Lessons learned?


-When will I learn not comment about my children's bowel movments? Apparently if I can express pride in a public bathroom over Edie's poopie, she feels she can too over mine(as she did tonight at a Hallowe'en function at my place of employment....maybe I'll get a raise now?)

-When will I learn not to get trashed at a PartyLite party? As of Friday night, I am the proud owner of $xx.xx of candles (too embarassed to put the real number in). So pretty! So shiny! So smelly!

-When will I learn to not promise to take my 2 girls plus 2 other girls out to a Hallowe'en party when I am completely hungover? THAT was a fun day.

Have you learned any hard lessons lately?

I've been tagged! This is pretty fun, if, y'know, you like to talk about yourself ad nauseum *nods head violently*. Join in on the fun!

Thanks Alison for tagging me on this!


4 jobs I’ve had

Club Monaco (where size 2 girls go to feel fat and where I fell in love with “the gays”)
Museum of Science and Technology (choo-choo train technical drawing archivist – eeeyah, as exciting as it sounds)
Stats Can archivist (a litte more exciting….)
Portrait Gallery of Canada – Yes! I have arrived! This is a pretty fun job….

4 movies I could watch over and over

Goodfellas, Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, every holiday season.

4 TV shows I watch

The Office, 30 Rock, Gray’s Anatomy and, don’t judge me, America’s Next Top Model (Tyra is so fierce!)

*I did not know that The Tudor’s had started already, shit! I’ve got some lips I mean t.v. to catch up on!

4 places I’ve lived

Manotick, Lennoxville Quebec, Ottawa (ummmm, now I’m depressed)

4 favourite foods

Pecan pie, lasagne, sweet potato fries, does wine count as a food?

4 favourite colours

Tofino sunset, Frozen canal, Frontenac brick and Muskoka dust……

JUST KIDDING!

Light yellow, moss green, black, charcoal grey

4 places I’d love to be right now

In-law’s cottage on couch in front of the fireplace with my book; Las Vegas Rockabilly convention; Richard Branson’s island for super-rich people; and, well, I’m feelin’ a little sentimental today, I would actually like to be at home with my family.

4 names I love but could/would not use for my children

Ava, Eva, (friends grabbed them before we could); Henry, Gordon (didn’t have boys).


My turn to tag……I’m gonna task my new friend Allisa and my old friend Chantal

Friday to Sunday, à la Meanie
A family celebration on Friday night, honouring my brother’s 40th (!) birthday ended in near tragedy when my sister’s own little baby, a Boston Terrier puppy named Bogart was hit by an SUV. This little dog, filled with piss and vinegar, was bounced down the road after being hit by a truck going about 60. It happened at about 10:00 p.m. After two nights in emergency, he’s doing just fine. They are calling him a miracle dog. You know what the best part about this story is? A group of kids across the street saw what happened and heard my sister’s screams. The next day, one of the kids, a 12 year old boy, knocked on my parents door with flowers for my sister, because he was so sad for her. Wow. Somebody’s parents are doing a good job with their kid. That’s awesome.

While Grace hasn’t been super popular at home lately, she sure is with the rest of the world. She was invited over for a pancake breakfast on Saturday, picked up from there to go to karate, never made it home because her karate partner wanted her to come over to his house for the afternoon. When I picked her up, there was Grace, holding court to 4 young boys in her friend’s bedroom. Gulp. Girlfriend sure is comfortable with herself. Actually, it was a pretty nice day as it gave me time to hang out with little Edie, who now has her own little extracurricular activity – gymnastics! It is freaking adorable watching a 2.5 year old jump with glee on a trampoline. I also had two drop-ins, one from my boy Christopher and another from a Mommy from my stay-at-home days. Made me feel as popular as Grace!

For bonus points, Jo’s Mom babysat for us Saturday night. Friends of ours also secured sitters and a group of us headed out to the bar for some beer and hockey. Go Sens Go!

Sunday welcomed us with open arms and it was declared pumpkin patch day. The girls were reluctantly bundled (the first cold day is always such a shock) and we headed out. Grace put as many pumpkins on the wagon that she could (and was fairly rational when I insisted we couldn’t liberate the patch of 2 dozen pumpkins). Edie seemed wary of the patch – sitting in the wagon with her “dolly”, patting Dolly’s back, saying “is okay dolly” over and over again.

When we came home, waiting for the girls were two friends. I like to call them football orphans – last fall their dad came over pretty much each Sunday to watch football with Jo with his girls played with ours.

I love this time of year, it’s an awesome, cozy feeling kind-of season.

