(I think the quote in the Subject line is from Porgy and Bess. Am I right?)
At least it beats my Subject line from the last one of these I sent out, "Still Alive". Particularly since it was pointed out to me that I immediately followed with another e-mail entitled "Correction". Rather alarming, that.
And so the summer draws to a close. Stores are full of back-to-school specials, end-of-summer sales, and the Canada geese appear to be headed south.
It's been an eventful summer as far as milestones go. At least three couples I know have welcomed new life into the world, which is about the biggest milestone there is. Two couples (one of them our neighbours) had daughters in June, and then our friends Todd and Susan had their second child, a boy (Zane), at the beginning of August.
I didn't get the details of our neighbour's birth, although I gather it was somewhat difficult, but the other two stories were, I think, what make people think twice about having kids at all. My two popped out with a watermelon-seed-like ease. Theirs seem to have been more like watermelons.
It was kind of neat holding these little people. They're so unbelievably ridiculous - I mean, you put one hand on their heads and the other, very close to the first, on their bums, and there they are. A whole human being, completely contained between two hands. No limbs flopping off to the side like my own 'baby', who tips the scales at 36 pounds these days, shakes the floor when he runs, and conclusively halts conflicts with his older brother by merely sitting on him.
Another milestone, at the other end of the life continuum, was the death of my grandmother. She'd had a long decline and this had been expected for a long time, but it's still sad to know she's gone. However, her ending was apparently peaceful, at home, not in a hospital. I wish I'd been able to be there for herfuneral, but being so far away (she died in Chile) made that somewhat impossible.
Less momentous but still important milestones came and went for the kids.
For one, Justin started to potty train. As we did with Daniel, we encouraged him, but never pushed. Then one day Justin just decided that he wanted to spend most of his time 'nudie-bum' as he calls it, and was quite happy to make the following deal: you can only go nudie-bum if you tell Mama when you have to pee. No problem. He's quite proud of himself when he does. Daniel made a big deal out of it the first few times too, giving him hugs and kisses and telling him he was such a big boy and we were all so proud of him. This is part of what sucks about being an adult - you have to do a lot more than just pee to get people to cheer you.
Justin's vocabulary also continued to expand, although he's got some pretty interesting grammar errors going, particularly with possessive pronouns. Like, he never says My, only Mine, so instead of Where's my cat he says "Where is mine creature?" He also substitutes Us's for Ours. (eg "Is that us's house?") He's also got some cute interpositioning of letters, like "Hopsital", "Aminal", and "Melonade".
Hm. Why doesn't Snapple make Melonade?
And was the Battle Hymn of the Republic penned by Justin in a previous incarnation? "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord..")
I was getting a little concerned that he didn't know any of his colours or numbers or letters. He just had no interest - every letter was A, every number was I dunno, and every colour was blue. Then one day he figured out Lello and had a great time pointing out every Lello thing he could see, and colours took off from there. He's recently gotten very fond of reciting the numbers up to 10 and has grasped the concept of 1 v. 2. Anything more than 2 is just 'a lot'. I figure he'll come around to getting interested in letters eventually.
Daniel has become sporadically interested in learning Spanish vocabulary. I really wish he could speak it, but it's so hard to really foster language learning when it's not spoken at home. I tried to put him into a Spanish school on Saturdays when we first moved to Ottawa, but that didn't exactly go swimmingly. He was asked to not return :( So I'll try again in a few months.
The main thing he's learning right now is social skills, particularly with our next door neighbour's son. It's not a smooth ride - they fight a great deal, and are often in conflict over what games to play and how to play them.
One thing that suddenly struck me the other day though, watching him with this other boy, was that Daniel doesn't have a mean bone in his body. Here's this other little kid, being a perfectly normal six year old who jeers and makes fun of anything thathe sees as different or worthy of a put-down... and Daniel just doesn't do that. At all. When he's angry he lashes out and calls the other kid names, butit absolutely never occurs to him to say hurtful things unless he's mad, or to make fun of another child because that child is slower, less skilled, or just plain different from him.
