Linda Blair paid us a midnight visit

You know that feeling you get when you say something aloud -- then immediately wish you could swallow those ill-considered words because you know you've just put a horrible jinx on yourself?

Yes. Well. That's exactly the feeling I had when I bragged to my mother last month that my 2 1/2 year old Milo had *never* been sick. Not to the point of vomiting, at least.

Fast forward to last Thursday: Rob and I were awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of Milo crying. Not so unusual -- he wakes up once or twice a week and calls for us because his precious blankie has fallen to the floor (or, much more rarely, because he himself has fallen to the floor).

So I got up, stumbling and squinty-eyed, and made my way to his room. When I opened the door, there was Milo sitting in the middle of his bed, wailing as if he'd just awakened to discover himself on a sinking raft in the middle of shark-infested waters..

"Mommy!" he sobbed. "My tummy hurts! And I spilled something on my pillow!"

Insert ominous music here...

Sure enough, the little guy had thrown up all over his bed. And himself. And -- horrors! -- his beloved blankie. So while I got him changed and held him close (even as he continued to vomit into hastily grabbed towels), reassuring him that he was all right and hadn't done anything wrong, Rob stripped the bed and threw everything into the washing machine. Even the blankie, the presence of which Milo usually considers to be as necessary to his survival as oxygen.

But the poor boy was so zonked out by the whole experience that he just wanted it to GO AWAY. "I want to sleep! I want to sleep!" he cried, over and over again. So when the vomiting was done, and the sheets and pillows were replace with clean ones, we laid him down and let him sink immediately back into sweet, sweet oblivion.

For Rob and I, of course, it took a lot longer. We were so wired by the experience that we couldn't relax enough to fall asleep, and every rasping cough from Milo's room jolted us back into heart-pounding alertness. The positive side to this was that we were still awake when the washing machine finished its cycle, so Rob figured he may as well get up and threw everything into the dryer, just in case we needed to change Milo's sheets again in the middle of the night.

So when Milo woke up a couple hours later, crying for his blankie, I was overjoyed to run downstairs and grab a clean, soft, warm fuzzy dry blankie. "This'll trump anything he gets for Christmas," I thought. And when I put it into his outstretched arms, his chortle of glee told me that we were all going to live to see the dawn.

Sure enough, when I went into his room to get him the next morning, he greeted me with a cheerful, "Milo's feeling better, Mommy! Not sick anymore!" And then he proceeded to scarf down an entire waffle and half an egg. Ah, the resilience of youth.

... I certainly wish *I'd* been able to recover as quickly when the same damned stomach bug struck me down on Saturday night.

See all the fun you're missing, all you childless people out there?

To sleep, perchance to dream some really messed-up shit

If you've never been pregnant, you probably have no idea what happens in the subconscious mind of the impending mother-to-be.

... Frankly, neither do I -- but I can tell you this: it does make for some pretty fucked-up dreams.

Last week, for example, I had a dream in which I relived the entire 2 1/2-hour final episode of M*A*S*H, which I haven't seen since it first aired in 1982. (Okay, so I'm dating myself.)

I woke up sobbing into my tear-soaked pillow, silently crying, "But it WASN'T a chicken, Hawkeye! It was a BAAAY-BEE!"

Harrumph.

And then last night, I dreamed I was Cordelia -- the spurned daughter in Shakespeare's tragedy, "The Madness of King Lear." (Speaking of "pretty fucked up," that describes King Lear in a nutshell.)

In the real play, Cordelia gets banished because she doesn't want to compete with her two evil sisters in a contest to describe how much she loves her father the king, who plans to give the choicest parcel of his kingdom to the daughter who claims to love him most.

(Cordelia thinks the contest demeans the love she really feels for him. Stickler. Whereas her harridan sisters, who feel no love for the king at all, suffer from no such compunction.)

And so because Cordelia refrains from waxing poetic, her self-absorbed daddy kicks her out of the kingdom in a huge huff -- and then gets punished for his hubris as his two remaining daughters plot and scheme to de-throne him, destroying his sanity in the process.

(Amazing how a king can be taken in by a smooth line as easily as a teenaged girl. "But... but... you said you loved me!" )

In my dream version of the play, Cordelia got banished because her sisters set her up to make it seem that some small deceit on her part resulted in the death of a man. Lear didn't care about the man who died -- he just wanted to get me (Cordelia) to admit my guilt. And when I refused to, he accused me of lying and got so pissed off he booted me out of the kingdom, while my two evil sisters looked on, smirking and giggling behind hands held over their mouths.

Again I woke up sobbing into a tear-soaked pillow, my protestations of innocence falling on deaf imaginary ears.

Then I spent the next two hours trying unsuccessfully to get back to sleep, because I couldn't stop myself from plotting elaborate revenge fantasies against the two evil sisters who set me up.

Bitches.

