grace

When I got to the Grs last night for a short visit, I was met with quite a sight. A pantsless Ruby was helping Grace bread some tofu. Fiona was lying on the floor, looking mournful.

"I'm glad you're here," Grace said. "We're having some sadness."

"Oh dear," I said. "What's up, Fi?"

She just made her eyes slightly bigger. "She doesn't know," Grace said.

"Oh dear."

Grace and I continued chatting, about cell phones, what happens at Sporty Kids. I was still holding tight to the bag I'd walked in with.

"I would like a book," Fiona stated, still lying on her back on the floor.

"Well!" I said. "Are you in luck! Because what do I happen to have right here? A book! For you! And your sister!"

Ruby was too busy with the tofu to care much, but Fiona was really excited. We snuggled ourselves into the couch, I opened the book and started reading. After a couple of "Wow!"s about some particularly astonishing figures, Ruby bipped in and out, wandering off to get more snacks, wandering back for a few more facts. Fiona settled into silence. I couldn't tell if she was rapt or bored. Since I was getting bored, I should have been able to guess.

It's too bad, because when I saw the book at City Lights, I loved it immediately. The illustrations are gorgeous, sharp angles and muted 50s pastels. Beautiful font. It's a great size as well, a nice rectangle, and not too many words on each page. I clutched it to my chest (along with Valencia, for a somewhat dichotomous purchase), quite chuffed with myself.

Halfway through actually reading it out loud, however, I was maybe not quite so chuffed. The language was very grown up, lacking rhythm and play. The facts were boring facts that kids don't care about.

Fiona concurred. "This book," she announced, "makes no sense."

"Pardon?" I said.

"It makes no sense."

"Well," I responded, gamely looking for the bright side, "it's not really so much a story to make sense as it is just a series of facts about San Francisco."

"This story. Makes no sense. And the pictures," she continued, "are greyful."

It is impossible to argue with a three year old's perfectly perceptive neologisms. Grace chose us another book.

+One+

Grace and I quite handily beat Greg and Bobcia at 4 games of Sequencia, mostly, we decided, because of the Polish Diagonal Sight Disorder with which both are afflicted. This, you will have to trust me, is hilarious, and I would explain why, except that by the time I finished explaining, complete with diagrams and flow chart and game plans, it would not be amusing in the slightest.

I love this game, though. I'm not a huge board game fan, having been turned off them at an early age by a childhood friend who cheated like mad, lied about it, and then made fun of me for losing. But I find Sequence - "It's part card game, part board game!" - thoroughly enjoyable. It's enough to keep your hands busy while you're chatting, and not so difficult that you have to pay much actual attention.

Bobcia also called me a boozer all night, as in "Get a load of this boozer here!" because it took me an hour to drink my one and only beer of the evening. I found this also to be hilarious, for reasons that probably do not require flow charts.

+Two+

One of CT's pictures from his trip here in August has been chosen by Schmap for the Downtown Neighbourhood section of their Ottawa site. I'm very excited about this. I was standing right. There. Swear to god.

+Three+

Does anyone want a yowling cat? I've just about had enough.

I've heard her through the earplugs, the past two nights.

If I thought it would make it better, I'd get her one of those automatic feeders. But it would have to have multiple compartments so that she could get fed at 3 am and 5:30 am, and probably 4 pm too, so I didn't have to generally listen to an hour's worth of yowling when I got home.

And sure, I could feed her earlier, but at what point does it stop, yknow? She's on a pretty strict schedule. Between 6:30 and 8 am, 5:30 and 7 pm, and 11 pm and 12:30.

If I fed her every time she started yowling, she'd go through a case of cans in a couple days.

Basically, if you are in the house and she hasn't just been fed, she's either yowling or I'm hunched up waiting for her to yowl.

At 5:45 this morning, I took my earplugs out, wrapped myself in a robe, stomped down the stairs and shut her in the basement. Then I stomped back up again, shut my door, plugged my plugs back in and slept, solidly and deeply, for about 90 minutes.

You know what I want?

I want my pre-diabetic cat back. I want the cat who ate dry food 5 kibbles at a time, who slept with me at night and put me to sleep by purring. Right now, I do not want the wet-food eating, stink-drooling, demon-infested yowl monster that my formerly sweet natured lovely cat has become.

Not much of a salesperson, am I?

+Four+

I didn't go to the Slow Dance Party tonight because the thought of strangers touching me made me want to back slowly out of the room instead.

+Five+

I think my post yesterday came across as less hopeful than I meant it.

It's really quite a relief to have stopped looking, and all in all, I'm pretty happy about it.

I don't really think I'm going to be alone forever, not necessarily, at any rate. Hence the wry half-smile and the murmur.

Maybe I'll find someone, maybe I'll find someones. Maybe I won't find anyone.

But what's the worst that can happen? Most of the women in my family who are over 50 - all but two of them - are single, either through divorce or death. And those are just the ones who are alive. All my great aunts were either spinsters, or widowed young enough I never met their husbands.

I come from a long line of women who have ended up without a partner, though not alone, not by a long shot. They've all lived full and happy lives.

What I need to do is fight against what pop culture tries to shove down my throat as the one true way. Difficult to do, because being coupled in some form or another feels right to me in many ways. But wrong in many others.

