Fucking fours

They warned my about the 'terrible twos' but nobody said a peep about the 'fucking fours' (as a mama friend recently called them). Ah well, friends, I am here to let you know, the fucking fours are no walk in the park. Perhaps a chase in the park is a more accurate description, a chase involving a seemingly deaf four-year-old and a frantic parent, yelling at the oblivious child to stop.

Four years old.

The pros:

Amazing self confidence: D- thinks he's great. "I'm great," he says. Eavesdropping on a recent play-date with a friend from daycare, I couldn't help but notice that the boys' conversations revolved around one-upmanship, who was the fastest runner, the strongest, had the most toys, the most cars, the most super hero skills.

Complete sociability: D- talks to anyone and everyone. He shows off his artwork on the bus. He proudly tells tellers, shop assistants and strangers in the street his name and age. He then pauses, waiting for whatever praise or applause may follow. In a restaurant last night, when D- had tired of his table mates' company, he walked over to the bar, plonked himself on a bar stool and started to chat up the only other patron, a large black man with dreads. They were close friends by the end of the evening. I wouldn't be surprised if they exchanged numbers (luckily, D- does not know his phone number yet).

A mind that is fast, fast, fast: D- does double digit math in his head. He remembers what we did two summers ago, he does puzzles that stump me.

A body that goes zoom!: Running, jumping, hopping, rolling, skating, sliding, climbing. Faster, higher, longer, harder. He jumps off the diving board of the pool (albeit with a foam-stuffed bathing suit), he climbs rocks and bookshelves (wait, wait, that's in the cons).

The cons:

Attitude!: When a boy thinks he is the best and can do no wrong, it is sometimes a challenge to contradict him, and when you do, oooh, get ready for some attitude. Typical conversation: "D-, put on your boots, it's raining outside." "No, it's not!" "What do you mean? It's raining outside. Look out the window." "Nooo." "D- put on your boots." "It's not raining, mommy." "D-, I am counting to three, put on your boots." We get outside, it is raining, but only mildly. "See mommy, you were wrong, it's not raining." "D-, we are not going to have this conversation."

Hear no mummy, see no mummy: Being the self confident little man that he is, D- thinks he is ready to make all decisions himself, this leads to running across the street, in the dark, while his mother screams from the sidewalk. This means putting on his shoes, going outside and climbing the fence to the backyard, without telling anyone! Running across the street! Going outside alone! I used to be able to control these behaviours with a sharp "D-!" but not anymore, now he just keeps on running.

And my heart keeps on leaping up into my throat.

I hope fives are a little less CRAZY.

Black head

Fall is here. The mornings are cool and crisp. The afternoons bright, blue skyed warmth. Thoughts turn to wool sweaters, apple picking, falling leaves. In this spirit of fall renewal, I decided to henna my hair a mild chestnut brown, to tame down the harsh blonde highlights that I had put in over the summer. I picked up a package of henna at the local grocery store and then it sat on the back of my toilet for several weeks. It never seemed the right time to dye my hair; too late, too early, too tired, too distracted. With a lazy afternoon ahead of me (well, actually, I should be tidying the apartment but who wants to clean) I decided to dye my hair.

Henna has a long use in my family. I have hennaed my hair about every colour, and have fond memories of my mother with a plastic bag on her head, green goo sliding down her neck as she renewed the red that was hers for years.

I emptied the green powder into an enamel bowl, added water and put on plastic gloves. It felt like an old ritual. As the henna dried on my head, I read a travel book by Paul Theroux. When I rinsed off my hair, I got a surprise. My hair, normally a medium brown, is now pitch black. Not mild, chestnutty black, if such a thing exists, but teen-angst, goth black; pasty-skinned, belly-exposing black; cheap black. Ugly black.

Shit.

And it will look horrid growing out, that black tips with brown roots look that girls working the cash at the pharmacy seem to favour.

I did not want black hair. I do not like black hair. I do not have the eyebrows to support black hair. When I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror (and there have been many such glimpses as I vainly hope that in drying it won't be so very... black) I am struck at how horrid I look.

And there is nothing I can do about it. As I often say to my son when he wants something he can't have, tough bananas. I am stuck with it.

