It's Worth the Trip

Aaand, we're back home. Amazing how quickly those trips to Canada fly by. One second we're all cheering because we've crossed the border onto Canadian soil, the next we're waiting in line for an hour to get back into the States.

As always, a good trip. So good, in fact, that I spent part of our drive home (the part where I wasn't cleaning up barf - here's hoping it was just some rich food The Boy ate and not the stomach flu) musing about all the things I love about The Automobile City.

Top 5 Things I Love About Steinbach:

1. Friends with nicknames. Barnacle Barb, Floral Fern, Tjelah, Rocky, Schellenboink...all names born from younger, much sillier times. I've certainly made friends since those days, but none which come with the resonances of 25 (or even 30, in some cases) years' worth of memories.

2. Pic'n'Pay Shoes. Once again, the 25% off storewide Boxing Week sale was kind to me. How is it that a tiny little store in southeast Manitoba can consistently carry such great shoes? And where else can you buy Skechers, Sorels and Naot from someone who's known you since you were a kid?

3. Never-Say-Die Entrepreneurial Spirit. Whether it's Dutch Connection > Grapes Grill > Stone Creek Grill or Hamdog > Kickers Chill'n'Grill > Roadhouse 52 > Directions, nothing says "I bet I can make a go of it" to a native Steinbacher like a For Lease sign. Seriously, though - sushi in Steinbach? Now that's optimism.

4. The "Why is Left of Centre Such a Difficult Concept" corner by Clearspring Mall. An endless source of amusement, that one. How many years have people been cutting one another off now?

5. Full-Service Car Washes. And I do mean FULL service - apparently you can wash pretty much any type of passenger-carrying vehicle. Behold, the glorious sight which awaited us at Super Splash:

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Boxing Day

I loved baby laundry. No matter how nasty or how stinky, no matter what better-left-unknown fluid had required extra scrubbing this time, no matter how many times I had washed that very same sleeper in the past week - I loved taking a load of baby clothes fresh and warm from the dryer and folding each wee item in readiness for the next round of spit-up.

As time passed, and The Girl grew, her clothes began to take up more space. No longer could I fit her entire wardrobe into one laundry basket, one drawer. I stopped tracking sizes in months and instead moved to the Ts. She stopped outgrowing her clothes weekly and soon I began to see the same shirt for more than two months at a time.

Then The Boy came along, and I started to use some of the wee items again, although only briefly given his propensity towards The Huge. The Girl's gold standard of fashion changed from "blue t-shirt with a picture" to pink shirts with lace (thanks Kinder Korner!) and I started separating the pink from the blue.

And the boxes of outgrown clothing began to fill.

There's something comforting about knowing you've got baby clothes in storage. It means you are Prepared. You may not be pregnant (or even thinking seriously about becoming so), but they're there If You Need Them.

They also mean that you are not Done. It's such an innocent question - "so, you think you guys are Done?" Yet such a complicated answer, one that requires the synching up of both head and heart, of both mother and father.

In my head, I've been Done for a few years now. Emerging battered, bruised, and only marginally sane from the infant years, I realized that my life felt pretty full with the two little people I've got. Full of love, certainly, but also full of about all the Little that I can handle.

Some days, 2 has seemed to be two too many, when I've been feeling particularly self-centered or I've broken up one too many fights about who is hogging the black marker. Some days, 2 has seemed to be two too few, when I've caught sight of those large families on those rare days when everything falls into place and they look like a Hallmark card. But mostly, 2 has seemed just about right, and things have hummed along merrily.

Ah, but my heart. It is easily fooled by the golden glow of remembrance and selectively recalls only those warm moments of holding sleepy, lumpy innocent angels. It dismisses any suggestion that I lack the mental fortitude to add another arrow to my quiver. It assures me that three carseats fit easily into the backseat of a Jetta, that we won't notice a 50% increase in the contributions towards the college funds, and that The Girl and The Boy would welcome and not resent an addition to the family more demanding than even they are.

Worse, it whispers to me that being Done means saying goodbye to my youth. It warns that I will be admitting that I have fulfilled the essential function for which my womanhood was designed, and that all those mysterious monthly processes are now somehow superfluous. It says that hanging a Closed sign on the Baby Shop seals me off forever from those hopes and dreams that, if I am honest, have never disappeared but simply lie dormant.