I sure hope he keeps that character trait.
It's been a moderately eventful summer for us otherwise. Probably the biggest thing that happened was that we went camping as a family for the first time. We went to one of those campsites that you drive in to, with a store and washrooms and all sorts of amenities. Chris remarked that when he was a teenager he used to make fun of those campsites (being into 'extreme' camping where you walk into the bush with everything you need to survive on your back). He often wondered who the hell would go a wuss-camp, pretending they were camping when really, all they were doing was going to a spread-out motel.
Well, now he knows. Parents of small children, for one. It was quite a relief to know that if we were missing something we didn't have to haul our little ones all the way back out of the bush. When we ran out of all liquids on the second day, for example, it wasn't a disaster: we just got more from the store.
Maybe some day when our kids are teenagers we'll take them 'extreme' camping. And they'll probably mock all those 'fake' campers out there, and we'll just quietly smile.
***
Thought I might have carpal tunnel syndrome from being sucha geek. I was a bit embarrassed about this until I went to my family doctor and was told it wasn't carpal tunnel, it was something to do with my ulnar nerve. He said he doesn't know why it's screwed up and I have to go see aspecialist about it, but he said in about 90% of cases it's because you're resting on your elbow too much. Gee, I screwed up my hand because I leaned on my elbow too much. How is that less embarrassing than carpal tunnel?
***
Our street has had houses on one side for about 40-50 years, but the other side was only developed this last year. I kept taking the kids out for a walk down the street and inexplicably thinking of Texas.
Then finally one day I realized why. The newly developed side had absolutely no trees. It was just a long, perfectly straight, perfectly flat, treeless street. Every house looked the same, disappearing into the horizon like an artbook's example of a perspective drawing. Weird.
They finally did plant trees, and the view has greatly improved. I'm just glad they put in trees instead of cacti. That would'vemade the Texas illusion complete.
***
I've been reading a lot of fan fiction lately - it's free and easy to find. For those who don't know, fan fiction is stuff written by amateurs using characters and settings created by other people - usually from TV shows and movies, but also from published books. It's posted at hundreds of places all over the Web. I got into it a long time ago with the X-Files and Star Trek (yeah, I know, insert geek-snort here) and recently branched into Law & Order and Homicide: Life on the Streets. It's neat seeing what other people think of the characters, or how they think some episodes should have ended, or 'what happened after the credits', etc etc.
Although the fact that this stuff is written by amateurs does have its drawbacks. I'm often reminded of a quote from Flannery O'Connor:
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
You get what you pay for, after all. Sometimes I feel like I'm plodding through swampy fields of garbage trying to find discarded Rolexes. It's very exciting to find them though :)
This summer I finally got off my duff and stopped 'lurking'and started writing and posting my own fic. That was a lot of fun - I hadn't written fiction since elementary school. I got an offer from another writer who had space available on her website and offered my stuff a home. So now there's a whole page on the web with just my stories on it. It makes me giggle, especially when I wonder how much of my own writing could be preventedby a good teacher :)
In case anyone wants to know where this webpage is, let me know. Don't bother if you've never watched Law & Order, though, since fan fic is essentially written by people too lazy to make up their own characters and therefore if you don't know the characters being used, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
***
I think I sent out a message saying that my soccer team (called The Rookies, because we really were) had made it to the playoffs. We not only made it to the playoffs, we got in second place, final score 2-1. Oh, and I scored our only goal that game - the only goal I've ever scored. Chris was there for the game and he said I looked quite stunned as the ball went in. I bet. I'd never even taken a shot on goal before.
***
Chris finished Adult Inpatient and started a rotation in Child Inpatient. Heavy heavy heavy stuff. He was quite disoriented forabout the first month - going from almost being able to do his job on autopilot to, "I not only don't know the treatment for this kid, I don't even know the diagnosis, and when my supervisor tells me the diagnosis, I don't even understand the words he's using."