And there is something marvelously hysterical about being stuck with black hair, like being obliged to wear that hand knit reindeer sweater for months on end but not being able to wear it ironically. I have horrible black hair. This is a lesson of letting go, of letting go of ideas of myself, of how I must present myself to the world.

Which doesn't mean my hair won't be ponytailed for the next few months. Or under a hat.

Saturday in the park

It is one of the last days of summer. Sharp, cool mornings turn into hot days. Hurricane Irene is making her way up the coast. Soon, it'll be wet and even colder. Goodbye summer. Hello fall.

With a lazy day stretching out in front of me, I decided to go to the library and get some comics. I prefer the term comics to graphic novels. But the term I really like is BD because it is in France and with French friends that my love for comics really got its start. I used to read them a lot. Not the sci-fi-fantasy-sex-pot-violence ones, nor the mangas, but the sullen, ironic and silly ones. There is a scene in Lapinot that made me cry for the hilarity of it. It has a dog saying "whiff" and a cat, named Richard (Riri to his friends) saying, "tout doux". There is an amazing Swiss comic called "Priapus" based on the Greek myth about the boy with a huge penis. It has no words. It is amazing. I remember reading it in the park and being stunned by the artist's ability to convey his story through images (and no, it is not all dicks). Don't even get me started on David B or the Isaac le Pirate series.

It was with these thoughts in my head that I wandered over to the Bande dessinee section of the library (it had been so long since I had taken out comics that I stood blankly in front of the Large Text section before figuring out that BD was now where Foreign Languages used to be). I got three comics, one about life in Israel, one about a man with Alzheimer's and one about a depressed French guy (the last being a very popular theme in comics).

With my books in hand I went to the park and sat down next to a tree across from the baseball diamond. There was a baseball game on and participants and spectators had set up a barbecue. After a few minutes, I realized it was a deaf tournament and I had a frisson of voyeuristic glee before forcing myself to return my attention to Exit Wounds (the Israeli one). A baby cried and I thought, "Who will hear her?"

I opened the first page and noticed someone standing to my right. A tall man, in coke-bottle glasses and a black, sleeveless shirt. "Trouvez-vous quarante et seule?" he asked me. "Quoi?" I responded not quite sure I had heard correctly. He repeated his question. I puffed with indignation (readers of this blog will know that I do like a good indignant puff). "Je ne suis pas quarante ans," I said offendedly. He persisted in wanting to know if I was alone and I told him to piss off.

Really.

Exit Wounds was interesting, I couldn't get through the depressed French one, and I am saving the Alzheimer's one for another day.

Long live summer.

Hammer in the morning

My odd attempts at freelance journalism have often been fueled by interests I have or irritants that make me want to share my griping with a wider audience. I thought I had found the perfect story when one sunny, summer morning, I was awakened by the sound of jackhammers outside my window. Indignant, I peered out to see city workers digging up my sidewalk. Upon closer inspection, it seemed my corner of Parc-Ex was getting a make-over, complete with large orange signs, bulldozers, and sunglassed construction workers smoking cigarettes and texting as they leaned on a wall. I felt there was surely a story here. Why else would I be awoken so early in the morning? I called the city and tried to ask intelligent questions but ended up blurting out, "But why replace perfectly good sidewalks with new ones? And why before 7 am in the summer?" The answers were perfectly reasonable (replacement of sewer tops, verification of water mains, etc) and my ire fizzled to a coal glow of jackhammer headache. Then the work was done, the only reminder was the checkerboard appearance of the new sidewalk squares interspersed with the old. Until. Until this morning when the jackhammers started up again, the lounging city workers reappeared and the street in front of my house was ripped up.

It is just the section of street in front of my house that is getting the overhaul. One wonders if my call to City Hall got the ball rolling, as it were. I do recall saying, "It's not the sidewalks that need replacing, it's the streets." Perhaps they took my advice and are now replacing the streets, one bone-jittering section at a time.

In the meantime, I need to get away from my house.

Righteous indignation

Today in the post, a letter I had sent to a friend was returned to me for insufficient funds. Said letter had spent so many weeks mouldering on a table before actually making it into an envelope and then to the post office, that its return was cause for great dismay. Bloody hell! I immediately fell into a rage at the stupidity of the employee at the post office who had sold me the wrong stamp and puffed myself with righteous anger. I was ready to be the hand of vindication, the sword of all that is just, I was ready to roar my indignation.

