the funniest things

When I go to a party, I like to sit on the floor. Our friends Kathy and John had a small supper party last night. We ate supper at the table. It was nice, but I could hardly wait to sit on the floor. When I sit on the floor I can laugh lying down, which feels very good. These friends are the kind of friends who don't mind when I do that.

John is one of the funniest guys I know. I absolutely love his sense of humour. He is 100% uncensored, so much so that partway through the evening, Kathy came and cuddled up to him on the couch then commenced to jab him in the side with her elbow every time he crossed over some conversational line. A couple of the other women said "too much information" a few times and even put their hands in front of their faces. I just fell on the floor laughing, a lot.

Here's a John-ism: You know that guy who looks like Jesus, but with short hair, who walks up and down the street all the time?

I know, it's not very funny when I post it, but it is when John says it. I'm glad that John is Kathy's husband so she gets to do the poking and groaning, and I get to laugh.

question: who's funny in your life?

mompoet - tickled pink by frank talk

Five days, five minutes, five seconds

Five days off work...I do love flex time work hours. flex flex flex...ahhhhh..

Five minutes to read my email now that we have eaten supper. Daughter has a friend over for a sleepover. They are making chocolate chip cookies, or rather a chocolate chip cookie. A big one.

Five seconds to post my blog. Son wants to play the new version of roller coaster tycoon. I'm getting out of this kitchen before the big cookie pops the oven door open like when Lucy baked bread on I Love Lucy and so a roller coaster crash and burn can be orchestrated to impress everyone. Ahhhhhh. Did I ever tell you about Zoo Typhoon? That's when son and daughter cooperate to set all of the animals in Zoo Tycoon free to eat each other and all of the park guests and zookeepers. It's built into the program, so it's intended to be used that way.

five, four, three, two, one bye

mompoet

ps 2/3 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1 egg, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp soda, 1 1/2 cup chocolate chips 350, drop by spoonfuls, ungreased cookie sheet - don't cook them (it) too long

Eu-fem-isms

Have you heard this one?

I am re-booting my OOS (Ovarian Operating System).

I just love that.

question: got any good ones?

mompoet - calling a spade a ergonomically proportioned excavation device

love cascade

So I've been wondering why I have not written any poetry all summer and I think maybe I know the reason (er excuse?)...It's love and worry. I think if I wrote a poem I might explode or just cry for a few days or laugh hysterically so I'm holding back until I'm feeling less intensely everything about everything then I'll write. I'll write buckets. It's in there - just way to much to let out at the moment.

My major concern is that my sister and her family are leaving for Africa in just one week. They'll come into town tomorrow for "final shopping for appropriate clothing to wear in a Muslim country," and some visiting before they go. Then they will be in Africa for 1 or 2 years, depending on how it goes. I'm happy that they are doing something that they want to do, but I will miss them so much I don't even want to think about it right now. I know I'll get used to it, and we'll all learn how to write letters again but...mmmph.

And the other thing is Andy's work stress. Big huge gigantic busy movie summer, lots of wear and tear on everyone at work and wacky scheduling. He missed our camping trip and I miss him and when he's here he's tired and preoccupied, and I know it's like this when work gets busy and I'm not always sweet, serene, available and focussed myself but....mmmmmmphhh!

Also the end of the summer at my day camp and working with the best team of leaders I've had around in a long time. They've been so good at their work of course but what I've appreciated the most is how much joy they have taken in the children this summer, and in working with each other. Heck, they were leg-wrestling in Robson Square on Saturday night after the staff dinner and before the bowling. It's not always like that, you know. So I said good-bye and good luck to them on Monday and we locked up the shed and put the bows and arrows in safe storage for the winter, and I'm going to miss them too. At work, summer is important and intense then it's over. I served them up a picnic lunch at the park with a tablecloth and home-made pickles and I made them all cards, then they gave me a huge bouquet of flowers and an even nicer and funnier card with a photograph of me doing my Cousin It impersonation, and also a gift certificate for the Hart House. I felt overwhelmed by these expressions of their regard for me and for our summer together. And I'm going to miss them...mmmmmph!

And it's a bunch of other stuff too - daughter's anticipation and wonderful performance in the PNE talent show, school starting, festival and other events approaching, all good but challenging, surely too much transition for the tablespoon-sized coping centre of my brain.

Then I won the poetry slam Monday night and everyone said nice things to me and I get to be in the finals next week to try out for the second Vancouver team at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and it's just about more than I know what to do with at this particular time.

Oh, also, the gym is closed for maintenance. I know, I can go to another gym or go for a walk, but right now I would really like to kick my very own bike #29 into orbit for about an hour or so. Gym re-opens on Tuesday. I'll be there.

So, I am not going to have a drink or eat a bunch of chocolate, and I will not watch stupid tv and I will not bake or clean something (all typical panic responses when I feel overwhelmed). I will try to reflect and let it all wash over me, this over-the-top happy and over-the-top sad. I will go to church on Sunday (I've been in summer mode, sleeping in or going away on weekends) because I always find courage there.

And I will not write a poem. Not right away. But when I do, later, watch out. It might be a tsunami.

question: ever had some sum that's too much more than its parts?

mompoet - exceeding my limit and trusting that I won't tip over

I'm back (you're front)

Our computer had a virus. Now it is better. It's way too late for me to post anything but this announcement. I will have lots to say tomorrow. I will say some of it. Probably too much.

i'll be bach
you be beethoven

dumm dumm da dummmm

ps I won the poetry slam tonight (I mean yesterday) I mean yeeesshhh.

Good nougat and dreet sweams

mompoet

does it matter what a poet looks like?

This is not a rhetorical question. Seriously. I want to know.

I have been thinking a lot about poets and what they look like. At the Vancouver Poetry Slam, I always try to find a picture of the feature poet on the web before I go to the show, so I can say hi before the show, and also so I know that's the poet. My observation so far is that woman poets look all kinds of different ways, but more often than not, the visiting poet from another city, if he's a man, is usually the weirdest looking person in the place. Sorry,sorry,sorry to all of the visiting man poets who I have met and who I now think look just fine. It's just before I know them, they look weird to me. Once I see/hear them perform and introduce myself and say hi, then they all look spectacularly beautiful and brilliant. I am not exaggerating. I am that easily swayed.

Which is why I was very surprised when I first saw George Bowering. I had seen photographs of him like this and this and this. So I had a certain expectation. (actually, not weird, but pretty much "literary" looking.)

Then he came to the West Coast Poetry Festival in July, and he looked like this. Yup. George Bowering looked like Hank Hill on King of the Hill.

I know it should not matter at all what a poet looks like (to answer my own question, rhetorical or not). But it may be distracting, at least for a while. Until the poet reads or recites his work then it doesn't matter. The impression made by the words overwhelms that first, shallow one.

I wonder what I look like when I perform as a poet. A Homemaker Mom, I suspect. Like this, or this, or this. That can be overcome somewhat by my words, but I think they mostly reinforce the mom-ness of me.

question: Were you ever surprised by someone's appearance?

mompoet - trying not to look, only to listen

strange days

transition means leggy petunias more stem than flower, back-to-school haircuts, stacks of duo tangs empty and expectant, cold in the morning - hot at noon, last blast of corn and tomatoes and first new apples at the produce store, emailing a friend in the final days of a year off teaching to be with the baby, nobody in the high school parking lot but probably next week, a letter from the middle school, shopping for running shoes, PNE, ice back in at the arena, spider webs outside the back door, damp lawn at night, ripe blackberries on menacing vines, planning events for September...October...summer's end

question: how do you fall?

mompoet - falling, definitely

the dark is creeping in

Now it's dark when I let the dog out first thing in the morning, and dark when I walk her in the evening. I love summer and will continue to love it for a few more weeks. But I feel sad to know from day one it is a continual process of decline, from the longest day downward.

Oh well, there is one consolation...the shortest day is on its way. I like that even better.

question: what's your favourite time of year?

mompoet - liking the uphill trek better than the downhill slide

new weebl and bob cartoon (about cats)

Believe me, I don't link every new weebl and bob cartoon to my blog - just a select few. Most of them, if you knew I liked them, you wouldn't like me anymore. But this one is charming. Well, er, funny.... to some people.

question: do you iron your cat?

mompoet - immature

Damn Spamn

I've just received my second spam comment on my blog. When it happens I'll just shut off the comments to that post but what a nuisance. I thought nobody read these anyway, but now I know some horrible computer programs is locked in with a tractor beam and advertising anatomical enhancements, payday loans, instant university degrees and cheap prescription drugs in the comments section of mompoet.com

NOT FAIR!

mompoet - zorching spam on my barbeque and feeding it to the wolves

the thing about overbites

I have always been a sucker for overbites. I think they are cute. Here are my two favourite celebrity overbites.

overbite man
overbite woman
(she's the one on the left. Edward Norton is cute too, but he doesn't have an overbite)

I had one too when I was twelve (still do, just a little). Without a good orthodontist I would have grown up looking like this.

question: why is imperfect better than just perfect?

mompoet - biting my lip

bruschetta night

my husband is a tech wiz

He fixed the camera. First of all he was super nice about my splashing and smashing it, then he fixed it. That's me and Kirsi having a drink and laughing about smashed up stuff and how husbands take photographs. He wanted to stand right in front of us. As if!

