I went to see Sex and the City with RheostaticsFan on Sunday evening, and I loved it. We had watched the entire TV series together — RheostaticsFan had bought the DVDs and over the course of several years, she’d come over to my place about every six weeks or so and we’d watch a few episodes over ice cream, until we’d made it through all the seasons.

(Our husbands watched too. Don’t tell them I told you.)

Anyway, the movie was just perfect for a fan of the series like me, plenty of female bonding and humour and love and weeping into kleenexes.

And the fashion. Oh, the fashion.

I know I’m a little fashion challenged but please reassure me…I am not the only one who thinks that most of the designer stuff they wear in the movie is ugly and strange, right? I spent half the movie turning to RheostaticFan to mouth, “WHAT ARE THEY WEARING????” while she mouthed back, “I KNOW!”

More than that, though, I cannot believe that the average New York woman spends that kind of money on clothing. Am I just seriously that far out of touch with life in the big city? I looked it up after viewing the movie and the IMDB reports that several of the handbags in the movie are in the $5000 range. Even the little cupcake purse that Charlotte’s little girl has — which I ADORED — has a MSRP of around $4000. And there’s lots of mention in the movie of the fact that several of Carrie’s pairs of shoes are in the $500 range.

Five hundred dollars for a pair of shoes! Five thousand for a handbag!

I have three purses, one is a hand-me-down from FameThrowa and the other two are sports bags from the MEC that cost about $25 each. I have about 10 pairs of shoes including all sports-specific footwear and I don’t think I paid more than $100 for any one pair. It’s not that I couldn’t have afforded it, if I really really wanted to — I mean, if I didn’t have a minivan to service or a mortgage to pay or three university educations to save for. It’s that I just could never bring myself to afford it. No matter how much I loved an article of clothing, I have an upper price limit that I think is fair and there’s just no going beyond that.

I’m not hopelessly square, right? No real people actually buy this kind of thing, right? At least not in sane cities like Ottawa?

Right?

Little Miss Sunshine turned eleven months old last week, and so it seems the time for weaning has finally arrived. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. There’s plenty about nursing that I am not going to miss.

I’m really not going to miss my nursing bras, which are stretched out and stained and faded and smelly and disgusting. I told Mrs. Carl Sagan that I was going to burn them when I was all done and she laughed, only I was not kidding.

I’m not going to miss the biting, the leaking, or the various infections. I’m not going to miss having to wear shirts that are two sizes too big for me, so I can hoist them up at a moment’s notice.

And although I guess I am a little sentimental about my baby growing up, I’m not sad about it or anything. We have lots of other ways to bond, like me dangling her upside down by her ankles, which is probably her favourite thing in the whole world. That and arrowroots.

But I’m surprised to find that there is one thing about nursing that I am going to miss, and that’s the quiet time.

Being a stay-at-home mom is a busy job, a physical job, and a loud job (because it isn’t enough to talk about BUTTS at a normal volume, the word MUST BE SHOUTED). All day long it’s go-go-go, making a meal while changing the load of laundry, doing a puzzle with one hand while working a puppet with the other, making sure the baby isn’t eating any sand while helping the other two climb the rock wall at the park. There’s precious little time to just sit and read a book, or daydream, or even admire the beauty of my children from across the room.

Until now, though, I’ve had a required five-minute down-time at least four or five times a day. I find a quiet activity for the older kids — watching a TV show, or playing a game together in a bedroom — and then I take Little Miss Sunshine up to her room.

The curtains are drawn and it’s dark and peaceful.

The chair is comfy and sometimes there’s gentle rocking.

The Little Miss doesn’t like it when I talk or sing while she’s nursing so it’s silent and calm.

(Assuming relations between the other two have not devolved into a shoving match.)

I lay my head back and close my eyes. I take deep breaths and relax.

And there, with my feet up, in the quiet, I recharge. I get five minutes to just daydream, or to do a little writing in my head, or to just admire the beauty of my littlest girl.

I find it really hard to remember to take a few moments in my day to rest. There’s always someone who needs something and it’s hard to say no, that Mommy just needs to sit down. Instead I tend to push myself and try to do everything and be everything to everyone until I snap. Then I find myself yelling at the kids for a relatively small infraction and someone is crying and suddenly I’ve become Bad Mommy.