Of course, there is a back story. I do not fly into rages at the slightest provocation, although I will admit, I do tend to feel the casual slights, the vague injustices and the mild set-backs of life a little more severely than my more sanguine friends (What do you mean there is no strawberry sorbet! Oh my god, what am I going to do?!!).

But the back story is this: the guy at the post office is a jerk. He never smiles. He is grumpy all the time. He is never helpful. He never offers seasonal greetings or comments about the weather. His stoney-faced reserve drives me bananas. And here was my chance to finally vent all of my pent up irritation at the poor man because I now had a reason, rather than the rather vague, you're being rude, which works with my son but probably not with blase government employees.

Off I marched to the post office, letter in hand, ready to incinerate the man with my righteous rage. He was lounging against a wall talking on the phone when I came in. What chatting during work hours?! My shoulders hunched and I was read to pounce.

Some people have an amazing ability to diffuse anger and our friend at the post office had this trait. While taking absolutely no blame, he got me to remove my useless stamp from the envelope and add it to another one. He embarked on a speech about re-using stamps and the importance of doing it sneakily or else I would be fined. He was on my side after all! But wait, it was his fault I had to re-use the stamp in the first place. These thoughts faded to the back of my mind. He added an extra stamp, waved away my offer to pay and sent me on my way.

I left feeling like I'd gotten a deal. Righteous anger melted like ice-cream in the sun.

Writing about nothing (for GC)

When I started this blog, it was in the hopes that having an audience would push me to write; write more, write better. But sometimes I have nothing to say. Or what I have to say is personal or silly or inflammatory. This is not the venue for such thoughts. So what do I write when I have nothing interesting, funny or intriguing to share?

Here it is:

I got a flat tire today. I couldn't find my patch kit. I did find a spare inner tube. The inner tube is not the right size for my wheel. It took a lot of sweating in the back yard before I figured that out. My hands are dirty and sore. My clothes are dirty. I have an appointment with the bike repair shop tomorrow morning.

I was recently told that buckwheat pancake mix has to rest for at least an hour before it can be made into pancakes. I had never heard this before. I have always mixed the batter and then thrown the mix onto the frying pan, making lovely flat grey crepes. I made pancakes this morning. I should say, I tried to make pancakes this morning. After three attempts ended in the garbage, and I tried two different oils, my son had to resign himself to a bowl of cereal which he did in a rather unsportsmanlike manner ("BUT I WANT PANCAKES! On a PLATE!"). I blame the new bottle of frying oil but part of me wonders if too much information is a bad thing.

The postal strike has meant that I have received a new phone bill every few days for the past week, each time with a larger and larger amount due.

While a polyester-cotton sheet mix may seem like a good idea at the store, the scratchy nights that ensue are not.

I don't do well in crowded insectariums.

There. That is my bit of nothing for today

Nosebleeds and things that go crunch in the night

As the title suggests, we are just back from a few days of camping. I was wary before we set off, D- having made clear that he did not like camping last summer by endless tantrums and general naughtiness. I had found this quite worrying as I had envisioned my life with a child as being generally, if not literally, one big camping adventure. I decided to try again this year, decreasing our stay outdoors from a heady eight days (last year) to two nights in a private campground.

The website showed a play-ground and a man-made lake, and mini-golf, and horse shoe games. The reality was slightly different: the lake was almost empty and the water stagnant, the mini golf consisted of a field with some numbered flags, and there was not a horseshoe to be found. D- loved the water slide, zipping from the top into my arms but on the seventh or eight go around, I slapped a horse-fly on my arm at the wrong time and he bashed into my head. A nose bleed for D-, a fat lip for me and the bug got away.

It got better from there. We met our friends. We found the perfect place on the river to swim, a little slip of sand stretched like a hand into the clear brown water. We relaxed and let the city leave our bones.

The first night, snug in our tent, I heard a crunching sound that I could not identify. I looked out into the night with my flashlight expecting to see the reflective eyes of a small animal but saw only the remains of our fire. Was it the last popping and fizzes of the embers? I went to sleep.