Now I've got some tomatoes to chop and can. House is cooler. Husband and daughter are out buying school supplies. Son is shouting at the football game on tv. Neighbours are shouting too. With the windows open it sounds like stereo.

Life is good.
Kirsi, I am glad you are home after 3 weeks in Ontario. I had no one to drink with on the road.

question: what's your best side?

mompoet - going to smash some tomatoes and crush some cilantro

mama don't play no ukulele

Yesterday I got dog poo on my shoe while I was at work. I grabbed my spare pair out of the car only to discover they already had dog poo on them. Then I dunked the digital camera under the tap at camp and dropped it on the gravel. The guy at Van Cam says it's not worth fixing. Drats.

Today is much better. I took the day off work, which is always delicious. Andy took the boy-teen to Playland to ride the PNE rides with no lineups. The day before the fair opens all of the extra rides are operating, and included in your Playland pass.

Drama girl and I went to the musical theatre teacher's house for a choreography session in preparation for the PNE Star Discovery Kids Talent Show. Yup, our daughter is in the semi-finals next weekend. Then we went to Granville Island for the day. We had a great time - a little bit of poking in stores (she bought beads and hemp for bracelets), and some lunching and sitting out in the square watching the boats and the people. Ralph Shaw, the Ukulele King was playing, which delighted me. I asked my daughter if she remembered when we saw him on New Year's Day and she did.

When the kids were little, our New Year's Eve tradition included lunch with friends and a visit to Burnaby Village Museum on New Year's Eve Day. The village is all dressed for Christmas, with musicians and storytellers throughout the day. Daughter first saw Ralph Shaw in Brookfield Hall (the village's vaudeville theatre) when she was 4 years old. I remember he played a nose flute which she found totally enchanting.

So we were back there again when she was 6, and she read on the schedule that Ralph Shaw would perform on New Year's Day at noon. I agreed to bring her back (it was the very next day, but what else did we have to do?) Nobody else in the family wanted a repeat visit so soon, so we went on our own. Well, it turned out that nobody else in the world thought of going to Burnaby Village Museum at noon on New Year's Day. We had the place, and Ralph, to ourselves. Another entertainer came and sat down to listen to his set, because there was literally nobody else there. We sat outside on the porch of the ice cream parlour and enjoyed all kinds of old songs and a bit of chat. Daughter was too old to dance, but young enough not to shy away at this exclusive performance.

The only other time I can remember being the only one in the audience was at a performance of Haunted House Hamlet at Presentation House in North Vancouver. The show was staged in all of the back rooms and corridors of the theatre and on the stage, with scenes taking place simultaneously. It was a sparse house that night, and I found myself in the bowels of the theatre, with three actors performing a scene (I can't remember which). It felt weird be outnumbered, but I liked it.

Today, twelve year old daughter made sure we didn't get too close to Ralph Shaw, and declined to take the coins up to the ukulele case at the end of the show. Of course she didn't dance, but we enjoyed watching a three-year old girl spinning joyfully across the square.

She asked how buskers make enough money to live and I said I thought they also did paid shows like at the village and maybe taught music lessons. I asked her if she thought I might take ukulele lessons one day and she said, "You would!" Then I suggested that if I did I might just haul that ukulele along to parties and family gatherings and yank it out after supper and say, "Who's for a hootenany?" That earned an eye-roll, a nose-wrinkle and a brow-scrunch. I guess she's a normal teenager.

It was a much better day today. When we got home, daughter helped make supper. Husband and son came home tired and happy from Playland. Best of all, Andy's not on night shift for a while so our family gets right-side-up again. I love the movies, but not when they take my husband away all night.

Now I'm going to clean my shoes, load the dishwasher and make some bruschetta (I bought 20 pounds of Okanagan tomatoes just perfect). Ooops! Kirsi just phoned. I'm going to go sit by the side of the road and drink a beer instead.

The shoes (and the poo) will be there later.
The tomatoes will keep.
Too bad about the camera.
I will never play the ukulele.

question: have you ever showed up for a show and you were the only one?

mompoet - maybe the nose flute?

Why I love my job

Well, here's one example anyway:

On Wednesday one of the day camp leaders phoned in sick and there was no sub available, so I was the craft leader for the day, while the other leaders took groups nature-hiking and canoeing. The craft was picture frames. Each camper brought "treasures" from home to stick onto his/her picture frame using a hot glue gun. They brought beads and buttons and seashells and pretty rocks and stickers...you get the idea.

So the youngest group (6 and 7 year olds) comes to the table. I show them the craft and they get started...

mp: Hey Josh, what treasures did you bring?

J: (emptying his ziplok bag) Look, I got a wolf spider. I found it at home and nobody wants it!

mp: That's a very beautiful spider. Did you bring it to show your friends?

J: I brought it for my picture frame.

mp: Oh. Are you going to glue it on there with those pretty rocks you brought?

J: They're not rocks. They're diamonds.

mp: Oh yes, I can see that!

So he made a beautiful picture frame, decorated with 6 mineral samples and a dead wolf spider, all stuck on with a glue gun. The spider really was beautiful. It was pretty much intact, with 7 remaining legs stuck on pretty good, especially with the application of a glue gun.

It's good to see kids just liking what they like. The other 6 and 7 year olds liked the wolf spider picture frame too.

So that was my day. Oh, I also got to do storytelling. Haven't done that in over a year since our daughter (the younger of the two) decided that she is old enough that Mom may no longer come tell stories to her class. It was fun.

question: what do you like about your job?

mompoet - lucky

nature is nature

Tonight it rains on my house.
I will sleep by 11 and rise again at 5.
We sorted school supplies and marked the list.
More movies are being made in Vancouver, but not so many that the people in the lab can't drive home in the rain in the morning.
The movies will still not all be good.
Soon we will return to the bluff trail and forget about the movies.

question: does anyone hear the pillow's song?

mompoet - zzz

At least he knew the right thing to say...

I got bit by a parrot this morning. One like this. I was feeding my neighbour's bird and he stuck his beak out through the bars (I did not put my finger in the cage) and he bit me. I let out a little gasp when he let go, and he gasped back, "ooooomph." Then he tried to bite me again so I distracted him by jingling my keys over the top of the cage while I tried to reconnect and padlock the food dish back into place. But he was too smart. He turned around and headed back for my fingers saying, "Ouch! Ouch!" as he came after me. I was quick and just kept holding different things over the cage for him to go look at and I got the food and water dish back in and padlocked in place.

Nice of him to say ouch though. Do you think he felt my pain?

question: is Fritz related to Kanzi?

mompoet - ouch

nature is pretty good a lot of the time

Summer is ending.
The kids are growing up.
I came in third in the poetry slam tonight.
My sister leaves for Africa in 3 weeks.
I have been up since 5am. It is now 1am all over again.
The spiders are back.
The corn is ripe.
My son's jeans are too short again and he needs another haircut.
About a million movies are being made in Vancouver as we speak.
2 of them will be good.
Somewhere it is raining

question: how does it all fit?

mompoet - going to sleep on it

nature imperfect part too

Bats now.

question: where? why?

mompoet - I know, that's two questions

Fort Ebey

What a great weekend. We camped two nights in Fort Ebey on Whidbey Island in Washington State. Usually this time of year we go to Deception Pass, but it was full. Turns out we had an even better time. It was hot in the afternoon but cool enough at night for sweatpants and zipped up sleeping bags. We heard foghorns and bouy-bells and walked on a spectacular bluff trail. I accidentally caught the sunset when I sneaked out of dishwashing time to stretch the dog. A big mango disc slipping remarkably quickly behind on of the San Juan Islands with the water and sky all around it just like old hydrangeas. I thought I was by myself, but then I heard applause and cheers for the sunset from twos and threes of fellow sky-watchers perched on the bluffs and parked on the trails here and there. That's the goodness of camping, you can just stand there and watch the sky and it's the best show there is.

Speaking of the dog, she suspended her morbid camera fear on the beach one day and we got some good shots which is wonderful. She's been with us 2 1/2 years, and I think I have one photograph that isn't of her butt in frightened retreat.

We had a campfire both nights with enough s'mores to keep the kids all sticky and happy and saying things like "shmellow time!" It's so damp there from the morning ocean fog that they rarely ban fires. My friends Louise and Robin and Ralph and my parents were there too. We shared the cooking and washing up and the kid-watching and did a bit of exploring and some sitting and relaxing. My big triumph is learning to park the trailer (with a little help from Louise).

Now there's laundry and gear stowing. We won't camp again this summer, so I'll transfer the stuff like the stove and the little tent into our emergency bin in our shed. We're already talking about where to go next year. Summer is so short.

question: is marshmallow liking/not liking genetically determined?

mompoet - not liking

Back to work is busy and BLUE

Forgot to mention. This photo's a little dark, but the walls are blueberry ice cream and the trim is a Canuck jersey.

