Shrove Tuesday
I started working full time again in 2007. But the first 6-ish months were just hectic: trying to sort out how on earth you manage dinner and bedtime and laundry and cuddles and nursing and love and stuff in the context of the new separation.
But it was Shrove Tuesday 2008 that convinced me that we were doing okay. I picked Noah up and remembered just about then that it was Pancake Tuesday, possibly the only day in the Christian cannon that makes sense to me. I mean, pancakes. What else do you need to know?
(We’ll have none of that excessive Mardi Gras up here, thank you.)
So we stopped and got a box of (gasp) mix and made pancakes together and there was time for that and Noah had the giggles about pancakes for dinner and it was just so nice.
So of course this year, pancakes. I got to Noah’s school a bit early thanks to having burned more than my share of gas and oil and driven all the way to work, and picked him up with glee.
But I’d forgotten a snack for him. So he flipped out in the car, not so much because he was hungry but because I forgot, and then he kicked my car and I raised my voice that we do NOT KICK MUMMY when she is driving. And then I made the ill-conceived decision to stop and get a snack at the grocery store, and perhaps some whipped cream for the pancakes to make it super fancy.
So Noah and I had a 45 minute showdown at the grocery store. He sat down and cried, fairly quietly. But refused to move. I did think of just picking him up (who wouldn’t?) but I thought I could wait him out. A woman helpfully came by and said “you’ve been crying the whole time I’ve been shopping… you should tell your mummy you’re obviously too tired to be in a grocery store.”
Thanks Sherlock.
Anyways, got home now quite late for dinner and got out the (yes, evil) pancake mix. And Noah cheered up and helped stir (one reason for the mix, besides sheer laziness, is lack of raw egg) and then spelled his name for me: N-O-A-H-G. (There is another Noah in class this year.) So I could do it in pancakes.
It worked out, but it was not quite the same.
You can take the girl away from the dragon but…
I tend to have one on one relationships with people; I never really have come even remotely close to the whole Friends or Sex and the City thing.
I think this is probably partly personality - extroverted enough to want to hang out; introverted enough that large groups are tiring - and quite a lot multiple. When one is a non-selves-aware multiple in one’s formative teen years, one develops these habits - or at least we did - to cut down on the mental confusion and noise, don’t mix JJ’s friends with Karen’s friends with Shandra’s friends.
Actually, come to think of it, I did run with a lovely group in high school, but I always had intense friendships completely apart from the group and was therefore absent for a lot of group things. So I felt like Stanford the gay friend, really. Or one of Ross’s other girlfriends.
Anyways, maybe because of this I occasionally have this egoistical game in my head that’s kind of like that 25 things about me meme that’s been running around the Internet, and it’s “little Shandra-isms that people could bond over, would I ever actually connect them to speak together.” (The obsession with “how do I look from the outside” also comes from being multiple. And human. Bummer.)
All of which is a preamble to: If people have primarily known me via PernMUSH, they would probably have noticed a little me tonight.
I’ve been merrily playing a new character avec dragon, but with a light hand. I always admired people who played PernMUSH lightly and without weirdo multiple bullshit psychodrama. (*cough*) And actually, truly, no weirdo multiple bullshit on the horizon. It’s been lovely and calm and creative.
Even this next part (despite appearances, because you see, I’m laughing about it) which is that tonight one of the other characters decided to kind of vaguely piss off my dragon. (Pern has dragons. Big dragons. Who love their riders. And possibly tolerate other humans.)
Which I’ve intellectually never really thought is a good idea; I mean I know when I go to the zoo and sit and watch the tigers, who are only yea big, somewhere deep in my brain there’s a little nonverbal bit that is saying “look out for tigers!” and I have to assume that were my hindbrain in the presence of massive reptilian predator, my first instinct would not be to say something inflammatory. (The dragons understand language, or at least thought. It’s complicated. Not sure I recommend the books wholeheartedly at this stage.)
But my - shall we say - thing with this is not merely intellectual. Lemarath is a dragon and our totem spirit.
(Actually I could not really accept any religion that would not accept her role; she might be an angel, all the wings and gold and shit; she could be a form of a goddess or perhaps a resident of Teresa of Avila’s interior castle’s wild woods.) (I don’t know that Teresa of Avila had wild woods, but if she didn’t, she should have.)