The next night, same thing: crunch, munch, scritch, scratch. I envisioned birds in the trees above, feasting on berries, or squirrels searching for nuts. I stepped out of the tent and the sound stopped. The moon was bright on the grass. D- turned in his sleep and sighed. There was nothing to see.

On the third day, we started to pack up our camping gear, slow to leave nature for the city. I pulled the fly from the tent and discovered what all the scratching had been about. Hundreds and hundreds of earwigs had climbed up the tent poles to nestle in the nylon tunnels made for holding up the tent. I hate earwigs. D- and I had great fun beating the tent with a stick, making the earwigs twirl and fly into the grass.

I love summer.

Visa shmisa

pink and blue bicycle bought off of kijiji: 5$
training wheels : 16.90$
bicycle bell : 4$
children's soccer shoes bought off kijiji : 7$


The joy of getting things done, biking halfway across the city and discovering new neighborhoods, the precarious balance of a children's bike wedged onto the back of a bicycle, the sun and wind, the pleasure of being given grape freezies by a stranger because we look so hot an bothered, the fear at dropping a bicycle with a child in it, the relief when the child isn't hurt, the bargain hunter's satisfaction at getting a deal: priceless

The path and the well

There is within each of us a well, deep and dark, walls of moss, and dark murky waters below. We walk past this well most days, sometimes not even noticing it is there. Maybe we have placed a large wooden cover on it, padlocked it behind a fence, perhaps it is overgrown with weeds. The path through the woods takes us onto sunny vistas and wind swept fields, it doesn't go past the well anymore.

Today my path has brought me to the well, and I have slipped in. Down down, like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Into the dark place of sadness that inhabits us all. Suddenly everything is dark and the light seems so far away, so unattainable from the bottom, from the sharp rocks and the still, dead water. I want to cry and cry. Perhaps by filling my well with tears the water will slowly rise to the surface and bring me into the sunshine again. For now, I sit quietly at the bottom, frogs and lizards grazing my arms and legs. I don't have the energy to contemplate the long climb up the well to the surface.

Perhaps if I rest here a few hours, a few days, I will learn the value of being sad.

In the meantime I listen to Mercedes Sosa.

The intimate memoir - in memoriam -Simon Gray

I just finished the third tome in Simon Gray's Smoking Diaries journals, The Last Cigarette (2008) and am inspired to write my own stream of consciousness memoirs, full of wit, self-deprecation and unintended wisdom. Unfortunately for me, my powers of concentration are already severely hampered, most pressingly by a lack of adequate vocabulary to write an articulate sentence. It starts well. Another strike against my plans to reach memoir notoriety is that a friend is due to come by in twenty minutes or so to take me out for a drink in compensation for being unceremoniously ditched at the last minute by a man I wasn't that interested in in the first place. Regardless, the ego suffers and requires to be surrounded by attractive people in overpriced bars. So this Grayan attempt at self-biography is also a time killer so that I am not forced to look at myself yet again in the mirror and comment, inwardly, though sometimes outwardly- like a policeman on a loudspeaker to a deranged man barricaded in a house- on the state of my hair, on the speed at which my face is becoming 'mature', at the rate at which my body is losing muscle tone. But, perhaps here I rejoin Gray, who in writing about all of his faults and weaknesses avoided actually having to do anything about them. To write, to expose, to expostulate is also to distance from, to nudge and wink at oneself in the mirror of the page (never ever its glass friend that has so long been an enemy).

This is what Gray does, dance around the pain of a subject before attacking it side on or sometimes not at all. That is something I love in his writing, sometimes bringing up a subject that he mentions in passing, the pain of it, and then it is gone, not to be written about again. An executive decision has been made. So, no, you will not get the details of being dropped on a Friday night and then spending infinite amounts of time with a pink flat iron. Those details remain my own.

Simon Gray died not too long ago. If I wasn't so lazy, I would open another window and look it up on Wikipedia but I assume if you are interested, you can do it yourself. It was not too long ago. Having finished the last of his memoirs, I am saddened by his passing. Hence the title of this blog post (writing 'blog post' causes an inner shudder) of which I am not even sure of the appropriate formulation, in fact I know I have misspelled in memoriam because it keeps coming up with a red line underneath it yet the alternate options are not the word I am seeking (memorabilia, memorandum) and this is exactly what I love about Simon Gray, the digressions and the willingness to expose the delicate undergarments of personal frailty, our weaknesses yet also our essential humanity.