Now, I recognize the luxury of this position; so many would love to be wrestling with the "To Baby or Not to Baby" question and have both outcomes equally available. For those who have no choice in the matter, their answer might come easily. But despite being content with my choice (most days, anyway), the fact that there is a choice has meant that the boxes of clothes stayed in storage, as I waited for heart and head to be in synch.

On Friday I went through the boxes. I folded the wee items one last time, divided them by size and sex, and boxed them up again with clear labels like "Baby Clothes: Girl (12-18 mos.)" and "Baby Clothes: Boy (18-12 mos.)"

They're coming out of storage, you see.

And they're headed to nieces and nephews who will put them to good use, instead of languishing waiting for the baby that may or may not be.

Am I Done? Probably, possibly, maybe, I don't know. I do know, of course, that just writing this post invites the attention of the Oopsie God. And I also know that, if I do need baby clothes, the Albertville outlet mall is less than an hour away.

Which is as Prepared as I need to be.

The Girl's First LBD (aka Little Black Dress)

The Littles in the Finery of Christmas Past

Never too young for a collared shirt.

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Merry Christmas, HO HO HO!

Happy Holidays, Season's Greetings, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, etc. everyone! I trust that you and yours have found yourselves a cozy corner complete with cookies and with whatever token/lump of coal Santa has seen fit to reward you.

The "Best Parents Ever 2008" Award is totally in the bag. We reinforced the kids' conviction that begging is effective by rewarding the pleas of the past months with the oft-requested Nintendo DSs for Christmas this year. Although we got some Christmas cheer out of the gifts ourselves, given that they kept each child occupied for at least five hours out of the trip up to the snowy North on Tuesday afternoon.

It's a relatively quiet trip for us, unusually so, given that our calendar is filled mostly with large blocked-off sections of "reading," "eating," and "visiting with family." Wonderful things all, and activities that often get short shrift when we come for other visits and try to cram in as many people as possible into too short a time. I personally intend to finish both of the books I brought with me, and possibly get started on the new Miriam Toews which awaited me under the tree.

And with that, off to pour another cup of coffee and settle into a particularly appropriate Terry Pratchett, in which Santa (aka "The Hogfather") is a marked man and the Assassins Guild attempts to send him to sleep with the fishes. Who needs Dickens and his pitiful little Cratchett boy when you can have Father Christmas with a price on his head?

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Totally Saw This Coming, Part the Second

This would be funny......if it weren't for the fact that I now owe the Canadian government a total of $2,000. Five days before Christmas.

Did I not call this? Down to the day, in fact.

Perhaps I can use my newly discovered psychic abilities to make some stock market wagers to raise the money to pay Scrooge Mr. Harper. Seeing as how the stock market's not volatile at all these days.

Merry Christmas, PM!!

P.S. And for the curious, yes, my prescient abilities also included NOT spending any of the money - well, not much of it - that was sent my way, seeing as how I truly did see this coming, so the lion's share of it is sitting in the ol' SCU. It's not like we will now have to go and return all of The Girl and The Boy's Christmas presents.

But it's principle people - you don't give someone something, assure them that yes, it is indeed theirs, and then take it back.

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This Hurts Me More than It Hurts You

He's Jekyll and Hyde, people.

Most of the time, he's sweet and sunny (if a little bit busy and energetic at times). He has some trouble with listening, but hey, he's five years old - it goes with the territory.

Where, oh where, did my darling child go?

Oh, I know. The Boy will always be my baby, and if he acts out he's just exploring his limits. But it sure felt like he'd concocted and consumed an elixir designed to reveal his basest instincts last night as I held down a screaming, clawing, biting, kicking (surprisingly strong for his age) child, answering his shouts of "I HATE YOU!!", "You are the meanest mom EVER!!" and "I wish you were old so you would be DEAD!" with calm assurances of my love for him and reminders that he is not allowed to hurt other people.

Yesterday was the second day in a row of this. On Sunday he got kicked out of the practice for the church Christmas pageant.

