The wish list edition, with bonus fashion statement
CJ’s big problem: He doesn’t want to wear snow pants because they make his pants slide up his leg. And it’s snowing! And we’re late for the bus!
Mama’s quick solution: Tuck pants into socks, and we’re good to go.
But Mama wonders, will the kid figure out how to tuck his pants in again at school? After all, he has to dress himself in snow clothes for two recessess, plus coming home after school.
Apparently, Mama needn’t have worried. He knew what to do! He just wore them tucked in all day long. Like this. Yep. It’s a good look.
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Today’s post is all about practicalities. Sorry, folks. I’m going to post my kids’ Christmas wish lists here. If you’re an aunt, uncle, or grandparent, you may find these interesting, even helpful. If you’re anyone else, please accept my apologies, and check back tomorrow instead.
Albus’s Christmas list (spelling uncorrected)
1. cappachino maker (he saw it advertised in a catalogue, and here is what he told us: “I’ll just make decaf cappuchinos … or espressos.” I’m not endorsing his idea, but I had to leave it on the list, because, seriously, what 11-year-old asks for a cappuchino-maker?!)
2. Krave breakfast cereal
3. Crunchie chocolate bar
4. Settelers ‘o’ cantan (I think he means the board game Settlers of Catan, which even I can’t spell)
5. Lego minifigures (stocking stuffers: Santa will take care of this)
6. i-pod nano or i-pod-touch
8. Skylanders Giants figures: Whirlwind, Bash, Prism break, Wrecking ball, chop chop, Hex, fright rider, Stealth elf, Flame, Slinger, Sonic Boom (don’t ask me what all this means)
9.
There is no ninth request, but he wrote the number down, just in case.
AppleApple’s Christmas List (adapted from her birthday list)
-puzzle books
-doggy costume (ie. for the dogs)
-hat
-jeans
-apricot
-blood orange
-grapes
-kiwi
-pomegranite
-dragon fruit
-grape fruit
-papaya
-snake book
-mango
-mittens
-snow pants (size 10)
-horse books
-Fantasy books
-shakespeare plays (she has Romeo and Juliet already)
-chocolate
Fooey’s Christmas List
– Maplelea doll items: bed, wardrobe, hangers, prima ballerina, Katajjaq Giggles
– Lego friends
– i-pod touch
– Books
– Chocolet
– journel
– snow kitten writing set or snuggle puppy writing set (these may be Scholastic order items)
– Doodle journel
– my perfect puppy (?)
– Skylanders fugeirs like: Ninijni
x-mas list for CJ (transcribed by Albus)
1. Lego Star Wars
2. Playmobiel Pyrates (oh, the spelling, Albus, the spelling!) (pretty sure that means “pirates”)
3. Lego set with Iron man
4. Batman lego “the butcave” (surely Albus mean to write “batcave”)
5. Skylander feguers like: double trouble, trigger happy, bash, hot dog, pop fizz, and zap, thumpback, spyro (again with the Skylander figures! Hats off to those *&%^^ing wii marketers, whoever they may be, for sucking in three out of four of my children.)
I will just add, although not on every list, that books, puzzles, games, crafts, and creative off-the-wall toys are always welcome, and will please the children too. And I’m not just saying that!
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Should I make a Christmas/birthday wish list? Ah heck, why not.
– books or gift certificate to WordsWorth
– clothes or gift certificate to Andie’s (my favourite shop uptown)
– tea
– exercise clothes or gift certificate to Studio Energi
– there must be more, but I’m blanking. No Skylander figures (or figeuers, or figeirs, or even figrers) for me, please.
Attention: Minor profound thought ahead
This is a perfect writing day.
Rainy, grey, dark, gloomy. No pull to go outside or run errands in the sunshine (not that the pull is very strong for me anyway, when I’m on a writing roll). I woke from my post-spin-class cat-nap to the sound of heavy rain on the roof. That sound makes me feel content, dreamy, and ever so slightly guilty for sending my children off to school without umbrellas or rain jackets. I’m their weather girl. And apparently I’m good at maintaining the long-standing weather-person tradition of totally wrong forecasts. I should get a green screen and a pointer, and do my hair and makeup.
Attention: Minor profound thought of the day coming right up.
Writing fiction is not a responsive job. In a responsive job, you show up with your talents and skills, and respond to the needs presented to you. Your schedule, also, responds to other people’s needs. I imagine this could be very satisfying: here is a need being treated by my specific skills. I sometimes fantasize about having the skills to do work like that.
I don’t, really. (Although I could, perhaps, find a job as a copy editor or a creative writing teacher, given my current skill set.)
Writing fiction is quite different. I’m going to call it an originating job. In an originating job, you set your talents and skills to projects of your own devising, and hope to heck that others will connect with what you’re doing, and see value in it. The work (and the schedule) is self-directed. If I want anything exciting to happen, I must make it happen. I must see what could be, believe in it, and bring it about. I must pursue my goal against inevitable headwinds of creative dissonances and deeply uncomfortable emotions: doubt and uncertainty caused by a lack of exterior motivation. No one needs a book. (If I break my arm, I need a doctor; but a book of fiction answers no such direct need.) Being a fiction writer can feel excruciatingly meaningless. Completely unnecessary. It’s quite easy to go from wondering, can I do this, to why am I doing this?
That is why Wild Optimism is a huge part of my every day existence. The belief that I have something to say. The desire to express it. The sheer chugging energy that fires me toward an end. That is also why sometimes I am tired and weary, and I fantasize about people calling me up and begging to pay me pots of money to write books for them! That is why I fantasize, too, about doing other work, where I could walk into a room and respond to a need, immediately. I long for a different skill set, sometimes, or an enhanced and deeper skill set.
