Happy Birthday, Thing 2!

It is Thing 2's 12th birthday today, and you can believe me utterly when I say there were plenty of days when she was younger when I didn't think either one of us was going to live to see this day. A day where she was whole and healthy and independent and capable and well on her way to a rich, full life, and I had no criminal record and my name was not synonymous with "sold her child for spare parts".

Thing 2 has always been a kid who knew what she wanted and had no problem telling you what your role in the acquisition might be. When she was around 3 years old, she spent a lot of time with her hands on her hips, barking out orders to anyone within earshot....when people asked who she looked like, we replied, "Mussolini". Like most people born under the sign of Aquarius, she can't figure out why you can't see that she's right. And she's also charming and delightful and very, very funny.

It's always interesting when Thing 2 comes into the room:

• When she was about 18 months old, she pooped in the bathtub, and her poop had red sequins in it. (Very festive)
• She bonked her head so much when she was a toddler, that she referred to her forehead as her "poor head".
• She told the Mister's cousin that her new baby looked like "an alien".
• Pumpernickel bread was "pointy nipple bread"
• When she was about 4, she got mad at Thing 1 and threatened to cut off her ponytail.\
• She once went to bed wearing nothing but a life jacket. (In case the house hit an ice berg, I assume.)
• She was about 4 when she told me, very seriously, that "it's hard to kiss and think at the same time". I told her she didn't know the half of it.
• She was outraged at the idea that there were people in Thing 1's Grade 4 class that didn't believe in Santa Claus, and so she made a list of their names and sent it to St. Nick, just so he'd know, and they would be duly punished.

Happy 12th, sweetie! I don't know what we'd do without you!

Kibbles and Bits Some More

Things are very quiet here at Chez Loudshoes this week, which is just the way I like it. "Boring" and "uneventful" are positive things, in my books. The world could do with far more "boring" and "uneventful", I think. My calendar is very white, meaning it hardly has anything written on if for this week. (When the calendar is dark, with things written in sideways and along the margins because there's too much to fit into the little boxes, it makes me very stabby.)

Thing 2 will be celebrating her 12th birthday this week, and I was trying to remember what I was doing 12 years ago this week. Oh, that's right, bitching. That whole last trimester was one big bitch session, as I recall. I had pretty easy, low-drama pregnancies, but I recall being fed up of the whole adventure around month 7 with Thing 2, and I announced, loudly, that I was going to be monumentally cranky for the duration. (The Mister replied that he was going to be hard pressed to tell the difference between that and my usual demenor. Brave man, him.) Anyway, Thing 2 is very excited about her birthday; I think the fact that she's only celebrated 12 of them might have something to do with that. Once you've celebrated, I don't know, 30 or 40 of them, they lose their shine, somewhat.

The weather has been blissfully mild and non-wintery this week. The snow has been melting, and I've even had some of the windows open, to air out the place. (Shhh, don't tell the Mister....he will make fatherly grumbles about heating the whole of southwestern Ontario.) Toby approves very much, and spent most of the afternoon in the window of the ensuite bathroom,

making sure the squirrels did not get up to any hijinks. Or if they do, he can tell on them.

We went for a walk last Sunday to feed the ducks on the pond near our house, and the ducks were hilarious. Who knew? The pond had mostly frozen over, but there was some open water and the ducks were all crowded into that. They had to come over closer to us to get the bread, and that part of the pond was all icy. The result? Duck Bowling! They skittered and staggered all over the place in a most entertaining fashion. Then we witnessed a mallard ass-kicking, where two ducks seemed pretty determined to beat the snot out of each other. The Mister got involved and separated them, but they went right back at it. Just goes to show, testosterone is toxic in large doses, no matter what the species.

And the fact that that is all I can think of to write about will tell you how boring and uneventful my life is at the moment. It's perfect.

Top Ten Things I Learned Today

1. Toby does not like it when you hold onto his tail when he is going down the stairs.


2. The garlicky mashed potatoes are hardly ever garlicky enough, no matter how much too garlicky you think you are making them.


3. The skinny mocha lattes at Starbucks are delicious and only 90 calories.


4. Sunshine is a drug.


5. Cooked egg and avocado will NOT come off in the dishwasher.


6. My craving for chips and salsa borders on a disability.


7. Everyone in our neighborhood eats way more pizza than we do. (It was recycling day, and I got to see the contents of everyone's recycling box on my way to the mall.)


8. The underneath of the kitchen faucet is horrifyingly dirty. Seriously, go check yours out.


9. Everything looks better once the vacuuming is done. In fact, you hardly need to do any more cleaning if you do just that.


10. Cats and vaccuums don't mix.

Thanks for the Memories

I spent this evening drinking wine out of a box at my good friend, Big Liver Girl's house, and her delightful and newly-moved-to-town sister-in-law and brother-in-law were there as well. The Newly Moved to Towns have two delightful and delicious little children, about a year old and around two, who toddled and pattered and ambled about the place with complete good humor and bonhomie. I had totally forgotten what life is like with small children....it's not that long ago that my own were that age, but, truly, it is astonishing how quickly you forget. At the time it seems like your life was always ruled by what resembles drunken midgets looking for a bar brawl, and that it will never be any different, but it passes in a heartbeat.