(Which will seem more or less harsh to you, depending on your viewpoint, when I tell you that I am the director of said pageant and I'm the one who turfed him. We'll see how the week goes as to whether this will be a temporary or a permanent suspension. I don't need some crazed sheep going nuts in the stable and scaring Baby Jesus.)

Of course, in my mind, two days in a row equals a lifetime, and as I played enforcer to my "go to bed early without supper" punishment, I simultaneously saw myself on television, shaking my head sorrowfully and saying, "he was always such a sweet boy" before they cut to my son, grinning fiendishly and remorselessly as he was led away in chains for grand theft auto and wilfull destruction of property.

Sigh.

Interestingly enough, though, I had two thoughts while protecting my face from being scratched:

1) Spanking would cure this.

2) I do not want to spank.

Even though I knew a swat on the bottom would probably shock him to his senses and put him in his place instantly, I also knew that it made zero sense for me to tell him not to hit me because it hurt me and then to turn around and hit him.

Please don't misunderstand me: I do believe that there are situations where spanking becomes necessary. I consider it as a last resort in my behaviour modification toolkit, and have always said that it could become a possibility if all other avenues prove fruitless and we have come to mutual agreement over the course of several, unheated and rational discussions.

Nevertheless, it just seemed so incongruous that I would answer his violence with more violence. That doesn't mean I would put up with further violence; he was harming others and so he was restrained. But I don't see how hitting him sends a message that hitting other people is wrong.

It seems to me that spanking teaches children to behave out of fear. I know it did me. The end may justify the means here; perhaps a few swats on the bum are necessary to provide deterrents until children grow up enough to attain an intrinsic sense of morality. Perhaps it's better to experience the loving disciplinary hand of a parent instead of the far-less-loving and more damaging consequences of the law. Perhaps I'm just a liberal pacifist idealist (raises hand - guilty as charged!). Perhaps you will all say "I told you so" when I admit defeat and administer a well-deserved smack on the ol' toot-smoke-maker in a few months' time.

But in an effort to never have to know for sure, let's all pray that Mr. Hyde goes back into hiding very soon, shall we? And that Dr. Jeykll re-emerges with sweetness and light, bringing radiant sunshine and unquestioning obedience along with soft kisses and warm hugs.

Maybe I'll even be able to cast him as an angel....

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Holy Toot Smoke* Batman!

It. Is. COLD. here!!

(And yes, I know, many of you have been dealing with Winnipeg-in-the-basement temperatures for the last week. But before you start pelting me with frozen tomatoes, please remember that yesterday started off at 3 degrees above and rain before plummeting almost 20 degrees over about 8 hours. Can we get some compassion for the soft Minnesotans?)

People bundled up today like I haven't seen in ages. Of course, there are always those who are too cool for school, who remind me of those Manitoban idiots stalwarts who stand waiting for the bus wearing only a light jacket and no hat or mitts, trying to look nonchalant in -30 degrees with a windchill of -145 million. But, for the most part, everyone around here looks like Nanook of the North.

I, of course, pulled out The Parka, that fabled purveyor of warmth, and so fared quite fine. I did elect to take the bus today instead of my car; there's no plug-ins down here. Which is insane.

Alas, my house fares not quite so well. I can only assume that our house was designed and built by someone from California during a period when gas cost about a penny for a day's supply. How else can I explain the fact that we have no insulation in the outside walls. Yes, you read that right, and no, that is not hyperbole. There is NO insulation in our walls. I suspect we will personally be supplying bonuses to several Centerpoint Energy executives this upcoming season.

But we're back into the minus teens tomorrow, so here's hoping this was just a brief dip. I can't quite say the same for the 'Peg. Please have snow and mistletoe, indeed. Not gonna be a very warm welcome for our Christmas trip home.


* The other night, The Boy's hair smelled a bit funky, so I asked, "did you wash your hair with shampoo tonight?" To which he replied, "why? Does it smell like toot smoke?" And so another term for flatulence was born, which unfortunately has been running through my head at the most inappropriate moments all week. It does seem rather appropriate for a cold weather post, though, given that it's cold enough to be able to see your farts as well as your breath.

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From the Department of "Totally Saw This Coming But Makes Me Irate Nonetheless"

Dear Ms. Mae,

Please find enclosed the results of our recent audit of your personal information currently on file with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).

