Archive for July, 2008

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AFK

Thursday, July 31st, 2008

As of tomorrow, first thing, I’ll be AFK. Very, very AFK. So far AFK that it will become a distant and misty memory, this keyboard. And being at it.We’re packing Big Red and heading up north for a full six night, seven day camping trip. I am very excited about this. The girls are very excited about this (though it does need to be said, Juniper is less than excited about the nine hour drive ahead of us). Buddy is an interesting combination of jazzed and petrified.

The fact that the forecast is calling for rain for at least four of the seven days does nothing to brighten his spirits. I’m going to assiduously avoid mentioning the rain to him, and hope that he doesn’t really notice the gills and flippers beginning to develop on all and sundry.

So, I’ll be away from my precious keyboard for a week. All I ask, intarweb, is that you do nothing of interest during that time, okay?

Posted in Happiness, Juniper, Rosebud, buddy, family | No Comments »

Take good care of my baby.

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I lost the bead I had on Rosebud. You know, the bead? The one that every mother has trained onto every one of her ducklings at all times? The bead that keeps a constant reading of where your child is at emotionally, developmentally and physically?

Well, I lost the bead. Even though she’d already made a recent and noticeable language leap, she’s come back from her trip on an even higher level.

No shit.

It’s not enough that I noticed it and Buddy noticed it. Even Juniper, at eight, noticed it. Enough to comment.

It’s amazing to see her right now, and to try and retrack myself to where she’s at. Adapt to this suddenly more grown-up little girl.

What really troubles me is that I missed it. During her week away, she had a developmental leap, and I wasn’t there to see it. To notice it beginning. To feel myself grow to accomodate her.

This is the cost of divorce that I dreaded, and still dread, paying. It’s not that the marriage ended, it’s not that things went the way they did, it’s not the fact that Rosebud has this divided life (though that’s part of it). It’s that I knew, when things ended, that there would be things about my daughter’s life that I wouldn’t be privy to.

I remember, one night, laying in my bed at the old house, too tired and heartsick to move. A friend was sitting beside me, watching me, supporting me, grieving with me.

I told her, that night, that what made me so sick about it all was that I’d have to lose out on tucking my girl into bed every night. Being able to keep that bead on her. Being her all-the-time mother.

That holds true to this day.

If I had been a greater participant in the demise of my marriage, I might feel differently. Instead of anger and sadness, I’d have guilt and sadness. Or maybe nothing but relief. I don’t know.

But I can tell you that I’ve worked hard, every day, to stop trying to see the world as a just place. To accept it on it’s terms, appreciate the serendipity as it falls and accept that hard knocks are inevitable. Because we all seem to get more, and less, than we really should.

However, this particular little injustice in the world of Wyliekat will never be something I accept with any comfort.

Posted in Rosebud, family | 2 Comments »

Today

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Today, I am annoyed. Irked. Peeved. Piqued. Bothered.

Pissed off. I’m so pissed off that my eggs are boiling.

So who wants a uterine scramble?

Too graphic? Probably. But since I want to keep my job (thanksmuch), I can only be graphic in my description of how I’m feeling, as opposed to being graphic about what’s actually bothering me. So yes, uterine scramble.

Posted in Rant | 2 Comments »

The mommy-exchange

Monday, July 28th, 2008

You know, it’s funny how easily and readily you can tell when you’re hanging out with someone else who’s also a mother. Specifically, a mother who also has young children.

You know how you can tell? Easy. If they’re friends of yours, you find yourself heavily involved in the mommy-exchange, without even realizing it.

To whit:

When we were at the lake a couple of weekends ago, Buddy’s sister Pal was instrumental in the fact that I felt able to relax. Why? Very simple. On more than one occasion, she was very specific in saying things like “I’ve got Rosebud, you go and do Insert Fascinating Other Thing, Requiring Absence of Child to Complete”. Juniper, being 8, doesn’t require the same level of hawklike attention that smaller children do, lest we think she was ignored. She wasn’t. She was the opposite of ignored. But I believe a good portion of her weekend was spent immersed in the film adaptation of Popeye.

