Monthly Archives: March 2012

Love Sandwich

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I was so excited to open up this month’s O Magazine, and not just because it contained Adam Glassman’s spring fashion look book – which turned out to be a disappointment, anyway.  Sorry, Adam, a silky pajama top is NOT work appropriate even when paired with a pencil skirt; and let’s not even get started on orange and/or yellow pants.  No, I was excited because it was the First! Ever! Food Issue! and on the cover – right on the folded over part – was….STEDMAN!  And inside was an interview with him talking about what Oprah cooks for him – including, but not limited to, something that is called a Love Sandwich.  The recipe was not at all what came to mind when I heard the words Love Sandwich, it wasn’t anything even remotely slutty or Kama Sutra-ish.  The Love Sandwich, anticlimatically enough, involves a panini press, basil, tomatoes and avocado, among other things.  It does not involve anything bedroom- or Gayle-related.  Actually, minus the turkey and scallions (shudder), it looks pretty yummy.  I wouldn’t mind a Love Sandwich.

I was so excited to see Stedman on the cover that I was vibrating a little; I leaned over on the couch to show my husband, who responded in a puzzled way.  Why, he wondered, did I look like that?  Baby, it’s not every day one gets to see a narwhal.

Sometimes it is like he doesn’t understand me at all.  For example, I discovered that this weekend – yes, THIS WEEKEND – is the start of Daylight Savings Time and, as usual, I started to go off the rails.  My husband responded in an irritated sort of way, saying that I was being a) overly dramatic, and b) irrational, which made me respond in a “No, YOU’RE overly dramatic and irrational” kind of way, complete with hanging up the phone. 

It’s true, as my husband pointed out, that my children did adjust fairly quickly to a three hour time difference in Maui and again at home, but it is also true that the week following the “Spring Forward” is a crabby one, given that children are unable to sleep at their regularly scheduled time and then must be woken up at their regularly scheduled time, contributing to a sleep deficit which leads to HELL.  ASK ANY TEACHER OR CHILD CARE PROFESSIONAL.  Even if my children do adjust to the time difference, I shall still rally against it, in solidarity with mothers everywhere.  It is antiquated, it is unnecessary, and the first person to say “but it’s so nice to have light in the evening” I shall stab.  Or, if I don’t physically stab them, I shall stab them in my mind and then give them the furry eyebrow.  Where I live, in a couple months it will be light until TEN O’CLOCK.  I think that is more than sufficient.  I wake up at 4:45 am, I do not care about light in the evenings, thank you very much.   

Now I’ve got myself all worked up again.  I need to go out and buy myself a panini press; I think a Love Sandwich may be the ticket to happiness.  There is pepper jack cheese!  And avocado!  Mmm.  Baby.  Love Sandwich.

Just Like Bogie and Bacall

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Jake stayed at school for lunch today for the very first time – excepting, of course, Fridays when the kids have a “nutrition break” at their desks and then are dismissed at 1:10.  But today he is at a Lego Club meeting – there IS a Lego Club – and is the first of my children to voluntarily eat lunch at school.  You read that correctly: I do not share my friends’ angst about school lunches and the packing thereof; I live five minutes away from the school and so the kids come home and eat peanut butter and other contraband items.  I’m happy to have them home at lunch, they are happy to come home at lunch, but today it feels like Jake is all grown up now, in no time at all he is going to be leaving home and calling me on an infrequent basis.

It’s enough to give one just the teensiest bit of a heartache.

And yet, I do not wish my children were younger and that I could relive those years.  Sure, it was fun to be able to go to the zoo or the science centre any day of the week, and sure, it was fun to make up plans about what we could do that very day, and sure, it was fun to take the kids for a walk down the street so they could jump in puddles and become soaked and admire the neighbour’s collection of vintage cars that he was ostensibly restoring.  Actually, no, it wasn’t.  There were many long, boring days when I cleaned up paint from crafts and when I veered between each child when they went in opposite, hazardous directions at the playground, but I’m in a place now when I can think of the zoo and see the excitement from seeing elephants and getting those little Dibs ice cream things, and I can gloss over my entire, full-body exhaustion from pushing the heavy double stroller and from packing dozens of snacks and diapers and pullups and bottles and sippy cups and changes of clothing.  I can gloss over the potty-training episodes in public bathrooms, or the germophobic feeling of horror watching the kids using those little phones that tell the stories of the animals in that particular enclosure.  It’s like I’m scrapbooking in my mind: I’m remembering sunny, happy pictures of eating lunch at the picnic tables and talking about gorillas and I’m pasting over the thirty minutes it would take to get the sunscreen applied and the shoes on.  “Going To The Zoo!” is what I’m writing in bubbly stencils in my scrapbook mind, adding lots of happy stickers.

