Vendredi V - Birthday Edition

We're in full-on birthday party planning mode over here, with The Girl's birthday party in T minus 29 hours and counting. And so:

Top Five Best Memories from My Childhood Birthday Parties:

1. The cakes my mom made. Seriously, these were Good Housekeeping-worthy feats of decorating magic. One year it was a princess in a castle, another year it was a real Barbie doll with a cake for her ballgown skirt. The best cake ever was the three-tiered, heart-shaped frothy pink-and-white confection created for my 12th birthday, complete with icing rosettes and a Dazzle Doll perched on the very top.

2. Money in said cakes. Did your mom do this? Mine wrapped coins in foil and inserted them in the cake to be found later by the lucky eaters. As a modern mother, I'm horrified - how many children cheated certain choking or breaking of teeth?! But as a kid - this was awesome.

3. Balloon chandeliers. Nothing says P-A-R-T-Y like balloons on the lights. (Advice duly followed by every SRSS grad committee ever.)

4. The presents. Come on, you alllll know it was all about the presents at that age. I'll even admit to inviting one girl to my party because of the supercool present she had bought me the year prior (oh yes, it was a My Little Pony).

5. The excitement in school all day that built as the party hour drew nearer. I was the coolest kid in my class - at least for one day each year.

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I Stand Corrected

It appears that I was wrong.

There may, indeed, be an acceptable use of the phrase "pregnant person":

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/03/26/transgender-pregnant.html

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On Discipline (Or: My Road to Hell is Well-Paved)

When I was in Grade Five, overwhelmed by the combined influence of too many Sweet Valley High and Cheerleaders books, I solemnly inscribed on the first page of a notebook "My Self-Improvement Plan." I can't remember exactly what I felt needed improvement, but the impetus behind this would-be makeover was the sense that I was not peforming to my full potential and that getting to wherever that level of perfection lay was a) attainable and b) up to me.

The short-lived experiment (so short I don't even remember writing more than the first page) was only the first of many similar attempts to better myself. I've made countless promises to myself that I will eat better, exercise more, pray more, be more spiritual, stop being so fearful, etc. etc. etc.

I'm not sure why I feel so compelled to change myself. Perhaps that is another post. What I do know is that, for as long as I can remember, I have felt myself to be unruly and out of control and desperately in need of some sort of channeling, some shaping, some, well, discipline.

And so, it is not entirely unusual that I've been involved in three separate projects as of late. The first was my commitment three months ago to read the entire Bible in a year.

The second was during the season of Lent, where I committed to giving up allowing myself the taking out of my anger/anxiety on my husband and kids (I know, I know, giving up chocolate or coffee would have been easier, but I figured that if I was going to give up a vice, I might as well give up something that was already harming others rather than something would actually lead to me harming them because I was going through caffeine withdrawal.)

Finally, having realized that my approach of "everything in moderation" towards food had somehow lost the "in moderation" part and that none of my clothes fit, I attempted to follow a rigorous (for me) eating plan for two weeks.

Well.

I can claim only partial success. I am still reading my Bible in sporadic yet marathon-like spurts, but I am behind (I'll be caught up by the end of this month, I keep declaring). I reduced my yelling at the kids, but alas, it was not a harpy-free Lent season. I made it for about 8 days on the two-week diet, but succumbed to a few treats thereafter and limped across the finish line to some Extra Butter Flavour popcorn and a Sleeman's Honey Brown.

These un-successes - let's not call them "failures" - have brought me to the following realizations about self-discipline:

1) The mere practice of self-control is a good thing. At best, we learn to deny our most selfish impulses with intention while we are strong with the heady rush of novelty and promise, and then, hopefully, more automatically once our energy begins to lag. At worst, we learn the strength of those impulses, which provides necessary knowledge for the next time we try to get a handle on them.

2) Success requires an endless, monotonous fighting of the same battle over and over again. Just because you were able to say "no" to sleeping in and missing Bible reading today does not guarantee a similar result tomorrow.

3) Days, weeks, and even months of hard work can be demolished with unbelievable ease. All it takes (for me at least) is the tiniest thought that *maybe* I don't have to keep my commitment just this once and - WHAM - it's over.

4) Think staying on course is hard? Try getting back on once you've strayed. Before I ate that Chinese food, I could at least tell myself that all my hard work had kept me cheat-free. After? Not only had I lost my pride in my accomplishment, but I also had the knowledge of *exactly* how hard getting back to that point would be.