The hallways are biological beige like walking around inside a big pair of panty-hose. Yowza!

question: what's your favourite colour?

mompoet - cool

nature imperfect

I'm going to sleep in the woods this weekend and listen to the supper song of the barred owl as he chows down on platefuls of spotted owls, and contemplate beluga autoimmune hemochromatosis. I still think, all in all, nature works, but sometimes you have to wonder.

question: who cooks for yoooooooo!

mompoet - owlish AND leviathan

Bonobo Review the longer version

Well, not too much longer because now I have to go pack the trailer for our weekend camping trip before I get too tired to see straight. Oh yeah, I don't see straight ever anyway. Never mind, I have lots of time.

The Leaky Heaven Circus in Bonobo is at the Russian Hall in Strathcona until August 22.

We got down to the Russian Hall about at 7pm last night to get "2 for 1 at the door" preview tickets. I drove my sister and brother-in-law's other car (by the way, the Sub is taken, in case you got that email that I sent out that they are giving it away). Their other car is a Taurus station wagon that seats 6, so I could fit five kids and me inside. It had all of their camping gear in it too, and I'm pretty sure I sat on my sister's hat all the way to Vancouver.

Anyway, we got there, and there's this Happyland Carnival happening on the street outside the theatre. There are carnival booths with jarred oddities to look at, and a dog-girl, and lots of orphans and other weird characters and games of course and a Russian insulter who you can throw a pie at for a loonie. The kids took a look around and asked if they could wait in the car. They were so afraid to be embarrassed or associated with weirdness or something, but I pocketed and keys and told them we were going to the carnival. I had to play a bit to get them going, but they came around. They shot super-hero toys off of shelves with an air gun and popped balloons with darts and even won the shell game (I got tricked) but they wouldn't dance in the parade. Our son threw a pie and missed. It was lovely and weird and good.

Then the show started. It's based on the ape-language research that was done in the 80s in the States. What I liked most about it was how it captured the simulatneous earnest good-intention and total otherness of research about human beings talking to chimpanzees. I remember feeling a prickly thrill back then, when I read about an ape making up a sentence to ask the scientist to chase him and tickle him. This moment is in the play. But at the same time it's off-the-wall silly and irreverent and philosophical and smart and acrobatic. There are children in it and a dog. The actors are all wonderful. Costumes, sets, lighting very effective. I got prickles again but I was also falling over laughing and groaning at lame jokes and marvelling at the acrobatic skill of the actors and the wonderful musicians who played at the side of the stage.

The kids were all stiff and tense at first, wouldn't sit in the first row (they've been to Leaky Heaven shows before) but they wished they had sat there when Matata, the Mommy ape, simultaneously mused in french about the meaning of life and made a banana split which she then fed to the kids who were still immune enough to embarassment to sit in the first row.

This week my children and their cousins have been feeling like they are too old for things that they loved just a little while ago: campfire night at my daycamp, the Granville Island water park. It's sad to see them rush up to something with that same joy then back away and close up into a shell of self-protection. I know I have a short time to chase and tickle them back to child-like silliness before they just refuse, and act way too grown up for a few years. Luckily they have my genes, so they'll likely start acting like silly babies again before they are 25, but in the meantime....

So if you have a 12 year old, or a 15 year old, maybe you should take him or her to Bonobo. Go early and experience a full hour of Happyland too. Bring quarters and loonies for the insulter and the balloon pop and go feel prickly about people connecting with apes and with themselves. Or go for some other reason. I know you'll like it no matter what.

question: how come I still don't feel grown up?

mompoet - I can still get them to play Balderdash all night, and that's a good thing

what kind of birthday present do you buy your sister when she's leaving soon to live in eritrea for 2 years?

underpants

question: do you think that's okay?

mompoet - the kids are still screaming with laughter

Go to Bonobo

I just saw Leaky Heaven Circus in Bonobo. It's very good. It was fun watching the kids curl up at the weirdness of the Happyland Carnival and slowly breathe out and allow themselves to have fun. They are growing up too fast.

I'm too tired to tell about the show tonight, and also hoping to get up and make it to the 6:15 cycle class in the morning so I'll post about it tomorrow. Just get tickets, go. It's a good show.

Bonobo - ooooh ooooh oooh eeeeeeeee!!!!! ah!ah!ah! (fart)

question: ooooh?

mompoet - ba-nana

almost monday

If you are bored at work tomorrow you could make one of these. And I thought I was behaving outrageously with that oreo-middle goo-ball that I keep in my desk drawer.

question: did you have a good weekend?

mompoet - going to pack lunch now

I am not a neatnick by any means but this drives me crazy

The entrance hallway in our house makes your average telephone booth look like a grand ballroom, so there's not much space for abandoned footwear. We do take our shoes off when we come in, but geeeezzz...there's a place for them in the closet. I put one of those multi-level wooden shoe shelves in there and they do fit neatly and easily. Especially now that we have 6 extra feet living in the house for a few days we have way too many shoes.

I love every single person who wears these shoes, and I'm grateful that I don't come home to only my own lonely shoes, but I wish that all the people who I love would put their shoes away. When I put the shoes away myself, it backfires. First, the shoe-wearers get annoyed, because they can't find their shoes. "Where are my shoes?" "I can't find my shoes!!!!" "I'm in a hurry...Where are my shoes?" Then they complain "You put my shoes away. Why can't you just leave them out where I can find them?"

I could understand this if they were firefighters who had to jump into their shoes and get out the door to save lives, or if we had snakes and scorpions in the closet, so it was unsafe to put their shoes in there. But really...why can't they reach into the closet and get their shoes when they need them, and put them back in there when they do not?

Picture this: two kids coming in the door from the water park, taking off their wet flip-flops and leading a wet dog, who has waited to come into the house to give herself a good shakey-shake-shake, one husband going out the door and trying to find his shoes, and me, with a leaky bagful of drippy potato peels trying to get out to the trash (I know, I should compost, but I'm too busy rearranging shoes to compost) and the phone is ringing, but we can't find it because it's inside a shoe...Maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration, but I maintain that our shoe proliferation problem exacerbates domestic chaos.

The second problem that happens when I put the shoes away is that I feel resentment. Heck yeah, I do. And I try not to do things that cause me to feel resentment, because that means I'm making a choice to feel miserable and it's my own responsibity to choose another path. So what path? I've talked to the shoe-wearers and requested that we each keep one pair of shoes only "ready for immediate use" and put the others away. They agree but don't follow through. I could live with the pile of shoes but that bugs me too. But it doesn't bug me as much astidying them and having my loved-ones get annoyed and being resentful myself, so I guess that's what I'll do.

Maybe I'll start hanging my bras on doorknobs all around the house and insist that I need them there so I can find them when I have to put on a bra and run out the door. But they probably wouldn't get it. Also, I do have my own junkpiles in other parts of the house that probably bug them like the shoes bug me. Actually, I don't think so, but I can pretend because it makes me feel better.

question: any suggestions for eliminating this shoe-phoria?

mompoet - bitch, bitch, bitch (sigh)

listening to myself

The other night I said:

"When you all go to bed, it's okay to talk quiety with your cousin or cousins in your own room but THERE WILL BE NO:

• shouting between bedrooms
• running up and down the hall
• knocky-nine-doors
• notes stuffed under bedroom doors
• talking through the heating vent
• yelling out the window
• tin cans with strings
• morse code wall-banging
• mental telepathy

The kids thought I was nuts, but they were quiet.

question: did you ever listen to yourself and hear your mom?

mompoet - doing it all the time

Playland Survival Tips

I booked off work today and took the penta-gaggle to Playland. We planned to take transit, but it's a 3-zone fare on a weekday, so would have cost us $19.50 each way (gadzooks). My dad kindly shuttled some of the kids in his car and I drove too. So much for sustainable transportation alternatives. I know if we were regular transit users we'd have passes or faresavers and it would have been cheaper, but I can't think it would have been that much cheaper. When we were finished, two of the boys bused home and got back before we did, so Translink did make its contribution to our day.

The kids had a blast of course. They're old enough to take off and keep an eye on their watches. As long as they show up for our pre-agreed rendezvous and accept the food/water/sunscreen/check-in upon which I insist, they are free to explore and have fun and I stay out of their way. I brought a book in case they wanted to stay longer than I did, but I ended up riding the Coaster the whole time. I know I am verging on obsession with this ride, but it's harmless. They shut the ride down for 30 minutes mid-morning and I stuck around and watched them climb up to the middle of the second hill and fix something on the track. I got two front seat solo rides, which I love, and 6 rides in all, bringing me to 37 this season. I'm resigned to not making my target of 100, but 50 is definitely reachable. Every time I ride it I notice something that I have not noticed before, and every ride is different, with burps and bumps in different spots every time around. It's almost like it's alive. Good people-watching in the line-up too.

So here are my survival tips for Playland, in case you haven't taken your kids yet this summer:

1) Get a locker. It's $5 for the day with unlimited access. You rent a key at guest services and you can leave jackets, sunscreen, food, water, sleeping babies (well, maybe not). Ask for a big one if you need it. It will save you a ton of money on food and beverages and you won't have to haul your stuff around.