I’ve already dropped one nursing, so now we’re down to just three or sometimes four of these little oases of calm per day. I’ve already noticed the loss; I miss my quiet time.

I must make a new resolution to replace nursing time with something similar. Maybe we’ll start a family yoga minute or maybe I’ll just take extra long putting the Little Miss down for her naps, snuggling up with a second book instead of taking a milk break.

Because quiet time is just as important as Big Fun time, for all of us.

Do you know what five-year-old boys like to talk about?

Poop. Poop and eyeballs. Eyeballs, poop, and butts.

Typical daily conversation:

Gal Smiley: Can we do colouring? I’m going to draw a rainbow.
Captain Jelly Belly: I’m going to draw EYEBALLS. BLEEDING EYEBALLS.

Also typical:

Me: Captain, come for dinner.
Captain Jelly Belly: You have POO in your BUM! POOPY POOPY BUM!
Me: Very nice, eat your carrots.
Captain Jelly Belly: POOPY STINKY BUTT BUTT!

I keep trying to remind myself that this is just typical five-year-old stuff, but man, does scatalogical humour ever get old fast. On the other hand, I guess this explains how Adam Sandler continues to make movies that sell tickets — the five-year-old audience is growing all the time.

The other day I took the kids to a petting zoo that is just a few minutes from our house for the day. While there, we saw a goat pooping. Its bum was facing us so it was a pretty graphic view. I think it was possibly the best time ever in the Captain’s short life.

Last night while brushing his teeth:

Captain Jelly Belly: Remember when we were at the farm, and we saw that goat POOP? OUT HIS BUTT?
Me: Yes, yes I do.
Captain Jelly Belly: When the poo came out, it looked JUST LIKE EYEBALLS.

Wake me when he’s six.

Lately Captain Jelly Belly has been obsessed with a show called Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman, which airs on PBS. It’s kind of a game show in which six kids are given different tasks to perform in each episode, to earn points, and then at the end of the season (22 episodes or so), the one with the most points wins a trophy. The tasks are so, so cool though — stuff like learning to windsurf, becoming a Formula-1 crew chief, giving the weather report on the local news, or surviving in the woods for two days with nothing but a knife and a sheet of plastic.

A lot of the time the kids have to do something science-y, like make a to-scale model of the solar system (a whole city big!), or design a water balloon launcher. From watching Fetch!, the Captain has developed a real interest in science experiments, and is always asking if we can try them at home. For a while there, we spent every evening before bed doing float tests. We’d get a big glass of water and then we’d go through everything in the fridge and pantry, putting a little bit into the cup to see what would float, and what would sink.

Mustard sinks and looks really cool. Mayonnaise sinks too, and looks like little plops of poop, which is a really big hit with the five-year-old crowd. Salad dressing is cool because it separates and the oil part floats, while the vinegar and spices sink. Cheerios float. Sugar will use a slick of oil floating on the surface as a little boat, but if you stir it up, the sugar will sink while the oil floats back to the surface.

Milk just mixes with the water and obscures everything else, so don’t bother to try it.

Anyway, every night we’d end up with this totally disgusting cocktail of goo, which was kind of fascinating and repulsive at the same time. It’s really a good thing Gal Smiley was usually in bed by the time “experiment hour” rolled around, because I think the Captain was very, very interested in getting someone to try to drink it.

After a while I got kind of tired of testing the same old stuff and having the same conversation over and over about how mayonnaise looks like poo, so I introduced a new experiment idea: weighing stuff to see which was heavier.

I asked the Captain how we could do such a thing, and I almost cried with pride when he said, “We will have to build a balancing machine.” Do I have the brainiest kid ever, or what? I can hardly wait until he has to bring me to prom.

So we talked it over and together we came up with a basic design for the Balancing Machine, then we got Sir Monkeypants to build it because tools were involved.

Here it is:

What we have here is two large tupperware containers with a piece of wire from a coat hanger spanning the distance between them. The wire goes through the exact centre of a popsicle stick (from a BLUE popsicle, obviously), so the stick can pivot freely. The stick has two notches, equidistant from the ends, from which hang two identical baggies. We can place items in the baggies and see which one is heavier.

Here we are confirming that two identical Dora The Explorer finger puppets weigh exactly the same:

Here we are demonstrating that a single Dora finger puppet is heavier than a plastic pterodactyl:

The Balancing Machine reminds me of everything that is good and fun and cool about being a parent. It’s working on a project together with your kids, and seeing their minds open to new things, seeing them excited to think and excited to discover and excited to learn.