These exercises in self-restraint have given me new empathy for those who stray from commitments and profound respect for those who stray and then return. It is incredibly easy to make a vow; it is quite difficult to keep it; and it is nigh unto impossible to make it, break it, and then pick yourself up from the depths to which you have fallen, dust yourself off, and try again.

Yet I still persist in doing just that, even if it means only a chapter here and there, only a minute or two of biting my tongue before speaking sharply, or only a day of choosing an apple instead of chocolate. I may never consider myself "improved," but there is much to be said for acknowledging one's weaknesses and strengthening one's resolve, if only until the next time.

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Vendredi V - Good Friday Edition

Top Five Things I Love about Easter:

1. Good Friday breakfast at our "home" church. It gets me all shiver-y and somber inside.

2. Hard-boiled eggs where the dye somehow leaked through the shell and stained the egg white.

3. Rewards hard-earned having been (at least somewhat) disciplined during Lent.

4. Renewed joy in the fact that I am a Christian and thus have a direction towards which the compass of my existence points while on earth and a destination after death where I'll get to *finally* meet so many who have gone before.

5. Malted milk robin's eggs.

(As with the rest of life, a nice mix of the sacred and the profane - each makes the other that much sweeter.)

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Overheard While Watching an Episode of Little House on the Prairie

The following statement was overheard while our family was watching a particularly gripping episode of LHoP in which Laura and Mary are trapped in a runaway caboose and Pa is chasing after them on a very fast horse:


The Girl: (wistfully) I wish Pa was my Dad.

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Overheard in the Bathroom Today

The Boy: (gazing with wonder as I wrap my towel, turban-like, around my head)

Me: (noticing boy) Pretty neat, huh?

The Boy: That is *so* cool. You are fanTAStic!

Me: (laughing) Thanks hon.

The Boy: (admiring the cumulative effect of freshly-scrubbed face, turban towel and 14-year-old bathrobe) Mom, you are so BYOOOO-tiful!

From the mouths of babes, people.

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Rockin' Around the Clock

Yep, that's us. Rockin' it up 24 hours a day.

Well, not so much. It's been another Husband-less weekend due to an annual St. Paddy's Day pilgrimmage; he and the other guys met up in San Fransisco this year. I'm not sure there's all that much luck o' the Irish there, but who am I to criticize.

That left me and the kids with an empty social calendar. Most fortunately, the community sock hop was on Friday night:

Showing me their best moves. And, yes indeed, these are the best they've got.
The Boy did his best with the hula hoop.

So did The Girl, with a bit more success.

They spent most of the time just running around the gym instead of dancing, but hey, it burns off some of that energy, so I'm all for it.

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Vendredi V - First Edition

Might be the spring fever, might be the TGIF-ness in the air, but I thought it would be fun to start a new feature here on PGT: a weekly top five list (or bi-weekly or even monthly, depending on my ability to fight my tendencies towards laziness), a list designed to give everyone an opportunity to fritter away the last hours of the work week as they ponder their own list.

Well, at least it will give me a chance to do some frittering; y'all can do as you like. But I'll try to post it a bit earlier in the day from this point on in order to give you plenty of time to ruminate.

For this inaugural post, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic. Borrowing shamelessly from other blogs that feature a letter to one's 13-year-old self, I thought I'd start with this:

Top Five Things I Wish I Could Say to 13-year-old Peitricia Mae:

1. Boys are dumb at this age and not worth pining over. (But they do get better.)

2. Lose the neon and figure out a way to style your hair that does not involve a half-ponytail and a curling iron. For goodness sake!

3. Those so-called BFFs? They'll betray you because they, like you, are formed from that noxious mix of selfishness and drama exclusive to young teenagers. (But stick close to that Chrystie girl in French class and that Laurel girl who hangs out with her with whom you used to be friends until you blew her off in third grade because you would rather read - they'll be around for awhile.)

4. No one will remember that you dropped and extensively damaged the school's baritone saxophone (and this is faaaaaar from being your most embarrassing moment, I'm afraid to say).

5. Just because blue eyeshadow exists does not mean it looks good on everyone.

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I Heart Tom Allen

And Eric Friesen. And Jurgen Gothe. Not so much Catherine Belyea (I still pine a bit in my heart for Shelagh Rogers).

Today I finally got my internets radio going at work and spent a blissful day with some old friends. Many of you know of my passionate (almost zealous) love for CBC Radio 2. The theme songs have become subconscious time markers, so much so that the Studio Sparks theme makes my stomach growl because I know instinctively that it's lunchtime.