Okay. I’m putting it out there. I don’t like my 5.5 year old. I love her, but I just don’t like her right now. She is the opposite of everything I like about people. I feel like I am constantly fighting with her. I want to raise our girls well, with an emphasis on kindness, consideration and empathy. Grace is managing to make me feel like a complete failure by being unkind, inconsiderate and completely lacking in empathy. I am shocked and embarrassed when a doting grandparent requests a hug and she denies them. I want to crawl under a rock when someone pays her a compliment and rudely responds. I won’t even say what I want to do when she sasses back at me or laughs at me when trying to discipline her . I know I shouldn’t let it get to me as much as it does, and the more I react the worse it gets, but it’s just so hard to not sink to her 5 year old level .
So what are we going to do about this? The poor girl doesn’t know that I used to watch Dr. Phil faithfully when on my last maternity leave. Grace doesn’t know that I am fully ammo’d with Phil’s parenting solutions. Girlfriends’ goin’ down…..

Please, faithful readers (all two of you), is this normal behaviour for a 5.5 year old? Does it pass? Does the milk of human kindness ever infuse their little souls?

Little Blue Car
On Sunday morning, from the moment they woke up to the moment they went to bed, Grace and Edie were at it. Competing for a gold medal in pain-in-the-assness, they fought over everything – what show to watch, what book to look at, what colour of maker to use, what air to breathe, etc. The most ridiculous of all the things to fight about was a little blue hotwheels car. My girls are not car girls. Edie is all about the dolls right now and Grace is all about the puzzles. No one is all about the cars. However, someone dug up this little blue car and it became the piece de resistance of the day, each girl tracking how long the other had it for. “My car! Mine!” became background noise for me, and the noise got to be too much, and the car became MINE!, confiscated to the shelf where toys go to die.
After much protest, the girls moved on, finding something else to fight about, and the blue car was forgotten. Forgotten that is, until 2:30 in the morning , when screams from Edie’s room woke me up. Upon rushing to her bedside, ready to dole out Love, Tylenol, whatever, I could make out her crying “My blue car, MINE!”
Just let it go Edie, just let it go.


A huge thanks to Chantal, MamaTulip, Trollbaby, Alison and anyone else who linked to this entry. The comments from everyone have been so kind and supportive, and I’m so pleased that the message is getting out there. I’m also saddened by how many “Me too” stories there are out there.
Special thanks to my Friend who was willing to let me share her story – I hope your kind comments bring her comfort and strength to keep fighting this.

I often get emails about “true stories” about how we should be careful because someone knows someone who knows someone else who had something bad happen to them. Sometimes the occurrences heighten our awareness of things, but , more often than not, these messages get a quick read, and are then forgotten, deleted from my inbox.

Something bad happened last year. Something too close to home. Something happened to my best friend. She’s given me the okay to write about it here as she wants to raise awareness. I want you to read it and take away from it what will.

I have a best friend (can you relate to that?)
My best friend is in her thirties (can you relate to that?)
She has been married for close to a decade (can you relate to that?)
She likes to go out with girlfriends and have a drink or two and laugh and be social (can you relate to that?)
She went with some friends to a bar (can you relate to that?)
She ordered a martini or two (can you relate to that?)
She danced (can you relate to that?)
She got up to go use the bathroom (can you relate to that?)

Here is the part where you may stop relating, but please read on.

Someone put something in her drink.

She doesn’t remember anything that happened after that. She remembers waking up, in a strange apartment, to a fat, ugly man beside her. She remembers all the blood from her broken nose. She remembers the physical pain from other abuses he imposed on her. She remembers seeing her broken necklace. She remembers him trying to convince her that what had happened was consensual. She remembers him having the balls to drive her home, all the while trying to convince her that what had happened was mutual.

She went straight to the hospital where the police were called in. She remembers, most vividly, most painfully, the cops (the good guys) trying to blame what had happened on her, telling her she was a married woman who was embarrassed about an indiscretion. Even after evidence of large amounts of drugs being found in her system, a broken nose, bruises all over her body, the cops were still unsympathetic, telling her that they had been called in on the weekend to deal with this. She remembers being resented.

She remembers wondering how she could possibly tell her husband about this. She had to be tested routinely for every STD possible, as the rapist did not use a condom.

This happened mid-October last year. She needs counseling once a week, sometimes more. She takes a pharmacy worth of pills to deal with what happened to her. Even a year later, I held her in my arms the other night while she sobbed, and could not help but think I was holding something broken, and wondered if she could ever be fixed.

Please, whether you are a mom, sister, aunt, friend, WHATEVER. Please pass this story on so it doesn’t happen close to your home. Thank god my friend is strong enough and willing to share her story and fight for what is right. Please, go out, have fun, but always be aware.