It’s good times, right there, good times.

When I was a kid, my mother loved Erma Bombeck books. She owned all of them and read them over many times. She’d laugh out loud to If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What am I Doing in the Pits? and The Grass is Always Greener over the Septic Tank. I read them myself as a preteen and although I wasn’t married, didn’t have kids, and didn’t know what a septic tank was, I still found them charming and amusing. So, I’ve always had a soft spot for Erma myself.

A few weeks ago I was looking to round out an Amazon order with something small, so I could get free shipping, so for nostalgia’s sake I ordered a copy of Erma’s If Life is a Bowl Of Cherries. Although it was written in the 70s, I figured it was about timeless themes — snoring husbands and maintaining your sanity while on camping trips — so it wouldn’t seem too dated, and would still be a fun read.

I was really surprised to find out that it is dated. It’s not the subject matter, it’s the way that it is written. The book is kind of like reading a transcript of a stand-up act — it’s a bunch of one-liners, thrown rapid-fire at the wall, hoping something will stick. It’s not that the individual lines aren’t funny, it’s that there isn’t a cohesive whole to the various chapters. I was expecting a book of humourous essays. Instead it’s just joke after joke.

I think I’ve been completely changed and spoiled by Mommy blogs, which are so incredibly different. I’ve always thought that Heather Armstrong, The Dooce Lady, is a sort of modern-day Erma Bombeck, an apprentice to the master, if you will. But in fact, I like to read Dooce much more than Erma’s writing — and I’m shocked, because I’ve always thought that Erma was the gold standard. The difference is that a blog entry has a more cohesive “story” to it. It’s not just about getting the laugh, it’s about sharing an incident, happy or sad. A post might be very short, but it usually is about just one thing — not a scattershot of topics and punchlines. It allows you to bond with the author in a different, more meaningful manner.

Plus, I’ve read several of my favourite blogs for years now, and I’m getting to feel like I know these women. I’ve heard all kinds of tales about their lives, their husbands, their jobs, and their kids, in a more intimate way than Erma’s book allows. Erma is often funny but I don’t feel like I really know her from her reading — it doesn’t have that personal feel. Over years and years of daily posts — some funny, some moving, some sad — you can really develop a relationship with the bloggers you read.

And I love it.

I love blogging but even more than that, I love to read blogs. They’ve changed my definition of what it means to be a reader, what it means to bond with the author behind the work. The grass is definitely greener in this age of the blogger.

Captain Jelly Belly is learning about farm animals at school right now, so last night we were talking about the different names for the various members of animal families.

Say for example, sheep. The animal family is sheep, the mommy is an ewe, the daddy is a ram, and the baby is a lamb.

Likewise for pigs. The mommy is a sow, the daddy is a boar, and the baby is a piglet.

But for cows…I am stumped. The daddy is a bull. The baby is a calf. What is a mommy cow called?

I’m thinking a mommy cow is a “cow,” since that is the name for the female of other large animal species — a female elephant, whale, or hippo is a cow.

So if “cow” is the name for the female of the species…what is the name of the species?

I just looked it up and found a link that says that the name of the species is “cattle.” Sounds plausible, except I don’t see myself seeing a random unidentified creature and saying, “Hey look, a cattle,” in the same way I might say, “Hey look, a sheep,” or “Hey look, a pig.” Cattle has a plural connotation that the other animal names don’t have. What is the singular of “cattle”?

Hm.

Let us refer that saviour of many a parent of an inquisitive five-year-old, Wikipedia:

Cattle is both a plural and a mass noun, but there is no singular equivalent: it is a plurale tantum. Thus one may refer to “three cattle” or “some cattle”, but not “one cattle”. There is no universally used singular equivalent in modern English to “cattle”, other than the gender and age-specific terms such as cow, bull, steer and heifer. Strictly speaking, the singular noun for the domestic bovine was “ox.” However, “ox” today is rarely used in this general sense.

Good ol’ Wiki.

Incidently, a female that has never given birth is a “heifer.” And did you know, also from the same source that the word “cattle” used to refer to all livestock, and the word “deer” used to refer to all wild animals, as used in the bible and other old English sources? Fascinating.

