There is a crock pot at home. Not only that, it is turned on. Low.
Get this: there is a roast inside – with seasoning, and mushrooms and carrots and potatoes.
Everything but the meat came from the garden. The roast came from a farm a few hours away.
Once I get home, I will brown some vermicelli and cook the rice with it.
I will then proceed to make myself a martini and smoke an extra long cigarette
- because there is nothing better than fretting all day that your house is burning down (Empty House! Appliance! On!) than rewarding ones self with a few selfish wifely 1950′s stereotypes.
Franklin had an obsession with ducks when he was Eliza’s age. While on maternity leave, we used to go to Beacon Hill park with a bag of duck feed and an entire sord of ducks would waddle over and surround us. One day I asked a man to take our photo and I treasure this picture. It’s often a crap shoot when you ask a stranger to take your photo – framed too far off, over exposed, someone is blinking or picking their nose…
This time, it was perfect.
I’ll have to dig out the photo sometime and post it to flickr (it was pre-digital so this would be an effort).
Now that we live on the other side of the city from Beacon Hill park and the masses of ducks that hang there, we don’t bother to drive all the way down. Eliza gets her fill of the rabbits at UVic. We don’t feed these guys though. I tend to see them more as rodents these days and their population is out of control. Feeding them seems counter productive. They have already had their fill on my garden.
We walk to school and we count the rabbits, we go to the garden and we chase the rabbits, we eat dinner and point out the rabbits…. you get the idea.
Regardless of the rabbits in her life, she has also gravitated toward ducks. You are thinking that this is because of the easy pronunciation? Well… not really. She calls her obsession, “Pato” – the Spanish word for duck. This is because she has become obsessed with a little you tube action we call, Pocoyo.
This was on a television channel when Franklin was little and I’m not sure if it is still on but I’d be surprised if it wasn’t. There are a million Pocoyo uploads to watch and the show has been translated in English, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Finnish, German and on and on. There is also a pocoyo world that is amazingly similar to club penguin – except to do anything at all, you have to buy a “PW card” – 3 euros per month. For all that is Disney and shameful, at least you can have fun on club penguin without needing to purchase anything. Jeez.
Pato is hilarious. If you watch anything, watch this one titled, “A Little Something Between Friends” which has apparently won an award.
During the shows, Franklin likes to cast the characters. He’s “Pocoyo” (boy, blue, main character, and he once owned a hat like Pocoyo’s), I’m “Eli” (girl, pink, large elephant, likes to spontaneously dance ballet), Dickson is “Fred”, the Octopus (the most hilarious character, likes to sing, speaks gibberish) and Eliza is her beloved duck, “Pato” (because she loves him and yells out his name over and over and over again). However, between you and me, he’s reversed the two friends. If we were to really look at the personalities, Eliza is “Pocoyo” and Franklin is “Pato” – and also probably why the two of them like the one’s they have been initially cast as in the first place.
However, this is me and this is how much crazy thought and research I have put into a 7 minute children’s program. Here’s guessing that pink elephant drinks a lot of coffee.
The clip above is from a movie I absolutely love, “Metropolitan”. It is a long one but I really wanted to post the first portion of it – the discussion about Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and literary criticism.
I think for a long time, I was almost of the opinion that one did not really have the time to read a full fictional novel. I know. I’m an English major. Wouldn’t that be sacrilegious of me? Except that this opinion is precision because I was an English major. I remember being assigned to read a novel a night one semester – what with the combination of all my courses that term. Herman Melville type stuff. Nothing all that skimable.
Now that I have more time (read: no money to go to university), I am really enjoying fiction. I’m still on that Jane Austen kick. I’m finally reading the Mansfield Park these two are talking about in the movie. I’m finally learning just how virtuous and unbearable Fanny Price actually is – and she is…. virtuous. She is also slightly unbearable in a passive aggressive, just say what you feel, kind of way but there are plausible reasons for her personality. To tell you the truth, I’m starting to really adore her. She reminds me of my friend Joy, from Grade One in Vanderhoof, BC.
If anyone in my life could be cast in this book, I would be Mary Crawford and she would be Fanny Price (I also have an ex-boyfriend of the Henry Crawford type but haven’t we all?). Joy was, as far as my six year old memory allows, smart as a whip and quiet as a mouse. We both sat in the row farthest from the teacher, a witch of a woman, and were allowed to do quite a bit of independent work. She sat up front because she was so wee and only spoke in whispers. I sat in the back because there was no problem hearing my voice (ahem) – it was probably nicer to hear it less, actually. I also remember that I sat directly behind a boy who brought me flowers everyday and I put them in the top corner of my desk where there probably had been an ink bottle at some point in the past.
Ah memories.
But I digress…
What I wanted to say when I started this post was now that I’m able to read for enjoyment and without a deadline, I am finding that I am able to take the time to even read certain sections over and over again. I know it sounds odd, but Jane Austen is such a talented writer with such an accurate insight into human nature. I feel privileged to be of the same sex.