You may notice that this notification directly contradicts provides an update to another letter mailed recently directly to your U.S. residence in which we indicated that you were, in fact, eligible for exactly this amount and that we had deposited said amount into your bank account.

You will be pleased to know that this clawback redistribution of wealth represents your contribution to Canada's response to the recent economic crisis gripping the world. Following up my successful disbanding of Parliament for a seven-week holiday desperate attempt to shore up political support brainstorming-session-in-which-I-come-up-with-a-way-to-right-our-country's-ever-present-financial-woes, I have come up with a plan to squeeze blood from a stone reclaim monies distributed erroneously by us to Canadians living abroad.

(Of course, once we subtract the amount it cost us to have bureaucracy in place whereby we assessed your claim the first time, sent you the first letter, submitted the money into your account, reassessed your claim, and sent you the second letter from the actual amount you return to us, we will probably have spent more than if we had just let you keep the money in the first place. However, "liberating money from US bank accounts that rightfully belongs to Canada" has a very nice ring to it and will help me perform well in the polls.)

We appreciate your enthusiastic participation in this endeavour, given your ongoing support of the use of your US tax dollars to fund federal bailouts. Although you are refused the right to vote in both countries and thus have no say in how your tax dollars are spent on either side of the border, we nevertheless are confident that you agree that, with our laudable history of astute financial planning, the Powers that Be on both sides of the 49th are in a better position to know how to spend this money than you.

Wishing you all the best this holiday season,

S. Harper

P.S. We are reassessing the Universal Child Care Benefit payouts next week. Looking forward to speaking with you again soon!

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And on Every Street Corner You Hear...

I love the Sally Ann Bell Ringers. They make me happy.

Of course, they also make me feel guilty (see previous post). But it's a happy kind of guilt, easily assuaged by dropping a few coins into the little slot.

The Army's out in full force these days, with ring-offs happening on street kitty-corners (really, why post two kettle-minders within tinkling distance - isn't that like two Starbucks across the street from one another? "Oh, they have different personalities." Perhaps there are two ways to ring a bell...) and locked-down red kettles swaying festively in the wind.

Now the soldiers themselves do not always look happy, which is almost the best part. Sure, I love the enthusiastic ones who throw themselves into their work with extra vigorous wrist snappage and cheery "Happy Holidays!" flung towards every passerby. But the ones who give a half-hearted jingle as they shift their weight back and forth on weary feet and give a brief nod of acknowledgement as I pass are my favourite.

Why so glum chum? I think to myself. You get to be a part of something fabulous - the guilting of wealthy people into giving away a bit more than they thought they would. If you're doing it as a volunteer, you get the satisfaction of knowing that You Helped. If you're getting paid, then perhaps you will be fortunate enough to avoid the very circumstances the donations you receive are intended to remedy.

But I completely identify with the Reluctant Volunteer, the person who gives time because it is A Good Thing to Do. I wish I were the type of person who has a natural servant heart and who takes pleasure in the mere act of giving. I'm not, though - I'm selfish and crochety and rather Ebeneezer-y. So I empathize with those who are likewise, yet force themselves out to their bell-ringing duties because they know that the world is a better place for it, even if they'd rather be at home watching Heroes.

So good on you, Sourface Sallys! Thanks for the reminder that even if we're just going through the motions, at least we're going!

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An Inconvenient Truth

I took my car yesterday because I was vain. And then I felt guilty about it.

I'm pretty much a world champion when it comes to guilt. Don't know whether it's Mennonite guilt, liberal guilt, first-child-syndrome guilt, or just a heightened sense of hubris that leads to me assuming I'm actually responsible for everything untoward that happens (and, therefore, must feel guilty about it) or what, but "guilty until proven innocent" is my personal mantra and exculpatory evidence is rare.

So, having made myself late because I just had to blow dry my hair yesterday morning and thus missed the "make it to the bus" window, I jumped in my car and felt convicted that I had greeted Mother Earth with solitary-driver-diesel-fumes so punishingly and so very early in the morning, all because of my vanity. (My hair is very pretty right now, though, after last week's hair appointment.)

But then I thought, you know, I knew this would be a possibility back when I decided to forego my sleeping-on-wet-hair + next-day-bedhead look the night before. No, this was not (only) vanity that led to that little hole in the ozone layer with my name on it. It was another of the seven deadlies.