Of course, it isn't all music and giggles over at that hallowed institution. The "new and improved Part I" format saw the removal of Joe Cummings and his Arts Report from the national morning show. I miss his witty banter with Tom. They've started to include commercials - like I don't already know that Tonic (the After-Hours wannabe) is on tonight. The Signal is about as terrible a program as you can get, particularly as it replaces my beloved Andy Shepard. (What happened to that guy, anyway?)

And, given that it's about to get much, much worse ( http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2008/03/04/radio-two.html ), I suppose I'll need to keep my headphones planted firmly in my ears to enjoy as much as I can of what's left that is any good.

In happier news, it is a gor-gee-ous day today. It's still 9 degrees outside! And I got to enjoy the first "summer car" of the year - you know, that stuffy-overly-warm-drowsiness-inducing car interior that heralds warmer days and longer sunshine hours.

My summer car brought with it the added bonus of making my car smell like Starbucks. I broke my cupholders a few months back, and so my current coffee-drinking solution has been to perch my cup on the passenger seat (or hand it back to my daughter to hold, but that only works if she's in the car). There's not a lot to keep it upright when I turn sharp corners, so I've probably spilled the equivalent of 8 venti bold roasts onto the seat.

Fortunately, it's my car, not The Husband's, so as long as the seatwarmers don't short out on me, I don't really care all that much. Plus I have a tendency to use flavoured (non-dairy, fortunately) creamer, so now it smells like pie. Yum!

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Time Keeps on Slipping, Slipping...

How can it be Wednesday evening? I'm positive that the week just started....

They say that when you have kids, and particularly when those kids get into school, time begins to accelerate. In fact, if I had a shiny loonie for every time I've been told "enjoy them while you can; they'll be gone and grown up before you know it," I wouldn't get that little pit in my stomach every time I think about not investing in my 401k.

I'd tend to agree, but mostly because I think the dreadful energy-suckingness of the infant years actually has the power to slow time, so those days that feel like they're 48 hours long - well, they really are. Now that my kids are older and it's not such a struggle, Time has resumed its standard, "where on earth has the time gone" pace.

There seems to be a general sense that this acceleration is a bad thing. People moan that they've fallen into "a rut" because the sameness of their lives causes them to measure life not by days or weeks but by seasons or years. They admonish one another to slow down, to stop and smell the roses.

Truth be told, I can't say that I mind forgetting to smell the roses now and again. There's a lot to be said for routine, for monotony, for the mundane.

(I think this is a fairly frequent theme on this blog. What can I say - I'm a creature of habit.)

I recognize that I gravitate towards stability more than some do. I feel no compulsion to experience all life has to offer and I never fear that I might miss out on something, having already made my peace with the fact that of course I will. Novelty stresses me out and new opportunities are usually anxiety in disguise.

It does not escape me, of course, that my quest for sameness likely arises from the past few years during which I have experienced tremendous instability. When I was filling out my forms for my current job, I realized I've had seven addresses in as many years. I went from happily married to unhappily almost-not-married and back again. I traded in my SAHM outfit for a working girl's suit. Once there, I switched careers, but not before attempting to do two at the same time.

I look at people who have lived in the same house for longer than five years with a good deal of jealousy. Other parents whose children have been at the same school for longer than one year cause me to break the tenth commandment frequently. People who complain about "same old, same old" raise my ire - they seem oblivious to the fact that their boring life is more likely to be turned upside down by a tragedy than by the Publisher's Clearinghouse people at the door.

Bring on the rut, I say! It means that life is stable enough that you can stop worrying about the next minute, the next hour, the next day. Would that we all had that kind of safety.

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The Six-Month Mark

This past week marked half a year since the plane carrying two very excited children and one very tired mom touched down at the airport. And I'd say it's taken about exactly six months to get back to a feeling of stability.

Consider the difference between the two weeks. Our first week here included the following less than enjoyable circumstances:

- living in a hotel
- eating out for every meal (sounds fun until you try it)
- a new school with an unintelligible teacher for The Girl
- a total loss of structure for The Boy
- a new job for The Husband
- getting lost every time I tried to go anywhere
- major paperwork and administrative hurdles

This past week was much different:

- living in our cozy little house
- eating standard fare designed for quick prep and minimal clean-up
- a successful week at school speaking French with her classmates for The Girl
- a successful week at school not speaking French but hopefully understanding the odd word for The Boy
- a starting-to-feel-quite-comfortable job for The Husband
- driving on autopilot because I know the way to the usual places
- officially Minnesota residents on paper in both countries

Add to all this a job for me that's starting to make sense, a new church that feels less unfamiliar each week and the promise of spring, and I'm prepared to pronounce the experience thus far as "so far, so good."

It ain't home by a long shot, but at least life makes sense again.