2) Bring lunch and water. There's nothing to eat at Playland unless you you like over-priced burgers and fries and pop or expensive bottled water. You can fit a couple of small cooler bags into the big locker. Take sandwiches and fruit in one, water bottles and/or juice in another. Bring some chips and pretzels and some cookies in a backpack and you might even get away without buying cotton candy and candy apples. The price of food can more than double your expenses if you buy on site. Bring real food and focus on the fun.

3) If you're planning to ride the Coaster, go to it first while the lineups are short and ride on the front car whenever the lineup for that seat is fewer than 5 rides. It's less than 2 minutes for a complete circuit, so you'll be on in just 10 minutes once you get into the "shed." Same for the back car.

4) If you don't care which car you're in on the Coaster, you can get on faster by grabbing the extra seat. There are 8 seats in every train, but only 7 slots for loading. Somewhere in the middle of the train there will be an extra seat "between slots." Most times nobody gets in because they have been queueing and are pretty much robot-brains. Everyone stands and stares at the empty seat. Be ready and take the extra seat, you can ride twice as much if you do this.

5) Get free ice-water. There's a big spout-jug of it by the rear door of the White Spot concession near the entrance to the park. If you're on the run, they have paper cups. If you have a water bottle, fill it up. The water is cold and lovely and free, and it will keep your kids from fainting and getting heat stroke and you from getting a headache and hating everything. Did I mention it's free?

6) Talk to people. I have good conversations in the lineup. People are there to have fun and they like to compare kid stories or ride stories. If they look like they don't want to talk, eavesdrop. It's great entertainment while you wait.

7) Find shade. There are trees and grass in the Southeast corner of the park, between the Coaster and the mini-golf. You can sit on the ground or at a picnic table to rest, re-hydrate, eat lunch. This is also a good rendezvous point.

8) Leave when you have had enough. Whether you have a day pass or a season's pass, the worst half hour is the last if you should have left already. The best is when you leave laughing and talking about the fun you had.

I had a great time. The kids were all ready to leave at the same time. Dad treated us all to Szechuan supper, so we are now full and tired and happy. Good day.

question: do you know any Playland secrets?

mompoet - still afraid of the haunted house ( and I don't like the Wild Mouse either)

weird cousinosophy

My sister and I know things about each other in ways that defy science and logic. No matter where we are, we just know things about each other. Like when she was cycle-touring South America and I dreamed that I flew to Brazil to give her maternity clothes that would be comfortable on a bike, and she phoned the next day to say she was unexpectedly pregnant.

Then there was/were our second children. We each phoned our mom on the same day (from different cities) to tell her the good news that we were pregnant again. Mom laughed her head off when I phoned. I said, "Mom, this is happy news, not funny news." She said, "phone your sister." Then we gave birth the very same day, Barb in Cranbrook, me in Burnaby. So we have twin cousins who are uncannily alike. I just heard my daugher arguing with my son in the basement, then I realised it was my nephew, he just sounds like my daughter. And they have similar personalities, tastes in food, etc.

Barb's husband once claimed he is the father of both of them. Actually, he told an old lady at the bus stop who was fussing over the babies. "Yeah, they're sisters. They gave birth on the same day. I'm the father." Well, I can tell you, it ain't so. But I didn't tell the lady. I just smiled like a good plural wife because it was fun to rattle her and I was still pretty wacked out from giving birth. Anyway. The twin cousins get reunited a few times every year, and I'm always delighted how they are growing up so different and so similar all at once.

Tomorrow the girl twin, who has just overcome her fear of the Hellevator at Playland, is going to get the boy twin to go on it too. I can hardly wait. One day they will appear in the same Broadway play. Barb and I will be in the audience, laughing our heads off in a happy AND funny way.

question: I don't know, ask the kids

mompoet - surrounded by stinky sneakers and walking miracles

we don't have to go to starbucks any more....

Finally we have an independent, family owned coffee place back within dog-walking distance of home. Il Mercante opened a few weeks ago at 50 Queens Street - spitting distance from the Bluck. It fronts onto the new Port Moody Square at the blocked-off bottom of Queens. It's a good place.

Fred Soofi (owner of Pasta Polo) owns this place too. He is good stuff, a real community-active guy who supports local political candidates, contributes to community festivals and events and fundraises big-time whenever there's a disaster somewhere in the world and help is needed. The new restaurant is smaller and more casual, and will include a deli soon, but you could go there for lunch or supper - not just coffee. They have pizzas, pastas, paninis and additional foods that do not begin with the letter p, but I can't think of them. The coffee? Goooooooooooooooood. Prices beat Blah-bucks too. Opens early and stays open weeknights until 10 at least. Dog friendly patio not dominated by smokers. good, good, good. This is our new place.

question: why would you eat cardboard with a plastic fork when the real cannoli is right across the street?

mompoet - la la la liking it

scrapbooking

My sister and her family just arrived at our house this evening. Barb and Kim will leave the kids with us while they go to Ottawa for a week's training for their year (or two) in Eritrea. Until Sunday night we'll have 5 children, ages 9-15 years. It will be noisy and fun. Thank goodness for Costco, I think we'll have enough food.

I'm tired and busy and will try to post some photos and thoughts. For tonight, a mixture of offerings from previous posts. This is my clip-show blog:

Today in a final burst of pre-return-to-work productivity I help in shelter an escaped mental patient in a cave and prepare his bedroom for painting. My only complaint is thanks to Andy's green thumb the wizards are in the thick of puberty. JK Rowling got this one right, although I half-wish we called them "thongs." I had planned to sit with coffee and the newspaper and wear pajamas as long as possible. But that was not to be. My husband likes to have all of the latest electronic gadetry. We were in a a giant industrial building now full of artists' studios. At the front of the class, our endorphin-pusher urges us to go faster, pedal harder, INCREASE THE TENSION!!!! Why do things always happen in weird clusters? AROOOOOOOOOO!

That was fun.

question: what is the square root of happy?

mompoet - fractal pterodactyl

of course they didn't do that...

Remember last week's news item about the sign on the London Subway urging passenger to walk, not run, especially if they were carrying rucksacks or "looked foreign." It was on the TV news - maybe the newspapers, I don't know, I haven't read them during my holidays.

Anyway, I emails snopes, the Urban Legends Website, and they've just posted an item about this story.

question: is it that easy to fool the news?

mompoet - I know, I know...

How I Spent my Summer Vacation

question: whatcha reading?

mompoet - happy and relaxed

pIckLEs**$%!!

That header is for my niece Maya, who wrote a hilarious poem that uses only one word, "pickles," over and over and over. I think it also includes eating and throwing pickles which are stored loose in pants and jacket pockets. She wants me to perform it at the bad poetry slam, but I said it's her poem so I'd be disqualified. She'll have to come and do it herself. I'll provide the pickles and do the laundry after.

Today in a final burst of pre-return-to-work productivity I canned 20 pounds of dill cukes. I'm on the list at the produce store so the guy will call me when the good stuff comes in. These are definitely good. The dog and me crunched quite a few just raw and fresh as I worked. Yum.

Jamming, pickling, canning, wine-making...these things all make me feel happy. Good stuff for my family and to give as gifts. Food that is totally pure and nutritious and sometimes cheaper than the store bought alternative, and always tastier, well, except for the wine, but it's cheaper for sure.

So I'm ready to go back to work, yes I am. I'll take some pickles with me.

question: did you ever listen for jar lids to make that happy sNaP!!!?

mompoet - dome-estic

painted out

If you ever need the inside of your sauna painted while it is operating, or maybe if they need a fresh coat on the foyer of hell, I think I can do it. Three days of toiling in what must be the hottest room in anybody's house have finally paid off in a very cool looking (but hot-feeling) bedroom.

After our son helped with the prep work I decided to paint solo. It would have been a better mom thing to work together with him, but he was stressed to the gills just looking at it, and very grateful when I offered him the job of chief cook and bottle washer in return for me being the painter. He wants a fresh room and he'll love the results, but participating in the transition is excruciating for him so why make him suffer? Remember, this is the kid who decided not to change the colour at Christmas because it would be too stressful. Change is hard for him, so I think that adapting the task was the right thing to do.

Anyway, despite the heat, I love painting. It's kind of like swimming though. You stand around at the edge of it thinking Ugggg but once you start it's great. There's a rhythm to the work and the radio to listen to, and the satisfaction of saying goodbye to the old colour and making a big transformation in a short time. It's good for the shoulders too. Remember The Karate Kid and how he conditioned by staining the fence. Painting is a workout if you work at it.

Tomorrow we should be able to move the furniture back in, stick the light switches and outlet plates back on, re-attach the doorknob and see what the new bedroom really looks like. It's also our last day of vacation. Eighteen days is goooood.

question: what will I paint next?

mompoet - wondering if a room gets smaller everytime you paint it....

life imitates art imitates cooking...