So, you know. Diss her, deal with me. Not that anyone playing a game should really have to engage with this, but it’s still something I bristle about.
So tonight: Dragon character, idiot (hrumph) calling down the wrath of angels, dragon. I had that moment of being thrust sort of - not OUT of the scene; OUT of the scene implies back to things like oh, my desk is messy. More like further into the scene. And I’m afraid my character came out a little… Shandra-like. And my dragon came out… a little Lemarath-like. People who know me probably would have caught it.
I realize all this is weird. But it is my head too. It really is like finding a weird third arm that only plays the… spinet, or something.
Trifecta
This is totally the complaining blog lately. Here goes.
Noah popped a fever over the long (here) weekend and since today was the third day with no real symptoms otherwise (bit of a cold-like thing) I took him in. (Another “work” from home day although I started at 4 am, so it darn well was work for a while there.) He is fine; we need to keep an eye on it and bring him back if he gets worse or if the fever doesn’t go away. Not sure what we are going to do tomorrow.
This doesn’t yet count for the trifecta. Here goes:
When I got in my car to take Noah down, it was oddly… disarrayed. The $5 in the glove compartment was on the floor. Then I noticed I had no change (who takes the change, but leaves the $5 bill?) Then I noticed that the glove compartment had been strewn about. So yes, my car was broken into (I guess I hadn’t locked it; I hope it’s not that they got the frequency or whatever). But guess what was in the car that was also gone?
Carl had left his house key and the keys to the other car in there. Which is a point of argument we have had a lot but in this case I had not brought them in. So, he’s out right now getting a new lock for the front door… and if they take the Honda, which they didn’t last night, before we get a new ignition, all power to ‘em. (You have to make a police report to get a new ignition.)
Then, while in the doctor’s office, I coughed. I have whooping cough, also known as the 100 day cough, so not a big deal right? (I gave up on going in for mastitis ’cause it went away by itself. S’posedly.) So she took a “quick” listen which turned into a long listen and now I have a new fun diagnosis to add: Pneumonia. I’ve had pneumonia 9 times in my life, well, now 10. So I should have guessed that a lung thing would lead to it. Although I had thought I might have outgrown it. So now I’m on the major antibiotics.
Get back to the house and get back on work email to find that my company has retrenched to the tune of 10 per cent of jobs, and 5 unpaid days off for the rest of us. I managed not to get laid off, but man… I don’t know. I feel quite vulnerable. And you know, if it happens, it happens. I guess I could get well, then. Had a candid discussion with my boss that things are not going as well as I would like, so put my head on the block that way.
So that was the day. No glass of wine either due to antibiotics and illness.
Mastitis
Could have seen this one coming… yup, we’ve been weaned for almost two weeks and yesterday I started feeling gross. Today, hot lump. In exactly the same spot as I had it when Noah was 9 months old.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if all this time, the underlying issue has been a low-grade infection?
Sleep, hot compresses, and possibly a trip to the clinic-that-freaks-about-extended-nursing today (it’s a holiday here), or else a trip to my non-judgmental doctor tomorrow.
Eureka
I had a really good idea for a book for once. Of course my great Canadian novel is languishing a little, but this idea is commercial and not a labour of love exactly, although it is definitely something I want to write.
So I might do that. Right now it’s the all jumbled up phase in my head.
Quotes from the front
“Noah, please don’t put your sword in your dinner.”
“Noah! Don’t put your sword in Daddy’s dinner!”
“T-Rexes can eat rice.”
“You’ve had enough cauliflower. Yes I know dinosaurs eat cauliflower.”
“You want to be a bad guy? How do you know who’s a bad guy?”
- “Because they scare you” [not a bad answer, at that]
“Time for bad guys to brush their teeth!”
The week in review
Work… hard. It got better as the week went on. But today I was trying to book a room for a meeting next week, and all the meeting and conference rooms in the whole building are booked for the entire week.
By HR.
Which does not bode well, I tell you. Although I have my little plan and I’m ok with it.
