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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
SQT
Fear us!
Me:
Lyr:
Mags:
PWNED
I ran to the computer to blog this.
So, just now two older women of the Jehovah’s Witness faith came to the door with their Awakes and Watchtowers and because we used to do that, I was being nice and listening to them. So, apparently, was Lynn, because I got shoved out of the front. Here’s the conversation though:
JW: what a beautiful child, blah, blah… do you hope that he grows up in a better world than this one, which has so much terrorism?
Lynn: Yes (tone: you idiot)
JW: Do you really believe that governments can solve this problem?
Lynn: No (uh oh, Lynn’s ’sweet’ tone)
JW: Let me read to you from the Bible, if that’s all right, about God’s plan for peace.
Lynn: Have you read the old testament?
JW: Of course.
Lynn: Then you know God is a terrorist. (Shuts the door.)
PWNED, man. I’m betting my house is going to either go on the ‘avoid’ list or, God (heh) forbid, the visit twice a month list.
Atalanta at the temple
At the starting post our eyes met and I blushed, the line of heat from neck to groin piercing me, disrupting breath.
All that training to outrun you all; assuring my castle in the clouds would stay unoccupied, my heart unfettered.
It was already lost then, but my legs had learned the lesson of my broken heart. My father left me on a rock for being a girl. He was only the first.
So I turned to the hunt - better predator than prey.
I learned that lesson well. And I threw a few golden apples of my own;
I hope you don’t think your lines were that original.
It was that it was you tossing them my way.
So here I am, caught, the way I never thought I would want to be.
The best race I never won.
Fuck me again,
inside this union.
Fuck me again.