So I'll write and I'll knit and I'll run and skate and lift weights and practice yoga. I'll play board-and-card games with my friends while drinking one beer. I'll put on short skirts and go dancing with other friends while drinking several. I'll go to California to visit hot boys. I'll travel. I'll go back to therapy. I'll laugh at good jokes, read good books, eat good food.

And happily, mostly, I'll warrant.

When Fiona and Ruby were born, I offered up my babysitting services. For a long time, the Grs didn't have babysitters, and I was honestly a little scared of putting two wee babies to bed, when I wasn't even used to putting one wee baby to bed.

Since the Grs have started using babysitters, they've called me a couple times to see if I was available. They called tonight.

I didn't make it to the phone.

I spend many of my evenings at my kitchen table in front of my computer. My main floor is pretty small, just living room and kitchen separated by a peninsula of counter. My table sits at the end of the peninsula. Making it an archipelago, I suppose. I sit in the kitchen, facing the living room window that looks out onto the street.

It's a great table, found in the garbage around the corner, in near pristine condition, a round pedestal table with flaps that come down to make the perfect sized-rectangle for my flat surface archipelago. It's marbley brown with chrome.

As I sit at my table, at breakfast, in the evenings, over the course of a few days, the table gradually millimetres its way towards the living room window. The progress is so gradual, I don't notice that it's happening.

Until.

The phone will ring, or someone will knock on the door, and I will try to get up quickly. I'll push the chair back. But since the table has moved forward, so has my chair. When I push, the back legs will get caught in between two floor tiles. The top will keep going. I'll catch myself before I go teakettle over arse, but then I'll rebound back and bang my ribs into the table. Then I'll try to turn sideways to make my getaway, misjudging the space between the chair and the lowered flap, banging my knee and thunking back down into the chair.

I am nothing if not graceful.

So surprise! I didn't manage to get the phone. But I did get the message, and could I babysit on Sunday? No, damn, I couldn't. But I was free tomorrow night! Ha, did they need a babysitter tomorrow night, ha ha.

They did!

So tomorrow night, at 6:30, me and my camera will wander down the street to put two hilarious adorable children to bed, and then we will blog about it after for the pleasure of the entire internet.

Around 5:45 Friday afternoon, my phone rang at work. It was Grace and Greg's number. Of course, I picked it up. Fiona, it turns out, had been sad all day. So sad. Super sad. Whiny sad.

When asked what would make her feel better, turns out she said "Go Megan's, see Freya." Could they make that happen?

Of course they could. What else are pets for except the de-sadding of two year olds?

Though I have no real idea if it worked, since they were off to visit their Bobcia shortly after.

++

There were many things yesterday that caused my simmering down: I made arrangements to buy three ceiling fans for $35, one of those very nice kettles for $25, off of kijiji mostly, thus saving me scads of cash; I had a great yoga class, where I was able to get past a couple of mental blocks I'd been having and into full lotus; it was especially great compared to the class on Thursday, during which I spent 20 minutes crying in the bathroom; the big cry in the bathroom on Thursday; certainly not least, the aforementioned Skype date.

The most important thing, though? More important to my general well being and mental health than all of those things put together?

I present to you, the list.*

Like many fellow neurotics/librarian-types, I'm a compulsive list maker. When I clean my desk off at work, clean out my day timer, empty the papers at the bottom of my bag, I find tons of lists. Most of them I'd forgotten I'd made, many of which no longer make any sense.

For this move, I had the lists of people who've volunteered their time, I had lists of what needed to be cleaned, I had lists of what needed to be double checked, what needed to be tripled checked, who needed to be reminded of what, and what I needed to buy to be prepared for the actual move.

All written on scraps of paper clipped on my desk at work, on my kitchen table at home, in my day timer, at the bottom of my bag.

And the tickertape was wearing me down.

Thursday, I stole about 7 feet of brown paper off the roll at work, tacked it up in my long long hallway, found all the lists I could find, and transcribed every thing from them onto the brown paper.

I promised myself that as soon as I thought of something, I would write it on the list. If I thought of it again, my mantra would be "ON THE LIST."

My brain caught on pretty quick. I had to use the mantra maybe 5 times before my brain just relaxed, and my shoulders with it.

++

I can only guess that the Go Megan's visit worked.

It's the best thing on there.

*Some of those names might not be right. The list is not so much for veracity as for the quieting of minds.

Got back not too long ago from the Grs house, where I had a lovely play and bathtime with Ruby and Fiona.

What is cuter than a starkers baby being helped to walk from the bedroom to the bathroom?

Not much, I can assure you. I was a bit busy when Fifi had her promenade, but I got a full cute backside view of the Ruster as she went off. Her muscles are shocking - her quads and hip muscles were actually bulging.

After bathtime came story time, which was a pretty short one. And then! I got to give Fiona her bedtime bottle. She schnozzled into the crook of my arm and tapped the cap that had been on the bottle against the side of the bottle and looked up at me as I murmured god knows what at her and then she'd look away and droop her eyes and just was generally delicious enough to make you wish she might never go to sleep but instead snuggle there forever, warm and baby-smelling.

They're so big now. I haven't been over in almost two weeks, and it's totally a cliché, I know, but the fact that babies change so quickly is only a cliché because it is entirely true. Fifi's got so much hair! Ruby looks so different I didn't even recognize her in a picture with her Aunt Carrie.

I do love those babies.