~~~
Family: Noah has been okay with the weaning bit. He asked every night for a few nights and then last night and tonight he didn’t ask, but he looked like he wanted to. He’s still, I think, a bit angry or confused. Of course he’s also 3.5. But anyways, he’s latched onto Carl and stepped away from me a bit, which was happening anyway, but now I don’t have the Boobs Of Power to make it all about me again. We have snuggled and read books and everything though.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m still a little sad myself, even though it truly was time. I actually think it is helping my body, despite the hormone roll. I think I need my nutrients just now. On the other hand this may just be rationalization.
~~~
Although I was berating myself for taking on some roleplaying & game responsibilities at this difficult and energy-depleted time, in fact playing is opening up this whole other element that has been shut down for a while. Magdalynn wrote a (not great, but still) prose poem (below). I’m contemplating the box that holds my book notes. And at work I’ve felt lighter in spirit, although heavier in just getting snowballed under things.
There is something to making room for play that is very powerful.
~~~
We found another school option: there’s a francophone public school in the area that is willing to talk to us. I accidentally tripped over it; I’d only looked at the Catholic (public) board. It’s unclear whether French Immersion counts towards the legal right for Noah to attend that school (if one parent was schooled in french for elementary school in the province of Ontario, the child has the right, but FI may not count. I do have my certificate at least.) But even if it doesn’t, they are willing to talk to us.
A few things have come out of that exploration.
One is that I coldly believe that it’s an amazing opportunity for really good second language instruction. I mean, as long as it’s a decent school, it would develop better french than most FI programmes. If we want to jump for it though, we probably have to leap this fall and not go the extra Montessori year. That’s not for sure, but it’s just if you’re going to put a child into a classroom where he doesn’t speak the language of instruction and that the kids (presumably) use, it’s probably better to go earlier.
But when I attach my heart to it and my memories of being scared that the teacher didn’t understand me, it feels a little bit like too big a leap. And then I get into the maybe-for-kindergarten-and-we-could-teach-more-french-meanwhile space, which might be good space.
And then weird things come up like, my grade one/four teacher was a mean mean woman who beat the kids (in grade 1, when it was legal) and humiliated them brutally (in grade 4, when hitting was no longer on the table) and in my mind I’ve associated this a little bit with francophones.
And my dad made a really - well - ignorant comment. He went off on a tangent about how francophones who live in Toronto probably are a really great elite group. I think in his mind he’s thinking they’ll all be people from France and Belgium and a few from Quebec or something. And maybe that’s true in certain areas of down/mid town. But here in the east end I’m thinking the francophone students are probably hailing from Haiti and Senegal and Rwanda, and other African countries in which the vast majority of the world’s francophone population resides. I’m still shaking my head at the disconnect and contemplating whether I care enough to take it up with him before we set foot in the school.
~~~
Slightly mad to post this here but you may be aware it’s a certain doll’s (let’s just call her Babs) 50th birthday this year. Due to the nature of my work, I have been up to my eyeballs in Babs’ PEOPLE. In good ways (I have sooo many pictures of Babs in couture, Babs’s cars, etc., and had a crowd today looking at them.) I may get to interview Babs, which would be pretty surreal - doubly surreal if you think that in a sense, I don’t exist either. It makes me laugh from time to time that I have a job where I have to listen to Babs’ peeps ask me to ensure that she is treated respectfully.
And actually, despite my feminist misgivings… it’s darn fun to work with Babs.
~~~
Magdalynn’s draft, composed on the subway, not indicative of what we could do were it polished, insert other disclaimers here, poem:
Prologue, a poem of ending
I think, beloved, we must have met long before the womb. Perhaps on an island of souls, marooned to wait the passage over the waters into the flesh.
I think there in the midst of those castaways - the two groups, those who stand in the sun with their eyes to the horizon, and those content to wait in the shade with eyes close - there were two who did neither; two to whom the darkness of the jungle sang.
I think we must each have ventured into its depths, feeling the green resist us and delighting in the need to set mettle against the task of exploration.
But I think you would have found the quicksand, sinking into its mire. And I would perhaps have reached to you were it not for the snake and its poisonous bite.
Then, perhaps, we fell together, the edges of our souls touching. Twice dead.
That is why, perhaps, born as strangers, our hearts each sought the other. And perhaps as well, that is why your eyes mirror the death I know to be in my own.