I think it began when I took the kids to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I've been obsessing about the scene where Violet Beauregard turns into a blueberry after chewing blueberry pie chewing gum. Now everywhere I look..blue blue blue blue blue

question: blue?

mompoet - luckily I never chew gum

Late July Bounty

Andy and I picked 34 pounds of blueberries on Friday morning. We got out to the farm at 8am. Lots of people were there already. It was cool and damp and we heard roosters and horses and smelled cows. It took us 3 hours to fill 8 buckets. We go to a place in PoCo called Granny Franny's. It's run by a guy who is meticulous about his field and plants and watchful of u-pickers. The berries are spectacular. Here's my favourite way to enjoy them.

question: what's your favourite food of summer?

mompoet - baking muffins

paint chips

Son and I washed and prepped his bedroom walls today. We're in the midst of patching, and should start painting tomorrow morning. I picked up the paint this afternoon. Going to the paint store is funny. I like to watch what colours people choose and try to imagine the room they will be living in with that colour. There was a fairly stressed-out young couple desperately trying to match a creamy beige that they last had mixed in 2000. Not being appreciative of beige I thought it was funny - who cares? Beige is beige! But if it's your beige in your beige room, then it is important. I bet they have a white couch and a brown dog. Then there was this older guy who was painting the wood trim on his old trailer forest green. He had the paint stir stick from the last time he painted it, but not the old can of paint for the code, and he wanted just the same colour. They have a scanner at the paint store that can duplicate colours. It turned out to be a near-perfect match. Then there was the sweet looking lady who had 6 gallons, one each of a sherbert pastel - pink, green, yellow, purple, blue and a pale grey. I wonder if she's decorating an ice cream store, or maybe painting a mural with happy elephants? For our son, I got tinted primer (I do love primer!) and deep blue for the walls. Andy convinced me that the ceiling still looks great from the last time we did it so we'll just leave it. As I was leaving I caught the beige couple looking askance at my 2 gallons of midnight blue. I smiled at them and thought, "come over to the dark side!" Paint is just paint. It's the easiest and cheapest way to make a dramatic change in your living environment, like dying your hair or buying a new sweater can make a change to your personal appearance. I like it!

question: What do you think the pastel 6 pack is all about?

mompoet - not beige!

summer vacation book review

I read three novels at the lake:

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling

How I Spent My Summer Holidays by WO Mitchell

Wally by Greg Kramer

All three are coming-of-age "boy stories." All three were great and taken close together with some overlaps, very satisfying. They were also great vacation reads, taking me to places where I've never been.

Wally is set in Wales, London and Vancouver, all in theatres. It's about a guy who feels hurt from boyhood and spends his life chasing down something he can't even figure out what it is. The main character is pessimistic but loveable, and the novel is compelling because the story keeps taking him to the brink of happiness then veering off into worlds of self-destruction. Of the three, this was the most frustrating for me because I couldn't see eye-to-eye with any of the characters, but I was hooked by their complex and authentic personalities and predicaments and the world of the theatre in which the story is set.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation is set in a prairie town in the summer of 1924. It's every bit as sensational as Wally, in turns hilarious and heart-rending. I loved the characters and the portrayal of small town social life and morality. The main character, 12-year old Hugh is fabulous and real, and there are all kinds of interesting other people like King Motherwell, a man from the town who convinces Hugh and his friend Peter to help in shelter an escaped mental patient in a cave that the boys dig out on the prairie. There's one great scene where "Blind Jesus," another mental patient, wanders into a revival meeting baptism in the river. It's beautiful.

Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is set in Hogwarts. JK Rowling got this one right, although I half-wish she'd write shorter sentences, only because I have read every one of the Harry Potter books aloud more than once (well, I just finished my first out-loud of the sixth) and it's exhausting to stay on top of the sentences and read them well. That small criticism aside, the second-to-last book in the series balances humour and drama beautifully and carries Harry, Ron and Hermione along as they grow into young adult wizards. The continuing conflict with Voldemort and the Death Eaters is very nicely developed and the promised death of a major character is shocky-chokey just as I thought it would be. JK Rowling has given up on trying to continuously recap what's happened in past volumes, which helps keep the pace brisk and prevented the book from being 1,000 pages long, no doubt. Oh yeah, there's lots of kissing, but that's appropriate as the wizards are in the thick of puberty. My only complaint is not enough Hagrid. He's been my favourite character since Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. If I got a tattoo, it would be of Hagrid.

I didn't set out to read three boy books but I did. I'm glad I did. I recommend them all. Don't read Wally if you're already depressed unless you want confirmation that you should be. Get ready to stay up late if you read Summer Holidays or Half Blood Prince. You won't want to put them down.

Now I'm reading Sylvanus Now by Donna Morrissey. We're passing it around the neighbourhood and it's my turn. I'm gobbling it up.

question: is binge-reading the best thing about summer vacation?

mompoet - turning pages

pie-pod?

New Weebl and Bob 'toon out now.

question: why doesn't my daughter think this is funny?

mompoet - dough brain

party

Nine slept in our basement last night. I think "slept" might be an exaggeration. The nice thing about 11-12 year olds though is they are old enough to sleep in. They all quieted around 4am and woke at 10. After eating prodigious quantities of fruit, pancakes and bacon they are now singing in the basement as they stuff their sleeping bags and sort out their belongings for an 11am pickup. We're keeping 3 guests until mid-afternoon. Maybe they'll go swimming, maybe they'll make a movie. Andy is going to the beach. Son and I will prepare his bedroom for painting. In this heat, his ceiling is going to suck up a gallon or two of paint, but that's okay. It needs it! The dog will be glad when some of these extra girls go home.

Gotta go, the minivan caravan is arriving to retrieve girls.

question: what?

mompoet - bye

picture picture?

Blogger says it has an easier way to post pictures. This is a test. Only a test.

This is a picture of me washing dishes at camp. I think we ate spaghetti. The person who washes the spaghetti dishes is entitled to many privileges and special treatment because spaghetti dishes are very yucky!

When we camp, we wash dishes just once a day, usually in the evening. That's a tree beside me, watching to make sure that I am doing a good job. Out of the picture are Andy, enjoying a beer by the lake, Alex, wading on the shore in the gathering darkness, and Fiona, the photographer.

So I guess you'll actually be seeing me from time to time in the blog. Hope you can stand it.

question: can you see it?

mompoet - imagining images and deciding what to share

my beach

After lunchtime our back deck is cool and breezy. We have flowers spilling out of pots and planters, thanks to Andy's green thumb (he purchases, plants and feeds - I water). We have tall chairs out there so you can see over the rail to the trees and the inlet down below. I finished reading Harry Potter to our son out on the deck last night. Today I have spent a couple of lazy hours with newspapers and magazines. We have meals out there too, and sit out in the evening with drinks (we have little lights that look like insects for a festive atmosphere). Mostly I like to put my feet up and read. I loved the week at the lake, but this is my beach. Home sweet deck...ahhhhh.

question: where is your beach?

mompoet - getting the hang of holidaying and still a week to go

Happy birthday dear 12-year old

Our daughter is 12 today. She has planned her own birthday (takes after her mom, I think). I have instructions NOT to clean the house. We have pie instead of cake, and we're going to the Spaghetti Factory for supper. That's the "family birthday." Tomorrow is the "friends birthday." Ten girls, lazer tag and a sleepover. There will also be a water balloon fight, makeovers and decorating flip flops with foam shapes and fake flowers. I let her experiment on mine and they are gorgeous and over-the-top. Like Carmen Miranda only on my feet.

When I was her age we called them "thongs." But that means something else now. I keep threatening to walk into Shoppers or London Drugs with her and say "My daughter and I need some THONGS! Where d'ya keep 'em?" That would cause her to die of embarassment. She also told me I am not allowed to shave my head, not that I was planning too, but sometimes I threaten to, just to make her nervous. I also have this jean jacket from 1986 that I put on and pretend I'm going to wear when we're heading to the mall. It has a million zippers and big lapels, shoulder pads. Very retro but totally unacceptable. Maybe I'll wrap it up and give it to her tonight as a birthday present. She'll either put it in her movie-making costume box or burn it.

Congratulations daughter! You have made it to the thick of adolescence. Congratulations to us for making it too! We should all shave our heads, dress in bad clothes and go talk loudly in outdated and inappropriate slang at the Spaghetti Factory. Yeahhh!

question: why didn't anyone tell me it would be this much fun?

mompoet - walking the line between individual and non-embarassing parent

do it yourself dog psychology - part 2

We are new dog people. Soleil, our first canine ever, has lived with us for 2 1/2 years now, and we're figuring it out one step at a time.

Lately she's been peeing in the living room. It's digusting! Our new carpet does not show a dark spot when it's wet so sploosh! you just step in it. At least when she pees downstairs we can see it, and the carpet in the basement is in 12 inch square tiles that we can pick up and put into the laundry tub to wash. In general, she waits to pee outside but if she is sick or upset she sometimes pees in the house. It's very smelly and wet. Yuk.

We have a carpet-washing machine, which I have used a couple of times in recent weeks to attack the spot where she has gone, but I think she can still smell it (truth is I can still smell it and I'm not even a good smeller) and once a dog has a pee spot, she goes back to it. So how do we fix this? We never see her doing it, so she knows she's not supposed to. She's smart enough to wait until we're not looking. We don't want to yell at her because that is mean and it would just scare her and it would sound like, "BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA SOLEIL! BLA BLA BLA etc."