Sloth.

In addition to feeling guilty, I am also a world champion when it comes to being lazy. I procrastinate everything, and complete only that which comes with a deadline. The house is littered with unfinished projects (the baby blanket sans binding started when The Girl was three, my read-the-Bible-in-a-year bookmark stuck in Numbers, the Yoga Boot Camp box that has been opened only long enough for me to realize I don't like the look of the instructor).

And so, it shouldn't be surprising that I chose sleep instead of a few extra minutes to shinify my coiffure, thus leading to the infamous car debacle.

Part of me wants to blame technological advancements for my embracing of that internal inertia by which my body at rest will remain there. I live in a Jetsons world of washing machines, dishwashers, e-commerce and e-mail. Perhaps, I reason, the world is to blame for requiring less of me, leading me to require less of myself.

But that's silly, I know. If I were Laura Ingalls Wilder, I would have let the dishes pile up until we were out of clean dishes, instead of tidying up after each meal. If I were Lady Macbeth, I would have said, "ah, let him keep his crown. It's too much work to kill him." If I were Lot's wife, I'd have died in the flames instead of turning into a pillar of salt because I probably would have put off packing until it was too late.

No, I must face the truth. I am lazy because I do not like to do that which is inconvenient to me (i.e. pretty much everything of value).

And it's not that this laziness produces any benefit. Everything I procrastinate I ultimately have to do anyway, with the added bonus of less time and more cranky. Why is that? Why punish myself continually with guilt-inducing sloth only to have to play catch-up at the eleventh hour?

Samuel Johnson, great moralist that he was, wrote a piece on procrastination:

Thus life is languished away in the gloom of anxiety, and consumed in collecting resolution which the next morning dissipates; in forming purposes which we scarcely hope to keep, and reconciling ourselves to our own cowardice by excuses, which, while we admit them, we know to be absurd. Our firmness is by the continual contemplation of misery hourly impaired; every submission to our fear enlarges its dominion; we not only waste that time in which the evil we dread might have been suffered and surmounted, but even where procrastination produces no absolute encrease of our difficulties, make them less superable to ourselves by habitual terrors. (Rambler 134)

And yet, the story goes, Johnson himself wrote the article at the last minute, while the messenger boy sent to collect his submission waited in the hall.

At least I'm in good company. And now I should go fold some laundry. But I suspect I'll just spend my time surfing instead.

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If You Can't Find It, Grind It

Whenever I visit the Great White North, as I did this past week for American Thanksgiving, I am astonished how easily I shift gears back into my old life. The smiles are familiar, and the jokes are the same. Conversations begin exactly where they ended in the last email. Reunions aren't tearful because it seems as though we didn't really leave in the first place.

It was a really wonderful weekend. I revisited all sorts of former stomping grounds - my job, my hair stylist, my church, my book club...so many of the things that made me love my life. We hung out with family and got to go to Steve Bell, which was faaaah-bu-lous.

(An aside: where else besides Southern Manitoba can you go to a concert where the performer asks the audience to sing along and they do - in four parts, no less - because they've been singing that song in church for ten years. Happiness, thy name is an advent concert at the Centennial Concert Hall.)

Of course, there are little things that remind me that I don't live there anymore. I get excited every time I see a Friendly Manitoba license plate because they're rare in my neck of the woods (although that gets pretty old after awhile). I miss my exit onto St. Mary's because all of that construction on the Perimeter gets a bit confusing. I die a little inside each time I see the ever-encroaching limits of Waverly West.

And is it just me, or has the graffiti in Winnipeg - Crestcentwood-ish, Osborne Village-ish - been ratcheted up to the next level? We took a swing by the old neighbourhood and felt a bit like we were in the abandoned railcar section at the CN yard.

Nevertheless, when I'm there, everything seems to fit properly - the world in me and I in it.

It's when I get back in the car and head for what-is-now-known-as-Home that everything gets out of whack. The clutch stops working and the gears grind as I try to make the transition smooth but ultimately jolt jerkily forward with each shift.

But hey, all you have to do is get into fifth and pray that you don't hit any of the lights, right?

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