Here is an excerpt from Mansfield Park describing the wedding of one of the eldest spoiled Bertram daughter to an incredibly wealthy, yet ignorant, man named Rushworth:
It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed: the two bridesmaids were duly inferior: her father gave her away; her mother stood with salts in her hand, expecting to be agitated; her aunt tried to cry; and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant. Nothing could be objected to when it came under the discussion of the nieghbourhood, except that the carriage which conveyed the bride and bridegroom and Julia from the church door to Sotherton was the same chaise which Mr. Rushworth had used for a twelvemonth before. In everything else the etiquette of the day might stand the strictest investigation
Oh there is so much to say about this – so much to tell you about the book and how these few lines are so exact and hilarious but even if you don’t know the story, it is smart and wonderful.
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I was going to dress up as a Helicopter Parent for Hallowe’en but sometimes explaining your costume is tiresome and quite frankly, a little patronizing.
Instead, I’m making my very own homemade wrestling suit out of a plastic shopping bag.
Franklin’s birthday party was last weekend. We had to delay it for a number of reasons – chief being that the light sabers for everyone were late in the mail. Plus, my sister’s wedding and Dickson’s parent’s anniversary pretty much wiped us out – physically, emotionally and financially. Let’s just say that after this weekend’s shindig, I am no longer ashamed or feeling at all guilty for the absolutely adored STORE BOUGHT! costume for Franklin this year.
Oh, the horror.
No cardboard excavator creation. I’m even letting Eliza be the same thing she was last year – something found in a box of hand me downs from a friend. She’ll be an elephant. I’ll just have to make sure not to let her look in the mirror beforehand because that trunk hood will piss her off. I also predict that she will be demanding her own transformer mask. Everything Franklin can do, she can do… louder.
The Terrible Twos is strong with this one. She’s started taking back the power at the ripe old age of 18 months. We are in uncharted territory with the second born. Clearly, Franklin was the most docile and laid back kid in the history of toddlers and it was not our superior parenting style that lead to our quiet memories. We are duly humbled.
But regardless of the stress and the exhaustion and the money, these last few weeks have been wonderful. It was perfect to top it all off in a somewhat more subdued birthday party (7 kids with light sabers are better then 16?). In fact, the photo above could probably summarize why being a parent is so kick ass awesome. Everything is an adventure and pajama’s are formal party wear. Seriously, what more could a human really need in life?
We just got back from Edmonton yesterday. It was a nice trip – if harried as we almost missed our flight going there and were delayed 1 hour coming home. Regardless, the time spent in Edmonton at Dickson’s parent’s home and at my sister’s place was nice. Nothing harried there. It’s just that trip back and forth can be so… blech. I’m always worried about getting to the plane on time. For me, sitting on the plane and making sure the kids are taken care of is not as much as a challenge as making sure we have the correct flight information, the proper identification and getting our bodies to the gate in one piece.
Flying (with children) isn’t really that much of a challenge. We’ve done it before and I’ve done it alone with both of them. Breastfeeding babies, flirting toddlers, 7 year old boys with faulty headsets and monitors… it’s all good. Nothing is the nightmare people like to exaggerate about. I swear, sometimes airplane stories are the childless equivalent to mothers’ birth stories…. “This one time? On my way to an important interview? Puke ALL over my new Louis Vuitton!”
Whatever.
The moments when the two of them (Franklin and Eliza) are looking out the window and marveling at the white sea of clouds or the amount of snow on the mountains or the way the sea looks like the skin of a breathing animal when you are so high up in the sky makes up for the glares of the grumpy and child-free or the impossible task of holding the baby in the “burp position” while the seatbelt sign is on.
To tell you the truth, most stories I hear are of surprise – surprise that their children actually did extremely well on the plane. I think most of the time, the kids are great because the parents are not distracted and are able to be 100% concentrated on the kids. This is my little pet theory, anyway.
Wednesday morning while logging onto work, I happened to find on my MSN homepage a disturbing article: “Should kids on planes be sedated?“
Huh? Gravol is the drug recommended by many, apparently – although one woefully ignorant person recommended that a double dose of Tylenol or Motrin should be a “requirement for all children under 12 years of age”.
Sure, it can be exhausting with a 19 month old that is currently obsessed with dumping things out of containers only to put them back in again (Yikes, the Cheerios!) and the the word “no” apparently means, “do that again!” but kids loooove planes! I am a little scared to read that parents want to dope them up so they can get some rest. It’s exciting! It’s fun! It’s an amazing experience! And you want them to sleep through it all?!?
I love this rug hooking. There is so much in the world that is not going well these days that this rug’s message is the only recourse, really.
Expect Good Things.
I’m worried about H1N1. I’m worried because many of my co-workers and acquaintances don’t believe in vaccination. They don’t vaccinate for measles, mumps or rubella. They don’t take the flu shot. They don’t use antibiotics and they don’t use any kind of pain medication. They are “holistic”.
I’m all for holistic medicine. Clove oil instead of Motrin, Arnica for the bumps and bruises, changing of the diet for mental health… all that hippie stuff is good. However there would seem, in our technologically advanced age of the twenty-first century, some science can be given credit. I tend to think the eradication of child killing diseases is a good thing.
sigh
But! Expect Good Things.
Hope that this flu season doesn’t kill anyone.
oops. Has that already happened? To healthy children?!?
Say it ain’t so!
So the idea that you don’t think you’ll need it, that you will be able to weather the flu fine, that you are healthy and without pre-existing immunity problems…
None of this means that you won’t / might / could give your “not a big deal” flu to a child, or to a parent of a child, or to a sibling of a baby.