But I love the freedom and seemingly endless possibilities that come from doing an originating job.
Attention: No conclusions shall be drawn today.
I’m meeting Kevin for lunch tomorrow, to brainstorm and discuss our future plans, big and small. I’m sure we’ll have all the answers by tomorrow afternoon. Well … at least we’ll have a lunch date together.
Random fact: I got hit on the head with a soccer ball
Random facts.
My hair looks good this morning. So far, the only people aside from family to have seen it have been the school bus driver (who wears a knitted toque himself) and a man walking a dog (which sniffed me; dog, not man).
The school bus was late this morning.
I didn’t eat breakfast until after doing the dishes I should have done last night.
I was too tired to do dishes last night, or even to function as a responsible parent, and instead fell into a deep sleep on the couch while my children entertained themselves in the new Lego play area. Bits of their play drifted into my dreams. I swear they’ve got a game going on right now that involves taxation for the benefit of the greater good. CJ wasn’t keen to pay his taxes. This caused problems. (Meanwhile, Kevin took the dogs on a car-ride to pick up a child who’d been at a birthday party playing laser tag, much to the envy of her military-minded brothers, who bring me to grief regularly with their battle play. War is not a game! I feel this deeply! And yet my boys — yes, boys only — take great pleasure in imagining themselves blasting imaginary opponents with imaginary weaponry. Is this play harmless? Inexcusable? Inevitable? A necessary fantasy? Related to their genitalia? This aside is getting way too long, but I want to add an aside to my aside, and ask: Are humans hard-wired to desire conflict? Is conflict itself a kind of fantasy that helps us escape from the boredom of our adult responsibilities?)
Um. Where was I?
I did get hit on the head with a soccer ball yesterday. I meant to head the ball, which is not my favourite thing to do as I am a bit protective of my brain, and in my fraction-of-a-second hesitation was instead hit upon the head with the ball, which is not the same thing at all.
Also, we lost.
But my teammates have found out that I’m a writer, and one of them had actually heard of The Juliet Stories!!! Because someone at her book club had recommended it!! Which is really quite thrilling because it means the book is making noise enough to get through to new readers! And that is all an obscure CanLit writer can really hope for. (Maybe it helps that The Juliet Stories has been noted on end-of-year-best-of lists in The Globe & Mail, the National Post, and K-W’s own The Record? Do people shop off these lists? Do you? Do I?)
Driving home after my soccer game, I wondered, am I more fuzzy-headed than usual? But it was hard to tell whether it was ball-on-head-induced fuzziness or up-before-dawn-driving-all-day fuzziness. My big girl had a swim meet on the east side of Toronto, which required us to be poolside at 8 in the morning. She is not a morning person. She also gets carsick.
It was raining. The trip was by turns exciting (when we picked up coffee and bagels for breakfast from the sweet-smelling City Cafe Bakery on our way out of town), uneventful (safe driving), and tedious (nothing on the radio; aforementioned carsickness).
She won both of her heats.
I missed seeing the second one because I was chatting with a dad sitting next to me, whose daughter happened to be in the same heat, so we shared the parent-guilt equally. (Random fact: I enjoy chatting with people I will never see again.)
Anyway, AppleApple and I decided to skip her last race of the morning because it meant we could just make it to her soccer game in nearby Mississaugua. Her team won. I observed several girls heading the ball properly. We were then home in time for me to change and get back into the car to drive to my soccer game.
All of this activity involved way too much driving. I found myself making up the lyrics to a sunny little song: “I’m driving all day in my car / it’s really not that hard.” Sitting in the driveway, back home again, I felt this strange attachment to the car, as if it had become a cocoon world of slightly stale bagels and cold coffee and radio talk, temperature controlled, seat-adjustable. I didn’t want to go anywhere else. But I didn’t really want to get out.
Eventually I did. And then, it must be said, I really really didn’t want to get back in again.
Today, Saturday
Wake to a winter wonderland.
Date with daughter: Starbucks and errands uptown. Such a good start to the day, I’m thinking every Saturday morning should begin with a date with one of my kids. Albus calls the next one.
Advent begins. “Mom is so freaky organized she’s got an envelope in her office with advent activities!” (This is true. I just put them away from last year’s calendar, knowing the season would come around before we knew it. And here it is. Looks like we had a lot “hot chocolate for breakfast” last year.)
Today’s activity: Get a tree!
Uh oh. First we have to clean up the gigantic Lego living-room mess.
Good opportunity to create a new Lego playspace upstairs instead. Buy small area carpet while shopping for the tree, which comes in a box. Yes, we bought a tree in a box.
Tree-in-box was family decision: it’s economical and reusable. And it’s not like we’ve been hiking out to our back forty and chopping down an adorable and unique tree replete with picturesque memories that the children will carry with them forever. No, for the past couple of years, following some truly disastrous never-again hiking-around-tree-farm-experiences, we’ve purchased our tree in a Dairy Queen parking lot. So, really …
Also this afternoon: big kids had their second babysitting gig (he’s the other curly head in the foreground).
And now it’s dark, and we still haven’t had supper. Kevin and the boys are out picking up a take-out Thai order. I’ve got a very hungry and grumpy child curled in the rocking chair beside me, and another trying to solve a sudoko puzzle at the dining-room table (and she’s stuck on something, from the sounds of it). Also crossed off the list today: fresh sheets for everyone, tons of laundry, library run, creative Shakespeare presentation completed, and — still in the works — bread baking.
Hey, food’s here! As Fooey says, “Let’s eat! Let’s eat!”
Gone writing