When I finally DID fall back asleep, I ended up having a dream in which I had to interrupt a couples massage two of my ex-boyfriends were getting, in order to extend a lunch invitation to the one I still considered a friend -- but that's a tale for a different day.

(Pregnancy: Time to bring out the crazy!)

The glass is 99% full, dammit

So I went to see my very nice (and very male) family doctor a couple of weeks ago to tell him I was pregnant.

(I will be continuing my prenatal care with a midwife, but as Milo was due to visit the doctor for his much-belated two-year-old check-up, I thought I may as well get the ol' stethoscope treatment, as well.)

After congratulating me, the first thing to come out of the doctor's mouth was, "So I guess you'll be wanting me to get you started on your tests, then?"

Oh. Right. The tests. The not-so-joyous part of being pregnant.

Thanks to the wonders of western medicine, doctors are now able to test for certain birth defects while the baby is still in the earliest stages of development, so excited young mothers- and fathers-to-be can discover within weeks of conception whether their child to be is going to be stricken with a chromosonal abnormality such as Down's Syndrome.

The risk factor for such chromosonal abnormalities increases dramatically once a woman passes the age of 35.

I'm 37. And I'll be 38 when this baby is born.

Which is why my doctor quite strenuously advocated that I undergo all possible testing. Just "in case."

Never mind that I do yoga and ride my bike to work four times a week (a 13-km round-trip journey). Even given my state of optimal health, my ability to pass on healthy chromosones is apparently decaying with each passing day.

Meanwhile, merely contemplating the remote possibility that something might be wrong with my baby is enough to make me wrap my arms around my burgeoning belly and run to the hills, to find a nice dark cave to hide in for the next seven and a half months or so.

Yet despite my doctor's well-intentioned fear mongering (backed up with statements like, "Well, my wife and I just had a new baby daughter two months ago and we had the testing done." -- Yeah, dude, but you spend ALL DAY considering all the myriad things that can go wrong with the human body! Me, I'd rather not), I keep reminding myself that the "dramatic increase" caused by my age means going from a 1 in 178 chance (for women who are 35 years old) to a 1 in 100 chance of having a baby with birth defects (for women who are 38).

Which means there's still a 99% chance I will give birth to a perfectly "normal" healthy baby. Those are the odds I'd prefer to put my money on -- not the 1% long shot.

But even if I do go ahead and get all the testing done -- and the results come back and confirm my worst fears have been realized -- what then?

What does one DO with that kind of information?

Is it better to know ahead of time -- so I can spend the next seven months resenting the malformed child growing inside me?

(WOULD I resent the child, in such a case? Or would I research the malady and prepare myself so I could be a loving and welcoming mother once the baby had been born? Could I ever be that much of a saint? That's something I honestly don't know.)

Or is it better to go through my pregnancy, cheerfully anticipating the arrival of a perfect newborn -- and then be crushed when the baby doesn't meet my expectations?

(WOULD I be totally crushed? Or would I learn to love the baby no matter what, once I held it in my arms? Again, it's impossible to say.)

When faced with such unanswerable questions, all I want to do is close my eyes, plug my finger into my ears, and scream, "LA! LA! LA!" at the top of my lungs.

Ignorance is bliss.

Holy crap, here we go again

I'm pregnant.

Yes, once again, after a grand total of one, count 'em, *1* time of officially "trying," the Dread Pirate and I have managed to hit the jackpot.

And once again, I knew I was pregnant within roughly 30 seconds of conception.

The only difference THIS time around was that whenever I said, "I think I'm pregnant" during those two long weeks between conception and being able to take a home pregnancy test, instead of rolling his eyes and saying, "Don't be ridiculous -- we only tried once!" or "How could you possibly KNOW that?" the Pirate's response was, "Of course you are." -- accompanied with the occasional deep sigh or rolling of the eyes.

(He's now convinced that I'm able to impregnate myself on demand, with a little help from him and his wee "pals," of course.)

And so here I am, sitting in front of a computer at work, biting back yawns and pretending to work while surreptitiously Googling "cloth diapers" to see what new and wonderful hemp-fleece-pockety creations have appeared online in the past couple of years.

It's going to be a long 30 weeks, I tell you.

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying the opportunity to become reacquainted with some long-lost friends... my boobs.

Nice to have you back, girls!!!

This is me in May 2005, when I was about 8 months
pregnant with Milo... I'm currently only at 10 weeks
and already my belly feels bigger than that. Whee!

You don't know what you've got until it's gone

Milo graduated from his crib to a big boy bed this week.

His grandparents brought Rob's old "super single" waterbed -- which has spent the last 20 years languishing in the crawl space under their house -- over on the ferry this past Monday, and Milo slept on it for the first time that night.

Of course, being the procrastinators we are, Rob and I didn't get the new foam mattress for the bed, like we were supposed to.

(Um... can I just say in our defence that we've had other things on our mind lately?)

And so -- once Rob and his dad hauled the bed into the house and put it together in Milo's room -- we decided to put Milo's crib mattress in it for the time being, just until his new foam mattress gets delivered on Saturday.