He did a lot of smiling and nodding at work and a lot of reading at home, desperately trying to catch up. He was finally starting to get into the swing of things when he had to take a month off to go in for surgery of his left wrist, repairing someof the work from right after his accident.
I won't go into detail over what they did, because I've erased that portion of my memory. Chris was quite happy to describe to me, in vivid detail, over dinner, how they were going to remove some metal things, put in other metal things, scrape down bone here, chop bone there, realign, graft, etc etc but I think I dissociated a little while he was telling me. It probably explains some of my more recent nightmares though.
He got to keep the bits of metal they took out. I think he wants to put it into what will eventually be our Shrine To Manhood, a display case of all his motorcycle paraphernalia. The jacket, gloves and clothes they cut off of him in Emerg, the banged-up helmet, the cane, etc. He was also thinking of making jewellery out of it. Wouldn't that be cool? I can just picture him at an Ozzy concert or something:
"Hey, dude, where'd you get that pendant?"
"From inside my wrist, dude."
Justin starts day care part time this week, full time next week, then next week Daniel starts Senior Kindergarten and I start law school. It's all rather exciting and nerve-wrecking.
For one thing, I kept calling the law school tyring to figure out my schedule but it didn't come out till the end of the summer. Geez, then these people complain that they're trying to recruit a more 'diverse' student population, including parents. Well, heck, if they made it a little easier for parents to arrange for child care, maybe some of them might actually be able to attend.
I finally have my schedule now. I've decided to take my fun courses (eg criminal law, torts) this year and my not-so-fun courses next year (property, contracts). That way if I don't do well I'll know it's because I've been away from school too long or maybe law isn't for me, not because the courses are deathly dull.
The mere thought of studying contracts induces catatonia in my soul.
Then again, you never really know from the titles. I had to take Canadian history as a compulsory part of my history major (I did a sort of double-major in undergrad) and I was filled with angst at the prospect. Turned out to be one of the most gripping, exciting courses I ever took. No, I'm not kidding. Then two years later I took Latin American history, which I was really looking forward to, and wanted to quit after two weeks. You never know.
(I'm really not kidding about the Canadian history course,BTW. I suspect amphetamines were piped through the heating vents in the lecture hall, but I have no proof.)
So that's what's happening in the future. Law school, day care, SK. One thing that's not happening is a third child any time soon.
Some of you may have known that we had been in debates re.having a third child. I waffled steadily since about a month after Justin's birth. Chris was quite definite - he felt two was good. A couple of years later he waffled briefly, then decided three would be better. I thought we were still in the 'debate' stage when one day Chris came home from grocery shopping with a replenished supply of vitamins, including Maternapre/post-natal pills. Cocky bastard. I found myself in the rather amusing position of, (since we weren't actually trying to get pregnant yet) taking my Materna pills with a glass of wine at dinner ;)
Anyway. We were about to stop all alcohol and such like and begin trying for our third child in earnest when we found out it wouldn't be possible after all, because of a rather large fibroid tumour that will most probably spell complete infertility for me. This is quite a bit of a bummer- we envisioned the conclusion of our child-creating days as something we would decide on, requiring a bit of snipping for Chris. As it turns out, it seems the decision has been made for us. Oh well.
The funny thing is, while this is a downer and we're not terribly happy about it, I found myself feeling a bit like how I felt after Chris' accident (to a vastly reduced scale of intensity). Like, this sucks, but holy wow it could have been so much worse. Infertility at age 31 after having two children is not so bad, compared to infertility at age 21, or at age 31 if we'd waited to start our family like most people our age did.
So yeah. Two kids is it for us, unless we decide to adopt some day. And as they are both boys, my mitochondrial line ends with me :)
Speaking of kids, you know, whoever coined the phrase "the pitter patter of little feet" either didn't have children or they lived in a cave or a stone castle. Cause I gotta tell ya, pitter patter doesn't begin to describe it. More like the thud thud stomp stomp of a herd of rampaging wildebeest.
