art, has turned into a poor storage solution. I pulled all the papers down and started sifting through them. And the pile of art I found in the office. I’m not exaggerating – I easily flipped through a couple of hundred pieces paper containing scribbles and paints and pastels.

I threw away about half….nondescript scribbles whose artist I couldn’t accurately name….was it big brother or little brother? Or was it me? I’d just finished sifting through the pile and hung up the remaining artwork when G asked: ‘can we paint?’ (You’ve got to be kidding me!) Which he did. No fewer than 4 paintings. Which I kept, of course.

Strategy 3: Unless particularly special or awesome, throw art away. Right away. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go straight to the trash can – don’t even bother recycling. [Alternate strategy....ban art making at home...tell boys it's something only girls do.]

The other big clutter culprit is recycling. This is partly my fault – I could purchase recycling bins but I’m too cheap to do so. Also, I’m not sure where I’d store said recycling bins. So the tables in the kitchen (the outdoor tables in my indoor kitchen) are laden with cardboard, and plastic bottles, and aluminum food cans etc. And it seems wasteful to go all the way to the recycling center more than once every two weeks.

Strategy 4: Stop recycling and throw everything away. Forget the environment and clogged up landfills. Or, spend the money and buy some bins….(and maybe a laundry basket, too).

Then there are the toys and books that cover the house from top to bottom…but unless Supernanny herself has some bright ideas, I think that will just be my cross to bear for the next seventeen years.

Or I could hide everything and allow each kid to pick one book and toy per week. And be the kind of mom my children will remember fondly in years to come.

Kicking it grocery-style

I wouldn’t say we are coffee fanatics, but we do like to drink good coffee at home. For the past four years we’ve bought our coffee from Alliance World Coffees, which also happened to be located in our church. So every other week, we’d pick up a pound of freshly-roasted-reasonably-priced beans.

But then we moved to Calgary. And found ourselves without our trusty coffee supplier. We’d brought along a couple of extra bags to see us through the first month, but the last of the Decaf Sidamo ran out this week. I’d checked at the Farmer’s Market where the artisanal roaster ‘Phil and Sebastian’ has set up shop. But their price tags ranged from $15-18 for 3/4lb bags. And the Vancouver-based Caffe Artigiano wanted me to part with $19 for a pound of beans. That was a little more than I’d envisioned spending.

So I hit the Canadian Superstore thinking we could maybe, dare-I-say, Starbucks it for a while. Just until we could find our new coffee beans of choice. But the only Starbucks at the store was already ground which, I believe, makes it only slightly better than Folgers crystals. So I decided to go with an enormous bag of Italian Espresso beans with an interesting font.

I have this theory about font. Call me a ‘font-snob’ but I often make decisions about supporting businesses or products based on the font of their signage or packaging. It may seem random, but it’s helpful in many traveling situations when you don’t know one restaurant from another. Go with the one that has a nice sign in the front, or a classy looking menu. It seems like whenever I’ve compromised this deeply rational standard, I’ve had to suffer the consequences.

So I picked up the bag of Caffe Gioia; tastefully presented in a silver bag with bold red and black font and bonafide Italian text. It cost $10.99 for a kilogram – less than $5 a pound. The saying ‘you get what you pay for’ flashed through my mind, but, I held out hope that I’d secretly stumbled upon the dark horse of the coffee industry. The unknown, future Illy, if you will.

And then I brewed the first pot. The lingering taste of cigarettes in my mouth suggested my frugality and aesthetic preferences had let me down. And Jason, pleading after the second day: ‘can we please buy some different coffee? I almost threw up a little in my mouth just now.’

Two weeks of learnin’

In the book Vernon God Little, the main character, Vernon, frequently says ‘I got me a learnin’. For him, ‘learnin’s’ are life-truths.

I’ve been amassing my own set of ‘truths’ over the last few weeks.