So I'm going with the same approach as the dog pajamas, which, by the way, have succeeded in curtailing her rump de-forestation habit very well. The living room rug has been washed again and liberally doused with "Nature's Miracle" smell-remover as recommended by the vet. The living room has been barricaded with chairs except when we are supervising the dog directly, so that the washed and treated rug can dry completely. When it is completely dry, I'm going to put down a plastic cover with towels over it. Hopefully this will prevent her from finding any lingering scent-trail that might induce repeat peeing. If she pees there, it'll be on the towels which will be easy to clean up, and the plastic will protect the rug. I'm hoping/predicting that a month with no access to the peeing field will break the cycle. We'll see.

question: why are dogs so doggone doggy?

mompoet - climbing over chairs to get to the couch

Cuke, I am your Father

My uncle in Ithica sent this too me. If you like Star Wars or vegetables or if you are concerned about the future of the planet, you'll like it.

question: ever made a salad with a light sabre?

mompoet - I yam what I yam

the world is a weebl

When I was just a little to old to want one, there were these toys called Weebls. They were little egg-shaped people with weights at their fat-ends. There was a song on the TV ads: Waddaya love about a Weebl? Weebls wobble, but they don't fall down.

The world has been weebly these past 48 hours or so...

Getting home from vacation was great. We had a wonderful, relaxing, sunny time. Daughter had an awesome time at Grandma and Grandpa's (my mom and dad's). They got to know her in a new way, keeping her for 4 nights as they did, and she them. This is very good. I hope that our son has the same opportunity some time soon. The kids and the Gr's experience each other differently without the parental layer mediating. Of course, when daughter came home to our house, she opened up her pressure valve and gave her beloved parents all of the tension she had saved up being nice at Gr and Gr's house. But that was to be expected. Also, she's ramping up for a pretty ambitious birthday party - lazer tag and sleepover for ten, with a craft and food and fitting 10 girls in our small rumpus room for the night. I finally told her I was feeling pressured by her preparations and she has calmed it down. She's pretty good stuff, and growing up. She'll be 12 on Monday. (I know I was every bit as intense and un-buffered at that age). I have to remember that 12 year olds don't always remember that moms have feelings, but they respond well if I say it directly.

We came home from vacation a day early to see our daughter's performance of Grease - the culmination of her two week drama camp. The show was on Friday afternoon. Grandma and Grandpa came too. But Grandpa didn't make it in to the theatre as the play was starting (having dropped of Grandma and gone to find a parking spot). We were called outside just as the show was about to begin to find the paramedics attending and my dad on the ground. It seems like he parked the car then blacked out on the way into the theatre. Mom and I went to Emergency with him. They kept him there for about 10 hours and ran all kinds of tests and found nothing. He couldn't remember anything much about anything for about an hour but most of it came back after that. Today he seems back to normal but they'll follow up. I was scared when I saw my dad lying on the lawn with blood on his face and clearly confused and disoriented. I wanted to protect my mom, who was really scared. I'm so grateful that he's well now but we want to know what it was and how we can make sure it doesn't happen again. The upside is that the firehall/ambulance depot is right next door to the civic complex where the theatre is, and Eagle Ridge Hospital is across the street, and my house is 10 minutes down the road. Dad picked about the best place possible to have an emergency. I was able to help by staying at the hospital until the initial alarm subsided, then going to fetch some supper, cooked by Andy, so Mom and Dad did not have to eat the hospital food while they sat in Emerg and waited for test after test after test.

In between bringing supper to the hospital and picking up Mom and Dad when they finally finished around 11pm, Andy and I watched Closer on dvd. Andy liked it. I hated it. Not because it's about infidelity, but because I couldn't find a heart or soul in the story. The movie was beautiful to look at, but empty. That's not a moral judgement. I can love a story about someone who does awful things if I can understand why, and connect with the heart of the person. In closer, these unreasonably beautiful people just keep changing partners like a square dance. I love you do-si-do Nope, now I don't after all promenade your partner I love her allaman-left I never did after all, bow to your partner. Oh well, at least there was not shooting or explosions. Andy said the point of it was that it was a story about personal emptiness. I still didn't like it or get it. Probably a bad choice for an interlude during a stressful evening.

Today I went to the Summer Dreams Reading Festival put on by Pandora's Collective, which was wonderful. Great performances and lots of spoken word/literary friends, all at Robson Square in the sunshine. Tonight I took the kids to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp, which was lovely and much more true to the original than the Gene Wilder version - except for an ending twist that is totally invented. Why do they do that??? Do people who make movies actually believe that audiences need a caramel sledgehammer of an ending? Oh well.

Back at home I read out loud to our son, two more chapters of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which we bought on Saturday in Osoyoos and we've been barelling through. We have 5 chapters to go and I know it will be shocky-chokey reading. He's used to me pausing to recapture my composure when the story swoops me up as I read it. "Mom, are you crying? It's okay Mom. It's just a story." Already I cried on the beach while I was reading it to him at camp. There's more to come.

Waddaya love about the world? It may wobble but you don't fall down.

question: do I have a weight in my fat-end?

mompoet - tell you about the dog psychologist thing tomorrow

phalanges

and carpals and tarsals and metacarpals and metatarsals and the stringy springy tendon-ligamenty stuff the makes them dance, clap and assemble fajitas, all AOK today.

question: did you ever eat with your feet?

mompoet - going to bed before I become a bat and hang out inside of tree bark by the tips of my capable toes

when i pass by a house with zinnias

growing in the garden, I want to knock on the door and give a big hug to the person who has planted and tended them and say, "Thank you for such extravagant beauty."

question: what was it I was supposed to be doing today?

mompoet - eyes popping at flowers the size of my head

toe's good

We had a wonderful time in Osoyoos. One week living on the beach in our bathing suits was very relaxing. I read three boy books, including the new Harry Potter, swam, and talked with my family and friends who we see up there every year. Not much to do, which was exactly perfect.

I did slam my baby toe into a tree root (twice) and it's been hurting like the dickens - so much that I was ready to go to the doctor today if it wasn't improving. But last night, after my first shower from which I did not step directly out into sand and dirt, I took a really good look at it. I managed to chop a big flap of skin off the tip of the toe and it was still partly attached. I took it off and it already feels much better. So the pain radiating up my foot was probably not from a fractured phalange. I'll test it out today, but I think it's okay.

question: did you ever notice how nice your own house is when you come back?

mompoet - toasty with fair to good toe-integrity and happy to be home

I'm back

I think I have a tan, but it might be dirt. I'll tell you after I have a shower.

Check out the latest ipod device

More later - going to shower now...

question: cherries anyone?

mompoet - multi-layered and a bit limpy

I am on Vacation

Today I learned that I can take good photographs with a digital camera. I have been a 35mm slr holdout for a couple of years but I caved and tried the little digital camera that Andy bought about 6 months ago. It works. I have to get used to looking at a moving image in a viewfinder, and there's more of a delay between intention and capture than with a film camera, but I can get used to it. I took a really cool photo of a small girl who had just let go of a bow string. The arrow was gone, but her hand was still shaped like string-release and also like surprise. It's a good picture.

I still have not learned to post photos on my blog so I can't share it here. Oh well, one thing at a time.

Work is done, at least for the next two weeks. I found out yesterday afternoon that they are going to paint all of the offices at my work while I am away. Ooops, somehow I didn't get the email a week or so ago. Luckily I got curious when there were paint chips everywhere and maintenance guys sticking their noses into my office. So I had time to pack up my bric a brac and get the art and calendar off the walls. My office is 5-sided and the smallest in the place, but I love it. the fifth wall is perfect for a painting. The walls will be beige or blue when I return. They haven't decided yet (the deciders, not the walls). (notbeigenotbeigenotbeigenotbeige) I hope they will be blue.

Most of what we need is packed for our camping trip that begins tomorrow. Dog and cat care is arranged. I washed and chopped fruit and veggies so I will have something nice when the festival of potato chip eating begins. I have 4 novels and two books of poetry and one magazine. I have blank paper. I have a digital camera. I am on vacation.

question: what shape is surprise?

mompoet - 5-sided

iiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiii-tch

Look out. I itch. Urgggg. I'm going to have to wear footsie pajamas to bed to stop from scratching all night. Ooooch. Yuk. I want to lie on the floor with my head in one spot and run around in circles, scraping my legs on the carpet. Iiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiii-iiiiiii-tch!

question: why did God make mosquitoes? (oh yeah, to feed the bats and the fish and the birds)

mompoet - are you kidding? I don't own any footsie pajamas!

sophie vs the roomba

My dad sent me this video.

I think Sophie likes it. What do you think?

question: woof?

mompoet - no, I don't have one yet (a roomba I mean)

ps Don't you love it when a dog backs up?

not jazzed yet

Usually by this time in July I am climbing the walls, all anxious about holiday preparation - both the packing and also work preparations. Instead, I am calm and steady. I'll get done what I get done and the rest will be okay.

I'm not sure what's making a difference this year. Maybe it's just delayed panic, and I'll find it lurking around the corner Tuesday at 10:42am or in the middle of the night Wednesday. But I don't think so. All I can conclude is that my grip is slipping sufficiently that I can't remember things long enough to worry about them, or I'm suddenly and inexplicably wise and centred. Huh!