I will miss your fine wit, Mr. Gray.

Swim little fish, swim

I have taken up swimming. I watched a two minute video on YouTube on how to do the front crawl, dug out my bathing suit and went to the pool.

This was a big step for me. I have always been intimidated by the people who glide smoothly back and forth across the length of the pool, their eyes alien-like behind their goggles, their mouths contorted as they take in air, their arms sinewy and strong. Despite numerous attempts by friends, boyfriends and family members to teach me a proper stroke, I have always returned to my inefficient doggie-paddle slash frog swim. "Turn from the hips!" said a friend. "Elbows out first" said another. "Breath from the side" suggested an ex-boyfriend. It never worked because I was never sure.

But then I watched that video on YouTube and I thought, "really, how hard can it be?"

The first time I went, I swallowed a lot of water. I would stop mid lap, coughing and sputtering. The lifeguards kept a close eye on me and frequently asked if I was ok. The second time I went I bought goggles and choked less though my movements in the water felt awkward, stilted and ungainly. The third time I went, I didn't swallow any water and in the last ten minutes of my one hour swim, I felt, albeit briefly, a sense of symmetry in my movements. For the fourth swim I bought a proper swimsuit instead of my mom two piece for hanging out at the wading pool. I was able to do more laps, sometimes several in a row without stopping to catch my breath at the edge of the pool.

And I started to look around. Pool culture is very interesting and I bet each pool has it's own culture. I want to explore this. I feel a need to swim in different pools, in different neighborhoods and cities to see what their pool culture is.

At my pool, I share the lanes with North African men for the most part. It is interesting to watch how some swimmers are full of bluster and competitive edge while others splash along at a snail's pace. During women's swim, the pool fills with Muslim women transformed from their hijab-clad identities to Speedo wearing dolphins. It is a transition I secretly love to behold. Also during women's swim is an elderly Greek lady who wears a shower cap and complains loudly if anyone bumps into her. She grumbled when my hand touched her toe, saying, "oh, you're too fast". I was flattered.

Meteorological discussion

Yesterday morning, an unseasonably rainy day in February:

Me: D-, look, it's raining!
D-: Yay. It's spring. It's spring!
Me: Well, it might not be spring yet. Winter might come back.
D-: Mummy, winter, spring, summer, fall.
Me: Well, yes but maybe winter isn't ready to go yet.
D- (starting to get irritated): Mummy, it's raining, it's spring.
Me: I'm just saying-
D-: Mummy, it's not winter, spring, winter! It's (starting to sing) winter, spring, summer, fall!
Me: Right.
D-: Yay. Spring. Spring. Spring.

Last night it snowed. Today it is minus nine. Never argue with a three and half year old about the weather.

In other news, I finished another painting and am feeling quite pleased with it.

Save some fur me

So.

I stayed up really late last night reading Bet Me (Jennifer Crusie, 2004) a romance novel that was chosen by my book club in honour of Valentine's day. I had been quite scandalized to be reading such a low-brow novel, and was quite furtive when ordering it from my local library (the librarian even seemed a little surprised when I came to pick it up, "celui-ci??" she asked holding up the blue hardcover with an image of plastic mule sandals and cherries. "Oui, oui, c'est pour moi," I answered hoping no one else noticed). All this to say that once I picked it up I could not put it down and that meant that my long list of Saturday errands had to be squeezed into a much smaller window of time.