• A 37 minute flight to Chicago can feel like an eternity when you’ve got a nearly one year old crawling and standing on your person.
• A twenty minute screaming fit by an exhausted child on an airplane feels like an hour when you’re surrounded by 66 passengers.
• Twenty-one pounds of sleeping child distributed across your thighs for an hour or so, will cause numbness.
• Ninety-three degrees of ‘dry heat’ is still very hot,
• If your child pees on you, immigration officials tend to wave you through.
• Six and a half foot ceilings in a basement apartment will induce a feeling of claustrophobia even in those who are seemingly immune. Low ceilings, combined with taupe colored walls and the absence of natural light will only exacerbate said feeling.
• It is possible to walk uphill both ways, particularly when you’re carrying groceries.
• Don’t shop at Costco on a Saturday.
• Kids and carpet do not go together. At all. Unless vacuuming several times a day is your idea of fun.
• The lines at Wal-Mart in Canada are just as long as in the States
• A dishwasher is almost as important as potable drinking water.
• Designating a space as a ‘playroom’ will not keep toys from traveling beyond its boundaries. In fact it may encourage the spread of toys.
• Consuming 3lbs of grapes or m&ms in three days is a bad idea. Also, the grapes don’t cancel out the m&m’s. Your jeans will still be tight.
• As with all dryer, higher climes….don’t leave home without lip balm, water and hand lotion.

The wall. Warning: unfunny

I felt it coming on Friday.  The realtor had scheduled a showing of our house at 3pm and I was trying to muster up the desire/energy/courage to thoroughly clean the house again so that someone could look at it for ten or twenty minutes and decide they don’t want to buy it.

If I sound a tad cynical or fatalistic it’s because I’ve been cleaning my house to this end for three months now (ten times in the past 4 weeks alone) and this weekend I reached the breaking point.  The point where I feel like if I have to put all the toys away and clean the house like the President-himself-is-coming-for-dinner one more time, I might snap.  Ditto for if I have to look at that Calgary housing website or send more emails to random people just to see if their advertised house is still available.

The facts are that any way you slice it, moving house pretty much sucks.  I guess there’s a reason it’s considered a stressful-life-event.  And is probably why a lot of people try to avoid it like the plague. Stupidly I thought that since we didn’t have to put our junk in boxes and load a van this time, the move would be comparatively easy.  I guess I glossed over the remaining minor details like trying to sell a house in a stank economy; finding housing in an overpriced city; re-finding housing in an overpriced city once you learn the pension nazis absconded with more of your new paycheck than you expected.  And then having to find temporary housing until you can move into the new-new housing. And customs and unresponsive movers and new car titles and..and…and…

But there was a tiny silver lining to the cloud which came to me late Saturday night as I was preparing for Sunday’s Open House.  This situation will resolve itself.  Just not in an obvious, timely or cost-effective way.  So if I can hang on for the ride and relinquish this desire for a tidy ending, I just might survive. 

Either way, Sunday was (probably!) the last Open House with us living here.  From here on out the realtor can swiffer away the dust bunnies blowing around en mi casa vida. 

Mmh, does vida mean ’empty’ or just ‘life’?

Calling my resident Spaniard….

Comparisons

Strange, the similarities between a funeral and a wedding.

Carefully chosen music and scripture and programs 

Attendees dressed up – men looking uncomfortable in the suits and ties they haven’t worn for a while

Sniffling, tears, wads of kleenex

But I’d rather see a bride, wearing the pouffiest, meringue dress out there complete with sequins, and huge bangs, excessive makeup and fake tan

Than a tiny white casket on a table

The Canadian Me

Moving is tough stuff, but, with the right amount of effort, consistency and energy, you can, if you so desire, try to change your personality – leaving your formerly boring self behind to wow your new hometown with a more interesting you.   

It’s highly unlikely I’ll have the aforementioned energy to make up a new me, but just in case, I’m mulling over some possibilities:

I love the outdoors and I love all the gear ‘required’ for outdoor life.  I could easily spend hours perusing the contents of an REI store or its independently owned counterparts.  So a move to Calgary could be just the excuse I need to become Nature Nicola.  

I think I could be perfectly happy wearing sporty North Face or Patagonia clothing and appropriately sporty footwear.  I would carry the Hen in one of those baby rucksack gadgets and G would have his own little walking stick and coordinating sporty clothes.  J would leave for a day of teaching or building models out of glue and we three could set off for the mountains, singing ‘the hills are alive.’