The budget is chunking along at work. I'm finding time to finish off the parts that I can get done before I go, and I've defined what I'll need to hand back to my boss before I leave. I still have to find someone to open camp on the Monday of the second week, but that's minor. The new leaders are working together really well. New head leader is wonderful. They will be fine without me for a couple of weeks, and I've scheduled small registration loads for them while I'm away, and one week girls-only which is always really nice, considering our average camper is an 8 year old boy whose mom REALLY wants him out of the house. Speaking of houses, our house is in pretty good shape for the house-sitter so hopefully no scrubbing blitz on Thursday night before we leave. On Sunday we opened up the tent trailer and I searched the shed and basement and located the essential items that weren't already inside the trailer (stove, sleeping bags, collapsible chairs, barbeque etc) and put them there. I have to make a bunch of salads and bake some cookies and pack my clothes. The kids pack for themselves. Andy just got the car checked over for the trip up, and he's buying marshmallows and propane and stuff that we'll need. Other than that, we're good. We can go on holiday.

Today I will deliver on my promise to my dad for a father's day gift of time. We're going to walk around Burnaby Lake and eat sushi for lunch at Piper Spit. That is if we don't get eaten. I spent a couple of hours at the lake yesterday visiting my camp. The mosquitos are working all day long in this cool, damp weather. I have about 100 bites on my legs. This is not an exaggeration. They seem to think that bug spray is salad dressing. It's okay. If you don't scratch the bites they disappear pretty fast. I'll wear long pants today. The worst is when you get a mosquito bite on your finger. It's really irritating. I guess one on your eyelid is even worse, but that doesn't usually happen unless you sleep with a mosquito in your tent.

question: ever tried to sleep with a mosquito whining in your ear?

mompoet - nutritious

Enjoying Music without Words

I am listening to Rossini's Barber of Seville. This is my mom's recommendation for my first experience with opera. Dad recommends Don Giovanni. I'll listen to that next.

I always though I didn't like opera - hoity toity, overblown, way too long. But this is fantastic! The intensity and drama are wonderful. It's way over the top and I love that! This is GREAT BIG MUSIC!!! It helps that a lot of the themes from this opera are part of everyday life in advertising, movie soundtracks, cartoons, cell phone ringtones (not mine - I detest musical ringtones, but that's another post) so my ears are hearing familiar music in with the new. I am listening to it for the first time and practically jumping out of my seat with joy and amazement.

I don't care if I don't understand the words. It's wonderful.

I got it from the library. They have a huge selection of opera. I can have fun with this. Now I definitely want to go to the opera. And I want to listen to lots more.

question: how did I take so long to find this?

mompoet - my car is leaking Figaro

clarification

Grandmapoet did not offer bystanders coffee bagels and peanut butter while mompoet actually was pushing out a baby girl. Breakfast type items were purveyed during late first-stage labour, at least one hour before the big finale.

question: all clear now?

mompoet - at your cervix

being born is important

Congratulations to Sonya, Lyle and Sara and welcome to Sara's baby brother! He was born Friday morning and weighs 9 pounds 10 ounces. Everyone is well and happy.

I got the happy news while I was walking the dog. When I got home I told the kids. I pointed out to our daughter (the largest birthweight child in our family) that this baby was even heavier than she was at birth. This prompted son to ask about his birthweight. For the record, they were 9 pounds even (he) and 9 pounds 8 ounces (she). Both seemed proud when I told them this, as if being a robust baby was a personal accomplishment of some kind.

Then daughter asked, "Who hurt the most coming out?" This was an interesting question for an almost 12 year old to ask. She's been retreating from my attempts to keep the dialogue about sex and life in general open between us, so I grabbed the opportunity (gently). I told her that for sure she hurt a lot more than her brother. In fact, it hurt so much while she was being born that I got very grumpy and told grandma to shut up. Poor grandma, she was just offering coffee and bagels with peanut butter around to the assembled helpers/observers and I transformed from an appreciative and stoic labouring mom to a crazed egocentric banshee (but only for a few minutes). So now the kids know about the transition phase of child birth, and not to offer bagels if they are in the same room with a woman who is going through it.

It's interesting how we fixate on the statistics about our moment of emergence. Birthweight, length of labour, hairy or bald, water breakng at home or in hospital, drugs/natural/surgical. To me, all of these things seem inconsequential compared to the actual business of growing up together as a parent and child. But we talk more about them than most of our most important days and challenges in our real ongoing lives. I guess we all like to mark that miraculous moment and the honour the heroic effort. It's proof of life and of of our individuality, the end of chapter one of our own personal history.

Welcome babies one and all. Congratulations on your birth, your individuality, your continuation through heroic lives.

question: how much did you weigh?

mompoet - 7 pounds six ounces

nothing compared to what else happened

I didn't know until I turned on the TV at 11 to catch the news headlines before sleep. It's funny, I had listened to the radio on and off in the car, but not the news, I guess. This morning I'm reading the descriptions and the theories about who did it, how it was allowed to happen, what the experience was like for those who were right in the middle of the bombing in London.

Among the pictures on the New York Times website this morning is one of a police officer with a sub-machine gun patrolling a Washington DC commuter train. There is so much power in this kind of war. Everyone feels threatened. Next comes the paranoia, then the retribution, both at home and in Iraq. It's hard to know what to do but to try to understand and stay human and say that more and more and more violence is not okay. It's hard to explain to the kids but we have to try and hope they have a better chance of getting it right.

I don't walk around every day thinking I might get blown up. Maybe it's because we're in Canada, but I know that's not a safe assumption. Still, you can't give up the joy and responsibility of everyday life because of a horrible possibility. If you do you have surrendered to the badness of the whole situation already.

At the bottom of it all is hurt. How else can anyone (big or small, whatever side of the equation) feel justified in doing this harm? And also power of course. I believe the need for unlimited power is based on fear so it all boils down to hurt anyway.

question: how can everyone in the world remember we all have the same shared interest?

mompoet - pie in the sky, feet still dancing on the ground, but a little more slowly

wuddaday

Oooomph. Now I have 3 days off. yeah!

Today I worked from 7:15am-9:15pm. I went out to a Japanese restaurant for lunch but it was a lunch meeting so we talked and jotted notes and ate. I still had a good day. I visited camp and ran errands for the staff. I learned how to make prints from a digital camera memory card at a self-serve machine (the volunteers thought that was funny), got photographed doing my impression of Cousin It from the Addams Family, worked on budget for 2 hours here, 1.753 hours there, talked to camper parents on the phone, had a meeting with the chief budget pooh-bah who is really nice and answered all of my questions. I broke 3 mechanical pencils, spilled water all over my desk, went to Costco twice but avoided MalWart, and photocopied about a hundred pages one at a time with the fax machine when the photocopier got irreversibly jammed. I missed campfire but I got to hold a puppy and I drove around with a soccer ball on the front seat floor of the car which if actually fun because you can try to drive very gently so it doesn't roll around. Not a good idea when the light turns green. People behind you don't like it. If I was a kid today, I would be diagnosed with ADD, but I'm an adult, so I'm multi-tasking and thinking outside of the box.

I thought about synethesia today. When my mind is going a million miles an hour part of it gets hooked into some abstract thought with obsessive interest. But now I'm just thinking about sleeping. One good thing, I turned on the crock pot in the morning so there was bean soup still warm when I got home, and nobody needed me to go to a store.

Go go go go go go go go go go stop (the shape of those words smells blue like hydrangea and vibrates like plastic zipper teeth)

question: Do you think smoked salmon sushi roll sounds like San Francisco?

mompoet - polysynaptic blip

moneybrain

At work on Wednesday I visited camp to make sure everyone was okay. First day of canoeing and spirits were high. The campers are really nice this week and the new leaders are liking each other and working together as a team. The volunteers are spectacular. Two speak Mandarin, which we really need this week. Everything was good at the lake.

Back at my office I put my phone on forward, locked my door and got to work on the 2006 budget. I'm writing my own and also leading my team so that my co-workers can get theirs done with a minimum of fuss, then I have to check everyone else's to make sure they're accurate and completed to spec. We use spreadsheets, which makes it easy, but some of the accounts are very complicated with long series of changes that must be done just so and in the right order and if you're lucky they balance after about two hours of mind-bending fiddling for one page. It's worth it, and also required by law, so we do it. By six o'clock I was not finished, but I had not sat down for supper with my family since Sunday so I left a big pile of paper and eraser bits (is there a word for those? maybe I'll make one up) on my desk and came home.

Turns out daughter has reached the point of "I give up" with her new bicycle. Husband too. We got it for her as an early birthday present. It was a really good deal. We found out why. The brakes squeal when you touch them so you can be heard a block or two away. This is not okay, especially for an 11 year old almost twelve year old girl. Mortifying actually. We've had the bike into the shop and they fixed it temporarily then the squealing resumed. So I had already talked to the bike shop manager on the phone to agree that they will take the bike back and give us a credit toward a new bike, but husband is fed up with dealing with it, so daughter and I go to the store to make the exchange. Husband comes too. I think he likes to see me talk to service people. I am nice but I get what I want.