That poor little mattress looked lost inside the waterbed's huge cavity -- which hammered home the point that Milo's big boy bed is indeed VERY BIG.

Assuming he doesn't try to set it on fire at some point over the next 16 years, he'll probably be sleeping in that thing until he graduates from high school.

Just think of it: He's now sleeping in the bed in which he'll probably experience his first wet dream.

He might even lose his virginity in it.

Gaaagh!

Excuse me while I wash out my brain with soap and water...

Okay, I'm back.

So we filled the cavernous space around that tiny little crib mattress with blankets, pillows, and stuffed toys -- whatever would help ensure that Milo wouldn't roll off and go "thunk" in the middle of the night.

Thankfully, Milo took to the bed like a fish in... something... and has been enjoying blissfully long sleeps every night.

The person who hasn't been adjusting to this new situation very well is ME.

After he went to sleep that first night, it hit me. I will never see him standing in that crib again, rubbing his blankie under his nose as he waits for me to pick him up and bring him to my bed or the couch for a snuggle and some milk.

The sight of my little string-bean sleepyhead standing in that crib was one of my favourite things in the whole wide world.

And I never even took a picture of it.

You know you've had a great walk in the woods when...

... You go home covered in ice cream and blood.

freebird

I was killing a bit of time at work yesterday (it was during my lunch hour! I swear!) and I had a sudden masochistic urge to see if Trevor, my first "real" boyfriend, had his profile listed on Facebook. I plugged in his name, and there he was on the second page of results.

Holding a baby.

If ever there were someone who SHOULDN'T contribute to the gene pool, that would be Trevor.

I met Trevor a month before the end of my first year at university. He was the friend of a guy my friend Jenn was seeing at the time. His main selling point was that he was interested in sleeping with me more than once -- sometimes even while sober! And that was pretty much it.

Trevor was an 18-year-old high school dropout whose mission in life was to shock and offend as many people as possible. (In retrospect, I suppose that going out with me must have figured into his grand master plan in some way.)

He enjoyed doing things like: spitting half-chewed food into my mouth while we kissed, climbing construction cranes while stoned off his gourd and terrifying the onlookers below, and "dining and dashing" from restaurants for kicks.

Yep, he was a real charmer.

"Then why did you go out with him???" you might be wondering. Did I mention he was interested in sleeping with me more than once? That made him a prince among men at that particular point in my life.

( Needless to say, it wasn't a particularly HIGH point in my life.)

Despite the neon-billboard warning signs, I decided to spend the summer with Trevor tree planting in the northern wilds of British Columbia. Why? Mostly because my family scoffed at the idea. My brother had spent the last couple of summers tree planting, and based on his stories my parents didn't believe I'd be able to endure the hard work and harsh conditions for longer than two seconds.

Well. If there's one sure-fire way to get me to do something, it's to tell me I'm not capable of it. ( Unless you're talking about brain surgery. Or pulling off a chemical experiment without breaking something or blowing something up. Those things, I cannot do.)

And so, despite my parents' misgivings, I hopped on a Greyhound and went to Prince George, where I hooked up with Trevor and the rest of our tree-planting crew -- most of whom were Alberta boys who all went to the same bible college.

Well... you can guess what they thought about the one girl on the crew who -- gasp! -- was sharing a tent with a boy who wasn't her husband!

WHORE.

What little respect they might have had for me plummeted once they got to know Trevor and discovered exactly what calibre of guy I was willing to share a tent with. They didn't talk to me much after that.

That made for a pretty lonely summer. Especially since Trevor decided soon after we got into the bush that he didn't really want to be my boyfriend, after all. The novelty of screwing a socially awkward university girl had apparently worn off.

Being Trevor, his break-up strategy was to repulse me so badly that I would flee back to civilization, screaming.

He started off by eating live tadpoles. He'd reach right into a muddy puddle, scoop up a handful of wriggling creatures, and pop them in his mouth -- then wait for my shrieks of disgust.

It was, indeed, a very effective way to make me stop kissing him. But it wasn't enough to get me to crawl back home to my parents.

And that's what Trevor hadn't bargained for: my stubborn refusal to admit defeat.

I soon became numb to the sight of Trevor eating tadpoles. My lack of reaction disappointed him, and so he upped the stakes. He started eating actual frogs. I turned around one day after he'd called my name and saw him stuff one into his mouth. He watched me, grinning, as one little frog leg kicked feebly between his teeth.

I heaved a long sigh. "Trevor," I said, fighting to keep my voice calm, "Please don't eat that."

And then he did.

It's amazing, the things to which one can become acclimatized over time. Like watching your boyfriend eat live frogs, for example. I soon became desensitized to it -- after all, how much worse is eating a frog than playing "frog baseball" -- smashing defenseless frogs into a million pieces with a shovel while shouting, "Batta batta batta SWING!" -- like all the bible school boys did? (Putting their God-given dominion over the natural world to good use, of course.)