The only problem is I’m not willing to actually camp – as in sleep in the outdoors in one of those cloth covered domes.  But as long as I didn’t really get to know people, they wouldn’t have to know I was a pretender.  They would just see me from afar in my cool clothes, carrying water in a Sigg flask, and think to themselves that I was some kind of fabulous earthy mother.

But it might be cost-prohibitive to start acquiring kayaks and mountain bikes, particularly since I don’t currently kayak or bike and don’t have much more than a passing interest in involving myself in said activities.

So, Crafty Nicola might be another, cheaper, persona to adopt.  I could become the next Soule Mama; sewing clothes for myself and my family, and curtains and pillowcases.  I would take the boys on nature walks (carrying the Hen in some sort of homemade sling contraption); engaging them in lovely necklace-making projects with their finds.  People would stop me in the street and say where did you GET that bag?  And I’d smile shyly and say, ‘oh, it’s just a little something I put together last night.’  

The only potential pitfall is that I tend to swear like a sailor whenever I try to engage in anything crafty.  I also don’t possess a sewing machine.  Which is why I started sewing a quilt BY HAND nine years ago.  I saw these quilts featured in a magazine (thanks Martha Stewart!) and, since I didn’t have the thousands of dollars necessary to buy one, determined that I would make one.  Despite the fact(s) that: I didn’t (don’t) have a sewing machine; I got a C in sewing in the 5th grade;  I don’t have a patient bone in my body.  Some quilter friends tried to piece it together four years ago.  They pretty much just shook their heads and said ‘it’s not possible.’  

Regular Nicola might have to suffice.

It is what it is

I had the privilege of sharing my new favorite saying with two fellow limbo-land-livers today: it is what it is. To be fair, I’m stealing it from a Canadian named Nathan who used it in reference to the crappy apartment he hoped we would rent from him.  But it made me laugh.  It’s refreshingly honest, unapologetic, without airs.  And it is remarkably versatile.   It can be used in reference to almost anything.  

I mean, sure, one could stress out about the fact that one is supposed to move to Canada in four weeks. And that one does not have a place to live there.  And that one still has a mortgage here.  And that one is driving a car that sounds like it is going to implode at any moment.  And that one’s car man has not yet found a replacement vehicle.  And there are the minor stresses that are really too numerous to list: cluelessness about the school situation for G, not knowing anyone, ‘Calgary pricing’ (where everything costs about 30% more than here) yada yada yada.

But, really, what’s the point of dwelling on these little unresolved elephants-in-the-room?  Dwelling never helped anything besides ulcers. And these little stresses seem almost trite when compared to some of the profoundly difficult things others are facing. Things that a car man, or a landlord or a tenant can’t solve.  

So, it is what it is.  The carpe diem of the 2000’s.  Well, the less assertive version, anyway.

Walking in the Rain

It’s raining buckets here and J took the car to class this morning.  That means my transportations options were reduced to walking or calling a taxi.  

So ‘brave’ and ‘fearless’ person that I am, I borrowed the babysitter’s umbrella (J apparently absconded with that as well), put on ‘my walking in the rain attitude’ and headed for campus.  

Why don’t I do this more often? 

It’s so enjoyable to be alone, surrounded by the unrelenting rain.  Sure, I got a little wet (mind you, I might not be waxing poetically if it had been a downpour) but it’s so good to get away from the nonstop chaos: to move my limbs and think, alone.  And wrestle with these, frankly-too-consuming, big elephants in my thought life: will we sell our house; will we find a place to live in Canada; will this move work out; will Jason find a car that he can be happy with .

I kind of resent these times when, instead of living, my life seems to revolve around achieving a particular outcome (will I ever go into labor, will the Hen ever sleep through the night, etc.) because it feels like I put everything else on semi-hold until the desired outcome is achieved.

I mean, to the Hen’s credit, he did finally sleep through the night this week.  And while I definitely celebrated – quietly, without the expectation that he will repeat the feat from there on out – this event that I’d so hoped for, didn’t really change my life or anything.  

So today’s goal is less fixation.  More living.  The house will sell.  We will not be homeless in Canada.  Jason will learn to love his Subaru (or the Windstar mini-van that God is going to send him as a joke).