But I digress. There’s something about that clarity, that awareness that someone else is on duty and is taking care of things, that just makes a mound of difference in the relaxation factor. Boys don’t do this. It’s not that Buddy can’t or won’t look after the children. He can and does. It’s just that he’s rarely that clear about it.

Fast forward to Sunday. A girlie brunch with a couple of my aforementioned friends. One of the girls, by a twist of circumstance, needed to bring her two children to the brunch. Without much said, I took over the care and feeding of the younger one. It was automatic. Reflex, even. Because if she’d had to manage both children for the whole of the breakfast, she’d never have been able to snatch a moment of girlie time, a commodity both rare and precious in parental lives.

It’s what we do for each other. Because we know that the burden of worry is so much greater than the actual burden of care. Thus, we seek to relieve each other when we can.

Good thing.
In other news, I have a second nose trying to grow out of my face. I love adult acne. Especially in light of the fact that I was fortunate enough to largely bypass teenaged acne. I guess it all comes around eventually, no?

Posted in Being a girl, In the mother/stepmother 'hood | No Comments »

Note to self

Friday, July 25th, 2008

In the future, try making sure there are no members of senior management hanging around when you’re talking with colleagues about things that require use the of phrase “dried spooge”.

Oh. Dear. Lawd.

Tags:
Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Where have all the good people gone?

Friday, July 25th, 2008

You know, I love my girlfriends. They’re the ones who have been sifted out of the chaff by time. The ones who have been by my side, holding me up during times when I couldn’t manage it for myself. The ones who’ve heard my woes, and sometimes helped me drown them. Okay, mostly they’ve helped me drown them. But what’s the first thing you reach for when a friend is in crisis? If it ain’t a bottle of red, I don’t wanna know you.

These girls, they’re still here. Still around, kicking me in the pants when I need it, celebrating my victories when I have them, and generally just being the kind of rockin’ chicks I’m proud to call my own posse. For them, my loyalty and love is boundless, endless and solid.

So when I say what I’m about to say, please to be noting that this is a minor wibble in the grander scheme. Still:

Where the hell have all my geek girls gone?

In fact - why have I never had geek girlfriends?

This evening, Buddy and I have been debating the options of seeing Hellboy II or The Dark Knight. Me, I’m pushing for Hellboy. He’s pushing for TDK.

See the dilemma? If I could tidily go out and see Hellboy with a fellow girl-geek, then it’d be fine. But since Buddy tends to frown on me dating other men (even just as film-dates), my options are limited.

I have some geek girlfriends inside the computer, and they also fit into my aforementioned posse. They’ve been around as long, or longer than some of my fleshier girlfriends. But they’re not exactly handy for a Friday film, are they?

So I reiterate - geek girlfriends, where did you go?

Surely I can’t be the only girl in the world who will happily swing from Sex in the City and pedicures, to Professor Layton and the Curious Village, to Hellboy and Batman.

Can I?

Posted in Being a girl, Rant | 6 Comments »

Divorce, Division and Duh?

Thursday, July 24th, 2008

A few weeks ago, Rosebud and I were hanging out together. Out of the blue, she told me she missed her dad. This does come up from time to time and when it does, I give her the same response. I acknowledge it and then tell her she’ll see him tomorrow.

Generally, this constitutes the end of the conversation. This time, she had other plans for me.
“Maybe Dada can come back and live at Mama’s house?”

. . .

Hey there, Fates. If this was an Option A - this question and Option B - a two-by-four to the back of the head, scenario, I wouldn’t have picked A. Just so you know for the future.

I mean, leaving alone the fact that she was not even two when her father left (giving me ample room to wonder how she could term it as having her father “come back” - what, did I give birth to an elephant?) AND the fact that my ex never did live in this house, can someone tell me why I didn’t have more time before this one hit?