Not so much worse, it turns out.

At any rate, I became increasingly bored with Trevor's amphibian-eating antics, and he became increasingly bored with me. After all, what good is a girlfriend if you can't make her yell or scream or cry?

Trevor was the one who finally ended up caving. He woke up one morning, rolled over in his sleeping bag and announced to me, "That's it -- I'm outta here."

As he packed his bag, he explained that it wasn't ME -- it was him. He was like that guy in Freebird, he told me. He wasn't made to stay in one place with one woman for too long. And that bird, I could not change. Lord knows, he could not change.

And so he left.

At least he didn't take the tent, I thought.

The last time I saw Trevor was the following summer. For obvious reasons, I decided against tree-planting that year, choosing instead to spend the summer at my folks' place in Chilliwack, waitressing at a Greek steakhouse.

Trevor blew through town one day on his way to Vancouver with one of his stoner buddies. He found me through the phonebook (there were only six Whalens in Chilliwack at the time).

I had to work the night he called, but agreed to meet him and let him drive me to the restaurant, "for old time's sake."

He showed up in an orange VW bus. Turns out he didn't look me up simply to get some ex-girlfriend nookie. He and his pal were funding their cross-country tour by selling acid, and he wanted to know if I could hook him up with any buyers.

I told him no.

Undeterred, he asked if he and his pal could do a dine and dash in the restaurant where I worked. I turned down that request as well, even though it was clear that both Trevor and his friend were in desperate need of some decent food. But hell, it wasn't going to come out of my pocket.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

Over the years, I've morbidly wondered whatever became of Trevor. Honestly, I would have put money on him ending up in jail -- or the morgue -- by his 25th birthday.

Yet there he was on Facebook yesterday, balding and pudgy, and holding a baby.

Heaven help us all.

What a Hitchcockian way to start the day

As I was riding my bike to work, I had to duck TWICE to avoid birds that seemed bent on flying straight into my face -- with wings outspread, claws stretched toward my eyes and everything. One was a pigeon, the other a seagull.

I'm thinking maybe I should switch my perfume from Eau de Roadkill to something else, perhaps?

Quote of the day

Brought to you by Mr. Short-Term Memory...

"Where's Milo's pants go, Mommy?"

That's my boy: running around and acting crazy, having the time of his life -- then all of a sudden looking down and realizing he has no pants on.

He's more like me than I care to admit.

Hugga wugga

We have a new favourite Muppets episode:



It rocks even harder than Alice Cooper singing, "School's out for summer!"

At the crossroads

You know those times in your life when you're approaching a huge change -- be it graduation, a new job, or marriage -- and you know you need to step up to the plate and grab that bull by the horns?

(And mangle a few metaphors while you're at it?)

This is one of those times for Rob and me.

And I swear to you, we're going to grab that bull's horns, swing ourselves over its head and land standing on its back -- then wave our mouse-eared hats with a flourish and shout "Olé!" at the top of our lungs.

Sheer brilliance

This woman is my hero:

http://www.myspace.com/melissamindy

She ALMOST persuaded me to sign up for a MySpace account, just so I could subscribe to her blog.

Almost.

monster

One of my good friends, Cindy, asked me why the memory of the boy who died in my swimming pool floated into my thoughts recently. (Nice metaphor, Cindy.)

Here's the answer...

I went into Milo's room one day last week after he'd awakened from his nap. There he stood in his crib, holding on to his blankie and blinking sleepily, his mussed-up hair a wild halo around his head.

I asked him if he'd had a good nap -- and he looked up at me and said, "Monster, mommy!"

"Monster?" I repeated. "Did you just have a dream of a monster?"

He shook his head, then pointed down at the space between the wall and the bottom of his crib. "Monster down there."

The boy is barely two years old and he already has a monster under his bed.

So it begins.

The good news is, thanks to his newfound-inspired addiction to the Muppet Show (we recently bought the entire first season on DVD and it still ROCKS), the monster under Milo's bed is definitely friendly.

It probably goes by the name of Sweetums and looks something like this:


Whereas the monster that lived in my closet during most of my childhood (only to be replaced by the bearded axe-murderer discussed in this previous post) looked something like this:


... And no one ever called him "Sweetums."

The appearance of Milo's new bedside companion got me thinking about the faces we see in the shadowy corners of our lives -- are they friendly or menacing? Angels or devils?

When the aliens appear, will they be benevolent teachers or ruthless overlords holding well-worn copies of "To Serve Man" in their tentacled grasp?

All this basically translates to how we apprehend the unknown -- in the world at large, in the people we encounter in our daily lives, and most especially within ourselves.

For too many years, I saw demons wherever I looked.

I mistrusted the motives of others. I expected the worst-case scenario to be the logical conclusion to any situation. Strangers were potential enemies. Pointed looks and whispered conversations were always about me -- and they were always insulting (but laser-accurate, of course).

