a busy day

we didn't take the car. we've had enough hassles with old cars breaking down and costing a lot. but here's a breakdown of my busier-than-usual day.

1 am - went to bed after a rousing game of settlers. i haven't played it in at least a year and a half. i lost by a hair.
7 am - the boy was up so we were all up. spent the morning cleaning, decluttering, calling car dealerships, etc.
11 am - the co-owners of the former car came over with kids. kids fought over toys while we discussed seeds, gardening, etc. i found it all very exciting.
1 pm - the guy from the vw dealership picked us up. we took the baby and left the boy at home.
5 pm - left the dealership in our new (to us) '04 jetta, fully loaded. felt rich and spoiled, what with the heated seats and all. and the car was within our budget, after they cut us a deal.
6 pm - got home, dropped off the baby and left again. getting anywhere was slow, what with the blizzard and all. the dude's gut can't tolerate seafood, it seems, so we had a lot of conversations in the car about what to do if he had to poop right there and then. i forbade pooping in the new car and insisted that he could shit in the snow on the median if he had to. traffic was at a standstill so it's not like jumping out of the driver's seat would have been dangerous. it's when we have long conversations on these topics that i know i married the right man.
7 pm - saw U2 3D at the IMAX. it was freaking amazing. the 3D effects were... effective. at one point bono got right in my face and reached out to stroke my cheek and i flinched backwards, thinking 'hey, don't touch me!'.
8.30 pm - went to the vegan collective for a bite. had their incredible tofu. if i could cook tofu like that i'd never make anything else. we ran into a former roomate. she was snotty and distainful for a bit, but mellowed out. i'm so glad i don't live with her any more.
9.30 - got home and put the boy to bed. took a poo that was at least 3 inches thick, maybe 4. i left it in the toilet for the dude to see. he was duly impressed.
11.43 - hoping to go to bed soon. i've worked out a budget for the coming month and want the baby to get tired already.

tomorrow maybe i'll get to take a bath. it's been more than a week since i washed, thanks to the challenges presented by my cast. i really stink.

that is all.

grey skies are gonna clear up

we were just offered a free car tonight. i haven't told my partner or the co-owners of the jetta yet. i will tomorrow. it's late and i'm so tired and sore and frustrated and stressed, but this amazing thing out of the blue lightens my mind a little.

i'm a little melancholy lately, since my babies seem to be in a huge rush to grow up. between the last paragraph and this one the baby stood up for a while, supporting himself, with my hands hovering under his, ready for when he wavered. he didn't need me for support or balance. he's been teething and working on crawling. his big brother is potty training and learning 50 000 new words a day. tonight he let me leave the room before he was asleep at bedtime. he called me back once so i could watch him close his eyes and actually fall asleep, but he wasn't scared of being alone or anything, he just likes having me there.
these boys need me less and less each day.

oy vey, what a day

i already recounted the tale of my adventures last week; falling down the stairs, the hospital visit, and so on. but here is chapter two.

chapter two: incompetency in the hospital
i got a call this morning. the doctor i saw last week said that he had been looking at my x-rays and had noticed that i had a broken foot. could i please come in to get a cast?
!@#&*%!@$!!!!!!!
so we dropped the boy off at the sitter's and went a-hospitallin'.
they showed me the x-ray. i'm not trained as, say, a DOCTOR or anything, but i could clearly see three broken bones. three broken bones that i'd been trying to walk on for the past week.
the doctor blamed the resident. the resident blamed the doctor. i politely nodded and thanked them and didn't make any waves. and inwardly detested myself for being a wuss.
a cool dude gave me my cast. he told me, among other things, that every x-ray taken is looked over by an x-ray specialist before it's filed or destroyed or whatever. so it wasn't even the crummy-ass doctor who spotted my break. although he told me he did.

but the cast is nice. i can walk fairly well in it. i wish i'd gotten it last week, though...

i wish this story ended here.

on the way home, a few blocks from the hospital, our beloved red jetta bit the dust. it suddenly made a noise like we'd driven over a mountain of styrofoam and stopped. my partner had to walk a long way to find a working payphone to call for help. the car was very cold in his absence. a friend came to get us. he knows about cars and took a look. he recommended that we start car shopping.
%@#*$!!!!!!!!!!!

so that was my day. may none of you ever top it.

a message from your friendly neighbourhood potential co-farmer

we have friends who have about 100 acres an hour or two from the city. they're still thinking about what they want to do with all this land, and looking for people to do something with them. we have been gazing longingly at farms online and dreaming of getting away from the city. it's incredible, how our hopes and dreams fit together so neatly.
we aren't about to sell the house and jump headlong into cofarming. what if we end up not getting along? what if it turns out that we hate rural life? so we're going to spend half the summer in a tent or trailer or something, on the farm. they have goats, chickens and a huge garden. we're discussing alpacas, bison, and hemp.
so right now i'm figuring out the logistics of where we sleep, what we eat, what we plant... this is all very exciting. i'll keep you posted.