I had forgotten:

• how busy small children are. They are like sharks, they never stop moving. Those little hands and feet and minds are always on the go. I suppose it's the fact that it's all new, it's all novel, and it must be investigated at once.
• how noisy they can be. Believe me, these two were far from loud, but I had forgotten the constant narration that young kids keep up. My own two were champion talkers from the time they figured out how to do it, and there were times when I offered to pay them a quarter if they would just. stop. talking for five minutes. (Which produced a whole other rant of "how much is a quarter?can we drive to DisneyWorld for that?how long is five minutes?is it this long?is it this long?is it this long?")
• how determined small children are to kill themselves. Really, they are quite purposeful in their goal to do themselves harm. "Hey! Is that a set of stairs I see? What happens if I stand at the top and lean over??? And wow! A rusty exacto knife! I bet I can have a lot of fun with that!!" There's no end to the perils they will pursue.
• how delightfully round and squishy their little bodies are. Babies and toddlers have exquisite skin and they smell delicious and their little knees and shoulders and bums are insanely darling.
• how little they are. I know it's ridiculously obvious, but they really are such tiny, wee things. You forget how small a space they take up.
• how tactile they are. Apart from the fact that they will happily play with nothing but their own body fluids for hours, I had forgotten how much they touch and like to be touched, and they climb all over you and you don't even notice most of the time. That perpetual physical connection is really such a very short time for both of you.

I thought I'd suffer from Post Traumatic Toddler Dissorder for the rest of my days when I was in the thick of it myself. If you had told me I'd have forgotten what it was like this easily, I'd have never believed it. But I did.

Be Careful What You Wish For

Overheard at Tim Hortons this morning:

Customer: "I'll have a 12-grain bagel, toasted, with cream cheese on the side, please."

Cashier: (looking a bit confused)"Okay......um.....which side?"

Things I Like About Getting Older

I had a birthday a couple of weeks ago, and despite the overwhelming evidence, I'm often surprised to find myself officially middle-aged.
I'm a Capricorn, and have accepted the burden of "old when I'm young" of my sign, so I'm just fitting into my skin now. (When I was a teenager and all my friends wanted to cross the border into Michigan, I was the one who blurted out "but we have no health insurance!") But luckily, I'm finding that getting older has some unexpected benefits, and I am happily embracing them:

I don't care how cool I look. There were many years of my life when how I appeared to others was of critical importance, and I was sure it was of critical importance to everyone else, too. I'm not sure when that dropped off my radar, probably somewhere around the time that I had small children hanging off me, depositing their bodily fluids all over my person with alarming enthusiasm. At this point in my life, I'm pretty sure nobody is looking at me, and if they are, they get what they get.

I am wiser. I have learned to consider the source, measure twice but cut once, shake before opening and always, always go home when the tequila comes out.

Experience gives you credibility When I warn the young people I work with about the dangers of shoulder pads and leg warmers, they listen. Because I have lived through that particular horror, and survived to tell the tale. They look at me with wonder and respect. And then when I tell them about perms and skinny leather ties, they listen.

I can do the things I like without derision. When I was younger and wanted to stay home on a Saturday night and read and knit and embroider and go to bed early, I kept that to myself, lest anyone know what a geek I was. Now, when I stay home and knit, it's perfectly acceptable, and I don't care what anyone thinks.. (Except my friend Sandy, who shouts "what are you, 90?" when I knit.) In another couple of years, it will be expected of me.

I can stop sucking in my stomach. I'm almost 50 and I've had two children. Nobody expects me to have a flat stomach.

Growing old is not for sissies, but staying young is even worse.

Reprieve

One of the reasons I haven't been posting much on the blog lately is because I am all whiney and moany about the weather, and can barely think about anything else, and really, who wants to read about that? I can barely stand to listen to myself, let alone inflict myself on anyone else.

But today, today, is an exception....today it feels like I'm nearing the end of a long prison sentence; I still have a ways to go, but the end is in sight and if I behave myself, I might get early parole. The sun is shining, the air is filled with the sound of water running and it doesn't hurt to breathe in deeply through your nose. It's not spring, but it's definitely not the dead of winter, either.

The snow has gotten all soft and slumpy and defeated here in the backyard. And that in the birdbath? that is definite melting going on there. Check out that glorious blue sky! It had been so long since we'd seen the sun I actually had to hunt down some sunglasses this morning to go get groceries. I hadn't seen them in ages, and didn't know where they were.

Toby is particularly enthusiastic about the change in temperatures....he had been slowly losing his mind the past couple of weeks, from being indoors so much, and I think I speak for both of us when I say "it's about time". (There's only so much dragging of yarn and tossing of foil balls and changing of bed linens I'm willing to do to keep that cat amused.) Here he is outside, experiencing sensory overload...the sun! the smells! the snow! the cold! Note his awkward stance, as he keeps breaking through the top crust of snow about 1 second after he thinks it's safe to put all his weight on it....he is clearly disconcerted, but I thought if was very funny. (I got a slitty-eyed glare of death when I laughed at him staggering around out there.)

Here is our garden gnome, Peadsworth, clearly coming up for air for the first time in 9 weeks. The forecast is for another day or two of this, and then back to desperate temperatures again, which is to be expected, being February and all. But the odd day like today makes the rest of the winter bearable. Just.