It wasn't until I hit my 30s that I finally came to like myself for who I am, as opposed to despising myself for not being who I thought I should be. (And not to go all hippy on your ass or anything, but I give full props to yoga for my mental paradigm shift.)

Lo and behold, the universe became a friendlier place -- shadows, strangers, and all.

Now, I know Milo is going to encounter evil in this world. I'm not sure I would keep him sheltered him from it, even if I could. After all, how will he learn to overcome adversity if he never encounters it?

But if he's lucky -- and I desperately hope he is -- the monster lurking in the dark corners of his life will always be "Sweetums."

How about you? What monsters are hiding in the shadowy regions of your life? And are they friendly or sinister?

Life sucks when...

While at work, you feel yourself becoming inescapably, gut-wrenchingly ill, but you can't leave because there's really important work that must be completed by deadline -- so you stick it out, get it all done between all the messy and embarrassing visits to the bathroom -- until finally you're able to leave, so you get on your bike and pedal home oh-so-slowly because you have absolutely NO energy and you don't want to precipitate another visit to the bathroom (especially when there AREN'T any bathrooms en route) -- and when you finally get home, you rush into the bathroom without saying hello to your child or your husband, who you're sure is going to act as your knight in shining armor and take care of all the supper and putting-kid-to-bed details so you can collapse on to the bed and writhe around in fetal position -- anything, anything, to make the horrible feeling go away --

And then before you're even finished in the bathroom, your knight in shining armor bangs on the door and says, "You got to get out of there! I'm about to be sick!"

Apparently we both ate the same piece of bad fish.

If I were REALLY rude, I'd make some sort of nasty reference to a "c*m shot"

For anyone who's ever lived in Japan, this will make perfect sense. Because when insane people enjoy insane things, it's perfectly logical, right?

Click here to discover what I'm talking about: Mayo margaritas???

Ch-ch-ch-ha-ha-HA

When I was 10 years old, my family moved from Deep Cove to Chilliwack.

One of the things that made this move bearable for me was the fact that our new home had an in-ground pool. Sure, I was moving away from the forest and the ocean and the mountains -- not to mention my friends.

But hey! At least we were getting a nice pool.

A few weeks after we moved to our new home, my mom brought my brother and me to the local pool supply store to pick up some pool-cleaning chemicals. The man who worked there was obviously familiar with all the pool owners in the small town that was now our home, and since he'd never seen us before, he asked us where we lived.

My mom told him the name of our street. Grimacing, he responded, "Oh yeah -- the old Buchanan place. Where the kid drowned."

Turns out a group of neighbourhood kids had been playing hide-and-go-seek the year before, and one of them -- a three-year-old boy -- had crawled under the fence into what was soon to become our backyard, then had slipped and fallen into our pool, only to become trapped beneath its vinyl cover.

Just the kind of story you REALLY want to hear about your new home.

We were pretty freaked out... But not enough to stop swimming in our pool.

As I floated lazily in my innertube, or swam from one end to the other without taking a breath, the little dead boy would sometimes surface in my thoughts. I'd stare through the pool's clear depths and wonder how he must have felt in his last moments -- whether he'd known what was happening, if he'd screamed, and if so, if anyone had heard him.

Then I'd scramble out of the water and rub myself down so hard with a towel, I'd leave carpet burns on my skin.

Still, I'd thought the creepiness of it all was something I could deal with -- something that lent a certain gothic charm to an otherwise normal suburban home.

And then -- at the beginning of the summer I turned 12 -- I made the mistake of watching Friday the 13th.

You know... the pre-Jason original, the one with the psycho-killer mom who murders a bunch of innocent people in revenge for her son's death by DROWNING years before?

Yep. Didn't relate too much to THAT particular tale.

All of a sudden I began to take notice of the little dead boy's family (because yes, they did still live just a few houses down the street).

His older brother was just eight years old -- by the looks of it, still too small to go about stabbing people in their sleep. The mother was pleasant enough, and seemed far too busy chasing around her toddler daughter to entertain thoughts of bloody revenge.

But the father... He was big and seldom smiled. And he had a beard.

The facial hair clinched it. The man was a psycho killer, and he was out to murder my family.

That whole summer, I was afraid to stay in the house by myself. Every creak was a footstep, every breath of wind was the satisfied sigh of the hunter closing in for the kill.

(Of course, my pre-teen addiction to Stephen King novels didn't help.)

I tried to share my fears with my family, but they pooh-poohed my concerns and told me I was just imagining things. Which I was, of course. Logically, I understood that.

But logic didn't stop me from bolting out the front door whenever I heard the slightest unexplained noise coming from some other part of the house.

Even now, I can feel how my heart used to pound as I stood at the foot of our driveway and stared at our house, willing myself to believe there wasn't an angry bearded man with an axe hiding in the downstairs bathroom.