I’m not stupid. I’m the product of divorce, myself. I was anticipating this conversation. I knew it would come up at some point.

I just didn’t think it would be before her third birthday.

Thinking so quickly that there was a hint of eau de burnt rubber in the air, I tried to muster the mental troops for an adequate response.

“No honey. Dada won’t be coming to live here.”

There, thinks I. Answered and done.

But then I started thinking about it. That answer alone might give her the sense that I’m the gatekeeper on this. That I’m somehow responsible for the fact that her father lives somewhere else.

And then I got a bit ticked. Be damned if I’m going to let my daughter think, for even a second, that I’m somehow the cause for her having three parents in two different homes. I’m sorry, Rosebud. Very, very sorry that your reality will always include this.

But it’s not my fault. And I will not take the blame for it. For whatever else can be said about the marriage that produced you, the one thing I can say for certain is that I did my best. I did everything I could do to make it work.

As all of this churned around in my head, I had to give an additional comment.

“Dada is happy where he lives.”

Which I can only imagine to be true. And really, a fairly mild statement, given the thoughts running through my mind. Cue moment of parental back-patting.

Even after several weeks, this conversation haunts me. I suspect it will always haunt me. This is the reality of divorce - her trying to put together why things happened the way they did, and us trying to provide only enough information to satisfy. Never the whole story.

It’s a little dance of dishonesty that I never wanted to have with my child.

Posted in In the mother/stepmother 'hood, Rant, Rosebud | No Comments »

Body-snatched by boob-nazis.

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

After dinner yesterday, Rosebud pulled out her dolls. She has very few of these and all are markedly bald. Not from being victimized by Toddler Scissorhands, you understand. Just bald. Fresh out of the package cue-balls.

Anyway, she has three dolls. One nearly newborn size, one medium-sized thing and the third clearly representing the get of Tom Thumb.

I should note that I haven’t seen this trio in some time, and never as a package deal. However, once she had them out, it was time to feed them bottles, change them and burp them (With Real! Live! Mama-generated sound effects).

I sat there, happily playing doll-babies with Rosebud, when I suddenly realized we were bottle-feeding these lumps of plastic.

As though cued, the whispy soul of a deceased boob-crew member descended into my soul and took charge of me.

“You know,” says she, through my voice, “this isn’t the only way to feed babies.”

And then, to my horror, she proceeded to give an anatomically specific explanation about breastfeeding. There were nearly charts and diagrams, but I was able to hoist us away from the conveniently located chalkboard.

Honestly, how could this person be . . . PROGRAMMING . . . my not-quite-three-year-old child? How dare they? I stared down in distaste at the medium-sized kewpie thing pressed up against my bosom in some kind of macabre mockery of feeding, wondering how I’d ended up channeling Kellymom without my knowledge.

As hastily as I could, I re-claimed my soul and the toy bottle (Simulates Real Drinking!) with it’s toy formula, and carried on with the mindless play, hoping my child hadn’t noticed I’d lost mastery over my own body for a moment there.

Now that this horrid body snatching experience is over with, I have this to say: whoever you were, granola-crunchy mama-soul with an agenda, paws off. She’ll sort that stuff out later. At least give me until puberty (hers and Juniper’s, not mine. Just sayin’) to work it out, mmmmkay?

Posted in Being a girl, Rosebud, family, feminism | 2 Comments »

Wherein I get my second of sunlight.

Monday, July 21st, 2008

Today, I finally got a share of the mommy-brain pie. As I’ve posted before, Rosebud has displayed a most phenomenal (in the phenom sense of the term) ability to take her contemplative bowel moments when she is alone, ensconced in the privacy of her own boudoir. That this happens precisely forty-five minutes after she’s put to bed could lead even a very loving parent to assume these are movements born of sheer spite.

I’ve shared this story with other parents, never soliciting advice, merely observing, with that casual “hands up in the air” gesture that is secret code for “I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. Do you?”