"it's a shitty job"

the other day i was carrying the baby down the basement stairs and missed the last step. i could have dropped the baby onto the cement floor and stopped my own fall, but instead i fell and deliberately landed so the baby wouldn't get hurt. i'm not actually trying to sound all heroic, i'm just trying to explain why i'm now on crutches after falling a foot and a half. my foot hurts like someone smashed it with a sledgehammer then lit it on fire, and my baby toe is sticking out at a funny angle, but the hospital says it's not broken. no matter what's wrong with it, i can't walk on it. or bend it. or brush lightly against it. or think about it. writing this paragraph is painful.

so my partner has had to do everything around here. changing babies, making meals and coffee, helping me get to the bathroom, supervising the boy... at the moment the boy is really interested in his cornhole and his poop, so my poor man is flipping out on a regular basis. last night the baby wasn't ready to sleep until 1 am, then the boy got up at 7. my partner got freaking cranky and was stomping around crabbing at all of us. i made him come talk to me.

'relax. getting worked up over no sleep doesn't help.'
'i only got SIX HOURS of sleep! and now he's going to be up all day, doing stuff!!!'
'i do this every. single. day. the difference between how much sleep you got and how much i usually get is that i have to wake up to feed the baby a few times a night. sleeplessness is part of the job.'
'it's a shitty job'

no freaking kidding.

domestic bliss

i'll cheerfully rail against the comsumeristic infection that is valentine's day, but deep down i'm a pushover for celebrations of any kind, and i love surprises. so this year i made my dude a full day of delicious, homecooked food. we started with pink, heart-shaped baking powder biscuits for breakfast.

baking powder biscuits

• preheat oven to 400
• mix together:

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

• then add:

1/3 cup oil
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk (water or soymilk are fine)

• mix as lightly as possible. the less you mix the higher they rise. if they turn out flat and thick it's your fault.
  
• turn out onto a floured surface and press until it's 1/2 an inch thick, ish. then cut out circles with the top of a wineglass.
• put circles on cookie sheet
• bake 12-15 minutes.
• mmmmm

for dinner we had lobster dipped in garlic butter. also wine. and vodka with pomegranate juice. then we spent the 15th nursing hangovers. but it was a great day.

~*~

yesterday i learned to knit. re-learned, actually. my friend showed me how to hold everything and how to cast on (which i've already forgotten) then was about to show me the stitches when my hands remembered what they haven't done in fifteen years, and i found myself knitting. it was awesome. by the time i left i was knitting, purling, adding stitches, taking off stitches, and ribbing. it was thrilling.
i'm going to get better at it then start making socks. the trouble with only buying ethical clothing is that socks are nearly impossible to find, and cost an arm and a leg. i can't afford ethical socks so i'll have to learn to make my own. i'll post pictures when there's something worth taking a picture of.

the brain may shut down but the mouth forges ahead

i was at a baby shower on sunday and i forget how it came up, but i found myself sharing my opinion on birth. which is that it's kinda gross and i'd rather not watch. i feel about witnessing birth the same way as i feel about watching someone take a long, loud poo.
as my mouth kept moving i looked around me and realized that every one of the women in the little group i was chatting with were doulas, birth educators, and folk like that. and their expressions ranged from glazed & not comprehending to disdainful.
oops.

then i thought 'birth: the ultimate bodily function'. then i cracked up.

all alone.

me: are you cute?
him: no, i'm happy. happy birthday.

forgive the bad artwork, but i'm not posting pics of my son's bare arse online.

the boy is potty learnin'. so he spends most of his time with a bare ass and legwarmers. he's a funny little dude. that ^ exchange took place last night when i came across the kid reading a book and singing to himself.
he's really exploded lately into language. full sentences, nouns, adjectives, verbs... he's a ball of fun. and weird, weird associations. like the happy birthday thing. if anyone says anything with the word 'happy' or if he's content he'll announce 'happy birthday!!!' as if he were jumping out from behind the couch at a surprise party.
what a kid, i tell ya.

mmmm, bread

everyone should make this bread.

it's easier than baking cookies, i swear. and the beer flavour is subtle and delicious. i want to experiment with using apricot beer and adding in bits of dried apricot. but even without additions and modifications this bread is freaking amazing.

although it wouldn't make good sandwich bread. and the loaf is on the small side. but eating the whole loaf while it's still hot from the oven, with butter...

review of the film club

david gilmour (his face, if not his name, would be familiar to most canadians. he's been a fixture at cbc for years and years) recently published the film club. there is a review on the back that says that it's about what happens when the author decided to homeschool his teenaged son by watching movies with him. i thought 'great! a book about unschooling!!'. but i was wrong. it isn't a book about homeschooling or unschooling or anything else like that. it's a book about a guy watching movies with his son.

what gets me about this book is the way the author looks at his son. he sees his boy the way i see mine. that kid is golden. he has flaws and shortcomings and he screws up but he is the best thing, ever. when it comes right down to it, the book is a love letter to gilmour's son. it's beautiful and it rings true.

i don't know much about movies and haven't seen most of the films mentioned in the book. the book was obviously meant for someone who has seen them or at least wants to, so i think my partner got a lot more out of it. i probably missed 1/3 of the content of the book just because i don't really care about cinema. so people who have kids and love movies would get the most out of this book. people with no kids who aren't interested in movies would simply be bored.