Eventually, I grew out of my fear. Grade seven finally began, I started spending more time with friends, and the inexplicable noises that had struck such terror into my heart fell mysteriously silent.

Then -- during the great ice storm of 1985 -- the pool's pipes cracked and broke. My parents never bothered to fix them. The pool fell into disrepair, eventually becoming home to countless frogs whose midnight croaking prevented my parents from sleeping.

Years later, while I was away at university, my parents decided to fill the pool with dirt and give it a proper burial. If you were to visit their house now, you'd never guess a killer pool lay concealed beneath the grass in their backyard.

Just like the pool, the terror it once spawned is still buried in my mind, lurking beneath the fertile soil of my imagination.

Except now that I'm a mother, it's not MY death that has the power to terrify me.

It's Milo's.

And suddenly, I feel a strange sense of sympathy for Mrs. Voorhees. Because the lengths I'd go to in order to protect my son from harm?

They don't bear thinking about.

How does he KNOW?

So I was having a dream in which a certain handsome dark-haired pirate and I were in a hotel room in some kind of Disneyland/Las Vegas-like holiday locale, and a bunch of other people were in the room with us, and we REALLY REALLY wanted them to leave so we could start getting friendly with each other -- but the others wouldn't leave, they just kept yammering about all the places they wanted to visit, food they wanted to eat, shows they wanted to see, and they wouldn't take our pointed hints indicating that we wanted them to get the fuck OUT of there and leave us alone already.

And then, when they DID finally saunter out of the room, each lingering over one last long drawn-out goodbye, and the handsome dark-haired pirate and I were finally able to close the door and fall into each other's arms --

-- a voice called out to me from the room next door: "MOMMY! Get up! Milo awake!"

Sigh. Even in my dreams, we can't get lucky. I'm pretty sure that boy is angling to be an only child.

Tsunami

Do you ever get the feeling that a huge wave of upheaval is about to crash down on your head and sweep you away to alien shores?

I can't shake the sensation that I'm gearing up to do a WHOLE LOT of dog paddling some time in the all-too-frighteningly-near future...

Because Meg told me to

In response to Meg Fowler's latest call to action. Never shall that woman be called "listless"...

1. What is your favorite word?

Serendipity

2. What is your least favorite word?

Fug or fugly

3. What turns you on?

Pirates, duh.

4. What turns you off?

Unrelenting tentativeness

5. What sound or noise do you love?

Milo's dinosaur roar: "Rah!" (It's identical to his monster roar, his lion roar, his bear roar, his alligator roar -- you get the picture.)

6. What sound or noise do you hate?

Fork on a plate -- pure torture

7. What is your favorite curse word?

I have to CHOOSE? Fuck that!

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Archaeologist

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Brain surgeon

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

"Took you long enough!"

I wish he weren't so darned ambivalent

The question: "Hey Milo, do you want a drink of this water?"

The answer:



Inscrutable as stone, that boy...

My work here is done

Milo just walked into the living room -- legs stiff, arms outstretched, and head jerking from side to side -- intoning, "Monster boy! Monster booooy!"

I feel like I've accomplished all I ever could have hoped for as a parent.

To hammer the point home, here's Milo's latest all-time-favorite YouTube video:



That's my boy...

Nature's bidet

It happens every time.

We come to Rob's folks' place on a hot summer day and eagerly await the receding tide, so we can go play on the sandbar behind their house.

We gather up our sand toys and head down to the beach, gingerly picking our way through the seaweed-covered rocks until we reach the rippled sand.

And then it happens -- I step close to a seemingly innocuous quarter-sized hole in the sand, and a giant three-foot spurt of water shoots from the hole, straight up into the leg of my shorts.

I shriek and take another step -- and a second fountain squirts up the other leg of my shorts.

Geoducks: the perverts of the bivalve world.

Yoga and hangovers don't mix

On Wednesday night, I went out for dinner with my good friends from university, Liz and Tracy.

It all started out very civilized, with white wine and scintillating conversation about the joy of owning really cute shoes and how hard it is to find a hairdresser who really knows how to cut good layers.

But at some point in the evening I think we started to believe we were still in university, 15 years younger than we actually are. And before we knew it, we'd polished off a couple bottles of wine, several pints of beer, several more glasses of wines, and a few mojitos just to spice things up.

The last hour (or two?) of the evening is a complete blur.

I don't remember getting home. I think there may have been a cab involved -- although I could have been piggy-backed home by a hunchback and still be none the wiser.

All I know is that when I woke up yesterday morning, there was a trail of clothing leading from the bathroom at the back of the house all the way to the door of my bedroom.

And I was still drunk.

Staying home from work wasn't an option -- I had an article to write for the weekly newsletter, and its deadline was set in stone. So I somehow managed to stumble my way to the Skytrain and get to the office (only half an hour late). Then I did something I haven't done for YEARS -- I tried to soak up the remains of my alcohol buzz with a greasy, greasy breakfast from A&W.

And then I tried to write.