Man, he’s only in JK and already I’m having trouble with his homework. I’m officially passing off all the calculus to Sir Monkeypants.

Yesterday I went to the mall to buy some shorts. Even though almost every size is represented in my wardrobe, from size 6 through to 16, I somehow am missing a critical segment of the shorts continuum. I only had one pair of size 14-plus-size that I could get into, but they were really too big so I was wearing them pinned together in the waist. Plus they were a little too short for a lady of my advanced years, if you know what I’m saying.

So. To the mall.

I went to the Eddie Bauer first because their pants fit me really well, but they cost a small fortune so I don’t usually buy anything there unless it’s on sale. I was in a rush, though, because I only had 45 minutes to shop before Little Miss Sunshine needed a nap, so I just grabbed and grabbed and didn’t look at prices. I put the first pair on and it was L-O-V-E and I knew I had to have them. I had a little heart attack at the price but you know what? I hate shopping, I never find anything I like, and these fit me like a dream and were super soft and a gorgeous colour and approaching-middle-age respectable, so SCREW IT, sold.

Also I bought a second pair in a different colour. SCREW IT, I say.

But really, my point here is not to talk about shopping, but rather to talk about sizing. I have several pairs of size 12 shorts in my closet and I tried valiantly to squeeze into them before the big shopping trip but no dice. I couldn’t even zip them up. All of these shorts are (OF COURSE) at least ten years old because my entire wardrobe says, “Hi! I’m from the year 1990, nice to meet you!”

So I assumed, when I went to the mall, I’d be looking for size 14 stuff. But when I tried on size 14 stuff — way too big. I needed a size 12. Even at the Eddie Bauer, when some of the shorts I already had at home were their size 12, but too tight.

This appears to be incontrovertable evidence that sizes have really increased in the past 15 or so years. What used to qualify as a size 12 is now more like a size 10. I guess it’s supposed to make me feel better about the fact that I’ve gained a bunch of weight and all that, and I admit it…it kind of does. Size 12! Whoo hoo!

Now if only I could get rid of everything in my closet that is older than 10 years, I’d be able to fool myself completely.

I do, however, find this size changing thing to be frustrating when it comes to shopping. I hate clothes shopping as it is, and it does not help if stores are changing their sizes all the time, or some are changing them and some aren’t. Sir Monkeypants likes to do what he calls “Man-style shopping” which is when he goes into a store that he knows, that he likes, that he already owns stuff from, picks something off the rack in what he knows is his size, and just buys it. Hell, maybe he’ll take two. Just like that. It takes him 10 minutes, and voila, modern, in-style clothes without even trying them on.

I’d love to be able to shop like that but with this sizing problem, I can’t ever know what size I am without actually taking the trouble of undressing and redressing and man, that is so annoying, I may as well just keep the same old 10-year crap. Even if I already own stuff from that store…even within the store’s current line…there are sizing differences for women.

Can’t the world just get it together on this ONE THING? Don’t we already have enough to worry about what with losing the entire bat and bee population of the earth?

It would really help me out.

On Friday I shopped at the IKEA for the first time in ages, and I had to pay five cents for a plastic bag. How cool is that? I usually carry a cloth shopping bag around with me (it packs up really small — a fabulous gift from my pal RheostaticsFan), but for some reason I’d left it at home. I was buying four small vases as thank-you gifts for my kids’ teachers so I had to have a bag, so I forked out the five cents. No bitterness, though, only appreciation that IKEA is taking a small step to reduce bag use, especially since you can buy reuseable cloth bags there now instead, as well.

Today at the Superstore I had a different adventure in bagging. It seems they have stopped having the cashier bag your groceries for you. Instead she just piles them up in a big hot mess at the end of the cash and you have to sort it all out yourself.

I’m sure that this is a cost-saving measure of some sort because discount grocery stores, like Price Chopper or No Frills, always have bag-your-own. But I really do not understand the business model here. First of all, since I had no idea what I was doing and was faced with a huge pile of unsorted groceries, it took me FOREVER to get stuff into bags…eventually the cashier got tired of waiting around for me to finish and started to help out so the three other people behind me in line would stop glaring at her. It was definitely much, much slower moving people through the line, which says to me that they will soon have to have more cashiers on each shift. Secondly, it’s not like they are saving money by eliminating a bag-boy position, as the cashiers there used to do all the bagging themselves anyway. And lastly, since I have no bagging skills and my groceries were all heaped together I did a terrible job of optimizing, which meant that I used way more plastic bags (which are still free…for now) than I would have otherwise. When the cashiers bag my stuff, they can fill my cloth bags so full that I can barely lift them, whereas I was able to get like, three things in there before they were topped out. So again, increased cost for the Superstore in terms of more bags being used, and plus crappier for the environment.