I don’t wish to go back in time.  We took the red-eye home from Maui, and this is what happened: the boys ate snacks and read books while waiting to board, they slept on the plane and woke up on landing, despite having only five hours of sleep they non-grumpily waited in line at Customs and then helped gather all the luggage at the carosel, they rode happily in the taxi home and carried their booster seats into the house, they went to bed and slept for another couple of hours, getting up cheerfully when I woke them up.  Here’s what I observed other people, people with much younger children doing: chasing their kids in the waiting area to tire them out, plying the screaming toddlers with sippy cups and soothers on the plane, walking around on the plane trying to get the babies to sleep, looking like a zombie in line for Customs, holding a sobbing, inconsolable little one.  I wouldn’t trade places with them for the world.  I love how my kids are so interesting and fun and relatively reasonable and self-sufficient and full of cool ideas.  But I came across this picture of them at age two and three:

And this one:

And then this one, from age 10 months and 27 months:

And suddenly, ANGST!

This angsty feeling was exacerbated by the fact that I’m finally reading Room, and by page 22 I had to get reassurance from everyone I know who has read it that it all will end okay, otherwise I would burn the book and spend the rest of the weekend curled up in a corner, crying.  I am not yet finished, but I haven’t burned the book yet, so I suppose that is a positive sign.  I did spend much of the weekend feeling moody and emotional, much to my husband’s puzzlement; was this moodiness due to my period?  WHAT MOODINESS????  AND GIVE ME SOME DAMN CHOCOLATE.

So that was my weekend.  On Saturday morning I saw a friend had written on Facebook that she had spent Friday night listening to her boyfriend play guitar; it sounded all blissful and romantic.  Here’s what I did Friday night: I drank half a bottle of wine on the couch in my pajamas, watching reruns of 30 Rock and then, incredibly, an informercial about love songs of the eighties, and that entire CD collection – entitled “Easy 80’s” – could be mine in only six payments of $26.99 (plus shipping and handling).  I was singing along to the informercial.

Actually, it WAS pretty awesome.  I mean, drinking wine in your pajamas is kind of the ultimate in comforting, and I’m sure my husband loved my rendition of Key Largo.  I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The book fair is over. Where’s my corkscrew?

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I was watching Modern Family on Wednesday, dying of laughter at what was referred to as “Satan’s Trifecta”, with Claire, Haley, and Alex all on the same “cycle”.  I laughed at poor Phil’s angst as I ate handful after handful of trail mix, wondering how I could possibly still be so hungry.  I wondered how, this week, I have been simultaneously exhausted yet unable to sleep, achy and tired and completely off my game.  I blamed it on the book fair, the minor case of the sniffles running through our house like a mildly annoying housefly, and the incredibly irritating personalities of others.  I did not blame it on myself.  I did not realize until a certain “aunt” came to “visit” much earlier than normal that there may have been something else going on.  Suddenly, it all made sense.

On a related note, a friend sent me an article entitled “Incompetent People Too Ignorant To Know It” which seems not only extremely accurate, but also extremely nerve-wracking.  Am I incompetent and unaware?  I don’t think so, but then, how would I know?  It’s enough to induce a breakdown of sorts, although the idea that stupidity breeds lack of awareness really does explain a lot about society.  Did I mention the book fair?

Speaking of breakdowns, Mark had one last night.  He was completely inconsolable because, he said, he was WAY BEHIND everyone in the class in math.  This struck me as very odd, since he is very good at math and also his teacher, a few days after we had returned from Maui, had assured me he was all caught up.  However, with the hysterical breakdown right in front of me, I wrote a note to the teacher and spoke with her prior to class, hoping to have a solution to the problem.  She was completely puzzled.  He wasn’t at all behind.  He missed a few worksheets when we were in Maui, but he scored very well on the unit test, and so she had given him the option to either a) forget about the missing pages, or b) complete them at his leisure.  Whichever option was fine with her.  Apparently Mark’s breakdown stemmed from his own standards, which were being compromised due to lack of time.  To say that he takes after his mother would be an understatement. 

Did I mention the book fair?

This week it seemed everyone was talking about Leap Day and the joy of having an extra day, which puzzles me.  It’s not really an extra day, is it?  It’s kind of like how we “gain” time during Daylight Savings.  It’s not really a gain, people.  Even if it is, somehow, an “extra day”, it’s an extra day in February, one of the bleakest months of the year!  Well, not for me, because I was on vacation, but I think most people would agree that February is, indeed, a bleak month.  This is not to say it isn’t fun to think of all those people who get an extra special Leap Year birthday – that’s kind of cool.  But then, I may be a little bitter since I spent Leap Day at the book fair for seven hours. 

There were some cool erasers, though:

For the rest of the day, I was singing “Don’t stop! Believing!  Hold on to that FEEEELLLINININGGG”.  My girlfriend who was volunteering with me that morning told me that her very first concert was Journey, which I thought was exciting and reminded me that MY very first concert was INXS.  The Devil Inside!  That was back in the day when you could see an excellent concert for under twenty dollars.  This also reminds me that The Grapes of Wrath – who I saw in concert for about twelve dollars and whose member Tom Hooper I had an astounding crush on – are rumoured to be GETTING BACK TOGETHER.  I’m a little nonplussed.  That just seems, for some reason, kind of depressing.  But maybe it’s just my current state of mind (“will you ever find your peace of miiiiinnnnndd?”).

My current state of mind being exacerbated by the fact that I spent all week in a windowless room staring at this scene, answering myriad questions regarding the price of various posters and erasers.  But that’s enough about the book fair.  I’m even boring myself.  This goes back to the original question, amended: are boring people too boring to know it?