Mostly, I’ve been met with clucks of dismay and groans of sympathy. The popular wisdom has held that this would make potty training an adventure in poopstain-from-bedsheet removal.

This afternoon, in the corporate napping centre (Yes, we have one, and yes, I use it almost daily. Shaddup.) I chanced upon my nanosecond of mommy brilliance.

If she’s so certain to poop at this time (and she is. Nuclear clocks could really be set by her bowels), why not make a potty pitstop part of the nightly routine?

So, armed with my rooster-shaped kitchen timer, a diaper and the endlessly re-read Puff, The Magic Dragon, I planted us in the bathroom. Ten minutes in hell, right? Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Except it was Wylie, for the win!

Be darned if that child didn’t take care of her own darned business in her own darned time. Eight minutes, all told.

If she turns up a poopy diaper tonight, I can righteously conclude that she has spite-pooped.

Of course, the risk to all this is she’ll feel an urge to void her bowels anytime she hears a timer go off. Or whenever she sees a rooster.

Please gawd, don’t let it be the latter. We’d have to ban eggs from our house.

Posted in In the mother/stepmother 'hood, Rosebud | No Comments »

Can I make it any more obvious?

Monday, July 21st, 2008

You’d think that I’d be in trouble for the weekend, when it starts out with 2.5 solid hours of driving, all whilst listening to the following:

He was a boy she was a girl
Can I make it anymore obvious?

He was a punk, she did ballet
What more can I say?

He wanted her, she’d never tell
Secretly she wanted him as well

But all of her friends, stuck up their nose
And they had a problem with his baggy clothes

He was a skater boy
She said see you later boy
He wasn’t good enough for her
She had a pretty face
But her head was up in a space
She needed to come back down to earth

Repeated, ad nauseum, by an eight-year-old whose attention was divided between singing this song and playing Princess Peach on her DS Lite. This singing would get louder when the actual music in the vehicle was turned up louder. Dueling banjos between Buddy and Juniper, only with less rhythm or rhyme.

Don’t even tell me about the ‘tweens. I know.

Anyway, you’d think I’d be heading into trouble.

You’d be wrong.

Buddy, Juniper, Rosebud and I had our first family vacation. We drove out to the Lake of the Woods to visit Buddy’s sister and her in-laws at a rather beautiful cabin, set right on the water.

We boated, we bonfire’d, we played, we rested, we scooted around on a handsomely appointed pontoon boat, admiring natural beauty and massive yachts owned by people with more dollars than sense.

And it was wonderful.

We came home with sunburn, sand and a pile of dirty clothes. We also came away with memories of sitting on a dock on top of water-like-glass, of beaches and mobile meals on boats, of family and friends.

We couldn’t have asked for more. We, as parents, felt petted and spoiled. It’s amazing how little it takes, these days. Meals that we didn’t have to plan for, activities that we simply roll into, doting grand-parently figures who take a decided delight in the attentions and affections of two well-behaved children.

It was one of those weekends you want to freeze in time.

However, life moves on, whether you will it or not.

This week, our summer will start to reach it’s peak of activity. I’ve realized that we’re careening towards our camping trip, at the end of the month. We need a kitchen tent, a tarp and a storage device to fit on top of Big Red. We need to plan meals, plan routes and plan OHMYGODEVERYTHINGBECAUSETHAT’SHOWIROLL.

Additional wrinkle: Rosebud will once again be taking flight to visit her grandparents. This is less of a problem for me (psychologically) than it was last time, because she’ll be with her father.

Still, I’ll miss the little blighter.

She was such a doll on the road trip. She was talking about her despicable duck (in clear, clear tones) for a chunk of the drive home, all the while yelling into her microphone, which she somehow ninja’d into our vehicle roof while we weren’t looking.

Technology is in her future, I swear it.

Posted in Happiness, In the mother/stepmother 'hood, Juniper, Odds and Sods, Rosebud, buddy, family | No Comments »

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