PLUS, there does not seem to be any way to use your reuseable cloth bags in the self-checkout line. I’ve never seen anyone doing it, and trying to put your cloth bags on the “NO CHEATING” scale causes an error for me. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but in the meantime I’ll just be over here being bitter.

So, to sum up, I am NOT AMUSED, Superstore. It seems like every time we go there I have a new bitch about them. They are very close to being put on notice.

In more positive news, however, remember this post I made a few months ago complaining that the cart return at the Superstore was a million miles out into the parking lot, rendering the concepts of “handicapped” and “maternity” parking meaningless? They moved one of the cart returns up next to the preferred parking!

Clearly, they did some serious thinking on the issue. I am pleased.

For now.

I had my first ultimate game last night in two years. It felt really good to be out running and playing again. I had been really afraid that any and all attempts to run around were just going to illustrate how used up and broken my body is after having three kids and turning 37. Like maybe I’d end up just gasping for air in a puddle in the middle of the field. Or maybe I’d break a leg or something.

Sir Monkeypants was pretty scared of me having a heart attack or stroke. On my way out he yelled after me, “There’s no shame in faking an injury!”

But you know, it actually went pretty well.

I got this really cool mark on my arm:

It’s sort of half way between a bruise and a scrape. A brape? A scruise? I got this one while jumping up to make a D in the middle of a crowd of five people and I totally D-ed that baby. I rock.

I also got this bruise on my knee:

That happened during this bizarre incident in which I turned to dash into the end zone, and I got about three steps before my legs were all, Oh no, thank you and I couldn’t possibly and Pip pip, Cheerio!. Then they were magically changed into a bowl of jelly, and down I went. Totally embarrassing. This same fall also, I think, caused me to aggravate an old injury in my right foot in which I dislocated a bone in the arch while being smashed into by a really big guy during an ultimate game about seven years ago.

I also pulled a muscle in my butt. That’s going to make it really hard to sit around all day without a lot of childish moaning. I don’t think I’ll include a photo of my butt here, though.

In case you are wondering, I do indeed have a head. Here is a picture Gal Smiley took of me yesterday afternoon:

Not bad at all! She’s currently really camera obsessed and loves to take pictures and videos, when I’m in the mood to let her touch the camera. She’s so totally getting one of those Fisher Price toddler digital cameras for Christmas. We used to think she would clearly grow up to be a doctor, but now I’m thinking, film-director-with-doctor-fetish.

Where was I? Oh yes, ultimate. I was mostly afraid of being the weakest link on the team, and although I did get outrun by some of the gals on the other team a couple of times, I didn’t feel like I was really holding everybody back, which was good. I ran a lot — I took three consecutive points in the cup, which if you know ultimate, you’ll know what I mean, and if you don’t know ultimate, you’ll know that I RAN UNTIL I DIED, and then ran some more. My flick was confident and strong, I made a couple of good defensive moves, and I didn’t really start to run out of steam until the last couple of points.

Then I came home and entered my physical activity in DietPower and it said, “Have all the Bran Flakes you want.”

So I did.

Most of all I’m invigorated by the idea that I could play all this season, and maybe for a couple more seasons too, before I have to retire. Already I feel like an old lady out on the field — it’s hard to keep up with these young pups who dash about the field with boundless energy. On the sidelines, when people find out I have three kids — I’m often the only parent in the group when I am subbing for a young team — I get to feeling really, really old. But if my knees and my heart and my butt hang in there, I hope to keep playing for a few more years, at least.

Can’t wait for next week!

Yesterday Captain Jelly Belly was watching me sort the laundry and he asked me this:

“Mommy, when I am all grown up and a daddy and married to Little Miss Sunshine, can I please, please be the one who sorts the laundry?”

And I thought, man, are you going to be a catch for some young lady some day.

He added, “Then I can put all my clothes in just one bin and they won’t have to touch any girl clothes.”

Ah, that’s the five-year-old I know!