It is always when I am in a hurry that everyone else around me s-l-o-w-s d-o-w-n-- . After trying on several pairs of black pants at Friperie Renaissance (yes, that counts as an important errand. My work colleagues are starting to rebel at seeing me in jeans day after day), I found a reasonable pair and with half an hour to spare, I went to stand in line. There was a sale on fur stoles that was inspiring the most frenzied excitement among my fellow shoppers. An elderly Asian gentleman encouraged me to get them while I could and at one checkout, a woman had a shopping cart full of black fur and was arguing with the teller. I imagine she was planning to make fur coats for all of her immediate family. I chose the other queue, where a new employee struggled with the cash register. He then started a long discussion with a buxom woman who was either returning a coat or wanting a discount. Next was an Indian woman who was buying two kids' books (what no fur stole?). Right, this should be quick, I thought, looking up at the clock. Then she paid with a fifty dollar bill and this started another long-ish moment with Newbie cashier finding his supervisor, his supervisor verifying the bill's authenticity, then Newbie slowly calculating the change for the purchase that could not have been more than 75 cents. I checked the other line. Fur Lady was leaning over the counter and pointing her finger. The man behind her in the queue was starting to sweat. I returned my attention to my queue, now two elderly ladies with small purchases (fur stoles, books, a picture frame). Right, moving right along. Newbie stapled the elderly ladies' receipts together and offered them a bag. I looked at the clock, time was slipping on and on. The woman in front of me, we'll call her Bleach-hair, moved up to the cashier (3 fur stoles, flimsy white skirt), then proceeded to pay for her purchase in nickels, pennies and quarters (the quarters were in a plastic bank roll which she struggled for what seemed like an eternity to open). I leaned on the counter, drummed my fingers, grinned madly to myself as I looked again at the clock. I was definitely late now. Then my turn. I thought, right, we'll show these people how to make a speedy purchase. But then I realized I had no cash and had to use my bank card which became inextricably stuck in my wallet. Much wallet wrestling ensued and the woman behind me (fur stoles, t-shirt) sighed.


That is what I get for reading romance novels!

Houllebecq sucks, or why horny white men should not travel

Being the frank francophile that I am I try to keep up with the major cultural movements in France. Living far away and being primarily self absorbed in my own life, only the biggest waves make a ripple in my attention and therefore I miss out on most cultural phenomena coming out of the hexagon. Michel Houllebecq, France's literary badboy did make it on to my radar a few years ago (the guy actually won the Prix Goncourt this year) so I decided to read a book, see a movie, and see what was what.

I read Platforme (2001), and saw Les elements particulaires.

The film was shit. The book even worse (more on that later).

Then today, I read an interesting article on tattoo culture by Mark Greif (wait, the connection is coming), got curious about him (some literary guy out of NYC) and looked up some other things that he had written. I read a review he wrote in 2003 of Houllebecq's Platforme and it re-awakened all of my dormant ire and irritation. My feminist growl and literary snobbism were ready for a fight.

I had pretty much forgotten the plot line of Platforme and could only remember my feeling of revulsion and disgust when I finished it. Luckily for me, Greif does a quick summary of the book, to remind me what I hated about it. It goes something like this: whiny French guy, isolated from any meaningful relationship goes to Thailand to fuck Thai girls, does some of that, meets a wonderful French woman, who is perfect in every way (basically, is completely forgiving of his narcissist, self absorbed, bullshit and still puts out all the time to mutual orgasmic joy), moves back to France, and said girlfriend sets up a sex-tourism industry which helps gross, middle aged white folks go to the third world so that they can screw third world whores. Then a bomb goes off, the girlfriend dies and the French guy goes back to being a whiny asshole (which, consequently, he never stopped being). The end.

The feelings I have about this book resemble the vitriol I felt upon reading Un dimanche a la piscine a Kigali (Gil Courtemanche, 2000) quite a few years ago. I was so incensed upon finishing it that if it had belonged to me I would have ripped it in half. It is almost against my nature to do violence upon books but it was such crap that I could barely control myself. The plot there, if I remember correctly, was: white male protagonist in Kigali during the genocide, wanting to fuck some young, idealized stereotype of the "African woman" (is it possible that her name was Innocente? or wait, Gentille!), fucks her, she gets killed (we get a long description of her rape and her deciding to embrace it and enjoy it) and then some other people get killed. The end.

After reading it, I read a glowing review by Giles Foden, of whom I had previously thought good things. I haven't read another book of his since.

Can we not move past the image of woman, and the 'exotic' woman, more specifically, as a piece of ass? My feminist heart grows weary at the way the over-sexualization of women is so taken for granted, is so unblinkingly presumed that it doesn't even make the review pages.

I am tired just thinking of how to articulate my argument, how to couch it in words that don't raise the hackles of anti-feminist middle roaders. What is so plain to me, so obvious to the women around me, doesn't cause a ripple or a pause, not a parentheses, nor a hand scratching across an unshaven chin. It is an uphill battle. One that makes me, when the anger has run out, terribly sad.