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Pardon Me, Sir, But I Believe Your Water Just Broke

My friend Jane reminded me yesterday that I have a bone to pick about the latest victim of political correctness - pregnancy.

I'll admit to having a fair number of pet peeves with regards to diction, and the use of gender-neutral language where the ability to bear children is concerned is definitely one of them. I don't know why it bothers me so much when I hear reference to "a pregnant person." At least, I didn't know why. But, the more I think about it, the more my raised hackles make sense.

When it comes to what is known as "politically correct language" (usually by those who don't like being told to use it), I tend to be a fairly avid supporter. Words define us. Tell a child he's stupid and just see if you get any A's on the ol' report card. Consistently use the word "chef" alongside the masculine pronoun and you've probably made it more difficult for your daughter to even consider entering Le Cordon Bleu School for the Culinary Arts.

Because of this, I believe that we can speak the change we wish to see in the world (to paraphrase Gandhi). We can use words in ways that empower, that encourage, and that engender change, simply by choosing to speak them. The opposite, of course, is true - consider the troubled history of the "N-word" - ostensibly a collection of six letters, but in reality so much more.

I remember the first time I heard a writer referred to as "she" - it was startling (and saddening, to realize that I'd always pictured an old white guy with pen in hand). Or the first time I prayed to "God the Mother." The seemingly simple use of the feminine pronoun opened up a space of possibility that didn't exist for me before.

I absolutely believe in using gender neutral language when it makes sense (hearing my daughter use "him or her" the other day warmed the cockles of my heart extraordinarily); firefighter vs. fireman and you could check with your local public health nurse and ask him what he might suggest are powerful choices that present possibilities. Breaking stereotypes in our choices of pronouns has the power to create alternative worldviews and give those around us a new, grander framework.

But "pregnant person" is a meaningless use of inclusive language that undermines far more appropriate attempts towards the de-masculinization of language. To assume that simply replacing "he" with "s/he" and "pregnant woman" with "pregnant person" will somehow usher in a utopia of equality is at best, silly and, at worst, makes questionable the very values such usage purports to uphold. Using the words "pregnant people" does not bespeak possibility; even if we all make a point to be uber-PC and make labour and delivery an equal-opportunity employer, I suspect I will not soon see a man in Thyme Maternity holding up the latest fashion and wondering how soon his belly will have grown enough so that he can wear it.

The ridiculousness of "pregnant person" strikes a blow against all inclusive language; it renders the use of gender-neutral language meaningless and, in so doing, undermines other attempts to change the way people view the world.

Am I being too strict? Perhaps. But I can't help but feel that the well-intentioned but misguided use of "pregnant person" suggests that language that promotes equality of the sexes is about as effective as asking me to turn my head and cough or The Husband taking pre-natal vitamins.

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All Quiet on the Southern Front

As you've probably guessed by the lack of posting, it's been a weekend of catch-up - catching up on sleep, catching up on housecleaning, and catching up on family time. Quite boring really (although we've had enough turmoil in our past that I'm really quite happy with "boring").

The Husband returned triumphantly home on Friday night and managed to stay up a few hours to help put the kids into their beds before crashing into his own. Somehow both children ended up in our bed in the wee hours, so it was a bit of a crowded, albeit snuggly, wake-up. Our weekly trip to the library was pretty much the major event on Saturday. Today was church followed by the usual weekend child meltdown (I don't know what it is - they both get totally irrational and out-of-control whiny on Sunday afternoons).

The Girl has been displaying some alarming behavior lately (well, alarming if you're a Mennonite liberal pacifist like I, less alarming if you're 15th in a long line of military heroes). She's become fascinated by war.

I mentioned here a few months ago that she enjoyed watching WWII documentaries. Well, on Friday she went to a local museum and was so intrigued by the mock explosion they used to demonstrate a particularly terrible event in the mill's history, that she begged me to tell her about every explosion about which I knew.

(A digression: remember that whole "truth or comfort" debate a few months ago? Well, I find it particularly difficult, nay, almost impossible, to ignore requests for information from my children, partly because I feel that to give them less than the entire explanation as I know it would mean I am lying by omission. This resulted in me describing trench warfare, the Challenger disaster, and September 11th as part of our bedtime routine, which was likely the cause for the "family bed" the next morning.)

On the one hand, I'm appalled even as I recognize the fascination that war and conflict hold for her. On the other, I know that to refuse to talk about it or to be very narrow in the way I allow her to explore the topic will only increase its lure.

So, yes, I have several picture books about WWII in my daughter's room. They're sandwiched between the dollhouse and the fairy poem book. Sigh.

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