So we brought the bike in. Looked at what we could get in exchange plus oh, only $99 more or so. Ahem.

I told them how we appreciated their extensive efforts to fix the bike, and the time they were taking now to show us the other bikes, but what would make us happy was our money back. Okay, they said. So now husband will go to Costco and get daugher the same bike he has that works just fine, no squeaking, two wheels, moves when you pedal it. Daughter is already thinking about how to make her bike look non-identical to her dad's. As we left the bike shop, husband asked, "Do you want to go to Costco now?"


NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

So back at home I finally turned off my left brain, hugged everyone, petted the dog and the cat and ate eggs, onions, tomatoes, bread and beer for supper at 8:30, fell asleep with my nose in the newspaper at 9 and went to bed. Gotta get up early and go play with the budget some more.

I am taking Friday off work. No stores, no numbers, no spreadsheets, only lakes with no paying customers, supper with the family maybe outside.

5 more workdays 'til vacation.

question: money mommy?

mompoet - dwindling

You can always tell how good a restaurant is by...

Check out this place.

I wonder if they serve pee soup?

question: do you think it's fair that the kids get in trouble when they say things like this?

mompoet - my fault, I know

bathtubs are happy places

When I got home tonight at 9:30 after much too much work, I heard my new neighbour Chris and his 2 year old through their bathroom window. Tristan was squealing and giggling, and I couldn't hear what Chris was saying but it sounded very exciting and pretty much like they were both having the time of the lives. I thought about how I used to put our kids and whatever friends they had over into the bath at about any time of day or evening when I wanted them to cool off, cheer up, kill time, have fun, play and coincidentally get clean. I remember how the owliest "I missed my nap" kid would turn into a sweet (and sweet-smelling) lamb just by spending 15-20 minutes soaking and splashing. I also remember how I used to fake losing my balance and fall into the tub with my clothes on, just to make them laugh. Mommy in her jeans and sweater inside the tub with you is pretty funny to a 2 year old. They won't let me do that anymore.

I just stood outside for a couple of minutes and enjoyed the music. I don't miss having a two year old. I do miss bathing one from time to time. I also miss falling in.

question: anyone got a two year old I can borrow?

mompoet - accelerated beyond belief

spike spike spike

I went back to the festival three more times this weekend: Saturday afternoon with Andy and our daughter to watch the Port Moody Idol competition. Daughter did not compete but several of her friends were in it. Her best friend didn't make it to finals on Sunday, so we decided to skip that. It was fun watching this talent show of kids then adults. Torchy pop is still the most popular for performers in the competition, but show tunes are big too. The best were the simplest and least well-known songs, coincidentally best-suited to their singers. I think it's a mistake to try to perform a song that's a hot star's trademark unless you totally change the way you perform it. Otherwise people just hear the discrepancies. One young woman played electric guitar and sang an original song. That was fabulous! Real talent. An older man (well, one my age) sang a simple blues song a capella. I liked that too. Personality is huge in a talent show. The performers who chatted while they waited for their music to begin captured the hearts of the audience. My favourite was a teenage girl who is blind. She introduced her country song like this, "My song's an upbeat song so you can clap along as much as you like. It's got a good story too. I hope you like it."

We went back Saturday night with our friends Michele and Brent. We sat in the wine patio (quieter and prettier than the "beverage garden.") Later we moved over there anyway for a view of the stage. The Night Train Revue was playing. They were very good. Something about old time musicians who know what they're doing and still love doing it makes me very very happy. We were singing along and clapping and cheering. It was good. The night was starry and the park was packed. Probably a couple thousand people there I think. Andy and I enjoyed both shows. He like the Time Benders better. I liked Night Train Revue more. Both nights were great, and wonderful for their friendly, happy, community feeling.

Came back Sunday afternoon for a quiet walkabout with our son, who wanted to go just with me and stay for just a short time. He's adjusting to the change of pace from school time to holiday time, and it's like decompressing. We sat and ate ice cream and watched the people go by and said hi to a bunch of friends and admired dogs. It was very sweet and lovely. The festival is winding down now, but we can hear the music drifting across the water and up the hill when we go out on our deck.

So this evening I paid the bills and balanced the chequing account record (ugg), read a book, walked the dog and made a big Sunday supper. Son and daughter cooked up a chocolate fondue for dessert which, on top of the ice cream in the afternoon, was delicious but a bit too much goo. This week is going to be very busy so I guess I'll be going to the 6:15am cycle class on Monday. I hope I put my shorts on frontwards! I have to make muffins now so the teenage eating machines will find something breakfast-ish when they get up in the morning. They cook their own lunches these days. Husband got the tent trailer out of the parking garage at his mom's apartment, so we can begin packing this week.

Canada Day weekend was just what this family needed to unwind a bit, celebrate a bit, and ease into the holidays. Eight more working days and we're on vacation. Yay!

question: none for now

mompoet - Canadian, Port-Moodyish, counting down to vacation time

fatal attraction

There's a new political gossip blog about the tri-cities (Port Moody/Port Coquitlam/Coquitlam). Check it out.

I'm suspicious of anything anonymous but it's juicy stuff for those of us who follow local politics and the personalities who make it tick (or squeak, or cluck or squish, or whatever it's doing today). I am willing myself to not look, but it's difficult. Check it out and let me know what you think. Maybe I'll post a comment so they won't all be also "anonymous." Civic elections are November 19. Federal may happen before that. Lots of juice for the mill/bucket/trough/cesspit/whatever.

question: did you ever slow down to look at a house on fire?

mompoet - guilty but compelled

O Canada Port Moody Style

We stayed home Friday and cleaned the house. Andy went out for groceries and took the kids to the video store. At 5:30 the neighbourhood Canada Day potluck began. It was inside a carport because it was raining. About 50 people came. We had fun and it was delicous.

At 8:30 Andy and I took off down to Rocky Point Park where we met up with his boss and his boss's wife and some of their kids and one granddaughter. We watched the evening's concert by The Time Benders. The show was pretty corny but we loved it. The musicians were talented and totally energetic. They sang and danced nonstop for almost 2 hours with a dozen costume changes including wigs and one muscle suit. It was a good choice for a crowd that ranged from newborn through octogenarian. Everyone was up dancing on the lawn in front of the stage. There were conga lines and everyone did the YMCA song, included 4 guys recruited from the audience to put on the cop/construction worker/cowboy/Indian Chief get-ups. It seemed like something that you would see on a cruise ship, but I've never been on a cruise ship so I'm not sure.

The really hilarious part was what the party crowd from the beer garden did. In past years we've had Trooper and Doug and the Slugs, which are oldies too, but much more rock-related than this theatre-style all-ages review. I guess the 20-somethings weren't sure what to make of the show so they just charged right on in like they always would. It was pretty incongruous to see blotto-boy and gooney girl charging the stage, shouting and dancing in front of the performers and being hauled off by security in the context of this family show. Kind of like finding a mosh pit at a Charlotte Diamond concert, but there you go. It was really funny. During the finale about 20 young adults who had clearly spent a good part of the afternoon and evening in the beer garden got up and danced on the front of the stage. As many as were herded off were replaced by more party animals in search of oblivion-blurred glory. I was killing myself laughing. It was beautiful, surreal, charming. Nobody got hurt. It was just too funny. The band handled it with style and grace and the security guys and gals were gentle and used good humour from the looks of things.

So that's a wild night in Port Moody.

Oh we got home at 11:30. I joined the Ladeez in Cathy's hot tub. The guys were still in the carport drinking shooters. Who says we don't party in Port Moody. yeeee hawww.

question: I wonder what it will be like tonight (we're going back)

mompoet - liking best the pieces that do not fit but work anyway

why I like dooce so much

I was just reading Heather Armstrong's blog, Dooce, and I nearly died laughing at this link from a post last year, then I shouted, "I love dooce!"

In case you have ever wondered how I pick my friends, this is it. Not to say that Heather Armstrong is my friend, I just admire her blog tremendously. But this is how I pick. For example I became enamoured with my friend Kirsi when we were at a party and she described in great detail how she bought an abdominizer on late night tv, then she did a demo of "how to look 10 years younger by shortening your bra straps" with one side "before" and the other "after."

Yup, that's how I pick my friends. I wish Heather Armstrong lived in Port Moody. She's my kind of gal.

question: do you think I'm compensating by choosing people even more extraverted than I am?

mompoet - who cares! I love dooce!

Something Really Icky

My dad sent me this link. Check out the slideshow if you can bear to look at skin that will never be the same again.

We had poison ivy in Ohio where I come from, but I don't think there's any in Port Moody, or on the west coast in general. Let me know if you know different. I have run through stinging nettles at Deception Pass State Park, but that was my fault for crashing through the bushes like Rambo. It was fun, but it wasn't worth it. I have also been tangled in blackberry and devil's club, but not at the same time, and I was once thrown into a cedar hedge, which resulted in prolonged itching.

Still, nothing as bad as the pictures in the slide show.

question: how far west does poison ivy grow?

mompoet - hugging trees carefully