Do you know hard it is to write coherently when your head feels like it's home to a swarm of angry bees?

When lunchtime rolled around, I decided to take a break from my drunken writer's block hell and clear my brain by taking part in the weekly yoga class I'd signed up for. (It's pretty sweet -- a yoga instructor actually comes to our office and does the class right there.)

Well. You know how they say that yoga helps rid your body of all the toxins and negative energy blockages in your body? After the previous night's debauchery, my body was apparently in serious need of some purging.

Halfway through the class, in the middle of "downward-facing dog," the nausea surfaced with a vengeance. I was able to make it to the end of class -- barely -- but as soon as we'd all said "namaaste" to each other, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I stumbled as quickly as I could to the four-stall public bathroom -- and then gaped in horror as one of my coworkers insisted on coming into the bathroom WITH ME.

And so -- with no other options available to me -- I surrendered all dignity and puked up every last morsel of my greasy, greasy breakfast, as my coworker listened on in horror.

(The sound of a flushing toilet can only drown out so much...)

She was kind enough to offer me a cracker afterwards, which I declined. I didn't have the strength to tell her that I was a. not dying, b. the author of my own misery, and c. actually feeling better now that I no longer had a belly full of toxic fast food.

However, I'm pretty sure that when I return to work on Tuesday, fully half the women there are going to think I'm pregnant.

Nope, ladies. Not pregnant. Just stupid.

Oh yeah

Right now I'm wondering, at what point in the evening did I forget I HAD TO WORK TODAY???

Udder bullshit

I'm the first to admit I have juvenile taste in movies.

After writing my guts out all day and most of the evening, the last thing I want to do is watch something that taxes my brain -- or my heart, for that matter.

I mean, I'm already aware of the evil people are capable of inflicting on each other. The non-fictional media do a great job of demonstrating that every day. Why would I choose to wallow in man's inhumanity to man in the world of make believe, as well?

Thanks anyway, but no.

On the rare occasions I sit down to watch something on TV or DVD, I prefer it to be as escapist as it gets. Which is why Rob and I tend to watch so many kids' movies.

I try telling myself I watch them in the name of "research," since I'm still toiling away on the never-ending story. But who am I kidding? I watch them because I LIKE THEM.

(There. I said it.)

So when Rob said we'd just received the movie "Barnyard" in the mail, I shrugged and agreed to watch it -- even though I vaguely remembered it receiving awful reviews.

"Ehhh, it's done by the same studio that did Jimmy Neutron," I thought. "How bad can it be?"

Very bad, as it turned out. Worse than bad.

It wasn't the cardboard characters or lame, predictable plot that got me (though it was painfully obvious poor ol' Daddy Cow was going to bite it Lion King-style within the first two minutes of the movie).

Truth is, I barely paid attention to those glaring flaws.

No. What had me choking with horror from almost the very first scene was the fact that the main character of the movie is a he-cow.

A HE-COW, people.

Not a bull. A cow. With udders. That just happened to be male.

Like so:

There's absolutely no logical reason for this creature to have udders. None of the other upright-walking animals had anything resembling sexual organs on their body. I'm mystified as to why the movie's decision-makers felt obligated to make the poor he-cow the exception.

Were they worried the audience wouldn't be able to identify the character as bovine without the telltale udders hanging out? Or is there a subversive pro-tranny message hidden in there somewhere?

Or is Hollywood REALLY that far removed from reality?

My money's on the latter.

Alien invasion

Throughout Milo's life, we've been careful to limit his exposure to television.

(Yes, I have been brainwashed by the studies that suggest too much TV scrambles the brains of children, leaving them twitching and drooling on the rec room floor, incapable of sustaining a thought for longer than 1.7 seconds. Rob thinks I'm overreacting, but hey -- look at what it did to ME.)


However, being the computer geeks we are, we never guessed that introducing Milo to YouTube might be a dangerous thing to do.

Silly us.

After watching just one clip from Sesame Street, he was hooked. Now, at least 50 times a day (and I'm lowballing here) he demands to watch, "Farm spaceship, Mommy! Farm spaceship!"

Even if I acquiesce one out of every ten times, that still means we're watching the same 4:20 (heh) long clip five times in a day, which equals 21 minutes 40 seconds -- and that's just a minute and a half shorter than a regular 1/2 hour children's program (minus commercials).

So much for protecting his tender developing mind...

Although to be honest, it's not so much his brain turning to mush that worries me. It's the fact that when the alien invasion finally happens, Milo's first instinct won't be to run for the hills like everyone else.

Instead, he's going to march right up to our tentacled future overlords with his arms outstretched, saying, "Yip yip yip yip uh huh uh huh uh huh..."

All cleansing no beer make Erin go crazy

So my 12-day cleanse is over and I SURVIVED!

And all I have to say right now is this: "BEEEER! Unnnnnngh."

(I'm on my second.)

It's times like this that I worry about how much I have in common with Homer Simpson...