***
We followed the Pope's visit to Toronto in the news. While I'm not a practicing anything and have many reservations with most organized religions, including Catholicism, it did make me think positive thoughts to know that there were so many young people traveling a long way for something that's supposed to be mostly good. In an age where the news is filled with stories of random violence, hatred, selfishness and material excess, it's somewhat nicer to read about people coming to see the Pope. Because after all, at heart most religions are supposed to be all about "how can you be a nice person and make a nice Being happy." Yes, that gets screwed up sometimes in its application, but that's supposed to be the intent.
Although Chris pointed out that there were far more people in Toronto for the Gay Pride Parade than there were for the Pope's visit. He wondered if that meant that homosexuality was more popular than Catholicism. Let's just not go there :)
***
Daniel and Chris were doing math. Chris had explained the concept of subtracting 3, and was asking Daniel to fill in the blanks for him.
"When you are six, Justin will be...","Three," says Daniel.
"When you are eight, Justin will be...","Five."
"When you are ninety-seven, Justin will be...","No that's too hard," says Daniel.
"Ninety-four," says Chris. "And you know how old I will be?" Daniel shakes his head.
"Dead," says Chris cheerfully.
"And Mama will be even deader!" Daniel points out.
***
We bought a bunch of drapes at IKEA. I know Scandinavians are supposed to be relatively tall, but, man... they must be giants. All our drapes were made for cathedral ceilings. We bought them anyway because we liked them and it doesn't cost that much to get them shortnened, but it really made me wonder just how tall those people are.
Speaking of which, does anybody know if They Must Be Giants is still a band and if they've put out any albums in the last ten years? I haven't kept up with popular music much.
***
Justin has an unfortunate tendency to repeat a question overand over until Chris and I are ready to scream. One day Chris said, exasperated, "NO!! I answered that question too many times and the answer is always NO! It's NO now, it will be NO later, it will always be NO, because the answer is NO!! Now. Justin, what's the answer?"
Justin considers him for a moment. "I don't want to listen to you," he replies dismissively, and turns to me. "Mama," he begins to ask the same question.
They're both doing that quite a bit, trying to play one of us off the other. Thankfully, they're both still too little to really be devious about it.
"Mama, can I watch TV?" Daniel asked me one day, minutes after I'd heard Chris tell him he couldn't.
"What did Daddy say?" I asked him.
"He said No. That's why I'm asking you."
***
For some bizarre reason Chris and I started talking about the Obits section in the paper and decided to write our own obits before we actually passed on. So if you ever read any of the following, don't be alarmed.
CHRISTOPHER RAE: After a long and valiant struggle with cancer, suddenly, on the highway, overcome by a Mac truck...
JIMENA BORDES: Suddenly, at Thurso's Pulp and Paper Mill. When an engineer tells you that a conveyor belt leads to the wood shredder, you really should take him at his word. Jimena leaves behind a loving husband Christopher, and children, Daniel and Justin. Funeral services will be held at the Pumphrey Funeral Home, closed casket only...
CHRISTOPHER RAE: After a short and cowardly battle with cancer...
***
We were at a party and Justin said something to me. A guest standing near me answered him, and Justin looked up at him very seriously and told him, "I'm not talking to you, Man. I'm talking to Mama."
***
Why are the the Dog Days of Summer called the Dog Days of Summer?
Why don't you ever hear about the Cat Days of Winter, Bird Days of Autumn, Salamander Days of Spring?
***
As I'm preparing to send this off, I can hear my darlings shouting at each other downstairs:
"Bow to my power or you will be punished!!" yells Daniel gleefully.
"NO! Bow to MY power or YOU will be punished!!" Justin yells back.
-- - Jimena
"You think you're smart, don't you Doctor Freedman? But you're not! You're dumb. Very, very dumb. But you've met your match in me!!"
Colonel Flagg, MASH