Happy Friday night, all...

Forget about mucoid plaques...

This atrocity is FAR stinkier... and scarier, too:

11-Year-Old Girl Wants to Be Like Jordan

Okay, so I don't know anything about "Jordan," other than the fact that she's a fake-boobed plastic bimbo. (Who knew they had them in Britain, too?)

But I do know this: if MY child ever expressed the desire to emulate such a stellar example of the WORST women have to offer society, I think I'd have to take her out to the back field and shoot her. Or at the very least, give her a partial lobotomy.

Kidding... but only sort of.

All right, enough with the lovey dovey stuff

It's time to talk crap again.

As part of this cleanse I'm doing, I've had to cut all yeast out of my diet. Last night, I began to wonder why. Why is yeast so bad? What has it ever done to be shunned and denigrated so?

I decided to go online and search for answers.

And then I got sidetracked and stumbled across this site.

(Warning: not for those who have weak stomachs or have recently eaten. Or who suffer from nightmares.)

YIKES. I thought MY cleanse was thorough. I never knew such... things could come out of the human body (without said human body being sliced open, that is).

It kind of makes me want to keep on doing this cleanse forever, to ensure I never have one of those monstrous "mucoid plaques" growing inside me.

... Though given all the trans-fatty foods I've eaten over the years (curse you, Pringles potato chips!) a mucoid plaque could be incubating inside me -- and you! -- RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE.

Cue the Twilight Zone theme...

Love

In response to my Meg Fowler's challenge, here are things I love:

• Milo's non-stop narrative, describing exactly what he's doing at any given moment of the day: "Milo running fast! Milo climbing! Milo read a book! Milo hitting Mummy!"
  
  (Okay, so I'm not so particularly fond of that last one.)
  
  
• The miracle of being allowed to sleep to 7:30 a.m (It's happened about three times since Milo was born)
  
  
• When writing, getting so into the world I'm creating that I actually forget myself and time ceases to have any meaning
  
  
• Doing yoga and listening to birds celebrate the sun rising
  
  
• Riding my bike to work
  
  
• Sitting on a patio with a cold beer and good friends, watching the sun go down
  
  
• Bras with straps that don't slide down my arms
  
  
• Freshly washed bedsheets
  
  
• Watching a really great sci-fi show with Rob, and actually being surprised by a plot twist (Happens all too rarely)
  
  
• Grilled asparagus, sprinkled with lemon, salt and pepper
  
  
• Walking in the woods -- in any weather, at any time of year -- and marveling at the countless shades of green
  
  
• Going to the park across the street and having all the neighborhood kids shout, "Hi Milo!" on our arrival
  
  
• Prawns and all things shrimpy. I KNOW they're horribly overfished and we're all going to die soon because the ocean is being scoured of its inhabitants, but god help me, I love the shrimp.
  
  
• Random run-ins with friends I haven't seen forever -- and realizing that the passage of time hasn't weakened our friendship one bit
  
  
• Books that make me laugh
  
  
• Books that make me think about things in a new light
  
  
  And finally...
  
  
  
• Pirates.
  

What a load of crap

I'm currently doing my first herbal cleanse. (The Wild Rose one, for those who care about such things.)

Right before every breakfast and dinner, I squirt 30 drops of brown liquid into a glass and then use it to wash back six foul-smelling pills.

And then I wait...

... until my belly tells me it's time for the first of many, many trips to the bathroom that day.

Oh. So THAT'S why they call them cleanses. My insides have been scrubbed so bare, you could probably eat off them.

(All together now: ewwwww.)

I will say this: I've had more energy every day for the past 11 days than I've in months. Instead of fighting the urge to collapse each night at 8:00 p.m -- then feeling like I've just emerged from a four-year coma when the alarm goes off each morning -- I'm like the Energizer Bunny.

I spring out of bed at 5:00 each morning thinking, "Yeah! Yoga!" and have to force myself to go to bed at 10:30 or later, just because I know I'll be getting up in 6 1/2 short hours and sleeping is what a sane person would probably do in my situation.

(OK so 10:30 might not seem very late to those of you who don't have a two-year-old and don't get out of bed at 5:00 IN THE MORNING. But it is. Trust me.)

However... Part of me questions whether the increase in energy is worth the pain of going without wheat, sugar, and dairy. And who knew how much I loved yeast and all things fermented! Already I'm salivating over everything I'm planning to eat and drink on Friday when this 12-day cleanse is finally over.

Basically, all the things that made me so darned toxic in the first place.

Crap.

Still alive, still kicking

Hi! Whatcha been doing for the past 16 months?

Really! You don't say?

Well, I won't bore you with the story of how I was sold into slavery for almost a year and a half and forced to perform unspeakable acts of horror. Yawn. How typical.

But I will say this: I'm back with a new name, a real name, and a new look. And I'm here to speak my piece.

(I've spent so many months writing in other people's voices, it's time I remembered what my own sounds like...)